Head 'em Off at the Past

  Elvis Kickthroat was a blacksmith in 19th century America, a time and place where everything was brown. He had a son named Ronald Thwirpwit (his father made him take on his mother's maiden name because he wasn't a bad enough dude for Kickthroat). Elvis wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, but Ronald's dream was to be a Mexican. One day, Ronald was impaled by a 1-dimensional woman and died. Please observe a moment of silence for Ronald now, as he will not be mentioned again in this story.

 Cue standard tavern scene. Men in the corner played that finger stabbing game, the women from upstairs offered themselves to blowup dolls, the bartender cleaned whiskey mugs with a cloth that had never been washed. Elvis waited until someone entered the tavern and then jumped in before the doors swung back shut. Not because he hated that cliche where you push them open dramatically and everyone goes quiet when you step inside, but because it was flu season and he didn't want to touch the door. Incidentally, everyone did go quiet when he walked in. Not because they were intimidated by Elvis; it was just one of those freaky coincidences where everyone took a breath at the same time and nobody wanted to be the first one to start talking again. And then an event happened. Not because of the reason you expect, but because of a reason you didn't expect.

 "Top o' the mornin' to ye, Mr. Kickthroat," olde tyme'd the bartender. "Can I get you the usual?"

 Choose your own adventure! Do you want Elvis to have the usual? Go to page 43. Do you want to take the story in a bit of a different direction? Read on.


 "No, I want something new and exciting."

 Suddenly someone with purple spandex and mirror glasses appeared.

 "Elvis!" said the newcomer. "You must come quickly with me back to 1947, where all blacksmiths have gone extinct and we need one to save the future! I mean present. It would be silly for me to refer to my own time as the future. Haha."

 "Why are you in such a hurry? You're a time traveler."

 "...Huh... Okay, take your time, then."

 "Let's do it."

 The stranger invaded Elvis's personal space and touched his chest, zapping them to 1947. It was as futuristic and awe-inspiring as he'd always imagined:  flying horses, self-robbing banks, and dynamite that could wipe out entire Japanese cities.

 "I'm Wonald, by the way."

 "That's a coincidence. I had a daughter named Wonald once. She got sucked into a black hole and died."

 "Or maybe she just got transported to the future and was stuck there until she could invent time travel and make up an excuse to get you to come to the future with her so she could experiment on you with her questionable new beauty products."

 "Good thing that probably didn't happen."

 "Oh, let me introduce you to my friend Faulty."

 "Greetings, fellow Earth mortal," said Faulty robotically.

 "Really? This is how future people talk?"

 "No, he's just being a jackass."

 Just then some robots from the even more future appeared and killed Faulty, since he would eventually give birth to the guy who would win the war for mankind against the cyborgs. Wonald, meanwhile, showed Elvis around her studio apartment.

 "So over here's the entire apartment. And out there's the rest of the world."

 "What do we do all day here?"

 "Watch the television set."

 "What's that?"

 "It's like a radio, but with images."

 "What's a radio?"

 "It's like real life, but without images."

 "Oh."

 They spent the next several hours watching Bonanza and snacking on off-brand cheese puffs.

 "This sucks. I should have had the usual."

The end




Page 43

 Elvis had the usual. Then nothing noteworthy happened, so the story ended.

The end

The Audience is Hardly Listening

 "Thank you, Baffany, for sharing your leaf collection. For our next act, please welcome Sven Schlotzsky & The Swollen Cajones."
 The annual talent show was the only thing the students of Womp Rat High ever got mildly excited about. Sven and his friends had practiced for months in the drummer's parents' garage. They even sent their demo tape to a record company, who was generous enough to reply, "I'd rather listen to a ruptured duck."

 Schlotzsky and co. jumped onto the stage and did a last check on tuning. The tension in the room was palpable, like a bitch on heat. And by bitch I mean your mom. One female girl student whispered 'omg Sven is soooo gorgeous,' then fainted in the most flimsy womanish way possible (letting the side down).  Derwent, lead guitarist, exposed the crowd to what he liked to call 'the vagina trap' (he wasn't good with words. He envisioned ensnaring hot girls with his musical talent; others imagined a kind of bear-trap-vagina). Notes of hairy crystal filled the air and rose to the ceiling. Another five girls fainted and some of the teachers started having an orgy in the corner. The drums kicked in and the tempo picked up. Sven stepped up to the mic, and was just about to start being fucking awesome, when the nightmarish happened.

