The Game
Everybody ran outside. The house wasn’t on fire, but Oscar had said it was.
“Why did you yell that the house was on fire?” they asked him.
Oscar just stood there and smiled. He’d never lost a game of hide and seek in his goddamn life.
The Shirt
He had one shirt left to iron. But he’d used up all the water already.
“Should I risk it, Billy?”
The cat just stared back. It didn’t understand ironing.
“It’s easy for you, Billy. Cats don’t wear clothes.”
Billy began to purr.
“Screw it.” He began to iron.
The shirt was ruined, obviously.
The Time Machine
“What is it?”
“It’s a time machine obviously” he explained to his past self. “How do you think I got here?”
“Oh right. How does it work?”
“It works by travelling through time, for God’s sake. I’d forgotten how stupid I was ten minutes ago.”
“I suppose you want me to get in this thing then?”
“OH MY GOD. YES”
A Thousand Paperclips
The doorbell rang. The postman handed over the parcel.
Jeremy tore it open feverishly, like a dog at Christmas.
It was a thousand paperclips!
“Why did you buy so many paperclips?” his wife asked, sighing.
He said he didn’t know. But the efficiency savings alone made it worthwhile.
A Very Special Birthday
“I want a cake with my face on, and that’s that!”
“But… we’ve already made the cake. It’s right there on the table!”
“Well, change it!”
“It’s simply not poss-”
Her majesty didn’t like this one bit. “OFF WITH HIS HEAD!” she ordered.
Everyone agreed that somebody needed to have a word with her. You couldn’t go around chopping people’s heads off anymore. Not in 2014.
The Priest
He didn’t even know if this one was going to be a wedding or a funeral. As usual, he’d have to do it on the fly.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to..”
He looked around at the crowd. A hundred smiling schoolchidren beamed back.
“um..er…”
Someone at the back coughed.
What could these children possibly want? He crossed his fingers and hoped for the best.
“… selfie?”
The End
As he lay dying, Jeffrey turned to his wife of forty years and just about managed to croak out a few last words.
“Maureen, my dear, there’s something I need to ask you.”
Maureen let a tear trickle down her cheek not even thinking of wiping it off. “What is it, my love?”
“Can we do it… can we do it one last-” he paused to cough up some mucus. As he hacked, Maureen sighed deeply.
“You mean you want to..?” she asked.
“Yes. Let’s take one more. One last selfie.”
As Maureen leaned in she could barely see the iPhone through the tears. Her face scrunched up like a tissue, she pressed the shutter button.
Jeffrey flatlined. His Do Not Resuscitate orders were clear. He was gone.
Maureen uploaded the picture to her profile.
#RIP #nofilter #like4like #teamfollowback #beautiful #girl #spam4spam
The Flower Shop
Janet walked in and demanded service.
“Give me a bunch of flowers,” she laughed.
“This is a bank, m'lady,” replied the cashier. “Get out, you’re drunk.”
The Secret Party
I had a secret party three years ago, but nobody came. Maybe I should have told someone. But I really wanted it to be a secret.
So the year after that, I made a poster. I didn’t hang it up anywhere, of course, but I figured - hey, word’s gotta get out somehow, right? Again, I partied alone.
So last year I caved in and told a few people. People I could trust to keep a secret. No one came.
So basically my point is I know we just met and I’ve already missed my stop, but I’m having a party tonight and do you want to come?
Happy Birthday
“It’s my birthday and we’ll do what I want!”
“Look dude, right now we’re not going anywhere. And I really doubt the Queen has nothing better to do than hang around with you.”
The car sat still in the slow lane of the M25. Some idiot had let a herd of cows wander onto the motorway and the police had closed it off in both directions.
“This is the worst birthday ever!” he huffed to himself.
“C'mon, that’s not fair. These cows shouldn’t even have been here in the first place. Who could have predicted that?”
I rolled down a window.
“Screw you, cows!”
They mooed back, as if to mock me. They appeared to be enjoying their new tarmac surroundings and showed no signs of moving on.
“I don’t know if we’ll be getting out of this any time soon. But I’m sure about one thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. We’re having steak for dinner tonight.”
I locked eyes with the cow at the front (possibly the leader?)
“Rare.”
The Christmas Story
“How on earth are we stuck in traffic again? At Christmas, for Christ’s sake.”
“Ha!”
“What now?”
“Oh nothing. You just ‘Christmas for Christ’s sake.’ I mean, that’s exactly what it is. So it’s like ironic I suppose.”
An icy silence fell in the car. Also there was some actual ice coming in through the air vents. I think the heating was busted or something.
The road ahead was blocked. A load of reindeer has escaped and were just all over the place. A few policemen looked on with less than no interest. It was Christmas Day, they weren’t being paid enough overtime to care.
“I guess this mean’s the dinner’s off then.”
I turned to my partner in the car. “Nah, they’ll probably just go ahead without us. Those turkey’s aren’t cheap.”
My companion sighed deeply, exhaling a small steam cloud that rose up into the slowly forming upper atmosphere of our refurbished Mini Cooper.
“Where the hell did these reindeers come from anyway?” he asked.
“I think there’s one of those winter wonderland Santa’s Grotto things around here somewhere. I guess they must have got out.”
He grinned to himself, which was never a good sign. “Sounds like a 'elf and safety nightmare!” he quipped.
If we were actually moving I would have slammed my foot down on the breaks. But since we weren’t, all I could do was to turn and stare at him angrily.
“You know that joke has literally been done to death, right?”
“No it hasn’t,” he said, grinning to himself like an idiot, “it’s great.”
“No. It’s boring and tired.”
“You’re still wrong. It hasn’t literally been done to death. It’s not alive. It can’t be dead.”
“I was using literally in the figurative sense.”
“You can’t do that. Literally means what you’re saying corresponds exactly with reality.”
“Wrong. In August 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary changed the definition of 'literally’ to account for the metaphorical use, as it’s commonly used for emphasis.”
He shut up. That kind of thing usually shut him up.
Eventually they lured the reindeer off the road with a big sack of carrots. I couldn’t believe that actually worked. We missed the Christmas dinner, but the police gave us a carrot each as a little present.
We argued all the way home about the plural of reindeer, chomping on our carrots the whole way.