The 100 Word Stories Podcast

The meeting went long, so when the meeting was over, I hopped in my time machine to go back and catch the beginning of the other meeting that had already started. But I had forgotten to bring my laptop, so I had to stand there and watch the other me at my laptop until he got up and jumped into my time machine. Then I picked up my laptop and jumped into my time machine and went back. But the two laptops had an IP address conflict, and we were both disconnected. Shit. My other me didn’t go back. Awkward.

When the smoke cleared, Billy was the last man standing. Clint was sitting in the middle of the street. Bart was laying on his back, looking up at the clouds. Bob was hopping on one foot. He insisted that it didn’t count as standing. Slim was doing some kind of weird yoga pose, holding himself up with his hands as he stuck out his legs. “Is that a Dhanurasana?” asked Billy. “That’s the rocker pose,” said Slim. “Know it’s not an Upavistha Konasana.” Doc was doing a handstand. He accentuated it with a few breakdance twists. “Show off,” said Billy.

Lewie Lisa Lizzie Richard Tom Serendipidy Norval Joe Planet Z The next topic is PICK TWO Hush Beauty Chisel One-eyed owl Interceptor LEWIE Spooker Boy was just like everyone else. But ever since his friends dared him to fetch a ball in old Mrs. Hendersons back yard, he’s had superpowers. The little hairs on the back of his neck would rise up with a sinking feeling of paranoia, signalling that trouble was afoot. Three weeks ago, his friend Billy was walking on thin ice, often getting home late. Spooker boy warned him, claiming he had super powers. They got back just in time to hear his mom start calling out. Billy never doubted Spooker Boy’s powers again. He hadn’t noticed the street lights. LISA Going Live for the Last Time Gabby needs no introduction to those of you on TikTok. She was one of the very first influencers. Today though she feels something’s off; Gabby has a creeping feeling that she’s being watched. An odd thing to say when you live stream most day to day tasks and live in a house that is predominantly windows. Her partner dismisses the idea and says she’s being paranoid and puts his VR headset straight back on. But there, tucked behind a perfectly manicured bush, in her vast garden hides her number one fan who notices that she’s left the patio doors unlocked. Lisa aka noodleBubble LIZZIE He looked at the dark building. Why had they called him in? Not a transfer, he hoped. His Sector was busy but he liked it there, especially since Steve, the new mutant, had arrived. Steve always tried to outsmart the local gamblers, but he was hopeless. “Next,” someone shouted. The implant reader confirmed his ID. “Room 3, Terminations.” Terminations? The door opened and there was Steve. “OMG, Steve, am I fired?” “Yes, you are.” Steve smiled. “But why?” “I need someone paranoid enough to be my shadow.” The relief washed away his paranoia. But he didn’t tell that to Steve. RICHARD Paranoid I kept telling her, it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you. She just laughed at me, “They’re not out to get you, you really are paranoid. When are you going to man up and sort yourself out?” Well, I tried, but the nagging conviction I was right wouldn’t go away. I swear that cars would swerve towards me in the street, plant pots would fall from windows as I passed suspiciously frequently, and the razor blades in the mailbox were definitely no mistake. But, turns out, no-one was out to get me. Except for my wife. TOM Boldly to Go Stardate: 2719 For the last six torens Lt. Cetak has been studying the inhabitants of planet 612n. They call themselves the Noid. A curious race that places trust as the highest ideal. To maintain this state, pairs of noids will bind with members who holds diametric different truths. Much of the daily activity is spent constructing contingencies over the possible machinations of their partners. This takes up a sizeable amount of time leaving little time to productive endeavors. We judge the threat assessment of this race as low, but the more pair a noids there are the great the danger. SERENDIPIDY You’re just being paranoid. You’ve been here before, countless times; it’s just a crime scene, like so many others you’ve been to. The blood staining the wall is still fresh enough to be tacky, the familiar smell filling your nostrils, and the taste of iron at the back of your throat. But now, the silence, cold and dampness are pressing in creating an almost tangible presence. You fight the unnerving feeling that you’re being watched; that someone, something, is lurking in the shadows. Something inside is telling you to go, to return to daylight, and safety. But, are you listening? NORVAL JOE Mandi lay in the guest bed staring at the ceiling. She closed her eyes and acted like she was asleep as footsteps approached the door. It didn’t sound like Billbert. It must be his mother. Was she looking for Sabrina? Did she somehow know that Mandi had trapped her in the magnifying glass? Mandi kept her eyes closed as the footsteps approached the bed and stopped. She cracked an eye open, then sat bolt upright. There was no one beside her bed. Either she had crossed over from paranoia to total mental illness, or there were ghosts in this house. PLANET Z Robbie read the order: extra cheese. He grabbed a handful of cheese and scattered it on the pizza. Forty minutes later, the angry customer called. “You call this extra cheese?” The manager had Robbie make another pizza. Two handfuls of cheese this time. “I said extra cheese!” was the response. Robbie snapped. He grabbed a fifty pound bag of shredded cheese, tossed it into his truck, and drove off. They found the customer’s body the next day, covered in cheese. The police still haven’t found Robbie. I hope they do soon. Because we just got an order for extra pepperoni.

