Category: My stories

Mother In Lawless

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The old woman with the gun is my mother-in-law.
But she’s more like a mother-in-lawless.
She breaks into banks with ease, breaking out of jail and nursing homes even easier.
We’re not a close family, but we’re kept under a close watch as hostages. Instead of knitting us sweaters, she keeps us tied up and gagged.
And I don’t drive the getaway car because I’m a part of her gang. I drive it because she’s a horrible driver and her license was revoked by the state.
I’m only doing it to save lives.
Now put the money in the sack.

Cobblestones

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Every night I mark the cobblestones with chalk.
When I wake up, the markings are scattered around the street.
Does someone wipe off the markings and add them in new places or shuffles around the stones?
I tried to set up a video camera, but it’s far too dark. No streetlamp.
I’ve also tried to sit on the steps and watch the street, but I can’t stay up as late as I used to. I fall asleep on the steps.
I wake up, and the chalk marks are gone.
And then, I see myself in the mirror… they’re on me.

Brick Fight

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Why are we throwing bricks at each other?
Because we were having a snowball fight, silly.
One guy decided to play dirty and packed a snowball around mud and threw it.
Mudballs suck.
Then, another guy packed snow around a brick.
Pretty soon, we were tossing bricks at each other.
Now that it’s May, you’d think the fight would be over because all the snow is gone.
But because we’re using bricks, the fight doesn’t have to end.
Maybe we’ll take a break and build some brickmen. Or build up our brickforts.
But that’s boring. Let’s bring on the bricks!

Grow Them Bigger

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“Close your eyes,” said the General. “And cover your ears.”
Seconds later, chunks of bloody, flaming Godzilla rained down on Tokyo.
The General uncovered his ears and opened his eyes.
And smiled.
People all over the city were cheering.
Getting the monster to eat the bomb without damaging it was a challenge.
Sticking pieces of the bomb in dead cow carcasses was the solution.
“They’re smart-assembly components,” said the General. “When they were all inside, they integrated and armed.”
After the cheering, bulldozers pushed Godzilla’s remains into the bay.
Where, slowly and painfully, they started to slide back together again…

No Miracle

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A plane crashes, and everybody dies.
Except one. A kid.
He’s badly burned, bones broken, but he’ll live.
People call it a miracle.
God doesn’t kill a hundred to spare a kid just to leave him a fucked-up, burned and battered orphan.
I see demons, laughing in the fires. It’s not a miracle.
The firefighters hose down the flames, the demons laugh… until I sprinkle the embers with holy water.
Go back to Hell.
They’re supposed to bless the de-icing compounds and the jet fuel.
Airline cutbacks. Priests are the first to go.
But, like me, the first they call.

Bug Diner

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I remember when restaurants wouldn’t put up with bugs in diners.
Those days are over, and one was taking up three seats at the counter, sitting on one and two left open because of all his arms.
He held a cup of coffee, stirring in blue packet after packet.
They used to say the red and yellow packets caused cancer, but I’m not a laboratory rat.
I just like the blue stuff.
“Leave any for me?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “Alice, another coffee.”
The waitress scowled at me, poured a fresh cup, and I twitched my antenna in gratitude.

The Vampire in the Basement

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The tanks are old and need replacing. Blood is leaking from the ceiling again.
We used to have them in the basement, but hauling them upstairs during every flood became a hassle.
The Master has the strength of ten, but the patience of a child and the arrogance of a nobleman.
Nor do the members of his coven perform any lifting beyond coffin lids.
Labor is for us, his daytime servants.
The work is steady, and as long as we don’t complain, we live.
The forecast calls for rain.
At least all we have to haul up are coffins now.

The Lawyers

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Despite the number of lawyers in America, fewer are available to defendants needing representation, but without money.
So, with a low-power spirit-trap and some old State Bar registers, we’ve started summoning up the ghosts of lawyers to represent them.
They work pro bono, with few earthly needs since having left their bones behind many years ago.
And although some of them are woefully behind on their case law, few modern district attorneys can stand the withering assault of a Daniel Webster or Clarence Darrow.
I still laugh when I see a lawyer’s ghost, chasing the ambulance with his corpse inside.

The Frying Pan

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You’ve heard of the expression “Out of the frying pan and into the fire” right?
But have you heard of its opposite?
“Out of the fire and into the frying pan” may not make sense to you, but then you don’t work with elemental spirits.
This is why we do not cook over the burners here in the research dungeon. Food attracts unwelcome guests to our plane of existence, and before you know it, you’re surrounded by firedrakes and salamanders.
Well, those and cockroaches, but we have traps for those.
And you can’t stomp a firedrake as easily as cockroaches.

The Farm

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Whenever lunch at school was chicken fingers or buffalo wings, kids would make jokes about chickens with fingers and buffalo with wings.
I didn’t, because I knew the ugly truth.
Every visit to Grampa Moreau’s farm was a nightmare.
Chickens clutching at the bars of their cages.
Tiny buffalo flapping around, goring our ankles.
(You do not want to know about the baby back ribs.)
These days, I’m a vegetarian, but I need to be careful. Grampa’s long gone, but out at the farm, his crops still grow.
And that’s why I’m picking the kidney beans out of my salad.