100 Words: Forced Reverence (two versions)

When reverence is forced, dissent will grow, as many a ruler has come to find when those they rule do not all follow.  Each time the knee is forcibly bent, a steeliness grows deep in the eye- you can see it if you look, they tell me now.

In some it will be seen early enough and that toadstool will be felled.  But, when shaken, the spores spread with the news on the wind and those that follow will hide it better. 

And you will reap what you sow, as I found out when the metaphorical dagger entered my back.

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When reverence is forced, dissent will grow, as many a ruler has come to find when those they rule do not all follow.  Each time the knee is forcibly bent, a steeliness grows deep in the eye- you can see it if you look, they tell me now.

In some it will be seen early enough and that toadstool will be felled.  But when shaken the spores spread with the news on the wind and those that follow will hide it better. 

And the poison of forced reverence will sooner or later enter the ruler’s mouth.

As it did mine.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #423 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Reverence.

100 Words: We misbehaved then and we misbehave now

I have always loved to misbehave with you, doing all those bad things we used to do- like stealing the best of the chicken stew or playing knock-down ginger along the mews.

Why did we have to grow, such ambition went low, mischief I would no longer sow, for years behind you I did not tow.

Yet eventually we found each other again, grown in ways we didn’t know about then, and became friends in a whole different way, and with one another we now very diff'rently play.

Allowing us every day to misbehave in our own private indoor raves.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #421 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Misbehave.

100 Words: Anticipation and Hope...

Having fully indulged his hunger and his greed, he visibly bulged as he sat (as did the chair he sat upon).

My siblings and cousins watched him quietly, the quietest we’d been all day.  We sensed it, the air was thick with our hopeful anticipation. 

In all our feverish young minds we heard the chair creaking through the conversational hubbub, so certain we were of the future.  He had eaten so much!  Even for him it seemed a lot.

Surely… surely…

Alas, though, no.  Our hopes for schadenfreude, not that we knew the word then, were dashed by fate’s inactivity.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #420 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Indulge.

100 Words: A future

Mere survival is the first step.  In this dirty, human-’fested hellhole disease spreads swiftly; for many it is their greatest hope.  The Space Exodus Project is a dead religion in comparison.

We’ve all a shelf-life of twenty-one years to fill a niche or be killed to make room: to establish ourselves into an approved career or get married to someone who has.  

I was never going to make those grades, too meek to not be destroyed by this unnatural selection.  I instead spent my time waiting for the pulping machine that tomorrow will fill my last view of the world.  

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #419 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Shelf.

100 Words: Untitled

The experiment changed him far more than he desired.  He had merely wanted to live forever but a few unexpected conditions had reared up, snapping and snarling.

An insatiable desire for blood sent him out to kill each night (now allergic to sunlight, he hid in pitch darkness by day).  Once a serial killer, he fled far from the labs he needed to fix himself.

Far he fled, away from people, eventually, to Australia, and a secret bunker under a cattle ranch where a cup of cow’s blood a day had to suffice until he could find the right cure.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #415 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Cup.

100 Words: The Protest

Resembling a field of flowers, overlapping round circles of colour stretched along the streets, the only colour on a grey day.  From our offices we saw the advancing protesters holding aloft their umbrellas and the policemen, a dull mix of blues, standing firm, waiting, their cannons ready. 

From above it looked comical- the cannons squirting, the flowers dipping in a futile attempt to shield their stalks.  Instead they flew, beheaded flowers littering the street.  To us it didn’t seem real.

Only after, seeing my brother battered and bruised did it sink in. 

Now I stand among them, my umbrella aloft.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #414 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Umbrellas.

100 Words: Quick Dissolve

Niel moved the fur quilt aside, walked away from the bed, from her, and left the cabin they’d been sharing for… however long it’d been.

Outside, he looked around one last time at the beautiful scenes that surrounded them before they dissolved away, along with the plains, to pure white- the way the sky had been when the man had made his promise.

Niel went back inside, he wasn’t yet ready to let go of the entire construct. 

As he returned to her, Niel couldn’t believe he hadn’t realised sooner.  Furs backed with soft, simple tapestries- no such thing existed.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #412 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Quilt.

An aside: As I went to blog, I didn't have a title but I did have a song in my head.  I took the title, Slow Dissolve, from the lyrics but then realised the dissolve didn't seem so slow here and changed it.  The song?  The Road by Simple Kid.

100 Words: I am Radiant

I am today, though I wasn’t yesterday- or any day before.  The change came this morning soon after dawn.  The sun, as it came over the houses across the street, poured beautifully through my window and made me stir.  As I woke, I yawned.  The sun saw, thought I was bored by its display and shot me with its rays.

Now I glow brightly.  It’s not so great.  With light and heat.  I’m worried that I will blind someone and set something on fire.  

“Oh great Sun, oh Helios, oh Ra, how can I make amends and stop being radiant?”

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #411 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Radiant.

100 Words: A Childhood Memory

My first memory is of a group of cows feasting on one of their own, Dad laughing as they frenziedly ripped their own teeth out.

I have few other memories of animals.  Most the same as everyone else (pets going postal) because, before I left infant school, they’d all been lost to the plague they could only stop among humans. 

Those cows will forever be my abiding memory of creatures other than humans.  Although I know they weren’t like that before, cow prints still hold a certain power over me.  Because when they finished, they chased us.  And ate Dad.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #410 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Feasting.

100 Words: The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men

Once, a wizened old man would hide in the roots of an equally gnarled, though much older, tree.

Passers-by would either ignore him (or perhaps miss him entirely), treat him with disdain (often very rudely) or seek to help him (offering food or alternative (warmer, drier) shelter). 

