L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Drabble Babble

October 26, 2008 on 12:45 pm | In General Musing, In the news |

A Drabble is a story of exactly 100 words. Laurence Simon (aka Crap Mariner) writes and podcasts one every single day here, but on Saturdays he turns it over to his listeners for a weekly showdown. There’s a different theme each week, selected by the previous week’s winner. Here are my last six entries:

The Voice - listen

Alan felt the 15-foot tall papier mache wizard head begin to tip dangerously. Everything had gone so well at dress rehearsal. He’d spent hours learning to manipulate the rods and strings that controlled the wizard’s eyes and mouth while speaking his lines into a mic. The mic was the best part: a special filter gave him The Voice - deep, resonant and superbly wizardy. But now it was opening night of The Wizard of Oz. The Redmond High School theatre was filled to capacity and disaster loomed. The head teetered precariously. Munchkins scrambled for cover.

“OH CRAP!” the voice boomed.

Olive Loaf - listen

Bill leaned forward in his chair, trying to focus on the PowerPoint presentation, but the charts, graphs and bulleted lists blurred as if obscured by billowing clouds of flour.

The monolithic high-tech empire he’d built meant nothing to him. Secretly, he’d always wanted to be a baker - knead dough in his hands; make crust instead of code.

Nobody knew.

Graphs morphed into racks of hot baguettes. Pie charts turned into, well, pies. Even bullets on lists made him dream of olives dotting a fragrant loaf.

He stood up and walked out as they watched him go, openmouthed.

Nobody knew.

Breaking & Entering - listen

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen

I’ve spent nearly my whole life keeping up the façade: Perfect woman, perfect family, perfect life. Terrified to reveal the truth. I’d be shunned, despised, ridiculed.

Of course you can’t keep it up forever. The first cracks are tiny, almost invisible. But they spread and before you know it, your life is a network of shards held together by fear.

Now that it’s all broken in pieces at my feet, I don’t know why I resisted so long. The darkness has gone, replaced by brilliant light.

Fuzzy Dice - listen

The phone rang.

“Now what?” thought Alma.

An incident at school. Could she come meet her son in the principal’s office right away?

Alma sighed. She had this fantasy of serving perfect gourmet meals to her smiling family around the dining room table. But whenever she started, there was some interruption. She reluctantly dumped the neatly diced cubes of carrots and onions into a Tupperware container and grabbed her car keys.

That was Monday. Tuesday night was dentist appointments. Wednesday, band practice. Thursday she worked late. Finally, on Friday she pulled out the Tupperware container and peered inside: fuzzy dice.

Light - listen

She noticed it as soon as she got up: she was lighter. Not thinner, but somehow less affected by gravity. Her feet hardly touched the carpet as she drifted downstairs. TV Newscasters were grim: global warming, pollution, the end of the world.

She grew lighter as the day went on. By evening she had to hook her toes under the edge of the cabinet to stay low enough to cook dinner.

Later, the moon shone bright in the window. She opened it and floated up into the icy night. Around her countless other shapes were rising. Spores seeking fertile soil.

Asylum - listen

“Joe, I swear it was the strangest thing. I was in the middle of a lecture and suddenly a wild-eyed woman in a straightjacket materialized out of thin air.”

“Quite a few ghosts haunt this university.”

“Ghosts?”

“It’s true . This place used to be a state mental hospital. Didn’t you know? The Eagles wrote ‘Hotel California’ about it.”

“Huh. I didn’t know that.”

“So many of the inmates who died here hang around that the university even has an admissions policy for them.”

“Admissions policies for ghosts?”

“Yeah: you can audit any class you like but you can never leave.”

See more like that one:

• Lies, Damn Lies and Publishing
• Deranged Atheist Sock Monkey
• Supershort
• Flasher
• Go Commando for Literacy