When I was young, I was always amazed at how some things I ate passed right through me.
Yellow bits of corn.
Green beans.
Bits of carrot and red bell pepper.
Disgusting, I know.
But every so often, when I wake up with blood on my lips, I keep lookout for the tell-tale glint of a gold ring.
I scoop it out with a toilet-brush and drop it into a glass of bleach.
I’ve found dozens of rings that way.
As for the finger bones, I flush those with the rest of the waste, and head for the bus station.
Category: My stories
Silent Symphony
The Symphony is performing “Concerto For Dogs” tonight.
It is entirely out of the human audio spectrum.
Violins, trombones, and other instruments tuned like dog whistles.
Nobody knows what the composer’s name is.
He was born as Almo Burt, but he had it changed a few years back to something outside of the audio spectrum, too.
Typical weirdo artist, right?
He steps through the curtain, bows, and announces: “Now put on your blindfolds. The performance is about to begin.”
The audience agrees, the lights are turned off, and the Symphony sneaks out for a drink at the pub next door.
Marconi
With each heart attack, Guglielmo Marconi grew more desperate to prove that soundwaves lasted forever, and that with a sufficiently-amplified shout, his words could be impressed upon the universe so they’d echo for all eternity.
For years, he’d been listening to the vacuum of space, trying to find the reverberations of souls past, but his time was running out, so he went forward with his plans to make his mark.
He was last seen alive, running through the streets of Rome, shouting “I AM MARCONI!” at the top of his lungs.
Then, mid-shout, he clutched his chest, collapsed, and died.
Miss The Boat
When the war came, Mother yelled “RUN!” and we ran to the docks.
The boat was crowded and leaky, and the captain said we needed to shed weight or we’d sink.
A dozen mothers and fathers jumped overboard and sacrificed themselves to save us.
Or so they thought.
The captain waited until dark before tossing the rest of the adults overboard and turning the boat around.
“I’ll sell the rest of you to the factories.”
Except me. I hid under some ropes and waited, and when he set out again, I slit his throat.
Now what? I ask the sky.
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka is dead.
Good riddance, I say.
But that’s not enough.
I don’t just want to piss on his grave.
I want to dig up his coffin,
Pry open his mouth,
And piss into his throat.
And I don’t just want to dance on his grave.
I want to start a kickstarter campaign,
To hire the Rockettes
And dress them up like rabbis
Beautiful, long-legged rabbis
And they’ll dance a whole chorus line on his grave.
Amiri Baraka was buried in New Jersey.
Land of chemical plants and Superfund sites.
A fitting place: a toxic creature in poisoned earth.
Keep It Safe
Lisa needed for me to watch over something valuable for a few months.
So, I agreed, and she handed me a metal box safe. It was painted up really nice.
“Keep it safe,” she said, and she walked out the door.
A few weeks later, she called in a panic. “Is it safe? Is it still okay?”
I said “I don’t know” but we got disconnected.
I took it to the garage and opened it up with a drill-press.
Empty.
I called her back and said so.
“YOU CRACKED IT OPEN? YOU BROKE THAT ANTIQUE LOCK? IT WAS PRICELESS!”
Shit.
The Old Teacher
My grandfather taught me how to play Scrabble.
Somewhere on the shelf with the golf and pool trophies was his masters points notebook.
But all those years ago, he’d never sit at the dining table to play.
Instead, he’d circle the table, looking over shoulders, shaking his head when my mother or grandmother would look for help, and he’d rearrange the tiles.
“Where does that go?” they’d say.
He’d point at the board.
“Oh!” and they’d smile and place the tiles.
These days, I imagine him screaming more than frowning.
I probably shouldn’t play Scrabble on my phone while driving.
Spit Donor
Some guys make a few extra bucks donating their blood plasma, and others market their sperm, but I think I’m the only professional saliva donor out there.
Where I have overactive salivary glands, others are the opposite.
And you may think a cup of warm spit isn’t worth a cup of warm spit, to them it’s like liquid gold.
This being my livelihood, I have to charge a fair market value for my efforts.
Most people are shocked when they get the bill, but if they think my spit is expensive, they should see how much my lawyers charge me.
500 More
Remember when The Proclaimers sang that they’d walk 500 miles and then walk 500 more to fall down at your door?
I never understood that song. Why would someone walk a thousand miles? Can’t you get a plane ticket or bus fare?
It turns out that they walked out your door, kept walking for 500 miles, turned around, and then walked all the way back.
Why they did this, I have no idea. They could have just walked out your door and fallen down right then and there.
Utterly bizarre.
The Proclaimers truly put the “wonder” in “One Hit Wonder.”
130
When Shakespeare wrote that his mistress’ eyes were nothing like the sun, he had no idea that she had just inhaled particles from a passing comet and underwent ocular nuclear fusion.
Her eyes had become exactly like the sun: two miniature gaseous spheres of Hydrogen and Helium under intense pressure, temperature, and gravitational power.
She clutched her flaming head and screamed until collapsing into a pile of charred bone and ash.
Shakespeare thought about correcting his sonnet, but it was already at the printers.
“Oh well,” he muttered.
Then he picked up his pen and wrote “Thou art as tyrannous…”