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When his self became a fear he couldn’t outrun, he woke his wife, and they drove through the night to comfort him. In those dark hours, they passed closed churches and open cookie shops. Normally he would have said something clever about that fact, but now it only frightened him.
His great joy had always been causing people to choke by saying something funny just as they were taking a sip of beverage. His wife guarded against this amusement, but one night he “got” her, and, indeed, she choked. Several days later, at her funeral, her brother waited, then.
“Yin is passive, introverted—frequently weak. Yang is outgoing and opinionated. She’s happy to stay at home with a book and her cat. He likes to party. Yin keeps their jaijitu (mighty circle) so cold that Yang, who is a real beach lover, constantly wears thick, heavy robes indoors.
“Prognostication poor.”
A concussion leaves Guido unable to speak in the past tense. One day a sinister-looking man in a pizzeria hears him say, “I get the stromboli when I’m here last week.”
The man, a local mobster, thinks Guido is in witness protection. When Guido leaves the store, the man follows.
The only birthday cards that Edward received were from three creditors and his parole officer. “Why let other people’s preoccupations with their lives spoil the party?” he thought. He sent himself an anonymous e-mail, agreed to meet the sender for dinner, and wasn’t shy about sex on the first date.
Billy hated mimes. He loved poking fun at (shadowing) them until one day a vindictive mime replaced Billy’s shadow with a copy of his. After several embarrassing daylight incidents and a near arrest on obscenity charges, Billy began going out only at night. Soon he stopped going out at all.
Jeffrey, trying not to make a sound, stumbled into the sofa in the darkened living room.
Suddenly a small dog started barking insanely.
“Wait,” he thought, “we don’t have a dog.”
Then a light and a woman facing him with a gun.
“Wait,” he thought, “That is not my wife.”
“Bless me father for I have sinned.”
“And who hasn’t?”
“It’s been four months since my last confession.”
“Did you break a leg?”
“Uh, no father …”
“Is this going to take long?”
“Well …”
“Look, whatever you’ve done, I’ve heard it all. Your sins are forgiven. Now get lost.”
The rooster began crowing to beat hell at 5:00 a.m. It was the first sound that Tom heard.
Half asleep he thought, “If you wake my old man again, you stupid chicken.”
The “stupid chicken” crowed a second time, louder.
The third sound Tom heard came from his father’s shotgun.
Last night at Them’s Fightin’ Words Lounge, the C-word and the F-word got into an altercation.
“The F-word called the C-word the C-word,” said the A-word.
“No S-word, I thought they wuz gonna throw down,” said the N-word.
“Hamas must be destroyed,” shouted the K-word from across the room.