September, 2012 Archives
Sep
The Allergy
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Last Saturday, I woke up to discover I was allergic to the color green.
I experienced a burning sensation and debilitating pain as I watered my plants, ate a salad for lunch, and finally mowed the lawn in the afternoon. That last one led to a trip to the emergency room.
The allergist was the first to diagnose me. She said it wasn’t as unusual as I might think to be allergic to color. She mentioned a friend who had been allergic to yellow his whole life.
The thing is, as Superman, it was bad enough with the kryptonite thing.
Sep
The Clock
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
I was walking down Canal Street when a man threw a clock from the roof of a twenty-story building. It smashed into the car next to me and I was startled from my chocolate-induced haze. I really like chocolate when I can get it.
I caught just a glimpse of the man and he looked like an angel, all blond hair and white clothes. I examined the clock, with its hands pointed to 4:44. I wondered if it indicated the start of the rapture.
Later, I realized the angel had escaped from the asylum at the same time I had.
Sep
Gothic Punishments
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
The idea was to keep piling bricks until you’d walled yourself into a tomb of your own making. It was all very Gothic, something straight out of Poe.
For Walter Rochester, however, the laying of bricks was not strictly a punishment. He found the monotonous labor helped to relieve his mind of thoughts of his unfulfilled existence and he embraced the endeavor. Where others resigned themselves with morbid indifference, Walter used the opportunity to indulge all of his latent fantasies.
His father had forbid him to attend architecture school, so his tomb would be a monument to those abandoned ambitions.
Sep
The Science Of Engineering
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
No one knew what was causing the rumble in subway line Q6, but it had people scared. City council called in the engineers and scientists to determine the source before they had an accident.
The engineers took a survey to measure what environmental factors might be affecting the tunnel and quickly reached a conclusion. Groundwater was leaking into the structure and had compromised the integrity of the entire network. They ordered an immediate closure to the line and made plans for repairs.
The scientists meanwhile blamed the whole thing on climate change. No wonder the Republicans hate science so much.
Sep
Ataraxia
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
He was plagued by a disturbed mental state, in that his mind was almost always perfectly relaxed. There were brief episodes of interruption over the course of the day, when he might eat a bit of sustenance or move an inch here or there. But even in these moments of excitement, his mind was preternaturally tranquil.
We would watch him for hours at a time, recording the slightest movements. On the one hand, we envied his peacefulness, and became more contemplative ourselves, but we still looked at him as something of a freak.
This was the life of a sloth.
Sep
Pickled Confectionery
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Anyone who’s been to the wrong side of West Virginia knows that just about anything can be pickled. The shop windows are lined with jars of pickled vegetables, pickled rattlesnakes, pickled squirrels, pickled acorns. They’ll even take candy and Twinkies and preserve them for wintertime.
My grandfather was from West Virginia and he would boast they used to eat the pickled leather of worn-through boots. I’m not sure if he was telling the truth or not, but it makes me feel fortunate that today we have the option of eating at McDonald’s. Though I can imagine pickled hamburgers are next.
Sep
Granular
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Justin and Franklin had been roommates for six months. They disputed everything on a granular level.
If Justin wanted to use the kitchen, Franklin would argue that in the fundamental sense of the word, kitchen is simply a place to cook. Justin could just as easily cook something in his bedroom, say a package of ramen noodles, so it would be correct to say that his bedroom was also a kitchen. Justin would retort that since his name was on the lease, one could consider that the entire apartment technically belonged to him.
Justin and Franklin hated each other immensely.
Sep
It’s A Pirate’s Life For Me
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
The boat listed back and forth in the gradual waves under a massive, cloudless sky. Drake, scratching at his stubbled face, stared across the empty horizon. As the sunlight refracted in time to the vessel’s movement, he could not spy even a mirage. The sea was parched of features, as it had been for countless weeks. Drake could not remember the last time they had encountered another ship, or his last sip of whiskey.
Drake sighed and went back to swabbing the deck. Life as a pirate was much less interesting than the stories had made it out to be.
Sep
Stardust
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
In the fairy tales, people go chasing after stardust because of its supposed magical properties. Legends are passed down of heroes anointed with the stuff and of diseases cured. There was one tale that my mother used to tell of a unicorn who had never tasted anything but stardust and you could ride her into magical realms. Stardust is the tears of angels, the remains of miracles.
Maybe there is some stardust in the universe that’s like that, but I have found it’s nothing but radiation and horrific burning. Leastways, it’s the stardust that gave me all these awful scars.