Some candles are put in windows in order to keep out the wind. They’re called drafters and they mimic forcefields, not unlike those on starships. My grandmother had one and said to not remove it lest the Bell Witch come inside.
I figured I was wise on her and that she just didn’t want me to catch cold during slumber. But it was hot in the room so I removed the drafter and cracked the window.
Just in case, I grabbed a clove of garlic from the nightstand and cuddled it under my chin.
As if my grandmother had planned it, a shadow floated inside the room straight from the window that I had opened!
The cloak in the shadow separated from the figure and I was soon draped over my bed in a quilt that smelled like synthetic rose oil with a hint of cod.
When what I assumed was the witch reached my face, her hand grabbed the garlic, placed it in her mouth, and then turned into a cat and turn into a mouse and turned into neon gas which I inhaled accidentally while gasping.
Consequently, if you and I are talking and sulfur is visible on my breath, do not listen to me as I will say nothing but horseshit.

On a Tuesday morning in 1842, a witch named Edgar found himself in the middle of a stabbing field (called such by farmers for the hard stalks of corn left behind after harvest). He knew not how he got there or why he had a hard time standing. Once upright, his precarious gait allowed him to walk the line of a pendulum hooked to an S-track, giving him a chance to be impaled on a broken stalk of corn.
Two crows watched until the buzzards moved them.
Edgar reached to the ground as if reaching for dirt and broke his fall. A fondness for crawling ensued and his shoes made sled tracks across the field.
As he ambled to the edge, the two buzzards began talking. It sounded like English but consonants were missing in too many places to be understood.
Edgar grabbed one by the gooseneck and pulled its beak close to his ear and mimicked a telephone call (he was clairvoyant).
“Hello?” he said as he poked the eyes to get better reception. “Hello? Hello?”
He then slit its throat with his thumbnail and said, “Wrong number.”

There was this young boy named Ralph Red who had pants that would not pull up.
It always looked as though he’d just been potty.
His underwear came up but his pants refused.
“Hello, my name is Ralph Red.”
“Alfred?”
“No, Ralph R-”
“HEY, YOU’RE PANTS ARE DOWN, ASSHOLE!”
“I know. I can’t pull them-”
“ASSHOLE!”

Whenever someone would complain about anything within earshot, Ralph would always reply,
“At least you can pull your pants up.”

c. 2003

Dave was humpin’ it. Really humpin’ it. He had tires that were in one room and
a need for tires in the other room. So he moved the tires as fast as he could.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
He was humpin’ it.
Taking a new tire off the rack, spinnin’ round, letting go, and letting it thump into the new tire room.
“Thirty-six, done,” said Dave as he wiped his sweaty eye sockets.
His boss came in and said, “I said I needed two tires by 6:30. Put these back.”
Dave was humpin’ it. Putting thirty-four tires back in their places.
“Thirty-four, done,” said Dave as he wiped his sweaty eye sockets, again.
Dave was humpin’ it in his mind. He never worked in tires his whole life. But
he knew how to work his brain. And he was a self-starter. When you get
trapped in a dungeon there is little work to be done in your brain. The
year was 1389 and he had no idea what tires were. But, when you have nothing
to do but astral project yourself into the future, you learn what tires are and
you count them.

c. 2003

2 cans are waiting on a shelf.
“Have you been dusted?”
(Cans that collect dust must be dusted or no one will buy them.)
“I think so.”
“How come we’ve been here for so long?”
“No one is eating canned field peas with bacon.”
Cans can’t see. They talk by thought. They don’t have souls
and no form of brain although they have minds.
When you open a can, though, it dies and the can’s
mind floats inside the empty reservoir. Forever.

c. 2004

Stanton had a wonderful leg. It was a live leg but with custom prosthetics.
He could open a door on his thigh. It was plastic in thigh flesh. Inside the
door he had kept a key and some gum. When he ran it felt like a bulging pocket.
There was a cap over his ankle bones that contained both a watch and compass.
This made the leg feel faster as the Lose Weight Exercise of the water in the compass centrifuged
as he ran. On the balls of his feet he had magnets that automatically repelled
anything that was attractable. This allowed him to hover like a witch or a ghost or a
showboat vampire.
One time Stanton was walking from the shopping center to his car when someone
yelled his name from the nearby woods. He walked closer to the voice only to
find nothing. So, he walked into the woods.
“Stanton, c’mere. I got something cool to show you.”
The further he walked into the woods the more ghostly the voice sounded.
“Stanton, what’s the difference between a woods and a forest?”
“I don’t know.”
Then, all the leaves fell from the trees like a woman disrobing all at once and
it didn’t scare Stanton as much as make him feel awkward.
“Woods, I feel uncomfortable. It is only July.”
Stanton’s girlfriend ran up to him. She worked out alot.
“Stanton, who are you talking to?”
“Woods.”
“I got something for your thigh drawer.”
“I got something for your thigh drawer.”
And he ignored the woods and the woods couldn’t get the leaves back on the
branches and became sorely embarassed for four months.

