Damn

            Oh, God, I hate doctors’ offices.  Why must everything be so white? Do they pretend that everything that goes on in here is all hunky-dorey, when it so obviously isn’t?  Not a person comes in that doesn’t have something wrong with them; even the hypochondriacs are afflicted in their own little way.  These walls taunt me.  The pristine-ness of the office and the coldness of their metal instruments mock me at every turn, I hate them all!  How can these things be so clean, so right, when they are in constant contact with the flawed, defective instances of humanity? How?!

            The doc drew some blood a few minutes ago, and just left me here to contemplate what might be wrong with me.  Oh, God, what is wrong with me? Why won’t they just tell me, is it so hard?  I promise, I can take bad news. It’s the waiting with the whiteness that I cannot stand!  He has my life in his hands, and I’m sitting here in this degrading front-robe thing, dangling my feet off of the little half-bed they have everyone sit on.  I can’t help but notice that the butcher at the grocery store I go to every once in a while uses this same kind of paper to wrap my ground chuck.   How’s that for irony?  How many people wind up going into that ground chuck I buy?  Why did I sign up for this?

            As I sat there, pondering my fate, the doctor came back into the room.  As I expected, he was holding a few pieces of paper, probably with the results of my blood work.  I didn’t say anything, but tried to read his facial expression.  He had that blank-yet-somehow-pleasant face that I always seem to see doctors wearing.  “Can’t I just have the results, doc? What’s the word?” I pleaded with him, unable to restrain the tremble in my voice.

            The doctor glanced at the papers, took a breathe, smiled, and said “Well, it isn’t as bad as we thought.  You won’t need a transplant, after all.  Just some vicodin for a week or two, and you should be fine.”

            “Oh, thank you!”

Rusty Mice

A rusty old gate sits upon its rusty old hinges at the end of the walkway

            Three blind mice are walking down a walkway near an old, abandoned house. They aren’t sure if it’s abandoned or not, but they do know that there are definitely no birds in it, which works out well in their favor. Somehow, all three of them manage to walk into a gate at the same time. Ross, who used to hang around the wrong sort of toads, was curious what he just ran into, and began licking it to see what, if anything, would happen.

            “This tastes a lot like rusted metal. Maybe it’s a gate!” Ross said to the other two mousey friends, Jorge and Sally. They weren’t as enthusiastic about licking things as Ross was, but they did learn a few things from his habit from time to time. This was one of them.

            “Don’t tell me you actually licked what we bumped into?” Sally asked, and heard Ross nod that he had, in fact, licked it. “I swear, you’re going to get some sort of disease some day, and your tongue is going to fall off! What are you going to do then? You can’t go around gumming everything, that’s just wrong.”

            Jorge tended to stay out of the conversation when Sally and Ross started discussing whether or not to lick things, which happened pretty frequently. It didn’t help all that much that he didn’t speak English, either. He had been an ancient kung fu master in a previous life, and while that didn’t translate all that well into being a mouse, he did enjoy hearing the other two mice talking to each other. They had picked him up after watching him fend off a trap door spider that he couldn’t even see when it was out of its trap door (he’s blind, remember?). They liked the protection Jorge offered, and he enjoyed the sounds of their voices, so it worked out pretty well for everyone. He had also somehow found a neon green bandana and wrapped it around his head, covering his eyes. He couldn’t tie anything else they had found, so Ross and Sally wondered if maybe someone else had done that part for him. Since Jorge didn’t speak English, though, they would never know the truth for sure.

            While you were reading about Jorge, Ross had begun climbing the gate, licking and inspecting more of it. “Ah, just as I had thought!” Ross called down to his comrades, “It’s an old rusty gate with rusty old hinges!”
            “Why is everything so rusty?!” Sally yelled in his general direction. “That seems a bit redundant, doesn’t it? If the gate is rusty, wouldn’t the hinges be rusty, too? Surely they would all oxidize at the same rate? How can you taste age, anyway? Old iron and new iron should taste the same, minus the rust.”

            “Who are you to question oxidation rates of gates and accompanying hinges? We’re fucking mice, what do we know about oxida- on that note, what the fuck is that word? Also, you wouldn’t know how old iron OR new iron tastes, since you don’t lick anything in the world that isn’t edible. Here I am, trying to find out some useful information, and you question me. Why? I’ve licked a great many things in my life, and I know what’s what. Why, I remember the time-“

            And then poodle he had called a gate ate all of them.

Jake's Place

Jake’s Place used to be a bar out in East Texas. It used to be, because nothing is in East Texas anymore. Only rumors of that old bar still exist, must like the rest of the East Texas/Arkansas/Louisiana area only remains in rumor since the Mexican takeover of the southern portion of the U.S.A.

