Sunday, December 28, 2014

A late night visit to Lake Michigan

The last thing Stevie remembered hearing was the creak on the floor.  It was an unusual creak.  Not that creaks are unusual, per se, but this creak was because Stevie lived alone.  Unless you considered his cat Norman a roommate, which technically he was, but cats don't make the floor creak.
So Stevie heard the creak and rolled to his back.  The last thing Stevie remembered seeing was a large fist connected to the right arm of a very large, bald headed man with no neck.  This particular fist connected with Stevie's jaw and turned everything black. 
When Stevie woke up, he was hog tied in a small rowboat near the center of Lake Michigan.  Because he was lying on his stomach, Stevie could only see out of one eye.  And that one eye again viewed the large, bald headed man with no neck.  "Oi, awake are we", said the bald man. "I'm glad to see that, as I hate to kill someone who is already dead."  The man paused for a moment, as if to consider his last words.  But then continued.  "The way I see it," he said, "you are on the short end of the stick right now and don't really have much for options.  Agreed?"  Stevie would have agreed, being the agreeable type, but the handkerchief gag that was tied across his mouth made speech pretty much impossible.  "No comment, huh?  That's too bad.  I like to have a little dialogue before I kill someone.  It makes the evening a little more enjoyable.  But no matter, we can make this a monologue just as well.  Friedrich Nietzsche talked about the superman and Adolph Hitler took his ideas and tried to put them into practice.  The weak and less useful of society were disposed of to make room for the new race of supermen that would rise up from the German people.*  At least that was Hitler's plan.  It worked for a while, but then things went wrong."  The man paused as if waiting for some comment.  Seeing that Stevie continued as indisposed, the man continued.  "See, Hitler was cleansing the race, getting rid of the riff raff.  If makes perfect sense.  Except then he made the mistake of genocide.  Wiping out an entire race, simply because they were Jewish.  That was his mistake.  He lost some of the strongest minds and hardest workers.  Which brings us to you."  At this point the man stopped rowing and sighed.  They had made it to the middle of the lake by this point and the night was perfectly still.  He set the oars into the boat and rolled Stevie onto his back. Slapping Stevie across the face, he continued.  "Now listen up, you.  You are like the first part of Hitler's plan.  No good, worthless and disposable.  You owe Mr. Vermicelli a lot of money and he is tired of waiting.  So now it's my job to take you swimming."  The man poked Stevie in the eye with one of his sausage like fingers.  "That's for being so fat and making you almost too heavy to carry."  Stevie would have explained his desk job and lack of exercise, but again, his gag got in the way. 
The man sat Stevie up and looked him in the eye.  "At this point, you are screwed.  Even if you could talk, there is nothing you could say.  So thanks for listening, sorry the water is so cold." And with that the man rolled Stevie into the lake, nearly silently and then proceeded to row back to shore.


(*Author’s note- I do not agree with the large, bald man’s opinion.  Everything Hitler did in regards to human life was wrong and immoral.)

