Category: My stories

Funeral barge

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I watch a milk carton boat float down the bayou, a dead hamster laying inside.
I walk upstream until I come to a house.
A boy on the front steps, crying.
“What’s wrong?”
“The hamster died,” he whines. “Mom beat me.”
I knock on the door, and a woman answers “What do you want?”
A younger boy is behind her, also crying.
“Why did you beat a kid for his hamster dying?” I asked.
She says “It was his little brother’s. Now butt out.” And slams the door.
I walk down the steps, and punch the kid in the face.

Static Wave

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Instead of saying her first word, my daughter opened her mouth and a wave of static filled the room.
The lights flickered for a few seconds before they caught and stayed lit.
I was expecting a Mommy or Daddy, like most kids, but the doctors warned us that the high percentage of nanoparticles in her system may alter her development slightly.
My wife and I said “Good, Marcie!” and tried to be supportive, but her grimace matched mine.
Still, despite the setback, not bad for 5 days old.
We’ll finish uploading Calculus tonight and start work on her Quantum Physics.

High-Five

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Grampa only had one last bit of advice for me before he died: “Never high-five a pirate.”
Then, he died.
Grampa was always good for stupid, useless advice.
According to him, you should never cook sea urchins on a Thursday. As if I’d cook them on any day of the week? They’re disgusting!
He also said that Van Gogh was smart. Cutting off your ear to impress a chick is a lot smarter than cutting off his balls like Picasso did.
“But Picasso never castrated himself,” I said.
Grampa just lit his pipe, blew a cloud of smoke, and winked.

The Diploma

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Okay, so I hit it off with this chick at a bar, we’re both drunk as hell, and she says come back to my place.
So, we do.
I don’t know how we got there, but we got there.
We both took our clothes off, and… we…
Agree we’ll do it in the morning. Just too damn drunk.
I wake up eight hours later, and…
What the hell is her name?
I look around, and her medical degree is over the bed.
Aha!
She wakes up, I say her name, and…
She goes by her middle name.
Oops.
I lose.

Time Kennel

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I think putting my dogs in the kennel while I travel is cruel.
So, I put the dogs in the Time Kennel.
It’s not like the Pet Freeze service. Those folks are butchers, freezing and thawing pets. They end up shattering or roasting them half the time.
No, these folks use a quantum bridge tunnel to send your pet into the future, right to the time of your return from a vacation or business trip.
To them, you’ve never left.
They lose fewer pets. Although, when they do, at least your dog has a fighting chance in the year 5000.

The Wreathmaker

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I work for a place that makes wreaths.
Year-round, we make memorial wreaths.
But during the holidays, we get a lot of orders for Christmas wreaths.
Sure, they’re just fancy flowers and branches and twists of wire, but each one gets a serial number and a chip in them that lets us double-check and triple-check they’re going to the right place.
Nobody wants to hang a memorial wreath on their front door. And the one time we sent a Christmas wreath to a funeral, well, this is why we now keep one or two extra wreaths in the delivery vans.

Unusual Creatures

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I know you’re familiar with butterflies.
But are you familiar with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butterflies?
They look like butterflies.
They fly like butterflies.
And, if you lick them, they taste like butterflies.
But the truth is, they’re not actually butterflies.
They are Something Else.
Unless you have a microscope, you won’t see the gearworks poking through the body that make the wings flap. The faint glow of lights in the eyes. And there’s no way you can hear the faint ticking.
So realistic. So beautiful.
You’ll believe it’s a real butterfly. And, really, isn’t that all that matters?

Baby Jane D’oh

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Usually, we find any abandoned babies at the back door of the hospital.
Once or twice, they been left in a dumpster. The mother’s afraid of being caught on tape, and they call from a pay phone to let us know.
And then hang up.
This was the first one we’d found in the parking garage, happily sleeping in her carrier, in the middle of an empty parking space.
The carrier was rather expensive.
Too expensive.
While we waited, a Lexus drove up and screeched to a halt.
“I must have put her on the roof, reached for my keys…”

The Girl Who Sneezed Dimes

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I once knew a girl who sneezed dimes.
Yeah, she could pay her own way when we went out to dinner, but have you ever eaten with someone who’s got a nasty cold?
Not all that appetizing.
The sex was okay, but I caught a snot-covered dime in the mouth more than once.
And she didn’t like being taken from behind.
It just wasn’t working out.
Over time, she’d saved up enough to pay for art school.
She packed her things, called a cab, and dumped a handful of dimes in the driver’s hands.
At least she’d washed them first.

Utah

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Wyoming is a rectangle. So is Colorado.
Nobody knows what the hell Oklahoma is shaped like. Rivers and valleys will make that kind of contoured mess on a map.
But Utah… it’s not quite a rectangle, but not quite a squiggle, either.
It’s a regular hexagram, all ninety degree angles, but uneven sides.
It’s got to have a name. Besides Utah-shaped. Or “Big Thick L.”
I ask the local math professor what that’s called.
He takes one look at the map.
“A polygamygon,” he says.
I thank him, and write this down for my report.
Yeah, I got an F.