The Deadly Girl

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When I was a kid, there was this girl. She liked to read Tarot cards for the other kids.
She couldn’t really read them, though. She just made things up.
Still, all her predictions came true.
When one kid caught the girl making things up, the girl told him he would die.
And he did. A dodgeball got him.
The teachers took her cards away, so she used dice. Although she called them bones.
Palmistry, phrenology, tealeaves – you name it. She thinned out her classmates quickly with her malicious, deadly predictions.
She works for the government now.
So, behave yourself.

Gateway

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As part of a top secret energy experiment, scientists tore a gateway into another dimension.
What came out wasn’t an unlimited, clean supply of energy but a horde of angry killer demons.
What we couldn’t kill, we were forced to contain in force-fields.
Some stupid lawyers from the ALCU demanded that these demons get their civil rights and day in court.
So, we put them in the containment cells with the demons.
Those that survived changed their minds about the demons.
One insisted on representing those terrorist assholes they’re keeping in Gitmo.
We put him back in with the demons.

Moon Prison

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The first permanent moon base turned out to be a maximum security prison.
Well, if you don’t want prisoners escaping and putting the public at risk, where better to put them than on the moon, right?
If they revolted, well, we could stop sending supplies up there. The oxygen systems were designed to only work for so long before replacement.
The man in charge of scheduling supply runs lost a daughter and a wife to one of those murderers up there.
So it comes as no surprise that the past three shipments of oxygen systems turned out to be duds.

Hand Of Revenge

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A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, the old saying goes.
In the silvery moonlight, a severed hand crawls its way through the forest.
It’s been crawling for a while, because it’s all tangled up in vines and dead leaves. Completely covered in dirt.
Don’t ask how it performs this hideous task. To learn of the magic spells that impel this hand is to earn oneself eternal damnation.
Just stay back, let the hand pass, and know that whomever it is seeking will suffer great pain.
But not as much as the one-handed wretch who sent it out, seeking revenge.

The Flying Banjoman

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We found the battered boat adrift off the coast of Nantucket.
Ragged body parts all over the deck, eventually we accounted for all the passengers, minus the pieces the seagulls dragged off.
Right there, jammed in the wheel, was a blood-soaked banjo.
“The uneasy spirit still roams the fog,” muttered the old harbormaster.
He reaches for the banjo and throws it back in the water.
“That’s evidence!” I shouted.
The harbormaster gave me a stare that drilled right into my bones.
“That’s what the last detective tried to tell me,” he said, and he pointed to… a severed lawman’s head.

The Planet’s Gotta Go

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Paradise Beta is going to be demolished tomorrow.
And that’s too bad, because Paradise Alpha and Paradise Beta were a cool binary planet arrangement.
Sadly, the Beta folks built what they thought was a new kind of generator, but it ended up messing with their angular momentum.
Their orbit’s changed significantly, someone did a few calculations, and found that in less than a year, they’d collide with Alpha.
Neither Beta nor Alpha liked that, so we’ve moved everyone on over to Alpha.
When Beta blows, it’ll atomize without making the star go nova.
Want to pull the trigger?
Go ahead.

Crown Of Newspapers

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We put the crown of newspapers on the bum and call him our king.
He is no less confused now than before his coronation.
Commands flow from his ragged mouth like filth from a smokestack, catching the wind and joining the clouds.
The Regicide leaps up and smashes the king with a hammer.
The bloodsoaked crown falls into a puddle and goes limp.
Three days later, it is a grey waterlogged mass.
But that’s okay, we can make another. And find ourselves another king.
We will destroy him, too. Over and over.
Until kings, rulers of men, are no more.

Haircut

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The amazing haircut machine made barbers obsolete.
All you had to do was stick your head in a box, and the computer-scanners would figure out the perfect haircut for you.
Five seconds with a series of lasers, and you were done.
Okay, so there were a few glitches in the system’s development, but those prisoners were too dangerous to have their hair cut by any other means.
No matter how well you chain them up or incapacitate them, putting a prisoner in close proximity with someone wielding a sharp object is a very bad idea.
A little off the top?

With Everything

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I didn’t feel like cooking, so I called the local pizza joint and asked them to send me a large pizza with everything.
“Everything?” they ask.
“Yes, everything,” I reply.
They pause a moment, I hear… breathing.
“Everything???????”
“Yes! Everything!”
The voice on the other end of the line is crumbling with fear and rage. “Oh… my… God! You sick monster!”
And then, the sound of a heavy metal blade hitting wood and a piercing scream.
I hang up quickly.
What have I done? What exactly is everything?
I need to lock the door. I need to hide.
Stay…. away!

The Hunt

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When the sun goes down, vampires wake up from their slumber and roam the countryside.
Here’s my question: do the vampire hunters come out and hunt them?
Back in the romantic days of vampire hunting, yes. They would face off with the vampires under the moonlight.
But then, vampire hunters started to use technology to seek out and hunt vampires during the day, rooting out their hiding places and destroying them while they were defenseless.
Now, it’s a mix of those daytime operations and some highly sophisticated tracking methods at night.
One day, all the vampires will be defeated.
Hallelujah.