GIRLS ARE PRETTY

You Steal Coats From The Chair Backs At The Library Day!

Today you’re going to steal a sweet London Fog from the chair of a college student who headed off to the men’s room. You’ll be halfway across the reading room when you’ll hear, “Dad!”

You’ll keep walking. Calmly. Can’t be for you.

“Dad stop!”

No way that’s for you. Unless…

“Security, that man has my coat!”

A guard by the door will grab you and tug the coat from your arms. He’ll turn you around to face the kid you stole it from.

“You don’t even recognize me, do you,” the kid will say.

You lost your glasses in a fight a month ago so you have to squint to see. Then you squint harder, hard enough to be sure you’re seeing what you’re seeing.

You can’t be blamed for not recognizing him. Last time you saw him he was ten. The only thing you recognize about him is the look in his eyes as he recognizes you. He’s looking at you like a kid would a father.

“This wasn’t a coincidence. I tracked you down here. A private investigator told me you steal coats from this reading room.”

“I wouldn’t have been any good to you,” you tell him. “You don’t want me back in your life.”

“I don’t,” your son says. “Mom’s dying. It’s her wish that you come back with me. Do that and you can keep the coat.”

Your son takes the coat from the guard and puts it over your shoulders, then he holds up two plane tickets. The two of you fly back to Michigan where you’re escorted to your ex-wife’s hospital bed. She wakes from her drugged sleep, sees your face, and starts to laugh.

“I have such a good son,” she says.

“Hi Muriel,” you say.

Your ex-wife says she’s tying up all her loose ends, and yours was the loosest.

“You left without saying goodbye,” she says. “Just disappeared. So I wanted to have the chance for us to have a proper farewell so I can say what I never got to say.”

Your ex-wife calls you a son of a bitch and spits in your face.

Your son leads you out of the room and hands you your plane ticket back. You fly home feeling good to have some of the guilt of your leaving washed away with your ex-wife’s spit. And you’re excited to have a warm new coat to help you get through this bitch of a winter.

Happy You Steal Coats From The Chair Backs At The Library Day!

The Gambler Day!

They call you “The Gambler” because you just bet your child’s college tuition on roulette. You put it all on black and the spin came up red so you lost everything.

“My God what have I done,” you shout as you fall to your knees by the table.

A few people will take pity on you by throwing chips on the floor around you. You’ll grab at them and bet them on black, but it will still come up red.

Finally you’ll crawl on all fours off of the casino floor, crying about how you’ve ruined your family.

“There goes The Gambler,” other casino patrons will whisper as you crawl past them. “He’s a legend.”

“So long Gambler!” a waitress will shout.

“Hey Gambler, where you heading next?” a boy will ask.

“I’m going to jump off of a bridge,” you’ll tell him. “The money I bet on that table is nothing compared to what I owe to the bookmakers.”

“Good luck Gambler!” the boy will shout as you crawl out the front door and make you way toward the bridge.

“I have a disease,” you’ll whimper.

Happy The Gambler Day!

There’s A Hidden Code In Your Daughter’s Finger Painting Of A Pony Day!

A Harvard art professor is in your kitchen aiming a black light at the finger painting on your fridge.

“Do you have any idea what this painting means?” the professor says.

“She’s very talented,” you say.

“We think she might be a prodigy,” your wife says.

The Harvard professor scribbles something in his notebook. Then he pulls some parchment out of his portfolio and compares the sketches on the parchment to your daughter’s pony finger painting.

“My God,” he says.

“Do you think she should be transferred to an accelerated program?” your wife asks.

“Or…” you say. “You could maybe write her a recommendation.”

“Your six-year-old daughter’s finger painting has proven thousands of years of Western society to be built on nothing but lies,” he says.

You and your wife high five. Some monks burst through the kitchen window and steal the finger painting before escaping into a waiting helicopter. The Harvard professor tries to chase after them but you manage to delay him enough to get a brief but effective recommendation letter.

Happy There’s A Hidden Code In Your Daughter’s Finger Painting Of A Pony Day!

You’re The Only Ones In The Restaurant Who Are Still In Love Day!

