The 100 Word Stories Podcast

LisaLizzieLewieNorval Joe The next topic is Railing LEWIE The newspaper described John as an idiot. Frustrated, he threw the paper down in his lap. “That editor is a complete idiot,” he said. His wife, well aware of the outdated clinical classifications, asked, “How does that compare to an incomplete idiot?” John stared at her, irritated, trying to understand her point. “He called me an idiot,” he explained. “The last I checked, both you and he had PhDs.” she replied. “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.” John grumbled behind the newspaper, “As you wish”, and continued reading the article written by a complete idiot. RICHARD Qualified Opinion Correct me if I’m wrong: it seems to me that these days that to hold a position of leadership in politics, the primary qualification is to be a complete idiot. Gone are the days when integrity, honesty and the capacity to hold one’s own in a debate without resorting to crudity and insults were key qualities of one in such positions. Neither do you need to champion, listen to, or otherwise care about the people you represent. Maybe it’s time we made them wear the red noses, make-up and giant shoes, and fool around like the clowns they clearly are. LISA A Subscription Kit It’s something I can’t miss out on. The first collaboration with Lego and a subscription provider. A weekly lego delivery offering the chance to build a limited edition piece over a year. I sign up immediately. Initially, it’s reasonably priced. And then it doubles. And then the cost doubles again. And I can’t back out because although it’s only one tiny block I’m getting a month I need to finish to see the bigger picture. By Christmas I’ve built a small frame. The last issue contains a little mirror and a tube of glue. My complete idiot lego kit done. LIZZIE The ticket booth was empty. “I guess it’s free today.” When he entered the fairgrounds, a man chasing him yelled, “Ticket, ticket!” He explained that he did try to buy a ticket. The man waved his hand dismissively. “How many?” He replied, “One.” The man looked at him. “Now you must pay for two.” “Two?! Why?” “Because I say so.” Wrong answer, he thought. “Do you have a death wish?” The man blinked. “Give me one ticket.” The man gave him one ticket and charged him for two. Good thing there was a loose plank right next to the booth. SERENDIPIDY Only a complete idiot would leave their fingerprints and DNA all over the scene of a crime they’d just committed, right? Naturally, I don’t consider myself to be an idiot, so I always take particular care to avoid contaminating the scene with any evidence that might incriminate me. Paper overalls, gloves and a face mask are essential; hilariously, I employ exactly the same approach as the forensic investigators who come after me! However, you will find plenty of fingerprints and other evidence all over my handiwork. It’s stuff I’ve kept from my previous victim: call it, recycling, if you like! TOM To long a list to even index by topic. Complete idiot is my default state. Rushing head long into some enterprise way out side my skill level. I would not be so bad if it didn’t impact someone counting on the success of the final effect. Once someone ask be to build a two feq. dome in their bedroom. I used a tight grain pine, beautiful warm brown. And the miters prefect, edges chamfering. All had to do it put a clear seal, but no I decided to paint it Robin Egg blue. Yes, Complete Idiot, client rejected it. Lost major coin on that project and a second commission. NORVAL JOE Billbert held up his hands. “Now I’ve got a ring on each of my hands. No one else at school wears even one. I’ll feel like a complete idiot.” He started to pull the ring from his finger. Mandi blurted, “Don’t take it off.” Billbert’s hand, reaching for the ring, obediently dropped back to his lap. He had a sinking feeling. He stood up and exclaimed, “Does this ring make me do whatever you tell...

Doctors called Jeremy‘s fear of sundials irrational, but he had a perfectly valid reason to fear the diabolical contraptions. His father was found speared through the heart by a sundial in the families front yard. The strange thing was, they didn’t own a sundial. Perhaps that explained how his father wandered into the thing fatally. His fear extended to other yard bound timekeeping devices, such as orreries, Astrolabes, and even more arcane mechanisms. He only had a slight aversion to classic yard decorations, such as ceramic lawn gnomes and plastic pink flamingos. He eventually moved to an urban high-rise.

Dan Hammond was the ham king of the Pacific Northwest. For years, trucks would bring pigs to his factory, and out came refrigerated trucks and rail cars full of pork products. One day, he announced a once in a lifetime opportunity for five kids to get an exclusive tour of his factory and a lifetime supply of pork products. But unlike Willy Wonka, nobody was buying up his bacon and ham and pigs knuckles and mass for the golden tickets. So his business went bankrupt and was bought by ConAgra conglomerate. Hundreds lost their jobs to automation and union busting.

