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Time for another drabble already? Concoct your own 100 word story, and tag it with “friday drabble”.  Link to it in the comments and/or on Twitter with the hashtag #fridaydrabble. Happy Drabbling!

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Did you ever want to run away and live in a museum?

Not me! Although I enjoyed “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” as much as the next kid, the MoMA always seemed like an impractical choice for a stowaway.

No, I’d run away to THE MALL.

Picture it: Spend all night playing the arcade games, stuffing yourself silly in the food court, reading in the bookstores until your eyes crossed, and finally, crashing on a Serta mattress.

What do you mean “You’d get caught”?

Why do you think I took this job as a night watchman?

Must be about time for another drabble! Dig deep within your brain for your own 100 word story, and tag it with “friday drabble”.  Share by linking to it in the comments and/or on Twitter with the hashtag #fridaydrabble. Happy Drabbling!

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They say you can’t go home again.

They’re wrong.

In fact, with that D-Hopper you’re holding there, sliding through dimensions is as easy as falling off a log. Easier even, given how hard it would be to find a— no, strike that. You still have trees, here.

I could go home at any time. Back to the thick, choking air, noxious and burning in your lungs. Back to the toxic swamps under blood red skies. Back to the cancer that awaits, creeping inside you with every breath.

Yes, I can go home again. But why would I ever want to?

It’s Friday, so it must be time for another drabble, the 100-word stories that force you to make it short (but not necessarily sweet).  Join in with your own 100 word stories on Fridays, and tag them with “friday drabble”.  Link to them in the comments and/or on Twitter with the hashtag #fridaydrabble.

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Arms pumping, legs churning, he sprinted toward the finish line. The broken pavement beneath his running shoes tried to trip him up, and only sheer luck kept him vertical, and in the lead.

He flipped a glance over his shoulder, gauging how far back the others were. Could he make it before they caught up to him? Lungs and body burning, he prayed silently that it would be so.

He crossed over the line barely ahead of the pack, and collapsed under their weight.

For the zombies, you see, it was never about the race, but only about the finish.

Time for a special Halloween-themed Friday Drabble!  Join in with your own 100 word stories on Fridays, and tag them with “friday drabble”.  Link to them in the comments and/or on Twitter with the hashtag #fridaydrabble.

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George loathed Halloween. He planned to lay low while the neighborhood kids made their rounds, begging treats from strange adults.

“WAAAAH!” he screamed, spying the man in the corner.

Floating.

Above the ground.

“Friendly neighborhood poltergeist here,” the apparition moaned. “I’m supposed to give you a heads’ up about the new Participation Law. Any folks that don’t hand out candy get haunted until next Halloween.”

As George shuffled down the candy aisle, a young man caught his eye.

“It’s gotta be a trick, right?”

George shrugged, and sighed. He was NOT looking forward to the Easter Bunny’s visit next spring.

It’s Friday, so it must be time for another drabble, the 100-word stories that force you to make it short (but not necessarily sweet).  Join in with your own 100 word stories on Fridays, and tag them with “friday drabble”.  Link to them in the comments and/or on Twitter with the hashtag #fridaydrabble.

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I absentmindedly spun the water bottle in my hands.  ”NOW WITH 10x MORE OXYGEN!” the label screamed in inch-high letters. Turning to Jake, I asked, “How can they claim this? Can one bottle of water really have more oxygen than another?”

He shrugged, grabbed the bottle from my hands and took a swig. “Not sure. But I know what I’d do to make that claim, and I bet I’d even save money in the manufacturing costs!”

“Oh yeah, how’s that?” I asked him, curious.

He grinned. “Just fill the bottle up only 90% of the way. Voilà! 10x more oxygen!”

Good news! I’m flying home today to take up residence again in North Carolina! My “3 month assignment” is finally complete after approximately 15 months up in Minnesota.  Right now it looks like I’ll finally be able to sleep in my own bed and kiss my wife and kids goodnight every night, and do so for the foreseeable future!  Hooray!

This also means that I’ll be having a little more free time to post, which should mean I’m doing more than slinging up drabble every week.  I’ve volunteered to help write some posts for the Scifi Media Group that Budd founded, and I’ve already got some lined up for that (coming soon to a blogspot near you).  Of course, I’m planning on spending a lot of time with my family, too, so even though I’ll be writing more, I might ease back into the posting so not as to overwhelm myself and end up in the same spot I was after NaBloPoMo a couple of years back (where I posted for 30 days straight, and then only had 5 posts in the 2 months following thereafter).

So without further ado, here’s this week’s drabble, in honor of Banned Books Week.

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Fridays are the days I post one or two “drabble“, the 100-word stories that test your ability to convey an entire story idea in an extremely brief format.  Feel free to join in and write your own 100 word stories on Fridays, and tag them with “friday drabble”.  Link to them in the comments and/or on Twitter with the hashtag #fridaydrabble.

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A Slippery Slope

First books were banned, then schools, then education in general.

Soon followed prohibitions concerning consumption of green vegetables, bathing, newspapers (and news reporting in general), public displays of affection, and regimented exercise.  People were at a loss with what to do with all their free time when employment was banned.

But the final straw, which incited rebellion and the eventual downfall of the empire, was the proclamation banning “girls and their cooties”.

Years later, looking back, the historians all agreed that it had been a monumentally bad idea to allow the child-emperor to dictate law according to his 8-year-old whims.

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