All the other couples gave up the ghost hundreds of dinners ago. But the light still burns for you two. Everyone can see it in the way you offer each other fork-fulls of food to try, in the way you reach across the table to touch each other’s hands the minute the bus boy clears your plates for the next course. They can see their past selves in you and remember when they felt like you feel. Some of them want to warn you of what’s to come, to tell you to try to hold onto how you feel for as long as you can, to not take it for granted. Others just want to sit as close to you as possible in the hope that your affection for each other might rub off on them and bring them a little closer to each other tonight. Unfortunately, one couple just feels way too pissed off at your happiness and they tipped your waiter a hundred and sixty dollars to let them take your food into the rest room and sprinkle it with urinal water, so you’ve been eating urinal water all night lovebirds.

Happy You’re The Only Ones In The Restaurant Who Are Still In Love  Day!

Be The Princess Who Remembers Where She Came From Day!

You were excited to be plucked out of poverty and away from your cunt step-sisters when the Prince saw how hot you were and fell in love with you. Once in the palace as his princess, though, you discovered just how little regard the monarchy has for the villagers and farmers who comprise their kingdom. You’ve tried to talk the prince into enacting more compassionate legislation but he doesn’t want to upset his father. So you’ve been coercing him to act by witholding sex from him. You first went a month telling him you were just too depressed to have sex thinking about all those high taxes your family has to pay while you’re living in that big castle, until eventually the prince got the message that lowering taxes meant he’d get some action. Then you told him you were too distracted to perform fellatio by the knowledge that so many people were in debtors’ prisons unjustly because of unconscionable lenders, so the prince convinced his father to have all debts under a certain threshold forgiven. You even got the palace whores in on it. They have family in the villages too. He’d go to them but they’d perform horribly to make sure he continued to long for you as his best sex ever. You only have a few more years before you get too old for the prince to find you as desirable as you are now, so make them count. Get the kingdom to subsidize farming and build some schools in the villages, then make him enact a law that makes it illegal for knights to rape commoners. You can do it. You can use your puss to make this kingdom a wonderful place.

Happy Be The Princess Who Remembers Where She Came From Day!

Throw Everything Out Day!

Your possessions are disgusting and today’s the day to stop possessing them once and for all. Throw out all of your furniture, clothing, erotic figurines, human ears, and children that you own and start fresh with all new ones. No sentimentality! Understand? No crying about how you don’t have any money to replace everything. No complaining that a lot of the stuff your husband paid half for. No worrying about how you’ll live without a bed, clothing, a refrigerator, a toilet, salt and pepper shakers, or your medicine. You have to get rid of everything because everything is filthy and you need to get clean. 

This is the only way to get clean.

Happy Throw Everything Out Day!

God’s Big Date Day!

God’s got a big date tonight with Diana, the girl who works at the magazine store.

“What should I wear?” God asks some saints.

They suggest the white robe. Then they tell him not to be nervous.

“Don’t be nervous?” God thunders. “I haven’t been on a date since Shannon.”

Shannon worked at Borders back before God caused them to go out of business. She cheated on God with someone else he created.

“Getting cheated on with my own creation? I’m just supposed to bounce back from that?”

The saints tell God he should just be himself.

On the date, things are going really well. Then in the car God makes a move on Diana. They kiss. God puts his hand on Diana’s breast. They undress. Diana performs fellatio on God and then God performs cunnilingus on Diana. Then God does something weird with Diana’s feet but she’s okay with it. There’s some spitting. Diana demands of God, “Tell me I’ve been disobedient.” God enters Diana from behind and the intercourse lasts several minutes.

God drops Diana off at her place and promises to call her. Back at heaven the saints ask God how it went. God just smiles.

“I know that smile!” one of the saints says. The others high five him.

God waves them off and goes to his room to think about Diana. Does he really like her for her, or is he just excited to feel something for someone again? He likes thinking about her. He kind of can’t wait to see her again. Just before bed he causes a massive earthquake in Southeast Asia, killing hundreds of thousands.

“But Diana’s safe,” God thinks as he turns on his white noise machine to drown out the screams coming from Earth. “Diana’s safe.”

Happy God’s Big Date Day!

You Explain Divorces To Kids Day!

Divorcing parents pay you to come by and tell their kids that their parents are splitting up. You get a thousand bucks a kid. Today you’re doing the MacDougals. Two kids.

“Listen up,” you tell them while driving. You always break the news in your Cutlass. “Your parents are getting a divorce. Your mom fell in love with some guy she works with.”

They want to know what about their dad.

“He hasn’t met anybody yet, far as I know.”

They want to know why.

