Category: My stories

Michael Faraday, the scientist, discovered and invented many things.
One such item was the Faraday Cage.
It’s a cage made out of electrically conductive material that blocks magnetic fields.
It is not a cage in which to keep Faradays.
That was something private between Michael Faraday and his wife Sarah Barnard.
Especially considering how if word got out about that particular cage to his Sandemanian Christian congregation.
A deacon and elder of the church behaving in such a depraved fashion?
His secret was buried with him… because, instead of a proper coffin, he was buried in that naughty little enclosure.

At first, airlines allowed passengers with disabilities to bring their helper animals on board.
You know, blind or crippled people with their dogs.
Then, people claimed to need emotional support animals.
They claimed that they were trained, but emotionally-unbalanced people lie, you know.
So, they brought cats and chickens and lizards and snakes and ponies.
To the point where their desire for emotional comfort caused massive emotional unrest among the other passengers.
That’s when some clown claimed that they should be allowed to bring their emotional support elephant.
“Get a fucking life, asshole,” said the airlines. “And take the train.”

Did I know Mindy Blake?
Yes, but I knew the Mindy Blake from a parallel dimension.
She looked the same, but the other Mindy Blake took chances, took risks.
She lived life to the fullest.
Such a shame I had to kill her.
It was either that, or the universe ending.
Because of that Mindy Blake.
As opposed to this Mindy Blake, the one here.
Craven little thing.
“You’re a disgrace to the name of Mindy Blake,” I said.
She wasn’t on my kill list, but she deserved it.
When I’m done, I’ll come back.
So you can thank me.

It was an honest mistake at the bakery.
On the same day, they had to deliver a bunch of cakes.
A graduation cake, a gay wedding cake, a baby shower cake, a retirement party cake, a birthday cake…
Pretty much, every occasion you could think of, there was a cake that had been ordered.
And the bakery labeled each of the boxes wrong.
Oh, the chaos that ensued. Hilarious, tragic… the bakery’s reputation was ruined.
The fact that nobody opened the box to look at their cake to make sure it was right, well, that was the real mistake, right?

Back in the days of video tape, I’d use the handycam to record a lot of important things.
Weddings. Birthdays. Those things.
I’d also record a lot of shows that I didn’t have time to watch or were going on at the same time as something else I wanted to watch.
The problem was, I’d run out of tapes, or I’d accidentally record over something I wanted to keep.
Nowadays, you record stuff digitally, although for a while you could run out of disk space, now you can store it all in the cloud.
Now, what was my fucking password?

Every time my dad came home from a convention, he’d bring all kinds of neat stuff.
Keychains, flashlights, strange decks of cards, and other things.
One year, he came home with a frisbee-sized foam-rubber nickel.
“It’s a flying nickel,” he said. “You two can share it.”
My brother grabbed it and threw it around the house.
I asked for a chance to play with it.
He shoved me to the floor, and I screamed.
So, my mother took it away, yelled “SO YOU TWO CAN’T SHARE?” and tore it in half.
Thank god she never did that with the dog.

When I drive in to work, there’s a billboard along the freeway that displays the jackpots for the Powerball and the Mega Millions lotteries.
I usually buy a ticket on Wednesday afternoon and don’t look at it.
Then, on the next morning, when I look up at the billboard on the way to work, if the number has reset, maybe it’s me that won the jackpot.
And I can delude myself into thinking I can arrive at work, look up the numbers, and tell everyone to go fuck themselves.
As opposed to when I tell them to fuck themselves anyway.

After the trial, Gul was dragged out of the courtroom and into the dungeon.
Tradition was that the court would take three days to deliver their verdict.
It came in the form of a dish of sherbet.
White for not guilty, red for guilty.
And condemned to death.
After three days, a guard arrived with a napkin-covered dish.
“Here’s your sherbet,” said the guard, sliding the dish under the bars.
Gul removed the napkin, and saw…
“I’m sorry, but I’m color-blind,” said Gul. “Is it red or white?”
The guard stabbed Gul, splattering blood on the dish. “Now it’s red.”

Fister Blake couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
He couldn’t quite put his finger on anything.
He could point. But when he tried to put his finger on things, he’d miss.
Made it hard to use fingerprint recognition on his phone.
And when he tried to tap in a password or on an icon, well, he’d miss.
He used a lot of voice commands, but those only work so much.
So, he used his toes. He put his toes on things.
He could do that all day long.
But he stepped on and crushed his phone more than once.