Toys'R'Us Kid

“Seriously, I’ve sent out fifty resumes, and not one call back.” Ted paces anxiously across the living room, stomping a shallow trench into the carpet.

“Did you put the right phone number on it?” Jed asks, while he watches Star Whores: The Empire Strikes Black.

“This resume is perfect. No mistakes.”

The heroine, Syndee Grace, is in an unenviable position between two large stormtroopers as Jed reads over the resume. He asks, “you don’t really want a job, do you?”

“What?”

“These are the lyrics to the Toys’R’Us theme song.”

Ted pauses, defeated, and says, “so what? I’m a Toys’R’Us kid.”

Serenpidity

“Nice pants, fag!” Carlos Silva yelled as he hung Troy by the waistband of his dinosaur imprint sweatpants on the outstretched finger of a statue of his school’s namesake: Sir Alexender Flemming. Troy’s older brother had warned that they were a poor choice for the first day of high school, but they were Troy’s favourite pants.

Troy tried to free himself, but his pants tore, revealing white, skid-marked underwear.

Shaking, Troy cried, “I’m going to fucking murder you!”

That just made everyone laugh harder. Later in the week, when Carlos died mysteriously, everyone wondered whether they should’ve been laughing at all.

An alternative to Florida

Mark and Maggie Holson entered the Parkdale High School gymnasium where the best Euchre players in the country were awaiting the beginning of the National Euchre Championship. It was Mark and Maggie’s first time qualifying, and the whole experience was becoming overwhelming for them. More overwhelming, though, was a vague smell of death and cat urine wafting through the gym.

Maggie whispered to her Dad, “I always thought people went to Florida to die. Turns out they just come here.”

Mark cautioned, “don’t underestimate them, Mags. Seniors have nothing but time on their hands.”

“Time and perfume from the 1500s. Uhg!”

Basilisk

Basilisk was the malignant monster who terrorized the countryside, wreaking havoc upon all it laid its soulless eyes.

Sir Huntingham was the vengeful knight who vowed to slay Basilisk as his father lay dying from its claw.

Tracking it for months, he found it asleep one moonlit night in a quiet, wooded dell. “Loiter not in the land of the living, foul demon!” Sir Huntingham cried, dragging his sword across the monster’s belly, revealing its insides.

Oliver was the lonely orphan living inside the Basilisk costume whose final thought before the knight’s sword tore through him was, “this all there is?”

Organic Machinery

As a child, Dr. Weller spent most of her time playing in her backyard. She sat near a large bush with lavender-coloured flowers that attracted enormous, fuzzy bumblebees. These bees puttered around like clown cars from flower to flower, burrowing deep inside, wiggling around, and then climbing out, often returning to the same flower later. They made her think of organic machinery, a single cog in something much greater, unaware of the master plan.

Now, the colour of the bacterial rash on Mr. Tindal’s semi-erect penis (he apologized profusely) reminded her of those flowers, albeit less majestic and far more sordid.