WHEN CATS RULE THE EARTH

The cat hopped down lightly from the side of the overturned police car and stretched. It was a seriously long and luxurious stretch, his back legs raises and his front fully extended; the claws of his front feet soundly sinking into the empty pair of pants on the sidewalk before him. He straightened up and looked around, licking his lips. It had been a busy square before, too busy for him to even dream of sneaking through, let alone prowling. He would come at night to scavenge the trash cans and even then only nervously, afraid of the crowds of mankind. Now basking in the warm sunlight, everywhere the cat looked the people were just piles of grey dust, spilled into empty clothes and left on the street, on the benches, in the cars. The cat nibbled at his foot briefly, but stopped abruptly; his ears flattened back against his head at the taste. He'd gotten their dust in his mouth now. He shook himself a little, and then the cat sauntered off in search of a blade of grass to clean the taste from his mouth.

RUBE GOLDBERG'S REVENGE

There in the center of the baseball diamond was the most complicated, convoluted, and plain ridiculous device ever assembled in a single night.  The metal beast was dressed in the skin of a hundred rolls of duct tape, thousands and thousands of wraps handing loosely from the cannibalized monkey bars and bicycles that served as bones.  The inside was a madhouse of gears and cogs and toys and metal, the stink of the solder barely pushing back the acrid scent of the still gummy tape.  The twelve kids (seven boys, five girls) manned their stations, dirty hands and feet at their pedals and ready to propel the gigantic beast out and into its path of destruction.  Their leader lit the candle before him and waited for the flame to burn through the string.  Once the string broke, some lead weights would fall, the balls would roll, a water bottle would be squashed and schoolbooks would soak and tear and then the glasses would break and then the engines would light and then the beast would roar.  Their leader pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and took an excited hit from his inhaler.  His delighted eyes locked onto the flickering flame and he grinned, whispering to himself "School's out, you sons of bitches."

GOVERNMENT MAN

It was supposed to be a sweet gig.  Such a sweet gig!  But in the end it was all bullshit, all bullshit!  In the middle sixties I was a private in the Army, and a private was all I was gonna be.  And that was fine, until I started hearing things about life over in active duty.  Over in Vietnam.  All of a sudden being a little pissant private didn't sound so hot.  So then I volunteer for some big time, super secret Army experiment.  Was supposed to make me like a super hero.  Faster, stronger, more powerful.  You've seen TV, you know the deal.  I asked them if they was gonna make me bulletproof and they just laughed at me.  Yeah, now I know why they were laughin'.  Their little experiment?  The radiation, all of the needles and the shots and stuff?  That junk didn't do a thing for me.  Nothin'!  I was supposed to be able to life a jeep over my head easy, run a minute mile in half the time, bend steel bars with my bare hands!  And all their crap didn't do a thing for me.  All it did for me, it sped my my metabolism or whatever so now I need three times as much food as a normal guy to stay alive.  Ain't that a treat?  Thanks a ton, Army Corps of Engineers!  Or whoever the hell you quacks were.  And I was supposed to get a reward, some big ticket for even risking the experiment.  You know what they gave me in the end?  An honorable discharge and free lifetime food stamps.  Yeah.  Yeah!  Can you believe it?  I risk my ass for my country, and they give me a lifetime supply of government cheese.  Unbelievable.  I was supposed to be a dream, a vision, a beacon of american strength and valor.  I was supposed to be a hero.  And instead, I sweat when I eat.

Family Night

It was dark now, but the coals still glowed with more than enough light enough to see by.  I held the child in my arms and tried to sing to it, but in my exhaustion I couldn't remember the words or the melodies to any children's songs.  The child grew fussy in my arms as I struggled with it, struggled with my idiot brain and got nowhere.  The child became upset and she - he - it, it began to wail and then to scream and twist in my arms.  I looked up to the stars, but I'm not sure for what.  Not prayer, certainly.  The child's screams turned into a thick barking cough and like a machine I sang the first two lines of 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' over and over and over again, silently begging the child to stop crying.  "Mother will come in the morning," I tried to whisper.  But my rough voice scared the child into even more frantic tears, and I went back to dully singing in my loveless, hopeless monotone.

