This is Drabbletober, the podcast of tiny fiction.

Hello, and welcome to Drabbletober Season 2. This is episode 1, for Wednesday the first of October 2025, and I'm Elizabeth Guilt.

Your one-hundred word story for the day is:

Putting on the Razzle-Dazzle

by Elizabeth Guilt

"You do know what 'Resistance fighter' means?"

"Don't really need makeup, do we, lads?"

"Your eyeshadow's crap, anyway."

So she explained - skipping the details of light-reflecting concealers, shimmering contour powders, AI facial-recognition algorithms, and the limitations of Government surveillance systems.

"My camouflage makeup means cameras can't process my face."

They made her walk through the Authorised Zone and a camera pinged immediately. She was arrested, and imprisoned.

The Resistance fighters fell about laughing when she came back.

"You? Again?"

She stared them down.

"That was to make sure the Government believes it doesn't work. Now we do it for real."

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If you've never heard of dazzle camouflage before, I strongly encourage you to look it up. It was used on ships and aircraft around WW1 and was designed not to hide them, but to make it hard to focus on them well enough to attack. Wikipedia has some great photos of lurid paint schemes.

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Take care, everyone, and I'll see you tomorrow for episode 2.

https://www.elizabethguilt.com/drabbletober/s2episode1