Lucien Smith

A software glitch caused every birth certificate in the county to use the name Lucien Smith.
You’d think that people would balk.
Nope. The parents didn’t mind the error at all.
“It’s a good name,” said one couple. “Better than the one we picked out.”
“You’d think it would be confusing, having twin girls named Lucien,” said another couple. “But somehow, we manage.”
The first kindergarten class of Lucien Smiths was a challenge for school administrators, but they quickly got the hang of it.
It’s the public stoning of children not named Lucien Smith that you never get used to.

Nancy’s Face

If you asked her out, Nancy would say “Sure. Let me go put on my face.”
And then she peels off the face she had on, wipes away the glue, and sticks on a fresh face.
She always makes sure she has at least two faces left in the pack.
You never want to run out of faces, and sometimes the last face in the pack ends up squished, like the last slice of a loaf of bread.
Satisfied, she smiles, and tosses the old face into a cage.
The rats chew the face to bits as it screams silently.

The Wish

I hear screaming.
It is coming from the well.
They say it is a wishing well.
I pushed the bad man into the well.
I made a wish:
I wish the bad man would stop hurting me.
I asked him for some coins to throw into the well.
He took them out of his pocket, laughed, and said…
No.
So, I pushed him into the well.
Him, and the coins in his pocket.
And I made my wish.
But he’s climbing back out.
Angry.
Maybe, if I hit him on the head with a shovel, my wish will come true.

Haunted

Blake ran the video arcade at the mall until a poorly-grounded Galaga box electrocuted him.
When the real estate company tried to put a shoe store in that location, Blake’s ghost scared off all the customers with all his yelling and throwing things around.
Same with the novelty gift shop, the jeans outlet store, and the cell phone place.
Exorcists and supernatural “experts” failed to remove Blake.
So, we put a laser tag maze in the spot, but called it Ghost Hunters.
It would work better if Blake wore a sheet instead of a Pac Man tee-shirt and jeans, though.

Drag The Kids Around

It’s Halloween again.
There are only two houses on our street: ours and the Smiths.
When Halloween rolls around, the Smiths knock on our door for candy, and then we knock on their door.
No one else comes into our street to trick-or-treat. It’s just us.
We don’t even get out real candy. It’s play candy from some kind of preschool playset that we pass back and forth.
The kids don’t mind. They don’t like candy. Or much of anything, because they’re dead.
We dig them up to drag them around.
At least their pretty costumes will always fit them

The Ghost Pimp

Ruth is a psychic who helps ghosts resolve the issues which keep them bound to the material world.
Once these issues are resolved, they can finally head off into “the light.”
“The light” used to refer to Heaven, but escorting ghosts to the hereafter doesn’t pay jack squat.
Now, Ruth puts ghosts into antique lanterns and sells them as emergency battery-free lighting.
I’m sure you wish that Granddad or Aunt Sue were at peace up in Heaven, but you must admit that the stairs to my root cellar are rather peaceful too, right?
I even oiled the stairs. No creaking.

Drive In

There aren’t many drive-in movie theaters left. The days of bringing in a bottle of scotch, sneaking your date in the trunk, and steaming up the windows are almost a thing of the past.
There’s an abandoned drive-in theater just outside of town. Watching a movie on a laptop computer’s not the same as the big projection screen, but nobody’s really going to be watching the movie.
I park the car, open the trunk, and look at my date.
She screams. The duct tape wrapped over her mouth and nose must have come loose.
I hate it when they struggle.

Unglued

To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
To the man with a screwdriver, everything looks like a screw.
And to a man with spiders glued to his face, everything looks like spiders.
Why someone would glue spiders to his face, I’m not sure.
The man with a hammer offers to smash the spiders with his hammer.
And the man with the screwdriver offers to stab the spiders with his screwdriver.
Neither solution sounds good to the man with spiders glued to his face.
Of course, nobody thought to ask the spiders what they thought or wanted.

Bambi The Commie

After every school massacre, the liberals blame the NRA and demand gun control.
And I polish up all the weapons in my basement and wait for the government to try to come and get them.
Yeah, I tell people that I use guns to hunt, but who the hell needs to vaporize Bambi with an automatic assault rifle?
Me. Especially if Bambi’s working for the government and trying to take my guns away from me.
Maybe if his mother carried an assault rifle to defend herself, Bambi wouldn’t have ended up an orphan and going around with that stupid bunny.

The Sled

I grew up in a big family, and we didn’t have much.
All the kids had to share one sled. We carved our names into it.
Right over the curse.
That Winter, the year I had the broken leg, the other kids took turns going down the hill.
“Let’s all get on!” shouted Robbie.
I watched through the window as the sled veered out of control, and they ran straight into the old tire swing tree.
Broken necks, hypothermia, and frostbite got them all.
Except me. I was the last kid left.
My dad busted the sled up for firewood.