Contributor: Lindsey Barlow

- -
He was following her now; he had seen the gold in her pocket.
It was two o'clock in the morning, and the child was six, and the gold was shimmering like honey on a tongue that whispered, "You've never seen anything like this before."
And for a homeless man, that was sublime.
So he stumbled, following her ribbons and bows while they fluttered over the shimmering streets, and then the gravel, and dirt, and grass, like birds and butterflies and bees and bats in the night. Fear, for once, never occurred to him.
He knew she saw him. He had caught her emerald eye, and she giggled, this girl with gold in her pocket.
Just after an hour of walking, they had reached the woods, and he set his rum down - the bottle had grown so heavy as he walked. And when he stood again, the forest was transformed. The rocks were pearls, the apples were rubies, the moss was opal that climbed up bark of bronze and gold, and all about him was a twilight of misshapen gems and fortunes that glowed. All, that is, but where his rum sat.
In that little spot, the dirt was dirt, the grass was grass, and there was no sweetness etched into their being. This image stirred him.
"Sir," the girl with gold chimed, "are you sad?"
He felt his eyes well with warm tears, and when these tears fell, they cooled. Diamonds tumbled down his cheek. He caught two of them just as they plummeted from his chin, but one bounded askance, and this one he missed. It dropped onto the ground beside the bottle without a sound. In the grass, the diamond trickled back into a tear.
"No, I'm not sad. You are too young," he replied to her, "and this place is too beautiful to understand me." He looked round himself at the natural palace. "But I understand. Now, I do." He glanced back at his tears and marveled that the smallest drops of him could be so priceless. "It has taken me so long to see that worth was not where I placed it.
"My debts... they aren't so heavy now. My thirst is nearly gone. I suppose it does not matter, after all, how late one travels that path in the dark night. The end of the right road overflows all."


- - -
Lindsey Barlow is a graduate student at the University of Texas at Arlington, and she is currently an Adjunct Professor of Writing and Grammar at Cedar Valley Community College. Her short story "The Trade" was previously published in Oak Bend Review, and her non-fiction article titled "Driven by the Spirit: The Alcoholism of Man in Boardwalk Empire" was published in Popular Culture Review. She currently lives in Dallas, Texas.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Lindsey Barlow

Contributor: Michael Plesset

- -
On a train, looking out the window. Wheat and people go by. Time to think,
and remember, what we wish the past was. Time to think, and wonder what to have for lunch, and what our great grandchildren will be like, and their great grandchildren. They’ll understand the universe, they’ll know what happens when we die. They’ll wonder how we got along knowing so little, and why we spent our time the way we did, sitting on trains with so much time to think.

It was a visit he wasn’t looking forward to, relatives with no common bond, postponed many times, until excuses have run out.

Two more hours, to get to where he doesn’t want to go.

Why haven’t you called?
We missed you at the holidays.
What have you been doing?

A wedding of one of their children, one he really doesn’t know. They’ll be happy, their big day, and he must pretend to care.

Suddenly the train slowed to a stop, what’s wrong. It hit something that shouldn’t be there, emergency. So there they sit, for what might be hours, on that train with still more time to think.

A woman across the aisle said ”I hope no one’s hurt.”
“Yes” was all he could think of to say.
“I’m going to a wedding” she said, “it doesn’t look like I’ll make it.”
“I am too, but to be honest I don’t care, I don’t really know them.”
“I’m going to my husband’s daughter’s wedding, she hates me” she said.
“Maybe we’re better off here, on the train” he said, “and we have a perfect excuse for not showing up.”
She laughed. “You’re right, this is the best thing that could have happened today.” And after a pause, “But I do hope no one’s hurt.”

He thought “No one was hurt? Oh yes, we were. We’ve lost this day forever, and that can’t be healed. Life carries us along, consuming us in tiny bites each day. If only time could be like this, instead of taking us in meaningless little steps to the end, it could stop, like the train, and let us rest.”

The woman said “We’re trapped here, what if we just got off and had a picnic, out here in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’m in,” he said “we could buy some food at a little store I saw a short way back.”

They got off the train, walked back to the store, got some food, and sat eating in the shade of a large tree, then just watched the clouds slowly drift across the sky, losing track of time. After a while, she said “This is the nicest day I can remember, I guess I haven’t felt very happy, but didn’t realize it.”