Kaseem counted out the barley for the harvest and prepared a clay tablet in the frame. Poking marks into it with a reed, he noted that there were 17,000 measures of barley in the harvest. he then marked the inventory with the seventh year of the reign of King Marduk. And he signed his own name below it all to mark this inventory as official. He left the tablet out to dry, and the next day he had it sent to the regional Palace for collection, processing, and forwarding on. Marduk would be pleased with this harvest and bless them.

Under a cloak and bandages soiled by his leprosy-torn body, silver mask on his face, King Baldwin lay dying on his bed. Somehow, he had kept Jerusalem in Christian hands, but who would rally the troops like he had? His sister’s husband was a insubordinate knight. Their son was far too young, and his own former regent was far too old and exhausted to rule. An advisor suggested wrapping someone else in the bandages, cloak, and mask. “We’d wash them first, obviously,” said the advisor. The young boy took over, but soon died. And the foolish knight fell to Saladin.

Blake was a knife-thrower. He could throw any knife with deadly accuracy. Not just balanced throwing knives, like other assassins. Any knife. Even butter knives thrown by Blake were deadly. I saw him go through a whole box of plastic knives and take down an entire movie theatre full of people. “I said shush,” he said, settling back in his seat and picking up his popcorn and soda from the floor. When a priceless knife collection vanished from the museum, the police blamed Blake. But it wasn’t Blake. He didn’t need those knives. Knives need him. To kill people with.

When I was little, I wondered why the moon would fill up and then empty. And when it was full, what stuff was it full of. “It’s just how it appears,” said my mother. “The moon is full and solid, it’s just that the shadow of the earth makes it look like parts cut out from it. Only when I moved South did I realize the angle of the shadow was different in different locations. At first, it seemed a bit off, but after a while, I got used to it tipped like that. Unless it was full, of course.

LisaLizzieLewieNorval Joe The next topic is Complete idiot LISA A Family Portrait We were playing at grannies. A raucous game of ball: when it hit a frame on the mantelpiece that fell with a clatter on the floor. Nothing had broken. We all felt that relief but as I picked up the photograph I uncurled it: it had been folded to hide two more people. The mood in the room changed. The man looked like Daddy. He was set apart a bit from the others, emphasised by the crease. I wished that the glass had broken so we could pick up the pieces, so we had something else to focus on. RICHARD Brushoff I commissioned a painter to do a family portrait. It was one of those crazy, spur of the moment decisions that seemed like a good idea at the time. I thought everyone would get into the spirit of things and be totally up for the sitting, but half the family just weren’t interested. Most of those who were, changed their mind when they found out how long it would take. As for the rest, they all made excuses, and come the day, I was the only one who bothered to turn up. I got him to paint me as Superman! LIZZIE Everyone stood, side by side meekly. Four generations. The photographer tried his best, but no one smiled. Back in his studio, he decided to reinterpret the concept of a family portrait. The grandmother’s face looking like a flowerpot, no top of the head, chopped horizontally above the nose, twigs around it (each twig representing a family member). At the last minute, he added, “We are all a part of this mess.” Why? No idea why he did it. He’s still waiting to be paid. The photo, however, was sold for a million to a multi-millionaire. Nothing happens by pure chance. TOM 1044 Can’t just brush it off. The town was deadly silent. A number of white vans glided up to the center of town. Slow crews of hazmat researchers exited into windswept streets. Methodically they gather items from every structure anyone may have spent even the shortest amount of time. Numbered and bagged mountains of items were collected. After days of collection members of the sorting teams had found one object evenly distributed across the city. On further inspection the shocking truth weighed in. The objects were not of this earth, so to the death they brought. The report on the president’s deck read: Hairbrush Fever. 1045 C.L.W.P In a family someone is always the designated photo-take. A truly thankless job. And only possible if your baseline personality is sneaky. Sadly, even with the will to record your family over the year you just get wore down by the sour faces warding off the casual portrait. In my case I didn’t declare my with draw from the familial fray. So it took year before they notice a lack of Family portraits. Now the complaint were why I wasn’t sticking lens in their faces. Want to hear a secret: all photo will one day be images of dead people. SERENDIPIDY I guess it’s not your usual sort of family portrait. Certainly, you can see us all stood in a big happy group, (I’m the one at the front, in the middle), and we all have big smiles on our faces, caught just at the moment we said ‘cheese’. Of course, apart from me and my sister, you can’t tell that anyone is smiling; mainly because I’ve scratched their faces off. My sister’s next on my list, and once I’ve slit her throat, I’ll be scratching her face off too. And my smile will be even bigger than in the photo. LEWIE Title: Prompted Royalty Secret Service agents entered the studio and informed Nancy, the photographer, that someone important was about to arrive. More agents swept through the back room, upstairs, and secured the building. Snipers could be seen on a nearby roof outside the windows. The King and Queen soon arrived for a family portrait. “Where is your family?” Nancy asked. The King turned to her and said, “Probably off saving the world or something. Can’t you just Photoshop them in?” “No worries. I can use ChatGPT,” Nancy replied. “Done.” The Queen asked,...

