Category Archives: Light

June 27, 2016

Onion Gum: A Thank-you Note

Dear Gus,

Thank you for the onion-flavored chewing gum you gave me. What a great gift to get for your best friend for his birthday. It really helped my life out a lot. I’m not being sarcastic, by the way.

You see, I didn’t notice the little clues on the package that would have indicated it was a gag gift. I just put it in my pocket before I went to my girlfriend Jessica’s house for dinner. I knew her father liked gum so I gave him the pack. This is my girlfriend’s father who doesn’t really like me since he thinks I joke around too much and don’t have any purpose in my life.

Well, I found this out later, but he just left it in his pocket until the next day when he was going to work. He takes the ferry across the bay to get to work and he was standing by the railing on the side and struck up a conversation with a woman and pulled out the pack to have some gum. He offered the woman the first piece.

She took one bite and started to gag and cough and was flailing around so much that she fell overboard. They stopped the boat and since there weren’t any life preservers nearby, Jessica’s father held his camera out for her to grab the strap. He is an amateur photographer and that camera is his pride and joy. He named it Desiree, I’ve heard.

Anyway, the woman grabbed hold and pulled herself aboard, but she ended up breaking the camera strap. Jessica told me that he got that camera strap from her grandfather just before he died.

There was a coast guard cutter nearby, and it came over to see what had happened. All in all, the ferry got in 40 minutes late, which means Jessica’s father was late for work. That might not have been a big deal normally, but he had a huge presentation and totally missed it. Turns out that the CEO of the company showed up unexpectedly too. They fired Jessica’s father on the spot.

Well, he blamed everything on the gum, which means he blamed everything on me. He’d never liked me much anyway, but now he was furious at me and forbade Jessica from seeing me. I was thinking of marrying her, but after that, things looked pretty grim. Actually she was pretty pissed at me too, so when he got home and said he’d been fired and it was my fault, she suggested we take a break apart for a bit.

I swear I wasn’t being sarcastic when I thanked you for the gum. Just bear with me.

It turns out that Jessica’s father was looking at the pictures on the camera that night and noticed one he didn’t take. Apparently, when he was reaching over to let the woman grab the camera strap, buttons got pushed and he ended up taking a picture of her. It was unplanned but it was perfectly framed and showed the angst of human existence as we struggle to stay afloat in a boundless sea of existential toil. Or whatever. That’s apparently what Time magazine said when they bought it from him for a ton of money. He said the word Pulitzer was mentioned a few times. Also, his portfolio is getting more attention now. He’s actually going to start a freelance photography career, like he’s always dreamed of.

Jessica’s mother really believes in signs so she convinced him that all this happened because of me and the gum. He called me himself to apologize and to thank me. Then Jessica called and so we’re back together again. I’m thinking of proposing, since her whole family loves me now.

So again, thank you for the gum. It really changed my life.

By the way, if you ever give me anything like that again, I’ll kill you.

Your friend,

Andy

9 Comments | tags: fiction, funny, girlfriend, onion gum, prank, thank-you letter | posted in Light, Writing Prompts

June 22, 2016

It starts with stealing Donald Trump’s jet

By David Stewart

“We’re gonna get murdered.” I unlocked Donald Trump’s private jet with stolen keys.

“It was your choice,” Jack said. “You wanna switch?”

“No.” I climbed into the cockpit and consulted the WikiTheft page on flying a stolen jet.

Somehow we took off. Somehow we flew to Mexico City and crash-landed in the busiest airport in Central America.

Somehow we spray-painted “To Mexico, love Donny” on the side and escaped the authorities.

“It’s your turn,” I said as we sat on a sidewalk, trying to think how to get home.

Jack looked thoughtful. “I think I’d better pick Truth this time.”

*FYI*

14 Comments | tags: Donald Trump, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, funny, jet, Mexico City, truth or dare, WikiTheft | posted in Friday Fictioneers, Light

May 20, 2016

One Stop to Hwajang Station

By David Stewart

Come on, come on. That frantic thought is sculpted into the crowd’s poses and expressions. Some are sitting, but most pace awkwardly.

