Tag: dystopia

Please, Sir, Buy My Trombone!

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To get you to buy a trombone, the Trombone Salesman will get you to try a trombone.
“I assure you: the reeds are clean,” he says, placing the trombone to your lips. “Now blow.”
Sure, you do not know how to play it, but one is at your lips. Your hands clutch the instrument, your fingers work the valves and slide.
“Now blow,” he repeats.
And so, you do.
The most horrible sound rushes out of the device.
Children scream.
Dogs howl.
Glass shatters.
The Trombone Salesman tries to take it back.
You refuse. “I’ll take it,” you say, grinning.

Christmas 2009

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Why does NORAD track Santa on Christmas Eve?
It’s part of his work-release agreement.
The rest of the year, his parole officer watches him.
He started with dealing, leaving a few extra packages here and there, picking up cash with the milk and cookies.
Then, distribution. That sack holds a lot of presents, you know. A few extra hundred kilos, properly wrapped. What’s the difference?
Keeping the toys going was bad enough. Keeping all his sources, pushers, and buyers straight required a lot of speed.
He’s clean now. No drugs. A natural jolly.
He’d better stay on our nice list.

The Truce

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There’s a demon standing at the gates of Heaven.
He bangs on the lock.
“Let him in,” The Lord says to Peter.
Every year, Satan offers up a Christmas Truce.
And every year, God declines it.
“Just as my son is the Prince of Peace, Lucifer is the Prince of Lies.”
The demon returned to hell, message torn in half.
Satan wept, black tears rolling down his greasy cheeks.
“We will honor it anyway,” he sighed.
With an oily rag, he wipes his face and turns to his minions.
“No missions today,” he says. “Instead, we will train for tomorrow.”

Everyone’s dying

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On the first night of Christmas, my true love gave to me… a cough.
By the fourth night, the virus had spread throughout the neighborhood.
And on the twelfth night, the CDC put the city under quarantine.
Men in Hazmat suits go door to door, picking up bodies and handing out drugs that we know won’t do a damned thing to cure this superbug.
The news says that it’s in Boston, Chicago, Moscow, Tokyo…
The Chinese deny making it. The Arabs blame “Zionist scientists.”
Everyone’s dying.
So is the fire. We put the suicide capsules in egg nog, and drink.

Gadgets

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The gadgets you buy today will be the junk of tomorrow.
So why not buy junk now and just be a bit behind the curve?
It’s cheaper, less stressful, and you know the things will be tried-and-tested as opposed to the buggy releases available at the bleeding edge.
The guy that I got my secondhand artificial heart from was buying a newer, fancier model. He thought it would be more reliable.
It glitched while he was in an elevator. By the time they got him to the hospital, he was dead.
While his former heart keeps on ticking in me.

Talking To Candy

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It’s the holiday season, and I am busy as a bee.
I work in a chocolate shop, and there’s no busier time than Christmas.
You’d think it would be Valentine’s Day.
No.
Just before I wrap each of these chocolate-dipped apples and hand-rolled jellies into their packaging, I whisper a message for each to announce as they are unwrapped.
“Your teeth will all rot out,” I say. “You will get fat and then suffer from diabetes.”
Then I close the foil and cellophane over the treat, affix a label, and add it to the completed batch in the shop window.

Printer

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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.

Pennies from Heaven

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Every time it rains, it rains pennies from Heaven.
Falling like bullets, they pierce umbrellas and shatter car windshields.
Dozens of people don’t make it to shelter and lay in the streets, bleeding or dead.
Birds, too.
After the storm passes, ambulances pick up the injured and dead, and we sweep up the broken glass, tow away wrecked cars, and bag dead animals.
We used to gather up the pennies and head to the bank, but now we bring them to the foundry.
They melt them down for the zinc and copper.
One day, they’ll finish the giant protective dome.

The Death of Walter

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Walter ran with a tough crowd.
They were the Boston Mafia, jogging through their Framingham neighborhood in the morning, bodyguards forming a protective cloud.
Once, Walter was out jogging on his own, and he crossed paths with that Mafia group.
The bodyguards checked him for weapons, recognized him from the travel agency, and invited him along.
Now, in an era of online airline reservations, Walter still got steady business from this group. Cruises and extended vacations, a little something extra for a private villa for a week.
And Walter never testified against them.
They killed him anyway.
It’s only business.

House Call

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I don’t feel well. I’ve been pretty sick recently.
Doctors did some tests. Then they did more tests.
“You have cancer,” they finally said. “Real bad.”
No treatment will do any good.
So, I went home, took the phone off the hook, and got drunk.
Stayed drunk for three weeks.
I get a knock on the door. It’s a doctor. Says he’s been trying to call me.
He has a drug now. Nanobots. Kills the cancer.
“So, I’ll live?” I ask. He gives me the injection.
“No,” he says. “This’ll kill you too. We just need your organs for transplant.”