Category: My stories

BONUS STORY: George the Party Animal

George was a pirate, but he was not a very good pirate.
The crew did not like George very much, and that made George sad and lonely.
So, George left the ship, and he took a vacation
All night, way past midnight, he was a party animal.
And he drank. And threw up. And he passed out.
Then, he would sleep off his wicked hangover on the beach.
Over and over and over.
After a month, he returned to the ship.
The crew still did not like George very much.
But George was too drunk to care what they thought.

(Created with Shatoetry and The Hit Crew’s “Sailors Hornpipe”)

The Treasure

The dentist’s office had a treasure chest. In the chest were all kinds of cheap plastic toys, stickers, and trinkets.
I have no memory of what I took from the treasure chest. I never kept anything from it. Nothing on my shelf, and nothing in my drawers.
Just a memory of the treasure chest itself, there in the dentist’s office.
Maybe I could make my own?
The party supply store has those things. Plastic rings, string necklaces, and other cheap amusements.
All I need are pliers, a drill, and some floss.
Alleyway dentistry, we’ll call it.
Sounds good?
Open wide.

Science

I am a scientist.
I work in a science lab, and I make science.
I wear a nice white lab coat. I have a badge pinned to my lab coat.
I conduct experiments.
Experiments take questions that begin with “How can you…” and try to find the answer to them.
The government gave me a big lab.
And a really nice new lab coat that’s really white. And a badge pinned to that coat that lets me get into really cool places.
“How can you make lots of enemy soldiers stupid?” they asked.
I think I found the answer.
Right?

The Last Straw

That’s the last straw.
No, not the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Or some ordinary straw, like the straw from a broom
The last straw is a bendy straw.
And I need it for my drink.
It would have been nice to have had a silly straw, because those are really fun, but someone used the last silly straw.
When the last silly straw broke, they reached for the last bendy straw.
“NO!” I shouted. “THIS IS THE LAST STRAW! AND IT IS MINE!”
And I smacked their hand.
They whimpered, and scuttled off to buy some more straws.

Facebook

When you access Facebook from the Western Hemisphere, the globe icon in the heading shows the Western Hemisphere.
And when you access Facebook from the Eastern Hemisphere, the globe icon in the heading shows the Eastern Hemisphere.
Last week, I was abducted by aliens. They examined me, probed me, and took me back to their homeworld.
That’s how I ended up in his alien zoo. I’m the Human exhibit.
What does the globe icon look like when I try to access Facebook?
I don’t know. The WiFi really sucks in this zoo, and my smartphone is running out of power.

Leperchaun

Just as the Leprechaun guards his pot of gold from rainbow-chasers, the Leperchaun flees the people who follow his trail of rotted-off appendages.
Why people would follow a trail of bloody fingers… toes… or worse, I have no idea.
Sometimes, it’s the police, After that John Wayne Bobbit incident, anything’s possible, really.
The dogs sniff out a trail, which leads to the miserable creature, hunched over a pot of glue.
With antibiotics, he can be cured of the horrible affliction. But the disfigurement is permanent.
With prosthetics and a 3D printed half-mask, he’ll still look like a goddamned Irish midget.

Chivington

Nothing lives long. Only the earth. And the mountains.
So sang the Cheyenne chief, standing in front of his lodge, watching Chivington’s soldiers ride their horses around the camp, shooting and killing.
The men. The women. The children. The old.
One soldier tore open the belly of a pregnant woman and chopped up the unborn baby.
Grant called the massacre nothing less than murder.
But none faced trial. None faced justice.
You can still hear the screams in the wind.
You can still hear the Cheyenne death song.
You can still hear the gunfire, the dust, the evil, and fear.

The Knives

Who wins at the end of Julius Caesar?
Certainly not Caesar? He’s dead.
Cassius and Brutus are on the run.
So is Casca.
And Mark Antony’s stuck having to run the place.
If you think about it, the only true winner is the local knife salesman.
Think about it… all these rich people looking for knives all at the same time.
And I’m sure that they don’t want the salesman remembering their faces.
So, the knife salesman made out like a bandit, closed up shop, got away clean, and retired to a villa on the coast.
He died only once.

Ran out of fucks to give

I really don’t give a fuck.
I ran out of fucks to give last week.
Usually, I try to save them up so they last until the end of the month.
But, you know, it’s December, and with all the holiday bullshit?
You know what I mean.
Don’t get me started on my family.
We tried a family plan for sharing a pool of fucks, but the kids blow through them like tissue paper.
I’ve tried to teach them how to be cynical and all that, but they never listen.
I ran out of fucks to give about that, too.

To Hell

The kids say that if you hit all of the buttons on the elevator, it will take you straight to Hell.
But I know that can’t be true.
There’s a sign on the elevator that says “In case of fire, use stairs.”
And we all know that Hell is the eternal lake of fire.
Therefore, the elevator doesn’t go there.
You’d have to take the stairs to get to Hell.
Or just fall down a really deep hole.
Such as an elevator shaft.
Maybe the elevator floor drops out.
Into the shaft
To Hell.
I think I’ll take the stairs.