Far off, they hear the train rumbling. Visible relief flashes from face to face.

It’s an awkward two-minute ride. No eye contact, rocking back and forth, biting fingernails. Come on!

The doors open and people lurch forth, loping crab-like with thighs clenched, men out the right side, women out the left. A moment later, a hundred stall doors slam. A long, protracted sigh.

“They should put these in houses,” someone says.

“Gross! What is this, the Dark Ages?”

*hwajangshil (화장실) is the Korean word for bathroom. This story does not take place in Korea. You can only imagine the sort of world where it does take place.

23 Comments | tags: bathroom, fiction, flash fiction, Friday Fictioneers, funny, 화장실, quirky, trains | posted in Friday Fictioneers, Light

May 6, 2016

A Farm Upstate

By David Stewart

Source

The van arrived an hour after the call. It was clinical white with the words A Farm Upstate in large black lettering. Next to them, as if to add legitimacy, was a picture of a red barn and an oak tree.

Bruce got out and ran the doorbell. A harried man answered the door. “Thanks for coming so fast,” he said. “He’s not doing well.”

“No problem,” Bruce said. “What kind is it?”

“Black lab,” the man said. “Come on in.”

The dog was lying in its bed in the laundry room, breathing shallowly.

“Marcus Aurelius,” Bruce read off the side of the bed.

The man shrugged and nodded towards the girls sitting cross legged in vigil with her back against the dryer. “Her mother’s a history prof.”

Bruce knelt by the dog, checking its vitals.

“Are you a vet?” the girl asked. Her cheeks were wet.

“No, but I know a lot about animals. I’m from a farm upstate.”

The girl’s face clouded with skepticism. “Oh, yeah? What’s the name?”

“Sunny Porch Farms. It’s a great place. There’s a huge porch where dogs can lie out in the sun, lots of window sills for cats. We even import butterflies for them to chase if they want.”

“So, you’re taking Marcus Aurelius?” She sniffed and ran a hand across her eyes.

Bruce nodded. “I’m afraid so. There comes a time in every pet’s life when they need specialized care. He’ll be happy up there though. I guarantee it.”

“Can I come visit him sometime?”

“It’s best if you don’t,” Bruce said. There was no point explaining why.

The girl said good bye, hugging the poor dog so tightly Bruce was afraid she was going to kill it right there. Then he picked it up and carried it out to the back of the van.

“Thanks again for doing this,” the man said, handing Bruce a check. “That’s a great marketing idea, by the way. Just to make sure, there won’t be any pain, right?”

“None at all,” Bruce said, pocketing the check. “I’ll give him a quick shot and he’ll be good to go.” They shook hands and Bruce got in and drove off.

“Hang on back there, Marcus, okay?” he said as they got on the highway. “We’ll be there in a few hours.”

Two hours later, Bruce arrived back home. The dog was motionless and Bruce was afraid he’d died until he opened his eyes and licked Bruce’s hand. Bruce carried him in to the treatment room and put him on the table.

“A retriever, I see,” his wife Jane said, walking in. She got a syringe from a drawer and filled it with amber liquid. Marcus Aurelius was quivering with fear and Bruce held him still while Jane stuck the needle into the dog’s leg, pushing the plunger down slowly.

“How was the traffic?” she asked.

“Not that bad for a Saturday,” Bruce said. They watched the dog. He shook his head several times and then took a deep breath. A minute later, he jumped off the table and barked.

“There, he’s doing fine now,” Jane said. “Go show him around and I’ll go get supper ready.”

Bruce opened a door in the far wall and Marcus Aurelius bounded after him. He seemed to have all the energy of a puppy now.

The door led to the wide yard that echoed with the barks of dozens of dogs. There was a porch a hundred feet long, facing south with rows of comfortable pillows.