So, I found an accounting error. Reported it to the CEO. Who did nothing about it. Then, I reported it to the SEC. The company doesn’t just fire whistleblowers, you know. They’ll lay you off for economic reasons, or they’ll downsize your job out from under you. Then, after a while, they’ll hire someone else to do that job. Blackballing you in the industry. Time for a new career. I’d saved up enough to put myself through pharmacy school. And got a job where the CEO picked up his medication. They called it a prescription error. I call it justice.

Mom and Dad took me to the cemetery every weekend. We visited Grandma and Grampa and me there. Me, Bob Thomas Morton. Well, not really me. Mom and Dad had me late in their life, too late to meet Grandma and Grampa alive. And too late to meet my older brother. Also named Bob Thomas Morton. They don’t talk about him ever. And I’m not allowed to ask about him. There’s no photos. None of his things. Nothing. When they die, they want to be buried next to him. And me? Maybe I’ll just carve in my dates under Bob’s.

So, a cop took a fentanyl addict with hypertension and a heart condition to the ground and knee-pressed the guy’s neck. City coroner said heart attack. Family’s hired coroner said asphyxiation. But, hey, the science is settled, right? “I CAN’T BREATHE!” were his last words. Protests. Riots. Burning. Looting. Peaceful, right? I watched a fat black elderly protester holding up a sign that says MY LIFE MATTERS. In a dense crowd. No gloves, no mask. Hugging strangers. The other side of her sign said I CAN’T BREATHE. It’ll come in handy when she catches the Coronavirus and ends up intubated.

So, my parents finally sold their house. But they didn’t sell the wooded empty lot next door. They had bought that lot to preserve their peace and quiet. It didn’t sell along with the house, though. They gave the lot to me. And I need to sell it. The golf course it’s near doesn’t want it. They gave me an insultingly low offer. So, I told them thank you, but I’m going ahead with my plans to build a shrine to Satan. And their golfers are welcome to pray there, of course. I’m sure they’ll rethink their offer pretty soon.

I used to play the violin. But I didn’t play it well. “Maybe I need a better violin?” So, I’d buy violin after violin, until I had a Stradivarius. It didn’t have a name, though. It was a badly-damaged body that was refurbished. Still, it sounded great. But I didn’t play it well. I paid for lessons, practiced a lot, until I finally got good with it. Then, I broke my elbow and lost a lot of range of motion. The surgeries and rehab were expensive and I had to sell the Stradivarius. Now, I play “Violin” playlists on Spotify.

Mickey Mantle jumped the line, got a new liver, but it didn’t do him much good. He got sicker and sicker, and former teammates came to Dallas to wish him goodbye. The orderlies moved his body to a gurney and rolled it into an elevator, Down in the basement, they moved his body to a cabinet in the morgue. It took a day for his final exam. They carved him up, pulled out his organs to examine and weigh them, including the liver he’d received, and sewed them all back into him. And off to the funeral home he went.

