The 100 Word Stories Podcast

Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at oneadayuntilthedayidie.com.

This is the Weekly Challenge, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.

We’ve got stories by:

• Jeffrey
• Tom
• Charlie
• Richard
• Jon
• Serendipity
• Tura
• Lizzie
• Laieanna
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

JEFFREY

Deceptive Advertising
by Jeffrey Fischer

I eyed the can with suspicion. “Monster” the can read. “Energy drink.” That was my goal: I wanted to be a real monster, scaring the living daylights out of people and not be responsible for my actions. I popped the can open and chugged it down. And waited. I felt jittery, but nothing more. How disappointing. I swallowed the contents of a second can and felt dizzy. Too much caffeine for sure, but I felt no more monstrous than before.

I looked in the mirror: scales, a forked tongue, a barbed tail. Sure I looked good, I looked the part, but I really couldn’t muster any rage. I considered myself a failure to my family. The company was getting a nasty letter for its deceptive advertising.

TOM

Not Tuff Enough

A long time ago in a movie theater far, far away I sat with my friend to view the second Alien film. We laughed, “How much scarier could it be then the acid dripping, face grabbing, chest erupting original monster?” Well, so said the seasoned boomer movie goers. There’s a scene when the Badie has trapped Ripple and the little girl in a med lap …. released the infant Alien on wheel who scream around the floor. I’d like to say we calmly remained in our seats snickering, no we screamed and fully jumped off the floor into our seats.

CHARLIE

Marcel was a monster. His idea of fun was to play practical jokes on everyone. His jokes were cruel and someone usually got hurt physically or emotionally.
Sometimes his jokes backfired, but never enough to discourage him from playing another joke on someone.

He would draw a full ounce of Super Glue into a syringe, and shoot it into someone’s car door lock or between the driver’s window and the rubber gasket so the mechanism would cease to open the window.

He was caught by a Samoan wrestler while vandalizing his Mercedes. An ounce of glue went up Marcel’s stern.

2.

The monster that dwelled inside demanded sugar and electricity. Cold maple syrup drenched a frozen banana, eaten with a fork. This was embellished by hooking wires from the socket to clamps affixed to a metal tub with an inch of water in it. The monster insisted that he step into the tub for as long as he could control his spasms, and then lie on the kitchen floor and abuse himself.

Lamont started the day like this. Every day. He lived a long life, friendless and detached until he visited the coffeehouse where he was the life of the party.

RICHARD

Bedtime

As I child, I was a terror – my parents despaired they would ever control my behaviour.

Eventually, they turned to cruel and inhuman means to get me to toe the line. They told me that I really should be afraid of the dark and the bogeyman was actively looking for me; they warned me the monster under the bed was real, and he wanted to trap me and kill me!

All attempts to get me into bed at night, and keep me there.

What they didn’t know, was that the monster under the bed, was absolutely terrified… of me!

JON

Carnivale
By
Jon DeCles

Clowns are monsters decked out so that we can laugh. The unexpected that would terrify us if we found one at the back door at midnight.
Carnivals always play on our fears and our desire to be frightened, just a little bit. Even the most cheerful pictures conceal a ride with heart-stopping disorientation.
If the ticket taker had worn a comical plaid suit, his presence in the mirror maze would have seemed explicable, part of the show.
It was late at night, and I didn’t recall many customers. His eyes held me as my heart beat faster. Could I escape?

SERENDIPITY

People call her a monster, but Brian Transeau’s music in the movie telling the Aileen Wuornos story is breathtakingly beautiful.

I listen to it as I drift off to sleep at night; it helps me relax; and it inspires me…
It plays quietly in the background as I plan my own killing spree.

Not because I’m a monster – far from it – I seek beauty and peace from life, just like the music as it fills my thoughts.

My only wish, is for Transeau to write an equally beautiful soundtrack when they make the movie of my own life.

TURA

Monster
———
Anna burst in and screamed, “There’s an alien monster on board!”

As captain, I knew exactly what to do. “Jenkins,” I said to the most annoying crew member, “investigate the mysterious noises in the sewer line on deck 27. Metal man” (I call our synthetic person that to annoy it), “secretly work against us. Everyone else, split up and wander into dark corners to get picked off one by one.”

Of course the monster would get me at some point (because War Is Hell), but in the end Ripley would succeed in blasting it into space.

What could go wrong?

