“They’re gone!” comes the cry from the parapet, as rosy Dawn fingers the sky. “They left in the night!”
Priam’s there instantly, frowning at the beach. It’s littered with the scraps and trash of ten years’ encampment, but the army has evaporated.
“What’s that?” he snaps, pointing.
“A tiny vehicle of some sort,” says one of his captains. “Perhaps it’s a peace offering?”
“Open the gates!” thunders Priam. “Its minisculity will please my lady Hecuba.”
In the dark, Bongo grins. He dabs sweat from his greasepaint and loosens his paddle in its scabbard. At last, he thinks, they’re sending us in.
Friday, September 9, 2005
“I’d like you to meet your new stepmother,” says her father, “and two stepsisters!”
“Fuck that,” says Cinder, and takes a Greyhound into the city. She gets a minimum-wage job and a small but decent apartment; she saves everything she can and studies hard for her GED. Her essay dazzles the admissions at Pitt, and with a scholarship plus some smart loans, she’s on her way to an MBA cum laude. Soon she’s the CFO of a Fortune 500 company! She drives a vintage Boxster and smokes only experimental CIA weed.
How’s that for a fairy tale, you little bastard?
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
“I’m younger than you!” gloats Lyndsey.
“I was born a minute later,” snaps Lynnette.
“Took myself a little trip to Europa,” Lyndsey’s laugh crackles over the spacephone. “Near lightspeed. Time dilation, baby. Lost a month!”
“Beat you by six,” says Lynnette, much later, from Pluto.
“Two years!” retorts Lyndsey, from Rupert.
They leave for Alpha Centauri within days of each other, but when they meet again Lyndsey’s losing.
“We’ve still got the same DNA.” Lynnette’s smirk is too old for her face. “It’s perfectly legal.”
“Your brain in a clone body is not a twin!” fumes Lyndsey.
“You’re right. We’re dectuplets.”
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Plot bunnies smell sin, so Jabez sits on the crypt steps and thinks intensely about naked stereo equipment. Lust. Out they come, bounding, a fuzzy white tide.
The shotgun leaps and dances in his hands; bunny blood spatters granite. “Die, vermin!” Jabez snarls, but of course that’s wrath. A second wave pours out of the wooded copse.
The gun’s empty, and he scrambles up on top of the crypt. They pile themselves trying to get to him, and he stomps their little skulls, grabs their necks and wrenches.
“That’s right,” he howls, when they’re all dead. “Not in my cemetery!”
Pride.
Monday, September 19, 2005
“You fuck your mother with that mouth?”
“No, I fuck yours! With your own!”
“What? My own what?”
Felten hesitates. “Your–your own mother.”
“That can’t be right,” says Donna. “Let me get some paper.”
DING
“You fuck your mother with that mouth?”
“Yes!”
DING
“You fuck your mother with that mouth?”
“She’s dead, you prick!”
“Oh jeez.” Donna flushes. “I didn’t mean that.”
“You didn’t know,” mutters Felten.
Pause.
“You’re not really a prick,” says Felten.
“Well, not anatomically.”
DING
“You fuck your mother with that mouth?”
“That’s good,” says Felten. “Can I use that?”
“It’s trademarked,” Donna says shortly.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
“You said you’d never watch a Guy Ritchie movie again,” laughs Dee.
“My words!” cries Rupert. “They’ve come back to haunt me!”
“These aren’t ghost words,” growls Nikki. “They’re zombies!”
Rupert’s got a machete; Nikki loads shells one-handed. “Head for the pointy part of the speech bubble,” says Dee. “Maybe we can barricade it!”
Nikki fires, gets lucky, takes out Ritchie and I’ll with one shot. Rupert swings at what he thinks is Never’s head. The machete sticks.
“No!” screams Dee as he stumbles. Nikki’s dragging her back, lips tight. Never moans, and its teeth lean in toward Rupert’s neck.
Friday, September 23, 2005
“But I don’t want to,” says Brody, eyelids sagging. “Not until we’re actually married.”
“Being engaged totally counts,” says Leta eagerly.
“Mm mmm.”
“Okay, think about this. Every time you turn me down, you’re making more unmarried sex happen.”
“Mm mmm.”
“It’s math! There are, like, a million sinful couples having sex every minute. More at night. And if we don’t have some of that sex, we’re forcing them to do it instead!” Leta bounces onto the bed. “Quantum statistics! Butterfly hurricanes!”
“I can smell that logic,” mumbles Brody, “and I’m not even awake.”
“I don’t think good horny!” snaps Leta.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Dudley bursts into the director’s office, panting. “Just came from the cuh. Coroner’s office, ma’am! C-cause of death was acute graphragmia!”
The director’s lips move for a second, then her eyes go wide. “Writer’s block,” she says. “Quick onset?”
“Yes,” Dudley manages.
“Contagious?”
Dudley’s face says it first.
The director stabs the intercom. “Get me the CDC. Get the Surgeon General. Hell, get me the Joint Chiefs!”
“Can we beat it, ma’am?” asks Dudley.
“This doesn’t leave the room, Dudley,” says the directory grimly. “But if we don’t have to resort to the nuclear option, I’ll call it a win.”
Wednesday, September 28, 2005