Category: My stories

Life Hands You Lemons

639176

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
So, I did.
Death handed me lemons, too.
I made lemonade with them.
Karma gave me lemons. More lemonade.
Then, Fate handed me a bag.
“More lemons?” I asked. “Please, not more lemons.”
Fate nodded yes.
So here I am, sitting on an island of lemons in a lake of lemonade.
Instead of a boat to rescue me, everybody’s bringing me lemons.
They ask lemon advice, when to plant, when to pick.
They want me to write a book.
ENOUGH!
If life hands you lemons, yell GET THESE FUCKING LEMONS AWAY FROM ME!

The Rider

639159

They may be hideous in appearance, but no goblin would be caught being rude.
“Sears,” says the creature. “And your name is?”
The topiary, a shrub groomed to look like a green poodle, said nothing.
“I need to be in Waco by sunrise,” said Sears, and he hopped on the back of the topiary. “Let us ride.”
For all the shouting, the topiary didn’t budge an inch.
The morning dew settles on the goblin’s frozen body, turned to stone by the daylight.
“Who put this ugly thing out here?” said the groundskeeper, knocking the goblin to pieces with a trowel.

The Camp

639158

I saw him in a bar. He was the bartender.
Turned out he owned the place.
Thirty years ago, he had a gun to my head, laughing as he pulled the trigger.
The gun was empty, the bullets fired at my family.
All dead, there in the middle of the camp.
Here. Now.
I asked for a beer, he put a glass in front of me.
I drank, pulled out a knife, and stabbed him in the chest.
“How’s it feel to die in front of your enemy?” I ask.
He laughed and said “Ask yourself. The beer is poisoned.”

The Wall

639158

Just a black angle in the ground, etched marble with so many names.
You could jog past it in less than a minute, nothing but a blur.
The flags at the base of each piece, the flowers.
Boots and candles. Cigarettes and flasks.
It’s the people that make you slow down and stop.
Less and less each year, parents too old to make the trip. Or gone themselves.
Children all grown up. They have children of their own. Easier to just let them learn about it in school.
The wall’s still there.
What was it for? What did we learn?

The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln #91

641697

Mary Todd was going crazy, but the analyst was curious as to the source of her husband’s misery.
Abe shrugged off all offers to get him on the couch and work out his issues.
“Perhaps it is something in your childhood?” said the doctor.
Abe laughed. “It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life,” he said.
When the doctor left, Abe took out his flask of Zook’s “Crazy No More” Tonic.
*glug* *glug*
“This is the only doctor I need,” he said, patting the flask and heading back to his office.

Chipmunk

639158

I mourned your death, O Furry Little Creature – so small and cute you were.
Day after day.
Year after year.
Century after century.
This ritual never changes.
I hold out the little peanut, you see it and stand up, sniffing the air.
I shake it. You creep closer, slowly, wary.
Almost close enough now. One paw reaches. I toss the peanut behind you.
You start to flee, but you stop. Sniff.
You grab it and scurry away.
To the road. The highway. A truck is coming, but you do not see it!
Splat!
I will miss you, my furry friend.

Hack Writerland

639165

Sixty-five million years from now, an amber block containing a mosquito will be drained of “author” Michael Chricton’s blood.
Through the miracle of junk science, his DNA will be patched to a chimpanzee’s and grown into a theme park attraction.
From all over, they will pay to see herds of hack writers roam the hillsides, devouring fringe research and vomiting up novel after novel, screenplay after screenplay.
“Mommy! Look at the box office on that one!”
Until a theme park rival tries to steal the DNA and causes deadly violent mayhem!
But that’s a tale for another hack to tell.

Cinder block

639162

As I hug this cinder block, I ponder our long relationship together.
We’ve been through a lot.
I made a bookshelf out of cinder blocks and slats in college.
The only thing that kept me from being blown away by the hurricane last year was hugging this cinder block.
I take it with me everywhere now as a good luck charm: the movies, the bank, grocery shopping.
I guess bringing it skydiving was a bad idea. I’ll just let it go and meet it on the ground when I land.
That playground down there doesn’t look too full, does it?

America

633535

Here lies America, and all of America’s lies.
All the lies we told the world and all the lies we told ourselves.
In the home of the brave, we move the fences in and jog the bases to thunderous applause.
In the land of the free, we doubled the price so we could buy one and get one free.
A thumb in every balance pan, a fox in every henhouse.
Eat chicken for dinner too many times and you will discover there are no eggs for breakfast.
Don’t scream at the fox to lay eggs. He has eaten and left.

Miss November

639177

In the old days, you ran out of film.
Now, with these digital cameras, your battery is always dying.
Miss November passes out, her nose bleeding from snorting enough lines of cocaine to line Ebbets Field.
They got enough pictures to last her shelf life, every angle, every expression.
Everything uploaded, scanned, rendered, and ready with a single click of the mouse.
Backdrops and shadows are her passport, just lay her over, matte, and print.
“What were her dislikes?” asks the publisher, lighting his pipe.
The coroner suggests hard linoleum, shaking his head at the corpse on the bathroom floor.