Category: My stories

It’s fun to jump on the bed.
Like a trampoline.
That’s why we do it.
It’s not fun to jump on the chair.
Chairs break and fall apart.
That’s why we don’t do it.
It’s not fun to jump on people, either.
They tend to scream and bleed and get really messy.
But they break in to our homes.
And jump on our beds. And chairs.
Leave! Jump on your own beds and chairs!
Police just catch them and release them.
They break in again. And jump on our beds.
So, we jump on them.
And they bleed. And bleed.

When I was a kid, if you needed to get your teeth straightened, you had to get braces mounted on your teeth.
Rubber hands and a headgear assembly controlled the tension, and every month you’d go in for tightening and adjustment.
Now, you can get your teeth scanned, and they’ll 3-D print a series of clear plastic guides that align them.
No more painful mounting and twisting of the braces.
No more disgusting rubber bands.
No more ugly headgear.
And no more picking up spy signals from outer space.
My orthodontist smiles, says “Da! Is good?” and offers me vodka.

What good is a bodyguard
When you’re staring at a body on the floor?
She smoked, she drank.
She fucked around.
She took pills, she shot herself up with all kind of shit.
Tattoos to cover up the worst of the needle tracks.
The scars. The bruises.
Cameras everywhere, sucking it all in.
The famous singer, who didn’t sing.
Everyone, shouting her name.
She’s not moving. She’s not breathing.
Wake up. Wake up.
The bodyguard shoves the cameras aside, lets the stretcher in.
Covered with a sheet, loaded into the ambulance.
Oh no.
You couldn’t protect her from herself.

I wake to the smell of hot buttermilk biscuits.
I open my eyes and see black silk.
A blindfold.
“Open your mouth,” you say.
A piece of warm biscuit on my lips, my tongue.
I chew slowly, tasting it.
Dribbles of butter on my lips, my chin.
I lick them off.
Your finger, dipped in jelly.
Grape jelly, you pull your finger back out.
Another finger. Strawberry. Blackberry.
Another piece of biscuit.
Then, a dribble of gravy.
HOT! It’s hot!
You dribble it down my chin, my neck, my chest. Burning.
I tug at the ropes, as you laugh.

The cemeteries are full of indispensable men, said De Gaulle.
And from the looks of things, we desperately need the services of indispensable men.
So, each of you grab a shovel and start digging. I’ll prepare the lab and a batch of the special revival serum. We’ll have an army of indispensable men by sunrise.
This isn’t to say that you’re indispensable. I mean, I couldn’t do this project without you.
Although, if you gave me enough time, I could dig up these men and revive them myself, but it would take much, much longer.
You know what I mean.

Scientists at NASA wanted to send bees up in a rocket to the space station.
They wanted to see how bees would react to zero-gravity conditions.
Would their honeycombs change their geometry from series of hexagons to some weird, alien topography?
Would their social structure change, where the drones and soldiers ruled over the queen?
So, the rocket went up, and the bees were transferred into the cargo bay.
They escaped, and stung the shit out of everyone on the space station.
Thankfully, none of the crew were allergic, but there were a lot more volunteers for routine maintenance spacewalks.

Scientists talk about the gene pool.
But they don’t talk about the lifeguard at the gene pool.
Or how much it costs to hire a gene pool cleaning service.
They come out and skim the dead leaves from the gene pool, and maintain the chemicals so that the water is clean and doesn’t burn your eyes when you swim.
The university can’t always afford all those extra costs, so they tend to call it a “gene fountain” or “gene koi pond.”
And they tell their staff and visitors not to swim in it.
Scientists have the most boring pool parties.

Bob was the fastest case profiler in law enforcement.
He could pick up any case file, and after five minutes, he had a description of your culprit.
The thing is, Bob was also the biggest liar in law enforcement.
Because he’d pick up the case files from his own crimes.
“The killer is seven feet tall, bright orange, and has chainsaws for hands,” he says. “Oh, and wears a bowler hat in the shower.”
As his coworkers thanked him and began their manhunt, Bob clocked out and went out to eat.
And start hunting for his next victim.

Jenny was a good girl, but her friends thought she was just a big bundle of nerves.
Which, I suppose, is fair. Because she was just a big bundle of nerves.
No skin or bones or fat or muscle or anything else.
After her accident, all the doctors managed to save was her nervous system.
Just a brain, spinal cord, and spidery nerves in a jar of electrolytes.
When guys asked her out on a date, she knew it was for her brains, not her body.
Although some liked to wave magnets over her and cause weird sparkly light displays.

They called Marty “Mister Smarty Pants.”
But it wasn’t his pants that was smart.
It was actually his underwear.
They were a strange hybrid of boxers and briefs, and when he wore them, he felt so much smarter.
Perhaps it was the way they held him there that led to increased confidence, and with that confidence came the appearance of greater intelligence?
You know, how glasses and a lab coat make people sound more authoritative?
Marty tried to wear those, too. And nothing else.
He got arrested for public indecency, despite his attempts to talk his way out of it.