The 100 Word Stories Podcast

What do deaf people use as safe words?
I’m asking for a friend. Who I have tied up in the basement.
So he can’t sign out HELP. And he’s never quite learned how to talk right.
How the hell am I supposed to tell one grunt from another?
And he’s got a ballgag, so rolling his tongue won’t work either.
Never learned Morse code, so all that blinking isn’t working.
Now, when it’s the other way aro...

The old general had gone senile years ago. He kept calling his caretaker, his chief of staff, and he would ask about reports from the field. The nurse would print out the same report every day, just with the weather and date changed. The general would nod, dictate orders, and the nurse would pretend to take notes so that she could give them to the brigade. This carried on for several years, and when the general would ask to inspect...

Last time I went back to the old school, it was for Professor Ellsworth’s funeral. A lot of his former students came, came out for the memorial service. The poetry we read was probably some of the worst poetry ever written. Professor Ellsworth had marked it all with failing grades and bitter criticism. With occasional demands for us to read works on the same subject by Milton, Wordsworth, and other masters. But now, the old Gas bag...

If I win the lottery, I will call a few major symphonies and buy the oboe chair. There’s no reason for it. It’s just so strange, nobody would understand it. And that’s the point. We only write our names in sand. Unless it’s with an oboe, I suppose. And every oboist in that city will strive to sit in the chair I bought for them. Or they could remain standing or sit on the floor, I suppose. How silly that woul...

I saw so many things in the city that I’d never experienced before.
The people. The lights. The stores. The streets. The buildings.
And in the middle of it all, a statue.
A tall man, his face full of hate, lashing a whip.
What was he lashing the whip at?
The plaque at the bottom of the statue had been defaced and was no longer legible.
I asked the people around it, but nobody knew who or what it was.
“Maybe it’s o...

And the prince and princess didn’t live happily ever after.
After a few miscarriages, the princess had four daughters in a row.
The prince cheated on her with a maid, producing a bastard.
That was awkward.
And then, the princess had a son.
The king and queen lived well into their eighties, so it took a long time for the prince and princess to take power.
By then, the kingdom was a bit of a mess financially.
The bastard killed...

• Lisa
• Lizzie
• Richard
• Lewie
• Serendipidy
• Tom
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

The next topic is Give Up

LISA

The Railing of Lost Things

There’s a railing where the Portobello Road meets Westway: The Railing of Lost Things. People travel to leave their finds on it. It has single gloves, socks and wellies. Scarves flap in the breeze and rusting keys nestle where the rails join the floor.
It’s an impossibly beautiful curation… a plac...

Toby came up with really good ideas late at night. He’d be brushing his teeth or putting on a night shirt for climbing the bed and an idea we just hit them. But you didn’t have a notepad by his nightstand. So he’d forget them in the morning trying to remember what he’d come up with. He tried using the voice assistant on his phone to remember things for him, but he’d be so sleeping groggy, the voice to text would come out incomprehe...

After the wildfire destroyed part of the city, the mayor and city council promised they do everything to help rebuild. But despite millions of dollars spent on planning and outreach, not a single environmental impact regulation or building code or contract was addressed. Eventually, the frustrated homeowners enlisted dozens of homeless people to raid the mayor and city council‘s homes and build campfires in their fancy living rooms...