Category: My stories

Welcome to Bernie’s Bagels.
My name is Bernie, but I’m not the Bernie in Bernie’s Bagels.
That was my grandfather Bernie.
And he made bagels.
He left the business to his son Bernie.
He’s my dad.
And then he left the business to me.
I have a son named Bernie.
And I plan to leave the business to him.
Now that I think of it, my great-grandfather was named Bernie.
So, maybe my grandfather named the business after him.
I don’t know, though. They’re dead.
So is my father.
One day, I will be.
But Bernie’s Bagels will live on.

I walk on a treadmill every morning.
Either it’s the treadmill at home, or the treadmill in the gym at work.
If my cat Tinny is sleeping on me, I don’t like to wake her up.
So, I let her sleep a while longer.
Then, I go to work in my workout clothes, walk on the treadmill there, shower, and change.
I can even charge my phone with the port on the treadmill.
The home treadmill has a television, while I listen to music on the work treadmill.
As long and I walk in the morning, it doesn’t matter, really.

Glinda told Dorothy that she could have used the power of the Ruby Slippers to go back home any time she wanted to.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” whined Dorothy.
“Because you needed to discover that power for yourself,” said the witch.
“But you just told me,” said the girl.
“Well, you had the power all along,” said Glinda. “You could have read the instructions.”
“Where are those?”
“Inside the shoe.”
“But I can’t take them off!”
Glinda said nothing.
So Dorothy picked up another fire bucket, and splashed water on Glinda.
“You bitch!” screamed Glinda, as she melted away.

I recently moved offices.
I threw out the stuff I didn’t want to move from the old office, boxed up everything I wanted to move, and carried it across the hall to the new office.
It took a while for the facilities crew to move my desk. I didn’t want to move it myself because it was big, heavy, and my back was hurting from moving the boxes.
I worked from a small side table for a day.
Once the desk arrived, I arranged my shelves, hung poster frames, and connected the equipment back up.
Then, I shut the door.

I twisted the lid off of the jar, bent over, and shook the frog on to the grass.
The frog righted itself, licked its eyes, and hopped away.
“Happy hunting,” i said.
Two months later, the mosquitos in the area were gone.
The frog I’d released had a virus which inserted DNA into other frogs that caused them to gorge themselves on mosquitos.
The virus had spread quickly among the population.
No more nasty pesticides. No more fervent searches for stagnant water.
I smiled, and licked my lips.
No more mosquitos to eat.
Maybe a nice cheeseburger will do instead?

Johnny was ten years old, dressed in Union blues and holding the flag high as he ran through the trees with his father, his uncles, and his brothers to charge the grey Rebel lines.
Bullets everywhere. Men and boys, screaming and falling into the dirt and mud and water.
Blood and death, bodies trampled into the earth, into the shadow of night, where you couldn’t tell where man ended and ground began, or the blue from gray.
Johnny dropped his flag, stopped, and stared at the surrounding carnage.
He fell to his knees, and instead of a prayer, he vomited.

I’ve had a lot of things on my mind in the past few months.
I’ve tried to draw inspiration from them, but instead, I find myself dwelling, trapped by my thoughts.
Instead of writing my way through the fear and pain, and finding strange new territory to explore, I find myself digging myself deeper into them.
Trapped. Scared. Alone.
The few bright spots are hard to see through the darkness and gloom.
But I know that they are there.
I pet my cats. I watch Netflix and on-demand.
Maybe the light will come back soon.
And I’ll follow it out.

I’m scared.
I’m really scared.
I said something I shouldn’t have.
And I totally regret saying it.
Yeah, I was mad.
Yeah, I was frustrated.
But that’s no excuse.
Now, I don’t know if I have a job.
I have to wait for the managers to investigate and discuss the situation.
Until then, I’m suspended.
With pay, but that doesn’t really help in the long run.
I’ve left jobs without knowing where the next job was.
And it’s absolute hell.
The waiting and not-knowing is awful.
I’m tempted to call in and quit.
Just so that I know for certain.

I packed the picnic basket, loaded up the horses, and we rode out into the forest.
We rode for half an hour, until I found the perfect spot.
We dismounted, and spread out the blanket.
Then, we unloaded the basket for our afternoon meal.
As I held the bottle of wine, I realized that I had forgotten the corkscrew.
“Should I go back?” I asked my companion.
“No,” she said. She took out a Swiss Army Knife, and flicked out a corkscrew.
So handy.
Unfortunately, the Swiss Army Knife didn’t include a condom.
And nine months later, you were born.

It’s not hard to make ice cubes.
Pour water into a tray.
Then put the tray in the freezer.
Let the water in the tray freeze.
Then dump the ice into a bucket.
Repeat this as needed.
Sometimes, I forget to let the water freeze.
And half-frozen shards fall into the bucket with a trickle of water.
Even if I pour out the water, the ice shards freeze together.
The bucket becomes a solid block of ice.
And I have to bash it against the counter to dump it out.
Then, I get out the trays, and fill them up.