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:

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

CHARLIE

I forced my little sister into the tumble dryer after I caught her searching my laptop history and bookmarks. I secured the door with sheet metal screws and clicked on the switch.

Thirty minutes with the heat turned off should teach her not to fool with my favorite game machine.

Forty rotations a minute for thirty minutes is twelve hundred rotations. Twelve hundred bumps against the steel ribs inside the dryer would probably be enough to knock some sense into her and hammer a few concussive reminders into her skull.

My sister is forty years old and a crack addict.

JEFFREY

Mixed Load
by Jeffrey Fischer

I stared at the controls. My choices were “tumble dry,” “casuals,” and “cottons.” I stared at the load of wet laundry. Jeans, so that’s cottons, right? But the next handful of clothes were polyester shirts and women’s underwear. No cotton there, so maybe casuals? Can underwear be casual? Okay, surely tumble dry means something. I had the vision of one piece of clothing tumbling over another as the thing inside the machine rotates. Wait – isn’t that thing called a tumbler? So all the settings are really tumble dry, aren’t they?

I gave up. “Honey, it’s a nice day outside. Why don’t you hang the clothes on the line outside to dry?”

RICHARD

Happy New Year

New Year’s Day: I woke up, on my sister’s couch, with a raging headache and covered in blood – my own blood.

I had no idea what led to my unfortunate condition, other than it was almost certainly due to the now empty Wild Turkey bottle that lay on the floor next to me.

Eventually the story came out – I’d taken a tumble on the concrete driveway, whilst nipping outside for some fresh air.

Just to rub it in, my brother in law had drawn a chalk outline around my prone body, before dragging me back inside to recover.

TOM

She Never Gave Up, A Mere Mortal Would Have.

Her name was Sally. None of that foofoo, hippy stuff, like River or Willow. A sensible name for a sensible woman. So it was that when her cat Max wove between her legs sending her tumbling to the floor though it had jarred the tiny dot of Sunshine LSD from her hand she had the presence of mind to track its parabolic position relative to the rapidly approaching rug. Save the face, or follow the drug? Sadly the equally orange sag carpet swallowed the orange dot. “NO YOU DON’T” she screamed. Six hours later it was hers again. Sensible Woman.

JON

Vacation

By Jon DeCles

When she had asked him to join her he had been suspicious. Her invitations usually involved jibes at his record in the Senate: often about his staunch anti-environmentalist stance. His constituents back in the dome liked the quality of their air consistent! Her mercantile empire sold products that were so-called ‘Natural,’ which made money from their novelty and nothing more: mere gravy on top of the water sales.

Being outdoors gave him a headache, so took aspirin. His martini tasted wrong with the artificial juniper. Waiting for her, he stared out at the eggshell color of the dry polar clay.

—-

The Long Tumble Down
By
Jon DeCles

“I think it started the long tumble down when they invented emojis. –No, it was long before that. They were already using hieroglyphs to represent words on computers and stereo units and, oh, all kinds of things. But once the tumble had started it could not be stopped, any more than you can stop an avalanche with a whisper. And they were not consistent! They made up symbols as readily as they misappropriated words, so meanings got tumbled together and things stopped meaning things. People began to get even worse at communication, less able to convey even the simplest things…”

SERENDIPITY

They taught me to tumble as a child. One of my earliest memories is learning to forward roll, soon followed by somersaults and backflips.

Now I’m a coach for the Russian Olympic Squad, but times have changed. Competition has become ruthless and there’s no room for half measures.

When I was young, we’d force children into unnatural and painful positions, crippling their bodies to achieve gymnastic perfection, but there’s no time for that these days.
Instead, we take babies and surgically remove their connective tissue, replace bone with pliable plastic, and fix joints with titanium bolts.

All, with parental consent.

LIZZIE

Time tumbled the walls of the old theater. Abandoned for years, it became refuge for all sorts of animals, including good old Ronald. Ronald found a secret room underneath the stage and decided to hide there. This time he didn’t run too far. The only problem was the kid. He always kept half the money Ronald gave him to get food, and he was a dangerous blabber. When the kid’s mom showed up and dragged Ronald by the ear to the local police station, the kid waved the little flag Ronald had placed on the wall of his secret room.

