Scene In A Pub

by Joe

“Look at me” said Jenna as she held what’s left of her strawberry cosmo. She’s in a bar, it’s a Saturday night, it’s pretty packed. Her friends have all shuffled off to various corners talking to potential suitors, she’s left there with Mindy who’s just a swig away from passing out.

Jenna stares longingly just 6 feet away at this guy, who looked like Harrison Ford and James McAvoy put in a blender. Jenna doesn’t know his name but she’s seen him here pretty much every weekend, enough to develop a strong crush on him.

“Just fucking go over there and talk to him” Mindy blurted out.

“That’s not how it’s done” Jenna replied.

“How is he even going to know you’re interested if you’re just oggling him from the sidelines, you gotta put yourself out there and make your move!”

Jenna sighs.

She walks over to him, sets her drink down at the bar and casually stands beside him. He takes notice and they have a fleeting look at each other’s eyes.

“Hi” he says.

“Hey” she replies. “I like your tie”

“thanks”

they would go on to have a nice long conversation with bouts of incessant flirting. She would find out that he likes football, he’s in graduate school, enjoys Jazz and is single. Her friends would then want to leave and she would go with them but not before asking to borrow his phone. In which she puts her number for him to call ‘sometime’. They smile at each other as she leaves the bar.

Three days later he would call and ask her out on a date. They would go to a showcase of his favorite band where they would continue what they started. She would get to know more about him and he’d get to know her. They’d end the date in front of her house where a goodnight kiss would be in order and oh what a kisser he would be.

“Well?” Mindy asks “Are you going to go over there?”

They’re still in the bar. Jenna’s still just standing there with her drink looking at him. The guy starts talking to another girl.

“Are you ready to go?” Jenna asks Mindy.

“Will you drive?” Mindy replies.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

My Relationship with Santa Clause

by Joe

I was running around the house one day when my mom angrily told me to stop and behave. In my mind I thought sure stop, behave be nice right now, I can go back to pretending I was Peter Pan and flying around the room later but then she tells me that I have to stay nice, all year in fact, because Santa Clause is watching and if he sees that I’m naughty, I won’t get any gifts this Christmas.

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Anthony’s Playlist for Annie

by Joe

Dear Annie,

Our relationship means the world to me. I have been thinking of you every day since we’ve last laid eyes on each other and I was listening to the radio when i realized, I need to make us a mix tape. I have scoured my itunes library to find the perfect list of songs that describe the story of our love.

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Awake

by Joe

I open my eyes, I’m still here I think. the room is as white as ever, the sun shines from the window, I can hear birds outside chirping, happily fluttering about. I’ve always hated that sound. It’s every stereotype of a perfect day. The princess prances about the sunlight, birds fluttering around her giving her a head dress made of flowers. Singing in tune to her annoying helium-enhanced voice. Birds, fucking birds and their fucking songs. Waking me up from my sleep. I hate that.

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Echoes (Act 3)

part 3 of 4

by Joe

Saturday Morning, the Library.

“So Aliens exist.” Elliot walks up the library’s steps with the Doctor, the TARDIS once again parked in the lobby. (apparently, something called a ‘Chameleon Circuit’ renders it unnoticeable)

“Alright, I think we’re here early enough that you’re probably not here yet, I mean past you, I mean technically present you, you know what I mean.” The Doctor says with a big duffel bag on his shoulder.

“So I am talking to an actual alien right now.” Elliot says.

“Are we going to go through this again?” The Doctor says.

“But think about, this means Tom Cruise wasn’t nuts after all, Xenu exists!”

“Well he does but that doesn’t mean Scientology is correct.”

“Oh wow, well what about Christianity?”

“just a religion.”

“Jesus isn’t real?”

“Of course he is, i was there on his birthday”

“you were one of the wise men weren’t you? I bet you brought Mirh, cheap bastard.”

“It was short notice, now focus, where is this Kissinger person?”

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Children of Stalin pt 1

by Peter

A lone phone rings in the middle of the night. A man is there to answer the phone, his name is Jimmy Bonnarelli. He answers the phone,”Yeah, this is Jimmy”

A man with a Brooklyn accent responds, “There are some friends of mine that are coming into town this week, and I want you to give them a proper welcoming. You know, some of that Jimmy B hospitality.”

“Five star?”

“I wish nothing but the best for them.”

“It’s not gonna be cheap.”

“I wasn’t counting on it.”

“Alright, I got it.”

“I got some people that can help you with the arrangements.”

“No, that’s fine. I have my people.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t quite make myself clear. This welcoming is very important for all of the familes. For the sake of peace and happiness you’ll have to work with a partner. One of the kikes. You have no say in this.”

Jimmy hesitates, he doesn’t like working with strangers, and something about people who won’t eat pork just doesn’t sit right with him. “Yeah, I’ll do it. So long as the kike doesn’t get in the way.”

Jimmy wasn’t exactly in the hospitality industry, nor did he have any intention to take his new clients out for dinner and show them the sights. No, he was a contract killer, a good one at that. He had honed his skills working for the OSS, taking care of any Nazi cells over on his side of the pond. A dashing figure, most people would not figure him for a paid killer, but he here was, high in demand and being hired for another one. His new targets were some Stalinist Russian extremists fed up with Kruschev’s inaction concerning the US. This job was the usual fill a guy full of holes, it would take more finesse, the kind that the common thug doesn’t not have, something only Jimmy can provide. This would take some of his cunning. No, all of his cunning.

