Parasites

100 Words - Paper Cars

I build paper cars. You download them from the internet, print them out, cut them out and tape or glue them together. It started as a form of inexpensive therapy. I thought about collecting Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, but that gets expensive real quick.

I started with movie and TV cars. First the Starsky and Hutch Torino, the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine. Then I moved on to sports cars. Currently I’m on rally cars.

This all seemed harmless enough, but I just passed 1000 models and I’m running out of shelf space. Perhaps I need a woman after all.

100 Words - Dance

 Her dancing was inelegant, but not without its charm. He ordered a scotch and wondered how much damage dancing with her would do to his social status. He decided it would be a lot. so he marched over and took her by the hand. 

She laughed as he tried to mirror her moves. Soon he was too drunk to care, which was the plan all along. College revealed to him the perversity of high society. He couldn’t quit it though. He’d have to be thrown out.

Unfortunately drunken, eventually nude, dancing at the country club barely registered as an offense.

100 Words - Procedure

The procedure was refined over and over again till there was no chance of error, inefficiency or hint of human creativity. Everyone who might possibly involved in the procedure, no matter how tertiarily, was forced to sit through eight hour meetings where they were badgered by the consultants to provide input identical to yesterday’s eight hour meeting.

During the second round of Proactive Procedural Reconciliation meetings, seventeen employees quit.

When the entirety of the company had been equally bludgeoned into boredom, the process was enshrined in the corporate runbook, where it sat in perfection and was thoroughly ignored by everyone.

100 Words - Red Crayon

I spent much of my childhood lost in sunsets drawn with my favorite red crayon. I don’t know where I got it. It was different from my other crayons. It was thick and had dimples on the side, like dice or Swiss cheese. It seemed to last forever. Then it was gone.

It’s not like I lost it and couldn’t find it. It was just gone. I knew it was gone and I’d never have it again, but I had no sense of loss. It probably still existed somewhere. It just wasn’t my crayon anymore. Maybe is was someone else’s.

100 Words - Bouquet

He brought her a blood-stained bouquet. She slammed the door and called the police. He stood on her lawn, stripped and cried. The police came and surrounded him. He summoned his inner thunder but it proved ineffective against the tasers.

His parole officer and his social worker were there when he came to. The charges had been dropped and he was free to go, if he took his meds right then and there and promised to keep taking them. He took and promised to take the rest. They knew he was lying, but the alternative was keeping watch over him.