The Final Rule

I have a hollow tooth. It is full of poison.
If I am captured, I will crush the tooth, swallow the poison, and die.
Sure enough, I’m in the middle of a mission, and I get captured.
So, I try to crush it, but it doesn’t break.
I smash my face against the table.
Nope. But I do bloody my nose.
Eventually, I get the information tortured out of me, and I’m sent back as part of a prisoner exchange program.
“Tooth’s a dud,” I say.
The agent reaches in, crushes it with pliers.
“Nope,” he said.
And I die.

The Werewolf

Bob points his gun at the werewolf, pulls the trigger… BANG!
The Werewolf goes down and lies still.
Bob waits for a bit, then says “Get up.”
The Werewolf gets up. “Those blanks are pretty loud.”
Bob hands the Werewolf a small red pouch. “Poke a hole in that and grab it to your side when I shoot you.”
“Just get me on the cart and the hell out of town before they do anything worse.”
The Werewolf and Bob went from town to town with their scam, became filthy stinking rich, and retired happily.
(But everybody else was dead.)

The King Of Cakes

It is Mardi Gras, and it is time for the King Cake.
I find this purple and yellow pile utterly disgusting, and I refuse to take a piece.
The rest of the group greedily rips off hunks, devouring loudly, until one pulls out a crinkly diaper.
“What the hell is this?” they say, throwing the diaper to the ground.
“Well,” says Carol, “you’re supposed to bake a baby into the cake, and whoever gets the baby will have good luck.”
Foster spits out some toes. “A METAL BABY!” he shouts.
Everybody begins to vomit.
Me, I reach for the cake.

She paints the future

She paints the pain, wide slashes at the canvas, red paint drips like blood.
Wrapping bandages, applying pressure.
The canvas still bleeds; what isn’t covered with red turns grey and sallow.
The red turns dark and black, she can do nothing but watch the canvas die.
Into the dumpster it goes with all the other failures.
You cannot kill art twice.
She casts the spell again, sips another sip of bourbon, and sprays it on a fresh canvas.
Waiting… waiting… feeling…
A pulse!
Dipping the dagger into the red paint, another chant: life… life… life…
The canvas trembles with fear.

The Ass End Of Dentistry

Every six months, I go to the dentist.
Well, not the dentist. A dentist.
My mouth is such a horror, they either commit suicide to avoid seeing me again or refer me to one of their colleagues.
Not-well-liked colleagues.
Still, every now and then, one tries to prove themselves, and only when I’m in the chair do they realize their mistake.
“Oh my God,” says the latest brave soul. “That’s… awful!”
He then commanded me to take down my pants and bend over.
Instead of doing a routine cleaning, I got a colonoscopy.
(Don’t ask me where the lollipop went.)

Silence

When I first saw “Soylent Green” I watched it with my mute pal Bobby Greene and said “Hey, that’s about you… Soylent Green, Bobby Greene?”
Bobby flapped his hands at me, but I never learned any of that sign language crap.
“Write it down, jackass,” I growled, and he picked up a steno pad and scribbled out FUCK YOU in big letters.
We watched the rest of the movie, Edward G. Robinson dies and Charlton Heston finds out the secret about Soylent Green.
YUCK wrote Bobby.
So, I killed him. Cooked and ate him too.
Hey, Soylent Greene is delicious!

Building Blocks

I’m all about the educational toys.
Most kids get little wooden alphabet blocks.
Not my kid. That stuff’s for babies. They stick them in their mouths and drool.
No challenge at all. How’s that educational?
I’m giving my kid alphabet cinderblocks.
Yeah, they had cinderblocks for sale at the Home Depot.
I sprayed on primer and painted some letters on the things.
My kid’s gonna be the strongest in spelling… literally.
No dummies or wimps in this house.
“Hey! Johnnyboy! Quit your blubbering and spell me DOG? I said DOG. No no no lift with THE LEGS, not your BACK!”

Third Thumb

I once heard of a psychic claiming they had a “third eye.”
Well, then I must have a “third thumb.”
You see, I’m a movie critic. The Celluloid Spy.
And I’m afraid of the dark.
Yeah, I hire mailroom interns to stand in for me at movie screenings.
My trademark trenchcoat, fedora, and fake beard make sense now, right?
So, when you wonder if the critic saw the same movie did, you’re right: I didn’t.
But here’s the creepy thing. I’ve been accurate in my plot synopses and ratings.
Stupid kid, getting hit by that truck.
Never saw that coming.

Baby Bunnies

If bunnies eat carrots, do baby bunnies eat baby carrots?
The answer is… well… sorta.
It depends on how young the baby bunny is.
If it’s a newborn, then it needs to nurse before it can eat solid foods.
Once it can eat solid food, you can feed it any kind of carrots or healthy vegetables.
Unless it’s a vampire bunny.
Those do not eat vampire carrots. Or vampire baby carrots.
Those drink blood.
So, why are you asking me this?
Oh. That’s what’s in the cage you brought me?
This empty cage.
I’d suggest we run. Away. Really fast.

Save My Baby!

A woman shouts “SAVE MY BABY!” and she points to a bakery.
I run into the bakery and see a drooling and gibbering chef wrapping a baby into a pie crust.
“Stop!” I growl, grabbing the baby from the chef. “That’s just wrong. And barbaric”
I pull out my smartphone and showed the chef how you’re supposed to cook a baby.
“You can’t just stick it in the oven,” I say. “Cut it up into sections.”
He smiled, got out his butcher’s knife, and I shut the door to the bakery.
How can the man work with all that screaming?