The 100 Word Stories Podcast

Welcome to the Fifty-fifth 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 Chris of Platypus Society, and it’s Transportation.
Nine stories were submitted this week. Oops!
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
And, once again, some disturbing madness from the one we all knew and loved as Planet Z.
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 of Weekly Challenge #55?
	Planet Z
	Tom from Footnote Podcast
	Tabz from Buffy Between The Lines
	Laieanna from Hodgepodge Point
	Mike from Mike Thinks
	KC Keyword
	Chris from Platypus Society
	Ted from Ted’s Podcast
	Patti from SmittyGal
	To4m from StuffCast
Free polls from Pollhost.com

WE GOTS PRIZES:
I will be sending the winner a prize… it’s a packet containing at least 1 refrigerator magnet and a CD with the archive of the entire 100 word stories podcast. (Well, minus promos and junk)
It is your voting that determines who wins. So listen, vote, and tune in next week to find out who won!

---

PLANET Z

Norman Mineta stepped out of the back of his limousine and saw their faces.
The ghosts were waiting for him, as they did every morning outside the Department of Transportation.
Thousands of them.
They waved the memos, briefs, and studies at him, documenting the need for reinforced cockpit doors on all domestic airliners.
Others waved receipts from airline industry lobbyists – the ones who convinced him it made bad business sense to do so.
As he walked into his office, nineteen more ghosts welcomed him in.
They said “Thank you, corrupt Infidel!” before returning to their seventy-two virgins in Paradise.

TOM

Javert had known Val Jean for 20 years.
On the 15 of every month
Val Jean arrived at the border with his rig.
Javier tore that truck apart searching for
the contraband that the smuggler
had somehow concealed from him.
Each month the dispatch back to Interpol was the same.
Javert was retiring this month and
this amused Val Jean for he to was retiring.
“I got to know how you did it?” pleaded Javert.
“Then I will write it down for you.”
As Val Jean drove out of sight
Javert opened the paper and
read the single work message.

TABZ

What’s the fastest way to get from here to there? For Buffy Summers,
queen of the slayers, the choice was easy. Dawn, Buffy’s sister who
once was a mystical key is mystically now a giant because she had sex
with a thricewise (don’t ask me, I don’t write them, just read’m) Dawn
could bring Buffy anywhere she wanted to go. Dawn carried Buffy in
the palm of her hand, almost like a toy. Well, it was a good mode of
transportation until the day Dawn had a run in with the police who
said “Come out with your hands up.” OOps.

LAIEANNA

Shawn hated transportation missions cause of boredom. He was relieved this trip in the semi carried his buddies, Bernie and Tom. They played together on a set of Nintendo DS consoles, their faces ghostly lit by the screens.
Bernie chuckled over Tom’s gaming frustration before falling forward from the semi’s braking. The back doors swung open and a swarm of sixth graders piled into the trailer. They all held bats or hockey sticks and menacing smiles.
Shawn held his DS close to his chest. “Who thought kids need to play outside more often?” He whispered before the group rushed them.

MIKE

Toddlers believe that parents shoulders provide perfect transportation.
Kids know real transportation involves pedals and handlebars.
Teenagers are certain, anything with a steering wheel, dented, rusty, and barely running,
is the ultimate transportation.
Almost without notice, transportation becomes a family minivan.
Then in what many consider post traumatic 40’s disorder,
soon a rag top sports car appears.
Later, transportation grows large, boxy and slow.
You realize, peering over the steering wheel,
eternal rhythmic green turn indicator soothing your soul,
the LEFT lane really is nicer.
And the transportation never mattered, it was the friends,
and family who traveled with you.

KC KEYWORD

Ted didn’t need transportation to
find cheap Viagra, Russian sex
slaves or Britney Spears crotch
photographs. No, he needed transportation
to the International keyword optimization
symposium. It was getting hard
to find real valid Windows
Vista key-gen programs. Ted was
determined to figure out exactly
how keywords worked. As taxi
fourteen passed him by, he
reached in his pocked, hoping
to find some cheap Canadian
drugs for his headache. “Yes!”
he celebrated quietly, one oxycontin
left. Ted promised himself that
as soon as he received
his free credit report, and
his Nintendo wii in stock,
he was buying a car.

