Category: My stories

Tickler

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Little Jimmy liked to tickle people. He loved to hear laughter.
He got so good at it, he could find the ticklish spots on all people who claimed not to be ticklish at all.
Folks got to know him well. So much so, all he had to do was wiggle his fingers and you’d feel them on your body, tickling you. Five, six, ten feet away – you could feel it.
Maybe he could too?
Jimmy’s last tickle victim was a toaster. He used a metal fork to do the deed.
I wonder… right before he was electrocuted, did it tickle?

Snow Shovel

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I haven’t touched a snow shovel in 18 years.
Sure, I’ve seen snow since then, but I haven’t touched a snow shovel.
They don’t have any snow shovels in the hardware store down the street. I guess there’s more people out there just like me that haven’t touched a snow shovel in a long time.
I looked in a catalog and saw that Restoration Hardware sells snowman kits. So does their local brick and mortar store. Might be worth it as a gag gift, making a snowman out of Crisco or something white and stackable.
Ho ho ho… Merry Criscomas?

You Are What

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As I was growing up, I was always being told that I am what I eat.
So, I would tell all my food that they are what eats them.
There’s not much point to telling a salad that, nor is there a reason to announce this fact to a steak.
One time, I went out for seafood and I chose my own lobster from the tank.
I picked my lobster and then told it that I was going to eat it, I am what I eat, so it was about to be me.
It pinched my nose in its claw.

Making A War

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There’s always that one person at a party, off in the corner, all by themselves.
Fred was holding the string to a red balloon, mumbling “All I need are ninety-eight more and I can start a nuclear war.”
So, we gathered up all the red balloons, but still came up short.
The party store was closed. We couldn’t buy more.
“Maybe if we paint the other ones red? I said.
But nobody had red paint, and the paint store was closed, too.
The next morning, I was drinking my coffee, when I heard the sirens.
Should have gotten a pinata.

The Deadly Girl

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When I was a kid, there was this girl. She liked to read Tarot cards for the other kids.
She couldn’t really read them, though. She just made things up.
Still, all her predictions came true.
When one kid caught the girl making things up, the girl told him he would die.
And he did. A dodgeball got him.
The teachers took her cards away, so she used dice. Although she called them bones.
Palmistry, phrenology, tealeaves – you name it. She thinned out her classmates quickly with her malicious, deadly predictions.
She works for the government now.
So, behave yourself.

Gateway

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As part of a top secret energy experiment, scientists tore a gateway into another dimension.
What came out wasn’t an unlimited, clean supply of energy but a horde of angry killer demons.
What we couldn’t kill, we were forced to contain in force-fields.
Some stupid lawyers from the ALCU demanded that these demons get their civil rights and day in court.
So, we put them in the containment cells with the demons.
Those that survived changed their minds about the demons.
One insisted on representing those terrorist assholes they’re keeping in Gitmo.
We put him back in with the demons.

Moon Prison

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The first permanent moon base turned out to be a maximum security prison.
Well, if you don’t want prisoners escaping and putting the public at risk, where better to put them than on the moon, right?
If they revolted, well, we could stop sending supplies up there. The oxygen systems were designed to only work for so long before replacement.
The man in charge of scheduling supply runs lost a daughter and a wife to one of those murderers up there.
So it comes as no surprise that the past three shipments of oxygen systems turned out to be duds.

Wrong Number

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She told me her number at a party, but I couldn’t remember the last number.
So, I dialed all of the numbers in the series.
One was a computer or a fax. So was two, five, seven, and eight.
Three and four were not in service.
Six could have been her. It was a generic pager number, so I gave it my number.
Nine was a kid’s personal line.
Zero was a hardware store. She said she was an art dealer, so that couldn’t have been her Must be the pager.
Unless, of course, she’s a robot with a modem.

The Happy Ending Machine

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It’s been tough times. Came home from work with a cardboard box.
You know how it is.
I try not to let my daughter hear me worry, but kids are smart. Can’t fool them at all.
So she put the cardboard box on the floor and said it’s my Happy Ending Machine. Says so on the side in Magic Marker.
All spelled right, too.
“Put anything in it, and it will get better,” she said.
Bills? They got paid.
Papercuts? They got healed.
Sick puppies? They got better.
Homework? It got done.
Because that’s what happens in happy endings, right?

Red

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I was explaining the color red to a blind man when the hot ham sandwiches arrived.
The blind man laughed. “You have no idea what red is,” he said.
“I know what red is,” I said. “You’re the one who has no idea what red is. You’re blind.”
“But I know what red is.”
Then he began an hour-long, amazingly poetic, utterly riveting explanation of what red was.
When he was finished, he took a bite of his sandwich.
“It’s cold! Waitress!”
I may not know what red is, but I know when to eat my hot ham sandwich hot.