Here’s the new launch of Drabble Wednesday, with the first reposting of my virtual reality series, The Adventures of Frankie and Joni. Some of these drabbles (100 word stories) were originally posted on my blog, then I continued the series on Patreon, and now it’s starting over here. Enjoy the first three stories today, and more to come.
Hand Me the Freaking Pail
I’m tired of water and I’m tired eating ration bars thrown down through the emergency hatch. Even Noah only suffered forty days with his flood. We’re up to despair day number 1,039 and still counting. I’m so sick of bobbing waves and bailing the leaky vessel. I may throw somebody overboard—namely my idiot co-worker Frankie who got me into this mess.
It’s only a test he said, what could go wrong?
But Frankie’s confident it’ll stop in seven more days, on a Thursday. That’s when this glitch of a virtual reality program supposedly ends and we can go home.
Name Glitch
Frankie and I are on vacation.
The company bosses gave us a free trip to their new virtual site (and a coffeemaker) to compensate for our getting stuck in the system. So here we are, basking in the sunshine at idyllic Sunnybrook Farm. Today, we get to meet the famous Rebecca.
I nudged Frankie. “Here she comes.”
“She looks different than the brochure. Isn’t she supposed to be a girl?”
A rather striking lady dressed in early 1930’s style approached us.
“Hello, do either of you know how to get to Manderley?”
Oh shoot, the idiots added the wrong Rebecca.
Cyber Terror!
“Oh, the horror! Save the women and children and the Twix! She’s goin’ ta blow, Captain!”
I listened to Frankie’s predictive, and strange, shouts with despair and gloom, staring at the now malfunctioning, smoking, and slowly self-destructing computer. The horrible sight gave me the urge to run from the building screaming, flee into the hills and become a hermit.
“I told ya we shoulda mollycoddled the wee thing, Captain. And now—oh, it’s lost!” The computer blew with a loud pop.
“Shoot. The program’s toast. I wonder what happened?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have programmed that virtual ghost into the machine?”
Be Afraid of the Dark 
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