Category: My stories

Sweating Bullets

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I know a magical creature on The Island Of Strange Beasts called the Winchester Panda.
It literally sweats bullets.
The more frightened or warm the creature gets, the more bullets it sweats.
The caliber, too. From small derringer shells to full metal jacket 50-cal machine gun rounds.
Their nesting areas look like ammo dumps, bullets strewn everywhere.
The Army tried to raise these things in captivity to cut down on munitions costs, but they only thrive in the wild.
No, we don’t hunt them. They don’t taste good, and their pelts are rather shabby.
But they hunt us. Keep quiet!

Irish Bowling

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You hear that sound?
Dull thunder, passing every home on the lane.
Finnegan O’Hara’s out bowling the roads again.
Irish Bowling. Throw the lead shot along the road, fewest throws wins.
Champion of Cork County five years running.
I swear, the man can hook along any curve you throw his way, any road, any where.
But throwing at midnight? Alone? Nobody to shout clear the path?
Madness.
And then… I hear the honk of the horn, the screeching of tires, and the sickening thud.
They brought O’Hara into the clinic at dawn.
They never found his shot.
To Finnegan! Cheers!

The Robot Flock

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The parish priest was tired of giving sermons every week, so he built a robot to deliver his sermons.
The worshipers were tired of listening to the priest’s sermons, so they built robots to listen to the sermons.
Robots delivering sermons to robots, week in and week out.
After the nuclear war, all the humans were dead.
But the robots kept going to the services, and the priest robot kept delivering them.
Nobody knows what the robots do the rest of the time.
Because all the humans died.
Maybe they write silly stories, and you listener robots listen to them?

The Bounce House

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We rented one of those moonwalk inflatable bounce castle things for Tim’s seventh birthday.
Sally’s busy with the cake. I have to check on something at work.
Looking over my laptop, I saw the kids dragging the castle in between the house and the pool.
Then from above, Tim shouts KOWABUNGA!
He jumps from the roof, lands in the castle, and then sails in an arc into the pool.
Huge splash. Laughter.
By the time I get outside, three more kids have jumped from the roof.
I yell at them. “I was supposed to go first!”
I climb the ladder.

Ghost Drinks

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The bar serves ghost drinks.
What’s a ghost drink?
Take an ordinary drink, like a Jack and Coke, and then bubble the spiritual essence of someone that’s recently died through it.
The fresher, the better. Has a tangy, sparkly feel. Like a battery.
If you sip it, the ghost’s ectoplasmic residue will be all that you taste. And that slime is disgusting.
You have to drink it. Quickly.
How the bar gets the ghosts, that’s another matter entirely.
I could tell you the secret, but I’d have to kill you.
Seriously. The last guy I told is in your glass.

Training

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Fur glides under his fingers. With every stroke of his hand, he feels the deep purring.
Muscles tense, skin twitches and ripples.
Over the years, the cat and the human teach each other what delights them.
A nip here, a warning there.
Bargaining.
In time, they have struck a balance, a routine.
But with enough variations to keep from becoming dull.
And then, tragedy. Loneliness.
One without the other. All that was between them is lost.
Cries of mourning, wandering from room to room.
A hand reaches down to stroke the fur.
Not the same.
But he can be trained.

The opposite of a muse

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What is the opposite of a muse?
What do you call someone who sucks all the inspiration and creativity out of your soul?
Or drains the soul right out of your body?
I need a word for what’s on my couch right now.
It’s been there for days, and I can’t rest. I can’t think. I can’t create.
I can’t write.
I keep trying, but the page is just as blank as when I pulled it out of my drawer.
I pour alphabet noodles across it. Scrabble tiles.
They slide off.
Without words, I have nothing to scream.
Only silence.

Too Many Cookies

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The only number of cookies I eat are too many cookies.
I get really sick from eating too many cookies.
I wish I could eat just the right number of cookies, but I don’t think that number exists.
I tried to keep track with graph paper and a clipboard, but it’s covered with cookie crumbs and pink pepto bismol stains.
Maybe there’s something on the label?
The package has a bunch of nutritional data with a suggested serving size: one cookie.
Ever have just one cookie? Only one cookie?
Hardly the right number of cookies. Hardly a number at all.

The Sins

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They killed their mother, said the man. My wife. My love.
You have seven to love where you once had one, said the priest. What will you name them?
As he watched the casket descend, he decided on the seven deadly sins.
Over the years, they grew to earn their names, and to detest their father.
In the end, it was Socordia, the lazy one, that killed him.
“If you’d only had given those rollerskates to me instead of her, I wouldn’t have left them lying around for you to trip over,” said Invidia.
Laughing, Ira burned the house down.

The Moral Compass

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I hold the compass flat in the palm of my hand, watching the needle spin madly.
The symbols glow a deep red.
“It’s broken,” I tell the salesman.
“No, it isn’t,” he says. “You are. Your moral compass is out of whack.”
The salesman snickers at me, his crooked smile wants me to punch it.
So I do. Many times.
As the salesman lays on the floor, I look at the compass.
The black end of the needle points at my heart.
“It’s working again.” I say, snap the lid shut, and step over the salesman out of the store.