Weekly Challenge #134 – That One

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Thirty-Four 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 That One.
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
VOTING

Which were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #134?
Justin from http://www.thebeandom.com/spaceturtle
Anima Zabaleta from http://zabbadabba.com
Jeffrey from http://GreatHites.blogspot.com
Ashley
Eva Moon from http://evamoon.net/blog/
Almo
Norval Joe from http://www.norvalsoutlook.blogspot.com
Guy David from http://www.guydavid.com/
Tom from http://midi.libsyn.com/
Mary from http://randomness-of-me-blog.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

Sad Betty crawled down the shelf. She walked across the aisle and stole a knife from a commando. He never paid any attention to her. She slunk back to her spot on the shelf. Beside her was Smiling Sarah. She giggled as the commando waved to her. When no one was looking, Betty pulled Sarah into the shadows.
“OK honey, you wanted a Sarah doll?”
“No mommy, I want that one!”
She pointed to a doll with a face that was slightly crooked. The doll was smiling. Behind, where no one could see, a doll with no face silently cried.

Norval Joe

The retirement home.
The old people sat in the dark and musty recreation room at the retirement home; the only modern thing in there was a wide-screen TV.
“Lets watch ‘I love Lucy’.”
“D’ya think they’ll give us mashed potatoes today?”
“Shuddup, I can’t hear”
“Turn the channel”
“No, I wanna watch this Chirapa thing.”
“It’s been canceled, turn on ‘I love Lucy'”
“Who’s got the remote, go back.”
“Shuddup, I can’t hear.”
“Go back to that Chirapa one.”
“What one?”
“Not that one, turn on ‘I love Lucy’.”
“The Lucy show was canceled, too.”
“I hope they give us mashed potatoes today!”.

Guy David

Chaketo Chirapa wandered amongst the corpses. None survived. That one was contemplative, this one hilarious, that other one his closest friend. He remembered the words of his mother:
“Eat your cereal, little Chaketo. You have a whole world to conquer”
He knew what he had to do. He turned on his communicator. He knew it would take many years for the massage to reach The Chirapa planet, but he could wait. He turned to leave, then hesitated. He turned dials, then he left. Behind him, the song of The Chirapa played one last time, before the underground tunnels sealed forever.

Tom

He kicked the tires, checked the cigarette lighter, adjusted the rearview mirror. The sale staff were unimpressed, that was until the Black Carbon American Express hit the counter, then two guys from the four floor race down to the showroom. “I’ll take that one.” Said the man glancing at the little red corvette. The model was from the year he was born. He was going to drive that car as fast and far as he could. It had always been time = money, now it was money = time. Hodgkin’s lymphoma = fast times fast cars and fast women.

Almo

George drove his truck toward Tom’s Turkey Farm and he thought about how different Thanksgiving was now that Congress had taken the restraints off the food industry. Hormones got the OK. Radiation, no problem.
George parked in the delivery area and wandered the yard. He paused occasionally to pet a bird. A young man came up and asked if George had decided. “Yes,” George said, “That one.”
The man took the bird away to be prepared. Soon after, the heavy steel crane lifted the turkey and the workers just managed to squeeze it into the bed of George’s pickup truck.

Eva Moon

Alma found herself unexpectedly perched atop the cabinet, panting wildly and clinging to the overhead light fixture. Bits of crumbled plaster and acoustic tile littered the floor. She glared down at the doctor.
She’d whacked her toe that morning and the pain had been getting worse all day. She finally made an appointment to have it checked. She told the doctor it was sore, but neither of them had realized quite how sore it was… Until he grasped her right big toe and flexed it.
Now he stood looking up at her in surprise. “Was it that one?” he asked.

Ashley

The transportation onto the pleasure planet Risa came unexpectedly.
Before either of the startled natives could react, he said, “I am James T. Kirk, captain of the Federation Starship Enterprise. Where are the green women? I need one for … recreation. There,” Kirk said, “I’ll take that one.”
Again, before either of the Risians could speak he stalked over, grasped a tall green hominid and left the room.
“Wasn’t that a self-motile squash that the captain just took,” said the first Risian to the other.
“Yes,” responded his companion, “apparently, great intelligence is not required to captain a Federation Starship.”

