100 Words – Doomed

I was once counted among the doomed of this land, but I found a haven in her arms. She gave me my soul back. Soon though the bill for this kindness will come due.

Fortunately she is not without need. Her line of work pays well when she can find work. Otherwise she must rely on her wits.

She waits for me somewhere in this night. I have the money she needs. She has what I want. We’ll both be satisfied. That is, if we survive. At the moment of exchange anything can go wrong. Tomorrow, will my mother weep?

#100words #fiction

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Short Story – Bad Boy

This is where I tell you the story of the good boy gone bad. Me.

They always used to call me good boy. Then they stopped. I wasn’t trying to be good, or bad. I was just being and doing what I felt like I wanted to be and do. At first it was good. Then, I guess, it was bad.

It started with the broken squirrel. I didn’t understand dead. So even though it wasn’t moving I assumed I could help it if I could unflatten it where the car ran over it. I put it in a cardboard box with a towel like I saw so many people do on TV.

Then I squeezed its sides where it was flat. There was a terrible cracking noise and all its guts and all these bugs came squirting out all over me. I ran to my mother. She threw me in the shower, ripped off all my clothes and left me there freezing for a long time.

She called me bad boy at least twenty times. I stopped counting at twenty, but she said it more. My father called me bad boy too, but just once. Mother threw the squirrel, box, towel and all into the trash. The next day she tried to explain to me what death was.

Death is like broken but it can’t be fixed. It took me a long time to really know the difference. At first I didn’t understand that to be dead something first had to be alive. They tried to explain to me what alive was. If something moves on its own it’s alive. But cars move on their own and they’re not alive.

I gave up trying to figure out and just brought things to my parents to ask them if it was dead or broken. I got called bad boy a lot. Sometimes for breaking things. Sometimes for killing things. I decided it would be better to not break or kill anything so I started spending all my time sitting on my bed.

To try to get me to play outside my parents took my TV away. After that I had to make up TV shows in my head. They all started off good but always ended bad. People killing each other. Animals eating people. Car crashes. Lots of blood. Red became my favorite color.

Then the police brought me home from school. They told my parents I was a bad boy. My parents believed them and didn’t even listen to why I broke that boy’s skull. He was a bully and was hurting the younger kids so I picked up a baseball bat and made him stop.

I thought that stopping a bully would be a good thing. This is what superheroes do. I was protecting the small kids. I’m the good boy. I give up.

So now I have to write this bad boy essay. They better like it cause I know where the warden hides his gun.

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100 Words – Broken Beauty

Across the water, a skyline of trees. The sunset makes rainbows in the river. There is a highway somewhere out there. The traffic noise fades with dying light. To live in such beauty and still be miserable. My soul is truly broken.

In the morning the sun will return. If I sleep I will greet it with hope. If not, acceptance of another day of not living up to expectations. One of these days the big switch in my head will click and all will be well. I will go forth and fulfill me destiny.

Till then, I will wait.

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100 Words – Time of Night

My favorite time of night. The bars are just shut and all the happy/horny couples head for bed. Groups of failed hook-ups laugh off their failure as they wait for the bus. Then, there he is, the lonely loser walking home alone. No one will ever miss him.

His fancy shoes clip clop unsteadily down the empty sidewalk. My sneakers squish in the last remnants of the earlier rain, but he’s to drunk to hear or care.

Then I curse myself. A nearly silent electric car passes me and slows near my meat. He stumbles in. God, I hate Uber!

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100 Words – Drunken Score

Her face looked like carved marble but was soft as cotton. My pursuit of her was pure folly. She wasn’t just out of my league, she was playing a completely different game.

I was drunk and barely coherent when I saw her at the bar, sitting alone, and went over to ask her out. It took a couple tries before she understand what I was trying to say. She took my phone out of my pocket and entered her number.

My friends tried to convince me to wait to call her. I ignored them. We went to dinner that night.

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Tom Week – New Jersey

9/25/19 – Slept Late

Checkout time is 11AM. Pat was the first one awake, at 10:20AM. Rush, rush, rush. We were only a few minutes late out the gate, but now we’re all exhausted.

We stopped at a WalMart which turned out to be in New Jersey. The problem with that is they charge you $6.50 to leave New Jersey. Cause nobody would pay to get in.

9/26/19 – Fixins

I fixed a couple things around the RV today. Got some errands done online. Pat did some cleaning. It’s not all fun and games in the big yellow truck.

