Duncan and Janice

It was a sunny day in Los Angeles.

Duncan had just woken up from a long night’s sleep on the park bench where he now sat.

He sat up on the bench, perked his doll up on his leg, as he usually did, put his hands in the correct places, and cleared his throat.

“I say Janice; today looks to be most pleasant. Most pleasant indeed,” Duncan said in his best rich-man voice.

“Why yes, Duncan, I think you’re right. I had planned to go home and bathe, since I am absolutely filthy, but instead, I believe I’ll sit right here with you all and enjoy the breeze and the sun. And also your handsome face,” Janice said in her high-pitched squeaky voice.

Duncan smiled and looked around the park. More and more people were coming out. It was Saturday, a wonderful day for performers like him.

“Janice, are you sure you don’t want to take a bath? You are indeed quite filthy. Your police uniform is sticky! What made you so disgusting?”

“Why, you did, you scamp. You dirtied me up last night!” Janice almost shrieked.

A man who was jogging, slowed to watch the man and his dummy. Then instead of leaving money, he made a face, much to Duncan’s disappointment.

“Why Janice! You know that I would prefer you clean! Why don’t you at least go splash around in the fountain?”

Duncan coughed. His neck hurt this morning, probably from sleeping on the bench at a strange angle.

“You rogue! You can’t do what you did and just toss me away! You’re lucky you’re so horribly attractive,” Janice said, looking at Duncan with a twinkle in her dull eyes.

Over across the path, two men were sitting down, also enjoying the beautiful day on a bench. Duncan liked seeing how happy everyone was today. He was starting to feel a kinship with the entire world. The more happy people he saw, the happier he felt.

“Janice, if you don’t go wash up right now, I’m going to pretend that I don’t know you.” Duncan raised his eyebrow in verbal victory.

“That would be quite rude of you after making bench love last night under the beautiful stars,” Janice said in her squeaky seductive voice.

Duncan hadn’t expected Janice to say this, and he was genuinely surprised.

He shifted a little in his bench, and slapped Janice heartily on the back, accidentally causing her head to roll forward unnaturally.

One of the two men across the path whispered in the other man’s ear and they both gave Duncan and Janice a strange look.

He saw this, but tried to ignore it in order to keep his happy mood going.

 “My goodness! What a-What a wonderful secret to share with everyone here!”

Duncan quickly fixed her head, although it seemed a little stiffer than usual this morning.

Duncan figured it was probably just from the morning dew.

The two men got up, and with one last glance at Duncan, they walked away.

Luckily another man, a richer man, stopped and stared at Janice curiously.

“Now it’s your turn. Give me a secret my little dumpling waffle!” Janice shrieked.

Duncan was caught off guard by his own words.

He hadn’t meant to make Janice say that.

“Why- why don’t we do our routine Janice?”

“Why don’t we make love on the park bench again today? It was so wonderful.”

Duncan started sweating.

A crowd was gathering, and he desperately needed money, but this wasn’t the routine at all.

“Janice, just look at all these people. I’m sure they would like to watch our show now.”

“You don’t want to kiss me and take off my little policewoman outfit again, pudding lumps?”

“Of course not Janice, now stop it!”

Two or three people in the crowd chuckled softly, but the others stared with furrowed brows.

“You were so strange, molasses muffin. You held me tightly and told me that you were sorry, but you couldn’t help yourself.”

A woman took her child by the hand and left the crowd. Duncan heard the child ask, “Mommy, why is the doll so big?”

He couldn’t deal with this. What was wrong with him? He took a deep breath and started the routine.

“I say there Janice, I was just down at the park the other day and I saw the most peculiar thing.”

“Duncan, is it because I’m dirty?”

“I’m sure you’re wondering what I saw Janice. Why I saw a man-“

“Duncan, you did this to me.”

“-I saw a man who had a misshapen head, like a potato.”

“You made me like this.”

“He was- he was having trouble walking with his large deformed head, weaving this way and that to-“

The crowd was shifting uncomfortably. No one was laughing now. Duncan had to put an end to this before anything got any worse. He tightened his grip on the back of Janice’s neck and forced her to stop looking at him and focus on the crowd. Something in her neck cracked.

