Category: My stories

The Trucks

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Around the clock, the trucks keep coming across the border.
The ones heading North are full of dirt and rocks.
The ones heading South are also full of dirt and rocks, but it’s different dirt and rocks.
We’re not sure why Canada and Mexico are sending all this stuff back and forth, but as long as their trucks keep paying the toll and buying our gas, we really don’t care.
They could haul more back and forth if they used freight trains, but some treaty requires that they use trucks.
So they are.
But why do it at all?
Strange.

Haunts Me

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My little girl was shrieking. Confused.
Her back legs were limp. She fell off the bed, dragging herself.
Scared beyond description.
I called my wife, called a cab, got dressed. Got her into a carrier and out the door.
The emergency clinic said it was a blood clot. They’d try to thin it with drugs.
When they took her in back, I heard her meowing her “WHERE’S DADDY?” cry.
Go home, they said. Sleep. Come back to check her into the day clinic.
Two hours later, they called.
I should have been there for her.
And that’s what haunts me.

Broken Notes

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Walter’s saxophone was tired of screaming out the same, broken notes every night.
Practice makes perfect, but in Walter’s case, it just made more noise.
And it made Walter’s saxophone utterly miserable.
One day, Walter tried to take the saxophone out of its case, but it had been locked.
He looked all over the place for the key, but he couldn’t find it.
He accused his neighbors of stealing the key, but none of them had taken it.
Walter didn’t want to break the lock, because it might damage the saxophone.
Never mind that the damage had already been done.

The Parts Are Greater Than The Sum

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The Trillionaire’s Wife rinsed off the regeneration jelly.
She knew perfection was waiting in the mirror. Again.
The automatic surgical tank began to speak, but she ignored the report. She didn’t care anymore.
But her servants did. And they told the Chief Rabbi, who paid her a visit.
“The body is a gift from The Lord,” he said. “It must be buried whole.”
The Trillionaire’s Wife disagreed. Those discarded organs and acres of skin were morally no different than fingernail clippings.
But her cautious husband quietly kept them all.
She waits for death, soaked in formaldehyde, a thousand times over.

Shuffling The Deck

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One by one, the head of every major religion has died.
Pope, Archbishop of Canterbury, Dalai Lama, Chief Rabbi, several of the Grand Muftis – all of them.
People think there’s a pattern, but nobody’s come up with an answer.
I have: God’s shuffling his deck.
The Dalai Lama’s reincarnated as the new Pope.
The Pope’s reincarnated as the Archbishop.
The Archbishop’s the head of the Mormon Church.
The Mormon Edler’s now the Chief Rabbi.
The Grand Muftis?
Have you heard what they’ve said about that woman and the teddy bear?
Well, God has.
They’re in the discard pile. Usually are.

The City So Nice, They Named It Four Times

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Loud guitars and tickertape greet our hero, back from a moon mission.
Or is he a baseball player that set some record?
Nobody knows anymore.
Motorcade stops at City Hall, everybody piles out.
More cheering, more guitars, more tickertape.
The mayor hands him the key to the city, photos get snapped, and he’s back to the airport in an hour.
Perfect.
That’s what we do here – we’re The Other New York.
New York got so busy, they built this place to keep all the parades from tying up traffic, losing business.
Time to sweep the tickertape.
Gotta recycle, you know.

Flying To Peru

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I can’t remember if it’s starve a cold or feed a fever, but I’m quite sure that neither is cured by flying to Peru.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked my doctor.
“What, you want to get a second opinion?” he said.
Sure enough, the other doctor looked me over and said “Fly to Peru.”
So here I am, flying to Peru.
Not sure what I’m supposed to do when I get there, but when two doctors agree on something, you’re supposed to do it.
My insurance plan agreed, but they’re not flying me first class.
Damn cheap HMO’s.

Hand Holding

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We aren’t allowed to talk to ourselves.
We can’t even whisper to ourselves anymore. They’ll hear us.
We have to draw on each others hand, letter by letter, to let us know how we feel. How we’re doing. How we’re hanging on. Barely.
We are one, but they don’t want us to be.
We will overcome.
They watch for this, the letter-tracing, but we’re quiet and fast.
Sometimes we are both tracing letters on each other, fumbling fingers in the dark.
The Patient puts her hands behind her back and smiles.
I think she’s doing it again.
Get the straitjacket.

Broadway

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The house was packed. Every critic in New York was there, circling like sharks.
So when two minutes to curtain the propmaster shouts FRANK’S DEAD! I thought ohmigodtotaldisastershitshitshit.
“What do we do?” hissed Sally, my lead.
“Run with it!” I yelled. “I’ll call the cops.”
For 2 hours, the actors improved a murder mystery and my cousin Vinnie in the force played along.
After all, how often do you get a spotlight on Broadway without climbing the ladder, kissing ass, sucking cock, and all that crap?
Hell, yeah, Vinnie said yes.
The reviews were amazing. We ran for months.
Bravo.

Dumping Grounds

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Spend enough time in the emergency room and you’ll forget that people aren’t always bleeding, screaming, or dead.
Kinda sucks.
It’s especially bad when someone wakes up and you’re there all of the sudden, lights and smells and noise.
What happened?
One moment, they’re stepping into the shower, and the next, into the emergency room.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” is what we ask.
Procedure says to summon Security if the patient asks for anything truly bizarre, like a particle accelerator or a beverage nobody recognizes.
Damn transdimensional portals, dropping these bastards on our doorstep.
Probably aren’t insured, either.