Mindy hated her new pet goldfish.
Her parents put the bowl in her room, saying “Goldie will watch you while you sleep. Say good night to Goldie, Mindy.”
And she did. And went to bed.
The next morning, Goldie’s fluttering fins looked different.
Mindy was trembling. “Why is Mr. Goldie…”
“Different?” interrupted her mother. “Goldfish do that naturally.”
Her mother had checked on the sleeping Mindy. And Goldie.
The fish was floating, dead.
So, her mother replaced Goldie.
Why was Goldie dead?
Not naturally.
No, Mindy had killed the hated Goldie.
Left his corpse floating.
AND NOW HE’S ALIVE AGAIN!
Take me to the river
River Phoenix picked the wrong place to go trick or treating.
Instead of going door-to-door for candy, he went to John Frusciante for a four day drug binge, dying of an overdose outside the Viper Room.
Johnny Depp closed the club every Halloween out of respect.
Okay, he was twenty-three, a little old to go trick or treating.
But he was far too young to take a ride in the pine box derby.
Think about that the next time you complain about a sugar rush from a bag full of candy or brain freeze from drinking a milkshake too fast.
Campfire stories
Kids sit around the campfire and tell ghost stories.
So, ghosts sit around the campfire and tell kids stories?
Yes. Yes they do.
They tell stories about kids doing horrible things, and then horrible things happening to them as a consequence.
Like casting a spell in a cemetery and getting eaten by zombies.
Or tormenting a black cat and the cat’s witch owner turning them into frogs.
Not to mention kids who steal other kids’ candy on Halloween and getting sick and dying from the poisoned candy.
Which is how they became ghosts.
Sitting around a campfire, telling their stories.
I don’t know kung fu
My brother took karate lessons for one week.
My parents were so cheap, they cut an old ratty white bathrobe down to his size.
The instructor turned him away and made them get a real karate robe.
So, for Halloween, he was a karate master, despite the white belt.
Eyebrow-pencil mustache on his lip.
I was given the white bathrobe.
“Two karate masters.”
The next year, he wore some other costume.
And I got the karate robe hand-me-down.
Well, more like “You will wear this and like it, you ungrateful shit”
To this day, I can’t watch Brue Lee movies.
For a tumble
Every morning, Frankie dumped out of bags of chicken parts into a metal drum, poured in special seasoning, and ran it for 20 minutes.
Dumping out the chicken into a bin to sit overnight in the walk-in cooler.
Then, yesterday’s batch went into the fryer.
Cooked and ready, the register girl bagged up the orders for sale.
One day, the special seasoning seemed a bit off.
It had green glowing crystals in it.
Frankie used it anyway.
But when he opened the drum, well, what came out… wasn’t chicken.
Pulling the screaming Frankie back into the cooler, shutting the door.
All sales
Cursed paintings. Cursed furniture. Cursed dinnerware.
Whether you’re selling or buying, Seraph-Minton is the auction house you’re looking for.
Our team of lawyers, priests, and assessors are always available for consultation.
Discrete arrangements, secure facilities, unequaled expertise in handling and shipping.
And, of course, reasonable commissions.
Seraph-Minton can turn your family’s shameful secret burden into cold hard cash.
No matter what the curse, there is always an interested party for it.
And through an arrangement with the Transylvania Historical Society, most governments offer generous tax breaks for charitable contributions to their extensive collections.
And, of course, all sales are final.
Weekly Challenge #860: Thumbs Up
LISA
Me Gusta
When my daughter did Spanish GCSE we started watching films in Spanish to help her get used to the language. I don’t speak Spanish so relied on Subtitles. For her A Levels we went a step further and changed the language on Netflix to Spanish… all of it. I mostly left her in charge of the remote control.
She’s just left for Manchester University, to study linguistics and Spanish. We forgot to change the telly back though. It’s OK although my Spanish hasn’t improved there’s pictures and symbols like home and thumbs up you know. Anyway I kinda like it.
RICHARD
Well-thumbed
Let’s have a big thumbs up for the opposable thumb!
