Category: Wednesday Words
100 Word Wednesdays – Police Blotter Stories – Make It Stop!
Another 100 word story based on an item from the police blotter of my hometown of Burlingame, CA. Enjoy! Link to the article follows the story.
Make It Stop
By Grant Baciocco
Day 365
It started at 5:30am this morning. A bit earlier than it has the past few days. Today he’s using the side of his fist, a nice departure from him using his knuckles. Perhaps they are sore from 6 days in a row. Good. He deserves a little pain for the pain he’s put me through.
I had thought I’d grown used to it now that is has been a year, but I do believe, today, I have reached my wits end. Today I may have to do something about it. I may have to make a call.
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100 Word Wednesdays – Police Blotter Story – It Sucks
Another 100 word pice of fiction inspired by an item in the police blotter of my hometown of Burlingame, CA. Link to the item that inspired the story and the blotter it came from at the end of the page.
It Sucks
By Grant Baciocco
Shane looked at the carpet closely. His nose inches from the thick orange shag. After a minute he stood up. “Nope. It’s still there.”
Thomas clenched his fists, “It’s can’t still be there! I vacuumed it! Twice!”
Shane sighed, “Then, as I told you, the vacuum is broken.”
“It can’t be broken! I bought it two weeks ago!”
“From the Goodwill, Thomas! It’s a crappy vacuum cleaner! Why do you think someone donated it?”
Thomas’ hand clenched the glass in his hand. He was close to throwing it.
“Wait.” Shane said, “Maybe you just do not know how to vacuum.”
—
Wednesday Words – Good Dog
Good Dog
By Grant Baciocco
“Don’t go in the field.” Timmy’s mother had told him before he and Maisy had left the house.
“I should have listened.” his brain now said to himself as he held onto the root for dear life. He had been chasing a rabbit with Maisy and had not seen the sinkhole that had recently appeared next to the giant oak that stood in the middle of the large field behind the farm where he lived with his family. Luckily, he had been able to get a good grip on a root as he’d fallen and it had stopped his fall. He hung on for dear life as he looked below him.
The drop was about twenty feet down. He realized if he did fall he’d probably hit the sides of the wall before the bottom so at least the drop wouldn’t kill him. It hadn’t killed the rabbit who was down at the bottom of the hole, now starting to hop around and sniff for a way out of the pit herself. He looked up and he could see the blue sky through the bare branches of the oak. He was about five feet from the lip of the hole. His eyes searched frantically for something he could climb up to the edge, as the root he now clung to would only raise him about a foot or two.
Below him, the rabbit started screaming. Startled, Timmy looked down and saw it was frantically trying to scramble up the slick walls of the sinkhole but kept tumbling back down. Looking closer he saw something move in the shadows below him. Seconds later, his mind snapped into focus that there was nothing in the shadows that was moving, the shadows themselves were moving. A buzzing grew louder in his ears. Squinting harder he saw at least twenty rattlesnakes squirming all over themselves to cross the expanse at the bottom to the terrified rabbit. There was a nest at the bottom of the hole. This is why his mother had warned him against playing in the field.
His grip on the root tightened even more. Sweat began to form all over his body. Again he looked up for some way to boost himself to the lip, but there was nothing but slick muddy walls. The frantic screaming below him grew louder as the snakes attacked the rabbit. Though he’d told himself not to, he looked down as the snake’s venom finally paralyzed the rabbit, silencing her cries, and they began fighting each other for the right to devour the poor creature. “At least Maisy didn’t fall in.” he found himself thinking.
“Maisy!” he said out loud, remembering his dog. “Maisy! Maisy!” he called loudly, partially to drown out the sounds of the disgusting feast happening below him. “Maisy!”
Seconds later the familiar, soft face of his golden retriever appeared over the edge. She sniffed the air and then caught his eye.
“Good girl Maisy!” Timmy breathed, his body weakening from the grip he was applying to the root above him. “Maisy, go home girl! G0 home and get mom!”
Maisy cocked her head as if trying to understand. Timmy repeated, “Go home girl. Get Mom! Bring her back! Hurry! Hurry girl! Go home!”
Maisy couldn’t understand most of the words her friend Timmy was now yelling up at her. She was a dog and, unlike dogs seen following a multitude of commands on television, she was not too bright. She leaned he head closer to Timmy to try and understand. As she did, the smell of a fresh kill filled her nostrils and, for the first time, she saw the carnage happening below Timmy.