The first permanent lunar base wasn’t named after Neil Armstrong as we hoped. Instead, it was named after some Chinese God. Despite years of planning and designs and technological development, NASA got bogged down in bureaucracy and politics to the point where the Chinese sent thousands of students and researchers to universities to steal the plans and technology, and they made it work. The finger pointing went on for years in Congress and online and on news shows while money continued to pour out of NASA into illegal immigrant fraud, schemes, and paying for sodas and candy on food stamps.

Cell phone service is really gotten bad around here. The company sent me out to the tower, and I went up the ladder, clipping to the safety wire, and when I got to the top all of the antenna and modules cables are fine. But there was a big hawk nest up there. So I put a camera up there and sure enough later in the day Signal strength went into the toilet again, and right there on the camera was the hawk. And it had an identification band on one of its legs, which seems to interfere with signal.

Some people get really cool superpowers like flying or invisibility or invulnerability, but Rose always knew which direction north was. And not just magnetic north. She knew all the different norths. The map north and the magnetic north, and all the other norths. However, she couldn’t read a map for shit. She never knew where she was half the time. She pulled out her phone and bring up the map application and the GPS would find her and say there you are and she not didn’t say ok. Five minutes later, she’d be asking for directions again.. kinda useless.

I loaded up my cart with olives for the run to Caeseria. The Roman roads made the trip so much easier. “Let’s go, boy,” I said to my mule. After a morning of passing olive trees and rocks, we came to the first of the roadside crosses. Counting dozens… hundreds lining the road. “Must have been a big rebellion,” I said. I recognized a few customers among the dead. And a few fellow merchants. “I hope the market is open today,” I said. “Would be a shame to have to turn back.” And we continued down the road to Caeseria.

Mindy kept a switchblade in her purse. The walk from her office to her car in the parking garage wasn’t the best. On some nights, the lights were out. Was it a power issue? Or did someone smash the lights and hide around a corner to wait for her? Carrying mace or pepper spray could work, but masks and goggles make them ineffective. A gun? Hell no. In the end, she got a laptop and worked remotely. A few weeks later, her boss, who worked on site, got killed in a robbery. Mindy took his job. And still worked remotely.

Alarms went off almost daily in processing plant seven. It was an orbital asteroid rendering facility that had seen better days. Demoted to a training facility, instructors ran the orbital base. Sometimes the alarms were just drills, but other times the alarms were real. Either way, it was good practice for the future miners, engineers, processors, and administrators. When seven had a full blowout, the company retired the facility. They wrote off that crew, designated the next oldest facility as a training base, and launched a new processing plant for improving production volume and efficiency. Next quarter’s profits will rise.

