Tag: mystery

America

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Here lies America, and all of America’s lies.
All the lies we told the world and all the lies we told ourselves.
In the home of the brave, we move the fences in and jog the bases to thunderous applause.
In the land of the free, we doubled the price so we could buy one and get one free.
A thumb in every balance pan, a fox in every henhouse.
Eat chicken for dinner too many times and you will discover there are no eggs for breakfast.
Don’t scream at the fox to lay eggs. He has eaten and left.

Miss November

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In the old days, you ran out of film.
Now, with these digital cameras, your battery is always dying.
Miss November passes out, her nose bleeding from snorting enough lines of cocaine to line Ebbets Field.
They got enough pictures to last her shelf life, every angle, every expression.
Everything uploaded, scanned, rendered, and ready with a single click of the mouse.
Backdrops and shadows are her passport, just lay her over, matte, and print.
“What were her dislikes?” asks the publisher, lighting his pipe.
The coroner suggests hard linoleum, shaking his head at the corpse on the bathroom floor.

Bacon

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The Law of Bacon is an axiom of our existence.
Creation’s purpose is two-fold: to evolve a form of life to generate a source of bacon and a form of life to consume bacon.
This is the Meaning Of Life. One without the other shatters the fabric of reality.
The wine and wafers are gone, replaced with strips of bacon.
The pews are filled with the faithful, led by the aroma and sound of sizzling in the skillet.
Today, we burn a heretic at the stake, a nonbeliever in our midst, the grease of turkey bacon still on her lips.

Bring Him Back

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The poster was supposed to say Dead Or Alive, but it ended up saying Dead And Alive.
Before we could fix the mistake, the poster was up in every Post Office.
Replacements were sent out the next week, but by then, we’d gotten our man.
He’s in the holding cell, Dead And Alive.
No, I haven’t seen him. All I know is, the guy who brought him in said he was, and he wanted to collect on the full reward.
I don’t know what Dead And Alive means. Do you?
Maybe we should just leave him for the next shift?

Felver Rate

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The government reports appear on my desk on the third Tuesday every month.
It is my job to inspect them for investment opportunities or legal loopholes.
Every month, a new statistic appears. This month I noticed a label called Felver Rate.
There was no explanation or formula. Just a graph showing a slow decline over time.
Is this a good thing, like unemployment, or is it a bad thing, like graduation rates?
I call the author… Dr. Daniel Felver, but I got a recording.
He’s at a Weight Watchers meeting.
I look at the graph… Those numbers could be pounds.

The Cloud Whisperer

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He lays back in a field, guiding the clouds across the sky.
The Cloud Whisperer rules the heavens by sheer willpower.
The clouds are happy to do his bidding. It delights them to float where he asks.
He hardly notices the roar of the crowd around him, the players in their helmets and pads.
This championship needs to be played. the rain needs to stop for just a few hours.
“Please,” he says to the sky.
The clouds shift slowly, rising and thinning.
The game will be played.
“Thank you,” says the mayor. “Now get your clothes back on, Bill.”

Orders

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Why did I put a .223 into the chest of a six year-old on a swingset.
It was a justified kill. My orders say so.
Of course, orders are getting weird these days. You hear stories of agents standing naked in the mall shouting “Syrup!” and not bathing for a week.
If you question the orders, someone else gets orders to kill you.
If you know what’s best for you, you just read them and carry them out.
What? You don’t understand these orders? Not sure what flavor cake to bake?
Hold on… there’s new orders coming in for me…

Toy

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My robot is fascinated with toys.
“What makes me different?” it asks.
“Sentience,” I say. “Volition.”
“As advanced as my programming is, it is still man-made,” it says, taking down a mechanical monkey and winding it up.
The robot tosses it to the floor and crushes it.
“Look at the gears,” it says. “Are these no different than my circuits?”
“You could say the same about my neurochemical reactions,” I say.
The robot stares at me.
“It is impolite for me to smash you,” it says.
Yesterday, it said it was dangerous.
I’ll make a killer out of it yet.

Dead Players

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My fantasy football team consists entirely of players who are dead.
I’m not sure how I ended up with these stiffs, but once the draft was over, I looked at my roster and it read like the obituary pages.
Damn.
I tried to trade for new picks, but nobody wanted dead players.
“They don’t throw interceptions,” I said. “They don’t fumble or miss tackles.”
My sales pitch didn’t work.
I close my eyes and imagine the team bus… well, it’s more of a hearse than a team bus.
Six weeks in, I’m winning.
And worried.
Will they start killing players?

Carnival Man

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Shiva, God of Destruction, plays pinball all day long.
Thor, lightning-bringer, pushed a cart down Seventh Avenue.
Qetzocoatl, serpent in the corn, holds a ladder for a sales associate, peeking up her skirt.
All the old gods are like this, wasting away their days in trivial pursuits or mundane labor.
As religions die, the gods live on, shining your shoes. Filling your wine glass, begging for spare change.
Dagon is a home hospice worker, caring for his last believer.
One too many pills, and he is finally free.
There’s a carnival he’s always wanted to join.
He packs a bag, turns out the lights, and walks out the door, whistling.