They heard the train start up again. Since the trains didn’t have a stop near there, they had no idea how they would get to either where they were going, or back to where they came from, but they didn’t mind, it was a strange relief to hear it going away.

“I guess we’re sort of like school kids skipping school,” he said.

She said “I never did anything like that.”

He thought about it seriously for a long while, then said softly, “Neither have I.”


- - -
Michael Plesset has published poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, and wrote material for a stand-up comedian. He did graduate work in mathematics and philosophy, worked in high technology and teaches English to Chinese students.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

3 Comments

Author: Michael Plesset

Contributor: Chris Sharp

- -
Reilly had not worked in any accounting capacity since his seizure last year. Over this period he kept going with temp bookkeeping jobs, though they paid less than a third of his usual professional cash-money. If his experience had been a stroke – what he’d first assumed – there was no clue to it in the CAT scan he’d taken.

The stroke theory had holes in it from the very beginning, even before Reilly went into a hospital. At 32, he felt much too young for retirement issues such as apoplexy. First and foremost, he enjoyed first-rate blood-pressure and cholesterol counts. If he had only experienced some unprecedented epileptic activity, his medical exam had found no source or remnant of it.

Reilly had finally settled on “exhaustion theory” to explain his blackout event. He concluded his exhaustion had started from being too competitive and relentlessly aggressive against his peers. Then the breakdown itself had spun him into a total reversal off his life. It led him to quit the accounts receivable department in the big national department store chain where he had stored his entire identity and energy. His choice was to then work for a small temp agency as an itinerant bookkeeper, allowing him to take a day off every other week or so.

The first year, Reilly needed some extra time off to deal with the madhouse effect of his seizure. He was glad he had no wife or children to handle on some kind of sideline.

The event had led Reilly to awaken in a mysterious wide-open field. He had never come close to seeing this rolling field before in his life. It looked like a place that at one time could have held a large fortune in cattle. Then the more he regained himself, he saw he was the only moving thing in the whole field.

The field ended at a brutalized log fence. Beyond that were utility poles made of more civilized logs. When Reilly saw a narrow highway, he noticed the sound of natural running water. It was his old Boy Scout survival training that led him to walk in the direction of the river current.

A large commercial truck stopped ahead of him and parked on the side. A driver wearing a red beret came out and asked Reilly if he needed help. Reilly nodded.

“Where are you going?” he asked the driver.

“Salem.”

“Salem where?”

“Salem, Massachusetts.”

“What?”

“Sir,” said the driver, jawing aggressively under his red beret. “What are you saying? Do you not know Oregon?”

“Oregon?”

“Sir, where did you come from?”

“I thought I was in California,” said Reilly. He looked around at the total surrounding green landscape. “I’m totally mixed up. Can you give me a ride to Salem then?”

Reilly still had money and credit cards in the place he had left them, and in Salem -- Oregon -- he paid cash for a bus back to California.

On the ride home Reilly went over the dream he still remembered from when he was unconscious.

In the dream, Reilly was surrounded by a team of hostile-looking people whose heads looked like bulbs in an exotic tropical garden. They broke into his ears and tested them, then they looked into his mouth, and even into his nostrils, and then they even took out his eyes, leaving him blind for a while, until they gently screwed his eyes back below his eyebrows.

At the end of the examination Reilly was met by a sort of secretary with just a flower for a head, and she led him into a private room. This fully furnished room was much different from the examination site, which was like other places in dreams that are in perpetual motion. The private room was in contrast grounded into real-life, fully awakened reality.

An older gentleman in a black suit and tie stood before Reilly in the new room. “You will be asked,” said the old gentleman, ‘Were your molecules rearranged?” You will say ‘no.’”

It was at the point Reilly became someone lying in a green field in Oregon.

It took Reilly a year to understand that the earth’s complete circle around the sun can erode most of the abnormality out of any misadventure or mystery. After a year, waking up in a field so far away from home was becoming less of a misadventure. Finally Reilly began to miss the adventure and competition of real CPA-level accounting. He started applying for real accounting jobs again, and after a few weeks he was called in for an interview.

When he arrived at the CPA offices for the meeting, he was started by a secretary who said, “You must be Mr. Reilly.”