LizzieLewieNorval Joe The next topic is Family portrait RICHARD The House Sitter “It’s just a dead plant. Look, when you asked me to house sit, I thought you just wanted me to keep an eye on the place. You should have made it clear you expected me to do other stuff too, like watering your precious plants!” “Oh, it was precious? Seriously, how much? For a silly miniature tree? You must be crazy!” “No, don’t go giving me the cold shoulder. I was good enough to step in at short notice; don’t take me to task over this.” “What do you mean, did I at least feed the cat properly?” “What cat?” LEWIE Title: Craigslist Said It Was Healthy “Take care of Jarold. He’s a bit troublesome in the mornings,” my manager said, feverishly preparing for his vacation. Jarold… was a ficus. Jarold was dead on arrival. Panic set in. I scrolled the marketplace and found an ad. We met in a questionable alley downtown. The woman rummaged through her truck, hair brushing over junk, and handed me a torpid plant. “This one matches your aura”. I couldn’t shoulder the guilt. It was eating me alive. By the time my manager returned, he paused, surprised. “Keep the plant”, he said, “Jarold seems to like you.” Jarold Jr. is thriving. LIZZIE The new dead plant in the garden of dead plants was rather cheeky, bragging about being the deadliest dead plant around. The other dead plants chuckled. A fever of hatred ensued. The deadliest dead plant…. Who cares? She’s dead. The new dead plant vowed to kill them all. The problem was that they were already dead. That’s when she came up with a plan. Fertilizer! She summoned the wind. The fertilizer flew from the ripped bag, and the dead plants, horrified, began to sprout again. “Happy to be alive? That is a kind of death, isn’t it, you silly weeds?” SERENDIPIDY He was shivering violently, sweating profusely; groaning in evidently intense pain. “The fever will pass soon” I reassured him, “and then there will be no more pain, no more anything really. You’ll just slip quietly away.” I picked up my notebook, jotting down my observations. This was my most successful experiment so far. Who would have thought that a simple, ground-up dead plant could be so viciously toxic?” I suppose you could consider my experiments somewhat unethical. Why subject people to a painful death, when lab rats would surely suffice? Simple: I’m an animal lover. And, besides, it’s fun! NORVAL JOE Billbert stared at the ring Mandi had placed on his finger and then watched as she placed one on her own. His head suddenly burned with fever and his thoughts became vague and torpid. His vision went bright white and he collapsed backward onto her bed. Billbert felt a sharp pain on his cheek and then again. He opened his eyes to see Mandi leaning over him. Her lips moved frantically but he couldn’t hear what she said. When his hearing returned, Mandi said and showed him her finger, “These are my grandparent’s rings. I think you are mine, now.” PLANET Z Ned Pearson was apprentice to Wordmaster Bunson last fall. The old man spent his time in a wheelchair and he was nearly deaf and completely blind. He would think of stories and Ned would write them down. Repeat that back to me, said Bunson. And Ned would read off what Bunson had said. Bunson would think for a moment and he would either have Ned cross out that line and replace it or he would continue with his story. Sometimes, Bunson would have Ned go back and read everything. Thank you, Ned. said Bunson. Perfectly done. Ned said you’re welcome.

After we had grass rolled out on our front yard, I would let our cats out to roll around and play and stock out there. I got an Apple AirTag on a collar in case they would run off. They roll on the grass and the sun beams. They claw the trees. They look so happy. I let them in the backyard as well and they explore. I had to put planks of wood on either side of the shed to keep them from burrowing under there. It’s time to come in. I pick them up and they complain loudly.

I live near the bay, and when I go to the beach, I see pelicans and eagles and other birds hunting for fish on the water. I like to watch them striding along the shore or flying above, ducking their head under the water and pulling out a fish or swooping down. It’s just so graceful and peaceful to watch. It’s certainly more enjoyable than when I bring some snacks to the beach and I get mobbed by seagulls. One time I brought a burger and fries and I got set up on the moment I opened the paper bag.

It hasn’t rained here in Pleasant Valley for a while. The stream that goes under the old library bridge is dry. The pond in the park, you can tell from how the bank is exposed from the receding water. The almanac said that this year would be wetter than usual, but nobody believes it. Sundays, Pastor Smith leads the congregation to pray for rain, but it doesn’t rain. And then one day the skies went dark, the winds blew hard, and we were in the middle of a hurricane. Not all at once Lord, said Pastor Smith, and he laughed.

When I walk through the park that used to be a golf course, there are a lot of houses with their backyards facing the former cart paths and fairways and greens. I’d try not to snoop, but some people put decorations out just for the benefit of people walking and cycling and playing the frisbee golf course. And then there’s a house with the 7 foot crucifix and some solar powered spotlights that light it up at night. Whether it’s a symbol of their faith and devotion or a thinly veiled threat to trespassers, I’m not willing to find out.

Jake and Molly carved their initials in the grand oak in Somerville Park. The sheriff talked to their parents. They agreed on a punishment. The magistrate waved his hand in front of Jake’s eyes, and then he waved it in front of Molly‘s. And then he left. Is that it? said Jake. The sheriff nodded and he left. Jake shrugged and said let’s go to the park, Molly. She agreed and they walked hand-in-hand. But when they got to the park entrance, they stopped both were overcome by dark fear. Trembling, they turned around and walked back home.