The Summer The Circus Came To Town

Jessica fell in love with the third clown from the end of the line. He had his face painted with a smile, suggesting he was frivolous but gallant. No sad clown for her. They had sex in the small tent where they kept the donkeys and goats and other uninteresting animals. It's not how she imagined it would be, but the animals didn't seem to notice, and she was in love. You can make anything romantic in the retelling when you're talking to your grandchildren. The fact they drove him out of town with pitchforks only added to the romanticism.

Citizen Watch

Let me start by saying nowhere in the United States is it illegal to film the police in public spaces. I'm sure if you asked Quincy Adams, he would tell you acting as a watchdog against an intrusive government is not only your right but your patriotic duty.

So I took to following cops in the neighborhood with my video camera.

I didn't last an hour. They must have put in a call to their buddies, because suddenly I was surrounded. They beat me straight into the hospital.

Needless to say, it's the best thing that's ever happened to me.

A Darkness Of Mind

Drake's fate was determined the day his father was killed.

Ghosts do not often commit murder. They haunt. They instill fear. They might so inhabit a person's psyche as to drive her to suicide. But actual slaughter is rare.

Drake’s father was murdered by a ghost, and on that day Drake became a ghost hunter.

He inhabited the darkness. He learned about betrayal and lonely hearts and the isolation of eternity. He drank in whispers and sang of misfortune.

He became a lost soul. So it was that upon his death, he knew that he himself would become a ghost.

In Pen, For Your Convenience

It's the last thing I'll ever write, the second to last marks I'll leave upon the Earth, before my ashes cloud the sea.

I'll clamp my mouth shut, bite my tongue. No intemperate words will sully the immortality of these last utterances.

This page is for you alone. I seek forever in your trust. My soul passes on to you--a flash, a fire--that I ask you to carry into the dark.

I leave my legacy in your mendacious hands, to do with as you will. Everything I am belongs to you forevermore.

I hope my memory haunts you.

Don't Talk To Me About Love Spells

Everyone knows when it comes to doing magic, widows are the worst. They're always going on about love spells or hunting down unicorns and mermaids to achieve eternal youth. None of it ever works.

You might consider my complaints a narrow-minded view and accuse me of the worst kind of chauvinism. I agree with you whole-heartedly that gender prejudice has no place in our enlightened age. But the fact is that widows just aren't any good at magic. Even when it works, it doesn't work anything like how it's intended.

And that's how I ended up with these golden testes.

This Isn't Happening

The man shambled into town. He was weak from exhaustion and covered in blood, though the lack of obvious wounds suggested it might not be his own. A few of the townspeople recognized him as coming from the neighboring community a few miles to the west.

"Everyone's dead. I'm the only survivor."

"What happened?"

"It was the trees. The attacked us. But not physically. They did something to our minds, made everyone go crazy. People started killing themselves. It was awful.”

“I don’t mean to make light of your situation, but that sounds exactly like the worst movie ever made.”

Death

Death. That was all his card said.

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

He knew the machine was perverse, playing with a person's fate in the most ironic ways possible. Academics and the intellectually insecure called it the Sophocles, because only the ancient Greeks could match the machine for its macabre sense of humor.

But Death?

Was he supposed to die from fear. Was the machine getting philosophical? Should he avoid anyone in a Grim Reaper costume for the rest of his life?

All in all, Bill could think of better ways to have spent that twenty dollars.

Why The Absence?

A lot's been going on behind the scenes at 100 Words, more than can possibly fit in a 100 word story. I wanted to update my loyal readers as to why I've been MIA for the past couple months.

First of all, I'm a few weeks away from finishing the final draft of my novel. That's exciting. The next phase will begin soon, when I start actively looking for publishers. Or figure out the feasibility of publishing it myself. Stay tuned for updates.

I've also been compiling stories for a 100 Word Story E-Book. It's going to be at least 50% all new stories, and we'll be selling it through iBooks and Amazon among other places. I'm hoping to have that ready to go by the end of June, but no guarantees at this point.

I'm also working on two submissions for the Machine Of Death 2 project. If you don't know about Machine Of Death, you can read about it here or here. Basically, it's a series of stories based on the premise that someone has invented a machine to 100% accurately predict how a person dies.

In the meantime, here's a new 100 Word Story based on the Machine Of Death concept. And I'll do my best to keep adding new stories on a semi-regular basis.

Thanks,The Management

His First And Last Day On The Job

Shawna James was the only female butcher in the tri-city area. She was known to be impatient with the new employees, especially as they looked at her as some kind of aberration.

But she wouldn't have trusted anyone else with explaining how the machinery works. No one else cared as much.

"This here's the mincer. First you need to wet the sausage down. If it's too dry, you might create friction. Then you need to insert it into the slot. If it doesn't fit, don't worry. Just keep pushing until it goes all the way in."

"That's what she said."

Institutional Negligence

They found her body–tattered, ripped open at the seams with the fluff bleeding out–in the middle of the sidewalk. The authorities labeled it accidental murder; she was the victim of circumstance.

But murder is never an accident. It takes nerve and planning and years of resentment piled on top of envy and systematic failures. Triggers don’t just pull themselves.

Neither of the authorities wanted to hear about it. They refused to own the fact their institutional negligence had allowed Mrs. Cassidy to be chewed to death by Chocolate, the cocker spaniel. Her parents were always skirting the blame.