LIZZIE

The slightly cross-eyed doll sat on the floor, her head rotating while a toy train inexplicably hovered nearby. No child was in sight and no one could tell who the doll belonged to.
They had paid a big chunk of money and everyone was fine with a bit of mystery.
When the monster jumped from behind a door, the guide screamed “Run!” and they all laughed nervously instead.
The guide later told the media that he did try to warn them.
The slightly cross-eyed doll still sits on the floor, her head rotating while a toy train inexplicably hovers nearby.

LAIEANNA

“Roadkill”

The third run at the monster truck rally was Albert’s time to shine.
He bolted into the muddy arena weaving among the moving vehicles.
Filth splashed, Albert flailed his arms and roared to get the crowd’s
attention. For several minutes, he danced with danger, dashing and
dodging until his foot slipped. Albert fell. Big Bertha rolled a
tire over him. The crowd voiced their horror and watched with morbid
fascination as Bertha slowly backed up to reveal Albert’s corpse, but
the rail thin man popped right up, already shouting his persona.
“Flat Jack available for parties, pranks, and general shocks.”

NORVAL JOE

Frankenstein was not the monster. He was a scientist, a doctor, who got caught up in the furor of his era. Everyone back then was trying to find an elixir of life, a universal solvent, and a cure for worts. Vivisection, grave robbing, and reanimating the dead was just something a guy did to gain a foothold in the scientific community.
The creature that Frankenstein created wasn’t a monster either. He was just multiple victims of circumstance, all rolled into one big guy.
The real monster is the liberal news media casting a negative slant on good old fashioned science.

PLANET Z

They say that the Universal Monster movies represent different stages of life.
Frankenstein represents our youth, because he is so innocent and fresh… until he throws a tantrum.
The Wolfman represents our adolescence, with hair growing out of weird unexpected places and unusual appetites.
Dracula represents the cool suave sex god we all wish to be in our adulthood.
And The Mummy represents the slow creepy horror of Death approaching.
All of the Bride and Son movies represent family obligations.
And then there’s the Abbott and Costello Meet movies.
They represent the need to do shameful things for a paycheck.

Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at oneadayuntilthedayidie.com.

This is the Weekly Challenge, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.

We’ve got stories by:

• Jeffrey
• Richard
• Charlie
• Tom
• Jon
• Tura
• Serendipity
• Lizzie
• Laieanna
• Lilith Heart
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

JEFFREY

Barnacles
by Jeffrey Fischer

I looked at polo shirts on the Brooks Brothers web site. The shirts came in a myriad of colors but the prices required a second mortgage for a fistful of cloth. Reluctantly, I closed the window.

Later, as I opened a blog entry on the mating habits of arachnids – hey, it’s a long-standing passion – I saw an ad in the middle of the page, for none other than Brooks Brothers polo shirts. The same thing happened when I browsed for fountain pens and later read a lengthy piece on cross-dressing anarchists – NOT a passion, mind you, but broadening one’s horizons never hurts.

No, those barnacle ads are not creepy at all.

RICHARD

Creepy

It’s a little known fact that there were, in the beginning, eight dwarves sharing that cottage with Snow White.

Along with Sneezy, Dopey, Bashful, Doc and the others was another dwarf who was always a bit of an embarrassment – he was the really ugly one whose appearance made children cry and grown men cross to the other side of the street.

Which is precisely why Disney wrote Creepy completely out of the story, and nobody has ever seen him since.

But actually, he’s been doing rather well for himself.

Ever since he sealed a publishing deal with Stephen King!

CHARLIE

Nina Titwash was creepy. A lazy eyed, spongy gummed grandmother; she worked on Maggie’s Lunch Wagon on the West side. She’d sneeze and cough, light up another Camel, and throw Elk Burgers on the Grill.

She’d wash her hands once a day, but only incidentally if she got something icky on them when reaching into the back of the wagon’s reefer.

Titwash was a native Texan. Her family lived off things they drug out of the city dump. One day, her dad found a duffle bag full of money, and moved out, abandoning the family and its secrets and crimes.

2.

Romy Wovencrotch was a Seattle hippy. He spent an hour each morning doing his hair, tweezing his eyebrows, and putting on wristbands, analog watches, silver rings and ear jewelry.

The creepiest of creeps, he creeped around coffee bars, bicycle shops, Thai restaurants, and music venues. He was a picker of pockets and picked the pocket of pocked marked procurer at the produce market. He was caught, shaved head to toe, dipped in plaster, and planted puss down in a pig pen at the wildlife zoo, North of town.

He was found a month later, half eaten by the big sow.

