Hold it

Looking back, losing seventy-five pounds was actually easy.
I walked a lot.
Stores that are less than a mile away, I walked to.
I ate less, and I only ate what was good for me.
I stopped buying bad stuff so it wouldn’t be around to tempt me.
Walking to the store means I can carry less, so I can’t carry heavy canned bad stuff.
Or bottles.
I no longer drank my calories. Only water and tea for me.
And the pounds vanished one after another.
The hard part is not losing, but knowing how to stop and hold it.

To The Shake Shack

I’ve never had a shake from Shake Shack.
I’ve had a Shake Shack burger. And Shake Shack fries.
But never a Shake Shack shake.
So, I went to the Shake Shack and asked for a Shake Shack shake.
Just a shake? Shake Shack asked, thinking it was a mistake.
Just a shake. I said. That’s all I can take.
The shake took Shake Shack seven minutes to make.
I don’t like to wait. But the shake was great.
But, sadly.
Seven hundred and fifty calories of shake.
I’m glad I walked to the Shake Shack, to walk off this shake.

Little Ricky

My name is Ricky these days.
People used to call me Rick. And Richard.
But now, they call me Ricky.
Some people still call me Rick. People who knew me back in school.
And the people who call me Richard, well, they’re reading my name from a form or a computer.
It’s the ones who call me Ricky that I listen to.
They used to call me Little Ricky.
But I got bigger, and I met another guy who called himself Little Ricky.
I was bigger than him, so I let him take the name Little Ricky, and I’m Ricky.

Lost breast

While Hugo was walking around the library, he came across a breast.
He picked it up and turned it over in his hands.
It was an ordinary ball of flesh, supple, yet firm.
About a C cup, he figured.
Maybe he should ask the librarian to make an announcement.
Or would that be too embarrassing?
Perhaps just drop it in the Lost and Found.
Its owner could pick it up when they realized it was gone.
But then, what if someone took it?
He put it back on the floor and walked away.
Let someone else deal with the thing.

The Healer

Aescepalus, father of all doctors.
They say he could cure any disease and heal any injury.
Including death.
Souls vanished from the underworld as Aescepalus revived them.
Cerberus, the guard dog of The Abyss, yelped and chased his tail. Hades screamed with rage.
“How dare he steal my subjects from me!”
Hades put a price on Aescepalus’ head, and bounty hunters were more than happy to hunt him down.
Until Aescepalus reminded them that many bounties were worth more alive than dead.
“I can fix your mistakes,” he told them.
But eventually, Hades won out.
Because Aescepalus couldn’t heal himself.

Weekly Challenge #766 – Fruitcake

Blep

Lizzie

The teenagers sat side by side. “What is it like to live with a dead person?” he asked. She looked down. Then she looked up again and stared at the horizon. He knew what she meant. He was living with a dead person too but had never admitted it to anyone else. He sat closer to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “I’m not crazy,” she said. “I know…” he whispered. “She’s just dead inside and she doesn’t know it.” He nodded. That’s when he knew he would be the one to take her away from it all.

Richard

Fruitcake

Uncle Sidney was, for all intents and purposes, a total fruitcake.

We’d frequently get calls from the police after he’d been arrested for parading around the park, naked, save for a pair of flippers and a turban.

He’d been banned from all the local stores for trying to sleep in the frozen food cabinets.

And he insisted on planting umbrellas and pogo sticks in the garden.

To say he was difficult to tolerate is an understatement, but we did nevertheless.

Not because he was family, or we were particularly kind, but because he was loaded.

A very, very, rich fruitcake!

Serendipidy

They call me a fruitcake, a few peas short of a pod -a bit loopy, but harmless enough.

It’s just a bit of dressing up and harmless fun, after all, and if it keeps me happy, why should it matter?

Of course, come the Festive Season, everybody is more than happy to play along, even encourage me. They love the red outfit, white beard and jolly disposition.

