The Famous Reverend Blake is never seen in public without his twin bodyguards.
And his bodyguards are never seen without their white plastic masks.
Well, sometimes, they are. When they take their turn as Reverend Blake.
They’re actually identical triplets, changing roles when convenient.
This is useful for Blake’s “24 Hours Of Jesus” marathon sermons.
Or, during his weekly sermons at his sprawling megachurch, an alibi for his perverted obsessions in the day care center.
Twenty thousand loyal followers saw Blake up there preaching.
There’s no way he could have been down there.
Bearing false witness is a sin, child.
Tag: mystery
Born into the theater
I was born into the theater.
Literally. My mother, the famous actress, scored a year-long run in Oklahoma! via that infamous casting couch.
Nine months in, she still refused to give up the spotlight to her understudy.
The costume girl eventually went insane.
During the matinee, her water broke in Act 2, but she didn’t miss a line.
She concealed contractions with howls of laughter and screams of joy.
The curtain fell, I was born, and she was holding me to her breast through four curtain calls.
If you think that’s bad, that bastard director added it to the script!
The Wrong Saint
We needed to dump this house. Quickly.
But the market’s a mess, and everybody’s low-balling us.
Someone told me that burying a statue of St. Joseph in the yard will speed the sale of a home.
So, I went to a Christian bookstore and bought a statue.
It wasn’t Joseph, though. It was Saint Winefride, the patron of payroll clerks.
At first, I barely noticed them, but after a week it became difficult to mow the lawn while navigating the colony of accountants camping out on the grass.
But, in the end, one of them offered to buy the house.
Fishy Witness
They say that goldfish only have seven seconds of memory.
They swim by something, see it, and then forget.
Which is why you’ll rarely see a goldfish called as a witness in a murder trial.
Sure, some lesser-experienced and desperate district attorneys will try anyway, and they end up staring at a fish for an hour before the judge tosses their case out the window.
Still, when a Mafia boss says “Leave no witnesses” to his men, they take it seriously.
Flush it.
Cook it.
Feed it to the cat.
I just knock over the bowl.
Accidents can be caused.
Turning The Knife
The priestess didn’t struggle or fight when I dragged her to the river and shoved her head under.
The water was so clear, her face so calm and her eyes staring back into mine.
So calm.
I let go of her, but she didn’t get up. She stayed under the water.
I pulled her up and back to the shore, our clothes soaking wet.
“How did you stay so calm?” I said.
That was when she drew a dagger from under her cloak and stabbed me in the chest.
“I was never in any danger,” she said, turning the knife.
The Doors
The front door to every apartment on the sixth floor was gone.
Nothing else had been stolen, nothing else had been disturbed.
Nobody heard or saw anything out of the ordinary.
The security cameras in the stairwells, elevators, garage, and lobby showed nothing strange.
One moment, the doors were all there.
The next moment, they were gone.
Why would somebody steal all the doors on the sixth floor?
They were just ordinary doors.
And why chose that floor?
Why not the fifth? Or the seventh?
The next day, they were back.
Nobody said a thing about it.
Was I dreaming?
Elegantly
Lying in his hospital bed, Albert Einstein, the smartest man in the world, was dying.
He coughed, smiled and told the doctors “I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”
They nodded respectfully and left the room.
The next morning, he was dead.
Nobody knows Albert Einstein’s last words because he spoke them in German, but the nurse at his bedside only spoke English.
However, I suspect he was saying “Get that pillow off of my face, you bitch!”
The Caged Bird
I don’t know what that Maya Angelou is getting on about, but she’s so full of shit.
I know the real reason why the caged bird sings: it’s a trick.
If you look closely, the bird’s stuffed. And when it sings, the beak doesn’t move. (It’s broken)
The singing came from a tape recorder built into the perch. Look. See it?
The switch is here on the electrical cord.
So that’s why the caged bird sings.
Why it sings Van Halen’s 1984 album? Because, I like classic Van Halen.
And I lost the bird songs tape that came with it.
The Uncharmed Life
The townsfolk spread rumors about Mercy Polk and her use of magic charms, potions, and wands in unusual rituals.
She was arrested and dragged before the town magistrate, and ordered to demonstrate her supposed magic powers.
She dipped her finger into a bowl of water, and turned it into wine.
“What is that in your other hand?” asked the magistrate.
“A stone!” shouted the bailiff. “The rumors are true! She has no powers whatsoever!”
The magistrate found her guilty and sentenced her to exile in Boston.
(And kept the stone for himself, since good wine is so hard to find.)
Loathing
Every morning when I wake up, I look in the mirror and I don’t like what I see there.
So, to save time and effort, I just signed a contract to outsource all of my self-loathing to India. The entire city of Mumbai now despises me for me.
They send me a daily report through email, with the occasional critical updates via text message to my phone.
This frees me up to focus on loathing everybody and everything else.
I’d outsource my self-righteousness to them, too, but they can’t possibly do as good a job at it as I can!