JON

Something Creepy

By

Jon DeCles

There’s something sexy about something creepy. The frisson is not about something you should not do, it is about something you don’t want to do: only you do. The way your skin crawls at the guy in the Clive Barker movie where he is re-assembling without his skin, only you can feel why the girl is turned on.

There is also something erotic about fear, about surprise. The feeling that something could happen out of your control. Women and men both have rape fantasies, but almost nobody really wants to be raped.

Thus the ticket taker in the mirror maze.

TOM

Some People; You just Can’t Please.

“Smile!” I don’t like to smile, especially for someone trying to steal my soul for a momentarily tourist capture the moment as staged as the last 20 WrestleMania; and if I had a folding metal chair then I would be smiling for real. “No wider.” So I raise up my best 4th Grade Photo Day Smile. You know the one your parents show to perspective girlfriends “OOOOO that’s so creepy.” Not as creepy as what I am about to do with that camera of yours. “So serious.” I ponder how long it will take to find the body. Hope they take photos.

TURA

Creepy
———
“The first card represents the present,” said the fortune-teller. “The Astrogator, spying out the future.”

Well, no-brainer, here I was consulting her.

“The second is the immediate past. The Knight of Batons, reversed. A soldier defeated.”

A reference to my ignominious exit from my last assassination mission? The soothsayer continued.

“Then the three futures. 16 of Tentacles. Entrapment without escape. This is the best future.”

This was getting seriously creepy. I decided to postpone my current mission until the stars were once again right. But first, I shot the fortune-teller. One can’t be too careful in this line of work.

SERENDIPITY

People seem to think I’m creepy…

You could put it down to my fascination with blood and gore, or my fondness for stories of murder and mayhem.

Perhaps my unhealthy obsession with knives and the darker side of the soul causes them to wonder about my motives.

Or maybe, it’s just that I come across as something of a psychopath?

But, I don’t think that it’s really any of those things.

What really freaks people out, is that they’ve never heard my real voice, or seen my face… You have absolutely no idea who I really am.

And that’s creepy!

LIZZIE

She just waited there, wearing this huge hat while sitting between the over-sized figures of Death and a Bride.
The display was a performance, they said. All she had to do was sit down and be quiet. And that’s what she did. Well, at least until Death started coughing.
She stood up and peeked in through the eyes of Death, wondering if anyone was inside.
“Are you OK?”
To which Death replied, amidst intense coughing, “Help me.”
Everyone fled. Too creepy, the critics wrote.
Apparently, Death had planned to rob the jewelry-clad celebrities attending the opening, and Death almost died.

LAIEANNA

“Creepshow”

Shooting, stabbing, even setting fire -which almost burned down my
house- did nothing to eliminate the hideous creature dwelling inside.
I tried humane methods first, but authorities couldn’t see it and I
got fined for false calls. Invisible when attempting to evict and
invincible when trying to kill, if left alone, friends saw the
monstrosity.

I didn’t need to tend to it, but I couldn’t ignore it. So, I did the
next best thing and made a spectacle of it. You want to see something
unnatural and creepy? Ten dollars will get you a ticket for a half
hour viewing.

LILITH

She awoke in the bedroom to the sound of the bathtub faucet shutting off.

The bathroom had been dimmed and filled with flickering tea light
candles. Lavender and chamomile aromas were swept up with the
spiraling steam from the bubble bath. The tub was empty. She smiled.

Her husband called for her. “You home, babe?”

“Upstairs,” she called back, lowering herself into the bath. She so
felt sleepy as her head sank below the water. Blood swirled up from
her wrists.

He screamed her name when he saw her.

She awoke to the sound of the bathtub faucet shutting off.

NORVAL JOE

Back in my neighborhood, when I was a kid, no one ever invited Wendell along, but he always showed up anyway. No one cared.
He wore a cereal bowl haircut and didn’t seem to have any neck at all.
He never said anything. He just nodded his head in agreement to whatever I said and smiled his creepy smile.
He must have moved away. I never saw him after eighth grade.
At my twenty-fifth high school reunion I asked around among my old friends if anyone knew what had happened to him.
Funny. No one else remembered him at all.

PLANET Z

I named my first cat Mister Creepy.
His grey fur stuck out in all directions.
And his tail was a bent shock of fluff.
His claws were almost always out, gripping the carpet for dear life.
And his yellow eyes, as wide as can be.
He never walked anywhere. He always ran at full speed.
There were times that he jumped up on shelves and the tops of dressers.
Staring down at me, hissing and shrieking.
One day, I left the door open too long, and he escaped.
Crazy bastard never came back.
It was a relief to us all.