Category: My stories

The Prince Of Scars

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We called the old man The Prince Of Scars.
He was brought to the hospital last winter, frozen solid.
We stripped him and put him in a tub of warm water, reviving him slowly.
His body was completely covered with painful creases, knots, deformations, and agonizing twists.
“What happened to you?” I asked him.
“Life didn’t pass me by,” he moaned. “It took one look at me and tore me apart.”
He didn’t say anything else.
We couldn’t get a name off of him and his fingerprints were long destroyed.
He left that morning.
Think he’ll be back next winter?

The Champ

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It is the Fourth Of July.
Thousands of miles from the Coney Island Boardwalk, Hodo blindly crawls on the cracked earth, flies buzzing in and out of his nose.
There is no food.
There is no water.
There is nothing but dirt, flies, and death.
A pack of hyenas catches his scent, and Hodo doesn’t feel them as they tear into his flesh.
Back at Coney Island, the winner of the hot dog eating competition congratulations the runner-up.
They laugh, throw up on each other, and laugh again.
To Hodo, the pool on the ground would have been a banquet.

A whisper in the ivy

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I hear a whisper in the ivy.
Is it the wind, blowing through the leaves?
On the ground, in a bed of green, covered with shadows, I see something.
I kneel down to look closer, but there is nothing there.
Another whisper. This time behind me.
And yet another. To my left. To my right.
It is the wind, and it wants to tell me something.
It breathes down my neck, past my arms, through my fingers.
“What is it?” I whisper back. “What do you want to tell me?”
Silence. The wind keeps its secrets, locked in the ivy.

The strange coffee

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Mary watched the last drop of coffee slide out of her cup and on to the floor.
There was a sizzle, then a whiff of steam. The drop of coffee burned through the tile to the basement.
Mary looked at the coffee pot, swirling it carefully. She’d used a free sample she’d received in the mail.
After a moment of panic, she realized it hadn’t burned a hole through her.
She went into the bathroom and checked to make sure.
After she got dressed again, she shrugged and filled another cup.
This time, she added sugar, igniting a massive explosion.

The Flower Goddess

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In her retirement, the Flower Goddess fills her days by arranging the stones in her Zen garden.
“Where are the flowers?” asks a visiting priest.
“In my memory,” she says, and she picks up the rake.
Concentric circles, weaving patterns. Lines without end.
Her sister, the former Goddess of Dance, sits on a bench and watches the sand.
“In my youth, I would have found inspiration from this,” she said. “But instead of useless motion, I merely observe and appreciate the stillness.”
The Flower Goddess nods, and summons afternoon tea.
She plucks hibiscus blooms from memory to boil in it.

The Locksmith

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It’s midnight, and I’ve locked myself out of my house.
I take a pen-knife out of my pocket, cut my palms, and rub my hands together while reciting the chant of The Locksmith.
From the shadows, a robed figure emerges, reaching into a large burlap sack.
His pale hand pokes from the sleeve of his robe, a shiny key in its fingers.
The Locksmith nods and unlocks the door.
“Thank you,” I say, reaching for my wallet.
The Locksmith shakes his head, holds my wrist, and his tongue licks my bloody palm.
“Delicious,” it croaks, and returns to the shadows.

The Brick Hater

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Arthur had an irrational hate for anything made using ancient adobe architecture.
Mud, clay, water, and straw were a recipe for rage in Arthur’s brain, and he’d been arrested many times for smashing at ruddy brown walls with a hammer or smashing bulldozers into them.
His mother sighed and said Arthur’s older brother had covered him with mud and straw, then left him in the sun to bake and harden.
“At least it wasn’t cake,” said the doctor.
“Who the fuck makes houses out of cake?” Arthur’s mother replied.
The doctor stroked his beard and grunted. “I wish I knew.”

The Leaking Pen

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Freitag’s pen drips and leaks on the paper, making it useless as a writing device.
But if you hold it over the paper and gently dangle it, the droplets of ink spell out messages we believe are from Old Lord Freitag himself.
“I was brutally murdered with my own pen, driven into my heart,” says his spirit through the cursed writing device.
We already know that. His butler confessed to the crime, Freitag’s blood and the pen’s ink fresh on his hands.
That was over two hundred years ago, but Freitag’s ghost hasn’t stopped since.
Here. Have a pencil instead.

Pocket watch

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For his three hundredth birthday, Papa Smurf wanted a pocket watch.
So, the Smurfs stole Gargamel’s pocket watch and brought it to him.
“Not only will this not fit in my pocket, but it still has the inscription from Gargamel’s mother in it,” he grumbled.
As smart as Brainy Smurf was, he couldn’t quite wrap his head around the delicate engineering necessary to make a pocket watch, and he went mad from the attempt.
The potion needed to cure him required five tongues of humans.
The tiny blue creatures armed themselves with scimitars and bags, and headed to the village.

Van Helsing

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Van Helsing delivered the fatal stake to Dracula’s heart and laughed.
As he boasted at the local pub, the townsfolk reacted not in gratitude, but in shock.
“Are you saying you killed that nice old Count?” the barkeep asked.
“He paid my son’s way through college,” said an old woman. “And had the hunch in his back fixed, too.”
Before he could respond, Val Helsing’s wrists were locked in irons.
“What for?” he said.
“Murder,” said the constable.
“But Dracula was already dead!” said Van Helsing.
The excuse didn’t work with the judge either.
Van Helsing was hung at dawn.