“He seems to still be in love with your mom. Seems like he expected it to last forever. The whole thing’s kind of knocked him on his ass so go easy on him.”

You’re driving them by the river. Life keeps flowing. That’s the message of that river. They get it.

“Why’s Mom doing this to Dad?” Bobby MacDougal asks.

“When you’re older you’re going to realize that you have to make a lot of decisions in life, and you regret all of them just a little bit. Some you regret more than others. You can’t go back and reverse everything, so you have to pick the decisions you regret the most and try and make a change.”

Debbie MacDougal asks, “So Mom regrets marrying Dad the most?”

You slam on the brakes behind the car in front of you. The kids are startled. Life can end at the drop of a dime. That’s the message with stopping short like that.

“Don’t try to read your parents’ minds,” you tell them. “Just let them overcompensate with presents and stuff. Here are some iPads.”

You throw the iPads into the back seat and they lose their shit.

“See, being children of divorce ain’t so bad right?”

They’ll be lost in their iPad screens. Drive them into a heavy, chaotic traffic jam, one with a burning car by the side of the road. Things might feel okay right now, but life is a slow crawl through chaos and suffering, is the message with driving into a chaotic traffic jam with a burning car by the side of the road like that.

Happy You Explain Divorces To Kids Day!

Anonymous asked: Why do webcomics have a page for each new comic, but webshortstories have all their entries in a single vertically-scrolling blog format?

Good question. My answer is I suck at this.

Transfer Student Day!

The transfer student makes everything possible. You think it’s just a fresh start for you, but the transfer student represents a fresh start for the entire school. You’re the fresh eyes who never saw anyone crying through lunch, the fresh ears who hasn’t heard the thousands of derogatory nicknames those students have been wearing like nooses around their necks since elementary school. For them, for everyone who sees you, you are a new beginning. 

You have no idea the power you possess.

Make a friend today. Lure girls in with your stories of what teenage society consists of outside of their district. Tell them tales, tell them lies, tell them whatever it takes to win their trust and make them want to claim you as theirs.

Get a boyfriend. Lure one away from his long-term girl. Tell him what love was like where you came from. Tell him boys do things to girls where you came from, things you can teach him. You’re pretty sure he can learn, because he seems just as mature as the boys you used to know.

Introduce your classmates to a new synthetic drug. Show them a dance they’ve never danced before. Make them watch a Youtube video they never even heard of, and they thought they’d already seen them all.

You are the open door they can’t wait to storm through. You can lure them anywhere, even to their ruin. 

You know your mission. You know what this means to Lower Hamilton High School that you infiltrate and demolish Washington East. This rivalry has gone on too long. It’s time to stop trying to settle this on the football field.

You’re our chance to take them down from the inside.

Happy Transfer Student Day!

Family Road Trip Day!

Take a road trip with your family. Get your kids into the back seat and your husband in the front and hit the fucking road.

“WHY ARE YOU DRIVING SO FAST? IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! WHERE ARE WE GOING!” your kids and husband will shout. Tell them to shut their goddamn mouths or you’ll drive through a guardrail and into a gulch.

“Road trips are supposed to be spontaneous,” you explain once they’re all quietly cowering. “We’re going to drive and have dangerous adventures until something about us changes.”

You pull into bars and pick fights.

You break into vacation homes and steal silver and electronics.

You transport crystal meth and you pick up hitchhikers who remember seeing the ghost of Elvis Presley and you come to the aid of a crashed crop duster, managing to rescue the pilot before his plane bursts into flames.

You drive for four more months, and when you pause to celebrate your daughter’s eleventh birthday and your son’s ninth by the lip of the grand canyon, you all finally agree that you’ve each discovered something about yourselves that has changed you forever. 

“I hate the road,” your daughter says.

“I hate America,” your son says.

“I hate being in a car,” your husband says.

“I want to spend the rest of my life in a tree,” you say.

Your husband hoists you up into a tree then he and your two kids wave goodbye as you climb higher and higher. Your husband says he’ll come back in a few months with divorce papers, but that he’s glad you’ve discovered yourself, and that you won’t be in his life to drag him on another awful trip like this one ever again.

Happy Family Road Trip Day!

The Lobby, 3:45 AM Day!

“Nightowl,” he says.

You look up from your book and smile a weak smile. “I just can’t stay in bed with my husband through the night,” you explain before returning to your book.

