Bachelor Keep

Roger surveyed his creation. It truly was the greatest castle the world had ever known, with impregnable walls and towers on a scale that previous ages would have found miraculous. And unlike the architects of the past, who built at the command of their liege, and using his resources, Roger had built his castle on his own.

The location was perfect too, in a remote landscape that lone travelers found hard to navigate, not to mention an army. He had not seen a single visitor during its construction.

Now, all Roger had to do was wait for someone to attack.

Discarded Laundry

I first saw him laying outside the haberdashery downtown. They said he was born without any connective tissue. Lacking cartilage and tendons and ligaments, he was more amoeba than man, and he was often left out like discarded laundry. Passersby debated his fate. The philosophical wondered if the deformity significantly altered his understanding of the world, while the compassionate argued he never should have been allowed to live. I always found it hard to look away. There was nothing holding him together, yet somehow he continued to exist. And I found myself increasingly jealous of how well-dressed he always appeared.

This is a story I submitted to Every Day A Century, a 100-word poetry blog that you all should check out.

Where Did All These Maggots Come From?

The maggots are the first sign something is wrong. They are crawling up my arms, in between my toes, behind my eyelids, inside my skin, and no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to move or do anything to get rid of them.

The second sign something is wrong is the coffin.

A slight deviation today. I recently submitted a 3-sentence story to Terrible Minds, themed around scary stories. You can submit your own story through the end of the week.

The Straight And Narrow Road

Prior to the trip, Nebraska frightened us most.

The road looked so straight on the map, like a rigid line held fast by fate and concrete. We'd heard stories of the empty fields and empty skies in every direction. The kind of tedium that could endanger your soul. I should have suggested that we reconsider and chose another route, but I didn't want Jesse to know how scared I really was.

I wish we had never gone to that fortune teller. She had probably been a fraud, but the thought of being bored to death has haunted me ever since.

The Loyal Dog

There is a shrine on a small Pacific island that was intended to be an agnostic memorial saluting the bravery and sacrifice on both sides. So many years have gone by, however, that memories of that battle have become obscured, much as the shrine itself has been weighed down by lichen and neglect.

People still visit the shrine and leave tributes. They aren't for the fallen soldiers, but for one particular dog who remained on that spot for ten years after his master was killed. He is remembered as the loyal dog and people mourn him more than any soldier.

The Curse

To this day, I don't know what I did to anger her. I was waiting at the stoplight at Pinehurst and Rock Creek. An old woman was crossing, decrepit really, and if I was guilty of anything, it was allowing my gaze to linger a fraction too long, perhaps just a tincture of disgust in my expression. When she looked in my direction, I immediately turned away.

That's when she began screaming, condemning me and all my future progeny. She even spit on my windshield.

From that day, I've never approached an intersection without being stopped at a red light.

Endeavor

Chet sat his desk daily in four-hour shifts from 6am to 7pm, with fifteen-minute breaks in between. The working conditions weren’t the worst he’d encountered. At least they had a ceiling fan.

Chet’s job was to type the word “endeavor.” When he was first hired, sixteen years ago, his word had been “the,” but then Peterson had died and so he got promoted.

Every fifteen seconds, a new page was handed to him, and he typed his word. Then the page was taken away, and a new page came. They were distributed randomly, going from station to station, until they had 120 pages. Mostly the scripts were incoherent gibberish, but every once in a while, they’d have a blockbuster.

Though Chet didn’t think it was a very efficient system, Hollywood found it cheaper than training monkeys to use a typewriter. Chet certainly wasn’t going to complain. It beat crunching numbers.

Today's story is exactly 150 words, but you get it for the same low price as always!

A Genetic Predisposition To Solving Mysteries

I found the broken glass of the window scattered over the shag carpet. Across the room, beneath the armchair, there was a dead sparrow. We had ourselves a mystery.

Ryan’s first conjecture, not unwarranted, was that the bird struggled before it died, coming to its final resting place several feet from the window. But he ignored the bullet hole in the far wall.

Ryan was always attracted to the easiest solution. And after discovering that our parents had once been international assassins and were now in quiet retirement, I wished that I had listened to him and ignored my curiosity.

The Clowns

When the clowns first appeared, the media tried to downplay it and sensationalize it at the same time. "When will the clowns strike your home, tonight at eleven!" contradicted with studies that claimed the clowns were simply a result of too many clown schools churning out too many clowns. Where would the clowns find work? It was an epidemic of clowns, but they were mostly harmless.

We eventually got used to them. A few families were killed, but based on how many clowns there are now, a few of them are bound to be bad. Mostly, we just ignore them.

Peace Of Mind

Gus was only able to survive day-to-day under heavy sedation. It was always a mixture involving alcohol, barbiturates, and valium, with a healthy dose of cocaine to taste. He'd learned ages ago how to fake his drug tests and before today he'd never suffered from even a minor forklift accident.

The foreman didn't care much about Gus, and certainly didn't care about his bouts with depression, but he did care about his safety record. Forgetting the fact that he had killed Gary by leaving his body hidden in the foundation shaft would be best for both their peaces of mind.