The 100 Word Stories Podcast

“Nobody puts Baby in a corner” was the last thing Johnny said before everything went black.

There’s only one way to separate the Californians from the Texans.

I wish I could make this moment last forever, said Arthur. He was happy, but the happy times don’t last. So when his family died in the house fire and the grief seemed endless, he realized that happiness speeds up time and grief slows it down, so the suffering lingers. After years toiling in his lab. He figured it out and the next day his lab assistants saw the horrifying result. Arthur stood there, as still as a statue. They couldn’t move his limbs and he didn’t fog a mirror, but he was still alive in his horrifying, miserable stasis.

As famous as Morgan was, he doesn’t have a headstone. When he died, he was cremated, and his ashes were buried next to his mother‘s coffin. There is a statue of Morgan outside of the stadium. He played in for 13 years and broke all kinds of records. Every year, players and coaches vote on an award named after him. But when it comes to himself, he didn’t want anything more than a spot by the people who brought him into this world and raised him. Those who know, they still bring flowers. Sometimes a bobble head or a football.

When Judy died in a car wreck, the fans warned. The producers wondered how would they finish the next season of the animated show she starred in. They tried to harvest the previous eight seasons for voice work, but it wasn’t enough. They fed it into an AI powered audio generator, but the performance fell flat. None of the sound alike actresses sounded quite like her. Eventually they enlisted her twin sister. She didn’t have the acting range, but the fans gave her a pass on that. Ratings continued to decline, and the show was canceled before the finale aired.

My grandfather was 19 when he enlisted for the war the night before he shipped out, he married my grandmother and promised that he’d come back. But he never did. This plane went down, killing the whole crew. My grandmother was in the middle of writing him a letter letting him know she was pregnant when they knocked on her door back then you couldn’t end things like you can now, so our family pulled together. My father’s first word was daddy. My grandmother had never used that word or mentioned her husband around the baby. Maybe he saw ghosts?

The next topic is PICK TWO

RICHARD

From Butthole to Rabbit Hole

LIZZIE

Silence. She was teaching meditation now. Breathe in, breathe out. The group followed her lead. Suddenly, someone at the back moved out of sync. Breathe in, breathe out. Another one out of sync. She stood up and walked to the back of the room. Now, one in the front row. Stop! What is going on? Everyone shrugged. OK, back to breathing. In sync again. For a few seconds only… She squinted. A corpse-pale specter kept pushing her students. She rolled her mattress and swung it. The specter looked shocked. Breathe in, breathe out, she said, a smirk on her face.

LISA

The Quiet One

NORVAL JOE

The three sat in the back seat while Billbert’s mother drove home. She made eye contact with him in the rear-view mirror, raised an eyebrow, and nodded her head.

He wasn’t sure what that signal meant, so he broke the silence. “Look, Sabrina. We’re all tired. We’re all stressed. And we’re confused. That’s still no reason to be mean to Mandi. You should apologize.”

To Billbert’s surprise, Sabrina said, “You’re right. I am tired and stressed.” She looked out the window. “I’m sorry, Mandi.”

Sabrina’s shoulders shook.

Billbert couldn’t see her face, but he thought Sabrina must be crying again.

SERENDIPIDY

Timmy called me to discuss details of a contract he’d like me to consider.

PLANET Z

By the time Harmony and Melody’s parents were told that their twin daughters were deaf, it was too late to change their names.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.

The Coca-Cola company invented the modern image of Santa, with his red fur clothes with white trim. For years he’s been advertising the beverage. When Coke left Nazi Germany, the Nazis developed Fanta in its absence. And the motto “Santa drinks Fanta” caught on, despite the regime’s insistence on a religion of the state instead of traditional religion. After the war, when the brand was reabsorbed into Coca-Cola, an effort was made to denazify Germany. Including rebuilding association of Santa with Coca-Cola, burning advertising posters, and coloring books in piles along with Mein Kampf while driving their peppy BMW convertibles.

Kris Kringle the Thirty-Seventh was homeschooled. His dad insisted on it. Back in the old days, helper elves and Santas got along. But modern society changed that. Whispers of labor unions and socialism and rebellion. And if the elves couldn’t get to Santa, the things they told their kids, well, that put little Kris in danger. They had talked about sending him to boarding school like his father, but the bullying there had been worse when they found out what he was. So the only option was homeschooling. At least Kris would graduate at the top of his class.