Category Archives: Fiction

The land of tiny pink ponies and tiny pink pony eaters

His name is Ralph.

The world was mostly pink with touches of pastel. The little pink ponies could and did defecate everywhere and no one was the wiser since their feces looked like little piles of pastel colored marshmallows that blended in with the pink and blue speckled grass. Even the air smelled faintly like bubble gum which was, of course, the result of pink pony farts. This magical pony fart scented land was known far and wide as Yoggin.

The fauna of Yoggin consisted mostly of tiny pink ponies, lavender land sharks, and glittery anteaters. The land sharks and the anteaters mostly kept to themselves, alternating long tournaments of backgammon with failed attempts at climbing the pink pine fir trees, so the ponies were free to scamper about the earth as freely as they could please.  The one restriction on their scampering was the unfortunate presence of giant monsters that lived solely off of the marshmallow flavored blood of the ponies. The monsters had insatiable appetites, and the ponies lived in mind numbing terror at being the next adorable horsey to go crunch between monster mandibles.

The ponies were no bigger than my grandmother’s Hummel figurines and ran around in petite herds, darting between the pink pine fir trees, pink ferns, and other pink vegetation much like pink schools of fish. It often seemed they moved as one creature, closely adhering to herd orders and ever mindful of the dreaded pink pony eater’s footstep.  In Yoggin, the clouds are pink, the sky a lovely robin’s egg blue, the sun pastel yellow, and the gently rolling hills are speckled pastel blue and pink. The pink shrubs nestle their limbs against the trunks of the pink pine fir trees, and the ferns’ leaves tickle the snouts of the pink ponies as they prance along.

The river that gently flows in the valley of the soft hills is heavily polluted. A noxious stench rises from its toxic waters that the little pink ponies are drawn to. Despite the innumerable corpses littering the riverside, at least once a month each herd loses a pony or two to the insanity that comes over them when they smell the wretched scent. Just like the sirens of old, the smell lures them and then sucks them down into the putrid waters where their soft pink flesh is digested within minutes and their cute skeletons spat back out on the playful earth. The pink pony eaters monitor the river closely to try to catch the creatures as they are seduced to their death, which is why once the ponies leave the herd, they are left behind forever. It is too dangerous to try to rescue them with a lullaby whinny or a prancy dance.

For many years, the pink pony tribes lived in peace with one another and there was much happiness in the land, despite regular pony disappearances because of the monsters.But that all changed one summer when Billy the pink pony decided he wanted to go to music school. The next year, Yoggin lay in ruins.

To be continued….

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Me and God Kicking it at Six Flags

Yeah, we did this one too.

Instead of participating in class today, I daydreamed about going to an amusement park with God.

I was wearing my adventure sandals and he was in his Old Testament kicks and rocking those sweet B.C. robes. He got us both in for free because he knew someone at the front gate and right away we decided our goal was to go on every single roller coaster at least once. We had gotten there early and spent the entire day dominating the place—zooming through the rides and egging on park employees in a good way, as if bantering with me and Holy Joe was the fulfillment of their entire careers as amusement park workers.

God had every right to be unimpressed with the amusement park, what with its sausagy people, the endemic smell of old nacho cheese, and the inevitable onset of line-depression. He had every right to be like, “My Child, this blows. Do you want to go to Waffle House?” or “My Child, this is lame. I shall call upon the bird with the greatest wingspan and we shall ride upon it until the furthest reaches of the earth” or “My Child, this is a place of depravity and it will be destroyed in 3….2….1…..”

Instead, he had a great time running around and armpitting people on the rides and making funny faces for the coaster cam. One time his beard got in the mouths of people behind us and they were pissed but at the end of the ride he turned around and sincerely said that he was sorry and that they were also forgiven. God was just a chill dude who liked to chow down on funnel cake after going on the Tilt-a-Swirl and before entering the Cistern of Death.

At one point, we were on the Ferris wheel and he decided to have a little fun—-just when we had reached the crest, he stopped time. The earth’s rotation, the sun’s burning, every physic of motion was halted and he just sustained all of it through his awesome power. Then we sat at the top of the world and looked out over a sunset that lasted forever. He was wearing his baseball cap sideways and he turned to me saying, “Pretty nice, huh.” I just rolled my eyes. “Get over yourself.”

He snapped his fingers and the world started up again, the wheel gently lowering us to ground level like a friendly giant. We ended up going on all the roller coasters except for one because we ran out of time before the park closed.

I was dead tired that night and slept the whole way home.

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The Moles Want Your Chocolate Chips

No mole snout will touch these.

They are here, you know. They burrow beneath us, their webbed paws ever clawing and their whiskers ever twitching their way in the earth’s darkness. They are the mole people, digging beneath the surface, squinting their eyes against the never ending dust, wearing tiny spectacles and yellow vests as commanded by their prophet-king.

Speaking with British accents to one another, they live only to dig tunnels and sacrifice chocolate chips to their strange mole gods. They grow tired of the incessant noise they hear from above.

