The 100 Word Stories Podcast

Some professor at some university discovered a new galaxy.

We like to disguise interrogators as Red Cross or lawyers or reporters, and they’d ask the prisoner if they wanted to send anything out to their family or the media.

Every four years, the theme park’s engineers build robots for the exhibit with the robotic presidents.

I don’t understand why that weight loss drug needed Serena Williams as a celebrity in their Super Bowl Commercial. If you have a working and safe weight loss drug, you don’t need a celebrity to peddle it. That shit will peddle itself and make you, like, gazillions of dollars.

The next topic is Experiment

RICHARD

Perspective

LIZZIE

“Draw a circle. And another inside it. And another, and another. The vanishing point is a full stop. A full stop inside an O. The circle is gone, it has no meaning as a circle anymore. It became an O with a full stop in the middle.”

SERENDIPIDY

“Mayday, mayday, mayday! Air Angel four six two, we have experienced an explosion on board and we have a serious cabin fire. Advise heading for nearest airport.”

LISA

A packed room with standing room only. The smell of a long day’s armpit lingers.

TOM

I don’t get much of an opportunity to use my classic training in art. So now I will carpe diem you all with knowledge like it was 1444. The first modern paint is the Baptistery. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon 1907 is the first post-modern painting. Oddly the latter fails to have a vanishing point. Vanishing Point: The single spot on the horizon line where receding lines appear to meet. It replaced atmospheric perspective which was basically glosses of fuzzy blue. The Florentine Fillipo Brunelleschi painted it 1415, it depicted the Baptistery in Florence from the front gate of the unfinished cathedral.

NORVAL JOE

“I thought that since Sabrina’s gone, the ring might come off,” Mandi explained.

“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Billbert tried to shake off the confusion of sleep. “She’s got to be here somewhere.”

“No. She’s trapped in a magnifying glass. Come see.” Mandi led the way back to her room.

She opened the drawer, wondering if Sabrina would appear, there, in the room or back at the vanishing point in the kitchen.

“Look.” Mandi held up the glass.

Billbert’s eyes went wide.

Not looking at it, Mandi shoved it back in the drawer, relieved that Sabrina had stayed inside.

LEWIE

As Jim drew lines on his drawing, a paradoxical view of stairs and archways started to form on the paper, similar to M.C. Escher’s Relativity stairs. The tip of his pencil came too close to one of the vanishing points, and it sucked it out of his hands.

Jim looked closer, confused as to what just happened. He tried to brush some graphite away from the area, and was suddenly sucked into the drawing.

Looking at his hands, half of them were drawn, and partially unfinished. He looked up to see a hole closing, peering back into his classroom.

LEWIE

As Jim drew lines on his drawing, a paradoxical view of stairs and archways started to form on the paper, similar to M.C. Escher’s Relativity stairs. The tip of his pencil came too close to one of the vanishing points, and it sucked it out of his hands.

Jim looked closer, confused as to what just happened. He tried to brush some graphite away from the area, and was suddenly sucked into the drawing.

Looking at his hands, half of them were drawn, and partially unfinished. He looked up to see a hole closing, peering back into his classroom.

PLANET Z

We found Jimmy hanging in his dorm room.

The teacher put reward stars on homework. Gold for great, silver for good. If you didn’t have a star, you had a problem. My brother was two years older than me, so my mother knew that this teacher put stars on homework. So I shoplifted a pack of star stickers from the office supply store and added them to my homework. Why I would be getting silver and gold stars for homework covered with red correction pen? So I made Xerox‘s of homework at the office supply store, filled it out twice, and put the stars on the clean copy.

It takes a thief to catch a thief, they say. So the FBI made the old swindler an offer. Pose as a rich Arab and bribe a bunch of crooked politicians, and we wipe your slate clean. And it worked out great, I mean, you’ve heard of ABSCAM, right? what I love most about the case is that the old crook would order corned beef sandwich sandwiches from his favorite delicatessen. When they asked why a rich Arab was eating kosher food, he said they were so delicious, and i can’t get any back at the kingdom, even with Delivery.

On warm summer evenings, I like to walk to the abandoned golf course and stand by one of the ponds. The water is usually pretty clear, with a few lily pads floating on the surface. I can see the fish swimming around, and sometimes a heron or a pelican flies in from the beach and ducks its head under the water and comes up with a fish. I stand there, sipping my coffee, and let my mind slowly go quiet. When the sun sets, I finish my coffee and walk back home, and all is good in the world, right?

Myst is the cat who goes outside to roam and stays out so long, she makes us worry if she’s ever coming home.

The explorers search for the peppers.