Category: My stories

Someone painted over the S in Skid Row the other day, and now the place is filling up with
five-year-old winos and toddler bums.
“Hey, buddy, can you spare a pacifier?” asks a tiny tramp in an unchanged diaper.
The church runs a soup and bread line, although they give away fruit rollups and bottles of formula to the needy.
A clean diaper, someone to tie their shoes for them.
All these kids need is a helping hand, some say.
But I’ve seen them gamble it away.
Shooting dice on the pier.
Ride the ladder up, and the chute down.

The Kholdani and The Resistance fought each other for years.
“We are the true defenders of the flag!” said The Resistance. “The Kholdani have dishonored it with their corruption and extermination campaigns!”
“Bullshit,” said the Kholdani, and they fought most fiercely.
When The Resistance finally won, they kept the flag.
The Kholdani were driven underground, and as The Resistance became corrupt and cruel, The Kholdani became The New Resistance.
When they won the civil war, the flag stayed the same, and The New New Resistance was born,
Pretty soon, everyone was dead, and the tattlered flag flew over smoking ruins.

Freddy lay in his hospital bed, dying.
Susie held his hand and waited.
“Pray with me,” said Freddy.
“I’ve already prayed,” said Susie. “For you to fucking die. I just wish it wouldn’t take so fucking long.”
Freddy’s eyes got wider when Susie pulled the pillow out from under his head.
“Why?” was his last word, as Susie shoved the pillow over his face.
Freddy couldn’t put up much of a fight. He went pretty quick.
Susie caught her breath, looked to the sky, and said “Fuck you for making me wait so long.”
Then she yelled for a nurse.

It’s a random surprise drug testing day at work.
Employees file into the main conference room, and a team of nurses pull out the testing kits.
Each employee picks up a test kit, breaks the seal, and looks inside.
I look inside my kit.
Heroin. Needle. Spoon. Lighter. Rubber tube.
Shit, I hate needles.
The credit manager opens their kit, and pulls out a joint and a lighter.
“Hey, can I trade with you?”
A nurse interrupts me. “It’s supposed to be random.”
I read the instructions, cook the nugget, and draw up a little blood before shooting it in.

Kids can be so cruel.
One girl in my daughter’s class is named Betsy. The kids call her Betsy Wetsy.
They stand around her and shout it until she soils herself.
A boy named Harold has long hair. He’s Hairy Harry.
He tried to chop off his hair and made a mess of himself, even with those rounded safety scissors.
The teacher tried to stop the torment, but the kids turned on her.
She’s in counseling now.
Nobody’s made fun of my daughter yet.
Not because she’s perfect.
No, she the ringleader of the child mob.
I’m so proud of her.

Sally liked to shop for shoes.
She filled her closet with them.
Eventually, the “baby’s room” became the shoe room.
Her husband wanted a baby, but Sally knew that if she had a baby, she’d have to clear out her shoe room.
So, she took birth control.
When the birth control failed, she secretly got an abortion.
The next time the birth control failed, she got her tubes tied.
Her husband eventually tricked her into a fertility clinic where the whole ruse was exposed.
They adopted a pair of twins.
And got a bigger house, with its own shoe room.

Listening to the jazz streaming channel in iTunes while writing is like living in a Charlie Brown special where you’re Charlie, and everything you write just isn’t good enough for the Peanuts Gang.
“You blockhead,” growls Lucy. “Don’t you know that you used passive voice?”
“Good grief,” you say, furiously backspacing. Except that you backspace over the one good paragraph you wrote.
“Try Control-Z to undo that,” says Linus. Your smitten sister beams at his brilliance.
Your beagle, neglected and lonely, pulls out the power cord from the wall.
The screen goes blank. The music stops.
Thank God for auto-save.

A film crew affiliated with The Smithsonian discovered the new species in the Amazon rainforest.
One billionaire, who was a serious gourmet chef, offered them a lot of money so he could cook and eat it.
Another billionaire, who was into bestiality, offered them a lot of money to fuck it.
After a bidding war erupted, the film crew had to admit that the species was now extinct. They accidentally put the jeep in reverse and ran the thing over.
Upon hearing the news, the pervert and the gourmet cook dropped their offers.
But a necrophiliac xenophile billionaire expressed interest.

I am the man who unmixes drinks.
I put the smoke back into cigarettes, and light back into the stars.
I put the blood back into the wound, and the scream back into your lips.
The tick and the tock go back in the clock.
Turn back, turn back.
The teardrop rolls slowly up, drying your cheek, as it goes back into your eye.
The knife in my hand, in my pocket.
Step back, step back.
That smile again, I wish it could last forever.
So, I mix another drink, light the cigarette,
and we move forward in time again.