Unsocial Climbing – a story in 100 words

You and I, my friends, we stand side-by-side. Others, envious of our beautiful bond, seek to divide us. Look, they shriek, that gulf between my wealth and your poverty!

Don’t let them worry you. Turns out we’re on the same ladder, different rungs is all. Up here it’s raining golden eggs, believe me! Stick around and pick my brain on how to climb good. Things they don’t tell you.

Like they give some folk that can’t climb a helping hand. You elbowed out while these raid the nest. Silent majority won’t squeak, they reckon.

They reckoned without me. Your voice.

 

 

Image: Math Tutoring & Learning Centers | Mathnasium

Stimulus: majority, raid and brain from https://randomwordgenerator.com/

Another story in 100 words: Regeneration

For her fifth birthday she got a corner of the garden, a little bed of her very own. She emptied a seed-packet on the glistening earth and rushed out next morning, expecting to see a crop of beautiful flowers.

Hopes dashed, she’d just discovered nature’s way – left to time, all things come to fruition.

Now older, seasoned, she wonders at toddler-tantrums from so-called grown-ups still screaming for the-moon-on-a-stick – her tomorrow, theirs today?

Impatient again, she watches seeds of protest shoot across her shining screen and rushes out to a blossoming of banners and bright futures planted afresh in youthful minds.

 

 

Image: The Guardian

Stimulus: crop, left and bed from https://randomwordgenerator.com/

Couch!

A story in 100 words including plant, consultation and pardon which were taken from https://randomwordgenerator.com/

 

Seat?

No.

As you wish. What’s the problem?

Don’t you know?

Not until you’ve told me.

I’ve paid a small fortune for this. You’re supposed to tell me what’s wrong.

You have trouble confiding in people.

Now you’re trying to plant ideas.

You mistrust others.

Trust is earned. So far you’ve done nothing to justify that exorbitant consultation fee.

Fully refundable in hopeless cases.

Washing your hands of me already, eh?

No, of course not, but I need you to work with me.

And in recompense for my active participation, you would give me a sizeable discount on your services …

Pardon?

 

 

Image: Art.com

Trial of the Trail

Here’s a 100 word story which I decided had to include the first 3 words that came up on https://randomwordgenerator.com/ – the words were bet, deputy and lose.

 

We creep in fear and single-file through thick jungle with no choice but trust our navigation to chosen leaders. Night falls and the rearmost urge us onward; we barely notice it’s boggier underfoot. Those furthest forward slow fastest and soon we’re a milling mob.

Uphill, tangled undergrowth; downhill, sunlight through trees. Lead us, we cry, trampling over abandoned machetes.

Each of us, whether demoted or promoted deputy, shares this democracy of incompetence – a bet on survival, ours to lose.

Nightbirds shriek and we stampede towards retreating day. Suddenly chest-deep in quicksand, we hear the crack of metal on wood.

 

 

 

Image: Discover Magazine Blogs

Triskaidekaphobia* – a story in 100 words

Readers of a sensitive or squeamish nature may wish to glance at the following story through their fingers. Others may scorn such pusillanimity! 

 

House Number Thirteen gives you Goosebumps.

Could it be the gravel driveway that twists through overgrown gardens, branches reaching down like fingers? Or the stranglehold of Virginia Creeper upon crumbling walls, windows peering out like blind old eyes? That door, perhaps, paint peeling from his wrinkled face?

Hinges creak like souls in pain. Step with thumping heart into the cavernous hallway – festooned with giant cobwebs – and climb the groaning stairs. Skin creeps at a distant flutter of wings.

But nothing prepares you for the moment your torchlight reveals these grinning teeth and gleaming eyes!

Welcome to our world.

 

* extreme superstition regarding the number thirteen

 

 

Image: Flickr Hive Mind

In A Twist – a story in 100 words

Hide-and-Seek was the closet contortionist’s favourite – squeezing into out-of-the-way nooks-and-crannies, overhearing distant discoveries, knowing she wouldn’t be next Seeker. Whenever searching ceased she’d creep up behind them – hiding-places still secret – and mock their burning envy for the Queen of Disappearances.

Until now. A sneeze betrays her. First-found, it’s her turn to count one-hundred. Giggles recede to the mockery of silence. She knows all the places but saunters round securing windows and entrances. Front-door last.

Street-corner reached, she hurls their tin – joke-shop sneezing-powder – into the bushes. Hers – a fuel-can – she grips harder before a final backward glance at the blazing house.

 

 

Image: Colourbox

Fun and Games – a story in 100 words

Struck by lightning, the ancient oak would have blazed for a day and smouldered for a week. In place of its wooden heart was a blackened hollow, hardened and burnished by centuries of sun and rain and ice.

Climbing up to its rim, children saw a sculptured bowl like a womb where they might rest like dozing emperors. Here they could lie, unseen, overhearing private conversations far below. No longer paupers in the balance of power, they could sip the nectar of the gods and experience a measure of divinity – invisible, ever-present, omniscient.

It beat the hell out of hide-and-seek.

 

 

Image: MoMA