9/27/19 – Amish Country

We’re in New Holland PA. Just east of Intercourse. We saw buggies and honor-system produce stands and lots of hefty women in long skirts doing yard work. And big horses. Like, can pull down a barn all by themselves big.

Because of the nice weather the campground is full and we are stuck on the back lot which can only be reached by going the wrong way down a one way street. No cable or wifi on the back forty, just drainage ditches and darkness.

9/28/19 – Black Vultures

Walking Abigail in the woods today we were swooped upon by what I thought were giant crows or ravens. We weren’t being attacked. They just wanted to scare us away. Turns out the birds were black vultures. They have five foot wingspans and tiny heads. A bit smaller than turkey vultures but way cooler-looking.

9/29/19 – Intercourse

We drove through Intercourse PA today. My inner teenager insisted.

9/30/19 – Yo Yo Weather

We are in a strange place. Rather than a continuous temperature arc, it wanders up and down all day and night. Dress in layers, y’all.

10/1/19 – October

The summer is gone. The month of my birth is here. We are in Delaware. Not far from where the rest of my family had a get-together last year. I couldn’t make it then. Bad timing.

PIX

• 

  The vulture was not concerned with our nearness

• 

  This is the road to our campground

• 

  Abigail wanted me to release this horse

• 

  Dead Snake

• 

  Butterfly on the gravel road

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Tom Week – Sodom Mountain

9/19/19 – Sodom Mountain

Seriously, we are at the Sodom Mountain Campground. Pat has yet to turn into a pillar of salt. That means a lot to me.

I tried climbing the mountain but only made it about half way up. Above that the trails were too steep and loose rocky for me.

Next stop Gomorrah Valley?

9/20/19 – Hopewell Junction

Hopewell Junction is not a town. It is a “hamlet” within the town of East Fishkill, which is of course, just east of Fishkill New York.

9/21/19 – Writing Day

Got a whole bunch of writing done today. Perfect day for a bike ride but no safe roads around.

Pat is making pumpkins.

Abigail complains that we aren’t feeding her enough but the vet says she’s a good weight.

I’ve been sitting in this chair for too long.

9/22/19 – Pennsylvania

We are in Stroudsburg Pennsylvania. No two people pronounce it the same. When you point that out they all say that they pronounce it correctly and the other people must be from New Jersey. New Jersey is two miles away.

The woman checking people in at the campground is extremely bored and makes jokes to pass the time. The old couple in front of me were not amused. She was so happy when I joked back.

9/23/19 – Bonking

Went for a long bike ride today. Too long. I had to change my route due to poor road conditions. This happened a couple times and added many miles to my trip. Oh yeah, 90 degrees. In addition the hills were again much larger than Google Maps suggested.

I finally got to the bike trail I was aiming for and it was wonderfully flat. For the first five miles. Then it was a nightmare of impossibly steep hills with horrible surface. The trail was dirt, covered by gravel, covered by moss, covered by rotting leaves.

When I got back to the paved road it leveled out a bit, but I was so worn out it took me over an hour to go the last five miles. Such fun.

9/24/19 – Rest Day

Took a day off to nap and do nothing.

PIX

• 

  Ice cream truck in a childless campground

• 

  Someone ignored the no grills on the wooden table rule

• 

  Tractor!!!

• 

  The haunted camper of Stroudsburg

• 

  Even in death this poor guy’s legs don’t work.

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100 Words – Pain

The torrential pain swept across her body. She did not scream. There were no tears. A slight tremor. The ghost of a wince. She sipped her tea and contemplated her cards. Her cardmates gossiped on, unaware.

Later, back in her room, she takes three of the gray pills her nephew sends her from Mexico. She drowns them down with the vodka her neighbor with the limp leaves in her milk box every Sunday Morning. She leaves money for him but he never takes it.

Nobody else knows what has become of their former mayor. Praying for death. Weeping for relief.

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100 Words – Neon Clock

She stood beneath the neon clock waiting for him. I knew it was a him. It’s always a him and that’s where they always wait.

Judging from her amazing looks I imagined that he would be her equal. She was elegant and angular. Maybe he would be the same. Or maybe he would be round in contrast. Kind of like me, but dressed better.

I never found out. He never came. At twenty past the hour she gave up and left. It wasn’t till she was gone that I thought maybe she was waiting for me. I need better clothes.

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100 Words – Body Bag

Raul unfurled an official-use-only gray and green Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office body bag. He filled it with pine needles, a few twigs and threw it in the river. The swift water carried it downstream and into the path of the flashlight. Much yelling followed.

