Categories
Comedy Stories

The Dewey Decimal System

It’s a rare thing to find fulfillment in maintaining order, carving it out of chaos, keeping the Barbarians outside the gates. But it’s been my life’s pursuit. Case in point, I return from my lunch break to find all hell has broken loose in the library. How much anarchy has been unleashed in the quarter-hour…

Categories
Comedy Stories

No Class Room

“You’re sharing a classroom with Mister Galanis,” Principal Twomey says, heavyset and out of breath from climbing up the stairs to the 3rd floor. The 3rd floor is the inner sanctum of the English Department. We don’t appreciate visitors here, especially ones from administration. Rarely do they bring good news. And notification of sharing a…

Categories
Stories Tragedy

Incapable of Her Own Distress

There is something liberating about losing the love of your life. Compounded with all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it makes the choice to lose one’s mind easier—not to mention the choice of losing one’s life. I guess that answers the question whether to be or not to be. If I were still…

Categories
Comedy Stories

Pink Martini

“I don’t think I’m ready.” “You’re ready. Besides, you don’t have a choice.” “I don’t have a chance . . .” “C’mon. She’s sweet.” “She’s scary.” “She’s sweet and scary and—six years old. Look, I think you have a distinct advantage, being a grown up and all.” “Ugh . . . tell me what she…

Categories
Comedy Stories

No Thank Hugh

🏅 ❤️ “Thanks a lot for coming in tonight—you are a wonderful crowd. Now get out of here!” Hugh’s trademark comedic snark teeters between sincerity and sarcasm. The audience does not know how to take his tone, so they laugh even harder, cheering and whistling at the close of his set. But Hugh is already…

Categories
Comedy Stories

[Ok.]

[Ok.] A text from you. You want to meet me. For coffee. Something quick—so when it doesn’t work out—we can both leave unscathed. Of course, I say. Why not? I try not to—but I start imagining a cozy cottage for us by the Baltic sea, like the one my Polish grandparents lived in. A garden…

Categories
Stories Tragedy

I Nothing You

“Wait . . . can you still hear me?” she asks, expectantly. She paces around the parking lot at dusk, seeing if the connection is better from a different angle. She holds the phone up and squints at it. She hikes a bit up an embankment, stupidly looking at her phone, wondering if two bars…

Categories
Comedy Stories

Kerfuffle in Yazoo County

The white boy falls out of the Ford F-150 pickup truck first, hitting the road with a sickening thud. His left eye is already turning purplish-red, eyelid swelling to a most startling size. Moments later, a pretty dark skinned girl is launched from the Ford’s passenger side as well, but she elegantly falls, executing a…

Categories
Comedy Stories

Takeout & Delivery

Is that it? Silver Toyota Land Cruiser. Ubers are almost impossible to spot until they nearly drive up on you. Virginia grabs her luggage and double checks the Uber app on her iPhone for the driver’s name. Lee. She dutifully takes note of the license plate to compare before entering the vehicle. She isn’t going…

Categories
Comedy Stories

Take the Cannoli

“Carmine, you don’t have to help,” Rosemarie says. “You’ve done enough.” “Where’s all the ladies from the Women’s Guild? Widows aren’t supposed to clean up after their own husbands’ funerals. Mannaggia!” Carmine shakes his head, shoving a final piece of coppia ferrarese into his mouth. “There’s been three funerals this week already. What’s one more?”…

Categories
Stories Tragedy

The Coldness of Sand

3.1688739 x 10^-10 Millenia In ten seconds you will break my heart. In a thousand years, I will never recover from the words that will come out of your mouth, from this serious conversation you want so desperately to have, from your dead shark eyes that fail to hold my gaze. I will get up…

Categories
Comedy Stories

Unfinished Business

❤️ Five days after Yom Kippur, David Jacob Tomaschewitz counted on Sukkot’s challah sales to ensure his foundering bakery made a profit for the year. Although business had been brisk for Rosh Hashanah, the weekly sales of his bread for Shabbat had consistently diminished as other Jewish bakeries in Boca Raton had far more offerings—cookies!…

Categories
Comedy Stories

Innocence Lost

❤️ 5:00 a.m. — Lauds or Dawn Prayer “St. Benedict had too many rules for the clergy,” he said, rolling over in her big wide bed. “Awakening at this ungodly hour was probably the most demonic,” he sighed and burrowed back into the crisp, white sheets, cool in the morning air. The sheets had been…

Categories
Comedy Stories

The Physics Professor and the Latte

Read by Russell Norman ❤️ It wasn’t like Dr. Stevens to spend $4.38 for coffee. Not coffee—a latte. A latte was essentially a fancy espresso with a thin layer of foamed milk. Either way, $4.38 was an egregious amount of money to spend on a beverage for a young professor with crushing student loans. A…

Categories
Comedy Stories

Male #18

“It sounds like hell.” “You’ll be fine. Now, the women stay stationary in the circle while the men rotate around the perimeter. You’ll switch to a new partner every three minutes,” he carefully explained. “It sounds like square dancing,” I protested. “Do I allemande right or left?” “It’s not square dancing. And you will not…

Categories
Stories Tragedy

Dance With The One Who Brought You

❤️ Read by Russell Norman “Your wife’s confusion is partly due to salicylate poisoning,” the young doctor explains. Orville waits patiently for him to continue, holding his wife’s sweater while she dresses in the examination room. The doctor’s office is too cold, as Texans like their air conditioning glacial. It hurts his knees. “Essentially she…

Categories
Comedy Stories

Irrumator Praetor Matrem Suam

🏅 ❤️ In nómine Patris, et Fílii, et Spíritus Sancti. Amen. Things sound so much better in Latin, don’t they, Father Connolly? I guess that’s why my parents splurged on the whole two-hour deluxe wedding package. The TLM, baby! Total. Latin. Mass. I’m sure you would have been fabulous with the Gregorian chanting. Father, do…

Categories
Stories Tragedy

A Breakup In Five Acts

🏅 Act I is the easiest part to write as you don’t even like him at first, unusual considering how hard and how fast you fall. On your first date, he asks what type of restaurant you prefer. Idiot, you think. We aren’t going to get into any place decent this late on a Saturday…