Jeffrey

Well it is that time of year a again folks. There is a nip in the air, time to put all the summer equipment away if you have not already. And then there is this.
“So sweetie what did you want?”
“Daddy, I found the one I wanted.”
“Really, which one is that.”
“The one with the red stripes and the pink horn.”
“Really? Don’t you think that one is a bit big for you?”
“Maybe, then how about this one?”
“Well that one is ok I guess.”
“Good, then that is the one I want. I want that one.”

Anima Zabaleta

Yesterday, Bob laughed in the wine shop –
“That one,” the clerk pointed to a Chardonnay/Semillon blend, “goes great with fish.”
“And Chirapa,” giggled Bob.
“How delicious,” he thought, ” Barbeque Chaketo, and a pyre of Chirapa in the tunnels… Chirapa had stolen his beloved Harriet; revenge would be his.

Now, Bob quaffed wine contentedly, listening to the sizzle of roasting flesh…
Was the fire buzzing?
Bob didn’t know, that, like the longleaf pine, Chirapa need fire to begin their alternate form of life.
Chirapa song filled his ears: thousands of alien sporazoa flew from the flames, craving blood…

Mary Elizabeth

“What do you think?”
“I’ve narrowed it down to two.”
“Are you going to decide today?”
“Very funny. I’m still not sure what I want.”
“Just choose one.”
“What if I choose wrong?”
“The world won’t end. How about this one?
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You need to make a decision.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“Flip a coin already. We don’t have all day.”
“Let me think.”
“Do you want me to decide for you?”
“You can’t do that.”
“Oh, yes I can. The waitress is getting annoyed, and I’m hungry. Excuse me, miss. He’ll take that one.”

Planet Z

I stood there, watching the lobsters crawl around the tank, their claws bound with rubber bands to keep them from fighting.
They were oblivious to my presence.
My Blackberry rang and crashed. It’s been having problems dropped calls and lockups.
One lobster was staring at me, tapping the glass with a claw.
It was as if… it was trying to tell me something.
“That one,” I said, pointing at it.
They took it out, and I put the phone by it.
With a few taps of its claw, the phone worked.
No dinner – I hired it as my assistant.

Lasso

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You don’t need a license to carry a lasso.
That’s why I carry one of those instead of a gun.
Guns are aloud and messy. Lassos are a lot friendlier.
But have you ever tried robbing a bank with a lasso?
The teller laughs like you’re crazy.
If you’re robbing a bank with a lasso, you are crazy.
The teller says for me to hold out my hand.
“Why?” I ask. “What for?”
“Just do it,” she says and smiles.
So, I do it, and she puts a penny in my palm.
“That’s for being cute,” she says. “Next!”

Life Hands You Lemons

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When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
So, I did.
Death handed me lemons, too.
I made lemonade with them.
Karma gave me lemons. More lemonade.
Then, Fate handed me a bag.
“More lemons?” I asked. “Please, not more lemons.”
Fate nodded yes.
So here I am, sitting on an island of lemons in a lake of lemonade.
Instead of a boat to rescue me, everybody’s bringing me lemons.
They ask lemon advice, when to plant, when to pick.
They want me to write a book.
ENOUGH!
If life hands you lemons, yell GET THESE FUCKING LEMONS AWAY FROM ME!

The Rider

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They may be hideous in appearance, but no goblin would be caught being rude.
“Sears,” says the creature. “And your name is?”
The topiary, a shrub groomed to look like a green poodle, said nothing.
“I need to be in Waco by sunrise,” said Sears, and he hopped on the back of the topiary. “Let us ride.”
For all the shouting, the topiary didn’t budge an inch.
The morning dew settles on the goblin’s frozen body, turned to stone by the daylight.
“Who put this ugly thing out here?” said the groundskeeper, knocking the goblin to pieces with a trowel.

The Camp

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I saw him in a bar. He was the bartender.
Turned out he owned the place.
Thirty years ago, he had a gun to my head, laughing as he pulled the trigger.
The gun was empty, the bullets fired at my family.
All dead, there in the middle of the camp.
Here. Now.
I asked for a beer, he put a glass in front of me.
I drank, pulled out a knife, and stabbed him in the chest.
“How’s it feel to die in front of your enemy?” I ask.
He laughed and said “Ask yourself. The beer is poisoned.”