“He was weaving towards a hotdog vendor.”

“I was just trying to do my job and you hurt me.”

“And the hotdog vendor looked at his lumpy potato head and said-“

“I’m calling the police,” a man in the crowd said, leaving.

A child asked his father why the doll was covered in paint, but his father didn’t hear him.

“…some kind of prank?” Duncan heard one teenager tell another. The whole crowd was beginning to buzz now. “…looks so lifelike...” Duncan was breathing quickly and heavily. “…wrong with her neck…”

“JANICE! DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE HOTDOG VENDOR SAID?”

Everyone was quiet.

“Sir, I think something’s wrong with your brain.”

With that, Duncan collapsed into his hands, and began to cry. Janice slid off his lap and fell off the bench and onto the ground with a sickening thud, her neck twisting all the way around. The crowd started screaming.

Thomas the Fat Stupid Idiot

Thomas was a fat stupid idiot. He liked stupid music. He was content to eat food that had no more flavour than the thin paper wrapping it came in.

He drove a broken down red rusting car.

He used an old obnoxious cell phone.

He was generally hated by most judgmental strangers.

 

Even his mother found his company difficult to tolerate for any moderate period of time. Luckily his father was dead, so he didn’t have to worry about spending time with Thomas.

Thomas had several ex-girlfriends, and ex-friends in general.

People always thought there was some mystery to be discovered within his tiny stupid brain.

There was not.

His girlfriends always thought they could make him more interesting, or at the very least (towards the end of the horribly dying relationship) they thought they could discover how he balanced out.

Surely there’s some area where he excels, they thought bitterly.

But there wasn’t. He was an anomaly. He had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

And he was aware of this.

Every morning, he looked into his dull stupid eyes in the mirror and wondered why people spent any time with him at all, much the way a cow wonders why it’s raining, when it wasn’t raining just a second ago.

And like a cow, Thomas would heave himself around his house, doing whatever he felt like.

He could skip work and no one would say anything, being happy to have him gone.

He was a very good waiter at his tacky overpriced cookie cutter restaurant, mostly because all the other waiters did his job so they wouldn’t have to talk to him or look at him.

The managers encouraged this.

“Alright everyone,” the managers would say,”Stacy, Erik, Blevins, Kreltch, you each get one of Thomas’s tables tonight.”

“Why don’t we just fire Thomas?” a new girl would say.

Thomas would yawn and scratch himself, which no one would see except the new girl.

“You wanna fire him? You go right ahead, NEW GIRL!” the chieftain-manager would say.

And sometimes the unsuspecting new girl would fire Thomas. And sometimes they would end up dating because the new girl didn’t know any better.

 

Even when he was fired, people would offer him jobs seemingly out of nowhere.

People were drawn to him. Like that movie about a treasure.

Mystery, suspense, intrigue.

None of those feelings ever paid off with Thomas in the medium-run.

 

He didn’t even try to hide it like some fat stupid idiots you might know. He just blatantly oozed disappointment on everyone he encountered, like a cow with a liquefying skin condition.

But most girls just thought he needed attention. They thought he was self-deprecating, but in actuality he might be a musician or a writer or a painter or a person who might be obsessively good with money and wealthy.

And they would sleep with him. They would endure hours of horrific pink movements, like an ocean made of flesh that was lazily trying to drown them. And he would ultimately shudder violently and finish, his skin rippling quickly enough to hurl his rotting sweat hither and thither.

A woman never forgot sleeping with Thomas.

And they never forgot the feeling of loss.

The feeling of investing so much time, so much energy, so much of themselves into him.

The feeling of having him never reveal anything worthwhile; not the least sparkle of moderate intelligence, or consciousness, or creativity.

He ultimately wound up the head of a major automobile company and retired very wealthy, spending the rest of his days eating.

