100 Themes Challenge

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1. 
   

   PenguinAttack
   PenguinAttack · Jun 22, 2011

   BAM!
   
   

   Spoiler

   1. Introduction
   2. Love
   3. Light
   4. Dark
   5. Seeking Solace
   6. Break Away
   7. Heaven
   8. Innocence
   9. Drive
   10. Breathe Again
   11. Memory
   12. Insanity
   13. Misfortune
   14. Smile
   15. Silence
   16. Questioning
   17. Blood
   18. Rainbow
   19. Gray
   20. Cookies
   21. Vacation
   22. Mother Nature
   23. Cat
   24. Orly?
   25. Trouble Lurking
   26. Tears
   27. Foreign
   28. Sorrow
   29. Happiness
   30. Under the Rain
   31. Flowers
   32. Night
   33. Expectations
   34. Stars
   35. Hold My Hand
   36. Precious Treasure
   37. Eyes
   38. Abandoned
   39. Dreams
   40. Rated
   41. Teamwork
   42. Standing Still
   43. Dying
   44. Two Roads
   45. Illusion
   46. Family
   47. Creation
   48. Childhood
   49. Stripes
   50. Breaking the Rules
   51. Sport
   52. Deep in Thought
   53. Keeping a Secret
   54. Tower
   55. Waiting
   56. Danger Ahead
   57. Sacrifice
   58. Kick in the Head
   59. No Way Out
   60. Rejection
   61. Fairy Tale
   62. Magic
   63. Do Not Disturb
   64. Multitasking
   65. Horror
   66. Traps
   67. Playing the Melody
   68. Hero
   69. Annoyance
   70. 67%
   71. Obsession
   72. Mischief Managed
   73. I Can't
   74. Are You Challenging Me?
   75. Mirror
   76. Broken Pieces
   77. Test
   78. Drink
   79. Starvation
   80. Words
   81. Pen and Paper
   82. Can You Hear Me?
   83. Heal
   84. Out Cold
   85. Spiral
   86. Seeing Red
   87. Food
   88. Pain
   89. Through the Fire
   90. Triangle
   91. Drowning
   92. All That I Have
   93. Give Up
   94. Last Hope
   95. Advertisement
   96. In the Storm
   97. Safety First
   98. Puzzle
   99. Solitude
   100. Relaxation
   (Bonus) 101: YWS
2. 
   

   PenguinAttack
   PenguinAttack · Jun 22, 2011

   96. In The Storm.
   
   
   I folded the note in half, and then again, slipping it into my back pocket. On the floor our pens still rolled away from one another, red and blue inking onto the cork. Charlie looked out the window; the ridge of sky fell away from the hills like lead, sinking into the pastured farms.
   
   “Mum won’t be home for another hour.”
   
   “Do you have another pen? This one is leaking.”
   
   “All the pens leak in this house.” His voice was mad, but his shoulders relaxed, the check shirt falling neatly against his back. “The windows leak as well, and the taps. And the noses.” The snuffled laugh morphed into weeping as the rain began. A sudden reprieve, the droplets on the tin roof sizzled and pecked, hard and loud in the quiet room. Charlie drew an index finger along the window pane and giggled as it came back wet.
   
   “Your mum going to be alright in this wet?” He wasn’t listening. Charlie had that habit of closing the door on the real world, slipping into his own like a pair of slippers. I sat back down at the table and watched the ink run into itself. It didn’t make purple, like red and blue should, but darkened black, staining in splotches.
   
   “Reckon I’ll move soon, hey. Maybe go up dad’s way? Find somewhere other than this hole to live in.” The farm was his mothers, passed down from her father, but he hated it. As the rain blocked the sunlight, he turned to the light switch, flicking it on and off until the wires popped and it worked. “Eh.” He huffed, rustling the shredded newspapers as he walked through them. They were palm fronds under his feet, bending and crackling under his calluses. The school play was in a week and we’d skimped on the display, spent an hour colouring the crowd’s eyes in with pen. The newspaper palms were ripping with every step and it looked like another F on the card for this year’s Christmas Effort.
   
   Charlie nabbed the pens off the floor and capped them, tossing their half-wrung bodies onto the table proper. “Reckon you’ll come with.”
   
   “What?”
   
   “Up dad’s place. Maybe further, hey? We’ll get a car or something, trip it both ways. One way.” He didn’t look at me, just fiddled with the felt we’d patched together to make the Jesus coat. “Reckon... reckon you ought to come with me... Whatever.”
   “Well... what?” Charlie’s eyes are blue and green at the same time, changing depending on his mood (or the temperature, who knew). Deep and wavy and begging me to answer with something other than the obligatory ‘hah, yeah’.
   
   “Come on, Seph. Let’s have some real fun. Let’s get out this place.” I nodded, and he started grinning, black footprints smudging along the shiny cork.
   
   “Yeah... yeah. Let’s do it. Let’s get out of this hole.”
   
   “You’ll see, we’re going places.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so happy. The rain hardened, pelting down until the lights flickered and died.
3. 
   

   PenguinAttack
   PenguinAttack · Jun 22, 2011

   35. Hold my Hand (Thanks to Octave for choosing the theme for me!)
   
   
   It was cold in the sterile room, without windows the air conditioning spun the air around in tight circles, making her feel ill. Recycled air is all any of us breathe, she told herself, so there’s nothing to be afraid of. Fear is like shucking the bones of the meat, painfully graphic, animalistic. She whispered the words to herself over and over again as the halogen lights blinked off the silver instruments to her right. The door creaked and paused, cracking the white space in half, a pocked of cream and light pink mouthing at her from inside the door jam.
   