That marvellous evolutionary miracle which has allowed us to create tools, develop the written word, and made using chopsticks so much less fiddly than it would otherwise have been.
Just imagine if evolution had decided to follow an entirely different direction?
What if we had no thumbs at all? Or, even worse, opposable toes?
We’d all be walking on our hands, eating meals with our feet, and sock design would have followed a wholly different path.
Thankfully it didn’t, because I’m not sure I’m ready for a foot-focussed society!
LIZZIE
Thumbs up to the guitar player and his song and his hair and his boots and his eyes, contacts, and… No, this doesn’t work. She stretched. The damn guitar was more interesting than everything else put together, and it wasn’t even a nice guitar. Why did she have to praise the guy and pretend the whole concert had been amazing? No. She was going to be honest, brutally honest if need be. She opened a new message. “Thumbs up to the guitar player and the song and the hair, wow! And the boots, nice!” She sighed. Yup. Perhaps next time.
SERENDIPIDY
How are you doing so far?
You see, I’ve been getting something of a bad press lately. A lot of talk about how they’ve found signs of torture when they discover the bodies.
Personally, I think they’re focussing on the wrong thing; after all, surely they should be more concerned about the killings?
However, I feel I have a duty to give the public what they want.
So, if you’re feeling OK, can you give me a thumbs up?
And, I’ll just go ahead and slip the thumbscrews on!
You will scream if I tighten them too much, won’t you?
NORVAL JOE
Sabrina rolled her eyes and gave Linoliamanda the thumbs up, and said, “Yeah. Sure. We all know that Billbert can fly. Now, tell us the real reason you followed him all the way to Eureka.”
Linoliamanda showed spunk Billbert had never seen before when she folded her arms, glared at Sabrina, and said, “I don’t have to tell you anything.”
Sabrina sniffed. “You do if you want to be anywhere near Billbert. My coven just devined that there is a plot to capture Billbert and use him for their devices. It’s convenient you suddenly show up at the same time.”
PLANET Z
Every time an Astros pitcher strikes out a batter, the gigantic Minute Maid Park scoreboard plays an animation of a cartoon astronaut planting a flag with the number of K’s.
And then something weird happens…
Falling into a wormhole.
Falling into a crater.
But after every horrible thing, he gives a thumbs up to show he’s okay.
When they first started showing the cartoon astronaut animations, he didn’t give a thumbs up afterwards.
But I guess it was too scary for kids, so they added the thumbs up to show he’s okay.
Still, he’s probably shit his space suit pants.
Salem’s bloodlines
Witch powers run through family bloodlines.
But if a witch isn’t trained before she’s thirteen, she loses her powers forever.
Emily was trained by her mother, the Queen Witch, but over the years all she ever wanted to do was be normal.
She didn’t want her daughter Susan to become a witch, so Susan ran off to her grandmother’s house to learn.
The Queen Witch tried to teach her, but nothing worked.
Spells. Potions. Riding a broom.
Defeated, Susan came back home.
“I lied about your age,” said Emily. “You’re actually fourteen.”
And that’s how the magic died in Salem.
Becky
Becky lost her arm when she was six.
The Media Lab used 3D printing, nanoactuators, and an AI control system to construct a prosthesis.
A neural interface passed motor and sensory impulses.
She could feel its fingers, brushing on her face.
Strange… a little twitch?
“Just a calibration,” said the doctor. “Nothing else.”
The arm adapted to her needs, anticipating.
As she grew older, the Lab built new frames to fit, using the original AI system.
Until one day a researcher suggested a newer AI.
The arm tore out his throat.
In blood on the table it wrote “She’s mine.”
I’ve met
I’ve met the Grim Reaper.
And, as you clearly see, I’ve lived to talk about it.
The first time, he looked at me, collected a soul, and moved on.
The second time, he looked at me, did a double-take, and did his usual business.
Then came the respectful nods. The handshakes. The smalltalk.
Then, after about twenty times, he put his bony hand on my shoulder, and said “I see a lot of folks in your line of work, and I’m impressed at your skill. You never leave any witnesses. I’ll see you next time.”
Quiet in here, isn’t it?