Tag: dystopia

New Beginnings

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After your funeral, I met with the representative from the hospital.
They had the malpractice settlement ready for me. All I had to do was sign my life away.
So I did, and swallowed the pill from the Hemlock Society.
It tastes like… strawberries.
I could have been selfish and taken the first offer they gave me: growing a clone of you.
Healthy. Happy. Together.
But there would still be me, always knowing, resentful of how their incompetence took you from me.
Why make you suffer that again?
We will both be born again, fresh and innocent.
Healthy. Happy. Together.

Implants

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How fast they grow up.
My little girl, Lisa, wants neural implants.
All the kids at school have them, why can’t she?
When her mother and I were kids, we had to wait until we were grown up to get them.
Now, the school system pushes the kids harder and harder. And it’s so much cheaper to jack in a kid to the network than teach them the old way.
The green hair took some getting used to. The piercings. The drinking. The boyfriends. The usual signs of rebellion.
But then, I guess the third grade’s been tough for her.

Back In The Day

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Back in the day, Batman would be all over Gotham City, battling villains, busting crooked capers, and solving crimes.
Then, one day, instead of coming up with an elaborate way to kill Batman that he could escape from, The Joker stabbed him in the heart with a knife.
After that, all the fun of being a bad guy just went away. They had nobody to match wits against anymore.
Most retired. But others, well…
Sad, really, watching The Riddler going around, taunting passers-by with “What have I got in my pockets?”
Oh well. Fun while it lasted, right, Mr. Kent?

Cursed Town

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They say Westchester’s a cursed town. I wouldn’t know.
I was sent here to computerize the county’s record-keeping. Getting all those stacks of marriages, births, and deaths from the old ledgers to my laptop for processing down in Albany.
Three days in, The Town Hall burnt to the ground.
Here’s the weird part… everyone ever born in Westchester vanished like smoke. As if they’d never existed.
And everyone who ever died and got buried here, well, they weren’t dead anymore.
Not a problem for those not born. But the rest, well…
Damn Zombies make you wish you’d never been born.

Dictator

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The townspeople got word that the country’s dictator, after many years of ruling with an iron fist, had died overnight.
There were celebrations, cries of freedom, and they threw together an effigy of Old General Montcastle for burning.
Then, they looked around and realized things really hadn”t been all that bad with Montcastle running things.
They put the effigy in the town square and started to pile up flowers at its feet, turning it into a memorial of sorts.
Montcastle’s son got word of the memorial and said “Collect the flowers, but we’re still burning the place to the ground.”

Punisher

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The Mystic Sisters have a good racket going.
One’s a punisher for hire, taking clients down into her dungeon and beating them within an inch of their lives.
A few days later, they see the fortune-teller sister, the one who read bruises instead of palms.
Sometimes, guys go into the dungeon but don’t go to the fortune-teller. Other times, they see the fortune-teller, but they got their bruises elsewhere.
And then, well, one day, the punisher limps into her sister’s house. She’s got two black eyes.
“Save the bullshit and just get me some ice,” she says.

Heartless

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The kidnappers sent Julius one of Edna’s toes, but he still had trouble rounding up the ransom.
Time was running out for Edna. The deadline was Valentine’s Day, and they”d threatened to cut out her heart.
I won’t bore you with the details, but things went sour.
What arrived at Julius’ doorstep on February 15th, wrapped in paper, was her stomach.
The kidnappers didn”t know much about anatomy.
“This means she”s still alive, right?” begged Julius.
The FBI agent looked at his partner.
They started to pack up their equipment and notified the office that it was homicide’s problem now.

Jersey Girl

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Shirley the Mermaid had been around. She’d seen everything.
She and the girls were getting their nails done when they talked about their first times.
The first time Shirley saw a human, she swam after it for a closer examination.
It looked like a mermaid, but instead of fins, it had two limbs coming out of its hips leading into a solid stone-like block.
“Mob informant,” she thought. “Should have kept his goddamed trap shut.”
She took his wallet, emptied out the cash, and swam away.
Whether you’re over or under the Boardwalk, a Jersey Girl is a Jersey Girl.

My Bloody Valentine

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Five hours ago, this bum was using his pen knife to cut aluminum cans into hearts to give away on Valentine’s Day.
Now, he’s a bloody pulp under a bench. Some other bums beat him up for the aluminum cans, cashed them in for beer money.
He could have defended himself with the knife, but to him, it was a tool and not a weapon. Just as Cupid”s bow and arrow are for love, not war.
A mother tells her son not to worry. He’s up in Heaven now.
I hope they clean him up before they let him in.

The Walls

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When she’s all alone, she talks to the walls.
The North wall is her favorite. She could talk to it for hours about anything. And she does.
The South wall has the window. When she and the North wall are on the outs, she talks to it, but loud enough for the North wall to hear her.
It gets jealous.
The East wall, she barely knows. There’s bookshelves covering it, but what little she sees of it, she doesn’t mind.
The West wall is another beast entirely.
She despises it. Painted it so many times, but it never really changes.