CHRIS

I hate flying. It’s not that I have a fear of heights; I have a fear of Phil.
Who’s Phil you ask? Phil’s the guy responsible for tightening bolts on the wings. Phil’s good at his job, but perhaps one time about ten years ago he got distracted while tightening a bolt and shorted it a quarter turn.
Over the course of a decade of takeoffs and landings, that bolt is probably hanging by its last thread.
Was this the plane Phil was working on? Is this the flight the bolt comes off?
I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

TED

The man in the long black trenchcoat caught my attention.
“Psst! Hey buddy, interested in something cool? I’m selling cheap today, but tomorrow, it’s going up.”
I stopped to see what he was selling.
“This is the latest and greatest mode of transportation yet”, he said with a sly grin.
“How much?”, I asked.
“500”, he said. “Remember, tomorrow it’ll be twice that”.
I thought about it. Decided I really didn’t need the cat-fur suit anyway, so I paid him.
“Here you go, pal.. Just push that button, and you’ll see..” he said.
I hesitated.. Then thought, “What the Hell?”
I pushed the button…

PATTI

Mike was the coolest school bus driver. He rigged a stereo system and six speakers inside the long yellow bus and he’d blast Frampton, Boston, Fleetwood Mac for us every day to and from Del Mar high School.
He was only three or four years older than the seniors, and every girl thought he was cute. He had an eye for the young ladies and he would flirt back at them from behind his mirrored aviator sunglasses.
On days when he wasn’t wearing the sunglasses, Mike’s eyes were glassy red and his pupils were pinned. He sold the best pot!

TO4M

After Bob and Julio’s disastrous Grizzly hunt in Seattle they headed
South. Just drivin’. No particular place to go. Despite Julio’s
objections Bob picked up a hitch hiker just past Goose Lake in Oregon.
They dropped him off in Arcata and moved on out to Highway 61.They
stayed Motel 6’s along the way east. Julio didn’t like the cheap
motels. But Bob didn’t mind – he thought that the measure of a good
organization was the smell left on one’s hands after using the
restroom soap and these places were just fine. Road trips ain’t what
they used to be.

---

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.

Welcome to the Fifty-fourth 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 from HodgePodge Point, and it’s Pea Shooter.
Nine stories were submitted this week. Double digits!
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
And, once again, some disturbing madness from the one we all knew and loved as Planet Z.
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 of Weekly Challenge #54?
	Chris from Platypus Society
	Caleb from Black Tie Martini Club Oddcast
	Tom of Footnote
	Laieanna from Hodgepodge Point
	Sister Mary Edith
	Mike from Mike Thinks
	Terrence from Never Was
	To4m from Stuffcast
	Ted from Ted’s Podcast
	Planet Z
Free polls from Pollhost.com

WE GOTS PRIZES:
I will be sending the winner a prize… it’s a packet containing at least 1 refrigerator magnet and a CD with the archive of the entire 100 word stories podcast. (Well, minus promos and junk)
It is your voting that determines who wins. So listen, vote, and tune in next week to find out who won!

---

The full text of each story:
CHRIS

The only meal inmates ever looked forward to in Shawshank was shepherd’s pie. Ground beef covered with layers of mashed potatoes and peas, as prison food goes it was the closest any of us would come to fine dining.
My good friend Andy Dusfresne hated shepherd’s pie and for good reason. It always signaled a visit from “Pea-Shooter” Jenkins, a beefy bull queer from cellblock A. Pea-Shooter always asked for seconds, and then he’d go looking for Andy. In the days that followed, Andy would walk with a noticeable limp, leaving a trail of peas on the ground behind him.

CALEB

I reckon Whitey shoulda knowed not to flinch. I seen Pea Shooter Johnson shoot a pea out a man’s flat hand a dozen times from twenty yards away. The only time anything went wrong is when somebody flinched.
N’ I reckon Whitey shoulda knowed that he’d lose his other hand if he went seeking vengeance.
However, the trick of shooting the gun out a man’s hand is slightly less impressive when that gun has already fired.
I reckon Pea Shooter won’t be shooting anymore, rest his soul.
Then again, neither will Whitey… Less’n he learns to shoot with his feet.

