Hotel

Chelsea Hotel

“What’s he building in there,” the kids thought as they peeked through the dusty windows in the back. The old man stayed in the basement of the hotel for days on a row. Darkness engulfed his shadow even deeper as he paced back and forth. Strange noises, hammering sounds. The scar on his face, the tattoo on his arm, was he in jail? Every now and then he glanced at the windows and the kids cringed, wondering what he was building in there. They could swear they heard someone moaning the other day. Where is that poet who went missing…?

(Inspired by Tom Waits song “What’s He Building in There”)

100 Word Stories

In they walk. Rough faces. Unusual people. Provocative words.  A reception and all that. Rooms and more rooms. 100, 211, floors all the way to the roof and they lived and they died. Breakfasts and lunches and dinners. And people with voices. Westwards in time. Eastwards in crime. Unique individuals. Talks and sounds. Out they go never again, into the inevitable public recognition. They struggle and they struggle. This is their haven. And here they will live and there they will die some more. Forever alone in a stifling crowd, they yearn to come back, because home is a thought.

 

Observe

Eternity Island Gallery

Once upon a time, there was a wise man who firmly

Believed the world was much more than what he could see. The man was

Scorned by those who thought they knew everything. So, he decided to

Embark on a voyage of learning and understanding.  The people he met

Reminded him of how small his knowledge was. After years of travelling, he thought

Very well. Everything I saw, I’ll share.

Even if it’s just a little, I’ll share. He came back home and became a teacher.

Writer's Dash

Elation

Mare Serenitatis

Her face turned into a strange unusual tone of green mixed with yellow. Never, in her whole life, had she even remotely imagined that this would be as bad as that day when her cousin forced her to go up on a roller-coaster that, at some point, turned them upside down and kept them suspended for a few seconds, seconds that seemed like an eternity of pain and suffering. Her lungs tried to evade through her mouth and her stomach started a revolution of its own. The dream of an exotic, romantic time spent with her love quickly turned into a nightmare of unexpected proportions and… no lovey dovey (he had decided that it was time to trade her for a sassy twenty year old). Her whole system shut down. She had everything, from headaches to lumps on her arms, from back pain to blue spots on her toes, much to the amusement of everyone else. Now, she wasn’t quite sure if all this discomfort came from her “emotional imbalance caused by an eminent reboot of the system”, as a psychic had gravely explained to her when that same cousin dragged her to a “very professional Madame Theroux”. She was rather suspicious of the way that psychic talked; rebooting the system didn’t quite strike her as psychic lingo. But we digress. No lovey dovey, right? So, she decided to go with a few friends. Well, bad idea. Those loving friends turned into Mr. Hydes in the blink of an eye. They totally dismissed her greenness and were very happy to stay away from her most of the time. As they arrived at the island, everyone went about their business and she was left to her own demise. She could not walk much, but she was certainly not going to stay in the ship. As she stepped out, she spotted a garden with a bench, oh blessed sight, she thought. She sat down. And another victim sat beside her almost immediately. He looked kind of green but with traces of blue instead of yellow. They looked at each other and there was a silent complicity. He held her hand and nodded. She turned red. He smiled. She stuck her tongue out. He too turned red. They sat side by side for an hour. As they heard the transatlantic speakers bombarding a “Dear passengers of the Oceanic Elation, this cruise ship will leave in fifteen minutes. Please board within that time. If you don’t, you’ll be left here and we will certainly not return to pick you up. Thank you.”That did sound a bit odd to her, but she had decided that boarding was not an option, even if dragged by her hair, and that she was going to make this island her home, considering the only way out was by sea. “Will you stay with me?” she asked. He nodded. Her so-called friends boarded and never noticed she stayed behind. But she didn’t care. Elation did have many faces!

Writer's Dash

Red, Not Pink

Mare Serenitatis

Not again… the moon was pink! Rose was tired of that sissy color. She liked red.  So, Rose decided to do something about it. She climbed to the top of the church tower, as close to the moon as she could get. Then she pricked her finger on the cross and she stretched and stretched all the way to the moon. As she touched it, it turned into a beautifully bright red. The problem was when she tried to come down and lost her balance falling flat on her back. The last thing she saw was that damn pink moon.

100 Word Stories

Affliction

ClockTree Park

No one knew what to do.  They tried everything incessantly. Like in their daily lives, they never stopped. Time and time again, they would find her enjoying a sunset or looking at cats for hours, they said in the news. Family members and friends alike were stuck in this spiral of concern and personal defeat for not being able to change things. At the hospital, the doctors had never seen such a difficult case. The police set up a perimeter around the city to catch her and take her in for treatment. People could not accept the fact that there was one person in the city who simply enjoyed doing nothing in particular instead of always doing something. She would disappear and hide, they thought, where she could not be found for weeks. On one of these occasions, a man walked past the small rowboat where she was resting. He thought this must be the woman everyone talked about in the news, the one who was terribly ill. At first, he stayed far away. He really didn’t want to catch anything. But then he decided to walk up to her. She looked at him and smiled. She did not look that ill, he thought. She waved and motioned him to sit down next to her. The rowboat was a bit unstable, understandably, but he managed to sit and looked at what she was looking. He was speechless. He had never noticed how blue the sky was. He had never noticed the birds and the cat on the shore. He had never noticed how nice it felt to be cradled by the soft waves. He looked at her and knew. He was now ill too. But for the life of him, he just could not understand why this was considered such a terrible affliction.

Writer's Dash

Wombat

Hoss!

“Wombat.”

“What?”

“Wombat?”

“What on earth…?”

“The mammal.”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with meeroos?”