“Yes, I’m Mr. Reilly.”

“Mr. Barnes told me to tell you he will be with you in five minutes.”

“Thank you.”

It was the first time he’d been called “Mr. Reilly” since he had left the accounting offices of his old job. At his temporary bookkeeping jobs, he was called by his first name, as if he were a boy foot-foot tall.

“Mr. Barnes will see you now, Mr. Reilly,” said the secretary.

She led him to an enclosed office. At the opening of the door, Mr. Barnes was at his feet in front of his shining big desk. He wore a soft black suit that like his broad smile looked totally devoted to this very moment. Then the door was closed.

“Were your molecules rearranged?” asked Mr. Barnes.


- - -
Chris Sharp has numbers of flash-fiction short stories in Linguistic Erosion, Yesteryear Fiction, Weirdyear, and Daily Love as well as longer fiction listed by Google under “Short stories by Chris Sharp.” His book “Dangerous Learning” is being distributed by Barnes & Noble.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Chris Sharp

Contributor: Samuel Pugh

- -
For a boy of 8, it wasn’t unusual be scared of the dark …
Mum and Dad always left the hallway light on, the comforting sound of their TV programs creeping up the stairs, somehow softening the darkness, making it less claustrophobic. But they didn’t understand; not really. Every night was the same. He’d stare fixedly into the light, concentrating on the sickly orange glow until sleep finally overtook him.
But one night, the light went out.
Panic gave way to hysteria; the dark seemed to be wrapping around him, consuming him. With a voice laced with anxiety, he called out for his Mother. Mummy didn’t come. He pulled the duvet up, over his mouth, his nose, and called again; louder this time. No reply. There was something there, in the darkness. He could hear things talking, chattering, whispering about him. He was safe under the covers, of course, his duvet was his protection against … against them; but for how long? With a strange certainty, he knew they were moving closer. He would have to be brave, leave the duvet, and switch the light on. He leapt out of bed, and ran across to the doorway. If he could reach the light-switch, they would run away, they would leave him alone, they would disappear, they would …

And then he woke up; safe in his bad, safe in the dark. A dream …
He let out a sigh. Stupid, stupid, stupid …
And then they started to talk again, to chatter, to whisper. They were coming for him, slithering their way through the darkness, reaching out. He threw the duvet to one side, raced across the room, feeling for the light switch in a blind panic. He found it, switched it on, and …
And he woke up, tears wet upon his cheeks, his breathing manic in its rapidity. Again, he called for his mother. Screamed …
Mummy didn’t come. Mummy never came. And they were still there, crouching in the dark, talking about him, whispering about him, laughing at him. With a sickening sense of déjà vu, he dragged the duvet from his body, ran across the room, and felt for the light switch.
He found it. He switched on the light, and turned around.
And he didn’t wake up.
And that’s when he finally saw them …