“Maisy!” Timmy yelled again, regaining Maisy’s focus, “Go home and get mom!”
Maisy listened intently to him again.
“Go home?” she thought, letting the words circle around in her brain. She knew these words. She new where ‘home’ was. She knew what ‘go’ meant. “Go home.” She understood this. Even though Maisy was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, she was obedient. So, she went home.
An hour later, Maisy sat on the back porch of the farmhouse and looked out across the field waiting for her friend Timmy to emerge and praise her for being so good.
She had gone home.
Wednesday Words – Defeat
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Note on this piece: One of my WIP is a story focused on a group of super villains. Today, while pondering what to write, I figured I’d write a short story of one of them, The Blinding Skull. Who knows, this may wind up in the finished thing or just be a fun “extra.” Enjoy!
Defeat
By Grant Baciocco
No one realizes this, no one ever even thinks about it, but when you’re a superhero and you’re flying at super sonic speeds, it is really hard on your eyes. Think about it, the wind is whipping against your eyeballs at 786 miles per hour. That is rough on the eyeballs no matter who you are. It makes it hard to see where you are going and it dries out the eyes incredibly fast. Again, no one ever thinks about this kind of stuff, but The Blinding Skull did.
He had been sitting around pondering on how exactly he could make a name for himself in the super villain game by taking out Suprema, the most powerful hero in Daily City, when it had hit him. He was examining every scrap of paper he could find on Earth’s Mightiest Woman and it was a packing list that he’d procured from the inept doorman at the Tower of Good that gave him his first clue. The packing list, addressed to Suprema, read simply:
- EyeClear Eye Drops – 2,000 bottles
“What on Earth could she need 2,000 bottles of eye drops for?” He asked himself aloud. His skull glowing a bit brighter as he thought it out. “Perhaps that windbag Santa Ana had escaped from prison again. His hot wind power would certainly dry out one’s eyes.”
A quick search of The Impound’s prisoner manifest revealed that Santa Ana was still locked deep inside from the last time The Mighty Ranch Hand had captured him. So if that wasn’t the answer why, again, did she need 2,000 bottles of eye drops? He made a list…
- Allergies? – Suprema has no known allergies.
- Contacts? – Suprema is ‘the perfect human’ bad eyesight would make her less than perfect.
- Dry eyes due to crying? – Suprema is Earth’s Mightiest Woman? What could she be sad about? Heartbreak?
- Dry eyes due to ???
He was coming up empty until he looked over her stats on her Wikipedia Page. It read that Suprema was capable of ‘supersonic flight.’ She uses the drops because her eyes get dried out at the end of every supersonic flight!
His Skull grew incredibly bright now as his synapses began firing at full velocity. He sensed a possible chink in Suprema’s armor! Suprema’s only know weakness was a mineral called Red-Barrel. A gem so rare there were only two known pieces of it in the known world. Bother were in a lead lined safe in the Tower of Good. But there was a third. A third small piece was unknown to the world. It belonged to The Blinding Skull. It wasn’t enough to hold up in front of Suprema and make her lose her powers, but it was small enough to be ground down.
“Suprema needs eye drops because of her supersonic flight! If I ground down this Red-Barrel and slip into into eye drops and Suprema uses them, I’ll have defeated her for good!” The Blinding Skull cackled with delight and rushed to the elevator to his lab.
The hours ticked by, as did the days, as The Blinding Skull worked. Grinding, refining, pounding the piece of Red-Barrel into a size small enough to slip, unnoticed into a bottle of eye drops. Finally he was ready. He had an amount a he knew would do irreparable harm to Suprema the moment she placed a single drop into her eye.
He was still as he opened the eye dropper bottle and placed it near the small pile of fine Red-Barrel. He slowly, carefully, delicately, pick up the small piece of filter paper the Red-Barrel grounds were on. He slowly, carefully, delicately moved the paper towards the mouth of the bottle careful to not loose a single grain to the wind of movement.
Then, he sneezed.
He thought nothing of his sneeze until his nose was clear and he looked back at the now empty piece of filter paper in his right hand.
Then, he cried.
The Characters of The Blinding Skull, Santa Ana, The Mighty Ranch Hand & Suprema are ©Grant Baciocco/Saturday Morning Media