The prompt, from the inimitable Tracy Fabre is: You’re writing a very very short story. I’m helping, out of the goodness of my heart, by providing you the first and last lines.

Here is your FIRST line, courtesy of George Orwell in 1984: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

Here is your LAST line, courtesy of Richard Federman in Double or Nothing: “Then it does not necessarily have to be noodles!”

Those two lines are not part of your 100 words. Get to work!

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I got to work! It wasn’t easy, no siree, I found this to be a difficult prompt, but I… I… prompted it alright. By golly I did.

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Feel free to play along if you’d like. Just paste a link to your blog or Facebook page or whatever in the comments and I and thousands of readers will come and pay you a visit.

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And now, without delay, the story.

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One Cold Day in Minnesota

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

The tolling bothered Harold, but he hoped, in his moments of clarity, it would stop.

On the 42^nd day the clocks struck thirteen Harold did what he had to do. In an act that would earn him a place in the history books of Bilgespill, Minnesota, Harold stood in the town square and pressed a detonator that simultaneously blew up the Bilgespill power plant and 1/3 of Bilgespill’s population.

The tolling stopped.

Harold was suddenly less than popular

Sitting at Vivian’s Café a week later Harold ordered a plate of spaghetti.

“No power to boil noodles, you idiot!” Vivian snapped.

“Then it does not necessarily have to be noodles!”