Category: My stories

How do you make a joke?

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The back doors to the ambulance flew open and a man covered with blood was rushed into the emergency room.
The paramedics said he was a comedian who had been beaten up by an angry mob.
After he was handed off to the doctors, the paramedics went out for a smoke with the desk clerk.
“Let me guess,” said the clerk. “He tried to tell 9/11 jokes and the crowd got really ugly.”
“No,” said the paramedic. “He was at a dinner party hosted by the Saudi Arabian consulate.”
“So why was he attacked?”
“He refused to make 9/11 jokes.”

The Grim Arena

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The gladiators draw their rubber chickens, salute the crowd, and begin their battle.
“What’s with the chickens?” asks the emperor.
“Budget cutbacks,” responded his page. “You said you’d rather have swordfish dinners instead of swords.”
The emperor patted his full belly and smiled. “I love swordfish.” And then he frowned. “But grown men whacking each other with rubber toys is boring. Can’t they just fight with their fists? Or tell the guards to toss them their weapons?”
“Budget cutbacks,” said the page. “They barely have enough weapons for their jobs.”
The emperor sighed and watched the pathetic spectacle drag on.

For Your Eyes Only

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Sometimes, a document is too secret to be marked TOP SECRET.
So they make those For Your Eyes Only.
The document only appears to the recipient. To everyone else, they don’t see anything.
Not even a sheet of paper. It’s printed using a quantum ink and paper from phase-controlled wood pulp that only activates one unique set of sensory-processing neurons.
The problem is that when an agent resigns, you don’t know it they’ve destroyed all their documents.
We could surgically remove their eyes, but that would be cruel, leaving them completely blind.
So, as a mercy, we just kill them.

After The War

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The Review Board wants to interview me today.
I go down to the new Town Hall, passing the rubble of the old one.
“Were you in the war?” they ask.
The scars and my withered hand say yes.
“I don’t remember,” I say, just as the Veteran Release Center told me to say.
A doctor scans my brain with a wand.
“He’s clean,” he says. “All memories gone.”
“Innocent,” the Board declares, and my ID is stamped with a black V.
Outside, a woman points at me and screams.
“BUTCHER!”
She is arrested.
Don’t resist. Reprogramming is painless.
(I think.)

Password Protected

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My memories are valuable and corporate hypno-spies are everywhere.
All it takes is a dazzlestick to stop someone on the street and open them up for a psychic fileclerk to rifle through.
So, I decided to protect them.
The process isn’t easy, and it takes weeks of sessions to catalog secrets for storage in secure areas of the brain.
I woke up one morning, tried to think of those things, and realized… I didn’t remember any of them.
Protected. Secure.
Perfect.
Time to go to work… Wait. Where do I work?
Hold on… thinking… Oh crap!
I forgot the password!

The Last Piece Of Pie

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I take the pie out of the oven and put it out on the counter to cool.
Everybody is so polite here, so nobody’s willing to take the last piece of pie.
Or the second-to-last piece of pie.
Same with the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth-to-last pieces of pie.
In fact, nobody’s willing to take a piece of pie at all.
Just to start the process will cause that last-piece-of-pie situation to come about.
So it sits on the counter for days.
Spoils, covered with mold, and completely inedible.
(Nobody’s willing to be the one to throw it out, either.)

The Mummy Train

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Mark Twain used to joke that the wrappings for mummies were used in pulp for newspapers and their bodies burned to run trains.
But neither was true.
Instead, mummies were employed by the newspapers in the printing presses, shambling around the massive rollers.
If one got caught up in the machinery and torn to bits, who cared, right? They were already dead, their families long gone.
Letting them don engineer caps and run trains, well, that was a lot more dangerous. Mummy brakemen tended to ignore warning signals, and only so many accidents were tolerated before they all were retired.

Crazy Never Sleeps

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Crazy never sleeps.
You might crawl into bed and close your eyes, but while you’re asleep, Crazy is up and pacing the floor, listening to voices that nobody speaks with.
Crazy can’t be locked in the basement or tied to a chair. No matter what you do, Crazy gets loose and goes crazy on everything.
Broken dishes.
Knives stuck in the sofa.
The tub overflowing again.
Who knows what you’ll wake up to this time?
So, you stay up later… and later…
You try to stay up later than crazy does.
Then you realize: you’ve been the Crazy all along.

Mushroom King

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We all marvel at the magnificent crown of The Mushroom King.
But how did he get his mighty crown?
Well, as all Mushroom Kings do: he rolled his head in a bucket of shit, cultivated and grew mushrooms on it, and kept them growing… and growing… and growing…
Until he had the greatest crown of all.
That’s when we named him the new Mushroom King.
As for his throne, that’s from the previous Mushroom King.
His crown grew far too large, and he sank into the shit, gone forever.
Except for his crown, for the new king to sit on.

The Axe

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Every time I go to Lord Greybeard’s Castle, I can’t help but stare at the axe he’s mounted over the fireplace in the Main Hall.
It’s old and rusty, but every so often there’s fresh blood along the blade.
There’s no way that Lord Greybeard used it, let alone any of his servants.
The thing is massive, with a six foot wooden shaft and a blade that must weigh over a hundred pounds.
Lord Greybeard notices my curiosity, puts an arm around my shoulder, and laughs. “I cut myself shaving,” he says.
Then, his screaming head slides off his neck.