Lewie Lizzie Richard Lisa Tom Serendipidy Norval Joe Planet Z The next topic is Paranoid LEWIE George had an idea. It wasn’t a bright idea. It wasn’t even a good idea. In fact, it wasn’t even a bad idea. Suffice to say, if you could see the physical manifestation of it, you would only find a broken light bulb above George’s head. The idea wasn’t original. It was common. Or… at least, it used to be. George’s idea was no longer with the times. People moved on. They found better lighting. They upgraded. George was in a closet, alone in the dark. He was trying to find a light switch when most people talked to Alexa. LIZZZIE At the thrift shop, he spotted an artist’s mannequin with a lightbulb for a head, leaning against a tarnished mirror. It’s broken, they said. But he bought it anyway, and placed it on the mantelpiece. There was just something about that small fragile wooden figure. The next day, the mannequin was gone. Who took the mannequin, he shouted. Not me, everyone replied. He searched the whole house, and found the mannequin leaning against the full-body mirror in the bedroom. He could’ve sworn that there was a faint glimmer in that lightbulb. Perhaps the mannequin wasn’t that broken after all. RICHARD Light bulb moment They say Christmas is for kids but I’ve never agreed, although these days it’s really not like it used to be. Forget the old clichés about commercialisation or the true meaning of Christmas; it’s technology that’s ruined it for me. Specifically, LED fairy lights. Back in the day, it was almost a yearly rite of passage to dig out the fairly lights and spend hours of frustration hunting for the one broken light bulb in the tangled mass, before the satisfaction of seeing them burst brightly into life upon finally finding the culprit. And now, it’s just not the same. SERENDIPIDY The glass from the broken light bulb crunches underfoot, a disquieting sound in the darkness. The light from the officers’ torches bounces haphazardly off the damp walls, casting eerie, confused shadows on the scene, colours muted and unnatural. It’s hard to make anything out. You act on instinct, reliant on your senses and an indefinable gut feeling for anything that might be out of place and unnatural. Something feels, very unnatural. Very out of place. Very wrong indeed. A sudden gasp at your side, and the sweeping torches pause, all focussed on a single spot. Then you see the blood. TOM It was a dark and stormy night Sheets a rain broke against the roof. You could hardly make out the edges of homes down the street. Then the light show commenced in earnest, ragged forks of lightening coming from the east. The thunder was freaking the cat out. She bolted into the lamp, sent it hard to the floor. Broken light bulb shards everywhere. I lit a candle and grabbed a broom to sweep. The glass tinkle like tiny bells. This was that last sound I remember hearing before the wind removed the roof. The last thing I saw was glass shards dancing toward the funnel cloud. LISA Tuesday I spent the night in darkness with the cold clasping my hand. I’d pulled my jumper up over my nose, partly for warmth; mostly for its comforting smell. A small window illuminated my new world. When the sun rose I was grateful for the dark night and was glad I’d not explored – broken glass glittered on the floor from a broken light bulb waiting for my bare feet to find it. Grim and dirty. Bin bags spilling random belongings piled high. It was a room with a story no one wanted to hear. There was nothing to do but wait. NORVAL JOE Mandi tiptoed up the stairs to the guest room and flipped on the light switch. With a pop, the light went out. She could ask Billbert’s mother to get a new bulb, but that would draw attention to the fact that Sabrina was not in the room, too. A streetlight outside the window illuminated the room enough for her to see her way around, and she crossed to a dresser and slipped the magnifying glass into the upper drawer. She lay down on the bed and tried to figure out how she would explain Sabrina’s sudden absence in the morning. PLANET Z Only about 300 feet of water separates Little York Island from the mainland. People like things kept simple. The island is only ten minutes walk around. Everybody bikes or walks the paths. We built a footbridge a while back. Frank Henderson wants to widen it, we voted him down. if you got something big, the main post ferries it over and there’s a grocery at the other end of the bridge. There’s a doctor and dentist and a small general store. At night everyone turns out their lights and we watch the stars and sacrifice goats to the Chaos Gods.

