Did I ever tell you about my friend Diana Fire?
Parents can be cruel, choosing names.
When she was a child, she liked to play with matches. Every year, she’d ask for a new Barbie Dream House, but by Valentine’s day, Barbie would be back in her shoebox, hair singed and skin scorched a bit more.
Through the years, she blazed a trial through homes, jobs – burning every bridge.
I got a call this morning. Had to identify her body.
Froze to death after getting locked in a walk-in cooler. Ruined the irony potential there.
So we’ll have her cremated.
Tag: tragedy
Laminated
Flat Stanley became flat when a bulletin board fell on him.
You believe that he went on a series of wild adventures, right? Catching art thieves, sliding under doors, and mailing himself to far-off distant lands?
What really happened was a quiet, closed-coffin funeral.
His little brother Arthur was traumatized, shipped off to a mental hospital.
Every time his parents visited, he’d hand them another book he’d written about Stanley.
Alive. Adventuring.
Under his hospital bed, they found crushed and laminated mice.
“Experiments,” said Arthur, grinning
He escaped last night. Stole a steamroller.
Oh my God! The Mall!
Stop him!
I baked you a cake
Today would have been your birthday.
I baked you a cake.
When I got to the cemetery, I wandered around until I remembered:
You were cremated and your ashes spread over your favorite park.
I get so forgetful these days.
So, I walked to the park with the cake.
Groundskeepers were there, clearing brush and raking leaves.
I tried to share the cake with them, but they didn’t speak English.
That’s when I saw the woodchipper.
I turned the exhaust spout into the air, threw the cake into the blades, and the sky filled with white.
Coconut. It’s your favorite.
Gun Fight
Only a fool brings a knife to a gun fight.
But it takes a bigger fool to bring floppy clown shoes, a bright red wig, and a seltzer bottle.
I stood there, staring at the fool, with my gun pointed at his head.
“What is it about ‘gun fight’ you didn’t understand?” I asked.
“I thought you said ‘clown fight’ when you called,” said the fool. “I think I need to get my hearing checked. Or were you chewing gum while you were talking to me?”
I shook my head, put my gun away, and turned to-
He shot me.
Notes
You are gone, and I miss you.
I want to write a story for you.
To remember.
I sit here, pen in hand, but the page is blank.
I cannot stop crying. My tears cover the page.
I crumple it up and toss it away.
The floor is covered with tear-stained pages.
So, still crying, I go to sleep.
In my dream you pick up the pages, smooth them out, and sit down at the piano.
Your hands hesitate, then, reading stains as notes, you play.
It is beautiful.
I can stop crying now.
And write this story for you.
The Darkest Dark
I sat down, closed my eyes, and imagined the darkest dark.
There’s always light coming through your eyelids or the blankets you put over your head.
That’s when you have to step away from yourself, leave senses behind, going where no light will reach you.
My friend was puzzled by this, and asked “Why are you trying to imagine the dark?”
And she told me to see the brightest bright.
“Won’t that burn my eyes?” I asked.
I heard nothing, so I lifted the blankets, turned on the light, and she was gone.
She doesn’t need to imagine it anymore.
Everybody wants
I remember when the Christmas gift that everybody wanted was a new electronic toy or gadget.
Teddy bears that played storytelling tapes.
Video games.
Plastic spiders you could throw at the wall and watch them crawl down it.
As computing and materials sciences advanced, so did the latest and greatest holiday gifts.
Everybody wants it. And so do you.
Now that things have taken a turn for the worse, you’re lucky to get clothes, used or new.
Or, for the truly desperate, somewhere warm to sleep…
No, the world doesn’t end with a bang or a whimper, but Christmas carols.
Summertime
As you freeze your ass off in the dead of Winter, someone down in Australia is working on their tan in the peak of Summer.
The doctors look over your fingers to see how bad the frostbite damage is.
You’ll recover. Just get better gloves for the next time.
The Australian, however, won’t know about the spot on her back for months.
By then, it’ll be too late. The melanoma will have spread into her lungs and pancreas and…
It’s hard to dig a grave in winter.
What do you care? You’ll be on the beach, tanning.
Need some sunblock?
Seeds
On the eve of her return to the land of the living, Hades thanked Persephone for her company.
He handed her a map with some wine and food, in case she got hungry along the way.
The next morning, Persephone began her journey.
It took longer than the journey to Hell, and she sat by a stream to rest.
She drank some wine, ate some food.
Then she realized: it was the rest of that apple.
“Six more seeds,” grinned Hades. “That makes twelve. The world is mine.”
Far above them, leaves turned brown again, and snow began to fall.
Macarena
Jose Menendez was known far and wide as The King of The Macarena.
He was constantly putting his hands on his hips, jumping, and turning from morning to night.
Then, one day, he was doing the dance up on a bar and slipped on some spilled peach Margarita mix, and hit his head on the floor, putting him into a coma.
His living will said to play his Macarena tape by his bedside. If he didn’t get up and dance, pull the plug.
So, we did. And he lay there still.
We pulled the plug… on that damn tape player.