- - -

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

2 Comments

Author: Samuel Pugh

Contributor: Tómas Jónsson

- -
James came from a lineage of infidelity. As he lusted after his colleague, he wondered if his feelings were a genetic trait equivalent to his predisposition for high cholesterol.
To further deny responsibility for his actions, James surmised environmental influences were as much to blame for his new desires. James knew of countless affairs among his colleagues, neighbors, and societal elites.
Unlike the politician cheating with a young lobbyist, James’ had no fear of his wife learning of his disloyalty through the tabloids. James worried that some form of electronic data would expose his subterfuge. And again, surrendering to his environment, and despite the near promise of enabling his own destruction, James could not deny his desire to create an electronic footprint. In the privacy of his office cubical he put his never realized artistic potential to use by storyboarding a video and the positions in which his accomplice would look her best.
James continued about his day expecting it and all that followed to continue unchanged until his demise. He stared at Anne’s chest as she twirled her hair. Anne’s recent weight gain had done little to detract from her figure. She carried the new weight well, mostly in her stomach, leaving her shapely ass still worthy of James’ admiration.
Anne was not attracted to James. However, since James was oblivious to this, he had already convinced himself of a future liaison. In James’ fantasy, Anne’s reputation for promiscuity led her into his bed. She would seek him out for a tawdry night in which they made love for the sake of sex. For a short time they might even mistake their sin of lust as love.
James’ delusion created another battle against the forces driving him to cheat. Why should he not be free to fall in and out of love when his wife was swinging in and out of his life?
It was this pendulum of love that tormented James. He had not fallen out of love with his wife, but she had. For the past 751 days James’ wife put her career and personal satisfaction ahead of all else. Had James been as brilliant and half as successful he would have acted the same. Her success was so great they lived a life they never imagined. Living expenses became inconsequential. As a result numbers in bank accounts were used in the interim to fill the emptiness in James’ as he ate another dinner alone in their perfectly decorated beach house. All it had cost him was the vacancy of his bed and the realization that he was a commodity to his partner. When she was no longer successful and the career that made her happy was gone, she would plug him back into the equation restoring her sense of contentment with life.
James pondered if his feelings were his own way of commoditizing love. There was fundability to sex. It could be tallied as easily as money was counted. In this calculation James attempt to deceive, never admitting that he wanted to find love, not just have orgasms. James wanted an intimacy that could replace the sense of abandonment that came from his wife and the stark emptiness of the modernity.
Time progressed. James could not decouple from his wife. He was too weak to leave her despite the unhappiness she had caused. James was resolved to suffer in silence endlessly thinking rather than move forward on either front.
Had James been less codependent he might have addressed his wife’s failures. But his love had put her in a position of perfection. He was convinced that any fault in their relationship must have been his. If he cheated, she could remain perfect and he the failure.
When his wife went on another business trip he called the ex-girlfriend. She was aware of his vulnerabilities and manipulated him to serve her needs. As a couple they had no future, but they had shared love in the past. It was a residual energy that still held enough emotion to ease both their troubled lives.
James, at the mercy of emotion, finally gave in to his fears. He broke his oath to his wife. To cope he detached and compartmentalized his feelings from his behavior. Then his erection failed. Mostly flaccid, he struggled to penetrate his former girlfriend. He rubbed her tits and licked her pussy to no avail. James did not cheat, or so he convinced himself because he had not come.
James’ wife never found out about his mistake. She would not have cared. She had been cheating on him for years and never once struggled with the decision. She knew that James would never force her to pay for the consequences of her actions.


- - -
I split my time between Iceland and Wisconsin choosing to live in a climate of perpetual winter.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Tómas Jónsson

