Publisher: 100 Word Stories
Weekly Challenge: 168
Topic: Shrouded in Mist
Submitted: July 4, 2009
Published: July 11, 2009
Participants: 11 total
Recommended Topic: Skipping Stones
I heard stories of a wise person once that lived on a mountain. The path to wisdom was said to be shrouded in mist. The guru’s sight was able to pierce through the depths of your own. Your life is an open book without words.
I decided to take the trek to find the man. I found a village where many people spoke of the same story. They pointed to the mountain above the town; its peak was hidden by clouds.
The journey up the mountain took two days. At the top, I found a shack with only a mirror.
About the 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge
About the 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge
100 Word Stories
…And, as always, keep it brief!
The 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge was (and still is) hosted by Laurence Simon—better known in Second Life as Crap Mariner—who built a wonderfully strange, tight-knit community around storytelling discipline.
Originally, he started a daily random theme on ScriberOptics via 100words on May 13, 2005, based on a photo, using a combination of everyone’s submitted words rather than posting a single topic. He would write short 100-word stories featuring recurring characters, such as Abraham Lincoln and the Mustard Man.
In June 2005, he then spun the stories into their own subdomain from his personal blog at podcasting.isfullofcrap.com, featuring multiple authors and guest entries. Rather than daily challenges, he settled for weekly challenges, which were due on April 21, 2006, for the topic “Bunnies!” It was published on April 22, 2006. He continued each week posting a topic and invited people to write a story of 100 or [sic]Less Nessman 2.0 words long. Most participants went for exactly 100. It was a form of microfiction—a subset of flash fiction—where the limitation wasn’t restrictive but creatively freeing. Within those 100 words, stories could be funny, heartfelt, surreal, absurd, reflective, or unexpectedly powerful.
Laurence encouraged contributors not just to write but to perform. He always invited people to record themselves reading their stories and send in the audio so their voices could be part of the experience. If someone didn’t—or couldn’t—he gladly read their story for them. Sometimes he even used software to alter his voice, adding character variety, humor, or dramatic flair, so every episode felt like a small production rather than just a reading.
The project chose to respond to the creative emptiness of podcasts at the time not with cynicism, but with creativity. Laurence filled the internet with humor, storytelling, discipline, and imagination. Eventually, the project continued under his broader creative umbrella, “One A Day Until I Die,” where he continues to celebrate the joy of storytelling in all its weird and wonderful forms.
Episodes usually feature everyone’s submissions together in one podcast, and listeners vote on their favorites. The weekly winner not only gets bragging rights but also the honor of choosing the next topic—meaning the community itself shaped what came next. Many participants came from overlapping creative spaces: writers, musicians, podcasters, and especially people in Second Life, where the challenge became something of a shared cultural experience. It wasn’t just a writing exercise; it was friendship, collaboration, creative play, and a small but meaningful part of internet history.
I even had the chance to meet Laurence once at the Second Life Community Convention, where he was handing out refrigerator magnets promoting the podcast — including one I still have today on my fridge. It’s a little artifact from a wonderfully weird, wonderfully human creative era.
This project mattered. It still does.
Paper/Wood Floor Theme from an old version of 100 Word Stories Circa 2009
Reflection
December 28, 2025
This story was written for Weekly Challenge #168: “Shrouded in Mist,” published July 11, 2009, as part of the 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge. The prompt leaned toward mystery, atmosphere, and the sense that something important waits beyond sight… so I leaned into that idea literally.
Rather than writing about a monster in the fog or some fantasy creature in the mountains, I wanted to explore the idea that people often look outward for wisdom, authority, and answers—only to eventually be confronted with themselves. The “journey” becomes the metaphor that reveals the truth: the guru, the sage, the mystic on the mountaintop… was always a mirror.
Like many of the pieces I submitted, this one reminded me that good microfiction doesn’t need shock or comedy (though I wrote a lot of those too). Sometimes 100 words can simply pause, breathe, and offer someone a quiet thought to sit with.
For this challenge, I also recorded the story myself rather than letting Laurence read it. I used Audacity to capture the narration and LAME to encode it as an MP3, resulting in a 41-second audio version of the piece. Like many of my submissions from this era, sharing the spoken performance felt just as important as the written words—the timing, breathing, and tone helped shape the story’s quiet introspection.
