November, 2013 Archives

29
Nov

After Thanksgiving

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Kurt returned home after several hours at the bar, slightly buzzed and no longer furious at his wife. He expected the house to be spotless after that disaster of a Thanksgiving dinner.

Instead, when he opened the door into the kitchen, he discovered chaos. The entire house smelled of urine and vomit, and what might have been blood was smeared on the walls and bannister.

Fearing the worst, he ran upstairs, but although he encountered the same state of disorder, Andrea and the kids were nowhere to be seen.

What he found was that damn turkey sleeping in his bed.

28
Nov

The Red Lever

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Danger…Danger…Danger!

The alarm system sounded throughout the starship, almost to the point of annoyance. Every crew member was well aware their lives were in imminent danger as they passed the event horizon.

Ensign Jones waited in the heaters. He understood little of their mission besides the rumors. But he hoped it was important. He didn’t want to die for nothing. He had joined the Fleet hoping to become famous, and after eleven years he was still an ensign.

Jones yanked down the red lever. He didn’t want to die for nothing, but they were all going to die.

27
Nov

Everything Has Its Cost

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Lester frowned. The map told exactly where to find the hidden fortune of Reginald Day, the object of treasure hunters everywhere. Unfortunately, the map was now in the possession of his chief rival.

Lester plotted many possible methods for securing the map, but all of them ended either with him in jail, or in violence. Though it was at times necessary, Lester didn’t particularly care for violence. But the thought of prison was even less appealing.

So it was that Lester absconded with the entire Day fortune, at the cost of dropping Reginald’s 11-year-old granddaughter off the village clock tower.

26
Nov

The Illusion Of Choice

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

I was given a simple choice. Pick one basket. Whatever was hidden inside would be my destiny.

There were 100 baskets to choose from. I knew from the stories that most of them were dull affairs, with fates that would play out over the next 50-70 years. A few were glorious. One or two held nearly instant death.

I thought having such a choice was wonderful. It wasn’t until later I realized the feeling of control was an illusion, for though I could chose the basket, I had never been asked if I wanted to play the game to begin with.

25
Nov

The Best In The World

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

“I can make you the best in the world at one thing,” said the leprechaun.

David mulled his choice over carefully before eventually answering, “I want to be the best in the world at not dying.”

The leprechaun sighed, and David smiled smugly. “I outwitted you, didn’t I? You weren’t expecting that.”

“It’s not too late to change your mind.”

“Nope, that’s what I want.”

“Very well,” the leprechaun responded sadly.

A few moments later, a giant asteroid collided with the Earth. Over the next several months, humanity died off in the apocalyptic conditions. David was the last human alive.

22
Nov

The Coffee Wars

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

The Coffee Wars began in the 21st century, but unlike the other Great Wars, which ended via the exchange of cash settlements or mineral rights, the Coffee Wars dragged on.

John Grimes was the last survivor. Decades after the plantation riots, Grimes was housed in the Starbucks Asylum. He was kept alive through intravenous caffeination that was still technically against the law, but which was rarely enforced outside of government clinics.

It was Grimes’ silent presence that allowed Starbucks, his chief adversary, to eventually quell the resistance. Grimes glumly watched, unable to act, or even speak, through the caffeine-induced shaking.

21
Nov

Hell

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Hell is the worst place you can imagine, because if you could imagine something worse than Hell, than Hell would become that.

When he’d been alive, Edgar had been obsessed with cheese. He’d also been a huge prick and made everyone around him miserable. Now he was being tortured with cheese. He had cheese running through his veins and was repeatedly dropped into a vat of scalding cheese sauce. Even the scent of cheese lingered on his clothes in between dips. They thought of everything.

Edgar’s secret consolation was that Satan hated cheese. Even Satan suffered in Hell.

20
Nov

The Way Things Played Out

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

We looked around at each other and it was clear that we all shared the same sense of panic. We’d all been shrunk down to a few inches tall, and what had once been a rather shaggy lawn was now a thick forest. Our pet rabbit, Olive, was one hop away from killing us all.

If this were a Disney movie, my siblings and I would have set aside our differences and we would have worked together to overcome a string of comical obstacles before returning to normal height.

This played out more as a Lord Of The Flies scenario.

19
Nov

For What Reason A Choice

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Whenever she thought about the past, a heavy sadness weighed on her. Her term as Empress had been glorious and she was widely acknowledged as the greatest monarch in living memory.

Now that the peaceful successions had ended, and the municipalities were constantly at war, she regretted not holding on to power. It was the irony of their political system that those most worthy of holding power were those least likely to retain it.

Of course, giving up power had not been her first choice. She’d done so out of spite. Anything to get back at that ex-boyfriend of hers.

18
Nov

The Babysitting Job

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Lisa had been babysitting for almost two years, ever since she was 14. Never in her long career had she seen anything so disgusting as this.

Little kids will puke and poop and spit and generally make a mess of everything they touch. Lisa was used to all these awful behaviors. She was a pro.

But she’d never seen a baby molt before, yet that was exactly what this toddler was doing. Shedding its skin and revealing a hard layer of scales underneath. Lisa shrieked and jumped on top of the coffee table.

Perhaps the Iguana family wasn’t hispanic after all.