Category: My stories

Zachary Fudge loved to play with boomerangs. The problem was he lived in a huge Citi that didn’t have many parks. And a few times he got to the park, it would be crowded and it wasn’t possible to practice with his boomerang. So he threw at once and it hit a girl and the cops arrested him. When he tried to practice at night, there were drug dealers and junkies and prostitutes all around, and it wasn’t safe. Zachary moved out to a farm, but he never did get better with a boomerang. Or farming, to be perfectly honest.

Most kids, when they get thrown out of school, it’s with paperwork. Other times it can be somewhat literal, with the cops coming and dragging the kid out. But Eloise, well, she kind of set her self up for it. when the woodshop teacher asked the class to build birdhouses, she built a fully functional trebuchet, siege engine. Well, the birds can nest in the basket, but I wouldn’t recommend it, she said. Two of her classmates were horsing around and sure enough one ended up splattered across the basketball courts.. the principal was rather impressed, but the authorities weren’t.

Billy kept his sneakers by the door. Every morning and every evening he’d put them on and go for a leisurely walk through the old neighborhood. He’d get an apple from the corner grocer and eat it during install. Sometimes he’d stop for a pint at the bar check in with the bartender maybe even read a little bit of the paper. Walking past the school, remembering his days there the teachers, the principal, the school nurse – they were all gone. He walked back up his steps, opened his door, took off his sneakers, and placed them by the door.

Francisco wasn’t a particularly bright boy, but his mother and father had high hopes for him, so they put him on the boat to America. he had a small cardboard suitcase with some clothes and some food. He waved as the ship left the port. But there was a huge storm and the captain turned the ship back. We’ll head back out tomorrow the captain said. But Francisco, being so stupid, thought they’d landed in America. He got a shoe shining job and delivered papers and saved his money. You never figured out why everyone in America spoke Italian though.

“Nobody puts Baby in a corner” was the last thing Johnny said before everything went black.
When he woke up, he was on the floor of a white round room.
He was in a hospital gown and the back of his head was sore.
He slowly got to his feet.
No door. No windows.
He felt along the wall. No seams.
The cops questioned the staff and the guests, nobody knew where the dancing instructor went.
The owner said he chased after his pregnant girlfriend.
But she never head from him since she left.
Years later, the camp closed down.

There’s only one way to separate the Californians from the Texans.
Shout THE STARS AT NIGHT ARE BIG AND BRIGHT!
See who claps four times and shouts DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS.
Those aren’t the Texans.
Those are the Californians, pretending to be Texans.
Hit them. Kick them. Beat them down.
Hang them by their entrails.
We fire our guns in the air and eat our Whataburgers and drink our Lone Stars and cheer.
We are Texans. And we are loud and violent and proud to be Texan.
Wait. Who is that? Who is drinking a Bud Light?
Californian!

I wish I could make this moment last forever, said Arthur. He was happy, but the happy times don’t last. So when his family died in the house fire and the grief seemed endless, he realized that happiness speeds up time and grief slows it down, so the suffering lingers. After years toiling in his lab. He figured it out and the next day his lab assistants saw the horrifying result. Arthur stood there, as still as a statue. They couldn’t move his limbs and he didn’t fog a mirror, but he was still alive in his horrifying, miserable stasis.

As famous as Morgan was, he doesn’t have a headstone. When he died, he was cremated, and his ashes were buried next to his mother‘s coffin. There is a statue of Morgan outside of the stadium. He played in for 13 years and broke all kinds of records. Every year, players and coaches vote on an award named after him. But when it comes to himself, he didn’t want anything more than a spot by the people who brought him into this world and raised him. Those who know, they still bring flowers. Sometimes a bobble head or a football.

When Judy died in a car wreck, the fans warned. The producers wondered how would they finish the next season of the animated show she starred in. They tried to harvest the previous eight seasons for voice work, but it wasn’t enough. They fed it into an AI powered audio generator, but the performance fell flat. None of the sound alike actresses sounded quite like her. Eventually they enlisted her twin sister. She didn’t have the acting range, but the fans gave her a pass on that. Ratings continued to decline, and the show was canceled before the finale aired.

My grandfather was 19 when he enlisted for the war the night before he shipped out, he married my grandmother and promised that he’d come back. But he never did. This plane went down, killing the whole crew. My grandmother was in the middle of writing him a letter letting him know she was pregnant when they knocked on her door back then you couldn’t end things like you can now, so our family pulled together. My father’s first word was daddy. My grandmother had never used that word or mentioned her husband around the baby. Maybe he saw ghosts?