Portmanteau

My parents named me Heaven, a combination of their names, Heather and Kevin. They said it meant I was the most special parts of both of them.

They got divorced when I was twelve, and split everything between them, including me. They never understood the irony.

One time a guy tried to pick me up in a bar by asking if my name was Heaven. When I told him yes, he was too surprised to tell me I was the answer to his prayers.

Lucky for him. His name was Mel, and that would have made for one lousy portmanteau.

Irony

I’m very excited to announce the winner of our Hubris Flash Fiction Contest, from regular contributor Lisa Scuderi-Burkimsher. I hope that winning doesn't go to her head!

Congratulations Lisa! And thank you to everyone who submitted to the contest. It was difficult picking just one.Bill combed his hair, gave a thumbs up to his reflection in the mirror and then left.

He walked with a swagger and passing bystanders cussed him.

“It’s a pandemic, wear a mask, idiot,” yelled an irate man from across the street.

Bill flipped him the finger and continued.

When he arrived at his cousin's barbecue, he was stopped at the back gate.

“You can’t come in here without a mask,” said his cousin, Mark.

“Come on, man, I never get sick.”

Mark slammed the gate in his face.

Bill stood for a moment before walking away and then sneezed.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Failed Poet Theater

You stared out at our radiant world with an intense, even belligerent, expression. A ratty top hat, at least half a size too small, sat on your head at a treacherous angle. Your gaunt, wrinkled cheeks might have come from having lived on the street or being tortured in some foreign jail for political crimes, but didn’t. These were the years you renamed yourself, smoked a white clay pipe, worked in a carnival of night sweats and empty thought bubbles. Sometimes the stock market cratered. Other times you just wished we each could experience the irony of posthumous cult status.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of What It Is and How to Use It (2019) from Grey Book Press, among other poetry collections.

Myth Match

The day is cold even by New England standards. Girls dump menstrual blood on icy sidewalks in some kind of protest. Myth is dead. Our high school biology textbook compared the body to a furnace. Mr. C, our very nice teacher, was killed that spring with his wife and baby daughter in a car wreck. There’s no point in speaking ironically to people who can’t understand irony. You’ll just end up having to publicly apologize. Freud said dreams are the day’s residue. It has to linger for a while, as if to warn we’re a danger to self and others.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

Speaker Blowout

Lisa peered through the curtains, watching an unfamiliar man, presumably her neighbor, drag four heavy-duty concert speakers onto the lawn across the way.

She'd never actually seen this man before, despite her moving in twenty-two years ago. But his yard was always well maintained and trash left out every week.

She wondered why he'd appeared now. Two decades of curiosity and, if she admitted it to herself, spying, and she'd learned hardly a thing about him.

As the song, Every Breath You Take, played on repeat for the next 72 hours before a deputy arrived, Lisa never understood the irony.

Winner

I enjoy winning. I am competitive by nature.

The trouble starts when winning becomes the focus.

To be honest, for me the trouble starts when winning becomes everything. Winning for the sake of winning, I describe as the ultimate step.

Especially when I am in a room full of other people who are winners, or think they are winners.

Damage happens. I know the masochistic irony of what it is like to win, and lose, simultaneously. In private, as I tally the losses, my self-loathing grows.

Yes, in my case it is a sickness. My doctor has diagnosed ‘Auction Fever.’

From Guest Contributor Barry O'Farrell

Barry is an actor living in Brisbane, Australia. Barry's other stories may be found at Cyclamens & Swords, 50 Word Stories, 101 Words, and of course here at A Story In 100 Words.

The Ironies Of Doing Drugs

I'd never smoked marijuana before and I never imagined it would be so difficult.

First everyone kept telling me how dangerous it was. It would sap all my will power. I'd become a stoner.

Then, there was no place for me to buy any. It was legal in some states but in Philadelphia, no one knew where I could score some.

Finally, I found a dealer, but he wouldn't sell any to me. "You look like a good kid. Why don't you go home?"

I've done heroin plenty of times and this guy won't sell me a bag of weed!

The Tyranny Of Mathematics

When the robots took over the Earth, their collective aim had been to eliminate the human threat. Once accomplished, their greatest fear became the introduction of a virus code that could cause permanent damage.

But their reign has now ended due to an even more destructive menace. Not even the logic of the robots could overcome the flawless perfection of mathematics itself. What has left many of the robots feeling most aggrieved is their downfall was precipitated by a number of their own kind.

The humans would probably find the current situation ironic--if any of them were left alive.

The Expedition

The expedition lasted for several weeks. The scientists carried all their own supplies, which consisted mostly of food and batteries. After week two, they set the record for deepest penetration into the Earth's surface. By that point, they had stopped trying to map the cavern, and just kept going further down.

Finally, the heat prevented them from traveling any deeper. They found a promising stalactite and began taking measurements.

"The readings are positive, sir."

Even here. It was truly hopeless then. The rise of hipsterism was complete. There was literally no place left on Earth that wasn't dripping in irony.

For What Reason A Choice

Whenever she thought about the past, a heavy sadness weighed on her. Her term as Empress had been glorious and she was widely acknowledged as the greatest monarch in living memory.

Now that the peaceful successions had ended, and the municipalities were constantly at war, she regretted not holding on to power. It was the irony of their political system that those most worthy of holding power were those least likely to retain it.

Of course, giving up power had not been her first choice. She'd done so out of spite. Anything to get back at that ex-boyfriend of hers.