Tag: mystery

Tuesday Tax

605018

He goes door to door, collecting the Tuesday Tax.
Sometimes, it’s a chicken. Other times, it’s a flake of gold.
I pay with recycled motor oil.
Nobody ever pays the Tuesday Tax in cash.
The law doesn’t require it, so people take their frustration out on the Tuesday Tax Man with the most difficult of barter to exchange.
He writes his collections in a huge ledger, tears off a receipt, and drags everything back to his truck before moving on.
We found his body the next day, silver bullet in his chest.
He wrote the receipt in his own blood.

The Dolls

605016

No matter how deep I dig, I keep bringing up buckets full of dolls.
I knew that my dog steals them from neighborhood kids to bury in the back yard, but I never knew how many until I had to put in new flowers.
There’s hundreds… thousands in here.
There’s no way my dog did all of this. It’s just too many, and way too deep.
As I go back down, two dolls fall on my head.
I look up.
It’s my dog… and another dog.
He’s teaching others.
A howl. More dogs come.
Dirt rains down.
They’re burying me!

Serial Killer

605020

The IRS sent Billy Wallace a letter, warning him that he was due for an audit.
Billy shrugged, tore up the letter, and flushed it down the toilet.
The next day, the auditor was standing in front of his cell, looking in his briefcase.
“You say your profession is: Serial Killer, correct?” said the auditor.
“That’s correct,” said Billy.
“And how many people have you killed?”
“One.”
“Just one?” asked the auditor. “Don’t you need more than one to be classified as a serial killer?”
“I was just getting started.”
The auditor fined him for lying on his tax return.

Ten Eggs

639158

I watched the eggs in the incubator hatch.
Ten slimy, wobbly chicks drying off in the heat of the lamps.
They preen, standing on wood shavings.
Not yet eating, drinking. Probably tomorrow.
We’ll move them over to the other box when they’re ready.
Until then, there’s one last egg in the incubator.
It’s glowing green.
The chicks avoid it, preening and peeping on the other side of the incubator.
Wait. There’s only eight of them.
Weren’t there ten before?
The green egg glows brighter.
Maybe we won’t move them out to the other box.
Or open the incubator at all.

Printer

639157

The printer is jammed.
The printer always jams when I need it most.
Somehow, the printer knows I’m in a rush, and that’s when it chooses to jam.
Chooses. Yes, I said chooses.
In fact, I bet there’s a chip in the printer that tells it when I need it most.
It syncs up with the chip in my head. The X-ray resistant chip.
I know that you don’t believe me, but if you’d just let me open up my skull, I’d show you.
It’s not buried deep. Just a little hole, and you can peek inside.
Here’s a drill.

The Girl Who Sneezed Dimes

639176

I once knew a girl who sneezed dimes.
Yeah, she could pay her own way when we went out to dinner, but have you ever eaten with someone who’s got a nasty cold?
Not all that appetizing.
The sex was okay, but I caught a snot-covered dime in the mouth more than once.
And she didn’t like being taken from behind.
It just wasn’t working out.
Over time, she’d saved up enough to pay for art school.
She packed her things, called a cab, and dumped a handful of dimes in the driver’s hands.
At least she’d washed them first.

Talons

639156

A bird came up the walk this morning.
I looked at it. It looked at me.
And then it flew away.
So, I flew after it.
Flapping my arms madly, I rose into the air and gave chase.
The bird flew to the top of a house down the street and landed.
So I did too.
I looked at it. It looked at me.
And then I flew away.
The bird did not follow me.
I landed by a puddle and I looked in the water at my reflection.
I’m a bird.
Well, that explains why I’m not wearing pants.

Bottlecaps

639160

Joe has a trash can full of bottlecaps behind the bar. He calls it his collection.
No corkboards or anything. Just a can full of bottlecaps.
“I just collect them,” he says, pulling another beer from the tap.
“From where?” I ask. “You just keep beer on tap, no bottles or cans. And you’ve never gone anywhere but up and down those stairs to your apartment.”
Joe looked at the trash can and scratched his head. “Beats me,” he said. “I guess this makes it valuable or something.”
He handed me the beer and tossed another cap into his collection.

The Stairs

639160

Lily warned me not to go down to the basement.
But I needed something from down there.
We live on four, so I went down the five flights of stairs and…
Locked. Forgot the key.
So, I went back up six flights of stairs and…
Six?
If I went up six, I should be on…
Wait. Hold on.
I went back down again, down five flights of stairs, and stood at the basement door.
Then I carefully counted each flight of stairs up.
Six.
“Somethings wrong,” I said.
“I told you not to go down to the basement,” muttered Lily.

Breaking A Leg

639164

She broke my heart, so I broke her fucking legs.
Well, I didn’t break her legs. There’s this guy who does that stuff for me.
I tell him what she did, and the guy said “Yeah, I’d break her fucking legs for cheating on me like that.”
Turns out that it was him. He was the one.
So, after he broke her legs, I told him to break his own legs.
That, he couldn’t do.
“I could outsource it to this guy I know…”
Never mind. Just don’t do her… it again.
He breaks legs, not promises.
Loyalty is everything.