Jul
Bizarre Love Triangle
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Jack liked to think of himself as a private man, even though everyone knew he secretly had a crush on Fiona. The only problem being Fiona was engaged to David. The other problem being David and Jack were brothers.
Jack had never mentioned his feelings for Fiona to anyone, besides his therapist. He made a point of dating regularly, and bragging about all his ex-girlfriends. But this charade fooled no one, except for perhaps Stanley, who suspected Jack was a closeted homosexual.
In the end, Jack and Fiona and David had a mature conversation, and resolved the whole situation amicably.
Jul
No Surprises
Sherlock Holmes perfected the art of deduction to the point that he wielded a peculiar form of omniscience over existence. Through his careful, some would say obsessive, calculations and observations, Holmes anticipated even the most esoteric of events before they occurred.
Centuries later, chaos theorists would pour over his extant journals. They became fascinated by his predictions, sometimes so specific that his diary entries anticipated their own research into his system of ideas.
But what they saw as a nearly divine intuition of the universe, Holmes viewed as a curse.
He lived his life bereft of the pleasure of surprise.
Jul
Virtual Insanity
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Shibuya Station is nearly empty. The afternoon rain sent all the gamers scrambling for shelter for their mobiles.
I am left to wait virtually alone. The desolation leaves me feeling I am a character in a post-nuclear zombie p2p actioner. Hisamitsu and Starbucks and the latest Bruce Willis movie are the sponsors of my apocalypse. Even my daydreams have become corporatized.
I see her exit the underground. Her eyes never leave her mobile. She walks past, not even noticing the rain.
Her avatar pops onto my screen for a few fleeting seconds.
Our marriage will endure another seven years.
Jul
Clean
They were calling it the biggest mass migration in human history.
Millions of Catholics fleeing their home countries and flooding the Amazonian and South East Asian rain forests. Not only were the economies of entire regions being disrupted, but the environmental destruction was unprecedented.
The threats posed by climate change paled in comparison. The false modern idols–money and science, patriotism and Ronald McDonald–proved they were no rival to the power of religion. Millions would die due to the mistake.
All because the Pope, as part of the onset of his dementia, declared that daily rain cleanses the soul of sin.
Jul
Heretics
The tribunal accounted heresy as the gravest of capital crimes. The methods of sentence varied according to whim, but whether by fire or crucifixion, their death would be painful.
Bartholomew and George faced their accusers girded by an equal mixture of fear and antipathy. The cowards did not even have the courtesy to face them, but hid behind a poster of black cloth.
“Do you wish to recant?” Only the worst offenders were given such an opportunity.
Bartholomew refused. “I will die first.”
And so he did. Gruesomely.
“And you, George, do you wish to recant?”
“Yes. Yes I do.”
Jun
Graveyard Girl
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
During her lifetime, she had never actually been to a graveyard. The closest she came was holding her breath as the family station wagon drove by. Nor had she been to a cemetery. Nor a mausoleum, catacomb, or crypt.
But she could distinguish the difference, both etymologically and historically, between each of them. Her favorite stories were set in burial grounds, Gothic narratives dripping with death and love and tragedy.
So even though she was cremated, and her ashes spread out to sea, not many people were surprised to find her ghost haunting the church graveyard near her childhood home.
Jun
Echoless Well
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
The town of Bottomless Well was famous for one reason only.
No one could ever remember any water being drawn from the well. Yet, thanks to its purported wish granting properties, people still visited from miles around.
The well was meant to be a mystery, like God or a woman’s heart; it was better not knowing where the bottom lay.
When scientists discovered that the floor reached exactly 36 feet and 7 inches underground, and that the peculiar convex shape and absorptive qualities of the rock prevented any sound from escaping, the villagers pragmatically changed the name. Life carried on as before.
Jun
MOOOFASA!!!
by profadamworth in 100 Words
The clever commanders of our teaching have failed us Now they walk with the infantry, humbled and gray And all that we’ve learned from their studies in failure Is the different formations for losing the day
But though our shields are just brittle paper And though our strength is just desperate fear And though we’ve been judged and come up wanting Yet still we’re determined to find victory here
Jun
Alpha Eridanus – The End of the River
by profadamworth in 100 Words
It’d been generations since the biomass telescopes first detected life on Achernar. It took a hundred years to construct the ship and train the families who’d carry Earth’s hopes into the stars. The journey itself took several hundred more. Finally, Captain Monroe is ready to make landfall. In doing so, he’ll confirm what they’d detected last week – that Achernar is a planet of weeds. Specifically, one weed, iterated endlessly over an unbroken landmass.
The landing party dutifully disperses to take samples of the colorless alien, but Monroe’s eyes look skyward. The ship’s biomass telescopes had picked up another faint signal….
Jun
Medical Mystery
The doctors had never seen anything like it exactly. They took x-rays. They called in colleagues. They consulted every textbook they could find.
“You can see the glow through his stomach.”
“How the heck is it still burning?”
“The melted wax must be damaging his digestive system.”
“And you say it doesn’t hurt?” they asked.
“Not in the least,” the patient responded.
“Well, I guess we’ll have to operate.”
The examination was interrupted by a forbidding woman entering the room, who looked to be the afflicted’s personal assistant.
“Don’t let Mr. Copperfield worry you,” she admonished. “He’s just showing off.”