LAIEANNA

Poor Sumbal Trumble took a tumble while she fumbled with her jumbal
and stumbled over the dumbbell in the jumbled mess that was her room.
The cake crumbled all over the umbel scrumble she had just crocheted
and her lumbal was in pain as she bumbled around to get upright again.
Oh did her stomach rumble at the loss of her dessert, but Sumbal
mumbled for it to behave. Still she grumbled about the tumble but
being humble, Sumbal knew she had to just do it all over again. It was
only her fifth trip that day. What a drumble.

NORVAL JOE

Juliet stumbled sideways, clutching her shoulder, and fell backwards out of site. Benny hoped she wouldn’t tumble down the stairwell.
But that wasn’t his biggest concern. Someone behind him had just shot his former partner. Was that intentional, or had they bumbled his assassination and hit Juliet instead? Wasting no more time, Benny tumbled to the floor and rolled sideways into a cubicle listening for sounds of his pursuer.
All was silent for several minutes and Benny thought his attacker must have left.
As he climbed to his feet, a man stepped into the doorway of the cubicle and smiled.

MUNSI

All Things Move Toward Their End
By Christopher Munroe

There will come a day when everything we’ve created tumbles to the ground, when the things we’d used to define ourselves are torn from us, leaving us naked and exposed before an uncaring, impassive universe…

It’s an unsustainable lifestyle, after all, built upon untenable foundations, and we knew when we began that none of it was meant to last.

And no talk of “Busses” and “Parties” changes that.

Yes, it will all collapse, and we’ll lose everything we value, some day, and some day soon.

But not today.

So: Back on the bus, we have a party to get to…

TURA

Tumble
———
The sun would soon rise, and in the glim of the pre-dawn a group of about a dozen people were walking down a rocky path. Among them was a woman with a two-year-old toddling along the path beside her. As toddlers do, she toddled, and wobbled, and fell down, going all her length on the ground, then burst into tears. Her mother bent down and swept her up into her arms, bouncing her on her shoulder to calm her, and walked on.

Just an everyday incident, in a tribe of Homo erectus, a million years ago in the Olduvai gorge.

PLANET Z

Jojo and Klaus were two German tumblers who toured the Old West with their strongman act.
Slim and muscular, the men went from town to town, challenging the strongest man in town to a fight.
Klaus would brain the challenger with an iron bar, while Jojo would finish off the sucker with a dagger to the heart.
Usually, the strongest man in town was a drug or a thug, and wouldn’t be missed.
So, the Germans wouldn’t be charged with a crime. Or, in some cases, they’d collect a reward.
Eventually, the two retired to a tree ranch in Oregon.

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:

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

CHARLIE

Hazing was tougher than ever this year. To join, the test was to ingest five Aspirin, chased with a full gravy boat, and run all the way to the Mercantile without tossing your cookies.

Once there, the inductee would drop ‘tro and sit on a block of ice, bare-assed, like a Polar bear, while juggling soft, clay balls and hard boiled eggs being careful to avoid cracking any of the egg shells.

After this. the pledge would have to chug a half pint of gin, flavored with juniper berries and orange clementine.

The hazing for the fraternities would be the same.

JEFFREY

Lost Afternoon
by Jeffrey Fischer

“Come join me in the bedroom,” my wife said. In some households, that could be an invitation to something good. I knew it was a demand to waste my afternoon and beyond.

“Okay, I’m here. What’s up?”

She pointed to the wall above the dresser. The wall contained five swathes of paint. I groaned inwardly. “I picked these up from the paint store. We have Polar White, Eggshell, Juniper, and Clay.” I looked. White, pretty much white, green, and gray.”

“Um, wonderful. You said five swathes, but mentioned only four. What’s that brownish stain to the right?”

She stared. “Oh, that’s just gravy from a snack I had last night.”

“Too bad. That was my first choice.”

RICHARD

#1 – Gin

I’d always fancied making my own tipple, and having juniper bushes at the bottom of the garden, gin seemed to be the logical choice.

I wasn’t really sure how to go about it, but a quick Google search armed me with all the necessary information. The only extra I’d need was a good quantity of cheap vodka.

I have friend – Ivan – who has connections down at the docks… He saw me right!

Although I’m not so sure after tasting – I’m seriously thinking of adding aspirin to the mix to combat the headache… As a pre-emptive measure!

#2 – TED

It’s not every day you get to join a Polar expedition.

That’s the trouble with TED Talks – you get all inspired by somebody else’s pursuit of freedom and success, and before you know it, you’ve quit your job, sold the house, and signed up for a six month trek across the frozen Arctic wastes.

And it all seemed such a good idea at the time.