Robert's Chest

It’s hard to breathe. Not from digging until my muscles scream. Not from the dirt that fills the air after it escapes from the end of the shovel. No. My chest is tight. Having a gun pointed at you will do that apparently. No one told me. I’ve never seen a movie where someone points a gun at another person and they grab their chest and start gasping, but that’s what happened to me, and I consider myself a pretty manly guy.
That all changes with a gun in your face though.
I’ve never seen anything so scary as the abyss in the barrel of that gun.
The tiny blackness that seems to go on forever inside the gun.
Like how I’d imagine a black hole would look, sucking all the light and life into it, completely void of anything natural or comforting.
Kind of like if Mary Poppins was evil and her endless bag was a pandora’s box with all the pestilence and sorrow that’s ever existed.

Well, it’s not THAT bad.
Or I guess I should say, I’m over it.
i’m not just huffing and puffing, I mean, I was scared at first.
Damn scared.
But after about an hour with the gun trained on my back, the only thing that’s left is my tight chest.
I don’t think that’s going to go away.
I wish I had a heart condition.
That way I could just shovel a bit faster and then I’d keel over and make the bastards do the work they’re supposed to do.
Instead, I’m here like a chump, like a damn idiot, because when it all comes down to it, even if you can buy a few more hours to live, to think, it’s worth it.
Even if you know you should go out with dignity, and not do the bitch work of your will-be murderers.
Jeez. The least a murderer can do is take the time to dispose of a body. Put a little effort into it.
Kids these days.
Just want everything done.
I bet he would even find a way to have the gun shoot itself, so he wouldn’t have to curl his finger even that half inch.
He's standing there in his cheap gray suit, like a business-ghost against the black behind him. The effect is more surreal because of the headlights of the oldsmobile behind him. the tree next to him is like his faithful servant. some kind of evil ent, lacking branches and devoid of a soul. He didn't even press his suit.
“Lazy son of a bitch.”
“what did you call me?”
“you heard me,” I say. It’s the first tough thing I’ve said, and it’s easy now that I’m all worked up in my head. Besides, he won’t kill me yet. I’ve barely dug up to my knees, this ground is so fucking rocky and hard.
He chuckles a bit.

I wish I could put this shovel through his face. It’s sharp enough, a bit duller from hitting these rocks, but still sharp enough.
I can picture it so vividly, swinging around gracefully on the balls of my feet, simultaneously grabbing the shovel like a spear. In one fluid motion, launching it forward through space, perfectly level, head-level to be exact.
Watching his eyes grow the way I felt mine grow when he first pulled out his gun.
Seeing him raise his gun just a little too slowly and firing it into the ground in front of him as the shovel splits his nose in two, making an upside down smile in the middle of his face.
I can even hear him spluttering because it wouldn’t kill him. I don’t have enough force for that. I would have to step out of this grave and finish him with my bare hands.
I wish I could do all of that.
I wish I had at least a fighting chance.
But things never play out that way in real life.
I would throw it too hard, or throw it crookedly and he would just get angry and shoot me in the foot or arm.
Then he’d make me keep digging, and the pain would be excruciating.
No, better to keep digging as slowly as possible without raising suspicion and keep thinking.

I wish my brain would work!
I wish I could think of a million different scenarios, and then pick the one most likely to work.
Instead all I can think about is that one heroic scenario, my brother when we were kids, and that fucking doors song “this is the end, my only friend, the end.”
How annoying.
Over and over.
I wish I’d treated my brother better.
Who knows, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up here. Maybe being nicer to him would have been my first step on the path to being a better person.
I can’t decide if I should come up with a plan or accept my fate.
I mean, a bullet is a pretty quick way to go if it’s placed correctly, and if I don’t piss this guy off by trying to escape that’s probably just what he’ll give me.
He doesn’t seem the sadistic type.
He’s not enjoying this any more than I am.
And neither is the driver.
He’s just sitting in the Oldsmobile, making sure the battery doesn’t die by turning the car on every once in a while.