Sinclair Lewis once said that every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on. In spite of his Socialist tendencies, Sinclair Lewis liked to put on stilts and act like a complete tyrant. “I AM KING!” Sinclair would shout. “BOW DOWN BEFORE YOUR KING!” It made sense when he’d put on an Uncle Sam suit and march in the Fourth of July Parade, but he wore them year-round. This made it awfully awkward for him to sneak into meatpacking plants as part of his investigation for The Jungle, let alone go to the bathroom.

When my sister in law comes to visit, I set up a bed in the spare room. And the cats check it out. At bedtime, Tinny the cat becomes a snuggle cat. And she sleeps on the bed during the day, too. Usually, Tinny is my sofa companion while I work. She can be a pest and gets in the way, but when she’s being a traitor, I miss her. So when it’s time for my sister in law to go home, I put away the bed. Instead of snuggling with me, Tinny goes into the other room and screams.

Some kids want to be policemen, others want to be astronauts. Joey wanted to be boxing champion of the local prison. He trained and built up his body and police record. Winning fight after fight, and losing case after case. He climbed the ranks outside the walls and inside. Until his manager told him to lose. He refused, and killed him. Life in prison for murder. Joey walked through the gate, smiling wide. “I’m going to own this place,” he said. “Guess again,” said a voice in his ear, and he was stabbed a dozen times. “We own this place.”

The Apple card is three percent at Apple, Exxon, and Walgreens. I don’t need a new iPhone, I’m not going to use it on an insecure gas pump. But Walgreens? Sure. I have a lot of prescriptions. All my crazy pills. When I read my last statement, I only got one percent last time. I yelled at Support, and they said I need to use Apple Pay, not the physical card. The co-pay on all my pills is a dollar. Which means instead of three cents cashback for each, I was getting one cent. I guess the pills aren’t working.

The sysco truck has the motto follow me to your next grade meal on its back. I’ve got time to kill. So I did, thinking that it was gonna stop at one of the restaurants in this small town. But to my great surprise, it’s next stop was at the local prison. I don’t know whether it’s telling me that I’m going to jail or that they’re picking up prisoners to chop up and put in the beef soup, that hardly call that or ringing endorsement. Maybe I’ll just stick to the local Whataburger or DoorDash a bunch of salads.

Teddy had a good gig, standing in line for other people. The more important the thing people were waiting for in line, the more he’d make. He also got a side hustle filling seats for celebrities or dignitaries leaving a televised performance. That way there were no empty seats. He started his own company of line-standers and seat-sitters. But his workers complained of working conditions. “We won’t stand for this!” “We won’t take this sitting down!” They formed a union, and went on strike. The line-standers formed a picket line. The seat-sitters organized a sit-in. Teddy, exhausted, folded the company.