“This is a popular spot, Marcus,” Bruce said, leading the dog around. “Find yourself a pillow and soak up some sun, if you want. The cardboard box room is over there, although you’ll have to share it with the cats if you want to go play. The toys and bones are wherever you can find them, so feel free to bury them. The elementary kids come on Tuesdays for playtime and belly rubs, so I’d pencil that into your schedule, if I were you.”

A bell rang and feeding stations all over the farm deposited food. The air exploding into barking as the dogs ran here and there.

An hour later, Jane and Bruce sat down for their own supper on the second floor balcony, overlooking the farm. A parrot perched nearby.

“You realize that Marcus Aurelius was the one hundredth animal we’ve taken in,” Jane said. “How many more can we afford?”

“You think we should sell the serum,” Bruce said. “It still only works on animals, though.”

“But it could still do a lot of good. Plus we could make a ton of money.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Bruce said. He watched Marcus Aurelius cross the yard, nose to the ground as he intently followed some invisible scent trail. “I got an idea: let’s expand to goldfish.”

“Everyone has toilets. No one’s going to pay you to take their goldfish away.”

“They might. We could call it A Pond Upstate.”

“You just want the animals, don’t you?”

“Do you mind?”

She shook her head and with a smile, squeezed his hand.

5 Comments | tags: farm upstate, fiction, Marcus Aurelius, quirky | posted in Light

March 6, 2016

Rabid Disregard

By David Stewart

Captain Rabid did not inspire confidence, beginning with his name and ending with his apparent desire to kill his entire crew. On his first day he dismissed the ship’s doctor in order to motivate the men not to get injured or sick. He routinely ordered them to charge enemy ships head on, despite the fact that it gave the foe a perfect chance to rake the ship from stem to stern. Eventually enemy ships would just turn and run, not wanting to fight a crazy man.

One of the midshipmen had a pool going to guess the reason for this apparent insanity. The top choice was that he was suicidal; the second choice was homicidal. Less popular choices were that he had a father who was a hero and was trying to follow in his footsteps. In last place was the idea that he just wanted to get fired and go home.

* * *

Captain Rabid opened his diary.

Dear diary, I have done everything exactly wrong and still I am employed. The ship’s pool is at almost 100 pounds. Tomorrow, I will claim it, then have a naughty phrase concerning the admiral’s mother painted on the side of the ship. I should be at home in my garden by the end of the week.

9 Comments | tags: Alastair's Photo Fiction, fiction, flash fiction, funny, rabid, sailing ship | posted in Light, Uncategorized

February 29, 2016

Landlocked

By David Stewart

The good ol’ red white and blue for half a million Europeans

Landlocked

“I think you’re being aggressive.”

“I am not being aggressive! All I said was that I really want a vacation by the sea. I’m feeling stifled.” Luxembourg sighed. “All I asked for was a tiny corridor to the ocean. Even for a month?”

Belgium looked doubtful. “Yeah, but what if you don’t give it back? I know, let’s just hook up. Then you’d get lots of beach, through me.”

“Me and you?”

Belgium shrugged. “Yeah, and Netherlands too, if you want. Whatever.”

“That’s sick.”

“Just picture is: Benelux. It could be a thing.”

“Hey, what are we talking about?” a bleary voice from the northeast asked.

“Oh go back to sleep, Netherlands. It was just a joke,” Belgium said.

“You know, there’s more than one way to get to the sea,” France said, sidling over.

“Look, I really didn’t mean to imply that—oh geez, here comes Germany.”

Several hours later, after untold glasses of wine and beer and several annexation proposals, Germany wandered off and Belgium fell asleep. Luxembourg sat and pondered. There had to be a better way to get some beachfront property: something less wussy than being absorbed into another country, and less super-villainy than blowing up all the land between it and the ocean.

France was still there, drunkenly explaining how big it was.

“Dude, I’ve got this place called Clipperton Island. It’s off the coast of Mexico in the Pacific, of all places. I haven’t even been there in like a hundred years. I just like to tell people I own it. I even tell people I own part of Antarctica, though not everyone believes me.”

“How much land do you have?” Luxembourg asked.

“Beau—coup.” France smiled, then got up and went home.

