Ashes

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We place the new chief in a massive stone urn and pour the ashes in on top of him.
These are special, sacred ashes – the ashes of all chiefs, generations upon generations of tribal leaders that have come before.
This ceremony is supposed to pass along the wisdom of the ages, infusing our new leader with the strength and experience to guide us, but most times it just suffocates the dumb son of a bitch.
“Breathe in the knowledge!” commands the High Priest.
And the ceremony for New High Priests? They just paint their faces green and chant.
Go figure.

Drool

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Thor’s Drool, you say?
That’s not easy to come by. It’ll cost you.
Sure, Thor the Thunder God’s gone senile, not enough worshipers to get a bed in the Old Gods’ Home, but he’s still plenty dangerous when he’s lucid.
Eyes like burning ice, full beard with fresh war ribbons is how I like to remember him.
Now, he’s just a grimy angry old wretch living in a cave.
Hrm… let’s see…
I’ll send Rodney out to collect the drool for you. “Lucky Rod” I call him, but more like “Lightning Rod” when Thor’s aim is good.
Cash or charge?

The Last Time

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The last time I saw her, she was dancing in the middle of the street.
It wasn’t safe there, with all the traffic, but she was enthralled with some tune or poem in her head, and she just raised her arms in the air and turned like she was fending off really slow bees.
A scream pierces the air. But it’s not her, she hasn’t been hit yet.
They’re screaming for her to get out of the street. People on the sidewalks are doing that, too.
Nobody runs out to grab her. The traffic’s too thick. They just keep yelling.

Weekly Challenge #73 – Lighter

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Welcome to the seventy-third Weekly Challenge, 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 selected by Caleb Bullen of the Black Tie Martini Club, and it was: Lighter.
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
SOMETHING NEW
Due to popular demand, I am going to include stories that were sent to me, but without a recording. However, since the midget has left for sunny Coral Gables, Florida, those stories will just be posted in the show notes. You’re more than welcome to vote for them, but they will be ineligible for prizes or topic selection.
I feel that this is a fair balance between the podcast and blog natures of this content.
Feel free to share your thoughts on this decision in the comments, and we might possibly come up with an even better and more fair policy for handling these kinds of situations.
VOTING
Go ahead and listen to them by clicking on the grammophone thingy there in the left column and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):

Which were the best stories in Weekly Challenge #73
Elisson of blog d’Elisson
Jerry
Guy David of The Sixteenth
Tom from Footnote
Laieanna from HodgePodge Point
Chris from Platypus Society
Caleb from Black Tie Martini Club
Yxes of Podmafia
The Mad Bard of Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com


WE GOTS PRIZES:
I will be sending the winner a prize… it’s refrigerator magnets for the podcast. Massive amounts of fridge magnets were mailed out in the past week… watch your mail, and let me know if I’ve missed you.
It is your voting that determines who wins. So listen, vote, and tune in next week to find out who won!


ELISSON

It was a pleasure to set foot on dry land: my mood was more elevated than it had been in weeks. Recovering my land legs after stepping off the flat-bottomed barge that had taken me ashore was no easy task. I was giddy!
Having subsisted on ship’s rations, I had lost considerable weight. Happily, this made it easier for me to dodge the wharfside traffic, nimbly avoiding lorries and carts. I darted into the tobacconist and purchased a celebratory cigar, one with a milder flavor and paler wrapper than my usual.
Bedam! I had no device for igniting my cigar!

JERRY

The lightermen loaded the lighter with the light boxes from the dimly lighted hold of the lightly loaded ship and lightly pushed off toward the dock by the light of the moon.
The light lighter rocked as a light breeze pushed the lightly disturbed water into light waves against the lighters light hull.
The lightermen used the light ores to lightly steer the lighter across the harbor toward the lightly lit pier. Once in the warehouse the lightly armed police lightly steeped from the shadows.
What else could they expect.
They were smuggling contraband lighters into a smoke free city.

GUY

– I had my stomach pumped this monday.
They took out an electric guitar,
They took out a half used car,
They took out a lawnmower,
They took out a torch thrower,
They took out a wheel,
They took out some still,
They took out a baby,
They took out a lady,
They took out a song,
They took out something wrong,
They took out an old or login,
They took out a large evergreen.
I feel much lighter now, I can hop around like a happy kangaroo.
– Randy, when are you going to fix that hole? We just lost another goat.

TOM

It’s not easy being a celestial host. For one thing you don’t get a name or gender. He was just Incandescent Being 4830175/b. He became John after discovering John Wayne movies. The hyper analytic beings near him pointed out perhaps Marion would have been a better choice. Things got really dicey when John saw City of Angles. He sauntered over to God to get the skinny on this fall thing. “Well it’s not really a fall,” said God “It’s a float.” After millenniums of effort John final figured out the floating thing. It was just a matter of getting lighter.

LAIEANNA

By 18, Chad was a burly man, but also very simple. His size and strength kept down the teasing when he was a kid and even won him a group of rough and tumble friends. Growing up, they drank, fought, and dared each other to perform stupid dangerous stunts. This helped Chad become big, dumb, and tough.
At his first local concert, Chad wanted to celebrate with a waving lighter, like his friends, but had none. So he stuck his fat thumb into a nearby flame and shook the thumb torch in the air. Others screamed, he just yelled, “Freebird!”

