The 100 Word Stories Podcast

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. He watched the news and saw the devastation from the hurricane. "If you stay, be sure to write your name and social security number on your arm so we can identify your body," said the mayor. When they called for rescue boats, George hopped in the ship's rowboat and did his best to rescue as many people as possible. "Thank you, George!' they all said. "You're welcome," said George. After the rain stopped and the waters receded, George sold all the names and social security numbers to identity thieves.

Lisa Richard Thomas Lizzie Serendipidy Tom Norval Joe Planet Z The next topic is PICK TWO Castle, Rules, Root, Naked in the snow, A pillow LISA Interview with one of the two Plane Crash Survivors “Marie, What an experience. How did you manage to last nearly a year out there?” “For a start we had decent bedding. The contents of people’s cases were amazing. Some real luxury treats in there. We’d made a shelter from part of the plane. Most of the fittings had come loose when it crashed so it was easy to gut it between us.” “Your husband didn’t survive, did he?” No, and I don’t really want to dwell on what we ate but I think things would’ve been much harder to swallow on a budget airline. Having decent cutlery really helped. RICHARD --- Thank you for flying --- I think my budget airline of choice is taking the concept of low-cost a little too far. I understand doing away with cases in the hold, and limiting hand luggage to a single, tiny bag. And I can't really quibble over inadequate legroom and lack of refreshments. I do have concerns, now that they're charging to use the lavatory, and seatbelts are optional extras. And last time I flew I had to pay more, just to sit in a seat. But now I'm drawing the line. I refuse to supply my own elastic band and wind the propeller myself! THOMAS BUDGET AIRLINE SkyGrind Airlines redefined “bare minimum.” Seats? Replaced by communal perches made of recycled truck tires. Windows? Gone. Now, laser prints glued on walls. The fuselage? A patchwork of old billboard vinyl and repurposed garden fencing. Flight attendants were unpaid “SkyVolunteers”—contest winners too dazed to decline. Food? Trays of sandwiches... split among rows. Beverage cart? Lukewarm tap water served in jelly glasses, $3. When the plane tilted, passengers shifted to counterbalance—“dynamic seating,” they called it. Landing gear? Yoga mats. Yet people flew SkyGrind. Why? Tickets cost less than a vending machine burrito. Comfort was a luxury. Survival, an upsell. LIZZIE Low cost. This is what you get. A hole on the side of the plane through which two people were sucked out. Three more held on to their seats, one of them with a hole on his head instead. "Transfer the money or else", they said. The company chose the "or else" obviously. Now, they had to transfer a ton of money, but to the families of the deceased. One of the relatives laughed all the way to the bank. "Transfer the money or transfer the money. From low cost to premium, plus the inheritance, that's how you do business." SERENDIPIDY So, there you are, enjoying the in-flight entertainment, complementary drink and snacks, congratulating yourself on ditching the budget airline and splashing out on this particular trip. Until there's a shudder and sudden sickening drop. The engines start to scream, along with the passengers, oxygen masks drop from the ceiling, and the plane plunges towards the ground. Then, over the tannoy, you hear the captain's calm, reassuring voice: "Brace for impact!" By the way, I'm the captain on this flight, and the reason I'm so calm is because I have a parachute. Happy landings… I'll see you on the ground! NORVAL JOE His mother took the phone from Billbert’s hand. “Hello. I’m June Weinerheimer and a woman from Child Health and Welfare took Sabrina Hecksaohos from our home to place her with a foster family. May I speak with the supervisor?” “I’m sorry. Ms. Pickenpaw took a budget airline flight to Mexico a week ago and hasn’t been heard from since. According to privacy policy, only she can give you any information.” Billbert took his phone when his mother disconnected. “I know where Mandi lives. I’m going to look for her.” His mother nodded. “I’ll do what I can to find Sabrina.” TOM Come Fly With Me Lenny had just made it to junior partner at Wilcons Spencer and Dakmen. He walking into the room with an air of absolute convictio...

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. He spent very little time pirating and too much time thinking. He has a lot of bad ideas. "That would be like trying to change a car engine while you're driving it down the freeway," said the captain. "But we're in a ship, not a car," said George. "You can pull down the sails and replace them without much of a problem. Or replace the rudder with another." The captain nodded, but pointed at the rapidly approaching British Navy. "Can you hurry up with the sails and rudder, please?"

