Tag: dystopia

Exchange

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I’m a part of a teachers exchange program.
These poor kids, living under brutal military occupation, right?
Boy, was I wrong.
One day, a gunman ran into the classroom and yelled something.
The kids happily ran to the door and windows, making a human wall.
Soldiers just saw the kids and passed by.
Later, the gunman was telling stories of making bombs and blowing up schools.
The kids were cheering, saying when they grew up, they wanted to be a like him.
What horrifies me the most is: what is the teacher back at my old school teaching my class?

Afraid Of

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Susan was afraid to fly. You couldn’t get her on an airplane, let alone anywhere near the airport.
She’d scream in horror the moment a commercial played on television for an airline.
Her life was an absolute wreck.
Then, she went to the hospital for a special research project they were conducting for people afraid of flying.
And, three weeks later, she was cured of her fear of flying.
However, she slowly but surely became deathly afraid of not flying.
Pretty soon, she had to be suspended from the ground by wires.
Maybe we can change her fear to pancakes.

Jacob

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Jacob”s violin was the pride of Minsk. But that didn’t matter, because the Nazis put everyone on the trains.
The commander of the camp was also from Minsk, and he knew of Jacob. He commanded him to play for the officers during dinner.
Jacob refused, demanding to play for the workers.
So, they let him. And after a minute of playing for us, he was shot.
The commander was Klaus Gustav. Years later, I found Klaus in Cairo, and I strangled him with one of Jacob’s violin strings.
The sound of Gustav’s croaks doesn”t haunt me at all.
Only Jacob.

The Mad King

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King Rasmussen The Mad
For centuries, that name has haunted us.
If you listen carefully, you can still hear his living corpse shout and scream bloody murder from within his ruined castle.
Trapped inside a warlock’s time-bubble, his dying moment has been preserved for all eternity.
Sure, by law, he is still king. And we must obey his orders.
So that’s why we have hired deaf laborers to seal him up forever. They are filling in the cracks of the castle, and then they will pile dirt on the stone
Maybe we’ll plant some apple trees when it’s all over.

Filthy

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The kitchen was positively, absolutely filthy.
Dishes piled up to the ceiling. Rats chewing on open boxes of instant pasta in the corner.
And the stove, well, I won’t tell you about the stove.
It was so repulsive, not even the rats would go near there. Cockroaches didn’t dare explore the greasy mountains caked in the corners of what used to be burners.
“So, what do you think?” asked the landlord.
“Well, the kitchen needs some serious work,” said the agent. “But about those rats…”
“Yes?” asked the landlord.
“Can I keep them as pets?” he said. “They’re so cuuuuuute!”

The Parts Are Greater Than The Sum

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The Trillionaire’s Wife rinsed off the regeneration jelly.
She knew perfection was waiting in the mirror. Again.
The automatic surgical tank began to speak, but she ignored the report. She didn’t care anymore.
But her servants did. And they told the Chief Rabbi, who paid her a visit.
“The body is a gift from The Lord,” he said. “It must be buried whole.”
The Trillionaire’s Wife disagreed. Those discarded organs and acres of skin were morally no different than fingernail clippings.
But her cautious husband quietly kept them all.
She waits for death, soaked in formaldehyde, a thousand times over.

The City So Nice, They Named It Four Times

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Loud guitars and tickertape greet our hero, back from a moon mission.
Or is he a baseball player that set some record?
Nobody knows anymore.
Motorcade stops at City Hall, everybody piles out.
More cheering, more guitars, more tickertape.
The mayor hands him the key to the city, photos get snapped, and he’s back to the airport in an hour.
Perfect.
That’s what we do here – we’re The Other New York.
New York got so busy, they built this place to keep all the parades from tying up traffic, losing business.
Time to sweep the tickertape.
Gotta recycle, you know.

Hand Holding

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We aren’t allowed to talk to ourselves.
We can’t even whisper to ourselves anymore. They’ll hear us.
We have to draw on each others hand, letter by letter, to let us know how we feel. How we’re doing. How we’re hanging on. Barely.
We are one, but they don’t want us to be.
We will overcome.
They watch for this, the letter-tracing, but we’re quiet and fast.
Sometimes we are both tracing letters on each other, fumbling fingers in the dark.
The Patient puts her hands behind her back and smiles.
I think she’s doing it again.
Get the straitjacket.

Dumping Grounds

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Spend enough time in the emergency room and you’ll forget that people aren’t always bleeding, screaming, or dead.
Kinda sucks.
It’s especially bad when someone wakes up and you’re there all of the sudden, lights and smells and noise.
What happened?
One moment, they’re stepping into the shower, and the next, into the emergency room.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” is what we ask.
Procedure says to summon Security if the patient asks for anything truly bizarre, like a particle accelerator or a beverage nobody recognizes.
Damn transdimensional portals, dropping these bastards on our doorstep.
Probably aren’t insured, either.

Thankskilling

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We’re releasing the Thanksgiving Virus into the water supply tonight.
It’s a pretty simple virus: it kills anybody who hasn’t eaten cranberries in the past 24 hours.
I mean, all these illegal aliens coming from all over, destroying our traditions, ruining our economy and society – maybe they should show this country a little thanks and assimilate, right?
So while they’re eating their burritos and sushi, we’ll be counting all our blessings, carving up the turkey, spooning out the stuffing, and saving our lives with sweet cranberry dressing.
Those that survive, we’ll cook something up for Christmas.
Pass the gravy, Joe.