Contributor: Marco Scibelli

- -
The ice cream truck was plastered with stickers of the treats held inside, pasted over other stickers from the years gone by. On the hood, a mock metal ice cream cone was displayed, and it always bothered the driver; it looked sharp and scary. He didn’t want it flying through the windshield in a collision and killing him. The truck cruised steadily up the slight incline, with the plains of sage forming a downstage for the beautiful, jagged mountains that punctuated the background. If this was a play, the stage crew did a nice job on the set design.
The driver was an unimpressive man of ambiguous age, but he wore his white uniform well and he kept his hat neatly pressed to always have that paper-boat look in perfect form. He gripped the wheel lightly, just enough to make sure the van didn’t veer off course and crush all this beautiful scenery. Yes, he’d driven all over God’s Green Earth selling ice cream, and he’s had his favorites, (how beautiful the Everglades seemed from a freezing cold car), and his least favorites, (as far as he could tell, New Mexico was just a void with some road construction in the middle). This plain, however, took the cake with its stunning gorgeousness.
The cheery van slowly rolled over the pristine, natural landscape, and into the sightline of a seven year old girl. She was standing on the side of the road in a purple dress–oh, rather, a lilac dress because purple can be a boy’s color and she isn’t a boy, thank you very much–with little yellow polka dots. She was all alone as the van pulled up in front of her and came to a stop. The man threw it into park and approached his window.
“Why, hello there little girl.”
“Hello, mister.” The man smiled a grin at the little girl, exposing every one of his yellow teeth, crooked and ugly.
“Would you like a ride someplace?” the man asked the little girl. In her mind she knew her dad and her mom told her never to ever accept rides from strangers, (especially old ones because they’re very lonely, or so her mom said and her dad nodded gravely).
“I had ought to not, I’ll be fine without one. Thank you though.” The girl turned her gaze from his hollow, deep brown eyes and she fixated it on the ground. Crumbled rocks, encrusted with dirt at the edges.
“How about some ice cream, then? My treat!”
With this the girl looked up again and, after contemplating for a brief moment, nodded her head yes. The man retreated into his van, only to return seconds later with a nice cone of swirly vanilla ice cream. To the little girl it looked like the snow that crowned the mountains of the plains, and she was very excited as she took it. “Thanks, mister!”
“Oh, no problem little girl. No problem at all!”
She began to lick her ice cream happily, and not wanting to frighten her, (ice cream men know everyone thinks they’re pedophiles), he climbed back into the driver’s seat and threw the transmission into drive. The music, a little circus ditty, began to play from the rusting speakers atop the van. He pulled away and the little girl waved as he went.
He got home at half past six, and he smiled a little grin, not enough to show his teeth, though. Half past six was his favorite time to get home, he would have just enough time to do an inventory before Jeopardy! came on television, no extra time for idling and dilly-dallying. He counted, he watched, he went to bed.
The next day he found himself driving through the barren cold of the Canadian highways. No one else was on the roads, just him and the coniferous; occasionally a deer would hear his bittersweet jingle from inside its forest home and peer through the trees. He drove on like this for a couple hours, and found no one, nor nothing. Maybe it was a bad idea to try and hit Québec today, he thought to himself. He knew the French didn’t like his ice cream, were the French Canadians the same way?
His musings came to a shattering stop, and he found himself with a face full of air. Or was it a face full of bag? Shoving it back into the wheel, he noticed blood all over his now shattered windshield. He shivered through his whole body, but flung open the door with a start and peered out onto the road. He had hit a moose (at least if that’s what a moose looks like when a two ton ice cream truck hits it), and it was dead. Through what once was the moose’s neck was now the prop ice cream cone that once adorned his truck; where the ice cream cone once adorned his truck there was nothing but an eye. He hoped it was a moose’s.
At that moment a little boy, who had been watching from the side of the road, spoke up and startled the driver. “Hey, can I get an ice cream?” If it wasn’t in French the driver probably would have been appalled at the question, but something about the strangeness of tongue put the man in a daze. He gave the boy an ice cream.
That night he got home at nine. It had taken him a long time to find a shop to put his ice cream truck in, and it was pretty badly broken. He sat on his couch and turned on the television, but all that was on was Wheel of Fortune. He stared blankly at the television screen, ran his tongue over his teeth, and shivered again.
If this were another story or man, he’d probably kill himself. But this is this story and this man, and some day in a couple of weeks he would get his truck back and go back to the same old grind, and hope no one’s afraid of him that day or thinks he’s a pedophile. Yes, up until today he had never hurt a fly. No, he won’t kill himself. He’ll keep trying to live.
You! Tell me what’s sadder.


- - -
Marco Scibelli's just some guy who tries to write sometimes.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Marco Scibelli

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
Remember, a blind man can see things a sighted man can't. So let me tell you about her and then you can tell me whether I'm right.

The first time a man meets her, his eyes flicker and dart. Desire, an appropriate reaction.

The first time a woman meets her, her eyes pop out and coil on her forehead. Envy, another appropriate reaction.

Today, who can blame either? Today, who believes the canard about the true, the good, the beautiful, in theory or in a woman? I never believed it till the day that I met her.

And you won't believe it either unless you do what I did---frisk her for flaws that will allow you to live as you are, as you were, as I was when I met her. As for me, I'm no longer the same. Perhaps you can help me. My cane and my dog are no help in a matter like this.

The day that I met her, I was sitting on pillows propped against the wall of a building not far from Walmart. I had my cane and my cup properly positioned on the sidewalk. I was ready for business. And then I heard her heels type out on the pavement the story of my life. I could hear in those heels a woman who knew me although we had never met.

I had my baseball cap upside down on the sidewalk between my outstretched legs. It was full of my wares---pencils, spearmint gum and Tootsie Pops, free, for the children.

When her heels stopped in front of my spot, I sensed this lady, whoever she was, had bent over my cap and was checking my wares. Her hair was a waterfall licking at my knees. I was inebriated by her scent.

She selected two pencils and didn't ask price so I knew I had a real customer. And then with a wave of her hand she let paper money float through the air into my cup.

Believe me, a blind man can see with his mind the butterfly of paper money float to his cup. Any denomination, large or small, is a Monarch afloat on a zephyr.