Raul turned to Carl, “Run. Now.”

Carl’s confusion deadened his reaction. He truly expected to be inside that bag by now.

“It’s up to you,” Raul said as he started down the path downstream. “You’ve got about twenty minutes head start.”

Carl grinned and ran upstream to the highway. The sun would be up soon.

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100 Words – Torture

I laughed as she squirmed, fearing the needle’s sting. I clamped her arm down and injected the harmless solution into her vein. Ten minutes later she told me everything I wanted to know. Everything she wanted me to know.

The charade of torture is often so rewarding. The “victim” wants to cooperate. The sin of collusion is tempting. They don’t really believe the lies they were raised on. Any alternative, any truth, any rebellion will do.

Now what to do with he? Killing her would be too kind. It would deprive her of the horror of living a traitor’s life.

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100 Words(or less) – Movie Oops

All I wanted to do was make a movie. I know that’s little comfort to the families of the recently deceased, but it’s true.

The thing that bothers me the most is now I have to pay extra to have the “no animals were harmed” message removed from the credits.

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Short Story – Bad Meditation

Meditation was supposed to be relaxing. Nobody told me about the nightmares, or medimares or whatever the hell you call them. The visions of horror that jump out of the nothingness of the cleared mind. Not horror like you see in movies. Personal horror. Seeing yourself strangling puppies kind of horror. It started about a month after my first attempt at meditation. It took me that long to learn how to clear my thoughts. To think about nothing. It was a slow process but there was progress. Then one day I did it. I was just there and there was nothing. I was relaxed and receptive. Then my six grade teacher was there, only he wasn't just being his usual asshole self. He was carving runes into the skin of my friends and there was nothing I could do to stop him. Another time I was sitting, feeling very mellow and free, and suddenly I saw myself picking up a kitten and throwing her against the wall over and over again. That one sent me to the therapist. Obviously I was doing something wrong the therapist told me. She had me do my deep breathing and relaxation ritual. She kept whispering good and yes. Slowly she, and everything else faded away. I felt calm. My last thought was to let go of thinking about not thinking. Then out of nowhere came the vision of my aunt falling from a great height and splattering on the sidewalk. The therapist suggested that meditation might not be my thing. Instead, she gave me some pills to try to help me relax. No more pills! At least when the meditation went bad I could snap out of it pretty quickly. The pills trapped me in the nightmare. Hours of dogs with knives, talking bloody cabbages and me, killing or hurting everyone and everything I could get my hands on. The therapist got mad at me when I described my childhood as normal. After a few sessions she hypnotized me. When she brought me back up she pissed, having found nothing to blame the horrors on. I'm a nice person. Never arrested, well once, drunk in public the night of my college graduation, but I never hurt anybody. The thought of these horrors living in my brain makes me vomit. Literally. I started to wonder if I'm too nice a person, working too hard to suppress the bad in me. No meditation. No pills. Just sleep. It happened again. I was in a workshop. On the counter was a bird cage with eleven robins. I took each one and crushed it's beak with a vice. The noises they made. I woke after the eleventh had surrendered its beak. Surely I am insane. I never want to sleep again. My therapist has given up on me. She says I'm not trying to get better. She referred me to a new doctor. In our first meeting he wired me up to a bunch of machines, asked me a bunch of questions and said "huh" a lot. A week later they removed the tumor.

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100 Words – No Excuses

"I have no time for your excuses. I want the money and I want it now. So shut up, pay up or it's the sledgehammer to the balls again." He paid up. They always do. I am slowly winning the battle over the voices in my head. Their screaming has been subdued to a mere whisper. A gentle melody telling me to do terrible things. Doing the things the voices tell me to do eases the pain, but it always comes back. I think that if I can silence the voices I will silence the pain. What do you think? #100words

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Tom Week – In Oregon

5/10/19

We are staying this weekend at the foot of Mount Shasta. Which is surprisingly not where the old crappy soda comes from. It was and the 80's today but the mountain is still covered in snow. We were able to but propane today. All is well.

5/11/19

Good bike ride. Lots of hills but not much air. Beautiful scenery. Unfortunately, I forgot to eat before the ride so I've been feeling worn out all day. Tonya got to sit outside all day in her rocking chair.

5/12/19

Short ride to Oregon. Only the tourist info rest stop was closed so no Oregon Fliers! We'll have to rely on the dinky town info centers. The horror. Had to stop at Petsmart. It took a while because the GPS talking lady got very confused and wouldn't tell me how to get there until I would do a u-turn even though I didn't need to take a u-turn. The we got gas, which is weird because there is no self-service gas in Oregon. We are at another nice park with soft air and mountain views.

