Tag: Humor

Short Story: A Cataclysmic Event

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Lightning snaked across a black sky. Thunder cracked nearby, rumbling asphalt and concrete. The highway was abandoned– not from the late hour, but rather from the cataclysm most were still coming to grips with. Bethany and Robert were two of those few whom recognized at least some part of the cataclysm’s effects. They wandered along the highway, terrified and lost for action otherwise.

Rain was ready to unleash hell on them, fueled by the flashes back-lighting Beth’s, plump, pale cheeks. Her black hair made her seem all the more ghostly given darkness. Rob didn’t have to see her face to know all color was gone from it. They’d been humping in the back of his late-90’s station-wagon when it happened. Pumping across folded down seats in the woods off the highway kept them free from the angry intrusions of their respective parents.

Until the flash came, the only worries they’d had were whether or not Rob would pull out fast enough. Or if Beth would be part of the point-ex-ex percent whose birth-control failed. Then, the flash; like a giant m-80 that turned night to day. It was so bright it nearly blew Beth off Rob– and him inside her. They panicked, their first instincts of police intrusion. The flash died out a second later though– far too short for a copper’s flashlight.

They panted terror and pleasure, their nerves settling into shakes as they rolled apart at the ruined mood. Beth worked her panties back up her skirt while Rob wormed back into his pants. For a long while they sat, silent and catching their breath on the open tail-gate and sour from their ruined masterplan. When they finally parted for either side of the car’s front, slid into the darkness inside, Rob’s key turned to start the engine.

Nothing happened.

His heart pounded, stomach limboed up into his throat. He turned it again. Nothing. Not even a click. His horrified gaze fixed on the dashboard through the darkness. He suddenly understood irrational panic better. At least this was rational…

“What? What is it?”

It took him a moment to muster his courage. His mind was ablaze with the millions of ways both of their father’s would kill him once they found out where they’d been. That was, of course, after the public derision and castration.

He choked on hard saliva, “It’s dead.”

Beth’s eyes became late-50’s UFOs, “What? What’re you talking about? How?”

He shouted in panic.“I don’t know! It’s dead! I don’t know!”

“Did you leave it on?”

Frustration ground a roar from the back of his throat. He was irritated. His balls were blue, and now, destined to be cut off and stitched back on to his forehead only to be cut off again.

He slammed a hand against the steering wheel. “Stupid piece’a shit!”

Beth’s face turned green usual. “W-we have to do something. Find someone to jump it.”

His breath fluttered the last vestiges of hope, both for his rust bucket and his favorite, dangly bits. He kicked his door open with a squawk of metal. Beth was out behind him, stuck close for fear of being lost in the unimaginably-deep darkness. Even the city’s usual glow was gone– the first signs of something amiss.

But Rob was focused on the empty highway. Its usual vacancy seemed gone, different. The area generally came with fairly sparse traffic, but now, not a single car came nor went. Not even the few expected of waning evenings hours. Not one head-light or hi-beam cut the darkness.

Thunder rumbled again in the distance. Beth inched over. “Rob.” She clung to his arm. “Rob, we need to go before the rain hits.”

His mind was focused where the city’s glow should be. “No cars. No lights at all. And the car won’t start.”

“We need to go back and wait out the storm,” Beth urged, tugging at his hand.

He stood firm, “No, we can’t.”

“We have to. We’ll find help once the storm’s over.”

Rob was certain something had happened; not what, but its effects were obvious. “There’s no-one on the road, Beth. No cars. No lights in town.”

She followed his gaze to the glow’s dark place, “What happened to ’em?”

He wasn’t sure, but he sensed the flash was responsible. Whatever it was, it must’ve killed power to everything. That thought alone was enough to prompt him to take Beth’s hand and walk with her along the small access road. The lightning began, carried on as they inched onto the highway against their better instincts. The trek forward was empty only a few minutes. Then as if from nowhere, a vacant car appeared, mid-lane change and abandoned in the center of the road. Thunder rumbled again, deafening them. They fled for the car as the downpour began.

It was daylight when they finally emerged from the backseat of the strange car. They continued toward town, Rob’s fear for his “boys” only overshadowed by the alien displacement of his now-silent world. More empty cars appeared here and there, abandoned as before. They grew denser and more numerous as the city’s limits came and went. The streets and shop-fronts were devoid of humans, but their presence was felt in what they’d left behind.

Beth’s house was the closer of the two, as certain a place of genital execution as his own. They headed over, encountering the first signs of humanity– a welcome relief from the xenotian terror the empty city had imparted. A man fiddled about in his open garage, a simple sign that they were not, in fact, the last two humans left alive. It put Beth at-ease, propelled her along the twists and turns toward home.

