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.
Category: My stories
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Soon, we had surpassed our budget, and our bonus was revoked.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.
Myst needs a kitten
Myst has never been alone until now.
She was born into a big litter at a friend’s trailer park.
We were going to take her and her brother, but old Nardo already had his paws full with Bruwyn. Another new kitten was pushing it, so two probably would have killed him.
When Nardo died, she still had Bruwyn, and they cleaned each others ears every day. And they went out hunting and playing in the grass.
Now that Bruwyn is gone, Myst is all alone. She really needs a kitten-friend.
Because I’m sick of cleaning her ears. They taste disgusting.
Laundry Helper
Whenever my wife does laundry, she stacks the folded clean clothes on the bed.
And then, Nardo the orange cat would jump on the bed and roll around on the clean clothes.
Orange cat hair all over everything.
He taught Bruwyn to roll around on the clean laundry, and both of them would shed all over the clothes.
When Nardo was gone, Bruwyn had the laundry duty all to himself.
Now that Bruwyn’s gone, there’s no more laundry assistants.
Myst prefers to roll around in the dirt outside.
Maybe if I tossed all the clean clothes into the dirt…
Nah.
The Canyon
I don’t travel much anymore.
Instead, I like use Google Maps to look at famous places a lot.
People link photos to those sites, and I imagine walking through the streets of Berlin… riding a camel past the Pyramids… leaning on the rail of a paddlewheel boat on the Mississippi…
The Grand Canyon’s walls are a smeary blur in Google Maps.
The satellite photos don’t do it justice. And the tourists can’t quite cover all its greatness.
I want to go there and see it for myself.
And for the first time since I broke my neck, I feel self-pity.