100 Words - Her Music

The music began as a distant drum beat. Soon there were other instruments. Horns and strings welled up into an orchestral march. A harp fluttered above and faded taking the others down with it till there was just the drum and a single oboe drawing strength from sadness. Her smile appeared in the mist. A piano offered a few tentative notes of encouragement. The oboe continued unchanged and the piano was not heard from again. Her hand reached out cold and damp but her touch electric. The sadness sweetened. The glory of righteous pain. The music ceased. She was home.

100 Words - Therapist

Jack sat and thought about what happened. He was clearly sitting in his therapist's office but his therapist was not there. If he remembered correctly, two men wearing motorcycle helmets broke in and threw his therapist out the window. Then he remembered that happened to Buck Henry in a David Bowie movie. Jack was under hypnosis at the time and wasn't sure if any of it was real. Yet, he's not hypnotized now, the window is open and his therapist is gone. As long as he doesn't look out the window he can still imagine that she's alive. Schrodinger’s Therapist.

100 Words - Bob's Bike

Switchblade Bob had the baddest ass bike in town. It was born of his dad's crazy drunken though mechanically gifted vision. It had a moped engine cranked up beyond belief. The tach duct-taped to the handle bars only went to 9000 RPM and the motor easily buried the needle. The gas tank strapped to the top bar looked like it came off a shrunken copy of the devil's Harley. It was black. Not a shiny black. It was black hole black. Even the red dots of laser pointers failed to appear on it. Bob rode that thing proud and fast.

100 Words - Writing Again

I'm writing in my head again. I sat down to think of an idea for a new novel. The first I came up with was a great idea too horrible to write. It would probably be a great book but it would damage my psyche beyond repair. Then I rifled through every bad idea I ever had. Not for serious consideration but as a nostalgic courtesy. Then it came to me. A page of ideas and notes was quickly populated. As cruel as the first idea actually but with a buffer that should allow the truth without any permanent damage.

100 Words - Builders

I imagined that when I found the perfect music I would become the cool guy that was always my potential. Now, on the far side of fifty, I see that it was supposed to be the other way around. All that time wasted wandering dark alleys in search of answers when it was the questions that were actually missing.

"Build it and they will come." It was true. If anyone built it we would have come. We didn't know that we were the builders. Builders with no blueprints. Players with no games. Dancers with no tunes. Writers with no stories.

100 Words - Wacky

The park was weird. It seemed like just a short while ago it was very nice but the care stopped maybe a month or so ago. The pool was surrounded by crack-free pavement yet the water was covered with leaves. The sprinklers watered green lawns in desperate need of mowing. The clubhouse was closed for repairs. The lounge was closed for the season. The tracks of the advertised miniature train were missing. The BMX track was tire tread free. We parked among latent serial killers who lived in forty year old motor homes and drove ex-police cars. We had fun.

100 Words - Downhill

Woods. A hill running away. Downward slipping. A trail. My wheels spin slowly at first then speed up as fear recedes. Zigs zags dips ducks a jump...landing perfect momentum maintained. Long sweeping left through a field of sheep-mown grass. Rocks nip at my tires but the morning is too glorious for falling today. Sharp drop through more trees, the ground more rock than dirt but rock worn smooth by a million feet, hooves, tires and treads. Deadly in the wet but fast and sure in the dry. The trees become birch. Across the stream the checkered flag waves. I've lost.