The nearer home came, the more Beth was forced to drag Rob. His uneasiness doubled at his impending, albeit rightly due castration. With that uneasiness, came more people, most as confused and aimless as them. Some were altogether hysterical from the worlds’ forced stop from electricity’s absence. Rob sympathized; his world would stop soon too, or at least a small part of it would– though Rob had always been of the mind that big things came in small packages.

They found Beth’s parents standing worriedly outside. They rushed up to her as she appeared, hugging and kissing her with paternal relief. Rob swallowed hard, his hands unconsciously crossing to cover himself. They paid him no mind as he shuffled awkwardly to her side to await his scrotal death-sentence.

Her father began questioning them, his mind too dulled by the goings-on to notice their obviously guilty faces. Rob was equally dazed. Sweat beaded on his brow. He barely breathed, awaiting the ninjitsu strike that would severe his sperm-pipes and sunder his sausage from his body..

Before her father could turn his eyes to him, Beth threw herself on the proverbial scalpel for Rob’s testicular cause. With a muster of fearful tears, she lied and begged forgiveness ands understanding.

“We were on the highway driving, and the car went dead, and we pushed it into a log but then we freaked and on our way back the storm came, and we hid in a random car and–”

The run-on sentence continued for two full minutes. Rob’s brain struggle to transfer focus, but caught on to Beth’s angle. He retained his stupor with purpose, merely nodding along. It wasn’t difficult to keep her parents suspicions away given the enormity of what had occurred. Before long, they’d even admitted gladness that the couple waited out the storm– despite the obvious fears they’d cause.

Only moments later, the two were wandering to Rob’s house to repeat the scene. His parents reacted with all the same obliviousness as Beth’s had.

In the end, he and Beth were in agreement; whatever had happened saved them from certain doom. No matter how much it had doomed the world, it wasn’t quite as important their respective selves– and Rob’s dangly bits. It may have taken a cataclysmic event, but they’d weaseled out of paying for their petty, teenage rebellion, prolonging the testicular execution for another day.

Poetry-Thing Thursday: Distraction

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Yellow. Orange. Black. White.
A rubber ducky in my sight.
I promise to speak of only right.
But I’m sure you’d like to fight.
Sorry, I don’t. Go fly a kite.
And while you’re at it, don’t be so uptight.

Smoke. Mirrors. Lights. Action.
You only go where you can gain traction.
With those whom form but a minuscule fraction,
of that which we call the “sub-human” faction.
The same kinds of folks that would caption.
Michelangelo’s David “distraction.”

What. Why. Who. Where.
That. ‘Cause. Them. There.
A fat man. A small man. An Au-paire.
A bald man. A shaved man. A man with long hair.
If only. If only. A blind-man could stare,
more men would take a lover, not a brood mare.

But tick. But Tock. But money. But mock.
I jest with the best whom can take a knock.
As meant to be, for even thee, must sometimes feel stock,
and believe in life as naught but a clock,
that’s ticking and flicking for a lone moment of shock,
but you know what I think– it’s all a crock.

Short Story: Never Ends There

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

It’s funny the way things turn out. Not always in the laughing matter, obviously. Funny in that way people are afraid to call irony for fear of starting a “thing.” That happens a lot. Especially in this society. It probably started around the time this did too, come to think of it. Probably coincidence. Then again, I don’t believe in coincidence– or do I? I don’t know. Ask me next time the news is over.

Where was I? Oh. Irony. It’s ironic. Not because “ironic” is fun to say, but because it actually is ironic. How? It all began about the time people got hyper-sensitive. First it was people’s fuck-partners and tastes. The gays started it, or rather, the “L,” “G,” “B,” and “T” started it. They argued they’d been discriminated against. They weren’t wrong.

A few years back a young man was grabbed off the road inAlabama. He’d been walking home when his existence offended some would-be purity-crusader. A couple guys grabbed him, beat him to death, and lynched him in a tree. No, I’m not confusing it with the Civil Rights movement. It just seems that way.

It’s hate. People whom no longer realize what human means. They know we’re animals, but believe that’s excuse enough. “Nature’s way” and such, are the lines. Except there’s no species that murders, rapes, pillages, and tortures apart from Homo–sapiens.

The point is, it started with the “Gays,” “those folk.” They were rightfully pissed. Technically, they weren’t even allowed to die for their country. A soldier known to be a homosexual could be discharged and jailed. Draconian rules in a modern society. Makes sense, right?

They got angry. And motivated. And did their thing hoping to make things better. All good things, right? Right. No arguments there. Not there. Elsewhere’s a different story. Elsewhere, there’s nothing but arguments.

