View All Issues« Previous Issue | Main | Next Issue »
July 01, 2005
Volume 3, Issue 1
Welcome to Volume 3.
I came upon this one a very random manner.
What do you suppose they are staring at?
[click for bigger]
Laurence - The circus is coming to town!
"The circus is coming to town!" the kids shouted.
It was nice to hear that sort of thing these days. With videogames and the Internet, wholesomeness like kids getting excited by the circus coming to town was refreshing.
Of course, nobody was looking forward to the circus itself, but what happened while the circus was in town.
Stampeding elephants down Main Street.
Murder-suicides among the sideshow freaks.
Food poisoning scares on the Midway.
And just because you can stuff twenty drunk clowns into a sedan, it doesn't mean everybody gets a seatbelt.
You can't fault the EMTs for laughing, though.
Michele: Ice, Ice, Baby
“Steve, it’s winter. Put the top on.”
“No way. Live a little.”A plane overhead. A sudden shadow.
What Steve sees when he looks up turns his face bug-eyed and gape mouthed. Sasha looks at Steve in this cartoon pose, and has the absurd thought that there should be exclamations points hovering above his head.
Something falling from sky: blue, glistening through the fog, streaking like a meteor, crashing through the Jeep’s open roof, landing squarely on Steve’s head, turning his cartoonish face into a mess of blood and brain.
Blue ice. Frozen waste. Should have put the top on.
Tanya: Holidazzle This
It wasn’t bad enough that he’d had to leave Florida. He loved his wife, but he’d never understand why she wanted to stay in Minnesota. No, the worst part was her bizarre family. Every year, the bloody cheerful lutherans all packed into their jeeps to caravan to Duluth.
And this year, since Mary was eight months pregnant, he was driving. "Lead us out of town, Bob!" they said. Sure, put the southern boy in front. Gleeful bastards. He opened the door and leaned out.
"Stop singing that stupid 'over the river and through the woods' song and help me push!"
Ted: Uncle Charlie
He'd said it, over and over he'd said it. One day the glacier was gonna crack. And today it had.
Charlie looked at the crowd gathered around him with malice in his eye.
"You dumb bastards. It's not like I ain't been telling ya for ten years. This was a bad idea from the start."
Charlie looked back to the hillside, hoping that the frozen monster inside would just stay put.
"It took fifteen days, three tanks, and Holiday's elephant gun to get it holed up in there. Why didn't you bastards pour concrete or something?"
Too late, they understood.
From the Comments: hnumpah
The four-wheelers, out to enjoy the last snows of the season on the peaks of Colorado, eased to a halt, vehicles on both sides of the road. Drivers and passengers got out, gawking at the bloody mess in the road near the lead Jeep.
"My God, what is it?"
"How horrible... Is that an arm?"
The sounds of retching off the side of the road. One driver, more courageous than the others, walked over carefully and gingerly poked the finned carcass with a stick.
"It's real, all right," he announced. "It's really gonna be a bad year for shark attacks."
Stacy: Last Exit
She knew that morning, when she saw her toothbrush turned backwards next to the sink, that he meant to kill her. Things had been getting bad for some time now, but she thought she, of all people, was safe from his cleaner.
She gunned the engine on the BMW, pushing it faster than was safe on the wet roads. Snow was forecast for tonight, she sincerely hoped it held off until she reached Albany.
The state trooper surveyed the wreck of her car the next morning, noting the Jersey plates, and radioed the paramedics to bring their tweezers. Fuckin’ tourists.