The town guard dragged the mad puppeteer into the castle and threw him at the feet of the duke.
The captain of the guard whispered ‘Blasphemy” into the duke’s ear.
“Cut out the tongues of the puppets,” he responded.
“It’s the man who speaks, not the puppets,” said the captain.
“Let me see,” said the duke.
The puppeteer crawled closer, and looking up at the duke, he laughed.
“What is so funny?”
The puppeteer smiled and removed the puppets from his hands, revealing concealed daggers.
“You killed my wife and daughters,” he said, stabbing the daggers into the duke’s chest.
Tag: tragedy
A Time
Ecclesiastes 3 tells us that there is a time for everything.
To die.
To weep.
To mourn.
Every time I look at the shelf I put your box of ashes on, these are the only three I can remember.
So, I put down the empty bottle of vodka, pick up a Bible, and read it to remind myself that there are other times.
To laugh.
To mend.
To heal.
And for a moment, I smile.
Then, a twenty-dollar bill falls out.
I put down the Bible, pick up the twenty, and think:
Oh good. I can get more vodka now.
The Unbecoming
Fred lost his leg in a hiking accident.
The carbon-fiber leg replacement was so good, he had the other one amputated and replaced.
Refinements made them even better, and with intelligent and sensing exoskeleton enhancements allowed him to leap and run in ways he could never imagine.
He underwent more procedures, replacing his limbs and organs to make him a mechanized superman, capable of doing amazing things.
Still, every so often, he’d hesitate. Caution held over from his weaker, biological days.
One robotic hand raised up on its own, yanked off his screaming head, and tossed it into the trash.
Rico
No matter how much the equipment improves, some guys still don’t make it.
We hang their helmets on the wall at Jimmy’s Bar. It’s tradition to tap each of the helmets on the way to the toilet.
It’s late. Everybody’s hammered.
That’s when the pagers go off. All of them.
Captain walks along the bar, checking eyes and hands.
Rico’s got our keys, so he’s not drunk like the rest of us.
“Go,” says the captain, and he reports the rest of us Not Available.
After the funeral, we went to Jimmy’s.
This is Rico’s helmet.
Go ahead. Tap it.
Chopper
I’ve always been too afraid to ride in a helicopter.
Planes don’t scare me, and it’s not a fear of heights.
It’s just something scary to me.
A friend surprised me by taking me to a heliport and trying to get me in the helicopter for a tour.
I refused, so they got in to show how safe it is.
And they crashed.
The airport’s pretty far out, so another helicopter pilot offered to fly them to the hospital.
I declined the offer to ride along.
Now, I’m regretting it. I should have gone with.
Bitch has the car keys.
Collapse
Everybody thought that the economy was recovering, but the biggest bank in the country collapsed.
But it wasn’t like all the other banks collapsing.
It literally collapsed.
Not financially. Those numbers were sound.
The bank itself. The building.
Collapsed.
Bricks, glass, drywall, and everything in the building collapsed into a pile, and a plume of dust filled the air for blocks around.
All the bankers showed up to work, scratched their heads, and then went to the bank next door.
That bank had collapsed financially, so the offices were empty.
It was a tight squeeze.
But they made it work.
Marconi
With each heart attack, Guglielmo Marconi grew more desperate to prove that soundwaves lasted forever, and that with a sufficiently-amplified shout, his words could be impressed upon the universe so they’d echo for all eternity.
For years, he’d been listening to the vacuum of space, trying to find the reverberations of souls past, but his time was running out, so he went forward with his plans to make his mark.
He was last seen alive, running through the streets of Rome, shouting “I AM MARCONI!” at the top of his lungs.
Then, mid-shout, he clutched his chest, collapsed, and died.
Miss The Boat
When the war came, Mother yelled “RUN!” and we ran to the docks.
The boat was crowded and leaky, and the captain said we needed to shed weight or we’d sink.
A dozen mothers and fathers jumped overboard and sacrificed themselves to save us.
Or so they thought.
The captain waited until dark before tossing the rest of the adults overboard and turning the boat around.
“I’ll sell the rest of you to the factories.”
Except me. I hid under some ropes and waited, and when he set out again, I slit his throat.
Now what? I ask the sky.
130
When Shakespeare wrote that his mistress’ eyes were nothing like the sun, he had no idea that she had just inhaled particles from a passing comet and underwent ocular nuclear fusion.
Her eyes had become exactly like the sun: two miniature gaseous spheres of Hydrogen and Helium under intense pressure, temperature, and gravitational power.
She clutched her flaming head and screamed until collapsing into a pile of charred bone and ash.
Shakespeare thought about correcting his sonnet, but it was already at the printers.
“Oh well,” he muttered.
Then he picked up his pen and wrote “Thou art as tyrannous…”
Batman
I saw the Batman movie today.
And that’s all I’m going to say.
Because everything I try to say about it gets me in trouble.
Before I went to see the movie, I tried to say “I’m going to see it when the crowds die down” but people called me an insensitive asshole after all those people got shot and killed in Colorado.
And then, after I saw it, I said “That movie was awesome. It totally blew me away.” People got even more pissed off at me.
So I’ll just say “I liked it” and talk about the weather.