Category: My stories

Cave Paintings

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I am sitting in a cave, scared.
It is cold, damp and dark.
Every Winter solstice, the sun’s rays illuminate the wall so that the figures appear to dance.
I’ve tried it with flashlights, spotlights- but it has to be sunlight on this specific day.
I say it’s a magic spell, cast by a long-dead shaman.
Light peeks in through the cave’s entrance… and then it gets darker.
I hear thunder.
Damn. Awful time for a rainstorm.
Except… there’s no rain.
It gets darker, the figures dance, and I hear chanting.
Raising my spear, recognizing faces- I rejoin my tribe.

Organized

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I refuse to be a part of any organized religion.
So, I’ve joined a highly-disorganized church.
I’m not sure of the name of it. The signs all say different things.
One sign suggests that it’s a military research facility. Perhaps at one time it was, but I have yet to have someone from the military research me during a service.
Pews are scattered about, there’s no telling what kind of book you’ll read from.
I’ve got a phonebook this week.
There is no choir. People sing when they want to, what they want to.
I said “asylum,” right?
Church?
Oops.

Shoulders

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Most people have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, giving them advice as they go through their lives.
I have two angels on my shoulders. No devil.
All I get is good advice and admonishment when I don’t follow it.
If I have two angels on my shoulders, is someone out there with two devils on theirs?
Instead of getting a constant stream of goodness, they’re under the influence of evil.
That’s why I kidnapped you. You look like a two-devil person to me.
The angels are telling me not to shoot you.
I disagree.

Weird

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Mrs Jones knocked on her neighbor’s door and asked for a cup of weird.
“I’m having some trouble keeping up with the weird bill,” she said. “You know, with the rates going up recently and Henry and I being on a fixed income after he was laid off before he could retire early and get his pension-”
The neighbor made a hand gesture suggesting One moment, please and went down into their dungeon.
A minute later, they came back with a glowing, steaming mug of weird.
“Oh, thank you,” said Mrs. Jones, and went back to her upside-down pyramid home.

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.)