How long has it been?
An hour? Two?
It’s so hard to think straight.
This is where those math questions come in handy.
If Robert digs at an average of 6 inches ever 45 minutes, how long will it have been when he’s dug 2 feet and 3 inches of his own grave?
Maybe if I use the shovel just right, it can act like a tiny shield and block the bullets he fires.
But that would be so hard for me, and so easy for him to shoot somewhere else.
I’m not a ninja.
I can’t do that whole deflect-bullets-with-a-sword thing.
Maybe I can.
Maybe I have enough adrenaline pumping in me to give me superhuman reflexes.
Maybe I can will myself out of having a beer gut and atrophied muscles from working as an accountant for 13 years.
Huh.
13 years.
I laugh a bit to myself.
There’s a reason superstitions exist sometimes I suppose.
I wish I had some salt to throw over my shoulder.
Well, maybe not salt, but more like a beaker of acid.
That would be great.
Why don’t I carry anything on me for protection?
Even mace would get me out of this now.

Hmmm..
That gives me an idea.
I’ve actually been flinging this dirt long enough to have gotten a feel for it.
Maybe I can fling a big shovelful up into his face.
The grave is past my knees now, which means I could run away from the car and it would have to swerve around it and the tree to get me.
That would buy me enough time to make it into the trees in front of me, where I could at least have a chance.
Wow.
I think I can actually do this.
Let’s see.
I can feel how the dirt moves from my shovel and makes a trajectory right to the place in the pile I want it to go.
My chest has a different tightness now.
My heart’s beating faster.
I glance as casually as I can over my shoulder at the guy with the gun.
He yawns. I can tell I’m ready because I don’t yawn in response.
I dig a little on the sides just to expand the grave a bit.
Buy me another half second or so with the car.

“That’s deep enough.”
“What?!”
“Turn around”
I try to stall, I’m so close. I just need the element of surprise. Maybe I can convince him…
“dogs will still be able to find me this shallow,” I say, taking one last huge shovelful of dirt, and turning slowly towards him.
I can feel the tightness in my chest readying me, helping me now instead of hindering me.
He’s squared off with me now, gun aimed at my chest.
I’m holding the shovelful of dirt just below the rim of my own grave, waiting for my opportunity. My palms itch on the splintery wooden handle.
“nobody is going to find you. Do you have any idea how many bodies we have buried around here?” he asks.
I pretend to look around and see if I can pretend to count them, watching to see if he looks away from me, even for a second.
He doesn’t.
Instead, when I turn my head back to him, he fires.
And I thought the tightness I had before was bad.
There’s a big difference between having difficulty breathing, and not having your lungs work at all.
I must look like a fish, gasping this way.
I notice that I’m staring at his shoes now.
What happened to the shovel?
I don’t think it’s in my hands anymore.
But I need it.
I need to act.
Now’s my chance.
If only I could breathe and look higher than three inches off the ground.
I think my head is resting on the ground on his side of the grave.
Blackness.
Brightness again.
Now, like a tidal wave, air rushes into my one good lung.
I hear the whooshing of a 747 taking off, and realize that it’s me inhaling sharply.
I clutch at the ground and push myself to stand up and face my attacker.
I over shoot it and push myself backwards watching the lights float higher above me as the rim shoots skyward and I land on my back in my grave.
I hear the 747 whoosh again, and a car door open.
“Jesus Mickey, finish him already.”
The 747 whooshes again.
“He called me a lazy son of a bitch,” Mickey says.
“You are a lazy son of a bitch.”
The 747 lurches forward on the runway again, loudly.
“just grab the shovel and let’s get finish this.”
“I’m not burying a man alive Mickey, you do it, or finish him and I’ll help you.”
The 747 whooshes again, and this time takes off.
I wish I’d treated my brother better.
The 747's engines’ scream turns into a long dull roar that slowly quiets into a white noise in the background.