BUSK

The girl started the mosh pit at about eleven o'clock in the morning. She had hung a big, silver boom box from the railing- and really, when was the last time you even saw a boom box anyways? But yeah, she hung the boom box and it started blasting some truly aggressive noise, and the next thing you knew she was and kicking and thrashing all around the place in a tight little circle. And this was right before the lunchtime rush, in the middle of one of the busiest subway stations downtown. It was crazy. She had her eyes closed the whole time, and just went for it, just hurled herself and her fists and elbows out and around and around and around until the song ended. People all around- tourists, people with jobs, people in a hurry- all freaked out when she started, they ducked and covered and scurried back when she started but she didn't hit a single person. Not a one. Then when her song stopped, she casually held out an old baseball hat and patiently waited for people to drop change in it for her. And the craziest thing was...they did.

He Had It Coming

The kid just wouldn't shut up.  He and his two little buddies, just talking shit the whole time.  During the opening commercials, the trailers, and throughout the entire damn movie.  I'd heard of this kid, who hadn't?  Some little child prodigy, went to high school at the age of ten, solves mysteries for giggles.  Good, great for him, shut the fuck up; adults are trying to watch the fucking movie.  My date, Sheila, she's telling me to settle down and the kids some sort of local hero.  She says he broke up a smuggling ring on the waterfront, caught a burglar or two.  Like I give a shit.  This kid might be a little junior detective like in the Encyclopedia Smith books or whatever, but to me he's just another goddamn punkass who can't shut up when in a movie theater.  I look back and glare at him to quiet him down, I 'SSH' him as loud as I can and then the little punks start making fun of me?  Of ME?  Did I serve in Vietnam to get mocked by some little ten year old shit?  I just want to try and solve the little word jumble and he's snickering at me behind my back?  I stand up and pull him up by the front of his shirt, I can hear Sheila in the back of my head screeching to stop.  But you know what?  If the brat wants to play big boy detective, then he can get punched in the face like a fucking man.

Abstract

The madman flipped back the hem of his filthy raincoat and spread his arms wide in supplication. "I've done everything else that you ever asked for, I'm going to do anything else that you ask of me. Whatever you need me to do, it's done. Done! All that I ask is that you finally speak to me. Say something! Please. I'm begging you, I'm fucking begging you. How many years has it been? I've lived in your shadow for years. Two years? Two years I have spent in, in worship of you and your form. Your every angle, your curves, the lines of your face. I can't take it anymore, I need to know. Do you love me at all? Can you?" The statue loomed two stories above him, all red rust and creaking iron. He wept at its silence then, lines of tears tracking lines through the grime on his cheeks. And then his heart soared as the statue looked down at him, nodded, and then began to speak.

SUPPERTIME

The art of hurrying without appearing to hurry is best seen in a teenager, trying to get through his family meal as quickly as possible, without giving away the fact that all he wants to do is get the fuck out of there.  Kyle flashes a big and disarming smile, he talks and jokes constantly, eating hugely; taking seconds and thirds if he can get them.  Family dinner is a pure pleasure.  His family can hardly get a word in edgewise, all they can do is laugh and eat and smile.  But this is his plan.  Kyle talks and talks so that they eat and eat, the more time he talks the more time they chew and slurp and swallow away.  And in between funny anecdotes about school -fictions, he hasn't been to school in weeks but they can't know that, oh no- he sucks down huge, gulping bites of whatever they put in front of him.  Not just because he has a terrible, ravenous hunger way down deep inside his liars chest.  But because the faster he eats, the sooner the food is gone.  And the sooner the food is gone, so is he.