Some dude over 250 years ago said we will all hang separately or we can all hang together. If I were there, I would’ve shouted I don’t wanna be hanged at all. I mean if you’re hanging separately, you’re dead. If you’re hanged all together, it’s not just that you’re dead, but you feel kind of embarrassed everyone else being hanged seeing you being hanged. Unless you’re the last one to be hanged. Then I guess you’re sitting there watching everyone probably pissing and shitting yourself knowing that you’re going to be hanged. How about a little positivity, founding fathers?
Her number
She was beautiful and smart and I thought maybe I could ask her number. She told me it was the last 10 digits of pi. At first, I felt crushed, no way I was in a league and she knew it. But then. What if? So I finished my degree in mathematics, soldier through a masters degree and dedicated my doctoral thesis to her. Which calculated the last 10 digits of pi. And I called her number. But I was too late. She’d married the varsity quarterback who dominated in college and pros and all I did was become famous.
Faster than us
The first faster than light ships carried inorganic cargo. The time dilation field was hazardous for regular organic material. But eventually, we invented a shielding system that worked. Colonizing the planets, and then the stars came soon after. Communication methods were performed by a fleet of Messenger drones. It was weird hearing about catastrophic experiments with fusion on a star. You could clearly see in the night sky, but knowing that some scientists bungled the math and set off a supernova. Well, we won’t see it for another few thousand years, but still, it’s pretty to look at out there.
Triage
We bandaged Herman‘s left leg and had him stand up. He was a little wobbly at first, but eventually he was able to take a few steps, nod and head back out the door. The painkillers we infuse in bandages aren’t that strong, but they tend to do the trick. The door opened again, and a woman was holding her arm. I checked for a possible broken wrist. I did a few reflex tests before opening up another bandage and wrapping her arm. She moved her fingers and we got her in a swing before sending her out the door.
Weekly Challenge #1054 – Pathetic
Sorry it was a day late.
- Lizzie
- Richard
- Serendipidy
- Norval Joe
- Planet Z
RICHARD
Written off
I’m in a writers’ group.
There must be nearly thirty of us in all, and everyone, with the exception of me, has aspirations.
Some are working on their first novel, and several of the group are already published authors; some are even making a living from writing full-time. We even have one who had a best-seller with a national bookstore chain.
Not me.
I started my novel over thirty years ago, and I still haven’t got beyond chapter three.
So, I’ll just stick to a hundred words, I can just about manage that every week.
Pathetic, isn’t it?
SERENDIPIDY
You’re a pathetic little worm who doesn’t even merit being recognised as a human being.
A loser and a basket case, who will never succeed in anything they do and will leave nothing as a legacy when their miserable life comes to an unwholesome and untimely end.
You’re hopeless: doomed to perpetual failure, and when you’re gone, nobody will care, or mourn your loss.
Why bother trying? You may as well give up right now and accept your fate. You will always be pathetic.
That was my school report at age fifteen.
No wonder I turned out like I did!
LIZZIE
Pathetic. The word reverberated in her mind. The beach house was nearly empty now. He moved on and got offended when she found out. He begged for “a second chance”. But she packed up her stuff and walked away. Deal with it. The problem was, he didn’t want his “new life” anymore. “It wasn’t fun”. Get a house, have kids, go to work, come back home. Suddenly, what he had with her was what he had with the other one. Boring. Shame the beach house was one of the casualties. She moved on. It’s nice to be free, she thought.
NORVAL JOE
“Why did you bring her here?” Sabrina asked, curling her lip. “Nobody wants Lindimindi around.”
Mandi’s mouth dropped open in shock.
Billbert frowned, thinking deeply. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t leave her at her mansion, by herself.”
“You’re pathetic.” Sabrina folded her arms and turned away.
No one expected Patrick to speak up. “No. Sabrina. You’re pathetic. I listened to you when you were in our basement. You were delirious from our sensory deprivation experiment. Did you cry for help? For your grandmother? No! You shouted at Billbert that he was too stupid and lazy to come and find you.”
PLANET Z
Ollie was the bane of Olive Garden. Yeah the Guinness book Record for most breadsticks eaten in an hour. I won’t give you the number because that’ll just encourage you. I mean, you could look it up, but that’ll start you on a dangerous road. Ollie ate so many breadsticks, his stomach exploded, and there was nothing they could do for him, and he died. Unlike Leslie, his wife who had the record for most bowls of salad, eaten in under an hour. She went light on the salad dressing, so it was healthier. Unlike her carbohydrate addicted husband was.
Elevaterror
There were three elevators in the Montgomery building. You could get into the elevator on the left and when you got to your floor, you were coming out of the elevator doors on the right. Terry tried this a few times and sure enough the strange phenomenon transported her to a different elevator door. It was always the right floor. Just a different set of doors on that floor. She asked others and they said yeah, it’s a little weird, but the stairs are a lot weirder. We lost people that way. It was… bad. Terry kept to the elevators.
Eldest
Bonnie came from a big family out on the farm four brothers and four sisters. She was the oldest, and when her mother died of tuberculosis, she became the glue that held the family together. Getting all the kids out into the fields, and then out to school. She was the one who milked the cows. Her father never said thank you. She couldn’t do everything though so every kid had a household chore from laundry to sweeping to cooking. Some fought back, draining her energy. She lit the fire that burned the place down, everybody tied into their beds.
Bookworm queen
Nancy Whitcombe was the prom queen by default. Everyone else had dropped out or was too sick to go, or worse. There’d been a horrible bus accident after the football game where most of the senior class ended up dying in a flaming wreck. The ones who had been too sick from food poisoning in the cafeteria to go to the game, consider themselves lucky. And Nancy had been a total bookworm. She never went to games or parties ended up as prom queen. She also graduated at the top of her class. It looks good on her college applications.
Sea of grass
The neighborhood was a nice wooded place with houses and driveways and all that. You got lots of shade in the summer from the tall trees. Every now and then you’d have to cut back a branch or take out and hold dead tree, but for the most part, it felt like living in forest. Then people moved away or died, and we were the only original family left, and people started coming in, knocking down all houses, cutting down the trees and putting up their little mini mansions and we’re the last tiny forest and a sea of grass.
Lich mayor
Gartham the Witch King has been a really good mayor these past 300 years. Our little town is quite self-sustaining. And when we need occasional injections of goods and cash, we just put out the call for heroes to come save us from the lich that lives in the caves with his undead army. Nobody comes close to defeating him, and the more fresh souls we provide, the fewer towns people he needs to harvest. It’s a pretty good arrangement, and every year we hold a festival in his honor, and he waves his bony hand to the adoring crowd.