 The animals in the zoo next door escaped again. They tore through the wall and had their way with the guys and drank all the punch. Just as Sven was frantically trying to think of a way to salvage the performance, Vanilla Ice himself came out of retirement and started busting out some mad rhymes about animals and stuff. Then a bad thing happened to him and he died.
 The next day Sven called an emergency meeting at his tree house. You're never too old for a tree house. He waited for hours, but his friends never showed up because they're still kids and when their parents say to clean out the fish tank, they mean right now, dammit. Not Sven, though. His parents were mushrooms. Mushrooms were notoriously chill about chores and homework.
 Anyway he spent the night crying and writing about last night's events in his diary like a girl. But in a crazy twist that's never happened in any other story ever, a reply appeared in the diary.

 He watched the words scroll across the page.

'Stop being such a girl.'

 He traced them with his fingers, and found new profound meaning in them. He found himself repeating them to himself while he went about his daily antics. Finally he had a eureka moment. 'Stop being such a girl!' he screamed.

 He realised the diary was not insulting him. It was giving him a tip-off as to the best come back in all of history. From now on, Sven would say these words to anyone at anytime and it always gave the desired results - the person would shut the hell up and Sven would feel like a badass. It even worked when the person you were talking to was a girl!

 That is, until one stormy Thursday night. He was chilling with friends in the park, drinking, because he was in a band and he had an image to uphold.
  

  Deezer, the keyboardist, was showing off his arrest record, in reply to which Sven suggested that he cease having such a lack of Y chromosomes. Deezer didn't find this amusing at all, which in itself is the worst punishment Sven could receive. But to make matters worse, the Deeze went back to Sven's house and chopped his parents up on a salad and sold it to some passing monks.
 Meanwhile WRH announced a second talent show.
 

 Sven prepared for this talent show like he had prepared for no other. For hours each night he practiced pitching his voice juuuuust right. I'll give you a clue - there were a lot of smashed crystal glasses lying around his now mushroomless house.

  The night of the talent show he snuck onto the stage while everyone else was in the backroom getting ready. He tinkered around with the controls on the equipment a bit, then snuck back out, imagining he was wearing a cape and some kind of mask and going 'mwahahahaaaaa'.

 The band began to play. Like before, people orgasmed all over the place and the music rose and rose and reached its peak as Sven stepped up to the mic.

 But this time, instead of preparing to sing fricking awesome, he took a deep breath and went 'EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!'

 The amp nearest Deezer blew out the screech of Sven's voice a billion zillion times louder than any of the other amps, thanks to Sven's pre-show tinkering.

 Deezer experienced what can only be described as rape of the ear, except with less blood and diseases. Everything was strangely quiet. People moved about but there was no sound. What's going on? He could see Sven's big st00pid st00pid face in front of him, his mouth saying some words. 

 'What?'

 'I said that'll teach you to eat my parents, you schmuck! And btw you SUCK at keyboard! I never wanted you in the band anyway, it was Derwent's idea!'

 'What?'

 Sven slowly began to realise that he had deafened Deezer. Ohhhh the sweet sweet irony. For now he couldn't communicate to him the fact that he just totally got some hot sweet steaming revenge on him. Oh, the shame! Oh, the pity! Oh wait, it's okay, that's why notepads were invented.

 Sven carefully wrote 'YOU SUCK' on a notepad and threw it at Deezer's deaf face. 

 As an afterthought, he picked up his pen again and wrote, 'P.S. Stop being such a girl.' He threw this, too.
 

  "Um, Sven," Derwent tapped on his shoulder. "We want you to leave the band. I'm sorry. You're just too much of a trouble maker."
 "Can't we at least finish this song first?" They were right in the middle of My Little Choo Choo.
 "No. Go away."
 The next few years brought on endless legal battles for the rights to the name "Swollen Cajones." My Little Choo Choo went on to be a big hit. Their mothers were reportedly very proud.

The end

Piper at the Gates of Chaun

  The earrings were perfect. Olivia turned her face in the mirror and watched them sparkle.
 

 They were a gift from her plumber. All the suggestive comments had gone over her head, so he thought surely this would tip her off. He'd never learned the dangers of underestimating a 16-year-old girl's density.