5/13/19

Long bike ride today. 16 miles of surrounded by mountains beauty. Some great bike paths. While I was gone Pat cleaned the bugs off the front of the RV. There were A LOT of bugs on the front of the RV.

5/14/19

We are now in Sutherlin, which my Harry Pottered mind keeps seeing as Slytherin. It's a funky park that doubles on weekends as a drive-in theater. There are some severely funky RV's and people here. We are at the venn diagram intersection of people who Birckenstocks and people who own assault rifles. The weird part is that when we checked in the clerk apologized that the cable TV wasn't working. Then when I was hooking up a voice in my head told me to hook up the cable anyway. I did and it works fine.

5/15/19

Lazy rainy day.

5/16/19

Today was one of the most beautiful drives ever. Mountains, rivers, lakes and elk. After lunch we stopped at a very funky second-hand store. I found, but resisted buying, a Hannah Montana karaoke machine and a metal Jonas Brothers lunch box. Tonight we are staying in a park full of bikers. There is a big festival in town. Who knew? Pat rode her scooter to the carnival. Later, Tonya and I went and got big soft pretzels. Yummy.

PIX

[caption id="attachment_4041" align="alignleft" width="300"] Oregon is the land of yurts[/caption] [caption id="attachment_4042" align="alignright" width="300"] Someone didn't like their McDonalds toy[/caption] [caption id="attachment_4043" align="alignleft" width="300"] The erroneous mile marker[/caption] [caption id="attachment_4044" align="alignright" width="300"] The view of the movie screen from our RV site[/caption] [caption id="attachment_4045" align="alignleft" width="300"] Tonya was useless at the magnetic fishing game[/caption]

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Tom Week – Strava Success

5/3/19

Good bike ride this morning. Ten miles. Best of all I now have the 7th fastest time on Strava for a route segment in Castroville. My usual place is in the hundreds or even thousands. Rest of the day was lazy, listening to sea lions and boat bells, watching neighbors come and go. Lots of fun. Got dinner from Phil's which is one of the main reasons for coming to Moss Landing.

5/4/19

Driving through the familiar. It was nice to visit Gilroy and eat at one of our favorite restaurants. It was weird though driving so close to San Francisco but not going to San Francisco. This park is nice. We have an unobstructed view of the ocean.

5/5/19

Lots of climbing on the bike today. Just short of 1000 feet. There are way more rental RVs here than in any other park we've been in.

5/6/19

Pat and Tonya had Dr. appointments today. Had lunch at one of favorite restaurants. Later we got to visit with our informally adopted son Chester. Smiles and tears.

5/7/19

Shopping day. Running from one familiar place to another. Consumer nostalgia. Tonight I went to a comedy showcase. It is among the worst I ever saw.

5/8/19

Too cold to ride today. Where we're going tomorrow it's in the 80's.

5/9/19

Woke up to temps in the low 50's. Many miles later it's in the 90's. Ah California. Tried to get propane at the RV park but the guy couldn't make the pump work. Or the next guy, or the fourth guy. Finally we gave up. Hopefully the problem is their pump and not our tank.

PIX

[caption id="attachment_4018" align="alignleft" width="300"] This island off the coast of San Francisco is rarely visible due to fog.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_4019" align="alignright" width="300"] This hang glider zoomed over the RV park a couple times.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_4020" align="alignleft" width="300"] Only at a truck stop in Northern California can you see sea gulls and a snow-covered mountain.[/caption]

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100 Words – The saddle

She knew all the big horse words like dressage, cadence and farrier. I was an idiot who had no business being in a saddle. It was only my basest desires that brought me to the trail that day, hanging on for dear life atop a beast trying to throw me off with every step. Somehow my screaming failed to clue her in to my distress. I became aware of this when she yelled, "Hey, lets run this part!" She kicked her heels and her horse took off and my horse followed. The ground slammed into my face. Gravity won again.