What they don’t know, is that every Christmas Eve, I sneak out from the secure accommodation, climb down the nearest chimney and massacre an unsuspecting family in their beds!

Compliments of the season!

Tom

Always Inedible

The New York Times reports that the Secret Service does not have a plan for a president who will not exit the White House when their term has expired. Nice play Secret Service guys, Oh Br’er Rabbit please don’t throw me into the briar patch” Right, want to hide what you be doing, dos that is plain sight. I heard a squaw on an Intel site over the Christmas. The term Fruitcake keep popping up. After a mess of cross filters chewed it up, it seems to be some operational code word. Yup Individual One is Fruitcake. Seem holiday fitting.

Norval Joe

Linoliamanda placed a hand on her father’s arm, helping to difuse her potentially explosive father. “Let’s go home, Daddy. As threatening as these gentlemen may appear, they haven’t produced a warrant for Billbert, us, or anyone else.”
Mr. Withybottom scowled around the room. “I guess it’s best we aren’t associated with any of these fruit cakes, anyway. If these agents have any issues with them, they can leave us out of it.” He took his daughter by the hand. “Let’s go, Linny.”
Taking advantage of the distraction, Billbert whispered to his mother, “Come on, Mom. Let’s get out of here.”

Planet Z

Most people joke about fruitcake being inedible, but when the pandemic shut down food processing plants, distribution systems, and grocery stores, yeah, that fruitcake your grandmother sent you looks awfully good.
You’ll go through every can of cream of mushroom soup, every can of lima beans, every box of pasta you have on the shelf first.
Might even stare at those cans of Alpo dog food.
Anything but that fruitcake.
Until, it happens.
You open the tin, peel back the plastic, and reach for the knife.
Which gets stuck in the sugary brick.
With enough ketchup, that Alpo tasted good.

The richest man

Croesus, King of Lydia, the richest man in ancient times.
He found joy with his wealth, and misery in parting with any.
The more he had, the less he gave.
Piles of riches, hidden away in the treasury of his crumbling palace.
And then, he died, and found himself on the shores of the River Styx.
The boatman holding out his hand, waiting.
Croesus felt under his tongue, and found not a coin, but a stone.
His family had repaid his lifetime of greed by dooming him an eternity of wandering the afterlife.
A shade forever yearning for peaceful oblivion.

The carrier

At first, they blamed the Chinese food markets and poor sanitation for the pandemic.
I mean, that’s where Bird Flu came from, right?
Researchers traced the migration path of the virus and discovered that it closely matched another migration pattern.
Santa Claus’ Christmas Eve flight plan.
It seems Santa picked up the virus somewhere and that’s how it spread so rapidly.
And being good enough for Santa doesn’t always mean washing your hands or covering your face when you sneeze.
Santa survived the plague.
Now, he stays up late at night, drawing lines through so many names, good and bad.

Kobe’s beef

Sure, it was bad weather that brought down Kobe Bryant’s helicopter.
Because of all that fog, Santa Claus couldn’t see where he was going.
Even with Rudolph’s red nose lighting the way.
Because Santa’s sleigh doesn’t show up on radar.
No radio or flight plan, either.
So when some rich former athlete ignores the tower’s weather warnings and just has to get his ass from here to there, well, God forbid there’s a jolly old man taking his sleigh out for a test run.
Oh, kids. Don’t worry.
Santa’s fine.
Just don’t ask him for a Kobe jersey for Christmas.

Because you really need a story about a goddamned puppy

Tina wanted a puppy for Christmas.
She asked for one all the time.
On Christmas Day, she woke up, ran down the stairs, and…
No puppy.
But when she opened her gifts: a dog collar, a bowl, some treats, and a pooper scooper.
“Let’s go to the shelter and get a puppy,” her dad said.
So, they went to the shelter, and Tina looked at the puppies.
“I don’t like any of them,” she said.
“Well, what kind do you want?” asked her dad.
Tina couldn’t decide.
So, the collar, bowl, treats, and scooper sat in the corner, gathering dust.