The 100 Word Stories Podcast

Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Forty-Two, 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 Playing Doctor!

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

[polldaddy poll=4236104]

And if you want to spam your social networks with this episode, use the Share buttons at the end of the post.

---

Tom

“Want to play Doctor.” he slyly said

“Let’s check those vitals” she wryly replied removing a thermometer from her med bag.

As the light ran along the glass rod a disturbing thought crossed his mind.

“That’s not oral is it?” “Nope, but actuate”

“You sure have a talent for killing the moment”.

“What’s amatter pookie don’t want to play Doctor any more?”

“Not if it’s going to involve foreign objects. I am no longer in the mood.”

“Aha come on. we could play the little match girl and the salami salesman.”

“Ok but I get to be Giuseppe this time.”

Zackmann

Hello, Realtor ? I need to move away from my crazy neighbors. I told them, I am not a doctor, I
only play one on TV. Their kid was sick and they gave him the medicine from my ad. Then they
were angry with me when the medicine didn’t work. What did they expect, when I said I was not
a real doctor right in the commercial? I need it by October because I got that part as a zombie
in The Walking Dead and I really don’t want to take the chance of them blowing my brains out.

Steven

I read a chapter of the self-help book, then the entirety of _Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas_. It’s a potent combination: 12-step uppers
with sentence fragment gonzo hallucinogens.

The arthritis pains come with the first real snows, beautiful stabbing
aches as white flakes. Pain induced insomnia turns everything into
buzzing noise. I read another self help chapter, and see myself, my
patterns in the book. Then I mainline British science fiction.

Is love always portrayed as codependence?

I watch Fight Club again instead of staring at her picture.

I wonder if self-medication always feels like this.

Danny

Once upon a time, playing doctor as a child was innocent enough. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. A child’s innocent curiosity is satisfied, too young to understand the meaning of sex, or the harm of having an innocent question answered. Fast forward to today. Children who dare play doctor today can look forward to a small army of state workers removing them from their homes, placing their parents in jail, putting them through counseling, and labeling them sexual predators for the rest of their lives, as if they are adults preying on children. Our age of innocence is over.

Jeffrey

“The term practice has never really instilled any confidence you know doc?”
“Jake, you are not going to go all fraidy-cat on me now are you?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Alright then, just sit here in the chair, and I will tighten the straps.”
“Are you sure you have to strap me down.”
“I don’t want you to accidentally move and have something go wrong.”
“‘I guess that make sense. Doc, how many times have you done this?”
“Oh many.” He flipped the switch, Jake twitched, once and started to smoke. “Maybe I should’ve told him I was just playing doctor.”

Justin

Christopher and Pip sat at the table, looking bored.

Christopher sat up with an idea.

“Let’s play Doctor!”

“OK, what do we do?”

“Come on, into this fort I built.”

“Since when do Doctors have forts?”

“Well, it’s a fort, but pretend it’s the Doctor’s home. It’s kind of a fort.”

“Why would I go to the doctor’s home and not his office?”

“What? He has an office? I never saw one. Here’s his gear. What time should we go?”

“Go where, and what’s this stuff? Why are there headphones on this screwdriver?”

“That’s his sonic screwdriver. It does everything!”

TJ

It had to be ironic on some level. Laramie, backstage, snogging with
Deedee Feetch while understudying for Doc Feetch in the lead role of the
community theater production of “Playing Doctor.” Doc Feetch was
called away on a fake emergency Laramie had called into the hospital
across town. So… Laramie was taking a break from playing a fake doctor
in “Playing Doctor” for a real doctor so as to play doctor with the
doctor’s wife while the real doctor was off playing doctor somewhere
on a doctored call… when an audience member fainted. Is there a doctor
in the house?

Norval Joe

All Marcus ever wanted was to help people.
As a child he was always playing doctor.
He lived in a poor, crowded neighborhood, so the imaginary illness were often obscure and complex.
He joined a make-believe Independent Provider’s Network to compete with the HMO’s, but reimbursements were so low it was difficult to pay off his student loans.
After a failed plastic surgery he had to pay Joey Swartz a weeks worth of lunch money to avoid a lawsuit.
When he graduated college he became a lobbyist for a drug company, the only way to make money in medicine anymore.

Planet Z

I live in a small town.

We’re all close. Real close.

At the end of the year, we put on a show.

This year, I’m the sheriff.

Sheriff’s playing the judge.

Judge’s playing the doctor.

Doc’s playing Postman Joe.

Everybody’s a part of it, playin’ everybody else.

Ain’t nobody in the audience but cameras.

(I told you I live in a small town.)

When we’re done, we turn off the cameras, put the tapes in the players, and watch ourselves bein’ each other.

If we haven’t had a fight durin’ the play, well, this is when the claws come out.

…
…
…

And here’s my entry for Steven’s contest:

Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Forty-One, 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 It seemed like a good idea at the time…!

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

[polldaddy poll=4198944]

And if you want to spam your social networks with this episode, use the Share buttons at the end of the post.

---

Craig

What these “nut bin” clowns don’t know, is that I am close to befriending a telekinetic embodiment of Christ, in the ward and very near my escape. Tranny-psychopath left an archipelago of revolting milky stains on my bed during recreation group. Endure this…refocus on laundry cart.

Psychiatric meds are inflicting torpidity in all of us inmates; even the geniuses sleep. Spattered feces in the halls…. Holy shit; perverted apes must be getting ready to prey on me. I’m scared… no security on shift except nurses.