CHRIS

I’ll never forget the day my good friend Andy Dufresne set the warden’s pants on fire.
While in his office cooking the books, Andy found the warden’s lighter sitting carelessly on the desk. Using his rock hammer and a pen, Andy punched a hole in the casing. When the warden tried to light a cigar, the lighter burst into flames in his hand. He screamed so loud every inmate in Shawshank prison heard him.
That evening, Andy was skull raped by a pack of horny bull queers, but he didn’t mind. All things considered, it was still a good day.

CALEB

Remember that old Alfred Hitchcock episode where Peter Lorre bets a Cadillac versus a finger that Steve McQueen’s zippo won’t light ten times in a row? I was thinking about that as I wrote my story. I rested my hand on an old paper cutter with the blade up, and flicked my zippo as I wrote. I finished the story on number 10. Would I win a Cadillac or lose a finger? When it lit, I flinched and down came the blade. That made me drop the zippo onto my notebook, destroying the story and my finger. Still… I won.

YXES

One dream haunted her day and night,
Relentless in it’s seducing call to her innocence.
She had already forsaken all of her friends and family,
Simply because she was driven by an unforeseen power she couldn’t deny.
She sits on the sun-warmed beach and loses herself in what she sees before her.
Big white fluffy clouds dot a bright blue sky
Marshmallow castles puffing up, floating in their majestic array.
Studying them, she is mesmerized by their pure definition and depth
She knows where she can find her perfect happiness.
Running towards them, arms held longingly upward,
She drifts to the clouds, lighter than a feather.

PLANET Z

Grace challenged herself to lose 50 pounds by summertime.
She hung a bikini on the refrigerator. Every time she went to get something to eat, she’d look at it, shrug, and eat too much anyway.
Her doctor prescribed some diet pills, but she only lost a few pounds with them.
So, she talked to a friend, who knew a friend who could get her something stronger. Much stronger.
When summertime arrived, Grace was sixty pounds lighter.
And totally bugfuck insane.
Sure, the bikini fit. Looked absolutely stunning in it.
Then they put her in a straitjacket and took her away.


OTHER CRAP:
If Garf isn’t too annoyed with my constantly screwing up the call to the show last week, well, I’ll be trying to drop by his High Tech Texan Show on Saturday to give a report on stuff, things, and this-and-that.
There a way to write reviews for this podcast in iTunes and other directories. I’d appreciate any and all reviews of this podcast.
Your Mostly Fearless Leader doesn’t command you to do so, but he is somewhat whinily cajoling and imploring you to do so.
Let a tiny slice of the world know how much you like or don’t like or could care less about this not-quite-so-bold endeavor.
Thank you.

Strippers

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Old Joe was a funny man, great to be around.
Every night, he’d shuffle from strip club to strip club, peeling off five-dollar bills from a roll as thick as a cabbage.
I don’t know how long he’d been doing this, but that roll never ran out. Not to his dying day.
At his funeral, the place was packed wall-to-wall with strippers, and by the end of the service, the floor was a sea of veils and black dresses.
One final party.
There in the center, old Joe, smiling in his coffin, gripping that bundle of fives.

Hand Of Revenge

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A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, the old saying goes.
In the silvery moonlight, a severed hand crawls its way through the forest.
It’s been crawling for a while, because it’s all tangled up in vines and dead leaves. Completely covered in dirt.
Don’t ask how it performs this hideous task. To learn of the magic spells that impel this hand is to earn oneself eternal damnation.
Just stay back, let the hand pass, and know that whomever it is seeking will suffer great pain.
But not as much as the one-handed wretch who sent it out, seeking revenge.

Bag Of Hair

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Vanity can be such a drag.
The problem I’m facing is… my hair is turning grey and falling out.
All things considered, I’d rather have it turn grey than fall out.
I mean, hair that’s still on your head you can color. Then you’re going around with colored hair.
Hair that falls out is a lot harder to color. Still, I collect it all up out of the shower trap and sink and color it every evening.
If people ask me if I’m going grey, I take out the plastic bag full of hair and scream NO I AM NOT.

Angels Blush

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At first, my picture was up in the Post Office. Then, they took it down.
“Racy,” they called it. “Too damn sexy.”
I have done things in the line at the Post Office that could make angels blush and The Devil bite his lip.
They got rid of the stamps you lick because of me. How I’d lick a stamp, postal carriers fainted by the dozens.
Calling my actions sinful and “moral cancer,” the Postmaster General declared war on me, and stamps became stickers that weekend.
Don’t ask me where I stick mine. You couldn’t handle the thought of it.

Peek A Boo

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I have found another portal into a parallel universe.
Unlike the others, it’s to a universe where my daughter is still alive.
At first, I thought to bring my daughter here, but I don’t think I can explain how she survived a fatal car crash three years ago.
I could go there, but I’d have to take my parallel-self’s place. Not an easy thing to do when there’s been three years of experience to learn?
Perhaps I can peek in there and maybe watch her grow up. There’s no harm in that, right?
I won’t change anything. Nothing at all.

The Flying Banjoman

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We found the battered boat adrift off the coast of Nantucket.
Ragged body parts all over the deck, eventually we accounted for all the passengers, minus the pieces the seagulls dragged off.
Right there, jammed in the wheel, was a blood-soaked banjo.
“The uneasy spirit still roams the fog,” muttered the old harbormaster.
He reaches for the banjo and throws it back in the water.
“That’s evidence!” I shouted.
The harbormaster gave me a stare that drilled right into my bones.
“That’s what the last detective tried to tell me,” he said, and he pointed to… a severed lawman’s head.