The Wall

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Just a black angle in the ground, etched marble with so many names.
You could jog past it in less than a minute, nothing but a blur.
The flags at the base of each piece, the flowers.
Boots and candles. Cigarettes and flasks.
It’s the people that make you slow down and stop.
Less and less each year, parents too old to make the trip. Or gone themselves.
Children all grown up. They have children of their own. Easier to just let them learn about it in school.
The wall’s still there.
What was it for? What did we learn?

The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln #91

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Mary Todd was going crazy, but the analyst was curious as to the source of her husband’s misery.
Abe shrugged off all offers to get him on the couch and work out his issues.
“Perhaps it is something in your childhood?” said the doctor.
Abe laughed. “It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life,” he said.
When the doctor left, Abe took out his flask of Zook’s “Crazy No More” Tonic.
*glug* *glug*
“This is the only doctor I need,” he said, patting the flask and heading back to his office.

Weekly Challenge #133 – Omission

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Thirty-Three 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 Omission.
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
VOTING

Which were the best stories in Weekly Challenge #133?
Steven from http://ideatrash.blogspot.com
Mary from http://randomness-of-me-blog.blogspot.com/
Justin from http://www.thebeandom.com/spaceturtle
Guy from http://www.guydavid.com
Almo
Tom from http://midi.libsyn.com
Eva Moon from http://evamoon.net
Norval Joe
Planet X from http://planetxpodcast.com/
Ashley
Anima from http://zabbadabba.com/
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com


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


STEVEN

“Cindy, this is Jason from work and his wife Megan.” Dan ushered the
two into the kitchen, away from the noises of the party.
“Cindy,” Megan said, “I saw your daughter today. She’s so adorable!”
“Yes, Dan,” Jason said, “She looked wonderful in that dress. Did you
say you had a son, too? Where’s he?”
Dan and Cindy glanced at each other, at the basement door, then to their guests.
“He’s visiting his grandparents,” Cindy said quickly. “Let’s go join
the others back in the den.”
Neither Dan nor Cindy glanced at the door for the rest of the evening.

MARY

Overwhelmed by her own bliss, she barely noticed him dressing to leave. As he softly caressed her face to kiss her goodbye, she was startled by the cool chill of metal on her cheek.
Her eyes widened in shock as she stared at his wedding band.
How could this have happened? Their whirlwind romance seemed so perfect.
Never before had she become intimate with someone so quickly, but they were in love.
He turned and walked away without waiting for her to form a question. “You never asked.”
Rather than love, their relationship was based on a lie of omission.

JUSTIN

Ollie ordered an ostrich omelet but asked they omit the onions. Oliver the waiter gave the order to Otto the chef. Ollie ogled at the opulent onyx ornaments adorning Lady Olivia’s ornate outfit. From outside entered an overly obese officer of the order. It seemed that Lady Olivia obviously overstepped her bounds in not obeying the parking lot ordinance. She objected to the order to off-load her over-sized and orange Oldsmobile out of the compact zone. After an occasion, she obliged the officer, offended. Ollie obtained his order. It was out of line! Onion loving Otto made Ollie olive loaf!

GUY

As bob crawled through underground tunnels, he thought about his omissions. He giggled as he remembered how he omitted Harriet, the apple falling from her head after he blew it up. He smiled as he remembered how he curved Dave The Hacker into omission, starting with his ass, using his army knife. Now it was time to omit those Chirapa into oblivion. He could hear them in the distance. They where singing. Those fuckers where singing Chirapa songs. Then he could see them. He charged, spraying them with bullets from his automatic, and the song of The Chirapa was silenced.

ALMO

Robert snatched the envelope from the FedEx man. It was bulky, solid, the way realized dreams are supposed to feel.
Robert had spent three months assembling his proposal for the city architectural contest. It was edgy but not so much that it would horrify the council. It would create a three-word landmark for the city, like Seattle Space Needle or Sydney Opera House. He had a source who said the judges were absolutely wowed.
He pulled the rip strip. Stamped in on the first page Robert read: “Rejected for omission:” and the line checked below said “Missing applicant signature.”

