Publisher: 100 Word Stories
Weekly Challenge: 1031
Topic: Pick Two: Hush, Beauty, Chisel, One-Eyed Owl, Interceptor
Submitted: December 29, 2025
Published: January 25, 2026
Participants: 8 total
Recommended Topic: Between each snail
The one-eyed owl had a chiseled jaw line. His hushed beak made him the perfect interceptor. Glaring silently at any who dared approach, he rarely spoke.
The moon’s beauty in the night would have its light reflected from all who approached, timid and uncertain. He would ask the question of, not who, but whom?
It was rumored that only the lollipop guild was able to pass, once they answered a question central to the forest’s concerns. Not of smoking forest fires, hooting over campgrounds, crying over garbage, or plows destroying the lands of mice.
Just a centralized accounting of consumption.
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
Behind the Story
For this challenge, the rules said to choose two of the prompt words… but creativity rarely respects limits. Instead of narrowing the field, I decided to lean into all five: hush, beauty, chisel, one-eyed owl, and interceptor.
The result grew into a surreal woodland guardian myth — part environmental folklore, part pop-culture collage, and part playful nostalgia. There’s a whisper of the Tootsie Pop owl, a nod to Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl, a shadow of The Secret of NIMH, and even the iconic crying anti-littering PSA. Those figures all represented authority, environmental warning, and wisdom in different eras… so merging them into one strange sentinel just felt right.
After my music production, submission, and dinner later that night, I realized that I had missed an opportunity. The lollipop man should have been the lollipop guild, tying in the munchkins from The Wizard of Oz. It would have kept the person (or persons) small, in keeping with the boy in the Tootsie Pop commercial. I went through and re-recorded the story, adjusted the background music to align, and submitted a correction to the podcast.
To support the tone, I again recorded the reading in Audacity, cleaned the vocal track, reduced room noise, and layered an instrumental generated using producer.ai. I rearranged the composition so the music swells during the owl’s presence, then softens to let the narrative feel haunting, reflective, and just slightly uneasy.
The “one-eyed owl” became more than a creature — he became judgment, memory, and uncomfortable truth. And yes… he intentionally says “whom.” Wisdom deserves proper grammar.
Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute
The Great Owl
Number of Licks
Keep America Beautiful
Bambi Movie
The Lollipop Guild
