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100 Words

Jub

10:16 / 28.09.06

I read somewhere about an anthology of stories written by famous authors and each was exactly 100 words long. Good idea for a thread I thought. So, post your stories here - must be exactly 100 words long.

**

The sweaty man could hear the noise from the pub next door. Sitting in his office was never fun, but in summer less so, as the heat became stifling and the windows were flung open letting the cool breeze and the sounds of booziness float in. He looked at the clock on his computer screen. Only 3 more hours to go until the weekend – how was the pub already so full? Did those people not work? He closed his eyes and imagined the cool, refreshing drink and the release it symbolised come 6 o’clock. Only 3 more hours to go.

All Acting Regiment

12:34 / 28.09.06

THE SWING OF LADY TOM

Dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance.
Dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance.
Dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance.
Dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance.
Dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance.
Dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance.
Dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance.
Dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance.
Dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance.
Dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance- sudden cease.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

04:30 / 10.10.06

Marjorie wanted to go to the races, which elevated some eyebrows, let me tell you! Giraffes are not often seen at the races - actively discouraged because they spook the jockeys. Look up from your horse to see a giraffe's long neck in the stands? Scandal! Bertie tried to dissuade her, of course, but Marjorie was having none of that. "I'll chaperone myself," she told him. "If you won't come with." Bertie hadn't the stomach for the races, preferring a gentlemanly sport like bumper boats, but could hardly let his wife attend stag, as it were, because what would people say?

astrojax69

05:04 / 10.10.06

A collage of fire gleamed across the horizon; here tall flames danced orange while there a dark shoal of debris clouded above the sky, raining embers as it flung itself towards the town. And there and about, even now, hollow gaps in the smoke, trees standing defiantly.

Where are they? Clarissa wanted to stay, to burn with all she had left. Yet, Lucas had promised he’d bring Grandpa home, one last time. It had to be now. Nearer, the end comes.

A giraffe gambolled past the bay window, straight towards the fire-front. Ah, once again, this would not be pretty.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

00:55 / 11.10.06

That green bicycle resting its wheels against the brick wall of the bakery won freedom haphazardly, rescued by a bicycle rights activist – while its former dictator bought smokes in the Seven-Eleven. Once the lock was cut the bicycle was awkward and unwilling to move, having never known this strange sensation running through its spokes. The activist rode this bicycle! That it might remember itself. The activist rode, and rode, and rode until he reached the bakery, then left the bicycle around back with the brick wall, so that it could learn to hold its handlebars upright all on its own.

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

17:54 / 11.10.06

Buck lined his sights up and, at last, squeezed the fat handle. Instantly the furious squack of a startled chicken exploded over the yard, accompanied by the sight of said hen tumbling forward at rapid speed through a cloud of dust. Buck lowered the strange tube with a nearly breathless “Coooool…” as the dazed chicken attempted to recover its balance.

“What’d you say it was called?”

“A Chicken Perturbater S900. Kind of an old-fashioned model, the S-series – these days it’s all about tachyons and retroactive egg noodling, but the S-series was solid. It’ll take care of your little problem, ha-yuck!”

Olulabelle

20:24 / 11.10.06

Standing in the kitchen she stirred the plain soup, round and round and round, always the same way. When she had counted the correct number of rising bubbles, she poured the soup into her bowl and scraped the pan, three times as usual.

She took a slice of bread from the loaf (she didn’t buy un-sliced because the slices wouldn’t be perfect) and she sat down at the table.

For each spoonful of soup she took one bite of bread. Always the same ratio, never forgetting.

As she ate her neat soup she dreamed of wild, colourful messy, drippy food.

Olulabelle

20:28 / 11.10.06

That was fun. I adore Papers' bicycle one, I really feel for the bicycle and I really like the style it's written in.

Papers, do another.

Olulabelle

20:37 / 11.10.06

She used to rail at him under her breath, sending him telepathic messages whilst he was at the pub.

"If he doesn’t come home in the next ten minutes then I’ll…"

She used to pace up and down, waiting.

"He said home at eleven, not too late..."

She used to go to bed and try and fall asleep but instead lie there seething.

"He said just a quick one..."

It used to frustrate her, being on her own. But now she’s used to it. She’s come to like it.

"Why don’t you ring Tommy", she says.

"Go down the pub?"

Tsuga

22:25 / 11.10.06

She looked out the window of the bus, as she had for the last four hours; watching the day break over the endless repeating flat fields of sugar cane and cotton, the only vertical elements being water towers or irrigation heads, the only variation being the angles the rows came into her sight, and crossing the occasional river rimmed with refineries. At night the refineries glittered with all their lights, by day they were harsh silver flaming demons.

She was getting close, she knew. She absently bit her ring-finger nail; her brow was tight with worry. Not again, she thought.