“It looks like one.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Of course it does. Look!” And he produced a picture of a wombat.

“That does not look like a meeroo.”

“Yeah, right, what do you know about meeroos? Nothing.”

“I know enough. Cute little bug-eyed, big-eared, four-legged breedable in that virtual thing called Second Life.”

“Ok, you don’t like meeroos.”

“I do!”

“Nope. If you did, you wouldn’t say virtual thing and certainly not breedables.”

“Like they are not, huh?”

“Yes, but it would be like calling your cat a … four-legged felis catus.”

“Ok, let’s drop it.”

“A wombat is a meeroo.”

“I’m leaving.”

“It is.”

“Shut up.”

“Look!”

“Not listening!”

“I’ll write a book about meeroos and wombats,” thought Mike very sure of himself. “After all, these are two endangered species.”

The door suddenly opened.

“Mr. Foster and Mr. Thomas, it’s time for your medication.”

Writer's Dash

Centrifuge

Mare Serenitatis

Centrifuge Gymnastics – episodes of an extremely ridiculous hype by Anthony Loop

Episode 1 - “Come on, centrifuge, centrifuge. Come on, come on!” It was driving him crazy. The trainer’s screechy voice made him lose his concentration and he was new to these centrifugal exercises inspired in the Sufi whirling dervishes. They were the new hype. The gyms were packed with people wanting to gyrate tirelessly. Special prices were devised so everyone could experiment with the immensely peaceful feeling of rebirth coming from centrifugal forces. His friends had warned him. The centrifuge fun was not that fun when one lost its focus. And alas!, when he bumped his head against Mrs. St. Patrick’s mighty bosom and she in turn slapped him violently making him centrifuge all the way back to the weights machine, he decided that that was it for him. No more. “And go, and go, centri-fuge, centri-fuge. And go, and go, four more times! And one… and two…” He could just aim for the head of that trainer; the bottle he was holding filled with some liquid totally unidentifiable and green, he had had to buy to enhance the centrifugal effect, they said, looked pretty sturdy, or he could just…. Immersed in indescribable devilish thoughts, he totally missed a centrifugal Mrs. St. Patrick whirling in his direction at high speed, knocking him down head first into the gym mattresses and making him turn into a sandwich filling between the said mattresses and a pretty big Mrs. St. Patrick. Amongst all the commotion of a fallen amazon, yes because when he had been slapped no one cared, the centrifuge stopped leaving the high pitched trainer alone in the opposite corner of the room. No one noticed though that he was suddenly covered in a green slimy stuff. Good thing the centrifuge gymnastics hadn’t ruined his aim!”

Writers Dash

Moon

Tripsaville

To Circe

Aim for the moon, said her friend. And she did. She collected broken tiles, blue, red, green, and glued them on a cardboard the size of the moon. People thought she was crazy obsessing over those tiles, but she didn’t pay any attention. She was on a mission. Yellow, purple, orange. She gathered all the colors except one. Should that color go in there too? Suddenly, a kid said “the black is missing”. No black, she thought. “The moon will look better,” and he smiled. Life is full of colors but the kid’s smile was the one she really needed.

100 Word Stories

We Love To Be Hated

Mare Serenitatis - Waiting for a communication

Who said that?! Honestly! Don’t be negative! Let’s try to figure things out calmly and maturely, ok? Ok… Much has been written about Linden Lab’s decision regarding the SL9B (Second Life 9^th Birthday). Here is more! Ready? There won’t be any sims with woohoo parties or colorful builds like last year. There won’t be any commercial messages disguised as pretend-to-be art installations. And there won’t be any awesome cool builds either. There will be no land. No land means no party. No party means no cake! Residents are used to having cake. They have had cake for the past few birthdays. No cake, means… oh no, dieting! Instead of having a handful of sims with everyone working cozily and brotherly for the common good, we will have… neighborhood celebrations? I enjoyed last year’s cake, to be honest, but well, I am known for not giving up when faced with extreme adversity such as… having no birthday cake! SO, I guess I will buy a few fireworks and throw them in my street (yes, I am lame, I don’t own a sim) annoying the hell out of the cats and driving hunters nuts with lag. My neighborhood will organize some events. We can set up a few readings (and I don’t mean fortune readings… although now that I think of it… we even have the Lenormand deck up in the Gothic Castle already!) and a few parties (one, because the repetitive yooohoooos and yuppieees are kind of boring; although we do have a wonderful ballroom… decisions, decisions). We can also organize a few races (a fairly new idea about to come true). It’s my partner’s fault. His persistence produced the magic of making a race track appear in a few days. Oh, wait a second! “The Magic of Second Life” was last year’s birthday theme. There is no theme this year, is there? *panicking* Have I missed that communication?! *looks through the extremely well-organized Linden Lab communication channels feverishly and furiously; oh darn, no such thing…*. Moving on, we can also come up with a few art exhibitions (only because our neighbor and co-conspirator is about to open an art gallery!), a few discussions (probably four, if the celebrations last a month) and and and… well, ok, we’ll throw in another party for good measure, there! Then, I’ll post these amazing, fantastic, thrilling events (driving friends, acquaintances and followers crazy) in the Destination Guide, Search and Groups, Tweeters, blogs and company, where they will get buried under a ton of other similarly amazing, fantastic and thrilling events. Yay! Power to the people! I’m ok with power and dieting, really; I need to get ready for the summer anyway. The only thing I am concerned about is whether I am going to celebrate SL9B alone in my street or if I need to set a bunch of extra plates at the table! Could a Linden please send me a postcard (yes, that thing you have to glue a stamp on), since online communications seem to be a bit faulty? Thank you!