Category: My stories

Of all the childhood games out there, the one I hate the most is Simon Says.
Because I never got to play it as anything but Simon.
Sure, telling kids to step forward or raise their hands can be fun.
But it was never enough.
It led to my being a megalomaniac, ordering kids to rob banks, smite enemies, and far, far worse.
I tried it on my family, but they were also Simons, and my parents never relinquished their iron grip on power.
Oh, I also hate dodgeball.
Getting hit in the face with a rubber ball sucks, too.

I like to dip my cheese pizza in ranch dressing.
I also like Doritos.
So, I bought a bag of pizza-flavored Doritos and a bag of ranch-flavored Doritos and ate them together.
It was a dumb idea.
Because the flavor dust gets all over everything. And they don’t stack like Pringles.
So, I’ll dip pizza-flavored Doritos in ranch dressing.
But I won’t crumble up ranch-flavored Doritos and sprinkle them on cheese pizza.
That’s stupid and messy.
Some idiot came up with a bag that mixed pizza-flavored Doritos with ranch-flavored ones.
Just because you can think up an idea doesn’t make it good.

You probably only know of the two Wicked Witches and the one Good Witch from the classic film, and maybe you know Mombee from the later sequel, but the books are full of spellcasters, sorcerers, and other practitioners of magic.
Ding Dong was especially proud, powerful, and dangerous.
The few who knew of her existence knew not to mention her, let alone insult her.
Munchkins are as ignorant as they are small, so they didn’t realize their mistake of singing “Ding Dong, the witch is dead!”
“No,” a voice muttered. “You’re dead.”
A massive firestorm wiped Munchkinland from the map.

Can you hear the mortars? They’re silent again.
After the bodies were piled into trucks and hauled off, we brought the stretchers to the creek.
Washing the blood and guts off of the canvas, getting them cleaned up for the next wave to come in.
We’d wash ourselves, wash the blood and guts off of ourselves, trying to wash out the memories and noise and smell away.
Wondering when we’d end up on the stretchers, taken down the hill down to the trucks, piled up, our blood and washed off and… and…
Can you hear the mortars? Hear them again?

A government survey found a dozen indigenous tribes living in the rainforest we’d marked for farming development.
It doesn’t take much of a bribe to get the numbers and GPS coordinates.
The army doesn’t patrol out here, so it’s easy to fly in one of our own survey teams.
Handing out blankets and tools and other goods.
They’re most interested in the sugar cubes.
The poison in them acts quickly.
It’s painless, and they die with smiles on their faces.
The next survey will show this area as uninhabited, and after we make the claim, we’ll roll out the machinery.

Fifteen minutes with an epsom salt warm compress, the bump on my cheek comes to a head.
“Wash your hands again and squeeze it gently,” says the virtual nurse.
Yellow and white flow down my cheek, and I wash it out with deionized water and squeeze again until only blood comes out.
Swab it out with a cotton swab, then hydrogen peroxide.
The buzz of the pharmacy drone, it drops off the antibiotics.
“Take two tonight, one tomorrow morning, and use a clean bandage,” the nurse says. “I’ll check in tomorrow.”
And I thank her, and head for the door.

Working from home and walking to stores, I don’t drive my car much.
After three and a half years, less than ten thousand miles.
As little as I drive, I still ran over a nail and had to get a new tire.
I figured I might as well buy 4 new tires, but the store owner insisted I just needed the one.
Okay, fine. Thanks.
A week later, I hit a pothole too quickly and tore up another tire.
And I needed a tow to the tire shop.
He’s still only selling me one tire.
At a time, I worry.

It’s National Lemon Day.
I go through a bag of lemons a week.
They help prevent kidney stones.
Well, the standard ones.
The uric acid ones, you also need to do potassium, keep your pH in check, and avoid foods with purine, and so on.
Every morning, I put 2 lemons on the cutting board.
Ream a half lemon out with every glass of iced tea.
Oh, I drink a lot of iced tea and water.
Because I don’t want to wait 10 hours in the emergency room for a dose of Demerol and a cat-scan.
You know… the stones.

The Flugelheimer Circus Train took the curve too fast and went off the rails outside of Morgantown.
Right out by the ravine, half the cars rolling down the hill into the rocks.
The others like scattered crushed boxes, spilling out broken animals and people.
The few survivors, limping and crawling and carrying each other to the lights of Morgantown.
Ambulances and nurses rushing out, the Boy Scout Troop giving first aid, no comfort to the mangled.
And where was Flugelheimer?
Not in his private car.
He was in Rio with the formerly-bearded lady, living it up with the insurance payout.

I work with a charity that builds schools in poor neighborhoods.
Neighborhoods with run-down schools, not enough skilled teachers, old textbooks, and few after-school activities to keep kids out of gangs.
We get a lot of grant money and celebrity support.
And we use it to build the schools.
The best schools. Beautifully and perfectly designed schools.
Problem is, when we’re done building the schools, there’s no money left.
Maybe enough for a ribbon for a politician to cut.
And run, leaving behind an empty school with no teachers, no textbooks, no afterschool activities.
Except for vandalizing the empty shell.