From the Moment of Sensation

"Stop!" she cried as I tossed the pills in my mouth with a swallow of water. I spit them out. "What? Are they the wrong pills?" I checked the bottle. "Or are they expired?" I looked closer. "Okay, I don't get it. What's wrong?"

"That's the thing," she said, "they're the right pills. My research has discovered that even minor emotions and sensations create intangible thinking creatures, spirits of a sort."

"Spirits?" I said. "That's--"

"Crazy, I know," she said. "There's really no better term for them, but they're real, provably real. And your taking painkillers would've, well, killed dozens or hundreds of pain spirits. It would've been mass murder."

"Well," I said, "accepting your hypothesis for now, I'm taking the pills as an antiinflammatory, not for any pain. Is that okay?"

She visibly relaxed. "Oh, yeah, that's fine."

I took some new pills and cleaned up the mess the old ones had become. "Hey, what about the pain I don't feel now but won't feel in the future because I've taken these?"

"Oh, that's not murder. That's like, I dunno, contraception," she said. "It's fine."

I felt the blood drain from my face. "What's wrong?" she said.

"I'm Catholic."

The Monsters and the Ghost

Fire Monster and Vampire were walking through the dark forest when they heard a spooky noise: "WhoooOOOooo!" The monsters stopped. "See what it is," said Fire Monster.

"You see what it is," said Vampire.

They both looked around and saw nothing. When they turned back, a ghost floated between them.

"Ahhhh!" said the monsters together. "Get it!"

Fire Monster breathed fire from her mouth and threw fire from her toes, but the fire went right through the ghost and set a tree on fire. Vampire leapt upon the ghost and tried to suck out its blood, but Vampire passed through the ghost without touching it and bit the ground.

"Oh," said the monsters. Vampire spit out dirt.

"WhoooOOOooo," said the ghost.

"Maybe," said Fire Monster, "we should find out why it's here?" She turned to the ghost and said, "Uh, hi. How are you?"

"OoooOOOoookay," said the ghost. "I'm loooOOOoooking for newoooOOOooo friends."

"We don't need any new friends," said Fire Monster.

"Wait," said Vampire. "Maybe we can start a new club for monsters. We each have a friend, but we don't have a club."

"OK," said Fire Monster.

"OoooOOOoookay," said Ghost.

And that was the beginning of Monster Club.

The Final Years of Rupert Murdoch

"I've decided to spend the rest of my life in the shower." If anyone else had said it, he would've been laughed out of the room. But no one laughed at Rupert Murdoch. He renovated his home, installing the world's largest on-demand water heating system. They added multiple showerheads, installed waterproof furniture, added televisions and a state-of-the-art sound system to the bathroom, and purchased waterproof tablet computers to manage everything in the house.

After a month in the shower, Rupert told his staff, "I'd like to go to the kitchen," but refused the offered towels and robes.

He tiled half the mansion, expanded the heating system by an order of magnitude, added showerheads everywhere, and installed a system of motion sensors to keep the showers on him wherever he went.

The following interview with GQ asked him why, and Rupert said, "I've always loved showers. At this point in my life, I have so much money I couldn't possibly spend all of it. Why not spend the rest of my life where I'm happiest?"

After Rupert's death three years later (he slipped in the shower), more than one of his obituaries read, "He died as he lived: In the shower."

The Wrong People

I suddenly realized I'd invited the wrong people. Everyone I'd slept with and everyone I'd killed sat at the table with me, waiting for appetizers. I tried to start some small talk, but for some reason everyone was angry with me. The main course arrived on a covered silver tray: a great big suckling pig, complete with the apple in its mouth. But with my face. I poked it to make sure it was real.

Chance turned to me from my left, blood flaking from a crusted wound where I'd cut him from ear to ear. "This isn't hell," he said, "whatever you might think."

Spider put a hand on my thigh from my right, giving me an erection. "This isn't a dream, whatever you might hope."

I laughed. "Obviously it's—"

"Not a hallucination," chorused the other side of the table. "Not brain damage," chanted six at the end. "You have not been kidnapped by the future for shits and giggles," said six more from the other end.

I looked at the assortment of fatally wounded and arousing memories. I thought about killing the living ones and fucking the dead ones.

I grinned. Might as well have a good time.

A Look at the Marble

"So," said the interviewer, "the question we're required to ask of any great artist." He and the subject laughed. "Where do you get your ideas?"

"I'm not sure I qualify as a great artist," Mrs. Moberly said from her antique couch. "But humility aside, I have to go with the classic standby. I look at the marble," she said, and her eyes grew a little distant, "and I see something in it that wants to get out."

Behind her, workers packed marble statues in cushioned boxes. All were of monstrous creatures, from palm size to larger than a bear, unearthly things that disturbed audiences the world over. More than one critic had complimented Moberly's art while complaining of nightmares after her shows.

"You might be the only person who sees them before you're finished," said her interviewer. "So, you let them out?"

"Oh no," she said. "I always stop just before that point. I hate to imagine what would happen if I actually let them out."

The sound of marble shattering on the ground made the interviewer jump, but Mrs. Moberly calmly reached under the couch. She came up with a shotgun and racked it as the workers started screaming.

The Type Writer

"At last," cried the writer. He picked up a package from the front step and carried it inside in both arms. "It's here!" He brought it up the stairs and set it down before his family: His wife, their two children, and his uncle, all of whom looked up from the dining table. He made space among the remains of their dinner, his nearly untouched, and grabbed up the breadknife to cut it open.

A moment later, plastic packing bubbles littered the near-empty plates. The writer lifted from the box a typewriter, glorious in its severe black, mechanical form, and howled in glee.

He ran the few steps to his desk, where he swept a pencil and paper to the floor and shoved aside his computer to make space. Running its cable down to the nearest outlet, he called out, "My era of unproductivity is over! Finally, I can write while avoiding the distractions of the modern age!" He gestured at his computer, and then gesturally threw it away. "Now give me space!"

His family cleaned up the dinner and the packaging as the writer wound fresh paper into his brand-new typewriter and sat before it.

And sat.

And sat.

The Stylist

"So, what do you do with all this hair?" he asked. The stylist paused. She had recently begun therapy and was trying out a policy of complete honesty as good for her state of mind. "Well," she said, "I collect it and add it to a pile in the back. Once I have enough, I'm going to bring it to life."

She tried to keep working on his hair, but he turned and looked at her. "Really?"

"Yup," she said. "Turn to the left?"

This only lasted a minute before he turned and looked at her again. "So, you really have this giant pile of hair?" She nodded. "Can I see?"

She looked around the otherwise-empty salon. "Sure," she said. Brushing off the apron and letting him up, she showed him into the back, and then through into a room beyond. Sure enough, there was a pile of hair.

"So, uh, how do you bring it to life?"

"It needs a sacrifice of blood," she said. "A couple quarts, I think." He edged toward the door, and she said, "Oh, heck, you're safe. I'm going to use my own."

He tipped well but gave her a terrible rating on Yelp.