He would ignore the first sort (or miss them in turn), curse the second and reward the third, bidding them not to tell of what he had done.

In this way the wizard sought to rule, in the short term, by fear and, in the long term, by the survival of the kindest.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #408 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Once.  

The title ultimately comes from Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, though I thought I would instead use a full line from the poem he took it from (partly as a way of reading it for the first time).  This was also very much inspired by one of the other stories written from this prompt - Number Two on the list below is also very good).

100 Words: Fifteen to One

He always chimes in just before me; it’s so annoying.  As I go to answer, every time, he chips in first and takes the points. 

His reactions and thinking times (are they one and the same for him?) are too quick while mine are too dull.  I frustrated, I take it out on the buzzer, pressing ever harder.  And still too late.

Doomed from the start, though I wasn’t to know, I can only watch as my opponent creeps ever further ahead with answers I know but cannot remember quickly enough.

I started with a hope that’s quickly faded away.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #407 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Chimes.

 Additionally, I wrote a story for Challenge #404 but did not blog it in time to link it up.

100 Words: I shall marry a shapeshifter

Sardonically they told me that she had really gotten her claws into me now. 

If only they knew.

All they see is her gruff, shifty, exterior born from her concern of turning in public.  

They have never seen her softer side, the side I see at home, that made me fall for her. 

That’s why I let their feelings wash over me.  That, and this secret held between us.

It’s hard to date a shapeshifter who hasn’t full control; to be woken up by scratches. 

It is harder to be her, though, make no mistake.  Harder to be the one.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #404 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Claws.

100 Words: The Physical

When I joined the army I got a physical examination right at the start- we all did, all the new privates lined up together and displayed their own privates for inspection.  Not much fun but one thing did happen to lighten the mood.

The guy next to me had quite a large one and the doctor, upon seeing this, took out his pencil and lifted it for examination, clearly amazed at the size.

“Blimey,” he said, “I bet this fella’s been out of his cage a few times.”

“Aye,” replied the recruit, “But he’s never been on a perch before.”

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #403 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Perched.

100 Words: The feel of dewy grass

The feel of dewy grass under her feet was one of her favourites.  You could see from the look on her face, discovered later from the words that she wrote. 

She liked dolls too, feeling their faces, hair and clothes.   She preferred people really but it wasn’t considered decent to feel anyone and everyone all the time, so we settled on dolls.  She had many and kept them in pecking order.

Before we could formally communicate this is what we did; ‘was all that we knew.  We kept her, and ourselves, smiling by giving her the things that she loved.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #402 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Dewy.  I read about Helen Keller while writing, too; the wikipedia page helped in forming this story.

100 Words: Two Uses for a Staff

While living as an old man the wizard discovered the usefulness of carrying a staff.  “I shall have to share this at the next AGM,” he decided.

Chris had been in the Alps for some years, initially adopting the guise of an old man as a pretence for using a staff to help with walking up and down hillsides- something only the very old seemed to do.

This was before wizards went into hiding, when everyone would cheekily ask the root of their power.  Chris found people naturally began to believe it was the staff.  Very convenient it therefore became.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #400 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Staff.

100 Words: Maisie

The kitchen staff slept under the great heavy wooden table that ran down the room’s centre. For they had duties through the night, a fire to keep ever alight.

Maisie didn't mind, she learned to live with only a few hours sleep for she loved the time lying awake- precious time kept for herself.

Each night she would give stories to the stars, advancing her tales and adventures as time wore on.  One day she would recall them for her children but for now she would lie happily awake creating other worlds far away, full of mayhem, monsters and mischief.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #400 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Staff.

100 Words: I cloaked my grief in bricks and cloth

I cloaked my grief in bricks and cloth, hid myself away behind closed doors with curtains drawn, rooted myself to my bed and waited for that grief to pass. 

It wouldn’t leave me.  It kept me there- each day turning me slowly to stone, every day making it harder to move.

It was a child that saved me, a child crying out in pain as they lay, fallen, bleeding in the street.  No one else went and so, eventually, I did, unable to bare their grief any longer. 

Outside, in the fresh air, I found something in me I’d lost.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #398 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Cloak.

100 Words: Time Thief

I’d lock up me bike, make sure it were secure, enter time portal at nine on dot.  On arrival at destination I’d find orders at me feet and get started.  Once I had it, whatever it were that day, exit portal’d open and I’d return at five sharp, place haul in locker, go home.

Such was my working life. 

I’m old now.  Such business was long ago ended, the individuals involved remaining a mystery.

And now look- we’re history in museum.  The world’s archives were scoured, many of my orders found.  Brings a tear to eye.  Ah, the wonderful memories.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #397 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Secure.

100 Words: The Inspector

It was on Turnmill Street as we approached Farringdon that we saw him stooped low, inspecting the wall brick by brick.  My friend and I stopped, both equally amazed by the scene and stopped to watch.

He ran his fingers over each brick lightly, his eyes closed, feeling, thinking.  Then, once decided, he opened his eyes, shook his head and muttered, “no,” to himself.  On and on he went as we remained quite transfixed.

Until he found his brick, the wall opened and he stepped inside.  Within the wall we saw another world and we’ve been inspecting it ever since.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #396 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Inspect.

100 Words: A Shaft

They stood looking down into the shaft.  It was filled with the deepest black they’d ever seen, that somehow extended to the rim, the sun unable to penetrate even the first few centimetres: when they dipped their hand, it disappeared from view. 

Then there was the moaning, the calling out for help, that started after a few minutes.  The voices that sounded like them, confirmed they were them; that warned them yet also transfixed them completely.

After the push and fall came the deja vu, the repetition of all they’d heard. 

As they got up to speed the horrors began.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #395 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Black.