4/10/17

A Reddit Story

For a writing warm-up, occasionally I go to Reddit.  There is a subreddit there called Writing Prompts.  I pick one and just go with it.  I give it very little thought and just roll, letting the story just develop.  I find that it helps my mind get to the right place to work on other projects, namely The Book, that ever present project that sits in the back of my head.

One night, around midnight, I decided to pop out a story.  I hadn't written that day so I wanted to get one out.  I found a prompt and just let go.  It's a stupid story, one that doesn't make any sense.  But it made me laugh so I posted it.

Somehow, and I have no idea how, it became my most popular story.  Throughout the next day, I was hit with so many comments that I couldn't keep up.  I've decided to post that story here.  Maybe you guys can figure out what made this one work better than the others.

Enjoy!

Prompt:
After too many ridiculous and lengthy lawsuits dominate the world's courts, the world's leaders decided to pass a law to remove all warning labels.  The Darwin Act has just been passed...

Here is my take on that prompt.  I'm currently sitting at 3,000 upvotes.  Who knows why.

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Sarah Miller, exhausted from a double shift, put her green blouse into the washing machine. She poured her Clorox Bleach in and washed the garment. 30 minutes later she mindlessly threw the blouse into the dryer and set it for 50 minutes. Sarah promptly fell asleep, looking forward to her job interview for the next day. When she awoke 9 hours later, she was frantic as she knew she was going to be late for her job interview at the High Powered Business Person’s Business. She grabbed the blouse, the faint light barely spilling in from her cracked apartment windows and began to iron. The shirt exploded, engulfing her in flames. The flames quickly spread to the rest of her apartment building. 45 innocents perished because the tag that read “Do Not Bleach, Do not Machine Dry, Do Not Iron” was not on her brand new blouse.

Jonathan Sqiggles had just laid down in his bed, ready to enjoy his brand new mattress. He had gotten the mattress from Steve’s Wholesale Bedding just down the street only today. But what he didn’t know, because the label was removed, was that Steve’s Wholesale Bedding had gotten the mattress from a factory in Columbus, Ohio that had used other dirty recycled mattress to make this new mattress. The bedbug attack was so fierce and unexpected that within 20 minutes only a skeleton remained of Mr. Sqiggles.

Muldoon looked in his side view mirror and saw the T rex’s jaws gaping. However, the view in the mirror showed the dinosaur much further behind him than he had thought. He knew that they were safe, despite the screaming of Dr. Malcolm. No one listened to Malcolm and his chaos theory because he was an insufferable bore and know it all. Muldoon breathed a sigh of relief and slowed the jeep down. It wasn’t until Ellie was snatched from the passenger seat of the jeep that he realized objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear. The T-rex soon ate them all. Dr. Grant, upon learning of Ellie’s death but not caring about Malcolm's, became despondent and allowed himself to be eaten as well. The dinosaurs escaped the island and invaded the mainland. No one was prepared because no one even knew that dinosaurs existed once again. New York became a dinosaur buffet.

Tommy Jenkins leaned his back against the wall at the chemical plant. He removed his hard hat and began to think of Linda waiting for him back home. He was lost in his thoughts when he brought his lighter to his mouth, getting ready to inhale that first cigarette after a long shift. He did, then the plant exploded, releasing benzene over half of Dallas County. Half a million people either died or suffered permanent damage due to the chemical cloud. The act was incorrectly labeled a terrorist attack perpetrated by North Korea and international tensions rose.

Jin Soo, a South Korean badass, finished welding the surplus jet engine onto the top of his used Volkswagen Beetle. He downed his beer, a Natural Light that a Texan sent him, and got into his car. When he was ready, he smiled at the small gathering of friends around him and uttered the last words anyone would ever hear him say: “Let’s light this candle!” His friends were standing too close behind the jet engine and quickly caught fire. The little car took off and soon found itself airborne without any way to control it. North Korea, mistaking the car for a missile attack, fired its own missiles. However, the guidance systems were so bad, probably made at a mattress company in Columbus, Ohio, that they quickly veered off course. The dear leader was right, they had been able to make missiles that could reach any continent in the world. 45 nuclear missiles landed in Antarctica and the polar ice cap was obliterated. Within a year there was no more land for people to live on. In the beginning, billions had died holding onto children’s inflatable beach balls not realizing that they were not flotation devices.

A new society would eventually arise, leading watery nomadic lives. They would have many years of trials and tribulations until a brave man by the name of Kevin Costner grew gills and saved the last of humanity by leading them to the only land left on the planet.

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Thanks for reading.  Here is the story on Reddit so you can enjoy the comments as much as I did.

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