The prophet-king tells them the gods have grown angry for forgetting the proper grammar of mole-speak and misplacing the chocolate chips meant for sacrifice, for offering the holy beings only mole skim milk instead of full cream.

The noise from above increases, the pounding, hammering, shrieking, and rumbling. The burrowers believe they feel the very pain of the earth. “We must do something,” declares their leader. “Do we sit in silence as our own folly threatens to destroy us? No. We will be smarter. We will go above and cleanse the earth of its ailments. We will find better and richer chocolate chips with which to appease our gods and we will then burrow beneath the surface once again, forever. But now we rise. To the top!”

The moles are coming. Hide your chocolate chips.

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An Example of a Cover Letter with Ideological Overtones

The most noble of scavenging birds of prey. A worthy master.

To Whom it May Concern:

I was rooting around in a dumpster when I found a good piece of chewed gum in a receipt from your store, American Eagle. I am passionate about scavenging birds of prey, so needless to say I was intrigued by the company name. The next day, I concealed myself in a bush for several hours. When someone passed by, I frightened them by leaping mightily and yelling “booga booga booga.” I then demanded to know what American Eagle is. An oily teenage boy told me it is an apparel store that can be found at my local mall, Walnut Springs.

For the next thirty minutes, I loitered suspiciously around the Walmart parking until I found a sneaker clad man who wasn’t paying attention while putting his groceries in his trunk. While he was distracted with unloading his Go-Gurt and Cheetos, I slithered snake-like into his backseat. When the sedan began moving and reached the main road, I bolted upright, hissed, and commanded him to take me to Walnut Springs Shopping Center. The man complied.

Once there, I slithered out of the sedan—it was green—and made towards the entrance of the great temple of consumption. Heat rose off the asphalt and sweat accumulated the corners of my body. I almost didn’t make it, but finally I reached the gates of Babylon itself and entered with the rest of the sausage people. Once inside, I found a crude map-like representation of the holy shrine, and deduced that American Eagle was even closer than I imagined. It was right behind me.

Good God what horror. You declare yourself worthy to name yourself after the greatest and most noble scavenger of all time, and yet what kind of frivolous merchandise do you peddle? Jeggings? Skinny Jeans?  Shirts emblazoned with nothing more than pathetic incarnations of the American Eagle logo? The walls covered with scantily clad adolescents cavorting at various music festivals, suggestive twinkles in their eyes…the whole thing was a disgrace. Only I know what secret these young gods held: it was that they had taken part in the communal pissing-on of everything that is good and noble.

For that reason, I’m applying to work at American Eagle in some sort of ideological reconstructive capacity, with the title of Master Re-ideologist. I will have the creative power to redesign any aspect of American Eagle that I see fit and sack anyone who does not meet my standards. Your company, dear sir or madame, is quite frankly an abomination. You are lucky that I’ve come along to save you from the destruction and/or complete loss of your own souls.

We’ll be in touch.

Best.

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How to Make a Scotch Egg

A quest for the best.

You cannot mine for truth in a quarry of lies. Likewise, you cannot search for an authentic Scotch egg recipe on Google. Even articles from reputable sources like the BBC and Allrecipes.com are wormy with deceit, indicating that mere boiling, wrapping, and frying exercises are all you need to make a Scotch egg. Do not be fooled.

A real Scotch egg can only be found through questing, and the journey is not for the faint of heart.  A long time ago, on a night like this, my babysitter told me how to seek the egg.

Should you think yourself brave, you must set out for the darkest part of the forest with nothing but a case of cheap beer, the collector’s set of American Pie movies, and a small pouch full of Sacajawea dollars, the most unpopular coin in America’s history.

In the forest, you will find a bare breasted bro* living in a tree trunk. Midway through his M.B.A. program, this bro partied a little too hard one Thursday night and lost a series of bets that led to his eternal banishment. He owns one baseball cap and lost his t-shirt months ago after trying to wash it in the creek. All he can do for entertainment is bulk up and watch sports on his iPhone. Be kind to him.

The journeyer must present the American Pie movies and beer as an offering. After accepting the gift, the bro will immediately want to have a drinking contest, but you must resist no matter how goofy he is or how much fun he promises getting hammered in the forest will be. One must retain all their wits for the next part of the journey. Politely refuse, promising him you can do it another night. Should you prove successful in your offering and bro-conversation, you will be granted the location of the magical farm. Don’t let him follow you.

Night falls as you approach the farmhouse, which appears to be abandoned.  You knock on the door and hear no answer….you try the handle….it’s unlocked. With silence in the pit of your stomach, you enter the house and find, illuminated by soft yellow light, a gleaming basket of Scotch eggs on the counter. Be careful. Do not act foolishly in your egg lust.

Look behind you!

It’s the Scotch Egg Monster protecting its litter! Throw a handful of Sacajawea dollars at the beast, grab the basket of eggs and RUN. Do not stop. Run past the bro in the tree and throw an egg at him. He needs the protein. Keep running until you are home in bed.

Catch your breath.

Devour the litter.

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