Nine

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Calendars are artificial constructs, I keep telling myself.
The number of days in a week or month, the number of months in a year. These are all based on arbitrary standards that society has chosen.
The length of the year and where it starts varies, adjusted constantly to compensate for these inconsistencies.
September was once the seventh month. Now, it’s the ninth. The ninth of September, on a year set from an arbitrary start, has no cosmic meaning.
I repeat this over and over as the skies turn red, and taloned beasts crawl out of the shadows, sniffing for prey.

Corn Dogs

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There’s nothing quite like a fresh hand-dipped corn dog at the county fair.
These aren’t the pre-processed ones you get at the state fair or the grocery store.
You can watch as they pull a hot dog out of the kettle, spear it with a stick, dip it in the batter, and dangle it in the hot oil.
Look behind the curtain, and you’ll see the batter-maid milking a batter-cow into pails, hot dogs picked straight from a hot dog tree, and the oil pumped straight from the Great Vegetable Oil River.
As I said, as fresh as can be.

Idiot Tax

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The Idiot Tax collector stumbles from door to door, shaking his burlap sack and shouting at the top of his lungs.
Four in the morning. He always comes at four.
I watch a door open and a broken toaster fly out.
He catches it, grunts, and shambles off to the next house.
It’s against the law to kill an Idiot Tax collector. Even by accident.
My rusty butcher’s knife is in his chest.
“I tried to hand it to him,” I say. “Honest.”
I cry. I whine. I babble incoherently.
I, the new Idiot, pick up the sack and howl.

Ceiling Fan

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I good salesman.
I sell ceiling fan to anybody.
I sell to The Pope.
He say his church, it too hot.
Ceiling fan, it a work? He ask.
You try, if it no work, you give back, I say. No pay.
The Pope, he rich, but he no stupid. He like no pay if no work.
We shake hands, share a pizza. Nice wine.
He buy fan, say put it up in my church.
I look, whoa. Tall ceiling. I need big ladder.
I put ceiling fan in chapel, right on Adam’s bellybutton.
It not pretty, but it a work.

Weekly Challenge #176 – On the line

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Seventy-Six, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
The topic this week was… was…. um…
It’s On the line.
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
VOTING

Which were your favorite stories this week?
Justin from http://www.thespaceturtle.com
Norval Joe from http://www.norvalsoutlook.blogspot.com
TJ from http://tjaman.libsyn.com
Guy David from http://nightguy.guydavid.com
Anima from http://zabbadabba.com
Lynda from http://sisterpepperspray.blogspot.com/
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):

Justin

Steve’s entire research grant hung on a thin line. The slightest failure would topple it over and ruin his chance at research. The music industry would revolutionize marketing if it had a way to quantify a bands target market. His first test was to see if his apparatus would indeed measure a certain quality of a specific musical genre. In the back of a hole in the wall he attended a show of the emo punk band Razor Winged Butterfly Kisses. With the needle deep in the red, he discovered that he could indeed measure a band’s anguish in angstroms.

Norval Joe

“You’re gonna let me win.” Ed threatened the five other boys.
Each put a toe on the line and waited.
“Bang.”
Ed sprinted forward. Tim knew the bigger boy would soon fade.
Halfway around the quarter mile track Ed slowed. Tim moved to pass. Ed’s elbow to his nose put him back in place.
On the final stretch Tim went wide with a burst of speed. Blood ran freely from his nose. He shot past Ed to the finish line.
No one cheered or patted him on the back
PE was over. It was back to the classroom for math.

TJ

One definition of insanity is doing a thing repeatedly, expecting different results. As Carl fled the auditorium, pursued by bloodthirsty mob, it seemed insanity as well to perform the same act to the approval of one audience and the inflamed outrage of another. Their applause thundered on the line “Couple it with something – make it a word and a blow” as Mercutio in “R&J.” Less so in an increasingly awkward swordfight in “Hamlet.” And while his wife seemed to approve at home, the reaction was markedly different upon his delivery of them in comic breakaway doublet. Shakespeare for Kids indeed.

