This is our "best of" page.
Here are the stories we like best of all those sent out to you, our wonderful internet audience. You have the opportunity to vote for the one you like best! The winner each week, will stay on the "best of" page, and the rest will be relegated to relative obscurity until such time as we compile our "best of" anthology for publication in print. (Wow, a real book!)
Once you have read the 4 stories on this page, fill out the form below to vote for your favorite. The information you send is for our use only and will NEVER be sold to anyone or used for any purpose other than for us to contact you.
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cucumber |
Dear Oprah, |
Story A |
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Eraser-pounding Diet Fresca Diaper-Service Driver Don Knotts in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken Cheated once at solitaire |
Ezra awoke to the sound of something banging against the outside of his house. Whump, whump, whump. On this particular night, all the lights were off due to a power outage caused by a severe windstorm. Ezra squinted to try to figure out what could be making the noise, but the lights were out everywhere and squinting just made it darker. Normally, he would have been able to chalk it up to the old maple doing a Buddy Rich impression on the outside of the house, but he had stayed up most of the night watching a Don Knotts festival on TV (until the power went out) that culminated with a showing of The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. Ezra's imagination was now working overtime and he was on a supernatural bend. Whump, whump, whump. Ezra was growing more and more anxious. The situation was exacerbated by the steadily increasing need to take a stroll to the little boy's room. He wanted to go, but was, at least for now, unwilling to leave the relative safety of his bed. Ezra promised himself never again to drink an entire two-liter bottle of Diet Fresca before bed. Whump, whump, whump. As the feeling in his bladder intensified, Ezra wished he had taken the diaper-service driver up on his free sample offer. "No, no. I don't have any children." Boy, what a dumb thing to say. Whump, whump, whump. Ezra's situation was becoming increasingly urgent. He was convinced there was something trying to get into his house. He looked over where he knew the outside wall was, but still couldn't see anything. Suddenly, the wall began to brighten. Not so much at first, but enough to notice. It steadily increased, getting brighter little by little. The light seemed to focus in the center of the wall, and Ezra became aware that something was coming through. It was hardly recognizable at first, but as more of it got through the wall, Ezra could make out the shape of a person. As the apparition grew closer, Ezra recognized his third grade teacher. Mrs. Flotsmeyer came to his mind every time he got caught cheating at something, but the only thing he had cheated at recently was solitaire. As she got closer, Ezra realized she had something in her hands. Two great big blackboard erasers. They had to be at least two feet long. Yeah, these were the big guns. When she got closer, she began pounding the erasers together, creating huge clouds of chalk dust. The dust filled Ezra's nose and mouth. He was having trouble breathing. He started coughing spasmodically. Suddenly, Ezra sat bolt upright. A couple of pieces of popcorn rolled out of his mouth and down his sweatshirt. Some pieces were stuck to his face. He looked around. On the table in front of him, a half-empty bottle of Diet Fresca lay on its side, burbling out its contents all over the TV Guide. On the TV set, there was only the flickering granite look of snow. Through the hissing sound of the television came the realization that Ezra had been dreaming. The clock on the VCR still blinked 12:00 just like always, and the light in the kitchen was still on. Then a chill ran up Ezra's spine. Whump, whump, whump. |
Story B |
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Yam record player Cell Phone Sales Rep Chickens butter |
Dirk spent a lot of time nattering about things that didn't matter. Things like digital, analog, rates and roaming. He was a cell phone selling fool. The primary difficulty with this chosen profession was that Dirk lived two miles from a yam farm in the middle of nowhere. He lived where truckers were still talking to each other with terms like "breaker 1-9", asking questions like "what's your twenty?" and sporting monikers like "pig-pen" and "rubber duck." Sure, Dirk knew what he was talking about. He learned all there was to know about cell phones from a record album about technology in the 80's. The fact that he couldn't ply his wares in his own town didn't slow him down. He was going to win the "chicken-pult" contest that would win him enough money to get to a big town where he could pursue his chosen profession. The chicken-pulters contest was a long-running tradition, and over the years had evolved from a conventional catapulting to a "whatever get the chicken moving" contest. Dirk had studied plans for almost anything that would produce velocity in a projectile and finally decided on a design that he was sure would win. He went to the farm supply store and got a 12-foot length of 12" drainage pipe, several feet of surgical tubing, and a strainer. He put his launcher together and began practicing with the contest only a week away. Dirk found that if he coated the pipe and the chicken with butter, he could pick up an extra 30 feet. When the contest came, Dirk not only won the distance contest with a pult of 375 feet, he also won the target contest by pulting his chicken into a hay bale fifty feet away. Unfortunately for Dirk, his plans to move to the big city were cut short by a group of PETA activists who kidnapped him an put him to work in a nursing home for retired milk-cows. |
Story C |
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Tomato mirror weight trainer rats bank |
She was one hot tomato, this dame. She had the kind of face you wish you got to look at in the mirror every day. Unless you were a man, then it would be scary. And she was a dame with a problem. It seems that someone had found her checkbook in the A&P parking lot and had been kiting checks all over town. Not only were they driving her into the poorhouse, but whoever "they" were, they were shackling her with a reputation only a 15-year-old boy could envy. According to the bank, she had bought some mighty screwy stuff in the last week. Supposedly, she was now the proud owner of things ranging from fake vomit to a subscription to a girly magazine. Plus she had a pogo-stick and a unicycle on layaway. Throw in a few trips to some of the seedier places in town, the kind of places where your shoes stick to the floor, and you have one bad tomato. That's when she met me. My name is Lars, and aside from my day job as a weight trainer, I spend most nights Philip Marlowe style. I'm a private dick. It didn't take much brain-power to figure out where to start looking. The subscription to the magazine led me to believe that the culprit must live in her building so he could keep an eye on her mailbox. The other odd items made me think it had to be one of the neighborhood kids. All I really had to do was wait for him to pick up some of the stuff on layaway, and I could nab him. In just a couple of days, I had my "man." It was little Jimmy Statten from 2-B. I always knew he was a bad egg. I caught him with the checkbook in one pocket, and some plastic rats in the other. Obviously he had planned to scare his little sister with them. But he hadn't counted on one thing. Me. I'm Lars. Private dick. |
Story D |
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