Luxembourg called up a friend in the United Nations. “It’s not that I’m feeling small or anything, Kimoon. I’m just wondering if there is any land no one has taken yet. I just need some lebensraum, you know? I mean—forget I said that.”

“Two words for you,” Kimoon said. “Bir Tawil.”

“No thanks. I’ve already had a lot of beer this evening—”

“No, it’s a place in Africa. Maybe you could have it.”

“Actually, I’m a little leery about colonizing Africa,” Luxembourg said. “Belgium’s told me a thing or two about what it went through there. I don’t want to become that. It’s just not me.”

“No, it’s perfect. It’s a tiny little place between Sudan and Egypt—actually, it’s about your size. Sudan says it belongs to Egypt and Egypt says it’s Sudan’s, so neither one claims it. Honestly, if you want it, you can just have it. It’s a real headache for map makers. Rand McNally has been breathing down my neck about it for years.”

“You sure it’d be okay?”

Kimoon laughed. “You’re Luxembourg! Who’s going to say no to you?”

This was sounding pretty good. “Okay then! I’ll send some guys down this week with a flag and get things set up. How are the beaches there?”

“Beaches? It’s totally landlocked. That’s shouldn’t bother you though, right?” He laughed and hung up the phone.

Luxembourg sat alone in the bar. It had just doubled the size of its territory, so why wasn’t it happier? It didn’t need to be like Canada, with its 200,000 plus kilometer coastline. All it wanted was a place by the water, where it could sit and listen to the seagulls.

And maybe a navy.

3 Comments | tags: anthropomorphism, Ban Ki-moon, Belgium, Benelux, Bir Tawil, Clipperton Island, fiction, France, geography, Germany, lebensraum, Luxembourg, Netherlands, quirky | posted in Light, Uncategorized

February 28, 2016

The Legend of Arthur King

By David Stewart

The Legend of Arthur King

“Good evening, and welcome to the BBC News at Six. He calls himself the reincarnation of the legendary king of the Britons, but his passport says Arthur King. Mr. King is on a quest to rid the country of what he calls ‘invaders and filthy foreigners.’ He was recently arrested after threatening to ‘blow up Essex’. Our history correspondent Alastair Forbington interviewed him today.”

The picture shifts to an inmate in Belmarsh Prison.

“It’s disgusting, you know, the way these foreigners are taking over everything. When I was king, Briton was ruled by the true British. Not like now. Now, the Anglo-Saxon horde has so completely overrun our fair island that you can’t throw a stone without hitting one of them. They’ve even gotten into our place names. Essex? That’s just ‘East Saxon’. England? That means ‘Angle-land’. And the sad thing is, we just let it happen, little by little. Starting right now, I’m calling for a crusade against these foreign devils. All true Britons come meet me in Gwynedd and slowly, we will take back our country.”

“I see. So you are declaring war on every last man, woman, and child on Great Britain, including yourself?”

“If that’s what it takes. One more thing, we need to stop using this barbarous ‘Angle-ish’ language. From now on, it’s Brittonic or nothing.”

9 Comments | tags: Alastair's Photo Fiction, Anglo-saxon, anti-immigration, Belmarsh Prison, Essex, fiction, flash fiction, King Arthur, nativism, satire | posted in Light, Uncategorized

February 6, 2016

Nursery Rhymes of the 1%

By David Stewart

Ralph Owl and Eleanor “Pussy-cat” McGrint set sail in a beautiful pea-green 80-foot yacht. They left from Dover because that’s where Ralph’s investment firm was based and he needed to catch up on emails before they left.

“Hey El, where’s the honey?” Ralph called from the yacht’s kitchen. It was an 80-foot yacht so of course Eleanor didn’t hear him. He found her on deck. “Where’s the honey, El?”

“Who cares about honey?”

“We’re on this stupid boat for a year and a day,” Ralph said. “You really want to spend the whole trip with no honey?”

“Why are we starting off arguing about bleeding honey?” Eleanor shouted. She threw a fiver at him. “Get some flown in.”