Guy David

“Enil enohp eht, Enil eht no” said the inscription. “What does it mean?” asked Suzy. The archeologist raised his glasses to his forehead and said “it’s in some long forgotten tongue.” He looked at it again, turning the strange writing this way and that. Suzy took a peek over his shoulder. The scribbling began to turn and move. It glowed slightly, then rearranged itself. The inscription now said “Sorry, but we’re not in right now. If you care to scribble a message we’ll be sure to get back to you as soon as possible.” “Some things never change” said Suzy.

Anima

Malicious little imp.
You stand, teetering on the brink of innocence, a smile curling your lips. However, the evil glint in your eye belies your true nature. You raise your right leg, left toes on the line, ready to hopscotch me into a nervous breakdown. Will it be now? Or now? Or now?
I hear my own mother – “Just wait ‘til you have kids of your own, – you’ll see.” I should have listened.
The bandages have hardly been off a week… Why must you and your faerie friends sing that song?
Step on a crack, break your mother’s back…

Lynda

Look at them down there fiddling with their shiny things–totally not real blackberries, by the way. Harvey chipped his beak on one of those things in April and he hasn’t been the same since.
They think they’re tweeting? They don’t know the first thing about tweeting! When we sit up here on the line, we’re one with the whole world, able to send out the alarm for worm sightings or where to get bread with one sound.
Well, here comes what you get for not looking up and admiring the bird over your head!
HA! I just pooped.

Planet Z

I called the operator and asked for help.
“It’s an emergency,” I said.
She said “Please stay on the line while I connect you” but it sounded like “Please stay on the lion.”
I looked around for a lion.
None nearby.
I pondered hanging up and calling someone to ask where the nearest lion is, but I didn’t know who to call to ask about lions.
“One moment please” said the operator, and then, after a brief series of clicks, I heard the unmistakable roar of a lion.
I hung up the phone.
Good.
Now the damn movie can start.

Turtle Teacher

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Every classroom has a turtle in an aquarium, placed on a table in front of each class.
The kids stare at the turtle for four hours, take a break for lunch, and return to staring at the turtle for the rest of the day.
Cameras watch the turtles and students, and the principal watches the video screens.
Nothing happens for days… weeks… months…
The Ministry was ready to pull the plug when an alarm went off in Classroom Twelve.
The turtle was gone, a greasy smear on the inside of the aquarium.
Upon review, one student’s eyes glowed red.
Success!

Teleprompter

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The President read the words on the teleprompter, the camera watched him, and the people loved it all.
One day, The President decided to sleep late, so they pointed the camera directly at the teleprompter.
The people loved it much more than they loved The President.
When he woke up and heard that they loved the teleprompter more than they loved him, he appeared on camera without the teleprompter.
The people booed and hooted. They told him to go away.
So, he did. And when the teleprompter was broken, the Vice President’s teleprompter took over.
That’s when people freaked out.

Smacked in the face with a rollerskate

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I’ve never seen Lisa rollerskate.
She just carries that pair around to smack people in the face with.
That’s why I wear a football helmet with the full facemask.
She can slap me in the face all she wants with those rollerskates. It won’t make a lick of difference.
Other people, you can tell she’s whacked them. A bloody lip, a black eye, or a knocked-out tooth.
But me? My face is unblemished and injury-free.
That’s when she tried something new.
“Kiss me,” she said. And she pulled me real close.
So, I took off the helmet and… WHACK!
Bitch.

Fern

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The kids all point their fingers at Fern and laugh.
She doesn’t cry. Instead, she reaches into her backpack and pulls out a compass.
There’s no greater sight than the look on a bully’s face when he’s been stabbed in the chest. That change from the purest malice to emasculated shock happens quickly, but time slows down enough to let the moment be savored.
The bully goes down, hands clutched to his chest, blood leaking through his fingers.
Others scream, but Fern just rifles through the bully’s backpack.
She takes the compass, stows it away in her backpack, and leaves.

And back again

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The princess needed to smuggle gold from one castle to the other without thieves knowing.
Ruplestiltskin was long banished into nothingness, but his spinning-wheel remained.
So, she spun the wheel backwards, turning gold into straw.
She sent out the straw with farmers, and then the princess with her spinning wheel afterwards.
Brilliant, she thought.
The next day, the carts were loaded up with the straw and sent out.
Soon after, the princess began her journey.
Midway there, she found that bandits had struck the caravan, bodies and straw scattered in all directions.
She wept for the gold, and started gathering.