Category: My stories

Agencies want to know three things:
Are you willing to kill?
Are you able to kill?
And can you do it without leaving a trace back to you or them?
Marco’s Imports likes to test new talent by assigning someone they’d personally want dead.
An uncle who’d molested them as a child. A detested cousin.
To them, it’s all about family.
The Diamond Exchange sends their candidates after the homeless, the drug addicts.
People nobody would miss.
My outfit, Consulting Limited, prefers the last man standing method.
The real talent shines through, and no awkward rejection notices necessary.
Sign here.

I cannot describe the ship.
Its surface absorbs all light.
Its shape, indeterminate.
One moment, I was standing outside if it, I put my hand out…
And the next, I was inside of it, looking out through a clear surface that surrounded me.
I was standing, but on nothing.
No lights, but I could see all around me.
And breathe.
I felt myself melting, becoming one with the ship.
Knowing everything it knew.
Let’s go somewhere, I thought.
Suddenly, I was out in the stars.
So much darkness, so much light, so much color.
I saw everything.
And we flew.

My previous job would send employees on a two week trip to Hawaii after ten years of service.
When I got to nine and a half years of service, I quit.
You see, I hate long plane rides.
I also hate long vacations.
And I’m allergic to weird foods, such as poi.
They offered to fly me anywhere, but there really isn’t anywhere I’d want to go.
I asked if they’d pay for some tickets to Astros games, but they said they’d get back to me.
But shortly after that conversation, I quit.
They still haven’t gotten back to me.

Brittany was a wedding planner for dogs.
Crazy dog owners would get their dogs hitched with other dogs, and she’d plan out the party, get the guests invited (and their owners), and hired the caterers.
The flower girl would throw around flowers, the happy couple came in, and the preacher would say a bunch of stuff before asking if anyone had any objections…
That’s when I shout out “WHAT THE FUCK? IT’S A FUCKING WEDDING FOR DOGS!”
Brittany said I was a bigot, a hater. A goddamned Nazi.
How the hell was I to know they were two boy dogs?

In his will, Freddy hated to waste anything.
He said he didn’t want to waste a good suit and nice shoes.
Or any wood or metal for the coffin.
And all those chemicals they’d pump into him, didn’t they waste enough of them trying to save him in the hospital?
Wrapping him in a sheet and burying him, that would be a waste of land and the stone to mark it.
So they filled his body with explosives and dropped him on a mosque in Gaza.
That was preaching hate around the clock, and training gunmen, suicide bombers, and kidnappers.

I see advertisements for Cruella all over the place.
They’re fucking obnoxious and ugly.
I don’t know anyone who saw Cruella in the theatre.
I don’t know anyone who paid extra to see Cruella on Disney Plus.
I don’t know anyone who paid for the Cruella DVD.
I don’t know anyone who watched Cruella on Disney Plus for free.
Hell, I know people who will bite out their tongue and bleed to death if they tie them up and force them to watch it.
How the hell can these Disney assholes afford so many advertisements for something nobody wants to watch?

Books open people to new ideas and worlds.
I think back to the books that impacted my life.
The Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary that had so many words to learn and use.
The encyclopedias in the library that taught me so much about history and science.
The Bible, which taught me about faith and religion, but also of excuses to be hateful and fearful of others.
The one that impacted me the most?
I never actually caught the title.
Only the blows to my head and body when my mother couldn’t find her wooden spoon for the constant beatings and spankings.

Dan built a platform for the camera. Then he rigged it to a weather balloon.
Filling the balloon, until it was ready to release.
And that’s when Dan cut the tether.
The balloon rose, pulling the platform with it.
But the tether was lashed around Dan’s ankle and he was yanked up with the balloon.
Without a knife to cut the line, he was hauled into the sky.
Higher and higher, colder and colder, until the air was too thin to breathe.
Then, the balloon burst, and the platform fell.
Later, someone found the platform, camera, and Dan’s broken corpse.

I live in a golfing and tennis resort community, even though I don’t golf or play tennis. A lot of people drive around in golf carts. They drive in the bike lanes, which scares the crap out of joggers and walkers and cyclists who are wearing headphones. Even though teenagers can’t get drivers licenses, through a technicality, they can still drive golf carts around, electric bikes, and weird one wheeled scooter things. Every now and then you hear about some kid losing control and hitting someone or something. There’s a lot of white crosses on the side of the road.

Rita taught English in Dubai and lost her teaching job after she complained that half the kids in her class were named Mohammed. That’s all the administration heard and they fired her right on the spot. It had nothing to do with the fact that the kids all dressed alike, let alone while having the same name. And she couldn’t go by last name because they all had similar last names like Saladin. And the parents got mad when she would give them numbers calling on Mohammed one, Mohammed, two, Mohammed three. She was replaced by a teacher named Mohammed.