Posts Tagged ‘Sign’

12
Jun

Career Day

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

“Good work today, Boys,” Bud Peptide said to his sons, Spud and Pud. “We finished plowing the back 40. You fellas deserve a reward.”

Bud pulled some bills from his wallet and handed them to Spud.

“Head into town and buy yourselves your first drink at the Short Twig Saloon.”

The brothers rode into town, burst through the saloon door and bellied up to the bar.

“Two beers,” Spud said to the bartender.

The bartender looked the boys over.

“Can’t you read?” he said, pointing to the sign on the door. “NO MINORS!”

“We’re not miners,” Pud said. “We’re farmers!”

From Guest Contributor Lee Hammerschmidt

Lee is a Visual Artist/Writer/Troubadour. He is the author of the short story collections, A Hole Of My Own, It’s Noir O’clock Somewhere, For Richer or Noirer, Flash Wounds, and Pulp Stains. Check out his hit parade on YouTube!

8
Nov

Dead Language

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

The beggar standing on the corner was holding up a cardboard sign I drove past too fast to read. I heard a red alarm bell ringing when one of my students, a college junior, spelled “toxin” “tocsin” in an essay. In the surviving fragment of his book, On Analogy, Julius Caesar tells us to “Avoid strange and unfamiliar words as a sailor avoids rocks at sea,” which, I admit, seems like sensible advice. But even so, I’m not about to take writing tips from the man who started the fire that in 48 B.C. destroyed the Great Library of Alexandria.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press).

15
Jul

House Rules

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

“No!” the vacation condos manager barked, his stink-eye getting stinkier by the second. “You cannot borrow a screwdriver to repair your drone. Drones are strictly forbidden on the property!”

“Geez, alright,” I said. Man, there’s a harshness on the edge of town. Last time I book with Wazoo Properties.

“And by the way,” he said. “No more ukulele playing on the lanai or by the pool. It’s strictly…”

“Forbidden?”

He nodded yes.

“One more thing,” he said, pointing at the NO SMOKING sign.

“So, what you’re saying…”

“Yes. No drones, no tools, no frets…and you don’t get no cigarettes!”


From Guest Contributor Lee Hammerschmidt

Lee is a Visual Artist/Writer/Troubadour who lives in Oregon. He is the author of the short story collection, A Hole Of My Own. Check out his hit parade on YouTube!

26
Feb

Recovery

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

The healing came slow. A damaged psyche doesn’t show like a bruise. Her little boy needs her; she is everything to him and he is the world to her. But she needs to be whole for him.

More than a month of repair to start the recovery. Participation in daily activities was the first sign. A faint light at the end of the tunnel, but a light nonetheless. Her posture showed confidence. Then her gait picked up a bit. A twinkle returned to her eyes. Her journey would be long and arduous, but she was on her way to recovery.

From Guest Contributor NT Franklin

NT Franklin has been published in Page and Spine, Fiction on the Web, 101 Words, Friday Flash Fiction, CafeLit, Madswirl, Postcard Shorts, 404 Words, Scarlet Leaf Review, Freedom Fiction, Burrst, Entropy, Alsina Publishing, Fifty-word stories, Dime Show Review, among others.

12
Feb

A Postcard To The Afterlife

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Hi Dad, it’s me again. Still here on Earth. Still wishing to be where you are, engulfed in the brilliant light of peace and tranquility, behind gates guarded by ancestors from times never known to us. Still waiting for a sign, a rainbow, a white dove, anything that tells me things are better out there in the universe than they are here, right now. Still missing the opportunities that passed us by when we thought there were an infinite number of opportunities left. Still whispering unheard, unanswered prayers into the night sky. Still hoping the moonlight carries them to you.

From Guest Contributor Rhiannon DeCambra

8
Feb

Plans For Departure

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

This feels like the worst place one could possibly be – insurrectionists on the front steps, an unkindness of ravens in the yard, a side door that requires a sign explaining how to open it. I’m leaving for. . . I don’t know where. Maybe somewhere bombs would only ever kill the bomb makers. You can come if you wish. I can’t promise there’ll be roads and buildings made of spider silk or that lakes will gently bubble to the dreams of sleeping fish, but light will reach us even a million years after the source of light has gone out.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie’s latest poetry collection, Gunmetal Sky, is due in February from Thirty West Publishing,

21
Oct

Dreamland

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

The lake has an island that has a church on it with fine black cracks etched all over. It’s the place where disaster originated. Everything else has been declared safe for visitors. The sky is an orange I never experienced before. A smell like the rancid diapers of the spawn of Satan crawls through trees. A fox poses in front of a sign that says NO JEWS AND ANIMALS ALLOWED. Joggers, dog walkers, and parents with strollers slow down as they go past. I catch the expression on their faces, mostly a combination of surprise and puzzlement. Sometimes they smile.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of two new poetry collections, The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro-Press, 2020).

25
Aug

Bare Ruined Choirs

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

An ex-beauty queen has been found in her bedroom decapitated, limbless, a chainsaw nearby. On the wall, a decorative wooden sign says, “Breathe deeply and calmly.” How do you do that? We need a plan, an intervention, something. In Hiroshima after the bomb, they piled the bodies in the swimming pool at the college and cremated them with scrap wood. Last night when my mother finally managed to fall asleep, she dreamed she was walking through a ruined city in a hospital gown left behind from her cancer surgery, while, in the distance, sirens screamed. Assume the monster is everywhere.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of The Death Row Shuffle, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

10
Apr

April Come She Will

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Men on the street would call my girlfriend lindo. “Get used to it,” she said. I decided the best thing for me to do was nothing. April had been designated Artichoke Month. I remember we saw a movie about astronauts on a mind-bending journey to the cosmic womb. It was confusing and a little scary. She got really into the singer-songwriter who had committed suicide by stabbing himself in the chest. There were long lines outside liquor stores and gun shops. One day we found a hand-lettered cardboard sign lying abandoned on the sidewalk: Hungry & Cold / Anything Helps.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

2
Apr

Threatened Birds Nesting

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

You’re eating lunch on a bench in the park, close to a roped-off area where a sign says threatened birds are nesting. It’s the first nice day in a week. You’re enjoying the spring-like weather when a man you’ve never seen before steps out from behind a tree. He points a .38 special at you, shouts, “I regard Henry Ford as an inspiration,” and fires. In just hours, friends have assembled a pop-up shrine at the spot, with flowers, teddy bears, messages of love and respect. Although not me. I’m reading true crime books in order to gather survival tips.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.