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Lawrence's Lovely Coconut

Lawrence has been fantasizing about this day for weeks.  He saw the advertisement in the back of a tropical vacation magazine and couldn't get the thought out of his mind.  The ad offered the sale of fresh coconuts, shipped anywhere in the world for a flat rate of five dollars.  Lawrence couldn't pass up the good deal.  So he ordered one.
Having lived his entire life in North Dakota, Lawrence had never actually seen a coconut.  Sure he had eaten coconut before.  In pie, on cookies and on dessert bars, but never fresh. It would take a week to arrive and Lawrence literally tingled with excitement.
It came on a Thursday afternoon, when Lawrence was cutting out the Garfield comic from the newspaper for his collection.  The mailman rang the doorbell and hand delivered the medium size package to Lawrence's eager, sweaty hands. Lawrence sat on the edge of the couch and stared at the unopened box for a few moments. He carefully cut open the packing tape and removed the still chilled coconut from its Styrofoam inner lining. He rolled it over in his hands, feeling the cool hairiness.  But then an even stranger thought came into Lawrence swirling thoughts.  "What if I dropped this out of a high window onto somebody's head?" It was then that the plan started to form.
This was no small feat for Lawrence.  Being somewhat of a simpleton, Lawrence had to plan carefully for the plan required several complex movements.  The first Wednesday of the month has just passed, so his mother's monthly trip to the grocery warehouse over in Minot had just come and gone.  Lawrence would have to wait until next month for the next trip.  Living in Devils Lake, North Dakota had its advantages.  Lawrence wasn't exactly sure what they were, but that's always what his father told him.  It has its disadvantages as well.  For one, there were no buildings over two stories tall, and Lawrence needed at least three stories for his plan to work.  So Lawrence would agonize over the next three and a half weeks and formulate his plan.
He would ride with his mother into Minot for groceries and then go for a walk while she got her nails done after groceries.  He would sneak down to the Hyatt House Hotel and sneak up to the fourth floor.  He would find an open window and wait for someone to walk by.  Lawrence thought the plan was perfect.  So he waited.
The days that crept by were agonizing, but the day finally came.  Lawrence had kept the coconut in the fridge and carefully wrapped it up for the trip.  He put it in his backpack and hoped his mother didn't ask too many questions.  She didn't.  He fretted as they casually strolled through the store.  He strummed his fingers and figeted as they packed the groceries into the car and drove across town to Mrs. Chang's Nails.  Lawrence couldn't start his walk soon enough.  Finally his mother went into the parlor and Lawrence went down the sidewalk towards the hotel.
He arrived, with luck, to the hotel, just as a busload unloaded.  Lawrence straggled in with the group and successfully blended in. Making it to the fourth floor, Lawrence roamed the halls, unawares of any observation and eventually found an unlocked window overlooking a busy sidewalk.  The time had come.
Lawrence randomly chose an extremely, morbidly, grotesquely overweight middle aged man as a target.  The man walked beneath within a small group of others and paused, remarkably so, directly beneath Lawrence's window. The time had come. He took careful aim and let it go.  In eager anticipation, Lawrence watched as the coconut made perfect contact, striking the fat man directly on top of his balding head.  The sound was unmistakably hollow and the man staggered, dropping to his knees and then onto his face.  Lawrence almost started cheering.  The contact and subsequent "display" was better than he even imagined. A crowd gathered around the man, now sitting up on the curb, a small trickle of blood running down the side of his bright red head.  An older woman had picked up the coconut and looking confused, began looking around.  Lawrence pulled back into the window and had to muffle his laughter.  He hoped the lady had not seen him.
Making his way back down to the main floor lobby, Lawrence could hear small snippets of conversation about the man and the falling coconut.  By the time Lawrence stepped outside, an ambulance had arrived and the EMT's were checking the man's vitals.  Everything seemed okay.
It wasn't until Lawrence was six blocks away when they police stopped him and returned to the hotel, Lawrence in tow.  It was the conversation with his mother that Lawrence feared the most.



Saturday, December 13, 2014

The Memory


Christov crossed himself as he ran out of the church.  It was a practice he could not remember ever not doing.  From the eighth day of his life and from the fortieth day onward, Christov lived the Orthodox life.  He knew more saint stories than anyone could imagine, in fact, he had memorized the entire Synaxaristes, all twelve volumes.  And that was without even trying.  Christov had revealed his “gift” to his priest, but certainly didn’t feel like it was a gift.  It wasn’t merely twelve volumes of “Lives of the Saints” that had perfectly taken residence in his heart and mind.  Christov remembered literally everything, every conversation he had ever spoken or heard, every meal he had eaten, every image he had seen.  His mind was a flood of information.  “You will learn to glorify God with this,” his priest said.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

None the Less


Mr. Albertu Squinsiss loved women. At least that is what he called it.  For as long as he could remember, he loved women.  Talking to them, looking at them, watching them do just about anything, it was all fascinating.  He was, in all honesty, quite intimidated by them, but he loved them none the less.
So when Mr. Albertu Squinsiss got married, everyone was quite surprised, but at the same time, not surprised.  From the first date to the time of the marriage ceremony was only three months, a quick time span by anyone's standards, the whole thing went off without a hitch.
But there was a problem.  Mr. Albertu Squinsiss still loved women.  The weekend after his wedding found him at the local topless bar, as was typical for him.  The waitresses acted surprised and not a little disgusted at his presence, but they took his tips and attention none the less. 
So the question is, "In the midst of a lap dance, was Mr. Albertu Squinsiss still married?" Of course he was, but it was at that point that he was simply a very bad husband.