Meredith the Warrior-Queen

Meredith was late. Everywhere she went she was always behind. She always was rushing from one place to another and today she was running especially behind.
She was supposed to be attending the party of all parties. She looked at her watch. Ten pm.
She was going to do much networking!
Her friend Laramie Kreltch, whom everyone just called "Kreltch," was holding it for some of the upper-level players in Hollywood.
Meredith wanted to be an actress, and she knew she'd make it. She was talented. Kreltch said so, and she told Meredith that she knew a thing or two about success.
Kreltch had told Meredith that everyone who was worth knowing would be at her party.
But Meredith was late!
As she ran through the streets of Hollywood, not being able to afford a cab, she had thoughts about what everyone would think when she walked in to the party that was already underway.
Some people thought being "fashionably late" was a good thing, but Meredith had been raised to always be on time to show that you cared about meeting the other person.
At least she looked lovely. She was wearing the only lovely dress that she had. It was black, just long enough to be elegant and it tapered just right to her figure. She loved her lovely dress so!
Dammit!
She looked down at her shoes. Her left heel was broken off.
She started cursing. It wasn't a nice habit, her mother had told her, but it seemed as if everyone in Hollywood swore.
She was cursing at her broken heel so loudly, a man she passed looked at her and muttered about not having any change.
She didn't want his change and she let him know it very cursingly.
Well, she would just have to lean on one leg all night so people wouldn't notice.
Now she was running, with every other step pushing her higher because of the remaining heel on her right shoe.
She felt like crying. She couldn't even afford to eat. If this party didn't help her to get her break she had no idea what she would do. She was so stressed! Maybe she should have taken that stupid man's change.
Meredith the warrior-queen, Meredith the warrior-queen, Meredith the warrior-queen.
She repeated her own private title to herself over and over again.
She would overcome this. She was meant to be a star. She could feel it deep down in her bone-guts.
As she ran, she pictured armour over her dress. and big spiky boots instead of her half-broken pair of shoes. She had a wonderful imagination and she had a wonderful memory. She could remember every event that had happened to her on every important night of her life.
Sometimes to cope with a bad day, she would just relive another day in her life. Thanks to her imagination, whatever she couldn't remember, she made up. It also helped her stay in character for acting. She could clearly picture the imaginary scene around her, so that it was almost real.
Sometimes, her brain would even start reliving another day for her, without her even trying.
She thought it was a good way of dealing with stress, like the stress of being constantly late.
"Blast!" she said, "I'm running behind."
She was just a few blocks away now, and getting nearer.
For just an instant, she looked down and saw that her dress was tattered and faded, worn well beyond it's years.
Then she closed her eyes, and took a deep breath to calm herself.
When she opened her eyes, her dress was new again, and shoes were fine. She looked at her watch. Ten pm.
She smiled and started running. She couldn't wait to start trading phone numbers with the biggies in Hollywood.
Meredith the warrior-queen. Meredith the warrior-queen.

Georgie's Birthday

Yay!
It was Georgie’s birthday again!
He loved his birthdays. He always got exactly what he wanted. He had clowns and elephants last year, but this year, he wanted a space alien party.
He was going to play laser tag all around his parent’s enormous mansion. Maybe his daddy would even surprise him and show up to play!
Then mommy would stop being so sad and get off her smelly bed and come play, too.
It would be like when he was really little and mommy was just an artist. Daddy struggled, doing all sorts of things for money, but it didn’t matter because they were all happy and daddy would play horsey with him.
“Faster, Georgie,” he would say. “Giddyap!”
But that wasn’t important anymore because Georgie could have anything he wanted now. All Georgie had to do was ask mommy and tell her special assistant what she whispered back. Georgie didn’t like her special assistant, Ralph. Georgie had caught Ralph one time trying to steal mommy out of her bed. Georgie didn’t know what “passed away meant.” All he knew was that Ralph was taking away his mommy and he loved her and wanted her to stay.
He made his ugliest face at Ralph and then ran to put on his space suit.He couldn’t wait to play aliens with his friends, and maybe even his daddy!

Tumanny the Shark

This is the last picture of me before i died.

My name was Samuel "Too-Many-Instruments" Pawlin. But my friends called me Tumanny.

This is my story.

I was a gambler. Not just an on the weekends with your dad's pals kind of gambler. A real shady dark room where everybody's got a gun kind of gambler. And i used to win. I mean big, really win.