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. The governor called for evacuations because of an imminent hurricane, so a lot of people ran out of gas on the freeways and got stuck. George convinced pirates to pick up as many people as they could and sail away to safety. Of course, the pirates held the people for ransom, but were reasonable and offered hurricane discounts. And it wasn't exactly brutal kidnapping, either. Most just partied and had a good time on their boats. "That was great!" most people said. "I can't wait for the next hurricane!"

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. He'd sit on the rocks by the shore, talking to Cassandra, the last of the mermaids. They'd trade stories while watching the sun go down. One day, Cassandra never showed up. George assumed that she'd gone through The Emerald Gate, never to return. But she'd actually gotten tangled in a Japanese fishing trawler's net. For years, she traveled in a freakshow carnival. Telling her stories to the crowds. Leaping through hoops, singing her songs. George eventually found her, but she was happy with her life. George smiled and left.

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. But he was a genius compared to the dimwits at the drive-through. George pulled the ship up to the speaker, lowering sails and dropping anchor. He assumed that the noise was someone trying to say "Can I take your order?" George read the list he'd gotten from his crewmates, but the speaker kept interrupting him. "Can't I just pull up and give you this list?" More static barely resembling human speech. George pulled up anyway, and handed over the list. "Next time, we order Uber Eats," said the captain.

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. He never learned The Pirate Code. So, the time when he ended up in prison, he was woken up by the strange tapping on the stone wall. He'd summon the guards to complain, and the guards would nod and open the cell next to him. "I was trying to tell you that we're breaking out tonight, you idiot!" shouted the prisoner being dragged off. "Oh, okay!" shouted George back. "Thank you!" George slept peacefully... until he heard the chiseling in the wall. He summoned the guards to complain again.

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. Every time he took his ship into the harbor, he'd end up smashing it into Little Kids Rock, and he'd have to be rescued. How did the rock get the name "Little Kids Rock?" Well, not so long ago, a little boy gathered up wood scraps, glued and nailed and lashed them together, and made himself a raft. He put it in the water, got on board, raised his ragged sail, and drifted out of the harbor. George's ship smashed into it. And then he smashed into the rock.

Lisa Tom Richard Lizzie Serendipidy Norval Joe Planet Z The next topic is Budget airline LISA A Glimpse of my Future She’d placed three cards on the table. Face down. Nodding after each was revealed. “The first I see a man. In uniform he’s tall. I foretell a pursuit.” She turned the final card, and sighed saying “Yes. The chase will be relentless.” She gathered the cards and returned them to the deck then placed them in her basket. We both moved away from the table together. It was an odd thing to happen, right? We went through the door together too. An alarm went off and the security guard ran after us. I may never go back to John Lewis. TOM 990 Somebody bet on da bay. I had a friend who loved to bet on the ponies. He saw himself as a bit of a handicappers. Loved to play the Trifacta. For you-z whos mother school their children never to lay down a Jefferson on a hag, may not be aware be this gambling term, it means to play a wager on the horse to crossing the finish line in the order 1st 2nd and 3rd. Win Place and Show. Win Place. While my friend poured over each horse’s history in the handicapper’s rags. I just chose my picks on how much I likes the horse’s name. 989 Rabbit Holes The path of the geek is long and deep. Being in Silicon Valley in the late 70s if you had a cursor interest in Networks you were easily swept up in the techno-Gyr. Spent major time working with Sun, then Red Hat then SUSE. I had a 1200 baud Hayse before it was released to the public. Built a mess of servers. Ran Sendmail. Ran IRC. Ran Apanche. Try my hand at Microsoft’s servers, but frankly, their stuff sucked. Taught Unix class, now I’m just happy to wander around Discord. If your now current everything is above your pay grade. 869 Speed I think I may be repeating myself. Cus’ the topic seems vaguely familiar. Of courses you would need to be pretty rain-many to remember just shy of 1000 topics. A dim reference to the coolest kid in my high school. Rose Converse. Girl would give James Dean a run for his money. And she did in a shocking blue VW. Spent many night cruzing Spent many nights on the interstate going nowhere fast. Rose had a mayonnaise jar full of white crosses. Pop Em like malted milk balls. It was speed on speed waiting the morning to crash. I smile at the memory. RICHARD --- A time and a place --- Apparently, I suffer from lack of social awareness. No matter what I happen to be doing, someone will give me a dirty look and mutter, "There’s a time and a place for that!" Well, that may well be the case, but I've yet to find that particular place, and even then, I certainly wouldn't know the appropriate time. It's all so unnecessarily complicated. Who gets to decide what's appropriate anyway? If I want to do something, then why can’t I decide the time and the place? Anyway, I'll have to stop typing now… Somebody else wants to use the toilet! LIZZIE Begin at the beginning and rush, rush, rush. In a hurry, in a hurry, always. Everything changes. Everything shifts. Everything ends. Then, you stop. And there's still nothing. You hoped there would be something. But the tick tock ticked tocked away, faintly. Where to? Tell me, where to? And no one cared... Your place is no more. You stopped. Your loss. Now, there's nothing you can do about it. And you're left with that hole you already had, because there was nothing there before and there is nothing there now. Hope? What is hope? Nothing. Yes, the joke's on you. SERENDIPIDY Your trouble is that you’re far too arrogant. You think you know it all, and that you're better than anyone else. Well, don't even think about trying it on with me, because I won't think twice about putting you in your place. And don't think that just because you're bigger and stronger than me that I won't. Size and strength impresses me as little as your attitude does.

