Category: My stories

Dustsucker

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We used to clean these buildings by hanging a scaffold for guiding men with powerwashers and squeegies.
Now, we release Dustsucker Beasts on the ground, and they slide up the building to the top floor, leaving a streak of clean windows and bricks.
The trainer then leashes each beast, rides the elevator back down, and starts again.
It takes a third of the time and, when you consider insurance costs, much cheaper.
Until some idiot left a window open and wanted to pet a Beast.
So furry, so cute.
So acidic.
Inside rubber gloves, the trainer’s burnt, scarred fingers clench.

Obsidian Falls

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Obsidian Falls is really in Oklahoma, but through a surveyor’s error and a history of stubborn city councilors, they remained a Kansas municipality.
Mapmakers never could find a solution that satisfied the residents. Usually, they’d mark the region as Oklahoma, include Obsidian Falls on Oklahoma maps, and ignore the protests and death threats.
So, Obsidian Falls moved.
Every brick, every tree, every sidewalk and every fence.
It took over a year to complete, block by block vanishing and reappearing 3 miles North.
The surveyor didn’t have the heart to tell them they were still 2 miles short of their goal.

Daisy 5.1

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Daisy looked in the mirror and made a list of everything wrong:
Hips wide.
Gangly. Matchstick arms.
Freckles.
Thin hair.
Yuck.
And the chest. She said B, not D.
“No” she says.
A doctor nods, and the umbilical disconnects.
Back in the jar, her brain linked up the body catalog and browsed the new styles.
She’d always wanted green eyes.
“Maybe I’ll wait for Spring,” she thought.
The simulator worked up a sketch, and she scanned it for an hour before authorizing a growtank to begin.
Another tank quietly recycled Daisy 5.1, crediting her account and waiting for another order.

Battle

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Thop, Demon Storm of Arrows, watched his followers gather at the Canyon Fortress of Mists and grinned.
“Tonight, they will celebrate your doom,” he said to Shishksnikt, who was smiling at his own forces.
His Twenty Fists made their way along the rockfaces, sword on their backs.
“Warriors fight, warriors die,” he responded. “Your cowards and their toys are no match for steel.”
Behind them both, The Grim Reaper sharpened his blade and nodded. “I guess I’ll have to cancel my dinner plans!” he trilled. “Souffle tomorrow night, boys?”
Thop and Shishksnikt sighed. Next time they’d just flip a coin.

Country Music Star

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There’s a country music star on television.
She’s standing there with a guitar, but she doesn’t play the guitar.
She doesn’t play anything.
Doesn’t write anything either. Someone else writes the songs.
She doesn’t even sing her own songs. Someone else sings them for her and she just mouths the words.
That’s not even her up there. Someone stood in for her, and nobody noticed the difference.
When she won a Grammy, she didn’t bother showing up to the ceremony to pick it up.
They filed a missing persons report that night.
She was never found.
Isn’t this music great?

Hangover

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How many shots of tequila did I drink?
Five?
Six?
I can’t remember.
But what I do know is that I feel the worst I’ve ever felt.
I always remember how bad I feel.
So what I will do is wait until I feel better, then I will do five shots of tequila.
When I wake up hung over, I can then compare how bad I feel then to how bad I feel now.
If it’s the same, then I know I had five shots of tequila.
If it’s not, then I know I had six.
Pass me the bottle.

Mr. Fist Around My Throat

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My throat hurts.
It feels like someone clenched a fist around it.
But you can’t see anyone with a fist on my throat.
Maybe it’s my old imaginary friend.
His name was Mr. Fist Around My Throat.
Looking back, he wasn’t much of an imaginary friend. He was more of an imaginary bully. And he beat the crap out of me day and night.
I got even with him, though. I took medicine which stopped my imagining him, and he vanished.
Now he’s back.
Are these the right pills?
I knew I should have drilled a hole in my head.

Shedding

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We have a black cat and an orange cat.
Despite both being short-haired cats, they shed. A lot.
Every time I lay out a black shirt, the orange cat lays on it and sheds.
Every time I lay out an orange shirt, the black cat lays on it and sheds.
I know what you’re thinking: don’t lay out any shirts. Hang them up as soon as they come out of the dryer and the cats won’t shed on them.
You’re not the one carrying a pile of shirts around and the cats looking so cute, you have to pet them.

Pot Of Gold

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The Leprechauns lost their gold to humans who followed rainbows right to them.
Leprechauns have long memories and even longer lives, so they worked with what little they had left to make real estate deals and investments to build up their fortunes once more.
Late-night advertisements offered cash for gold, luring desperate humans to mail the shiny metal back to the Leprechauns.
They learned their lesson with the rainbow-attracting pots, and built massive secure vaults deep under Ireland to store their treasure.
To keep the curious humans at bay, they set out a few pots filled with poison-coated Iron Pyrite.

Sushi dealer

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The dealer skillfully floats the cards, gently landing in a pile in front of each of us.
He stands there with arms at rest, waiting for the first bet.
We stare back at him.
He doesn’t blink.
“We ordered sushi,” I said. “What’s with the cards?”
The plastic on the cards is starting to melt into the cooking surface of the table.
We look at each other. Did we go to a Japanese restaurant or a casino?
The cards are a mess.
Somewhere, in Vegas, a sushi chef is waving knives around.
He’ll probably get better tips than our dealer.