Category: My stories

The Devil’s Due

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Every day, the Devil puts himself on trial for all of his evil deeds.
The evidence is presented in its entirety, from the dawn of Creation to the moment the judge bangs his gavel.
Witnesses take the stand, present their testimony, and shuffle off to make room for the next victim of The Devil.
The Devil offers no defense, and he throws himself upon the mercy of the court.
Without fail, the jury always quickly finds him innocent.
The Devil scowls, and leaves the court a free man.
“Would they honestly find me guilty, I’d let them leave,” he says.

Boxed Up

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Brad woke up in darkness, a splitting headache his only companion. He rubbed the back of his head and then felt around him…
Straw… wooden floor… wooden walls… a low wooden ceiling… faint light leaking through the slats…
Brad decided he was in a crate.
He listened… ocean waves?
“Hello?” he shouted.
He waited. No response.
Brad kicked at the wooden slats until they splintered.
He peered out from the hole… a sandy beach, with the sun setting over the water.
“Excellent,” he said to no one.
He spent a week on the island, then called for a pickup time.

Shakesphere

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“All the world’s a stage,” said The Immortal Bard.
Little did he know, a thousand years after he said that a team of astronauts and planetary engineers would transform one of Saturn’s moons into an orbiting open-air theater.
Well, open-space theater. Despite several attempts to enclose the moon with an atmosphere, the semi-permeable membrane bubble kept leaking and bursting under the pressure.
The remote-controlled gargantuan robots were tied to neural pickups in the actors brains.
Someone backstage said “MacBeth” and cursed the production. Next thing we knew the planetoid had shattered.
Thank goodness for armored spacesuits and extra oxygen tanks.

Prison For Life

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Seventy years ago, Allistar Muggs had been sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Turns out he’d sold his soul to The Devil so he could live forever.
Nobody believed him at first, but Allistar didn’t age a day as the years passed by. Nor did the increasingly brutal assassination attempts ever succeed.
He always seemed to heal up without so much as a scar, missing tooth, or torn-off finger. He’d wake up the next morning, same as the day they gave him a number to wear.
We sealed the freak in concrete and buried him in the prison yard.

The Gates Of Heaven

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Centuries went by, and Peter made a list of the things that annoyed him about Heaven.
He wondered about the Pearly Gates. Why have gates without a fence?
Then there were the harps. They were all left-handed.
Finally, nobody was sweeping up all the molting from the angels’ wings. Feathers feathers, everywhere.
One day, there was a lull in the death count, or maybe everybody dying that day was far too evil.
Either way, he had some time, so he asked God about his list.
God smiled. “I work in mysterious ways.”
Peter nodded, and went back to the Gates.

Thumbs Up

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Alicia wasn’t just a thumb model, but she was the thumb model.
If you had a photo shoot that needed a close-up of the perfect thumb, you called Alicia.
Sure, it was her left thumb, but her left thumb reversed was better than any right thumb on the planet, too.
Ten years ago, it was insured for two million dollars, and on every billboard on every highway across America.
Then, she thumbed her nose at the whole shallow modeling industry.
Now, you’ll see it by the side of the road, hitching a ride just a little more down the way.

Lighter

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Howard spent a lot of money on his silver torch-style lighter, so he wasn’t about to give it up when he went through airport security.
“Can’t I just get it checked?” he asked the TSA agent. “I’m late for my damn flight.”
“It’s too late for that,” said the agent. “Please surrender the item and proceed through the detector.”
Howard argued with the agent for a minute, and it ended with “Well, if you’re so worried, how about the lighter I’ve got hidden up my ass?”
Howard took a later flight. He also asked for a blanket to sit on.

Blind

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Like all of the test-tube psychics, Maria was born blind – genetically engineered to prevent her from seeing the physical world around her.
Instead, she saw the potential of the world around her. Meadows of possibilities and forests of decision-making trees wobbled through a fog of free-will.
Most of her group were passive observers, but Maria was one of the special ones. She could bend and shape her surroundings.
This was handy in important negotiations, and more than once she had wrestled an apocalyptic conclusion into an elegant and beautiful agreement.
It also kept her from walking into closed doors.

Gus

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When I was little, I had an imaginary friend.
Gus wasn’t another kid or a cowboy or a dragon or an astronaut.
Gus was a fireman.
Over the years, I made real friends, so I didn’t need an imaginary one anymore.
Gus became sad and slowly disappeared.
Last night, I lost control of my car and rammed into a tree.
The last thing I remember was the door being ripped from my car and Gus reaching in to pull me out.
“Thank you, Gus,” I said.
When I came to in the hospital, Gus was gone.
So were my legs.

Goodnight, Bum

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After my daughter died and my wife left me, I missed a lot of things I had taken for granted.
The thing I missed most of all was reading bedtime stories.
I knew the stories by heart, we all do. But there’s something special about opening a book and reading aloud.
It’s not just the pictures. It’s something about that book. Holding it up while you’re sitting at the foot of the bed, nightlight’s on, covers pulled up.
Now, I go out into the city’s alleys and read bedtime stories to the homeless.
It’s not the same. Certainly smells worse.