Lewie Lizzie Richard Tom Lizzie Serendipidy Norval Joe Planet Z The next topic is Broken light bulb LEWIE The hobo clown, Doc, swiped the oversized, sharp scissors from a white-faced clown, Tippy. Doc then ran in circles and stepped backwards. Tippy fell over, landing on his big red nose. Children laughed at the spectacle. An auguste clown, Mollywolly, shouted “STOP!” The clowns froze in mid-step. “No running with scissors!” The clowns ran in slow motion. This time, Doc fell down. He sat up and cried. “Did you hurt yourself?” Mollywolly asked? Doc shook his head violently, yes. “I warned you! You can’t run in slow motion either.” Clown paramedics came, shrugged, and carried him away in a cot. LIZZIE She decorated the scissors with a tussle. Sharp but innocent-looking. Don’t forget the… and she looked out the window. The sun was so beautiful. The birds were chirping. Are you listening? She wasn’t. Don’t forget the pack of sticky note pads of all possible sizes. One hundred of them. And don’t forget to bring them in different… Colors, yes. Annoying… They would have sticky notes all over the place with sticky messages packed with stupidity. The scissors came in handy when it was time to get rid of the sticky problem… It was messy, but it was worth it. LISA Interview with Dr Andrea Brookes I ask about the famous cutting skills that her fellow surgeons once envied. She dismisses praise and mutters about practice, not just in the hospital. We share some memories. There’s a lot of talk of scissors. She mentions a dressmaking grandma and her pinking shears: zigzag cut so the fabric didn’t need a seam. She tells me how she likes really sharp little scissors and that flesh doesn’t fray. Andrea stays in her cell for the interview. She doesn’t share it. I was hoping for more answers but visiting time is over before I find out where the bodies are. SERENDIPIDY Sharp mind. Sharp wits. Sharp tongue. Sharp words. The perfect recipe for cutting remarks. There’s nothing quite like destroying your victims mentally before you commence the real work of finishing them off, and the best method I find is a verbal character assassination. I like to keep the tools of my trade nice and sharp too: Knives, saw blades, axes, all sorts of bladed articles. I really shouldn’t have to explain the reason for that -it’s pretty obvious. Not my scissors though. I don’t possess any sharp scissors at all, just very blunt ones. They hurt a whole lot more! TOM Tools of the Trade If you have lived in Chicago the likelihood one of your earliest memories will be about a basement. Mine is my Grandfather Marquette’s, for he had a fully operational barbershop. Chair, mirrors front and back. Leather strap. An assortment of electric clippers from different decades. But the shiny-est object on a glass shelf was a set of German scissors. He kept these razor-sharp scissors in a black velvet case. I once made the mistake of handling the one. To is day there is thin white line which runs across the middle of palm. The sharper the lesson the greater the wisdom. NORVAL JOE Mrs. Weinerheimer could have been a pair of sharp scissors when she said, “Enough chitchat. Get up to bed.” She led the way out of the kitchen. Billbert followed, with Sabrina right behind. Mandi said, “Sabrina. Wait. Can I talk to you for a second?” “What do you want, Lindi Mindi?” Sabrina said with her typical snark, turning to face her. Mandi raised the magnifying glass and looked at Sabrina through it. Sabrina appeared in the glass, frozen with a condescending sneer on her face. Mandi quickly shoved the magnifying glass under her shirt to avoid accidentally setting Sabrina free. PLANET Z Arthur owns the sharpest scissors in existence. They can cut through the fabric of spacetime. Gravitational waves, fluctuating with every snip. The universe bends and twists, light flickers all around. Arthur ties off the loose ends, dusts off his hands, and puts the scissors away. Usually, the universe seals itself up and heals over. But this time, Arthur’s nicked some dark matter. A singularity leans out, and devours Arthur’s sewing room, house, and neighborhood. Over the next few hours, the Earth collapses into a miniscule dot. The scissors have a warranty for this, but nobody’s left to collect on it.

A group of coffee warehouse workers looked around the warehouse and grumbled. The tasters kept approving cheaper and cheaper crap. So, they quit and became coffee traders, trading in quality coffee. Then, the coffee traders became coffee roasters and the money poured in. It poured in faster when they opened their own coffee houses. Sure, the money was good, but there was some guilt over living wages. They were getting rich while the farmers stayed poor and wrecked their environments. So, the group bought up all the farms, built robots and automated warehouses. And the technicians were paid living wages.

We walk past their framed photos on the way into the office. Three years ago, killed by an angry customer with a bag full of guns. I remember that support call. They hadn’t paid their bill for three months. They didn’t have backups of their data. They shouted over and over that they were going to sue us. It was at the end of the day. I handed the call to a manager, clocked out, and walked out for the weekend. Now, we walk past their framed photos on the way out. You’d think they’d hire a fucking security guard.

We didn’t know a U boat was on our tail until the torpedoes hit our ship. Some of us made it to the lifeboard. The captain handed me his hat and jacket. “Lie to them,” he said. The Germans took us aboard, and they treated me well, good food and wine. I gave them inflated numbers of men, ships, and weapons. The other men were kept under lock and key. But not me. I had the run of the ship. Navigation, radio room… and the torpedo room. You’ll find us on the bottom, I whisper, and set off a warhead.