Some people claim to have known the Mexicans would revolt and make a move against America, but that doesn’t change the fact that they didn’t say anything, and now most of the southern states now belong to Mexico. They can say what they want, but no one could have known that the Mexicans had developed nuclear weapons, much less that they would be willing to use them against American civilians. New Mexico, SoCal, Arizona, and most of Colorado were overtaken easily, but the Texans were prepared and itching for a fight. The Arkansonians joined the fight since the Texans were already throwing down the gauntlet, and their fighting merely spilled into Louisiana. Most of the residents there moved out quicker than cockroaches escape a kitchen light, transforming Louisiana into a vacant battleground for the Mexicans, Arkansonians, and Texans to fight for to their hearts’ content. The Americans put up a good fight, too good a fight if you asked the Mexican military. Texas and Arkansas didn’t even get a helping hand from the national army, the central government was too lethargic and apathetic to send aid. What those civilians were doing down there was nothing short of incredible.

When the Mexicans decided that they were tired of trying to take the South, and wanted to actually take it, they decided to nuke Texas, shocking the Southern states into submission. The attack was well coordinated; they hit Dallas, Corpus Christi, and Texarkana all within the same hour, leaving nothing but desolation in what was Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana (which had been ravaged by the war beforehand more than any other place), and most parts of Oklahoma. The American government ceded the lands Mexico demanded without pause or guilt afterward. Some wonder if the war was instigated by our government, but no one outside of the institution will ever know. One thing ex-residents in the area do know, though, is that no one will ever go to Jake’s Place again.

White Wash

            Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a pigeon flying my way. “What the hell?” I heard myself ask no one in particular. I wasn’t supposed to get a homing pigeon for at least another week and a half, and this wasn’t an area where pigeons simply found themselves wandering into sight of anything. They tended to be shot, unless I warned everyone that a pigeon was coming about a day in advance. People around here really aren’t big fans of pigeons; I never got around to asking why.

            “What happened, Wallace?” Tylar asked as he ran in from the room behind the observation room I was in. I wasn’t as quiet as I thought I was, this could be bad.

            “Oh, nothing, Tylar. Don’t worry about it.” I scratched my head and sighed, hoping to convey some sort of weariness or disinterest in whatever might have happened without hinting at what actually occurred. Please don’t ask me what you’re about to ask me. We don’t have to do this, I thought to myself, silently this time.

            “Come off it, Wallace! Something happened, and I want to know what’s going on. I was bored to tears just a minute ago, and now you’re saying you get surprised about nothing going on in this room, too? Bullshit.” Tylar had that look in his eye. He thought he was playing Sherlock Holmes again; all that was missing was a tobacco pipe. Lord help us if he ever got his hands on a pipe like that; we’d never see the end of “Detective” Tylar.  

            “Like I said, it’s nothing.” Then an idea struck me. Maybe I could turn this around, and change his reaction before he even had time to react. “It’s just that… I saw the coolest thing just now. I’m not sure exactly what it is. You want to take a look? It’s a bird, I know that much. I’m thinking it’s one of those finches, you know? But I’m not sure.” I was hoping to beat hell that Tylar didn’t know a pigeon from a finch. As far as I knew, he was never into bird identification.

            Tylar meandered up to the porch, stood beside me, and cast his imperial gaze upon the landscape, hoping to catch sight of this mysterious flying thing.  He had come to the rescue, and was certain the problem would solve itself soon enough now that he was on the case. But at that moment, the horizon darkened and seemed to move towards us. Neither of us could see exactly what was going on, but we knew we were in for a terrible reckoning if we stayed on the porch any longer. As the things from the horizon charged closer, I frantically searched for my binoculars. Tylar ran to sound the severe weather alert –the only kind of alarm we allowed to be under his supervision- and soon everyone would wonder why the hell thunder sounded so much like the flapping of wings. I found my binoculars, and looked towards the ominous mass heading towards the town. I was horrified when I discovered that untold numbers of pigeons were swarming the city from afar. Where had they all come from? Why were they acting like this? How had they learned militaristic flight formations, and how in the world could they have fashioned those tiny green helmets that the albino pigeons wore? My first guess was that the helmets were a sign of the albino pigeons’ leading positions in the attack, and I was quickly proved correct. They led strafing runs across the city until every square inch of the poor place was covered in pigeon waste. Within minutes, everything had been turned white. So terribly, awfully, revoltingly white.

The pigeons had only begun, despite whatever I may have thought after that. After the fecal shower, the pigeons flew into the people’s homes, and took all of the food they could find, leaving us with nothing. This is why I hate pigeons today.