‘Cause it didn’t end there. It never ends there! It doesn’t end until after the horse is bludgeoned to death. After its flesh is a mushy pulp and dust for the day’s bread. Such is human existence– so far as we’ve seen anyhow.

It’s always expected once one person starts complaining, someone else’ll follow. Usually it’s a pattern that goes like this; a group or person has a legitimate grievance. They air said grievance. Another group jumps to support their side or the other. Someone on the opposing side then jumps up to match them. The four groups, screaming, arguing, or generally causing a sonic discordance easily confused for noise.

Meanwhile, one other group abstains entirely, flying to mars to hide under a rock there. One last group tries to listen calmly, hoping to pick through the madness for the grievance to evaluate it for an amiable solution. The madness goes on long enough for that group to suss it out. They shut everyone up and negotiate– which may or may not involve repeating the aforementioned.

In the end, everyone’s happy. In the end, everyone sits down again. The first, aggrieved group is satisfied. The second is too. The third and fourth still hate each other and are ready to be at one another’s throats, but sit down to support their sides. The fifth returns from beneath the Mars-rock. And the sixth implements the proposed and ratified solutions. Simple, human nature.

But it never ends there! As soon as the first group’s happy again, another isn’t. They weren’t before, but their grievance felt too personal. They feared airing it. Seeing the last aired grievance was just as personal, they air theirs.

In our narrative, that was “women.” Women were pissed that they’d been mistreated, underpaid, and over-sexualized. They wanted equality, an end to mistreatment. They weren’t alone, nor were they wrong. The shouting began again. All the groups jumped up, fled, and listened as usual. Their grievance was heard, and eventually, a solution was reached. Same as before, right? Right. All good. Nothing bad.

But Remember: it never ends there!

The next thing that happened? You guessed it, someone else got upset. That time, it was “blacks.” Their grievance was aired; they’d won their Civil Rights but whites weren’t holding up their end. They weren’t wrong either. Solutions were reached.

But itnever ends there! Other races started piling on. Everyone began screaming or fleeing or listening… You might see where this is going.

One thing invariably led to another until only some grievances were legitimate. Others were just ignorantanger. Everyone accepted that. But now it was okay to air that, add it to the discordance. The breakdown came when people stopped reacting and listening– and thus working to fix problems.

With everyone too busy presenting the latest incarnation of “woe is me,” the biggest blowhards stole the show. Just trying to listen cost more energy than people had left, including the calm listeners.

And because it never ends there, that mentality of everyone deserves everything and nobody should ever stuggle trickled into every facet of society. Aired grievances, combined with a helicopter-parent society, forced society into accommodating everyone. Then, no-one could say anything without it pissing someone off.

That was the end of it. Civility ended there. Political correctness ended there. Manners ended there. Everything ended there. But it never ends there!

This started then. Now I’m here. There’s little more to do than than drool down my chin in hopes of making sense of it all. The white coat’s binding, and not very warm, and you’d think all that padding would insulate the room. But nope.

I’m forced to write with my toes. I’ve gotten good at doing things with my toes. I figure we’ll need that when we all return to the jungle. They won’t let me have my hands free anyway. I’m always scratching at myself and tearing my hair out. When I got here I looked like a cartoon cat run over by a lawnmower.

Funny thing. I saw a dead cat on the way in. Or maybe it was a possum. You can’t tell for sure from a moving car. All this insanity just makes me tired. It just never ends! Just like all that madness beyond the padding. Sometimes I really wish I was that possum…

Short Story: All The Angles

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Everything’s perception. Or a matter of it, anyway. I knew that even then. I know it more now. For the bulk of my life I’d been learning more and more about perceptions, perspectives. The “views” of situations. The “angles,” as some would say. The “spin” others called it. So, when the end of the world was in sight, I’d seen it coming.

How? Simple: over years of training to recognize varying angles, I learned one simple reality. That, as it happens, is the reason people are told to examine things from multiple angles. That, as it happens, is to learn to distinguish fact from fiction. In simplest terms, by viewing all the angles, we humans see the truth– because it’s consistent no matter the angle.

So before belaboring the subject any further, let’s just say, I’d learned to see well. In all respects, I had keen sight. I saw the proverbial tidal wave from far off. It had been rising for months. The tides had been drawing back. Little-by-little, the sands lengthened. Day in, day out, the water receded.

I suppose this build-up lasted years, really. There’s some argument there, no matter the angle. One could argue the first moment after the previous tidal-wave was the true start of the next’s build-up. Conversely, the build-up could’ve been said to begin the moment before the wave first struck the shore. No matter what side you viewed it from though, a single fact appears; world’s-end was coming.

No matter the arguments about it, the build-up did have milestones. Those stones are obvious, in reflection. Even then, there was a scent to them– like oncoming rain, but the bad kind that makes you dread breathing.

