Tag: dystopia

The Camp

639158

I saw him in a bar. He was the bartender.
Turned out he owned the place.
Thirty years ago, he had a gun to my head, laughing as he pulled the trigger.
The gun was empty, the bullets fired at my family.
All dead, there in the middle of the camp.
Here. Now.
I asked for a beer, he put a glass in front of me.
I drank, pulled out a knife, and stabbed him in the chest.
“How’s it feel to die in front of your enemy?” I ask.
He laughed and said “Ask yourself. The beer is poisoned.”

Hack Writerland

639165

Sixty-five million years from now, an amber block containing a mosquito will be drained of “author” Michael Chricton’s blood.
Through the miracle of junk science, his DNA will be patched to a chimpanzee’s and grown into a theme park attraction.
From all over, they will pay to see herds of hack writers roam the hillsides, devouring fringe research and vomiting up novel after novel, screenplay after screenplay.
“Mommy! Look at the box office on that one!”
Until a theme park rival tries to steal the DNA and causes deadly violent mayhem!
But that’s a tale for another hack to tell.

America

633535

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

639177

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.

Devil’s Night

639177

They call this night the Devil’s Night because kids set fires to usher in Halloween.
One year, they got what they wanted, and The Devil showed up to survey the damage.
“You call this devastation?” He howled. “I’ve seen entire empires laid waste, nothing but ashes from ocean to ocean!”
He spat at on the sidewalk and laughed.
The kids burned more houses, but it wasn’t enough for The Devil.
Cops arrived and arrested the kids.
Instead of becoming Satanists, jail house imams converted them to Islam.
For them, any size fire was fine.
Especially when it involved killing Jews.

Pumpkin Screams

639165

This genetic engineering shit gives me a case of the heebie jeebies.
These newfangled pumpkins scream and ooze blood when you carve them.
When it got to Thanksgiving turkeys that gobble to the tune of “over the river and through the woods” even after you cut their heads off, I got worried.
How did it start? Let me think… It started with a simple splice of DNA to produce Yule logs that burn with natural cinnamon spice scent.
All downhill from there, rabbits laying eggs and crazy shit like that.
Oh. Great. Here comes Santa Clone.
Earlier every damn year.

Bring Him Back

639164

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?

Deathface

639173

The law says three days.
The machines can do five.
With modifications, seven.
That’s how long Spencer wants.
He’s got Deathface. Sunken eyes and cheeks, grey skin, eyebrows gone, raspy breathing.
The law says not to send a Deathface down. Notify the police if one comes to your Coma Center. Or if someone asks for a week.
It can’t be called an accident because the wastebag has to be changed and the
morphine refilled. The inspectors will know.
No, I say. I can do five. Not seven.
Spence left and I never saw him again.
Nobody saw him. Just vanished.

Orders

639156

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…

The Lawyer In Your Lap

639172

A universally-despised attorney gives up on making court appearances, using an assistant with a laptop and video software to conduct business.
“It’s safer this way,” he says.
Sure enough, he pisses off a class action defendant, and the guy shoots the laptop.
The assistant is relieved. At least he wasn’t shot, right?
His phone rings. It’s the lawyer, irate.
“That was a four thousand dollar laptop,” he yells.
The assistant asks him how much his suit jacket is worth.
“A thousand bucks,” says the lawyer.
“I’ll be glad to save you the difference by shooting that instead,” says the assistant.