Afraid.
Humiliated.
Bleeding.
No more!
Tablet after tablet, Cain marked every detail of Abel’s constant harassment, ridicule, cruelty, and torture.
And the abuse.. The awful touching… He felt disgusted, swam in the river until the wretched feeling passed, and then went back to the tablets with renewed fury.
When Cain was finished, he stacked the tablets and sought out his brother.
Many years later, Seth showed the tablets to Father Adam.
Adam wept, thought of his two lost sons, and smashed the tablets.
He then looked at Seth.
Would he stay silent?
Seth swore to, so Adam let him live.
Tag: history
Schrödinger’s Beans
Some people like chili with beans, and others like it without.
Sure, you can make a pot of each, but there’s a more elegant one-pot solution.
When he wasn’t in the lab working on quantum physics, Erwin Schrödinger was in the kitchen, cooking for friends, family, and coworkers.
When he made chili, he ran into the same bean problem. Fussy eaters whining about beans or no beans.
So, just for them, he made a special pot of chili.
They didn’t know if it had beans until they got agonizing cramps.
“Serves you right!” he’d shout. “You’re fussier than my cat!”
The Right Man
“One day, you’ll find the right one. You work too hard.”
Remembering her mother’s words; staring at her reflection in the shiny temporal engine, every wrinkle under her tired eyes.
Another night at the lab, alone, hunting for chronatons.
Tonight, she found them, and they exploded.
Nausea… Waking up slowly.
She breathed air so fresh… Outside… Trees… Beautiful clouds… Pristine…
And a man carrying a blood-soaked jawbone, standing next to a body.
She rubbed her forehead. Still a bit dizzy. The lab. The explosion. The-
It had… worked?
The man dropped the weapon, reached down.
“My name’s Lily,” she said.
Caesar
Caesar approaches The Roman Senate.
Cimber presents him with a petition, but he slaps it away.
Cimber growls and rips the dictator’s tunic.
Caesar stares, muscles rippling.
A mighty fist lashes out, Cimber goes sprawling.
Casca pulls a knife. The Senate gasps as he raises it.
Caesar kicks! The knife flies away. Then with a roundhouse kick, Casca follows.
“GET HIM!” shouts Brutus, and they all attack.
One by one, Caesar kicks, punches, and chops his way through the Senate, defeating them all.
“CUT!” shouts the director.
He calls the producer. “I think we made a mistake casting Chuck Norris.”
Atlas
A pair of philosophers in shabby togas sat across from each other in the marketplace.
One claimed that Atlas the Titan held up the weight of the sky to keep it from crushing the world.
The other claimed that Atlas held on to the sky to keep it from floating away into oblivion.
“That’s just… weird,” said the first philosopher. “Everybody knows that Atlas holds up the sky.”
“Have you seen him?” said the second philosopher. “Have you seen him yourself?”
“Have you?” the first philosopher snapped back.
They lapsed back into silence, looked up, and watched clouds float overhead.
The Dog Days
The Ancients believed that the rise of Sirius, the dog star, would add to the summer’s heat, thus producing The Dog Days Of Summer.
Stars are too far away to influence the temperature of our world, but the flame-cannons The Crab People Of Canis Major sure raised the heat in cities their invasion forces burned to the ground.
Why they invaded and how we defeated them, I have no clue. That was many years ago, and the grandchildren of the grandchildren of those heroes tell the wildest tales as we sit around the pot, boiling blue crabs in their memory.
Multiplying
Long ago, my Christian friends tried to teach me about Jesus.
So, I sat there and listened while they regurgitated everything they’d learned in Sunday School.
I agreed that the guy sounded like a really cool dude and did some amazing things, but I never understood the whole “multiplying the loaves and the fishes” miracle.
Sure, I was good at Math, but I never figured out how someone could multiply bread by a fish.
“What’s pumpernickel times trout?” I asked them. “Or whole wheat times salmon?”
In the end, they thought me a heretic.
Whatever. Their math is still fishy.
The Cake Of Damocles
The Tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius, welcomed the rebel Damocles into his home, offering his throne to the visitor.
“It’s all yours,” he said. “Enjoy.”
“Thank you,” said Damocles, and he sat down.
It was then that he looked up and saw a red and white cake, suspended over the throne.
“What’s with the cake?”
“It represents the threat those in power must live under every day.”
“Threat of cake? But I like cake.”
“Then I guess you like danger.”
That’s when the cake fell, and the sword inside it impaled Damocles.
“Oh, did I forget to mention it’s strawberry swordcake?”
The Navigator
Robert The Navigator looked over Captain Blood’s map.
“You’re shitting me, right?” he said.
Captain Blood raised an eyebrow.
Robert pointed at a sea serpent in the corner. “Ever seen one of these?”
“No.”
“How about this?” Robert pointed to a fat-cheeked blowing cloud.
“Well, it’s not to be taken too literally.”
“And am I to believe that this land here actually exists?”
“Um, that’s Italy.”
“Shaped like a boot? No, really… what child drew this?”
“Serpent ahoy!” shouted the first mate.
Captain Blood watched as Robert was thrown overboard.
“Good show, Blood,” said a nearby cloud. “Need a gust?”
Generous With Words
The fool is most generous with his words, a flood of nonsense and spittle spills from his lips.
I pull out a handkerchief, wipe my face, and try to maintain my smile.
Thankfully, he does not test my comprehension of his prattle, but merely asks if I understand.
“Yes,” I say. “Do go on.”
Sadly, he does, and I am subjected to more nonsense, more unwelcome moisture, and occasional stray bits of gristle.
“Try fainting,” whispers Duchess Morgan in my ear.
I roll my eyes and go limp.
Servants “revive” me as the fool moves on to his next victim.