 'These are great!' said Olivia. 'So do you want to check out my pipes now?'

 'Ohhhh, mamma,' thought Paul the plumber. 'Yes,' he said aloud.

 'Okay, well there's just this problem with a leaky faucet.'

 '...Go ooonnnn.'

 'So could you take a look at it?'

 She batted her lashes at him.

 Paul followed her into her bedroom, and she showed him to the shower. It was leaking some kind of red substance.

 Disappointed, he took the shower head off and a dead rat fell out into the tub.

 "Ohhhh, that's where I put Muffy! Come here, you little rascal," she said, snuggling it.

 'Great. Even the rat gets more loving than me,' thought Paul.

 In a fury of 'WHY DOESN'T ANYONE LOVE ME??' he grabbed the rat by the tail and smashed it over his knee. Blood and rat guts went everywhere.

  Just before he turned into She Hulk, he got a text: "Mommy loves you!"

 This lightened his heart a little. Then a leprechaun named Dinx sneaked up behind him and pulled his pants down, which shouldn't actually be all that embarrassing for a plumber used to showing everyone his crack while he worked.

 Olivia cocked her head. With his pants down, she was suddenly a hell of a lot more attracted to this plumber guy.

 But then the leprechaun strolled nonchalantly up to her and said, 'Hey. What's up?'

 Before Paul could say 'quibble', Olivia and the leprechaun had jumped into a Lamborghini and sped away into the horizon, leaving Paul to choke on exhaust fumes and rejection.

 Thus Paul was firmly established as a loser character who will undoubtedly get exactly 0 action in this story, until maybe the ending, depending on how much the audience grows to like him by then.

 He got back in his plumbermobile and put on an 8 track tape of the greatest hits of 1999.

 He was humiliated and past the breaking point. He wanted revenge. It was time to find out if a leprechaun's blood is really green.

 So he picked up the grisliest spare pipe in his collection, donned his murdering hat, and put the pedal to the metal.

 While driving like a mofo, he vowed to stay off women from now on. He refused to have any part in the whole institution anymore. A gay gene slowly sprouted out of his campest piece of DNA (the one that said 'yoohooooooo' to all the other DNA strands).

 After 5 hours of following the trail of Lucky Charms, he took a detour into Las Vegas. Okay, so it was 12 hours out of the way, but it's friggin' Vegas, man.
 He found a couple of homosexual muscular cyborg German dudes selling themselves on the street corner and asked them what the going rate was.

 "Piss off, faggot," they replied.

 "Okay, so even queer men won't have me," Paul said. "Then screw it. From now on I swear off all men and women. I don't need anyone. Happiness comes from within anyway."

 "Oh," pouted a hot girl listening through his window. "I was about to get naked and marry you. Sorry, I'll find someone else." She ran off with another overweight plumber.

 "Dammit!"

 Paul sighed, and continued driving.

 He didn't even feel motivated to kill anymore. But he didn't have anything else to do, so why stop?

 It took a long time, but he eventually tracked Dinx and Olivia down to a scuzzy motel off the highway. The door was locked. He almost stopped before he remembered vengeful murderers probably don't respect 'do not disturb' signs.

 The best way to handle a situation is to use the skills you know to your advantage. So he entered their room by Super Marioing through their pipes and out into their bathroom.

 They were asleep. The leprechaun was snoozing on Olivia's stomach with a satisfied grin on his face, the smug bastard.

 Paul plucked him off and threw him in a bag. Next thing Dinx knew, he was tied to a chair with duct tape over his mouth in the back of a cargo van. He could faintly hear a 98 Degrees song coming from the front.

 "This is payback for all the crap leprechauns put me through in grade school, you little Irish freak," Paul growled, ripping the tape off.

 "Oy'm noot Oyrish! Oy'm oonly a droonk!" Dinx protested.

 'Do you hate the English?'

 'Yes'

 'Then you're Irish!'

 'But everyone hates the English!'

 'Hmmm... good point....'

 So, to cut a long story short, they had sex.

 Olivia, meanwhile, woke up alone. She now had some embarrassing infections from all the interspecies relationships, so nobody would have her. And she had a leaky faucet, but plumbers wouldn't service her anymore, on the count of how she treated Paul.

 Also the next day a whale fell from the sky and landed on her.