That night in the Channel, the stars were out in a beautiful panoply of natural wonder, the universe on display above them. Ralph got out his guitar and started to play.

“I’ve got a headache. I’m going to bed,” Eleanor said. Ralph punched the railing in frustration and threw the guitar overboard.

After a while, Ralph went to the intercom and entered in the code for the bedroom. “Why are you so unhappy? I’ve bought you everything you could ever want?”

There was no answer.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a while. “I’m not trying to be a jerk. I love you. Really.”

A minute later, Eleanor stepped out on deck. She was wearing a white dress that glowed in the moonlight. “I’m sorry too,” she said. “Start again?”

He went to her and they danced.

They danced by the light of the moon.

The Original Inspiration

35 Comments | tags: 1%, Alastair's Photo Fiction, Dover, fiction, flash fiction, Owl and the Pussycat, yacht | posted in Light, Uncategorized

February 5, 2016

Couching Your Bets

By David Stewart

The inspiration for this story.

Source

Couching Your Bets

“Hi, I’m looking for a divan,” I told the receptionist at the casino.

“I can have him paged,” she said, slightly uncertainly.

“It’s not a he, it’s an it,” I said. She looked blank. “How about a Chesterfield? A futon?”

“Are . . . they guests here?” she asked, taking a shot, like a drunk sniper on a Tilt-A-Whirl.

“They’re pieces of furniture,” I said. “My furniture, in fact.” I was struggling to keep the conversation afloat in the tar-like morass of her incomprehension. “They rebelled and came here to Vegas.”

The receptionist was almost audibly praying for me to go away so I left her desk and wandered further into the casino. There were high stools at the slots, easy chairs in the lounge, and long, wooden benches outside for the smokers. But no couches.

“It was all because of the slip covers,” I shouted at a floor attendant five minutes later over the brassy jangle of the slot machines. I had explained my search and he was keeping up better than the receptionist had. “They hate slip covers, you see. They say they like to breathe.”

“They say?”

“Well, not really, but they left a note,” I said. “The futon wrote it, since of course the Chesterfield’s writing is crap. The divan was apparently feeling lucky, and you know how divans are.” The attendant nodded and chuckled knowingly in a way that made me think he wasn’t paying the least amount of attention.

“Have you seen them?” I asked.

He actually seemed to think for a moment. “Did you have a chaise lounge? Because I saw a red chaise lounge come through here a couple hours ago. It blew about ten grand in twenty minutes.”

“I’ve never had a chaise lounge,” I said, thinking that I’d also never had ten grand.

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” he said.

I wandered the Strip for hours, showing pictures and asking people. Finally, a cop said he’d seen some pieces of furniture go into a wedding chapel. I went in to find the shocking news, memorialized by a Polaroid picture tacked to the Just Married! bulletin board: my futon had just gotten married to a loveseat.

“Their cushions reeked of bourbon,” the clerk said. “I’ve never seen sofas so soused since that Saturnalia in Sears.”

I left in a rage and spent the rest of the night wandering around getting more and more desperate. Finally, as dawn was bleeding through the neon noon, I found the whole collection in an alley behind a strip club.

“Come with me right now or I’m going to IKEA,” I said, my voice as calm and steady as an executioner’s sword. They came quietly.

When I got home I spent a fortune getting them clean. I also found that the loveseat had tagged along, so I put it in the den by itself. The futon started to look forlorn, so I stuck them together, even though it messed up the layout of the room.

It wasn’t until I found $45,000 in casino chips in the cushions of the Chesterfield that things started to look up. Also, a few months later I went into the den to find several brand new ottomans ranged around the room, so that was a bonus too.

8 Comments | tags: casino, Chesterfield, couch, divan, fiction, funny, futon, gambling, humor, Las Vegas, loveseat | posted in Light, Uncategorized

January 23, 2016

The Office Zebra

By David Stewart

I love my job a lot, but it has been a hard last couple of weeks there. I never write about my job. Not directly, at least.