I had to switch towns quite a few times because of it. No gang bosses like to lose too many times, you know what i mean?

So that was my racket. I'd go from town to town, playing the cards until the big guns showed up. They'd try to take me for all I was worth, real gangster-style.

But they didn't. Even with them cheating, It was like lady luck had it real bad for me, you know? And if you've ever seen a big dumb crime boss cheating at cards, you know it's like an elephant wearing a toupee, real obvious.

So these guys wouold think they were real smart just because they were the big booze bosses in their little towns. I'm surprised more cops weren't wise to them, but they were probably paid real good to keep their mouths shut.

One day it was raining. Real cat and dog style, you know? And i saw this puddle in the grimy street. It was real tiny, like a nickel. Then there was this bigger puddle across the way, the kind a gentleman has to put his coat down on for a hot dame to walk over.

It just hit me. Little puddles only have a little water, right? It was time for me to start hitting bigger towns.

I figured I'd need some sort of disguise or else I wouldn't be able to shark anybody. And just like that, I saw it. There was a perfectly good sax sittin in the alley, like providence or something. maybe the owner was just sittin inside enjoyin a smoke and near forgot about it. I didn't care. I took the trumpet, and looked it over. How hard could sax be? I'd seen a lot of guys playing it, and they didn't seem to have a brain in their head once you talked to them in person. Real boring-types.

So I went to my hotel and started wailing. Turned out to be quite a bit harder than i expected, but i was the diligent type. Straight A's in school and what-not.

I hid out for about a year, practicing on that big flute and asking around to see who had the most loot, who was really loaded. My questions turned me to Chicago. Al Capone's big city. It was nice. Real nice. If I had been any type of a family man, a place I would have like to settle down in. Yeah, me with a picket fence and a little wifey to cook up the turkey.

In that year I'd gotten pretty good playing the sax and I knew just who was loaded.

There was a group of guys, real legitimate-looking on the outside, who owned all the hotels in Chicago. But they were the seediest lowlifes I'd ever heard about. Dirtier than any of the grime in any of the burbs I'd dealt with.

So I kept my ear to the ground, indian-style, for any way to get in. I was hanging out back of one of the hotels, the Lady, when I heard a scuffle around the corner. I crept up behind the dumpster. It was this musician I'd seen playing inside from time to time. He was really good, nimble fingers, you know? he was like pleading for his life and the goon that was out there just wouldn't have any of it. He was hitting the guy with a rod or something. He was turning the guy inside out like a shirt at the cleaner's. The goon looked all around, probably felt me watching. I ducked down lower, until I couldn't see anymore.

I heard the guy begging. The goon said something real low and the musician started crying. then I heard a quick silence followed by the loudest shriek I'd ever heard a man make. It was like the goon had ripped him in half or something.

When i looked up to see, the door was just closing behind the goon, and the little guy was in the alley crumpled all up crying and holding his hands.

I went up to him. He had the most pained look I'd ever seen on a man's mug before.

"my hands, my hands, my hands...," he just kept repeating over and over. I looked. His hands were a mess. I'd never seen so many bones up close, pink with blood.

I tried to get him up, take him to see a doc or something, but he wouldn't budge.

I looked at the rod lying on the ground. It was a clarinet, or oboe, or flute or something. He saw me eyeing it and finally made some sense.

"Take it," he said. I didn't have to ask twice. I could see that his hands would never be able to play again.

"I'll get em back for you," I said.

I felt real bad for the guy. I figured he'd probably gotten in too deep of a debt, or maybe he'd knocked up one of the thug's girls or something.

So there I was with a sax and a clarinet. I learned to play them both. Yeah, that's right, at the same time. I'd hold them both up to my mouth like pan with the flutes, you know?

No one else could do it, and believe me, they tried. I must have had thirty copycats trying to get in my style, but they couldn't, and the big guys noticed.

They set me up for a date to play at the Lady. Yep, that very same hotel. Now, I was a little nervous, but I was playing all my cards right, and I knew I'd take them all for a little spin after my music set.