Trust me, it’s not.

When you’ve lost your toes to frostbite, and are down to your last husky for protein, the only success you can focus on is surviving another day.

Don’t do it!

MUNSI

On Mornings After
By Christopher Munroe

One risk of the party bus lifestyle that nobody talks about is hangovers.

Good gravy, the hangovers.

Asprin won’t save you, and while keeping hydrated might mitigate things somewhat, you’ll still spend much of your mornings an utter human disaster, most days.

Which is fine. Nothing happens in the morning on a party bus, so you won’t miss anything.

Sleep til noon, many do, while the bus whisks you to the next town, for the next party.

Wake when you do, on your own time. There’s no pressure.

We’re all night owls here.

That’s why we joined a party bus…

SERENDIPITY

You have to pick your target area carefully – a baseball bat may be painful, but you must incapacitate your victim.

Leg bones are stronger than you might think; and although a good swing may break an arm, there’s no guarantee it’ll do serious damage. Broken collar bones and ribs are a better bet, but if you really want results, go for the skull.

To a baseball bat, the skull is eggshell thin – one good, hard whack, and it’s all over.

Trust me, to receive one of those will result in a headache no amount of aspirin will shift.

TOM

Just a Bunch of Words
Eggshell Juniper ran pell-mell down the long red corridor two picks in hand. The Polar Gravy was attacking joining with the Aspirin Feet of Clay. Both armed to the teeth with morning star and pole axe respectively. The Fight, a weekly challenge was always topical. This was billed as the next big thing, but always feel short, just like the picks and axes. “Mercantilism is the way.” The Eggshell yelled. “Works of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your chains.” The Gravy screamed. The groundlings pressed to post their last bets. The venters hawked their dubious wares.

LIZZIE

On Eggshells

New job, new goals, more money. That was great, right? Wrong.
Arthur’s supervisor, a wannabe vampire of sorts, decided to bite all the men in the company.
Arthur wasn’t fond of bites, especially of co-workers, even if they were female. So, he maneuvered cautiously through the intricate maze of corridors.
The day the supervisor caught him by the wrist, he smashed her face in with the lunch tray.
He told the police he feared for his life. They believe him.
And Arthur joined another company. This time, the goal was to find a quiet work environment… with no biting.

LAIEANNA

The three little pigs, everyone knows.
But what about the outcasts,
Two brothers, sadly disowned

One was dumb and a little cray.
He tried following in their footsteps,
But not with sticks, bricks, or even hay.

A house he built of eggshells, no wolf was required.
Just one attempt at entrance
Made his whole house crash and expire

The second pig, oh so into clay.
This wasn’t about building,
Just more shiek than mud to roll and lay.

Joke’s on us, you’d laugh if you could.
That pig now lives high on the hog,
As a pampered pet in Hollywood.

NORVAL JOE

Juliet smiled down the barrel of her pistol at Benny. Her teeth glistened, polar white between her blood red lips. Benny’s legs felt as if they had turned to gravy and his feet were mired in clay. He was painfully aware of his own handgun in the holster behind his back.
She read his mind.
“Reach for it and I’ll blow your head open like an eggshell.”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?” Benny asked.
She looked sincerely surprised. “Not if you join me.”
“Me join you?” he asked, as a bullet whistled past his ear, striking Juliet in the shoulder.

TURA

Clay; eggshells
———
Our Miracle Mineral Detox contains three magic ingredients. Two of them are clay and eggshells. Not just any clay, or
any eggshells, of course. Naturally formed diatomaceous kaolin with six nines purity, and sustainably harvested shells from hatched puffin chicks. There’s an authentic mediaeval recipe. “Take good black clay, two handfuls, and the shell of an egg that hath hatched in Its season, and by the rising light of dawn pound them together a sufficient time so they be well mixed” and so on. We leave out the claims that it will actually cure anything.

And the third ingredient? Gullibility.

PLANET Z

After the heart attack, Bob starting taking a daily dose of aspirin.
However, he never quite got used to the pill’s bitter taste.
He tried coated aspirin, but they tasted bad in a different way.
Syrups, candies… you name it, he tried it.
So, he started taking his aspirin with a cup of gravy.
And that tasted wonderful. Because, let’s face it… everything is better with gravy.
Of course, this ended up clogging Bob’s arteries even more, and eventually Bob had a second, fatal heart attack.
But the mortician had a hard time prying the smile off of Bob’s face.