In dread R’lyeh, Cthulhu lies dreaming. Well, that is, until the crash of a shipwreck woke him up. “What the hell was that?” growled the massive tentacled alien beast. A pirate walked up to him. “Hi, I’m George,” said George. “I’m lost.” Cthulhu looked at George with bewilderment. Nobody has ever looked upon him without going completely mad. “Don’t you feel the urge to drool and gibber incoherently?” “Not really.” Cthulhu gave George directions. “Thanks,” said George, and he left. A day later, he returned. “Was that a left or a right?” he asked. Cthulhu sighed, and drew a map.

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. His priorities were completely out of whack. "No, George, you can't have your own parking space," said the captain. "We're pirates. We're always out at sea, plundering. You'll never need a parking space." During the next raid, George somehow managed to plunder a Buick dealership. "Oh, great," grumbled George. "Now where will I park this car?" He tried to park in the captain's space, but the captain had George's car towed. George gave the Buick back to the dealership. He filled the tank, but he didn't have it washed.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate. After he heard Lyle Lovett's "If I Had A Boat" he bought himself a pony. Together, they sailed out on the ocean, and George rode the pony on his boat. It's not easy riding a pony on a boat. I could understand doing it on a big cruise ship. When George ran into rough seas, and he and the pony fell overboard. He had to let the pony sink to save himself. For the rest of the voyage, George missed the pony. He could have used the horse meat.

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. During the American Revolutionary War, he obtained letters of marque from both the colonists and the British Empire, and he stole from pretty much everyone. When he raided ships leaving England for the Americas, they had a lot of soldiers, weapons, and ammunition. Those raids didn't end well. So, he preferred to raid ships leaving the Americas for England. The soldiers tended to be tired or wounded, and easier to defeat. Their cargo was worthless: barrels with the preserved bodies of the dead, heading home for a proper burial.

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. He wasn't very good at following procedures. He'd be stacking cannonballs or swabbing the deck, and he'd be told "You're doing it wrong, stupid. The captain announced a change last week, don't you remember?" It happened a lot, and one day. George snapped, screaming "Why doesn't anybody write this shit down?" "Because half of the crew can't read," growled the captain. "Besides, I'm busy doing other things than meaningless paperwork. You should write them down." So, George did. With a permanent marker on the captain's face while he slept.

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. The people of Hamlin were desperate, so they called on George to rescue their children from The Pied Piper. George came back the next day with crates full of rats, and he released them. "No, you idiot," said the mayor. "The Pied Piper led those away first. When we refused to pay, he led away our children." "Ah, ok," said George. "Sorry." The next day, George came back with The Pied Piper. "My rate has doubled," said The Piper. "Oh, and I prefer Bitcoin." George took a 10% commission.