I just had to impress them with my music and be real friendly-like in person.

So the night of my performance, I was wearin my lucky vest and my flutes were polished up real nice. I showed up at the back door, all set. just ten minutes to show time. The big bouncer gave me a funny grin that I didn't really like, then let me inside. I went backstage and warmed up a sec. I just had five more minutes.

Then this little squeeky kid came up to me with another sax and clarinet.

"Here are your instruments, sir." Sheesh. I could barely make it out from all his hormones.

"I already got em kid," I said, holding up my pieces.

"The boss said you gotta play with these too. He wants to see if you can."

Great. I hadn't counted on this. two instruments was hard enough, but four? I didn't know what to do. I took them from the kid, and gave him a dirty look to send him scampering.

I had one minute to showtime. I couldn't screw up. I stepped forward and the curtain parted. It was like every dame had dressed to kill and dragged her guy to this show. All of Chicago must have been there.

But I was used to big lights and the stage now. I put all four instruments up to my mouth and started playing. I was surprised at how good I was. It was easier than I had expected.

Everyone was so shocked and amazed. I blew em away like a tommy gun!

I finished my set and everyone, all of Chicago there, stood up and applauded. I was on top of the world.

My mind quickly sharpened though. I knew I had bigger fish to fry.

The big scary-looking thug came up to me and said,"The bosses want to see you."

I put on my best dumb face and followed him down some steps into the cellar. I saw a big card table all laid out, and in the next minute, so was I. I was hit on the back of the head with something real hard and passed out.

I came to with my instruments all glued to my hands, and a gag in my mouth. Two clarinets in my left, a sax in the other, and the other sax glued to my chest. I was scared. Real scared.
I couldn't eevn see his face when he spoke from across the card table.

"We know why you're here. We know who you are. You aren't Tumanny, like the kids call you. You're Samuel Pawlins, the Shark."

The Shark. I kinda liked it.

I tried to mumble some excuse as I backed away from the shadowy figure.

"This picture will be an example for anyone who thinks they can take on the big bosses of Chicago."

Then a flash flashed, the picture almost blinding me. But it wouldn't have mattered anyway because right after the picture snap came the gunshot.

And that was it. The best, worst and last night of my life.

Galdur the Mighty

Galdur was happy. well, as happy as a dwarf could be. He had a trusty axe that he had carried in many a battle. The dark elves knew of his glorious victories and trembled before his during skirmishes. Yes, he seemed to have everything a dwarf could want.

One day, Gladrimir, the dwarven ambassador, came to his wonderfully cozy dwarven home and said that he had important news. Galdur let him in. Gladrimir told him that he had done so well that the dwarves wanted him to be their dwarven king!

Galdur thanked him and sent him back outside. Galdur quickly packed all of his trophies and belongings and he and the ambassador headed out to the castle.

After a few weeks of settling in, Galdur recieved a message that the dark elves were planning an assault. Galdur went to fetch his trusty axe, but his first in command, Glorthririmir wouldn't let him. He said that it was too risky for their king, and that he must give them orders while staying within the safety of the castle walls. Galdur was hurt. Didn't they want him to fight alongside them?

He sent orders. They won the fight. He moped around. Galdur was happy no longer. He wanted to be covered in elven blood. He wanted the rush of adrenaline that only battle could bring. He wanted his life back. But the dwarves wanted him to remain king. He was the best king they had ever had! The dwarven empire was finally respectable.

And thus Galdur ruled for many years.

One night, he heard a strange rustling amongst his large bedsheets. He turned on the candle, and lo! A dark elf was waiting for him, sword drawn! Galdur reached under his bed for his trusty axe. The elf advanced, but Galdur could barely lift his axe. Years of inattention had left his muscles weak and unable to lift his weapon. The elf stopped. He grinned, and his thin lips stretched farther and farther, almost touching his ears. Galdur tried to run but the elf, strong and battle-ready, held him fast. He slowly stabbed Galdur over and over again until he lay lifeless on the cold castle floor.

The end.