Category: My stories

Count To Ten

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She tied me to a chair and broke each of my fingers, one by one.
As she did it, she looked me in the eyes, and her smile got wider and wider with every finger she broke.
She held my hand, my left thumb slipped between her lips and she sucked on it slowly.
“Don’t!” I said.
I felt her teeth against my skin.
“This is going to hurt,” she said. And with my thumb in her teeth, she broke it clean.
Tomorrow, she will sign my casts and leave.
And she’ll wait for the day they come off again.

Migration

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Watch the spaghetti for me.
Don’t let it overcook. And don’t let it escape.
Remember the last time the spaghetti got loose? It took an entire legion of the Baron’s soldiers to subdue and drive back to the kitchen.
If it hadn’t been so delicious, both of us would have lost our heads.
They say that spaghetti is supposed to be easy, but when you forget to salt the water, all kinds of curses and maliciousness gets into the pasta.
The meatballs are screaming again?
Best not to serve them at all. We’ll use olive oil and pepper this time.

Predetermined

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You can’t change fate. Everything is predetermined.
From the beginning of time to the end of time, everything has been planned for.
Even the roll of the dice has a set outcome.
Don’t bother trying to escape from your fate.
This doesn’t means you should just sit there and let things happen.
Because the times you make happen, well, those were fated to happen, too.
The fact that everything happens according to a plan means you are completely absolved from the results of your actions.
This is what I’ll be telling the judge about those seventy-eight murders you committed.
Psycho.

The Sleeper

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My little girl couldn’t fall asleep.
So I told her to close her eyes, think of clouds, and count slowly to ten.
She always fell asleep at five or six.
But one night, she got to ten.
And she was by the bed, shaking me.
Wake up, Daddy, she said.
She does it to her classmates, at their desks.
She doesn’t even have to count out loud.
She just thinks of clouds and counts to ten.
What happens when you count backwards? I ask her.
She shakes her head. No, she says.
I feel tired, so I don’t ask again.

Floating

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It rained hard for a day, and the bayou looked like it would overflow, but it didn’t.
We watched tree branches and other junk flow with the water.
Then, a dead body. Jeans, jacket… face down and not moving.
Well, okay. It was moving downstream.
Around the bend, another body floated by.
Two bodies.
Instead of calling the police, we placed bets.
I bet on the first body. It had a good head start.
But the other one was coming up fast.
Mine got caught on a tree branch, and the other won.
Only then, did we call the police.

The Prison of Oz

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Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion sat in the prison cell, weeping.
The Scarecrow had insisted that they take him apart and slip him through the bars.
“I can go for help!” he said cheerfully.
So, they pulled out his straw and threw it with his empty clothes out the barred window.
They blew away in the breeze.
The Tinman insisted that he could slip through the bars if they hammered him flat.
The heavy wooden bench proved useful for this purpose.
It also proved destructive. They called out to him, but the Tin Man did nothing but twitch and moan.

Hawaii

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I saved up for a year to go to Hawaii.
I kept a calendar, marked every day off until it was time.
First class ticket, champagne and leg room.
They put one of those flower necklaces on me.
Checked into the hotel, and then took a taxi to a party.
First time I ever had poi.
That’s when my throat locked up.
I’m allergic, it turns out.
Spent the whole week in the hospital.
I don’t remember the flight back.
Yeah, being allergic to bees or gluten would suck.
But I can’t help but think this was far, far worse.

Curses

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The Great Mage, The Master of Kraken, taught me that all curses should be removed in reverse order as they were inflicted on the victim as to not cause harmful effects as they are unbound and dispelled.
Like turning the pages of a book. Auras overlap, but a good wizard can carefully determine the proper procedure in less than a day.
Never rush a job because someone’s dying from their afflictions. That can be delayed or cured, too.
With that in mind, where is this werewolf with the Midas Touch that’s been turned to stone?
I love a good challenge.

Rite of Passage

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Some societies have complex and deadly rites of passage. The elders really bust your ass.
Others require that simple rituals be performed. That kind of cake walk makes for a weak man and a weak tribe.
The times sure have changed since my tribe roamed these lands, before fences. Before the white men came.
My great-grandfather had to hunt ten rattlesnakes on his own. Now, my grandson gets a hundred bucks worth of chips and is told to make it last the evening.
Otherwise, we’ll throw a rattlesnake at him.
Maybe the times haven’t changed all that much after all.

The Chip

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I work at this place, maybe you’ve heard of it… Cyberdyne Industries?
Anyway, I needed an expansion chip, found one sitting on a workbench, turned out to be from the head of a Terminator.
Now it’s trying to take over the world every time I sync it.
I called tech Support and told them this, plus, it’s getting lousy reception. They told me to reboot it.
Now my downloads are faster, finally fast enough to take over the whole world.
Relax – they’ll come out with a 4G model next year, I’ll do the upgrade, and we’ll all be free again.