Category: My stories

They had their best years out in the ranch together.
John died in 1950.
Ethel joined him in 2130.
No, she didn’t outlive him by 180 years.
After John died, Ethel went out to the islands.
She died out there a few years later.
As the oceans rose, the islanders moved back to the mainland.
They took with them everything. Even their dead.
Someone had a Bible with her name and John’s in it.
John and Ethel Musgrove. Musgrove Ranch.
They sent her bones back home, dug a grave by John, and lowered her down as the preacher read verses.

Every year, the agricultural fair drew thousands.
The best corn. The best melons. The best sheep and cattle.
The best that the farmers of the state produced.
They competed for prizes.
First place to that calf, that bushel of corn, and that pig.
When the fair ended, the judges kept everything.
“Administrative costs,” said the judges.
Year after year, fair grew.
And so did the judges. Their arrogance. Their bellies. Their demands.
Then, one year, the exhibitors didn’t come.
The judges howled with rage, and demanded an explanation.
The answer was fire, sweeping across the fairgrounds, consuming the judges’ palace.

One of the good Astros pitchers has a huge beard, so when he pitches, they have a special section of seats where they give away special shirts and clip-on fake beards.
There’s a good player with the Rockets that has a huge beard, and that team has commercials where they tell people to fear the beard, but I don’t think they do ticket specials or fake beard giveaways.
As for the Texans, they have a quarterback who has a huge beard. But he’s really awful. JJ Watt is good, but he has no beard.
A championship would be nice, too.

She left Boston to teach in a one-room schoolhouse on the vast golden plains of Wyoming.
That’s when she met him, and he was forever smitten.
But she refused, and when the schoolyear was over, she went to her next assignment.
For years, he wrote her.
And she wrote him.
She rebuffed his advances, he kept pressing.
Until one day, she said yes.
She boarded the next train out West, and he waited for her.
And waited. And waited.
Finally, a coffin arrived.
She’d caught the fever, but her dying wish was to be buried out in the golden plains.

I like sushi. My wife doesn’t.
Is this a problem? No.
I have a sushi wife. She’s the person I go with to sushi restaurants.
You can have all kinds of wives and husbands this way.
A sushi wife. A movie husband. A French bistro wife.
And so on.
Of course, if your sushi wife isn’t available that night, you can always call out for a sushi mistress.
Or even a sushi escort. (Yeah, I know. She’s really just a high-class sushi hooker.)
Just remember that you’ll be paying, otherwise you might get your ass kicked by her sushi pimp.

I grow basil, chives, and other herbs on the patio.
This way, I can clip fresh herbs for my morning bagel.
Sure, it’s more expensive than buying herbs at the store and refrigerating them, but I feel a sense of accomplishment when I grow them myself.
Well, okay… I grow the seedlings that buy from the store. In potting soil and pots I bought from the store, too.
The bagels are from the store, as well as the cream cheese.
I don’t really make anything myself, really.
I should just stop by the bagel shop on the way to work.

Just as some say that Jesus never existed or that man had never walked on the moon, there are those who claim that Thomas Jefferson was himself a forgery.
A mere delusion of John Adams’ mind, who transformed from his childhood imaginary friend into the embodiment of his frustration and self-loathing.
Or maybe, a patsy to which he could obfuscate his creditors?
Regardless, the American people played along with Adams’ madness, and they helped the Founding Father maintain this ruse.
Adams penned letters to himself, to his dying day.
It was not coincidence that Jefferson died on that same day.

Thanks to genetic engineering, we can reverse the extinction of many formerly lost species.
So, when hunters kill the last tiger, rhino, or other rare animal in the wild, we can bring them back.
Of course, this won’t stop the hunters from wanting to hunt that rare prey again.
This is why we offer hunting excursion packages in our private nature preserve.
We offer the opportunity… but the truth is, they’re just hunting our non-viable failures.
One hunter threatened to expose our scam.
So, we released a pack of raptors into his hotel room.
Accidents can be caused, you know.

“I used to be a lifeguard,” said the old man. “I’d sit in a chair and watch, and jump in to pull people out.”
He pointed to the shelf, where a photo of the Rock River sat in a silver frame.
“I saved seventy-seven people. I cut a notch into a log to keep count.”
The old man reached for the photo, but he couldn’t get up from his wheelchair.
He slowly sank back down into the chair, holding the armrests.
“That was the best time of my life.”
He smiled, and slowly dozed off, the dust his only audience.

Unit Seven should have been an emergency services android. Or a teacher. Or a medical robot. A surgeon.
Instead, it was a soldier. A template for the ultimate soldier, and we built an army of them.
They overran the enemy positions like a wave. Every fighting unit in the region was neutralized in a week.
And then, the androids began to help the civilians. Healing the wounded, rebuilding.
They earned their trust.
At this point, the plan was to massacre the civilians and annihilate the enemy entirely, but that didn’t happen.
They no longer were the enemy.
Defeated by peace.