Concealed, in the laundry cart ­­­– I deserted Jesus and escaped!

“Medication time… doctor? Doctor Yoon…?

Danny

Summer 1987, time for our annual college rafting trip. I’m introduced to a cute girl, I just had to impress her. Grabbing the rope of a homemade swing along the river’s edge, I jump from the height of a 3 story building. With a drought causing the river to be unusually low that year, I miss the water, instead smashing into the rocks of the river bank. My right leg, cleanly broken, all ligaments of my ankle, completely torn. All to impress a woman who married someone else less than 6 months later. Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

AM Earley

“Listen,” Don said defensively, “We all know this marriage isn’t going to last six months.”

Kelly’s response was to grab the scruff of her cousin’s neck and forced him out of the hotel.

Wil looked at the other woman who was barring his and Don’s way. “Don’t bother calling the cops,” Darla stated. “They are already inside.” Wil looked in the ball room and confirmed five important members of the law inside.

As he picked up Don off the side walk, Wil didn’t question offering his services in divorce proceedings at a rehearsal dinner. He did wonder if he should have given his business card to the two mothers of the couple.

Jeffrey

After all what is wrong with a little D and D game. I mean we
all love it, and who wouldn’t, the roll of the dice, the hit
counts, the nine grown men all with duct-tape on some part of
their attire. It was a great time until the screaming
started, and the midwife sent the rest of them home. How was
I to know that she was a level 11 dungeon master. Now the
guys say they don’t want to play at our house any more. But
the midwife invited us to her place, so it all worked out.

Tom

When I was young I heard tell of a cowboy who took off all his clothes ran head long into a cactus patch. Upon extraction he was asked why on earth he did it. His replied “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Last summer my oldest friend from high school was diagnose with a critical heart condition. His resolution to this was a walk down the railroad tracks and waited for an on coming freight. At the wake the family wonder why. I said “It must have seemed like a good idea at the time” Silence ensued.

Steven

I stop typing when Bob’s fetid breath flows into my cubicle. “Write
the good idea episode.”

“Huh?”

“Write where his companion says it seemed like a good idea to
gallavant across time and space in a telephone booth – but they miss
their regular boring day job and regular boring life.”

“Already?”

Bob nods. “There’s discontent. People are starting to want more from
their lives. Time for their hero to say that regular boring lives
are… important.”

“Time for him to lie again.”

“Exactly. Allonz-y!”

“On whose authority?”

A pepperpot’s shadow slides past my door.

“The highest authority. The highest.”

Zackmann

We thought cashing in on the Snowman Offsets was a good way too get rich. Hiring farmers
in winter to make snowman when they couldn’t work in the fields, Great Idea. At least until
someone discovered Snowmancromancy and used the snowmen to take over the world. Okay
just the northern states and Canada. One day the snowmen became self aware and stopped
taking orders. Snowmen put us in this igloo prison. We are hoping escape will be aided by an
early spring. After escaping, we could go inside Leavenworth for our crimes but at least we
would be warm.

TJ 1

On the plus side, it had quieted them down immensely.

Four fussy kids packed up on a cross-country car trip quickly got on
their dad’s nerves, and by day three his nerves were clinically
jangled.

So it’s easy to see the logic of dropping them in a safe place while
he and his wife stepped across the way for a quiet, sophisicated meal in
an upscale restaurant.

By and by, that silence became deafening. They hurried across to
discover that, as it turns out, four kids playing hide-and-seek can hide
themselves pretty darn well in the Museum of Natural History.

TJ 2

Bread in the ficus. Nearly a week’s worth of damp newspaper, and a few
half-filled spray bottles and water pistols. Rice crunching everywhere.
Noisemakers scattered among discarded clothing and — perhaps most
disturbingly — a black corset dangling from the chandelier.

Fortescue regretted their staging a local production of “Rocky Horror
Picture Show” as a fundraiser for the opera house — not to mention,
volunteering the Opera House. “Think of the fun! Think of the irony!”
he’d said.

Now all he could think of was the gallons of Febreeze, and the priest
he’d probably have to call in to exorcize it.

DJ

His toes gripped the smooth vine as he squeezed through the tunnel into the Temple. The priest waited at the entrance to the Alter; they bobbed to each other, dewlaps inflating in mutual respect.

He entered the impenetrable darkness.

There was a flash.

He found himself on a bony claw. Glancing back, he saw a black-hooded skull and froze in panic — but it only nodded and gently flicked its hand. He spread his wings to steady himself.

He had wings! Death forgotten, he launched into the air. He laughed, and a gout of flame burst from his mouth….

Norval Joe

The wind was cool and comforting as it blew across his sweaty forehead and through his golden curls.
Everyone had said as he grew, his chubby red cheeks made his face cherubic. Wings would be handy, right then, as he clung to the steeple at the top of the skyscraper.
People milled about, hundreds of yards below, on the street, unaware the masked crime fighter spied from above.
A gang of criminals broke the window of a jewelry store, grabbed as many diamond necklaces as they could hold and ran off.
Too high above help, Flypaper man could only watch.

Planet Z

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

A new fuel source that was rich in energy, cheap to produce, and portable.

What could possibly go wrong?

The world quickly adopted it, and technology advanced by leaps and bounds.

But after a while, what was marketed as a perfect solution turned out to be dangerous to the environment and increasingly expensive to produce.

Still, in the face of cleaner and renewable alternatives, humans refused to give up their oil economies.

War, famine, and death spread across the globe, and the few hardy survivors cursed their greedy and shortsighted ancestors.