TOM

One might mistake a drinking straw for a pea shooter, but it lacks the tinsel integrity rigidity and diameter to propel a pea with sufficient velocity to make one of your friends flinch. The fathers of my three best friends regulars beat them with fist shoe and belt. It was hard to make them flinch.
We would weave balloon tired schwinns between the cars parked at Garfalos grocery pneumatically pelting each other with peas. Getting catch in a cross fire I snapped my head back and plowed into the mirror of a 43 Packard.
Blood everywhere.
They flinched. I won.

LAIEANNA

“Got one in the nostril! Watch him flail,” Bernie celebrated over screams and cries. A celery stalk whizzed by, hitting a howling child. Tom gave Bernie the thumbs up then aimed his bow again for a redheaded girl.
“Hey!” Shawn shouted next to Bernie, tapping his helmet. “Look there!” He pointed past the barrier towards the west. Clambering over a broken wall, preteens were making off with a Wii and Xbox.
“Bazooka,” Bernie ordered, dropping his pea shooter to load a broccoli head. The weapon was fired. Four kids fell. “When will the brats learn? These are adult toys now!”

SISTER MARY EDITH

Dr Janet sighed as she clicked on her nostril flashlight. The concerned father flitted about her like a bird watching a cat approach its nest. Janet peered into the darkness. A great green orb nestled in the coral pink.
“That, Mr. Totenpepper, is a pea.”
“Oh is that all! Sweetie blow your nose…Blow like this…Blow or no desert!”
The child’s face crinkled and she opened her mouth to howl but Dr. Janet was ready. She whipped out a colorful cardboard target and a sucker.
The girl’s face cleared. She took a deep breath and…The pea clung to the cardboard. Bulls-eye.

MIKE

Ted was disgusted.
“This pea shooter is practically useless.” he thought
Previous mistakes weren’t important now,
someones coming.
Ted dashed into an office
looking for anything useful.
Suddenly, the door shattered, a menacing form appeared.
“This is it” Ted muttered
Letting loose with abandon,
running behind his adversary,
Ted’s pea shooter making pathetic yet satisfying “pops”.
His enemy stood motionless, as Ted destroyed him,
Screaming cheers of victory!
Thousands of miles away, Jeff cursed,
monitor cable wrapped around his ankle.
His brother behind him roaring in unrestrained laughter.
Jeff reconnected it just in time to see Teds text message
“n00b!”

TERRENCE

Shifting Raoul tried to ignore the increasing pressure in his bladder.
Eve was sleeping but not deeply. ‘I do not want to wake her’, he
thought to himself before giving himself a mental slap. ‘What I am
worried about?’ he scolded himself, ‘I am Raoul, she should be
cowering before me.’ Even though he thought it firmly he knew that
there was something about Eve; something that changed him when she was
around.
Carefully he slid out of bed and tip-toed to the bathroom. He then
slowly lifted the seat, took his pee shooter in hand and emptied his
bladder.

TO4M
No text given
TED

Tommy and Nick were bored. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon and there seemed to be nothing to do.
I explained to them, that when I was a boy, we used to make peashooters, and have compeitions. See who could be the best marksman. I also told them that the cat was not a target. “Use soup cans” I said. “or make paper targets”.
The boys disappeared into Tommys bedroom.
An hour later, the boys emerged from the room, soaking wet. Stinking of urine. Empty squirtguns in hand.
“Uncle Rocky?” Tommy squeaked. “We’re out of ammo. Can you pee in my waterpistol for me?”

PLANET Z (as IRA GLASS)

Paul and Zachary were ordinary kids from Harlem, sitting around, bored.
Zachary looks at the massacre in Bush’s illegal war in Iraq and comes up with the idea to go on a killing spree.
“But let’s make it interesting,” says Paul. “Let’s kill people we know in alphabetical order.”
So they go on a tear through the neighborhood: Andy, Betty, Cecil, Dwanitra… all the way up to P.
And that’s when Zachary pulls out his gun and shoots Paul.
“Why did you do that?” gasped Paul.
“Because you talk too damn much,” said Zachary. “And we don’t know any Q’s.”

---

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.