100 words: “You forgot your medicine.”
My entry:
“You’re not leaving,” Chrys told him, “until you take your medicine.”
Roger made a face. “Tea is not medicine. Sticky, bad-tasting goop is medicine. Aspirin is medicine. Sulfa is medicine. Penicillin is medicine.”
“And none of those will help fighting off this bug. It’s magic.”
“Penicillin’s pretty good against lycanthropy,” he said, sullenly. “There was this time in Austria –”
“But not against this.” She clucked her tongue, then sighed. “I guarantee this will help. My family has been blending this tea for two thousand years. Just ask Uncle Ho.”
“Your Uncle Ho is two thousand years old.”
“See? It works.”
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100 Words: “He forgot.”
My entry:
“Mr. Donne, I’m a dead man.”
Roger shrugged. “Aren’t we all? Just some of us sooner than later.” He sipped his coffee. “Who’s gunning for you?”
“No,” McRae said. “I mean — I’m dead.” His fingers touched his wrist. “No pulse. Room temp. Only breathe if I gotta talk.” He demonstrated. “I’m dead.”
Roger eyeballed the other’s mouth. Nothing pointy there. And he was a bit chatty for a zombie. “What happened?”
“I don’t remember anything for the last six months. And I was alive then.” He sighed, rattling. “That’s why I want to hire you. To find out what happened.”
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100 Words: “a great deal of money”
My entry:
“That,” Roger said, “is a great deal of money.”
Lopez nodded. “That is but a down payment.”
Roger considered how many months rent, office and apartment, the valise would cover. “What services are we talking about rendering?”
“There is a man I would like killed.”
Roger closed the valise and pushed it back across the desk. “I don’t kill for hire. Missing persons, divorce photos, fine. No killings.”
“You killed during the war.”
“Uncle Sam said it was okay. Given the targets, I agreed.”
Lopez leaned forward. “When you hear the target in this case, you will agree as well.”
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100 Words: “Just a little water”
My entry:
“This better work,” Roger said. “I just spent the last three weeks gathering this stuff.”
Weld examined the collection on his desk. The Unwashed Athame from the British Museum’s secret Minoan collection. A black diamond from the charred heart of that SS officer in Luxor. Dust from Drake’s real tomb.
“Right, this should be fine for the spell, Donne. All I need is a little water.”
Roger rolled his eyes. “What, water from the headwaters of the Alph? Holy water from the Black Pope’s private chapel?”
“Was thinking of the the tap, old boy. Wouldn’t do to drink my whisky straight up.”
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100 Words: “A round object”
My entry:
“The Earth, you know, is not round,” Uncle Long said.
Roger cleared his throat. “I’ve actually been around it, sir. It’s … round.”
“It is, in fact, the shell of a great turtle, swimming the cosmos, snatching up spirits from the aether.”
“Um, people have reached the South Pole. The Earth has a bottom, not an edge.”
Uncle Long gazed at me. “I’ve met him, you know.”
“Who?”
“The turtle. Terrible conversationalist.” His narrowed eyes glowed with cold green fire. “Insists on correcting his elders.”
“Roger, darling,” Chrys interrupted, pulling me away with casual ease. “Come try some of these canapes.”
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100 Words: “Dragons”
My entry:
“I hate this monkey suit.”
Chrys adjusted his tie. “You look very dashing.”
“Great. Your family already doesn’t like me.”
“They do so. Well, some, perhaps. But Uncle Long is very fond of you, which is why we were invited to his birthday.”
“Crap, we didn’t buy him a gift! What the hell do you get the dragon who has everything?”
Chris chuckled. “Uncle Long’s not like your Western dragons. He seeks only respect, not worldly wealth.” She looked at him sideways. “You did memorize that list of titles and honorifics, didn’t you?”
Roger dropped onto the bed. “I’m doomed.”
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100 Words: ”Being constructive”
My entry:
“Honey, what do you make of this?”
Chrys peered down into the crawlspace. “Oh. Yuck.”
Roger grunted. He’d seen more body parts during the war, but it was never pleasant.
“They look fresh,” she said.
“Preserved. You can smell the chemicals.”
“That’s more than one … person down there.”
“More like three or four. I count four, five left feet. Not sure if they’re, um, all complete sets or just … pieces.”
“I’ll let you go down and check.”
“Thanks, honey. One more thing — look there. Some of these pieces have been stitched together.”
She nodded slowly. “Volkart’s building something.”
“Or someone.”
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Hey, 100 Word Stories is back. Woot!
Today’s theme is: Resurrection.
My entry:
Donne had never seen a full-blown resurrection before. Lab-animated corpses, Abwehr revenants, Chinese “singing ghosts,” Haitian zombies, reborn avatars, sure. But the original life spirit slipped cleanly into a restored and revivified body? That was remarkable. In this case, it was terrifying.
“How’d you do it?” he asked Friedl. ”Last guy I heard of pulled off that trick, they made an annual holiday about it.”
Friedl smiled. ”What the mind of God can conceive, Man can imitate. Technology, with certain esoteric arts …”
Donne’s .45 roared. The top of Hitler’s skull blew off in a fine spray. Again. “God makes thunderbolts, too.”
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Today’s 100 Words theme:
It’s a celebration!
My entry:
How do you celebrate saving the world? Especially when almost nobody knows you’ve done it, and most of the ones remaining who do aren’t exactly jumping for joy?
For Chrys and me, it meant a drink at Buttons, in a small booth towards the back. Doubles, no less. Canadian for me, something green for Chrys.
Chrys smiled, raised a toast before sipping. “Well, you did it.”
“We did it,” I corrected. “We’re in this together. That’s what it says on the door.”
“To us, then.”
“Who’s like us? Damned few, and they’re all dead,” I quoted.
“But we still live.”
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100 Words theme:
Your life has a soundtrack
My entry:
A lot of things changed in the war. Some of that was okay. Some of it made me lonely, nostalgia for a past that was not only gone, but couldn’t even be visited any more.
Music was one thing. I used to love Glenn Miller, listening to him on the radio whenever I knew he’d be playing or leading a band. Some folks, they like Goodman better, but Miller was the guy for me.
He died in the war. Plane went down into the Channel flying back from a concert for the troops. I never listened to “Chatanooga Choo-Choo” again.
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