He should just go back to his work, whatever work a graveyard shift hotel desk clerk might have, but he’s not going to. He just got married and he wants to know if his wife does that. “Do all women do that?” he asks.

You tell him you’re sorry you bothered him and you’ll move to the business center.

“Do all women do that?” he asks again.

“I’m just a light sleeper,” you say, trying to put some comfort into your voice.

He asks if you were always a light sleeper. You don’t answer, which gives him your answer loud and clear.

“What stirs you?” he asks.

You close your book. “My eyes snap open like someone flicked a light-switch,” you say. “And I slither out of bed and watch my sleeping husband, feeling like I’m in control, like we’re engaged in some kind of war of wits and by waking up and living a few hours of conscious life without him even knowing it, I’ve got the drop on him.”

He’s terrified. “What do you think will happen if you sleep the whole night through,” he asks.

You shrug. “Not sure since I haven’t let it happen one time in the past fourteen years of marriage,” you say.

He asks again, “Do all women do that?”

“I don’t know if your wife does that,” you say. “Maybe she doesn’t need to since you work nights.”

“I’m just filling in tonight,” he says.

Go to his desk and place your hand on his. “I love my husband,” tell him. “I just don’t want him to win.”

“Win at what?”

You can’t help but smile, he’s so adorably naive.

“Why, win at marriage of course,” you say.

Let go of his hand and go to the business center so he can make a frantic phone call home now.

Happy The Lobby, 3:45 AM Day!

He Cries More Now Day!

When you bump into him it’s the first time you’ve seen him in ten years. He looks the same.

“You look even better,” he says.

You do it at his place. He isn’t married, just like back then. He’s barely employed, just like back then. He’s still good in bed, just like back then. You tell him he hasn’t changed at all.

“I cry more now,” he says. “Sometimes for days at a stretch. Normal I suppose.”

You cry less.

“I also have more trouble going into buildings sometimes now,” he says. “Occasionally I’ll just start walking toward a building entrance and I’ll have to turn around and run. Part of aging I guess.”

That hasn’t happened to you yet.

“I also find myself following men who look well put together to see how they live and find out what they figured out. Is that something that just happens after 35?”

Yeah you don’t really do that at all.

“Anyway want to meet my squirrels?” he asks.

You tell him you have to head home.

“To your squirrels?” he asks, a little uneasy.

You don’t have any squirrels but just to calm him down you say, “Yes. They’re waiting for their nuts.”

He breathes a sigh of relief. He gave you a taste of your past, and you gave him the false hope that his present isn’t as off-course as he suspects it might be.

Happy He Cries More Now Day!

Senator Outside Your House Day!

He’s in love with your daughter.

“She’s in college,” you remind him. “And you’re married.”

“Which is why I have to keep it a secret,” he says. “Up for reelection.”

Your daughter comes running outside and into the Senator’s arms.

“Now you know about us Daddy,” she says, kissing the Senator all over his face.

“Still not going to vote for you,” you say to the Senator.

The three of you laugh very hard, then your daughter and the Senator start making out as you look up at the sky, puffing on your cigarette, wondering whether there’s someone out there for you to love, the way the Senator loves your daughter. It’s been so hard since her mother died.

Happy Senator Outside Your House Day!

Who Dies First Day!

You and your boyfriend are playing Who Dies First, the fun game where lovers tell each other which of them they wish would die first.

You tell your boyfriend you wish you would die first because you could never wish for your boyfriend to die. You’d gladly go before him given the chance.

“I wish you would die first too,” your boyfriend says. You run from the room and don’t talk to him for days.

When you finally speak to him again you demand that he take it back.

“Nope,” he says. “I want you to die first.”

You go silent for a couple more days. When you confront him again, you’re certain he’ll change his tune.

“I’m playing by the rules of the game, which is to say who we want to die first, and we have to be honest. I want you to die first.”

You ask him why.

“I want to die knowing I shared as much of your life as I could,” he says. “I want to die knowing that there won’t be an unknowable future for you without me, a future that I could have enjoyed had I not walked in front of a bus or whatever kills me. I want to die knowing that the only thing I’ve lived for, that being you, is no longer around to live for any longer. That will be a peaceful death, knowing that there’s no point in staying alive any longer because you’re gone and the world is awful. I want to make sure you’re dead, then I’ll kill myself one minute after you.”

Tell him you get it now. Tell him he won the game.

Happy Who Dies First Day!