Category: My stories

The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln #85

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Abe finished the straw dummy, stripped off all his clothes, and started to dress the crudely-fashioned mannequin.
General Grant, laying with his back to a tree stump, took a pull from his flask. “What are you doing, Abe?”
“My mind is like a piece of steel,” Abe mumbled.
For the next hour, he poked and prodded at the stovepipe hat, never satisfied with the angle it rested on his simulacrum”s head.
“You can”t make him your Vice President, you know,” said General Grant.
Abe pouted and tore the wicked dummy apart.
But he never did bother to get dressed again.

Madman

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We drag the madman out of the basement and let him loose in the back yard.
The neighborhood kids squeal with joy and wave their butterfly nets.
“ONE! TWO! THREE!”
The madman hears the counting and remembers…
He needs to flee!
“NINE! TEN! ELEVEN!”
Over the fence he goes, and he”s loose in the streets. He jumps over hedges, paws at a car door, kicks over lawn ornaments…
EIGHTEEN! NINETEEN! TWENTY!
The kids swarm through the gate, laughing and cheering.
They catch the madman at a phone booth, trying to call Saturn.
Perhaps, next time, we’ll release two of them.

Smells

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There’s a chemical factory somewhere in New Jersey that can make any smell or taste you need.
Miles and miles of test tubes with lemon furniture polish, baked potato bubble gum, burning tire lip gloss.
Everything can smell or taste like anything else now.
In the labs below the basement, they mix the chemicals that can make any feeling that you need.
Here’s a test tube with Sadness.
Here’s another test tube with Joy.
Here’s yet another test tube with Fear.
Mix them up in the right combinations, and you can live out your greatest dreams.
Or your worst nightmares.

Telegraph

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Somewhere in the basement of the records office, I swear, you could hear clicking.
I dug around, opened up an old wooden crate, and found a telegraph key.
As I held it up to the light, looking for some kind or label, the switch clacked.
I nearly dropped it.
Maybe it just… you know…
It clacked again. And again.
Pretty soon, it was tapping a sequence. I put it on the crate’s lid, pulled out a notebook, and wrote it down.
I’m not good with Morse Code, but I swear it said: “Get me out of here.”
Where?
And who?

UFO

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Hubert was bored, so he picked up a camera and hucked a pie tin through the air to make a UFO photograph.
After sixteen reports to the FBI, they stopped taking his calls.
Later that month, gigantic pie tins floated down from the sky and landed in Hubert”s cornfield.
Hubert remembered The Boy Who Cried Wolf and realized he was completely and totally fucked.
Then, he remembered” he was the pie-eating champion of Bucktooth County ten years running.
Hubert ran towards the pie tins and… was blasted into smithereens by alien robots.
Come Fall, someone else will be pie-eating champion.

Garage Door

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Right after breakfast, when it’s time to go to school, Danny does this trick – he hits the garage door button and then watches the garage door go down and down and down…
When the time is just right, he runs for the garage door and rolls under it.
“Garage Door Limbo” he calls it.
One day, Danny’s principal calls his mom at work.
“Is Danny sick?” he asks.
His mom races back home, sees Danny trapped under the garage door.
Stone cold dead.
She weeps. If the garage door didn’t kill him, well, running him over finished him off.

Willy Lied

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Willy Wonka said that they’d come away unchanged and unharmed, but just a little wiser.
Willy lied.
The fat kid drowned in the fudge vats. They didn’t bother scooping him out. Choppy-chop!
The gum-chewer exploded into blueberry goo in the hallway. Fucking gross!
The greedy bitch was crisped in a furnace, followed by her father. Good riddance to them both.
The TV kid survived. But he was only four inches tall. That makes it hard to treat for radiation sickness.
By the time they buried little Mike Teevee in a shoebox, Charlie and his family were moving into the factory.

Confession

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Confession is good for the soul.
And for the community, too.
Every few nights, Max shows up with a bag of cash.
It scares me to think what he’s done to his wife and daughters this time.
Over the years, we’ve renovated the church with that money. Put in a community center. Added computers, tutors for homework.
Last night, soaked with blood, all torn up. Hands me a briefcase.
“Make it last,” he says. “You’ll never see me again.”
I don’t even listen. I just put it in the bank, and watch the news as they bring the bodies out.

Mailed It

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When you can’t be there for someone, sometimes you do the best you can with what you have.
This wasn’t much comfort to Sarah, but she didn’t feel like wasting time complaining or getting angry over something she couldn’t change.
She kissed the slip of paper, put it in an envelope, and mailed it to her one true love.
The mailman took it for himself and hid it away in a desk, bringing it out every so often when he felt sad and lonely.
A coworker discovered the letter and showed it to their boss.
He growled and mailed it.

Ask A Grampa

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All the ATMs are gone.
These days, whenever you need money, just ask a Grampa for it.
He”ll pull out his roll of bills, licks his thumb, and gives you one last look before he peels off what you need.
Need to deposit your cash? Just give it to a Grampa, and it goes right in his pocket.
There”s always a Grampa around when you need one.
Little, fuzzy-eared wrinkled old men, puttering around, smiling wide, enjoying the beautiful weather.
Nobody would ever think to rob a Grampa. After all, he”s our Grampa!
We love Grampa, and he loves us.