Category: My stories

One hundred and twenty feet of teletype paper.
Jack Kerouac lines it up into the typewriter.
Coffee, cigarettes, and benzadrine.
For weeks, Jack bleeds his soul on to the paper.
Screaming. Howling.
And then… finished!
Crawling to the bathroom, he pulls down his pants, his underwear.
Pushing and straining, squeezing his body like a tube of toothpaste.
One hundred and twenty feet of toilet paper.
Jack Kerouac lines it up along his buttocks.
For hours, Jack shits his guts out on to the paper.
Screaming. Howling.
And then… finished!
He flushes, and the toilet backs up.
Where is the plunger?

Wake up.
Realize that the nightmares were nightmares.
They aren’t real.
Look at my whiteboard.
Take whatever pills, vitamins.
Lay out clothes for day.
Make more ice.
Fill water.
Check on the bunny.
Do my walk.
Turn on the TV and Fire stick.
Find something to watch while I walk.
And walk. And walk.
Keep doing my walk.
Don’t stop until I’m done.
Shower.
Dry off.
Get dressed.
Play with the baby panther.
Water the plants.
Bagel and basil?
Refill cat water and kibble bowl.
Go to work.
Realize I’ve forgotten something.
Don’t turn back. You can never turn back.

Remember Aladdin and the magic lamp?
He found a magic lamp, and when he rubbed it, it released a genie who gave him three wishes.
Well, my friend Charlie always rubs lamps.
He hasn’t found a genie yet.
Until now.
It was a lava lamp.
A hot lava lamp.
Charlie rubbed it, and screamed from the burns.
The genie popped out, also screaming.
Trapped in there for years, in searing mineral oil and wax.
“I WISH FOR ALOE GEL!” screamed Charlie.
The genie filled a huge tub with it.
“Good idea,” he said, soaking and sighing.”This one’s on the house.”

You cannot buy your way out of Hell, but you can buy in to one of the nicer timeshares there.
Sadly, one week out of a year is still fifty-one weeks immersed in the flames of perdition.
Although if you stretch that out to Eternity, that’s one week times infinity, which equals infinity.
Sure, fifty-one weeks times infinity is also infinity. A bigger infinity than the first infinity.
Cantor, Frege, and Dedekind could explain this with Alpeh Null and Beth One and other mathematical constructs.
They’re in the timeshare next door, proving to all that Mathematics is the ultimate Hell.

“The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” Princess Leia said that to Grand Moff Tarkin.
I call it Vader’s Law, even though Leia says it to Tarkin.
It’s to remind me that control is an illusion, and to seek absolute control is futile.
Let there be plus or minus one. Let there be error. Let there be tolerances.
Just not enough to ruin the overall system.
After all, Burroughs said that control is controlled by its need to control.
It also serves as a reminder that I’m lousy at naming things.

The electronic signs on the highway display travel times to various interchanges.
Other times, they display accident information.
That way, you know why everything’s jammed up and not moving.
And then there’s the Amber Alert messages.
Those appear when someone abducts a kid and drives off.
They’re named after a girl named Amber who was kidnapped and murdered.
Thank God it was a girl named Amber and not a boy named Gaylord or Dick.
Imagine, getting Dick Alerts all the time.
Nobody would take it seriously.
Not that anyone does now, as we all disable them on our phones, right?

Jeff couldn’t believe it… he was sitting next to Carrie Fisher.
The Carrie Fisher. From Star Wars. And… well, Star Wars. And other stuff.
He introduced himself, shook her hand… did all the things you’re supposed to do with celebrities.
Show respect, give them space.
She looked tired, maybe a little wasted on something, so Jeff didn’t bother her. He let her sleep.
Maybe they’d chat a bit later?
Jeff wanted to take a nap, but Carrie snored a bit, so he put on his headphones and listened to an audiobook.
He barely noticed when she stopped snoring… and breathing.

I realized something this morning.
The Three Little Pigs and The Big Bad Wolf lived in The Land of Oz.
After all, the Pigs and Wolf could talk.
And they were Pigs with a Capital P, and a Wolf with a capital W.
Animals with a Capital A, who lived in The Land of Oz.
Do you remember what The First Little Pig made his house out of?
That’s right. Straw.
Straw that he pulled from the guts of The Scarecrow.
The screaming, whimpering Scarecrow.
If only The Tin Man and Cowardly Lion had responded sooner, he’d still be alive.

A coworker was expecting his second child.
This time, a boy.
There’d been complications with the pregnancy. He’d been taking time off to help his wife.
They’ve been going in for regular checkups. Things were looking good.
They set a date to induce labor… tomorrow.
But then, the doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat.
They’re still going to induce labor tomorrow.
Because, well, you have to.
I pull out my to-do list and scratch out DISNEY STORE.
Fold the notepad back into my pocket, stare at the screens for a while.
These are the times I wish I prayed, but don’t.