[*]

The Office Zebra^TM

I sat next to the smoking wreckage of my cubicle and took a sip of coffee. No one blamed me for what happened; I knew that. I did have a lot of work on my hands; everyone knew that.

Looking back, there was no real way to avoid it, but I still had that faint feeling like I should have known.

Clearly I should have gone into studying tardigrades. At least they were tiny and nearly indestructible. But no, I had to study zebras. Zebras were definitely not tiny and, looking around at the assortment of black and white striped flesh that was strewn liberally around the remains of my cubicle, I could say with some certainty that they were not indestructible.

The reason I studied zebras was that our former CEO had been crazy about zebras, and so all the researchers went whole hog into zebras. Unfortunately, it turned out that the CEO had been literally crazy about zebras, a fact we all discovered when they hauled him off, raving about how the next president was going to be a zebra and he knew because he’d already voted for it. Suddenly, there were a lot of us with advanced degrees in zebras (including the highly dubious PhZ) looking sheepishly around, wondering how to make ourselves profitable.

“I’ve got a great idea,” my co-worker Adrian said.

“What?” I asked.

“Promise you won’t steal it.”

“I promise.”

“Zebra flight attendants,” he said proudly, like a 3-year-old showing off his indecipherable finger paint smears.

“That is literally the worst idea I have ever heard,” I said. He ran off crying.

I didn’t tell him my idea, because it was actually good. My grand idea was to make a zebra that would work in an office setting. Your average zebra has no business being anywhere near an office, so clearly this was going to involve genetic engineering and maybe something more.

One night a bottle of vodka and I laid out my plan. The Office Zebra^TM was going to have a stapler for a mouth, the ability to recycle paper by eating it, and maybe a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot in its back. Honestly, I quickly ran out of ideas for what a zebra could actually do in an office. Luckily the vodka had some ideas. About halfway through the bottle, the pencil drawn diagram of the Office Zebra^TM had really come to life. It had a different stamp on each of its hooves, you could pull on its tail to dispense hot coffee, and its eyes shot lasers, for some reason. The next morning, when the vodka could no longer give suggestions, I got rid of the coffee dispenser and laser eyes.

The lab started work right away. After a few focus group meetings, they decided to give the zebra a larynx and the instinctual ability to say “Good job!” at random times. It also pulled a small cart with snacks and coffee (no unfortunately placed dispenser, luckily).

“What are you working on?” Adrian asked one day.

“I’ve got something in the works,” I said coolly.

“Me too,” he said, smugly. “It’s going to blow your socks off.” He strode off, still looking back smugly at me and promptly walked into a door.

The lab really came through, I must say. Six months later, I went down there to find a zebra that not only stapled my papers and brought me snacks and coffee, but also stamped my parking ticket and brayed a rather indistinct “Good job!” at me. It was not its fault that it said it just as I was coming out of the bathroom.

The next step was that step which every R&D person dreads; field testing, or in my case, office testing. I decided to bring it to my cubicle and see how it fared. It arrived the next day and I led it proudly it through the halls as my co-workers all gaped. Adrian was nowhere to be seen, unfortunately.

I started with the stapler. I fed paper into its mouth but it just ignored it or bit the paper in half. I tried the stamps on its hooves, but they didn’t seem to work. Even the Wi-Fi wasn’t on. I went to copy room to get some scrap paper to feed it when I ran into Adrian in the hall.

“Hey, have you seen my Kamikazebra^TM?” he asked.

“What?”

“My Kamikazebra^TM. Hey, why are your eyes widening in dawning horror?” It was about then that a distant boom from the direction of my cubicle answered his question.

All zebra projects were quickly cancelled. Apparently, when no one can tell a stapler from a bomb, it’s a bad thing. Adrian got in trouble for bringing his Kamikazebra^TM to the office. I didn’t get in trouble, they just made me clean up what was left of my cubicle.

I wasn’t in any hurry. I took another sip of coffee, appreciating the thin silver linings. I didn’t have to check my email today. The air smelled vaguely of barbecue. Adrian had gotten in trouble.

Things would work out somehow. They always did.