Lava Lamps

by Peter

The alarm clock goes off. It’s 7:00AM, time to go to work. A hand reaches out from underneath a blanket, feeling around, slowly making its way to the alarm clock. The hand reaches the alarm, finally meeting its goal, and comes to rest on top of it. The alarm continues to blare.

2 hours and 43 minutes later, the alarm is still blaring, and our protagonist finally rouses from his seemingly inescapable slumber. He finally manages to turn off the alarm. With the alarm no longer screeching, a soft moaning can be heard. Jim lifts up the covers, revealing himself and a female companion. As he’s getting up from the bed, he groggily mumbles “Hey, I gotta go to work, Sally.”

Still clutching sleep’s embrace, she moans,”Margaret”

“Just let yourself out and don’t touch my lava lamps, Tina.”

His lava lamps are his most treasured possesions. The bedroom which contain them is a mess with dirty laundry strewn about the floor haphazardly, a recreation of a demilitarized zone within a domestic setting. His lava lamps sat neatly, proudly on a shelf, transcending the mess it finds itself in. They weren’t much to look at, looking like an assortment of different sized mason jars, but they were his prizes, his trophies, and he deeply cared about them.

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Echoes (Act 2)

part 2 of 4 by joe

Saturday Night, The Library

Elliot runs. Through the hallways, past bookshelves. The library has started to look like a sinister labyrinth, the hallways painted in various shades of darkness. Trying to find his way to the exit, he tries to scream but can’t. he finds another person at the end of a hallway with his back towards him. Elliot runs up to the person but as the person turns around it’s another demon, just as bald and pale-faced as the one chasing him, Elliot rounds a corner and yet another one stares him down. There are 3 of them.

Elliot keeps running, He tries to a pull a bookshelf down, he can’t, they’re too heavy. He gets the idea of throwing books at them. He grabs book after book after book throwing them at his pursuers who are unfazed by them. Elliot grabs a large, heavy book, he looks at it and it’s a comic book encyclopedia. He puts it back on the shelf. He keeps running.

Lamps start consecutively bursting overhead. One can barely make out 3 sinister figures catching up to him. There doesn’t seem to be a gap in the bookshelves, each corner he rounds leads to another hallway. Elliot keeps running, he is clearly terrified, tears welling up in his eyes, breathing heavily, He’s tired and his legs are about to give out. He continues running, he rounds one more corner and finds himself at a dead end. Shit.

Elliot looks at the corner behind him. One can make out 3 shadows getting bigger and bigger. Elliot braces himself.

“Behind you” a familiar voice says.

Elliot turns around and is knocked unconcious.

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That Inconsiderate Bastard

by Peter

Here I am trying to make an honest living, well as honest as kidnapping a small girl and holding her for ransom can be, and this guy just busts in out of nowhere. Just who the hell does he think he is? Can’t be bothered to knock or even ring the bell. He just kicks down the door and starts shooting. Sheesh. People these days have no respect. You’d think they were all raised in the wilderness all missing proper door etiquette and what-not.

I see that he took down Vinnie, poor Vinnie, he didn’t even want to be here. We were on our way to a bar and I told him that I just had to make a quick stop. He had nothing to do with this, but there he is on the ground all bleeding from several new and interesting holes courtesy of Mr. I-can’t-knock-on-a-door-to-save-my-life.

I’ve had enough of this guy. He’s gonna get it and I’m giving it to him(no homo).  I point my shaft at him and squeeze off a few rounds (no homo). He overturns a table and ducks behind it, it just figures that a guy without any manners would just make a mess of things and hide behind the table like a coward. He thinks he’s safe behind those plywood tables, he’s wrong. I’m shooting and tearing up the table when he jumps out and shoots me. He shoots me! Now, this is the part where I fall down. I do so not because I’m afraid and I’m just playing opossum, but because he hit me good and now I’m dying. All because of that inconsiderate bastard.

Echoes (Act 1)

part 1 of 4 by Joe

Saturday Night, The Library.

Elliot is running down the library hallway, the lamps consecutively bursting overhead. One can barely make out 3 sinister figures catching up to him. There doesn’t seem to be a gap in the bookshelves, each corner he rounds leads to another hallway. Elliot keeps running, he is clearly terrified, tears welling up in his eyes, breathing heavily, He’s tired and his legs are about to give out. He continues running, he rounds one more corner and finds himself at a dead end. Shit.

Elliot looks at the corner behind him. One can make out 3 shadows getting bigger and bigger. Elliot braces himself.

“Behind you” a familiar voice says.

Elliot looks around and sees a fist hit his face, knocking him to the ground. Just before losing consciousness he could barely make out two figures hover over him.

“Ugh, I”m gonna regret that.” one of them says.

The two figures turn their attention to the corner. One’s a tall man with a trench coat, the other, is another Elliot both of them carrying two strange looking guns.

“Alright, where were we?” Asks the man in the trench coat.

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