Politically speaking, world’s-end was the result of a misstep. The Americans had always had two left feet. They’d proven, time and again, their “moral majority,” was anything but. No matter the angle, they were shown to be prone to making missteps. Everyone’s bound to make ’em though. No harm, no foul, right? Especially when glass-houses and stones are so plentiful, right?

Maybe. That’s an argument for another day. Or not– after all, the world’s over, and there’s no-one left to argue. Semantics. The point: the Americans started it. They’d made their mistakes. Those mistakes piled on. Often. In the end, they found themselves with a third-world dictator in charge.

At least, characteristically speaking.

The man wasn’t really a third-world dictator. He could’ve been. Everyone agreed on that. The angles too. Speculation says we’d have been better off if he were. He wasn’t. Problem was, America was still a super-power– or as much as there remained one in those days.

That moniker had been fading. The world was industrialized. More than it had ever been. The African bush had freshly-paved asphalt. Desert oases had turned to fuel stops.

In other ways, the moniker was as strong as ever. Most of all, with regard to militaries. Those of keen sight saw where madness might form. Those without, sensed its death-toll in the air’s copper-taste. Whatever the angles of the human species’ end eventually show, they’ll agree it was spectacularly dreadful.

Surprisingly, the cause wasn’t full-blown nuclear war. People had come to expect that. Personally, I was somewhat looking forward to it. It wasn’t zombies either. Another thing we’d come to expect. Then again, there were enough of those walking around– we called them voters.

No, in the end, it was just missteps and mistakes. Nuclear weapons were involved, but not in the apocalyptic exchange we’d expected. What happened was this:

The US screwed up. They sent the CIA into the mid-east to do some things. Secret things. Eventually, the CIA used what they’d gained during that doing of things to send some mercenaries to North Korea. Those CIA “assets” had a period of doing, too. Somehow it was learned the assets were CIA, and were wreaking havoc on the “glorious leader.”

North Korea was angry. North Korea was “Best Korea.” Best Korea made threats. China disavowed Best Korea. Everyone had known Best Korea had nuclear weapons. They weren’t much. “Baby’s first” nukes. Then again, a nuke’s a nuke, right? Right. Dangerous. Deadly. Best Korea’s nukes couldn’t go far. They didn’t need to.

Best Korea, in its infinite wisdom, nuked Other Korea. Specifically, Seoul. As it turns out. Baby’s first nukes were enough to completely irradiate Other Korea. The world turned against Best Korea. They were finally tired of Glorious Leader’s shit. Both he and Best Korea were wiped from the Earth like shit from a bunghole.

This was a problem for one, simple reason; the US was not involved. Russia was not involved. China was not involved. Although, China wanted to be involved, they weren’t. Too many people owed them too much money. They didn’t want to owe them more. Unfortunately, wiping clean the shit hole that was North Korea had shown the allied-nations, spearheaded by the UK, that they had power.

The UN didn’t quite like that. China didn’t quite like it either. The US liked it even less. Russia only pretended to like it because the US didn’t like it, but privately condemned it too. Soon enough, the UK and its allied-nations thought being able to wipe clean parts of the world without Super-power assistance was a pretty good thing. Everyone else still didn’t like it.

So what happened? How’d the US screw that up? Well, the US had a third-world dictator as President. That meant a super-power was being run like a third-world country– even deeper into the ground than it had been. In the process, it racked up a sizable debt to all of the other nations on Earth.

And, another misstep and mistake later the angles come in again. They’re important here. Regardless of arguments, they all show one thing: a mistake was made. China got pretty pissed about that mistake. Because China was pissed, Russia was pissed. Because China and Russia were pissed, the UK and its allies acted like they weren’t pissed. Actually, they were pretty pissed too.

The UK. They’d done a lot for the US. Naturally, they decided to show how big a fuck-up the US had made. They did so by tanking the US economy and liquidating the assets leveraged against the US debt to the UK. Russia and China, smelling money, did the same thing.

The UK got angry: they’d been trying to prove a point. Russia and China were being bullies. America was now a depressed wasteland. It had become the third-world country its president always hoped for. Incidentally, he died of a kind of dysentery not found in first world nations. Irony is delicious that way.

Anyway, the UK, Russia, and China decided to argue for a while. Then, they decided they were all angry with each other. Then they decided to fight over the scraps of the US. Then they decided to fight each other in Europe. By the end of it, 98% of the world’s population had been conscripted, drafted, and killed in the longest, bloodiest war ever conceived.

No matter what angle you look at it from, that’s pretty amazing. All that death. All that chaos. All that civilization. Gone. Beautiful, in a way.