Tiffany wore a necklace with a key dangling from it.
Marie wore a necklace with a padlock.
As long as they couldn’t get married in Texas, they refused to wear the rings they’d bought for a full-blown wedding.
They were together for fifty years, and every day, Tiffany looked at those rings.
“Not yet,” said Marie.
So Tiffany put them away.
When Marie got sick, Tiffany begged her to exchange rings.
“No,” said Marie.
And she died the next day.
Tiffany tried to put the key in the lock.
It didn’t fit.
She put on the other necklace and wept.
Tag: dystopia
Never go home
They say you can never go hone, and as long as the restraining order is still in place, that’s true.
Google Street View lets you get a glimpse at all the old familiar places, as long as they’re close to a main thoroughfare and not blocked by a new thick, tall hedge paid for by monthly alimony checks… your alimony checks.
So, if you want to peek into a window, you know, just curious, that will take a private detective with a camera. Or a wireless steerable webcam.
Or two.
Or three.
Or…
Obsessed? Me?
Just making sure they’re… safe.
The Unbecoming
Fred lost his leg in a hiking accident.
The carbon-fiber leg replacement was so good, he had the other one amputated and replaced.
Refinements made them even better, and with intelligent and sensing exoskeleton enhancements allowed him to leap and run in ways he could never imagine.
He underwent more procedures, replacing his limbs and organs to make him a mechanized superman, capable of doing amazing things.
Still, every so often, he’d hesitate. Caution held over from his weaker, biological days.
One robotic hand raised up on its own, yanked off his screaming head, and tossed it into the trash.
Coffins
I don’t understand the logic of spending so much effort on a beautiful coffin just to stick it in the ground.
So I began to haul the coffins back up, seal the bodies in bags, and bury them again while cleaning off the coffins for reuse.
In the off-chance that a body needs to be disinterred, I get a warrant in advance, so I can haul the body back up and stick it in a coffin for them to pick up.
I’ve made a fortune in profit, selling coffins over and over.
If only this racket worked with the headstones.
Nazi?
The leader of a Neo-Nazi group in Hungary recently discovered that he’s Jewish.
Can the reverse happen? Can someone Jewish discover that they’re a Nazi?
Angry liberal college protestors aside, I wanted to see if this were true.
Looking in my closet, I don’t see Doc Marten boots.
And my scalp isn’t just unshaven, but covered with unruly greasy curly hair.
Finally, I don’t attend any rallies or protests, nor do I go around beating the crap out of people.
Whew. Thank goodness.
I pat my teddy bear Adolf on the head, turn out the light, and go to sleep.
Swept Under the Prayer Rug
The bishop stuck Father O’Brien’s file in a drawer and locked it.
“Move him to Boston,” he said.
Two years later, the bishop pulled out O’Brien’s file and added the newest reports to it.
“Try New York,” he said. “Last chance.”
It wasn’t. A year later, O’Brien was sent to Los Angeles.
When the file was too thick to fit in the drawer, the bishop had O’Brien sent to South America on a teaching mission.
The locals took matters into their own hands, hanging the child molester.
“I should have sent him there in the first place,” said the bishop.
Ever after
There are eight million stories in the big city.
I plan on ending them.
The problem is, it’s hard to come up with an ending that’s the opposite of the simple and succinct classic: “And they lived happily ever after.”
Although “And they died happily” would work, since the poison I put in the water supply has a euphoric effect.
“Ever after” doesn’t make sense, since they’re all going to die.
Including me.
Which is why I’m writing the ending of their stories now. Because I won’t be around to write it later.
Think I can get that phrase copyrighted?
The Y
Unlike the Catholic Church, we here at the Y act quickly when we discover an employee behaving in a disgusting manner with a child or doing something inappropriate, like collecting child pornography.
It doesn’t happen very often, because we have a screening process and keep our staff under observation. Nobody is ever left alone with a child.
Plus, when one is caught, we don’t sweep them under the rug like the Church does.
We bury them under the baseball field.
By the way, the pitcher’s mound is getting a bit high. Better dig it up and quicklime the corpses again.
In The Dead Of Night
The tooth fairies exchange money for teeth.
Then, the sandmen grind them up into dream dust.
Overprotective dogs aren’t a problem with a face full of dream dust, but motion-sensing alarms can be.
Then there’s the sandmen and fairies who think the whole racket is stupid, so they steal jewelry, credit cards, and MacBooks.
Don’t get me started with the bootleg videos of hot celebrities and models sleeping. The Council can barely deal with the Lindbergh baby incident, let alone Internet paparazzi stalker porn. Technology’s like magic to them.
We’ll pay for Lady Gaga’s dentures and a new laptop, okay?
Masterpieces
Miyuki paints masterpieces.
She’s an art restorer. She touches up and fixes damaged paintings
She’s the best art restorer in the world, fixing everything: vandalism, neglect, smoke damage.
But it brings her no joy.
She wants to paint her own works. Instead of little bits of Renoir or Matisse, she wants to see a Miyuki in the gallery. A Miyuki exhibition.
Years of restoring others wore her down, and then… snap.
She painted over a Picasso, and…
It was beautiful. Magnificent. Her masterpiece.
And sent to another restorer to remove.
Someone stole a Rembrandt?
It’s Miyuki.
She needs more canvases.