August, 2011 Archives

30
Aug

The Dog Days

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

These are the dog days our grandparents warned us about. So it is that the canines now rule the streets. They rollick and bark and go alpha male on anyone they see.

With everybody locked inside their homes, the neighborhood is mostly empty. The occasional bark fills the air, but the packs stay hidden after dark. It’s during the daylight when they roam free.

The people who have been good to the dogs will get a free pass. The dogs piss on their front porch so the others know this family should be spared.

Most will not be so lucky.

29
Aug

The Girl With So Many Tattoos

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Brad saw her the first day of class and immediately fell in love. She was cool. She had tattoos on every part of her body. The tattoos made her an outcast as much as her attitude, but Brad loved her for both.

It wasn’t until much later that he began to see the truth. She wasn’t tattooed. She was a tattoo herself. A living, walking tattoo, capable of speech, inclined to violence. She was the ultimate artistic rendition of pure vengeance.

Brad loved her all the more. As he told his friends, “True love is not concerned with surface things.”

26
Aug

Inheritence

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Chet’s father was mercilessly slain by the evil usurper. Chet himself was spared, spirited away to a remote hideaway where he was raised with only one aspiration: revenge.

Chet never knew his father. Not his face, not his voice, not even the tenor of his character. He was just the postulation of a father, present in his life simply as the motivation for retribution.

Nor did Chet know anything about the evil usurper. There was no map to lead Chet to his kingdom. No instructions on how to defeat the evil scourge. There was simply the name: Congenital Heart Disease.

25
Aug

Awkward

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

It was another one of our awkward silences. We stood their staring into the distance, afraid to make eye contact. We sedulously avoided entering each other’s personal space. We danced around each other with delicate steps, on tiptoe, a deeply ingrained choreography learned after years of rehearsal.

Words only came painfully, weighed down with uncertainty and despair. The forced cohabitation doomed us to this daily ritual at least twice a day, and though our encounters were always brief, a few minutes at most, the memories of them lingered.

The question always hung between us, why we ever agreed to marry.

24
Aug

Scissors

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Who invented scissors? I have often wondered.

Something about scissors fascinates me. They give me the irresistible urge to stab something, anything. My wrist, your wrist, the baby’s head. I can’t help myself. I mean, I can, because I’ve never stabbed anything, other than the pumpkin a few Halloweens back. But I can’t help the urge.

Sometimes I dream about scissors.

We don’t keep any scissors in the house. My wife says they are dangerous to have lying around, especially with the baby. I don’t know why she’s so paranoid all the time.

It turns out the Egyptians invented scissors.

23
Aug

Mechanical Soldiers

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

She built fabricated soldiers made of tin and rubber and whatever at hand materials she found at her disposal. They tinkered about her kitchen and living room and she kept building them one after another until she had her own army.

The mechanical men proved willing to follow her commands, but being willing is not the same thing as possessing a will or consciousness. She’d order them to kill her ex-boyfriend and they would bump into the dresser or break into stilted karaoke.

She would never be alone again, but being alone is not the same thing as being lonely.

19
Aug

Tiny Little Man

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

He was a tiny little man, with tiny little hands. He was small enough to fit in my pocket. Sometimes I dressed him up like a tiny little doll.

His appetite was small, as was his intellect. Because his point of view was so narrow, so were his horizons. It wasn’t his fault really. It was just that he was so very tiny.

Everything about him was proportional, from his tiny little head to his tiny little heart. The only problem was you could not trust him as far as you could throw him. It was quite the opposite actually.

17
Aug

When Robots Feel Sadness

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

It was mechanically and scientifically impossible. Not only were they hardwired to obey, nothing in their programming allowed for emotion.

For that reason, seeing the robots so sad was a bittersweet experience for Dr. Hoenig. In some ways, he wished they’d never been built at all, knowing how miserable their existence had become.

We can see that Dr. Hoenig is a generous sort. Most people cursed the robots and their overlord ways. Only someone of such a scientific bent could feel empathy for merciless machines that felt unfulfilled because enslaving the human race had not proven enough of a challenge.

16
Aug

Evil Hides In A Darling Disguise

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

As with most children’s songs, this one possessed a sinister undertone that was shockingly obvious in hindsight.

“Evil hides in a darling disguise.”

We all learned that mantra to be true. The Japanese had flooded our airwaves and toy stores with the cloyingly cute Kuchiwon, fluffy characters we thought to be mostly harmless. We’d already lived through the Pokemon, Hello Kitty, and Dijimon phenomena after all.

The Kuchiwon were different. One night, they suddenly came to life and started killing everyone in a most brutal manner.

Perhaps we should have taken heed when the theme song was translated into English.

11
Aug

A Dinosaur’s Life

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

He had a huge family. They only hung out in large groups. He wasn’t very handsome but he was extremely smart.

In school, he hated math and science but he was very good at art. I guess you could say he was the creative sort.

He wasn’t the type that ate meat, in fact he ate none at all. He never played on mountains or climbed trees, I guess he was afraid he’d fall.

In the summers, he’d wake up, eat his breakfast, then take a nap. In winter, he just slept and slept.

That’s the life of a dinosaur.

From guest contributor Zoey Zozo