Crawling out from the wreckage of Babel’s Tower, survivors call out for help.
Nobody understands anybody else. The Lord has shattered our language into many tongues incomprehensible to each other.
We grunt and point and shake each other in frustration.
One grabs a shovel and begins to dig.
“To bury the bodies?” I ask.
He doesn’t understand, just keeps digging.
We drag corpses into the hole, he shouts, and throws them back out.
Ah. Yes.
I see now.
I grab a shovel. Others grab theirs.
We join him and dig.
If we cannot reach Heaven, we shall certainly reach Hell!
Category: My stories
Everything is a circle
Everything is a circle.
The table is a circle.
The table’s chairs are in a circle.
The cake is a circle.
The glass of milk is a circle.
Your eyes open wide. Like circles.
Your mouth is a circle, silent.
As you choke on the cake, your hands rise to your throat, and your face goes blue.
The lenses on my glasses are circles.
I watch you die.
I dig a hole in the back yard… another circle.
I push you in, fill up the hole.
I eat the rest of the cake, drink the milk, and go to sleep.
Peach
What did you just say?
My hearing’s not so good, and I need new batteries in my hearing aids.
“Peach on earth, and good will to all men?”
Oh, you said peace, not peach.
Although, now that I think of it, peach makes a lot more sense.
I mean, have you ever been angry when eating a peach?
I haven’t. And you haven’t either.
Nobody ever has.
So maybe if we give peaches to everybody, there will be goodwill to all men?
What? You’re allergic to peaches?
Well, I guess there goes my whole “Good will” idea.
(You oversensitive jerk!)
Clown Juice
Here. Have a drink.
What is it?
Clown juice.
Yeah, it tastes a little funny.
Freshly squeezed, too. None of that frozen concentrate junk or powdered “Clown Drink” crap.
Pure clown juice, straight from the clown.
Squeezed their squirting flowers myself this morning.
What kind of clown?
Circus clown. Only the best Barnum and Bailey label.
Rodeo clowns are just too gritty and bitter. Nobody wants to drink that rot.
And don’t get me started on mimes. Weak as water and sappy sweet.
Hospital clowns, well, they’re too salty.
From the tears they cry after visiting the kids.
Sad stuff.
They Walk No More
Things have been crazy here in Middle Earth.
There was a war. Lots of people and orcs and things got killed.
Some midgets and their friends chickened out and fled. They claimed they had to go off and destroy a ring.
Yeah. Right.
The noise died down, the fires got put out, we buried the bodies and repaired the damage to our homes and businesses.
Those ring-destroying heroes? Too hoity-toity for honest hard work.
They said “We’re sailing off to the West.”
Yeah, we got stuck building the boats. Them walking trees really yell when you mill them for planks.
Bottle Or Can
Oswald, laying back in his weekly bath, not that there’s much room in the tub left for water to call it a bath, shouts “BEER! NOW!”
Bertha’s sick of being treated like a damn servant. She brings up a bottle and a can. “Which would you have?”
“Bottle,” he says.
She breaks the bottle over Oswalt’s bald head. Glass shatters all over him.
A torrent of profanity fills the air. “What you go do that for?” growls Oswalt.
“Oh, you’d prefer the can?” asks Bertha, and she puts it in one of his dirty socks and bludgeons him to death.
Biography
I woke up this morning to discover I had an exact duplicate.
We quickly confirmed similar memory and appearance, but had no idea when or how the duplication took place.
Also, we both insist we are the original me, even though I know it’s me.
We reach for my wallet at the same time.
It’s a fair fight. We’ve evenly matched, reach and strength, and then everything goes black as my lights are punched out.
I’m sure I clocked him hard, too.
When I wake up, he’s gone.
My wallet’s still here.
And that’s how I got this black eye.
Roses Aren’t Red
I write greeting cards for a living.
Valentine’s Day is a way’s off, but it takes months to come up with new cards and get them printed in time.
Plus, stores are putting cards out earlier and earlier every year.
After sitting at my desk for a week, the best I could come up with was a heart in greyscale.
Inside the card:
Roses aren’t red.
And violets aren’t blue.
I’m colorblind, jerk.
If it gets rejected, I’ll just sell it to an online freebie greeting card company.
Sure, it’s cutting my own throat, but my art must be appreciated.
Cherubacide
Downtown. Valentine’s Day.
We found the body of a baby with wings in the alley.
There were three pink-shafted arrows in its chest, valentine in its hand.
“Suicide note,” grunts my partner, barely looking up from his coffee “Nothing to see here.”
“Nothing to see, Joe?” I asked. “Suicide shot himself three times in the chest, did he? A freak baby with wings, nothing to see?”
Joe stared deep into my eyes. “When love dies, you don’t want to know. Too much pain.”
Poor Joe. Guy’s hit bottom.
I guess I’ll give him the flowers and chocolates some other time.
The Tip Of The Iceberg
For some reason, no matter what the circumstances, Jackson and I always end up arguing.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg!” shouted Jackson.
I ask him to show me the tip.
So, he pulls it out of his pocket.
I thought about my high school Physics: buoyancy and displacement will lift the rest of the iceberg up to replace the tip.
Then I thought of English classes: Hemingway said writing is like an iceberg: ten percent above the water while ninety percent below.
Finally, I thought of Jackson’s sister, the cheerleader.
Man, she’s hot!
I love these arguments.