Customers, you see, usually drop change. A blind man can tell you what coins a customer has dropped by the clink in his cup. So when I heard her Monarch take to the air, I forgot about my teeth and smiled up at her.

I usually don't smile on weekdays. I used to smile on weekends till that Hummer ran over my mother. She lived for a while but she was never the same.

On Saturdays she used to bring meals wrapped in tinfoil and labeled in Braille to tuck in my freezer. She wanted me to know which meals were where but I was never able to read her Braille so I ate whatever the microwave served.

This new lady in heels, however, has dissolved my bereavement and taken me captive. She has me smiling on weekdays. I've been stoned on her musk since the day that I met her and I'm becoming ever more wobbly. Everywhere I go her scent surrounds me. I'm an addict now and I need my cane and my dog just to get around the apartment.

So, please, tell everyone now in the parade passing by to listen to her as I did. In time they may hear, as I can hear now, a year later, the cherubim sing as she blooms with our child like a sunflower in summer while I wonder, I try.


- - -
Donal Mahoney has had work published in a variety of publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Donal Mahoney

Contributor: Kristina England

- -
Samantha pushed at the lid again.

“Let me out, Jason. Let me out.”

Jason looked at the box and sighed.

Last time he let her out, she went to the next man’s garden and ate all of his berries.

Jason looked out the window at the horizon - a collision of lavender, pink, and gray. He glanced at his breakfast, uneaten on the table.

“Okay, but do you promise to behave?”

Samantha sat down in the box, pulled her knees up to her chin, and said nothing.

Jason lowered his head.

“Then I can’t let you out.”

“But I’m hungry.”

“I can give you some fruit.”

“I don’t want your fruit.”

He bit his lip, looked at the sun exploding outward, his mouth salty with daybreak.

Jason walked over to the box, pulled out a key, and opened it.

Samantha smiled and climbed out.

“When you’re done eating, don’t come back,” he said.

“Don’t worry. I won’t,” Samantha said, grabbing his cold slice of toast on her way out.


- - -
Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her writing is published or forthcoming in Gargoyle, One Forty Fiction, Short, Fast, and Deadly, and other magazines.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: Kristina England

Contributor: April Winters

- -
Judy has pink hair, tattoos, and multiple piercings. She’s always been the family embarrassment, and they’ve never appreciated her uniqueness. There was a time when she tried to conform to their way of thinking, but it gave her migraines.

Her sister, Lisa, said Judy had better learn to be a famous rock star because no one would hire her looking the way she did. Thanks to Judy’s gift for baking mouth-watering desserts, Lisa was wrong. The owner of Bob’s Bakery hired Judy the second he tasted her double-fudge torte.

In your face, Sis!

*

Two weeks ago Judy got fired.

Her boss didn’t find the humor in the cupcakes she’d decorated as masturbating monkeys. “Oh my God,” he screamed. “Don’t you know these are for a kid’s birthday party? Now what am I going to do?”

Judy looked perplexed. “It’s nothing they wouldn’t see at the zoo, anyway.”

“Look,” Bob said, “I let you skate the last time you pulled a stunt like this. I almost crapped my pants when I saw that unicorn-shaped cake with the condom stretched over its horn. But this … this is…” He looked like a crazy person, eyes wild, face contorted. Then he said, “Enough is enough. Get out! And take your phallic cake pans with you.”

Judy heard through the grapevine that when Lisa found out, she said, “Surprise, surprise.”

*

Last week Judy received an invitation to Lisa’s bridal shower, due solely to their mother’s insistence.

Yesterday Judy baked a cake in the shape of a nude male torso. Her phallic cake pans came in handy. With their help, she endowed the dessert with a giant penis – just to piss her sister off. When Lisa saw it displayed on the food table, the color drained from her face. She spoke in tongues. The guests heard the commotion and broke into fits of giggles when they saw what the fuss was about. Even Judy knew the only reason she didn’t have Lisa’s hands squeezed around her neck was because the women thought the cake was “awesome” and “devilishly decadent.” They followed the compliments up with orders for their own cakes, all requiring even larger genitalia.

Thrilled and grinning like a fool, Judy glanced at her sister. That’s when she saw Lisa’s clenched fists, the glare on her face and the throbbing vein in her forehead.