The end

Autistic License

(Note: The first and last paragraphs were written first)

 Richard was a morose kind of a guy. His favourite activities included staring at rainy windows and sighing heavily, thereby steaming up any nearby rainy windows. One day, Richard was dressing for another day in the office in his usual brown-brown-brown combo when he suddenly realised he'd left his brown tie in the wash. He plodded downstairs and reached into the washing machine, groping for his tie (ha, groping). He reached deeper and deeper, like a gynaecologist, and soon he had left the kitchen with its harsh flourescent lights and tasteless linoleum far behind him. Richard disappeared from the kitchen and into another world. The fridge hummed mundanely and the lights flickered a little, because they were attention whores.


 Richard emerged from a men's room toilet, which has to be some kind of literary device or something. He could hear slow, repetitive thumping from outside the bathroom. His vivid imagination imagined a bald caveboy bonking his head against the wall. He stepped around the two robots making out and walked through the door.

 The noise he heard was loud techno music. The room was completely full of stylized cartoon characters dancing to it. There was also a bald caveboy bonking his head against the wall. The setting was dark except for a few flashing colored lights. Up on the stage they were having a freestyle rap-off. The current rappist was a rotund fellow wearing a baggy shirt with a picture of David Bowie on it, in all his cell shaded glory.

 Yo, yo, the name's P-H-A-T
 I got year's supply of donuts in my P-A-D
 Look at me, ma, I done learned how to spell
 I hope you're proud of me down there in H-E-L-L
 Come on!

 Richard blinked, perhaps louder than necessary, for everything went silent and all eyes were on him. He nervously cleared his throat.

 "Um, my name's Richard and I sell pocket watch cogs.
 One for a dollar or three for 2.95... dawgs."

 There was one animated hottie in the crowd who looked less disgusted than the others and it was clear to him she was the one he'd grow old with. It was time to put all his time in the library studying about human mating rituals to use.

 He made his way through the crowd, which at some point or another during the last paragraph resumed its bustling activity. The girl eyed him with practiced indifference. He spoke in his persuadiest voice.

 "Can I buy you some liquid?"

 "Can I buy you some teeth? For biting me?" she retorted. Wronda wasn't about to put to waste her years in the library studying about turning guys down. She was thirsty, however, so she accepted the offer. After a few drinks, they went to a bowling alley. 

 "So tell me, Wronda. How do taxes work in this world?"

 "That's the lamest question you could have possibly asked. Don't be such a bore, or I'll have to show you the door," she Z snapped.

 "...So tell me, Wronda. How do... spaghetti?"

 Wronda sighed. It was going to take effort to make Richard interesting. After minutes of working at it, she discovered the problem: his brain. He was hardwired to be dull, no matter how many Family Guy shirts he bought. The only solution was to stick an electric egg beater in there and give him a fresh start. So she did.

 Richard came to and opened his eyes.

 "So how do you feel?" she asked him hopefully.

 "Well, I'd rather have a frontal lobotomy than a bottom in front of me. Now bring me a canvas and some paint. Stat."

 He painted Wronda while she posed like a '50s housewife, you know, like for irony and stuff. The brain scrambling had caused Richard to lose sight in his right eye, so he could only accurately paint her left half. He had to paint the rest from memory. After an hour, just as she started to lose feeling in her legs, he announced that he was done. He anxiously handed the painting to her.

 The left side was a perfect likeness of her and lane 16 behind her. The right side was smeared with feces. She wept. He showed the guy who handled the shoes and he wept too. He knew then that this was his calling; bowling alley employees never cry.

 He spent the next few months painting and marrying Wronda. He even found his missing tie, hiding behind a drinking fountain. Happy times.

 So people came from far and wide to see Richard's wacky artworks. He was on the cutting edge of the contemporary art scene, but if I were to explain how and why his paintings were so innovative, they would lose their holy fucking awesomeness. So just imagine that they were frickin' awesome and as big a break-through as when Jackson Pollock first decided that paintbrushes could get on their bike/take a long walk off a short pier/go forth and procrastinate (delete as appropriate). Richard was such a character that people would run up to him in the streets and ask him to sign their baby. That way they could sell it on eBay for twice as much. His life was rich (see why I called him Richard now?) and fulfilling, and he married a really super hot life model who never even had it off with Lucien Freud. They had babies that were paint splats on their best friend's drive, but no one really minded because they were cheap to raise and didn't really get upset when you forgot their birthdays.