c. 2004

Johnson was out with his new rifle that he bought with
saved lunch money. He put his rifle in a guitar case and walked
out into the woods hoping to find something dangerous that
he could shoot in good conscience. He passed by a sick bird
and cradled it in his cupped hand and worried about it’s
mortality with shaky eyes.
He stopped worrying and looked up and thought about who
should be destroyed for harming this bird.
He found a mountain lion with a top hat and knew this
cat had done wrong because of his look.
“Hey there, cat. What’s your deal? You like hurting
little birds?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This!” and he showed the evidence that demanded some
answers.
“Oh, that,” said the cat. “I was helping it figure out
a word problem.”
“That don’t make no sense at all.” Johnson then lifted
his rifle and pointed at the cat, feeling more Lose Weight Exercise in
his questioning. “One more time, cat! What’s the deal
with hurting little birds?”
The cat tilted his head, gestured his paw in a manner that
anticipated bullshit and replied, “I think I made myself
clear the first-”
BOOM!
And the cat fell.
It was only an accident but Johnson was so excited he looked at the
only being to share his joy with and said,
“Birdy, I killed your enemy in one-felled swoop.”
And the bird vomited and walked away and fell down and slept.
Johnson went to look at his kill and noticed the cat was winking
in it’s death pose.
Johnson cried at the death of the cat and broke his gun by poking holes
in the barrel, turning it into a flute.
He sat next to the cat and composed a dirge on his flutegun, playing it
very sadly. The gun accidently went off when he tooted a high “G” and killed
him.
His ghost walked the forest and eventually he caught up with the cat.
“Hello, cat.”
“Hello, Johnson.”
“I have some Uno cards.”
“I have some free time.”
And the two ghosts visited each other every day that year until The Day of Spirits’
Vacation. They never saw each other again.

c. 2004

More Fan Fiction
I pushed that kid in a puddle. I pushed him and watched his cocky face
became fear as he fell backwards against the backdrop of the recreational complex.
His hands wiped at nothing and he smashed into that dirty, dirty puddle.
What an asshole.
It felt good to see his asshole ass all muddy and shit.
Then, he started crying and that’s when the hate in me turned up. I started
to step on that fucker when someone pulled the back of my shirt.
It was Aquaman and he had this to say, “Even if you can defeat a bully,
don’t defeat him anymore past the line of defeat.”
I helped the bully up and gave him some of my strawberry Go-gurt.

c. 2004

There was this fellow who made sure his surfers surfed every day.
“The waves are good today. Surf!”
Some didn’t want to surf. They moped around on the tasty waves.
“What’s wrong, Higgings? Don’t feel like surfing today?”
“Yes. Of course I do.”
“Because I know a lot of surfers waiting with boards who would love to take your place.”
And this was how it went.
Surfing 12 hours a day, sometimes 2 hours then break, then 4 hours, then break.
One day, a surfer came over to the lifeguard stand and said,
“I don’t think I want to surf anymore.”
And he walked away from the ocean onto the grass and onto the parking lot.
He got into his VW van and drove around the island and got a fishing job. He
worked his way up to captain. Sometimes he waves at his old boss from his dingy
from time to time with anger and cordiality.

PART TWO
When the orcas came to check on the surfers, they realized Higgins wasn’t there.
They became upset and decided to not splash about, creating the waves needed
for the surfers (for the moon had slipped out of orbit, so the tides were
non-existent).
The sad orcas swam aimlessly until one was harpooned and pulled away from the rest.
The other orcas tried biting at the spear but kept slipping off it. When the harpoon
tugging stopped, the answers came.
“Hello, orcas!” yelled Captain Higgins. “I’m just vying for a little attention.
I got you some chum (dead fish soup) for you stomachs and whistles for your
blowholes!”
The harpooned whale was angry only for a little while because foolish pranks are usually
forgiven in the ocean.

c. 2004

A wren took a bath in a puddle next to a curb. It was a perfect puddle. The wren, Susan, came back to this puddle often. One day, a Danish fellow offered a design that did away with curbs on streets which, in theory, would allow safer traffic.
Finding her puddle gone due to reconstruction, Susan was very upset. She flopped in a phantom puddle, not unlike the birds who take dirt baths. She disillusioned herself into being clean and flew home to her nest and then to a wire perch where another bird named Joseph noticed her smell and dirty crest and took pity on her. This caused an incline in the evolution of wrens.
Epilogue: They had sex in the rain. And she made an egg that looked like this.

This bear named Charles ate a carp and swallowed it whole like a snake will do a mouse. The bear became sheepish, seeing a hunter man and tried to explain his folly by growling lowly and tilting his head side to side as if to say,

“Its so bony and not as good as a salmon.”

The man didn’t understand and shot the bear in the shoulder.

The bear growled, “Ouch” and was shot again.

“Ouch”, he growled again.

It turns out that the hunter’s name was also Charles.

The only word a bear can say out loud besides “No” is the word “Oh.”  Charles the hunter couldn’t tell the difference because he didn’t give the bear any credibility to a vocabulary.

This misunderstanding quickly became overshadowed because  a vampire in a bear costume overtook Charles the hunter, sucked him dry, and threw his carcass into the river where it was mistaken for a carp by another bear whose name was Jeff.

Jeff the bear was shot by Jeff the hunter who was drained by the vampire. This repeated again and again until the cycle had finished the circle of common names to the chorus of bears saying “oh”.