A software glitch caused every birth certificate in the county to use the name Lucien Smith.
You’d think that people would balk.
Nope. The parents didn’t mind the error at all.
“It’s a good name,” said one couple. “Better than the one we picked out.”
“You’d think it would be confusing, having twin girls named Lucien,” said another couple. “But somehow, we manage.”
The first kindergarten class of Lucien Smiths was a challenge for school administrators, but they quickly got the hang of it.
It’s the public stoning of children not named Lucien Smith that you never get used to.
Category: My stories
The Awful Search
When a cat goes missing, you put up posters and call shelters
And then you wait.
The waiting is the worst. The not knowing.
Every cat cry, every sound makes you think they’re back.
They’re not.
I walked around until my knee felt full of broken glass.
And walked around some more.
You look everywhere you’ve found them before, but they’re never there.
They’re everywhere but where you look.
So you keep looking.
I saw something. On the sidewalk.
No. It’s just a shirt someone had dropped on their way back from the laundry room.
And walked around some more.
Nancy’s Face
If you asked her out, Nancy would say “Sure. Let me go put on my face.”
And then she peels off the face she had on, wipes away the glue, and sticks on a fresh face.
She always makes sure she has at least two faces left in the pack.
You never want to run out of faces, and sometimes the last face in the pack ends up squished, like the last slice of a loaf of bread.
Satisfied, she smiles, and tosses the old face into a cage.
The rats chew the face to bits as it screams silently.
The Wish
I hear screaming.
It is coming from the well.
They say it is a wishing well.
I pushed the bad man into the well.
I made a wish:
I wish the bad man would stop hurting me.
I asked him for some coins to throw into the well.
He took them out of his pocket, laughed, and said…
No.
So, I pushed him into the well.
Him, and the coins in his pocket.
And I made my wish.
But he’s climbing back out.
Angry.
Maybe, if I hit him on the head with a shovel, my wish will come true.
Haunted
Blake ran the video arcade at the mall until a poorly-grounded Galaga box electrocuted him.
When the real estate company tried to put a shoe store in that location, Blake’s ghost scared off all the customers with all his yelling and throwing things around.
Same with the novelty gift shop, the jeans outlet store, and the cell phone place.
Exorcists and supernatural “experts” failed to remove Blake.
So, we put a laser tag maze in the spot, but called it Ghost Hunters.
It would work better if Blake wore a sheet instead of a Pac Man tee-shirt and jeans, though.
Drag The Kids Around
It’s Halloween again.
There are only two houses on our street: ours and the Smiths.
When Halloween rolls around, the Smiths knock on our door for candy, and then we knock on their door.
No one else comes into our street to trick-or-treat. It’s just us.
We don’t even get out real candy. It’s play candy from some kind of preschool playset that we pass back and forth.
The kids don’t mind. They don’t like candy. Or much of anything, because they’re dead.
We dig them up to drag them around.
At least their pretty costumes will always fit them
The Event
The catastrophic event happened faster than we could respond.
We tried to reduce pressure in the tank, but it exploded, killing 22 workers.
We are budgeted for 60 casualties in a cycle.
The plant manager congratulated us, and gave us a bonus.
However, more workers died as a result of radiation sickness.
The casualty count increased rapidly.
Soon, we had surpassed our budget, and our bonus was revoked.
We received a reprimand.
However, we were not terminated, as the plant manager had died.
Not that this matters much to us, as we vomit blood and await our own horrible deaths.
Voices and Voices
When people hear the voice of a dead person, they’re either a psychic or suffering from a guilty conscience.
When people hear the voice of a muse, they’re either manifesting the creative process or finding a way to shift blame a third party when the resulting project does not turn out well.
When people hear the voice of God, they’re either a prophet or a madman.
This is why we don’t use the speakerphone to play games with Uncle Frank. He’s a bit sensitive to these things.
Hopefully, we can catch him before the police do, or he kills again.
Certificates
I’m the county clerk.
I handle all the certificates.
Births
Weddings
Deaths
Every one of them has to go on official certificate paper, lined up just right.
It’s a pain in the ass.
You can’t just print these out in a color laser printer. That’s not good enough for people getting married or having kids.
The dead don’t give a shit, but their relatives care… only right up until the will’s been read, though.
I got bored one day and left a death certificate for John Coward on the copier.
Ran a thousand of them off and proved Shakespeare right.
The Ghost Pimp
Ruth is a psychic who helps ghosts resolve the issues which keep them bound to the material world.
Once these issues are resolved, they can finally head off into “the light.”
“The light” used to refer to Heaven, but escorting ghosts to the hereafter doesn’t pay jack squat.
Now, Ruth puts ghosts into antique lanterns and sells them as emergency battery-free lighting.
I’m sure you wish that Granddad or Aunt Sue were at peace up in Heaven, but you must admit that the stairs to my root cellar are rather peaceful too, right?
I even oiled the stairs. No creaking.