Judy wasn’t sure what thrilled her the most.


- - -
April Winters hopes to help people forget their troubles through humor, even if it’s only for a little while. Her other works can be read at The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Short-Story. Me, The Short Humour Site, and here at Linguistic Erosion.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

2 Comments

Author: April Winters

Contributor: John Laneri

- -
Tyler Jackson first visited my office several years back complaining of headaches. Since then, I've treated him for various problems, none of which were serious. Generally, his complaints have been stress related, which I gathered went along with his work as the Chief of Customs in the Houston area.

One afternoon several months ago, after examining a rash on his arm, he asked, “Hey doc, would you be interested in doing examinations for the customs service?”

Tyler was a big man with a confident attitude and a lean fit body.

“What kind of exams? I asked curiously.

Scratching at the rash, he went on to indicate that the customs service periodically used physicians to perform physical examinations on arriving passengers. He specifically indicated that he would want me to examine people who were suspected of harboring undeclared items or substances within body cavities.

“Why me?” I asked. “I thought you had your own staff and facilities.

“We do, but they're strictly eight to five – union rules. Sometimes we need outside people, especially at night. The service pays extra good money, so it's worth you time. I thought of you because your office is close to the airport.”

The arrangement did seem reasonable, so I agreed. A few extra dollars here and there were always comforting.

Several weeks later, at two am in the morning, the phone rang. It was Tyler.

“Hey doc... Sorry to wake you but we have a couple of suspects that just arrived on a red-eye from Paris. We need your expertise.”

Intrigued, I quickly dressed and headed to the office.

Once there, I came face to face with Tyler as well as two other agents, one male the other female, both of whom were busy escorting a man and a woman along with their sleepy-eyed, three year old daughter into my waiting room.

Both suspects were cuffed. I noticed that the husband appeared calm, even a bit frightened, but the wife, an aggressive woman with a loud voice, needed to be dragged on her heels as she shouted profanities and threats toward each of us.

By then, I was glad that consulting for the customs service avoided routine office hours. The woman could have easily cleared out a waiting room full of patients.

Tyler moved beside me and pointed toward the couple. “These two are suspected of harboring a couple of five carat diamonds acquired in Paris. We've thoroughly searched their clothing and bags and ended up with nothing. Our source close to the scene indicated that a sale went down a few hours before the flight departed, so we're fairly certain they still have the stones.”

“I take it the sale was black market.”

“Correct... sales of this nature usually involve stolen goods. We've been watching them for some time and received word earlier tonight they were coming in.”

With that said, I directed everyone to the examination area then indicated to Tyler, “I'll start on the husband with an emphasis on orifices. If nothing is found, I'll get abdominal x-rays. I take it your female agent is here to chaperon the wife.”

“And, watch the girl too, even though she's been sleeping throughout most of the ordeal.”

I started with the husband. He was mid-forties, overweight and hypertensive. While he acted put out, the examination went smoothly. His wife on the other hand, an angry woman in her late thirties, began screaming and kicking the moment we walked her into the exam room. Fortunately, the female agent was able to control her thrashing long enough for me to complete a thorough, but exasperating examination which included a barefoot directed to the side of my head.

From my perspective though, the examinations and x-rays were negative.

While the woman was dressing, I joined up with Tyler who by then was scratching at another rash on his arm. “As best I can determine, both suspects are clean. Sorry... I know you wanted more. But, I can't find anything to justify your suspicions. And, by the way,” I added, as I pointed to his arm. “Your rash is most likely stress related.”

“I suspected the same,” he replied evenly. “But, that couple bothers me.”

“You think they're guilty.”

“Absolutely... but setbacks frequently point us in other directions.”

Turning to him, I asked, “What do you mean?”

He glanced at me and smiled. “Now, we know who has the diamonds.”

Thrown by his remark, I pointed to the child. “Do you want me to examine her too? She looks fairly sedated.”

He started for the door, saying “We're through for tonight. We need a court order to pursue her. Parental consent would be helpful, but it's a technicality they've clearly refused for obvious reasons.


- - -
John is a native born Texan living near Houston. His writing focuses on short stories and flash. Publications to his credit have appeared in several scientific journals as well as a number of internet sites and short story periodicals.

Read more »

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

0 Comments

Author: John Laneri