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100 Words – Wounds

Barely awake, I lay in the bloody mud. My wounds ooze unexpected colors. The field is full of the dead, enemy and comrade alike. I alone am still alive. The battle was fierce and futile. People died on and for an empty field. Mothers and lovers will weep. The wolves and vultures are already disposing of the remains. Our God and their God look down and pity us as they share a somber drink in some heavenly tavern. No glory for the fools below. Years from now the schoolbooks will label this my greatest victory. The schoolbooks will be wrong.   #100words

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100 Words – Vivid Police

When Alexander gets truly stressed he suffers from vivid hallucinations of police surrounding him. They are there one second, gone the next. The first time this happened was his first semester of college. It started a week before finals and got worse every day. After the last final he got puke in the street drunk, and that was the end of the phantom cops. His therapist tells him that when he sees the cops he needs to take the blue pill. She thinks that's funny. Alexander sticks with her because she's the only shrink he's found that's smarter than him. #100words

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100 Words – Witness

I came to witness the second coming of Truman Capote. All I got was a bunch of tourists puking their green drinks on cobbled streets. Old buildings gutted of their souls and cheapness. No longer the refuge of poets and madmen. They have fled for the fringes where visitors need not witness their divine ugliness. The saddest part of all was realizing that I was also just a tourist. A voyeuristic dilettante climbing onto the shoulders of giants. Seeking approval from the ghosts of my heroes who care not for the living. Just the suffering of those doomed to follow. #100words

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100 Words – Woods

The echoes in the woods magnified our sense of danger. Creatures scurried on either side of the road, but they were small and harmless. It was the occasional ground-shaking thud that was worrying. It seemed to come from every direction and had no pattern. Then there was a mighty bang and the world tipped on its side. I woke up some time later with a terrible headache. Gravity seemed to have righted itself. The stars were all gone. I couldn't see the road ahead of me. I sat there waiting for the dawn the dawn to come. It never did. #100words

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Tom Week – Alabama Etc.

3/22/19

We're in Alabama! State number 26. It's everything we could ever hope for. Lot's of gun shops and even the news people have accents so think I can't understand half of what they're saying. Instead of golf carts the residents ride around on ATVs and mini bikes. Our next door neighbor has a dog called vittles.

3/23/19

We're in Florida again! Twenty miles from Pensacola. We're at a KOA with lots of RVs but very few people. Haven't figured that one out yet. My perceptions of the Gulf Coast are proving misguided. Not the people and places. They're what I expected. The problem is distances. New Orleans is only 230 miles away. That's three states. Alabama and Mississippi have much less coastline than I pictured. Also met a guy here at the campground that's riding his bicycle across the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It's his sixth day on the road and he's covered 400 miles.

3/24/19

Great day today. This morning I rode my bike to downtown Milton, FL. A town on a river trying to balance quaint and touristy. Fortunately quaint seems to be winning. After being in Georgia and Alabama I have to say that Florida is much friendlier to cyclists. Nice wide bike lanes everywhere. Then after lunch I got a pile of work on the RV done. Vents to replace and clean. Holes to weatherstrip. Door to trim to nail down. I felt like such a "guy."

3/25/19

Daylight Savings time, time zones, states smaller than I thought. All this has left me dazed and confused. We woke this morning in Florida. We drove to Alabama. Then we drove to Mississippi. All in the matter of a few hours. We are now an hour from Louisiana. We are in a very nice RV park in a not great area of Biloxi. Pat and I both got a little nervous because the neighborhood reminded us of one in Fresno. That park turned out to be hideous. This one is much nicer.

3/26/19

On the best of days there are no plans. Today is one of those days. We've extended our stay in Biloxi till Friday and rented a car. Or rather a truck, and this in no mid-size wimp of a truck. It is a 2019 Ram crew cab with a HEMI! We toured Biloxi, ate lunch at a pathetic Hooters knock-off called Twin Peaks, and took Abigail to a dog park that only had one other dog. Then I took a nap. I was up all last night working on my latest short story.

3/27/19

Nearly fifteen miles on the bike today. Out to dinner we had one of those rare failures of an experiment. The food was way spicier than hoped and it was full of unexpected ingredients. You can't win them all. Then we went to a giant gift shop which seriously needs some competition.

3/28/19

Coming back from WalMart I managed to get lost again. Having the ocean to the south is confusing. Took dad to the casino. He won six dollars, but Mom made him buy me a beer so he actually wound up with only two dollars profit.

PIX

[caption id="attachment_3934" align="alignleft" width="300"] Behind this RV park there were cows. As in mooooo![/caption] [caption id="attachment_3935" align="alignright" width="300"] Some RV parks have "yuge" spaces.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_3936" align="alignleft" width="300"] The rental truck was the envy of all the lesbians in the park.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_3937" align="alignright" width="300"] The view from the top of the Biloxi Bay Bridge[/caption] [caption id="attachment_3938" align="alignleft" width="300"] Pelicans by the bay.[/caption]

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