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

17:43 / 12.10.06

I swim in syrup while it rains acid. An immense weight pulls behind me, my feet failing to grip, fingers clumsy and slow, arms whipping back and forth through the air like I’m trying to find the rope that will pull me out of this choppy sea. I slip one final, unforgivable time, and slam down on the gravel-dusted slope before sliding and tumbling to rest my aching self near the bottom of it all.

It is too steep, it is too much. I struggle to make myself let go of the idea that I will ever reach the top.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

14:45 / 13.10.06

(Thanks for the compliment, Lula.)

The armada of umbrellas awakened to sporadic drops; one by one and then all of them, hundreds of umbrellas clenching their fabrics. The people, walking down side streets and main thoroughfares on their way to work, failed to notice; they went about as if nothing was happening with fingers on handles and arms outstretched; they stopped for the morning's coffee, maybe a pastry to eat from a paper bag while they walked, not thinking about their umbrellas as warriors, pastry that might otherwise end up soggy. Umbrellas in unison, a ballet and battle, gliding through streets, oblivious to their owners.

(This one took a bit of editing down to graze the hundred word mark.)

Olulabelle

20:40 / 13.10.06

A ballet and battle! That's lovely too. You're good.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

02:06 / 17.10.06

She had an orchid in her hair, and bent just so at the waist to let him whiff it as she was, by most accounts, of particular height. Dancers were served dinner in mid-box-step by gentlemen in shabby tuxedos without notable cummerbunds. He held her hands and stepped forward; she stepped back because of course they both knew the waltz, the building block of dance. Split it? Unthinkable. As they circled, he gazed into her nostrils; attendants emptied aperitifs into their mouths, followed by oyster shells, then butter-flecked lobster on polished forks, the promise of dessert like a distant polka.

Kiltartan Cross

06:28 / 17.10.06

What can I say? He did it for me, that's all. The one; you'd have done the same. Fine yellow hair down almost to his belted waist; pale skin; those eyes, that look. Dangerous, a seducer, his frank stare pierced my secret heart. He saw right through me from the start, what I am, what I wanted from him. Saw me as myself, as a counterpart, as an equal. His clothes shone and danced in the candle-light. He saw me, and there was mockery in his face even as I told him - yes, he should have my daughter's hand.

The Ghost of Tom Winter

21:26 / 22.10.06

And so it was: the true ones that sit upon the stone monoliths reached towards the sky with an exclamation of purpose and intensity akin to that of a baleen whale. “Monsters!” Harold Finkly stated as he gazed at the swirling wonder of the masked giants, “I must be mad! Or I must be brilliant.” Finkly took off his glasses, rubbed them thusly and now saw three cats sitting upon three trees with three eyes each. “Now I know I am mad!” Finkly sat beneath the tree, gazed up at the tender cats gazing back, calmly declaring “I give up.”

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

02:29 / 23.10.06

The teacher walked into his class – students with listless expressions and cell phones hidden in their palms, just under their desks – and he opened his briefcase, to pull out his notes. He began to draw maps on the board. "Forget the Panama Canal, and we'll be covering glaciation next semester." The morphology of questions, abstractions, and misery. An isothermal map marked Desire. He ended with Death's geography, features that cropped up in the landscape. An informative hour followed by blank students babbling in the halls. The teacher was fired; and then, the gym teacher proposed a strange variety of dodge-ball—

deja_vroom

11:47 / 23.10.06

Bones aching from fear. Wet black boulders pressing against her ribcage as the sea bursts in foam and salt. She can’t look at her belly because something – foul, flabby – is still sucking – and more.
Arpana wakes up and places her hand upon her swollen belly. She turns to Kavi –
- Kavi, the water... – but Kavi is up already, naked and not alone. Strangers form a circle around the bed as the contractions start. Something sucking – and more – in salty amniotic waters.
Kavi can’t stop smiling as the voices rise.
- It’s Ok my dear it’s fine. The worst is over.

charrellz

13:28 / 23.10.06

Mini version of a larger story I'm working on:

The first report came in from somewhere in the Midwest. There was a piece of blank notebook paper that suddenly weighed over 500 pounds. Then, in Texas, a typewriter crashed through eight stories of an apartment building, finally burying itself in the ground, unable to be lifted. In Tokyo, a pen in some guy’s pants became so heavy it ripped right through the pocket and then made a small crater in the street. The next day, I felt an odd strain in my neck, and before I knew it, it was all over. My brain had become a black hole.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

01:45 / 24.10.06

The drag race was a mistake. The jalopy hit the cliff edge, jostled and stalled – suddenly too much sky. Shit. I'm not James Dean – I'm the other guy. The one that didn't bail out in time. Over chortles from the engine he couldn't make out the screams; his dad's old ride felt like vapour, hardly there. Drifting along on top of a cloud for a moment. He wasn't James Dean. At least he'd go out at top speed like Dean. The back tire hit the cliff wall and time restarted and he knew, oh, he knew where this was going.

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