TOM

M called in 008. It had been a busy week at MI5. 006 had been dispatch on M mission, 007 on N mission and 008 on the most pressing of the three O mission was now reporting. At one point in the debriefing M raise on eyebrow at one salient point of contention. As 008 smiled confidently M raise her Walther PPK clocked 008 in the forehead. “actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea” she quietly quoted Sir Edward Coke. In British intelligence many sins are overlooked, but the sin of omission, never. 008 prove to be a Chalabi mole.

EVAMOON

Alma shifted her weight on the soft surface and tried not to look at the figure before her. The wait seemed eternal as he perused her record and she found her attention wandering. It really did look just like she’d always imagined it. The imposing gates, the light.
“Ahem”
Her attention was immediately drawn back to the judge.
“Overall, the balance ought to be in your favor.”
She held her breath.
“Except for one glaring sin. One of omission. You didn’t send in your 100 word story this week. That’s gonna cost you.”
Saint Peter picked up the red phone.

NORVAL JOE

What had he misunderstood from the enticing advertisement?
He read the beautifully illustrated pamphlet again.
“All expenses paid
Two weeks in Hawaii
Ocean front condo on Maui
First class seating from any mainland airport
All at no cost. All we require is you.*”
The asterisk on the word ‘you’. There was always an asterisk and you could never find it at the bottom of the page. He searched the advertisement again, realizing with horror that the bottom third of the advertisement had been torn away.
The omission of “*your soul” was what left him standing at the gates of hell.

PLANET X

Dr Odd plugged in the final connection of his latest robot creation and its head slowly rotated, scanning and logging each item it saw into its memory.
Coming to the Doctor’s monkey writing staff, the robot stopped and moved toward Guy and Laieanna,
The robot spoke, “What is your designation and purpose?”
Guy just gestured rudely at the robot, while Laieanna offered a ripe banana to it.
“I would like you” the robot said to Guy.
It was then that the Doctor silently thought, “I made an omission of not telling them that the robot ran on meat and blood”

ASHLEY

John looked across the living room into his wife’s weary eyes and said, “I think the adoption agency may have omitted something.”
Jessica simply stared and continued to chew on her gnawed finger nails.
Suddenly, a gout of flame shot upward from the crib in the next room.
“I think it’s time to feed the baby,” said Jessica.
Both husband and wife sat in silence.
Inside the crib, little Johnny purred as he slowly clawed the eyes out of his new doll.

ANIMA

Are you the next of kin?
Yea… William Tipton. I called when Dad collapsed.
You his son?
Adopted. Kitty should be here… Bill’s gone, huh?
Yes son, gone.
Bill was famous in the day… played piano in jazz clubs all over … You should see the pictures… Always dressed sharp, always with pretty girls…
Later, he and mom hooked up, settled down…
Jeez I loved him… treated me and my brothers like blood.
We tried everything we could, son; I feel for your loss; Look, there’s something you should know… I don’t think your father was the person you think…

PLANET Z

The previous administration’s omission of a Cabinet-level science policy advisor led to a decline in the country’s standing in the fields of science and technology.
As his victory celebration wound to a close, the president-elect was assembling his final choices to lead the country with him.
But the selection of a well-known science advisor was downright difficult.
Just then, a bald, scarfaced pudgy man in a grey suit appeared on the Jumbotron, demanding one billion dollars or he’d destroy the world.
The new president smiled.
“Hello, Doctor Evil,” he said. “You’re just the man I’m looking for.”

Chipmunk

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I mourned your death, O Furry Little Creature – so small and cute you were.
Day after day.
Year after year.
Century after century.
This ritual never changes.
I hold out the little peanut, you see it and stand up, sniffing the air.
I shake it. You creep closer, slowly, wary.
Almost close enough now. One paw reaches. I toss the peanut behind you.
You start to flee, but you stop. Sniff.
You grab it and scurry away.
To the road. The highway. A truck is coming, but you do not see it!
Splat!
I will miss you, my furry friend.

Hack Writerland

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Sixty-five million years from now, an amber block containing a mosquito will be drained of “author” Michael Chricton’s blood.
Through the miracle of junk science, his DNA will be patched to a chimpanzee’s and grown into a theme park attraction.
From all over, they will pay to see herds of hack writers roam the hillsides, devouring fringe research and vomiting up novel after novel, screenplay after screenplay.
“Mommy! Look at the box office on that one!”
Until a theme park rival tries to steal the DNA and causes deadly violent mayhem!
But that’s a tale for another hack to tell.