The Cult

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Right in front of their eyes, vision fades to static.
Frightened and confused, we, the masses, heed the call.
Stripping off our clothes, we gather in the woods, swaying in the summer heat, naked… writhing.
One beast, many mouths… many fingers… many hearts beating.
The flesh circle opens briefly, and our leader mounts a tree stump, the cow skull over his head glowing in the moonlight.
We have no choice. We are compelled to listen.
He raises his staff and tells the tales of our childhood, like many generations before.
This is what happens when the neighborhood cable goes out.

The Swarm

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Gigantic swarms of insects crawl the globe, disassembling buildings and erecting massive, looping cellulose towers.
We few survivors watch from Mars, peering through the spy satellites they hadn’t bothered to destroy.
Landmark after landmark, civilization swept away.
St. Basil’s… gone.
Manhattan… gone.
The Eiffel Tower… gone.
For a moment, yarmulke in hand, I get grim satisfaction as the Dome Of The Rock is crumbled to dust.
Maybe… just maybe… this time they’ll leave it clear?
I mumble a brief prayer.
Yes?
My smile fades as another brown tower takes shape.
Oy. If it isn’t one bunch of assholes, it’s another.

The Dusty Siren

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Wearing white lace, just like when we first met.
I chased her into the desert in the heat of the moment.
She sits there, beckoning, just out of reach.
Look again. A ragged sheet, blown across a dead tree stump.
Did I imagine her? Or did she imagine me, begging for one final kiss?
I can’t reach her. Too weak to crawl. Too damn weak to crawl.
Reach for me. Reach out to me and pull me into your embrace, my love.
She sits there, watching.
One final scream, a groan into the wind, and my mouth fills with dust.

The Symbol

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I saw the eagle symbol on her wrist.
Eagle symbols are for good luck and strength, but usually the eagle’s got the beak pointing to the fingers.
Hers points to the elbow, so I know it’s a fake.
It’s got the right colors, and it’s very well done.
But it’s a fake. It’s covering up another symbol.
While she sleeps, I look closely at it… the outline of something is under that eagle.
Weasel? Owl? Snake?
It’s some kind of criminal brand, something she got from the Eagles before they threw her out of their camp.
What has she done?

Weekly Challenge #67 – Fatal Wound

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Welcome to the sixty-seventh 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 Laieanna of Hodgepodge Point: Fatal Wound.
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):

What were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #67?
Stuart Warf of The Ten Cast
Tom from Footnote Podcast
Laieanna of HodgePodge Point
Sarah
Guy David from The Sixteenth
Caleb from Black Tie Martini Club
JD
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!

STUART

The couple argued intensely as former lovers with passion as fiery than any other relationship anyone ever saw quickly descended into a flaring argument that could be heard down the streets of Brooklyn.
He said, She said thats how it goes. He smashes the glass bottle, she screams in anguish and pain
His body fell still, He could hardly believe his eyes at what devious act he had just watched and committed. It all happened so fast and then crashed into slow motion like out of a Hollywood blockbuster.
The blood begins to drip like raindrops on his cold skin.

TOM

The titanium rail gun’s sight was centered on that Austrian Art School
want-a-be prick. Wolfgang Z14 contently smiled as he pulled the trigger a
fatal wound for a future Führer. Within Z’s brain the holocaust vanished
replaced by a 1000 years of Pax Zionose Europa.
The spinning mangled marionette of a man suddenly righted himself, woundless.
Wolfgang Z tried to blink but failed to close his lids before he vanished.
The dead returned to dead, the unborn remained unborn, a golden Europe became
gray. When the time rift settled the last of Hitler’s genetic pool reappeared
and took aim again.

LAIEANNA

Ours was an epic battle that raged through timeless years, never ending, never slowing, but we were losing to our enemy. They were constantly changing with the centuries, inventing destruction in bigger, more powerful ways. And yet it was the simplest of weapons that we truly feared. We, on the other hand, always remained the same.
My day to fall came when one of their foot soldiers took an axe to my side. I awakened to the pain of cold steel vibrations. The wound was my end. With a push, I went down to the sounds of his triumph.
“Timber!”

GUY

There was a strange buzz sound. Something was definitely wrong. The microphone was not supposed to make such a sound. Than it made a gurgling noise. I thought “that is strange”, then I looked closely and, suddenly I could see it, the microphone was wounded, and… it was a fatal wound.
I gave it a decent burial. It was still young, but I have already grown attached to it. I’m now using an old mike I found laying somewhere around the house, but, it’s not the same. I shell always remember it fondly. That mike was such a dear friend.

