Short Story – Running Shoes

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download the Running Shoes PDF

Running Shoes – By: Danny Machal

Part I

‘My name, is Berry Augustine.’

‘I’m thirty five years old and I’m a sick man.’

‘I’m also now, dead.’

‘At the age of twenty nine I was surprised to find there was a woman who would marry me.  My lovely wife Dana; she must have been sick too.  No sane and healthy woman would ever get involved in my situation.’

‘She is sad that I’ve gone, but she’s also the strongest woman I’ve ever met.  She’ll never stop loving me or forget me and the void I’ve left in her will be filled quickly.  She is just that kind of person, a survivor.  Not like me.  I was weak.’

‘You see, they told me I have obsessive compulsive disorder.  The three letters OCD would somehow define me to a lot of folks.  I’m a person ya’ know? I’m not just an ATM for the pharmaceutical corporations, and it isn’t like I’m contagious.’
Read the rest of this entry »

100 Words – They are little people, not midgets.

Weekly Challenge #163 – Death by Pineapple, Revenge shall be mine, failed Wolfram Alpha queries.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

We are little people.

My Father never hesitated to point out the things we weren’t capable of.

The constant mental abuse battered against my Mother’s mental ramparts.

She might be a small midget, but her pride was as large as a full grown man.

Smuggling a syringe from her work, she would make him a special Hawaiian pizza that night.

I typed the word ‘arsenic’ into the WolframAlpha frame work after we got back from Dad’s funeral.

No results were returned about it killing anyone.

—————————————————————-

Danny says –

1) I’ll record the audio for this story later today.

2) Give Blood and Thanks is postponed until tomorrow night.

3) Working on a REALLY cool story that I need to get finished up for GreatHites.

4) I’m going to do NanoWriMo this year.  So the time  has come for me to kick around ideas and start outlining.  Click the link to learn more about NanoWriMo.

5) I’ve got so much crap in the hopper right now it is disgusting.  I need to get the word count up and that is all there is to it.

6) I love you guys

100 Words – Mosquitoes and Prosthetics

The madness of topics continues over at the 100 word story podcast.  This week’s topic is equally as weird as the last.

hint: I wrote this story only after reading the wikipedia entry on mosquitoes.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

“Buzzalina, come dear, tell me what happened,” the surgeon said.

“Oh doctor, I’ll never be a mother now.  I should just kill myself; I’m useless.”

“There there, sweet, sweet girl.  Things will be okay.”

He held her while she wept.  No, she would never bare any children and she would probably ensure her own end.  A broken proboscis almost always means instant death, she was lucky.  One could call it a miracle from up above – a testament to the power of faith and the prayer of her family.

A.P. – Cybernetics Inc. releases organic flesh like covering for metal replacement limbs.

100 Words – Elvis, Choke, Fire? WHAT?!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

It was a rainy afternoon in Seattle when they got off the bus for lunch.  Eight homemade renderings of the King all sat around the teppanyaki table as the chef danced with razor sharp ginsu knives.  Gold Elvis clasped his hands around his throat, a large piece of beef wasn’t going down, and the Heimlich proved ineffective.

Gold Elvis writhed in panic and toppled a bottle of oil onto the griddle.  The flames ignited a White Elvis rhinestone cape triggering the sprinkler system.  Gold Elvis fell to the floor, an umbrella popped open.  The Benihana chef acted quickly with a Ginsu Tracheotomy.

“Beginners luck,” he said, wiping the blood on his apron.

100 Words – Telescope + surprise ending.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Telescope

There are billions of stars in the sky.  Eastern philosophy says that man’s destiny is written in these red giants, supernovas, pulsars and constellations.  That’s what my Dad says anyway; he is an astronomer at UCLA.  He is my hero, and someday, I’ll be an astronomer, just like him.

When I was thirteen he got me a high powered telescope for my birthday.  I was lucky to have the upstairs room, and he was beaming proud that I used that telescope every day.  My father gave me the greatest gift a boy could ever want.  I gazed on the perfect symmetrical moons of Suzi Morris’s tits every single starry night.