My Last Two 100 Word Stories

 I like monkeys!

I

Tommy remained in bed, determined to enjoy the morning. Incense and Peppermints was on the radio. Tommy felt the acid he’d dropped starting to take effect; a nervous tingling in his bowels. Why did acid always make him want to shit?

     Herman tapped on the window. Tommy raised the screen.

     “Hey man,” Herman said. “You score?”

     “Yeah. What you need?”

     “Six.”

     Tommy sold Herman six tabs of Arte Johnson acid.

     “You try it yet?” Herman asked.

     “Just started coming on.”

     “Cool. Catch you later.”

     (Later...)

   Tommy ran to the bathroom, seated himself and crapped a squirming school of purple polliwogs. 

II

Ivan was a large man who dominated the dinner table.

     “Pass the rolls,” he said. A command, not a request.

     His eldest son, Lebedev passed him a basket of rolls.

     Around the table sat Ivan’s children; Yevgeny, Mitya, Fyodor, Parfyon, Nastasya, Kolya, Lebedev, Ippolit and Lizaveta.

     Across from him sat his wife, Veronka. Veronka said, “I have news, husband. I’m with child again.”

      Ivan coughed and a shred of roast-beef launched from his throat and landed in Veronka’s eye.

     “Ow! Ew!” she cried.

     Ivan laughed heartily. “Now you can SEE how overdone the beef is!”

     Another food fight had begun.

Three More 100 Word Stories...

Not this Donna Loren

I

There once lived a waitress named Donna Loren (not that Donna Loren) who worked at a restaurant called The Steak Trough. She was good at her job. When she wasn’t busy with tables she helped the dishwashers, which seemed like a nice thing to do.

     One night the manager discovered that the reason she helped the dishwashers was so that she could eat the debris off the plates. He yelled at her in a demeaning manner and she fled the restaurant in tears. On her way home she stopped at McDonald’s and ate two burgers out of the Dumpster. Solace.

II

My rehab roommate was a heroin addict named Rupe. He didn’t scream or sweat or suffer like The Man with the Golden Arm. He was calm. He kept to his bed. Rupe received three experimental, mystery shots a day. I noticed a change after every injection. His eyes grew distant, as if peering into something vast. His skin started to sag. On the third day, his face began to change – a softening of features. On the fourth day he was comic Morey Amsterdam.

     I was going to request another roommate but I didn’t want to miss any of his jokes.

III

I’m stranded in an area so rural, so remote, that I don’t recognize any of the product brands on the shelves of the general store (the only store). Healey’s Dead Duck Potato Chips? Ripped Suture Root Beer? Barbara Lemieux’s Sugar-Therapy Donuts? Cause-of-Death Hot Sauce? A whole line of Vulture-Stain condiments (no relish, but seven different kinds of ketchup). Fibromitosis Mixed Nuts. Abe Lincoln’s Corpse brand beef jerky. Raw Sewage Coffee (with crystals!). And Dead Baby Sunflower Seeds.

     The name of the milk is so bizarre, grotesque, disturbing and tragic I can’t bring myself to mention it. Let alone drink it.

 

Two 100 Word Stories

I

She seats me in a booth by the window, the table I’d requested. It is an exact place with a view of shrubs and asphalt.

     “Can I get you something to drink?” the waitress asks with a practiced smile. Her nametag says, Lola.

     “Yes, I’ll have whatever Fatty Arbuckle was drinking at that party with the dead girl.”

     She gives me a clueless look. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

     “Neither did Fatty.”

     “Uh, I’ll give you a few minutes to decide.”

     Nobody understands my sense of humor. Oh well, it’s not as if I aspire to write for Fred Allen.

 

II

I bought some old slides at a yard sale for twenty-five cents. I don’t have a projector so I held them up to my eye to see what they depicted. They were taken in the early 60’s. A young couple traveling in Europe. I name the man Bob and the woman, Melissa. Bob and Melissa by the Eiffel Tower. Bob and Melissa on Carnaby Street. Bob and Melissa standing beside a wax sculpture of Stan Laurel. I wonder who took the pictures. It’s the kind of mystery that drives me crazy so until I learn otherwise, Gary had the camera.