Lisa Richard Lizzie Thomas Ian Serendipidy Tom Norval Joe Tom Planet Z The next topic is Place LISA The Server Pete, a medical student, was working part time as a waiter. It’d been a difficult shift a packed restaurant with one particularly rude customer mostly insulting him and questioning his intelligence. He didn’t contradict her. It was a placement week and the same awful customer had been in a nasty car crash. Her shoulder had come out of its socket; He quickly and efficiently popped it back in. As he left the cubicle she asked if she knew him. “I was your thicko waiter, the other night.” Pete smiled, “I’ll be back to stitch your facial injuries in a moment.” RICHARD — 404 --- It was me. I was the one who opened the email that brought my laptop down. And it was my laptop that went on to crash the network and bring the server down. The same server that went on to trash the data centre, which screwed the web and brought down the internet completely. Yes, you can blame me for it all. I'm the one who single-handedly broke the information super highway. And apparently, it's not going to be fixed any time soon, so they tell me. But why not look on the bright side? No more dodgy emails! LIZZIE "Arsenic? We apologize. The server is offline." The questions continued until the server was back online. Everyone resumed clicking their buttons frantically. Some even chanted "the server is online, the server is online". What were the little tables for? "Roleplay," was the answer. She didn't know where the menu was, but the waiter whispered "no worries". He'd explain everything. The needle. What? No. But but... "the server is back online". Now she understood the little joke. "Here, Happy Birthday, have fun". She was a widow, a black widow. Go to the RP café and have some arsenic on our tab. THOMAS Server Mr. Liu moved like a shadow through Jade Lantern, his age hidden beneath a crisp blue jacket and knowing smile. He delivered plates of thousand-year eggs and drunken shrimp with eerie precision, never writing orders down, never making a mistake. One night, a new customer hesitated over a plate of braised eel. Mr. Liu leaned in. “Eat,” he whispered. “It’s watching.” The man laughed nervously, but Mr. Liu did not. He simply walked away, humming an old tune. Later, when the plate was empty, the man swore he saw Liu give the eel’s discarded bones a small, approving nod. IAN The Server “Soup’s cold!” “Well, I didn’t make it!” thinks Larry, apologizing. “The guy on table 5 says this soup’s cold,” Larry tells the chef. “Christ, don’t shoot the messenger,” Larry thinks seeing Fat Steve’s violent glare. Swearing, Fat Steve vindictively overheats it, and Larry takes it back. “I’m never coming here again!” says the table five guy. “Good, fuck off!” thinks Larry, heroically maintaining his composure, squeezed in the vice of customer and chef. Later he reads the feedback on the restaurant app. Terrible food, worse service. In bed, he receives his manager’s text message. See me before your shift tomorrow. SERENDIPIDY Whether you've enjoyed your meal, or not, please don't forget to tip the server. Make it a decent tip too, none of your measly ten or twenty percent. Better still, go the whole hog, the food is cheap enough for you to double-up, a hundred percent seems a reasonable ask to me. Your server works hard, particularly with what they have to deal with behind the scenes in the kitchen. So, please consider being generous. If not, don't blame me when they wait outside for you with a cleaver. And you'll end up as tomorrow's dish of the day! TOM Rabbit Holes The path of the geek is long and deep. Being in Silicon Valley in the late 70s if you had a cursor interest in Networks you were easily swept up in the techno-Gyr. Spent major time working with Sun, then Red Hat then SUSE.

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. Any time he led a raid on another ship, things didn't end well. Unless you count that time George led a raid on that Filipino cruise ship. They were going to rob the casino, but people mistook them for actors playing pirates. "This is better than the shows in Vegas!" said the cruise ship's captain. "Can you do this for every one of our cruise ships?" George's captain signed the contract, and they made more money playing pirate roles than actually being pirates. George kept busy stitching up costumes.

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. Most sailors speak in ways that are saltier than the seas, but George did his best to avoid swearing. He had a swear jar by his bunk, and every time he swore, he'd put a piece of eight in it. His shipmates would steal from the jar, and George would shout "WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY?" And he'd drop another piece of eight in the jar. Which his shipmates would also steal. His shipmates eventually stole enough money to throw themselves a party. No, they didn't invite George.

George was a dervish, but he wasn't a very good dervish. He tried to whirl, but he'd get dizzy quickly, and he'd trip over his own feet. So, he tried to whirl the other way, and he'd trip over his feet even more quickly. That's when George decided to give up whirling, and he'd stand perfectly still. "What good is a dervish who does not whirl?" growled his dance master. "Does not the earth turn?" said George. "And orbit the sun? Which orbits the galaxy?" The dance master pondered this, and then slapped George on the back of the head.

George was a pirate, but he wasn't a very good pirate. He sailed the world, adventuring with his shipmates. But unlike them, he would take in local culture and cuisine. He'd be sipping coffee at a sidewalk cafe or enjoying some delicacy in a hole-in-the-wall while they'd be lining up at the McDonalds for a Big Mac and fries. And then they'd plunder and loot the place, burning it to the ground. George didn't try to convince his crewmates that going local was better than franchise food. Because he didn't want them plundering, looting, and burning his favorite places, too.