Bottle Or Can

Oswald, laying back in his weekly bath, not that there’s much room in the tub left for water to call it a bath, shouts “BEER! NOW!”
Bertha’s sick of being treated like a damn servant. She brings up a bottle and a can. “Which would you have?”
“Bottle,” he says.
She breaks the bottle over Oswalt’s bald head. Glass shatters all over him.
A torrent of profanity fills the air. “What you go do that for?” growls Oswalt.
“Oh, you’d prefer the can?” asks Bertha, and she puts it in one of his dirty socks and bludgeons him to death.

Cherubacide

Downtown. Valentine’s Day.
We found the body of a baby with wings in the alley.
There were three pink-shafted arrows in its chest, valentine in its hand.
“Suicide note,” grunts my partner, barely looking up from his coffee “Nothing to see here.”
“Nothing to see, Joe?” I asked. “Suicide shot himself three times in the chest, did he? A freak baby with wings, nothing to see?”
Joe stared deep into my eyes. “When love dies, you don’t want to know. Too much pain.”
Poor Joe. Guy’s hit bottom.
I guess I’ll give him the flowers and chocolates some other time.

Heartstrings

Sonya was good, her family said, but she wanted to be the absolute best.
“For the best music,” said The Devil, “you must string your violin with heartstrings. They resonate with unmatched beauty.”
So, at her concerts, playing her best, she captured heart after beating heart, luring the men to her home to harvest the strings she needed.
Still, she didn’t sound like the best of all.
The Devil laughed. “They have to be from people you love the most.”
Her mother.
Her father.
Her sister.
Herself.
The Devil laughed at the carnage, rosined Sonya’s bow, and played.
Magnificent!

The Girl Of My Dreams

She was the girl of my dreams.
Every time I’d go to sleep, I’d dream of her.
Adventure.
Romance.
Excitement.
I’d rescue her from all kinds of dangerous predicaments.
Then. when I woke up, she was gone.
“I’ve got to find her,” I said.
So, I looked. Everywhere.
I spent all I had on detectives to search the world for her.
When I found her, she attacked me with a knife.
“Why?” I groaned. “Why did you attack me?”
“You,” she said. “You’re the man from all my nightmares. Whenever you appear, bad always happens.”
And she stabbed me again.

Happen

I’m awake.
Did what I think happened happen?
No. It couldn’t have.
I look around the room.
There’s blood on the walls.
Blood on the ceiling.
Blood on my hands.
Blood on the sheets of the bed.
I don’t want to look at them.
I don’t want to see her under there.
I stumble to the bathroom and throw up in the sink.
Looking in the mirror, I’m covered with blood splatters… it’s on my face, in my hair…
I hear a moan coming from the bed.
Wait.
She… she’s alive?
After all that?
“Try harder,” she groans. “Kill me.”

The Zombie Clown

Zombies are everywhere.
There’s nowhere left to hide.
I found a boat and made it to an island in the middle of a lake, but the zombies walked along the lake floor and started to come ashore.
So, I kept the boat at sea, which really sucks because I get seasick easily.
I have plenty of food, ammo, and fresh water. And books to read.
If I need more, I go back to shore and collect supplies.
I saw a clown zombie. A freaking clown zombie.
Sick, really, twisting his guts into the shapes of animals.
But, yeah, it’s funny.

Mammoth

Under most circumstances, the escape of a cloned mammoth would be the lead in the evening newscast.
However, with the river flooding and filling with sharks, that was not the case.
“We should lead with the mammoth,” said the anchor, touching up her makeup in the mirror. “People don’t have to go into the water, but that rampaging mammoth might hurt someone out on the street.”
“It’s not exactly rampaging,” said the producer. “It’s just sitting there. We’ve got video of kids petting it.”
“What about the sharks?”
“Um, we can’t show the video of kids trying to pet them.”

Once upon a Tim

Once upon a Tim, there was a happy colony of bacteria.
I can’t tell you where that colony was on Tim, but wherever it was, the bacteria were happy.
Tim, on the other hand, was not happy.
The bacteria were flesh-eating bacteria, and since Tim was the closest flesh to them, the bacteria were eating Tim.
Tim lay in the hospital, nurses pumping antibiotics into his body while doctors prepared for emergency radical amputation.
The bacteria lived happily ever after in a petri dish at the CDC.
Tim, or what was left of him, didn’t.
(Who cares, right?)
The end.

The Gates

Devils despise the rule of The Lord, but there are unwilling servants among the angels, too.
They sat on a park bench, a malcontent seraphim and one of the damned.
“Did you bring it?” growled the devil.
The angel took out a bundle and unwrapped it, revealing a shiny iron bar.
“From right under Peter’s nose.”
The devil pulled out another iron bar, rusty and pitted.
“Let’s make them sing,” he said.
The devil and angel picked up their iron bars and swung them at each other.
The Universal Bell rang louder than existence, and the stars began to fade.

Don’t believe the frog

No, you’re not imagining things. That frog out by the castle gate can talk.
Let me guess: he says he’s a prince, and all you have to do is kiss him to change him back?
Yeah, that’s true. But he’s not telling you the whole story.
Sure, he’s a prince, but he was changed into a frog because he had been bitten by a werewolf.
Since the castle’s healer doesn’t have a cure for lycanthropy, he had the court magician turn the prince into a frog.
So go ahead. Kiss him. Be my guest.
Get your damn throat torn out.