CALEB

I told her that my love for her was like a fatal wound and that only she could save a life. That she was the balm in Gilead; that the power of love over death was in her hand and her hand only. But she just laughed. She didn’t care if I lived or if I died. So I am very sorry for everything. I’m sorry that such extreme measures had to be taken but be assured that it could’ve been avoided. Take that, you heartless bitch! I never said it was MY life she could save. I’m not crazy.

SARAH

She sat in the room quietly crying.
Crying like she had cried all those times he never came home.
Crying, like those tears would bring him home to her again.
Out of the arms of those other women who ‘meant nothing to him’.
She sat in the room staring at the picture of happier times.
“Fuck him” she muttered through the snot dripping from her nose.
She picked herself up and walked to the doorframe.
She slowly placed the noose around her head.
“You were never worth it…..”
Who would have thought a broken heart could be a fatal wound??

JD

Yesterday, while walking home from the bus stop, I bumped into God. I know, your going to say “God!”, but before you do let me tell you that he didn’t even say “excuse me.” Well, here is God walking down the street, not paying attention to anything, in his own little world and, bam, down I go in a heap on the sidewalk. I know, I know, your going to say “But that was God!” Well, I say, the heck with predestination, from now on I go with free will and it should be a week before his shiner goes away.

Z

The difference between a knockout punch and a fatal wound is a proud opponent who doesn’t have the sense to get out of the ring when he’s beat.
It helps if you’ve got a referee who’s trying to keep the fight going for the television network coverage instead of stopping it when over is over.
Coaches factor in, too. Telling your fighter to dehydrate himself to fool the scale ends up leaving him too weak to fight, too weak to fight back.
A whole lot of brain damage.
Kim went fourteen rounds with Mancini and went home in a box.

Thanks to everyone for sending in their stories, and I look forward to what you’ve got to write (and say) next week.
The theme for next week’s Weekly Challenge will be posted shortly.

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Finished

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We went to the hospital to visit Grandma.
She wanted to say goodbye to the kids, so we brought them along.
They were scared at first, but Grandma told them life was a long, marvelous journey. You meet so many amazing people while you take it, and she told the kids they were the two most amazing ones she’d known.
But that journey, as wonderful as it is, doesn’t last forever. When God decides you’ve earned your rest, well, it’s time to stop.
“Then God tells you to shit yourself,” said a guy mopping the hallway.
No, that didn’t help.

Feng Shui

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The news called them diplomats. Let’s not bullshit: they were spies.
Countries like the idea of spies with diplomatic immunity. Rules were meant to be broken, right?
One by one, important men were turning up dead in their embassies.
No bullet-holes. No knives sticking out of them. No poison in their bloodstream.
It was a real mystery.
Until one day, someone noticed that no Chinese “diplomats” had died. And the furniture of each death scene was arranged similarly.
It turns out, there’s a Dark Side of Feng Shui. The proper arrangement of furniture can kill.
Assassination through interior decoration.

Are You Happy?

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There’s a strange machine in the break room.
It’s about six feet tall, shaped like a box. Solid black.
It says “Are you happy?” on it in big white letters.
There’s two buttons on it: YES and NO.
I pushed the YES button and nothing happened.
I pushed the NO button and nothing happened.
Then, I pushed both buttons at the same time.
A drawer popped open, and I took a small yellow pellet out.
Should I swallow it?
I’m not sure. I’ve thought about it, and I can’t decide.
Just like I can’t decide if I’m happy or not.

Kids Are Stupid

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I remember the kids in the schoolyard telling each other that if you toss a penny off of the Empire State Building, it could kill someone.
Kids are stupid.
You’ve got to drop a roll of pennies to take someone out.
I’d repeat the experiment, but I dropped my binoculars, so I can’t see if I’m hitting anyone or not.
Maybe they’ll tell me at the trial. If they take me alive, that is.
Looking down, I think the binoculars killed someone down there, too.
I wish I’d brought a parachute. Jumping from here would be cool.
I’ll jump anyway.

Taps

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It took years of practice, but Softshoe Kelly learned to encode secret messages in his tapdancing.
He started simple, but his skills soon gave him the ability to transmit complex messages without anybody suspecting a thing.
When he was captured by the enemy, they paraded him in front of a global television audience.
Softshoe Kelly performed his act, and cryptology experts determined that he’d been treated miserably but had quite a lot of information on their weak points.
With this information, the enemy was defeated, but Kelly was mortally wounded in the assault.
At his funeral, the military played Taps.