   “Miss – er – Excuse me, miss?” The young man was pale and his piano-fingers trembled around the green clipboard. “Uh. Are you miss Del-eh-finny?” The smile was genuine in embarrassment, he knew the name was wrong but wasn’t willing to bring it up first.
   
   “Stephanie Delphine, it’s a pleasure to meet you, mister-?” He shuffled and cleared his throat (ha-hem and the air shuddered with the inhalation).
   
   “John. John Smith, please. Um. Well, I see you’re comfortable. Haha.” His beard was uneven on the right side, a centimetre too high close to his ear, it made his smile lopsided and awkward, somehow endearing.
   
   “Mister Smith.” She nodded, looking away from him and toward the streak of orange and pink that stuttered on the right wall. “It’s a picture.” Her voice thought she was surprised, and she was surprised by it.
   
   “What? Oh. Yes, it is. Just a little something to lighten the atmosphere. Haha.” The poor man bit his nails, the fingers below red and chapped. “Well, miss Del-eh-fine, how can I help you?”
   
   It was time to be evasive, glancing away from the painting and to the scalpel laid out like a hair brush on a vanity. The bright light bounced off it and hit warmly against the left side of her face, just below her eye. The muscle twitched and she turned back to the nervous young man.
   
   “The doctor. He says I may have something. You know, wrong. Something wrong, with me.” She stuttered where usually she strode and the door became large with promise. On the other side was the freedom of the well and she waited for it.
   
   “Ah. Um. Yes, the notes... you took an MRI? Miss... Miss are you okay?”
   
   The door span and the sliver of bile left in her stomach writhed. The twitch below her left eye engulfed her face, body rocking with spasms. The man’s voice hollered over her ears, pitching up and down around the room, and she tried to follow it but got lost in the light. The globe burnt her eyes, staining her lids with small white dots, they coloured red and green and yellow and she sighed – tried to sigh.
   
   In the room her file spread against the floor, the fingers made to play wrapped around hers. White and red at the same time, they pressed against the armrest. He said It will be okay, I have you over and over again, as though she could hear the words. She thought his mouth quite beautiful, then, curved like a bow at the ends.
   
   “Stephanie” He said, again, “It will be okay.”
4. 
   

   PenguinAttack
   PenguinAttack · Jun 22, 2011

   74. Are You Challenging Me? (I'm so sorry for this, guys)
   
   “Epic music on! Rocky theme if you have to! We’re getting this done if it kills us!”
   
   “Seph, I don’t think-“
   
   “If. It. Kills. Us.” Stephanie collected the crepe paper in bunches, until it covered her eyes completely, and tottered down the steps. “We only have a couple of hours to complete the hall before everyone gets here, and then we have to like, boogie down.”
   
   “I know but – Two steps left – we can get it all done in no time. No – slow down – problem at all. Really.” He was in a grey suit which suited his sandy hair and provided contrast to the red bowtie, which matched Stephanie’s finely cut dress. “Anyway, they’re not expecting anything too much you know. It’s about having fun.”
   
   “Hah, Ne knows so much about fun, she avoids it that much.” Leo strode through the gaggle of party planners, looking pretty hot in his black and grey pinstriped suit. Three girls sighed in succession, watching the young man tug his girlfriend behind him.
   
   “She is so lucky” Emma sighed, her sister cuffing her over the ear.
   
   “Get back to work.” Lette growled, watching Leo and Carly as they swished past. The girls muttered to themselves and began sticking stars to the walls once more.
   
   “Carly! You look absolutely lovely!” Stephanie cried, running to hug her around the crepe paper.
   
   “So do you! And your tie matches Ne’s dress, Charlie! That’s so wonderful, you guys look awesome together. Like a real couple.” She winked and Stephanie frowned, Charlie already turning away to talk with Leo quietly.
   
   “Don’t say those kinds of things, Carly, people will hear you.” Carly giggled and twirled in her lavender dress, taking in the hall.
   
   “It looks absolutely fab!”
   
   “For a highschool party maybe.” Leo cut in, slinging an arm around Carly’s shoulders. “The big kids might do a better job in uni.”
   
   “What? You think I can’t throw the best party around? I got news for you, bub. This is going to rock like all hell.”
   
   “Hah, yeah. I can’t wait to see that. Bet you five bucks that it tanks.”
   
   “Are you challenging me? Come on, let’s go.” The crepe paper fell in a bunch at Stephanie’s feet, rustling with every angry step she took. “I don’t mind hitting a boy, I promise.”
   
   The boys laughed and shook their heads, backing away. “Crazy women” Leo whispered, Charlie nodding in agreement, grinning.
   
   “Hold on, mister” Carly frowned at her boyfriend. “You think Ne can’t throw an awesome party? She totally can. She’s not some crazy lady. If you want to be like that, in fact, we’ll totally take you on. Come on, Ne, we’re going to make this the best party ever.”
   
   The girls took to the sites, chattering to themselves about the right height for the disco ball, and the right tunes for the Dj to play. In an hour the hall was set up, crepe paper tumbling down the rafters, turning the light multicoloured as the disco ball turned. Within no time the dance floor was full, girls and boys rocking out to the songs they’d set up on the large stage. Carly and Stephanie, tired from organising the girls and climbing up step ladders, hung over each other in the middle of the floor, swaying to the beat.
   
   Leo found them there first and gently untangled them, hooking Carly’s arm around his neck and snuggling into her. Over her shoulder he nodded at Stephanie, mouthing his defeat at her as Charlie circled his arms around her waist.
   
   “Come on now, I hear there’s an awesome party going on. Let’s rock.”

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