Your Cheatin' Heart
27 Jul 2020Today’s prompt: “You have just been caught in bed by a jealous spouse. How will you talk your way out of this?”
You won’t. Your spouse’s pistol does all the talking.
Today’s prompt: “You have just been caught in bed by a jealous spouse. How will you talk your way out of this?”
You won’t. Your spouse’s pistol does all the talking.
Today’s prompt: “A person is standing on a soapbox in the park, yelling at passersby. What’s going on?”
You yell and you yell to everyone in hearing distance at the park that, according to the ancient prophecy you’ve just translated, we have a week to close the interdimensional rift in the Marianas Trench before the Old Ones awake, come through it, and devour all of humanity. Unfortunately, no one heeds your entirely accurate predictions, probably because they’re drowned out by all the other warnings being shouted out by other people standing astride soapboxes in the park and inveighing against the dangers of space aliens, 5G networks, and Grimace from McDonaldland.
Today’s prompt: “Getting hit by lightning”
Back when I was a reporter at a community newspaper, we all had to take our turn taking weekend shifts. When you took a weekend shift, it didn’t matter what beat you normally covered – you would cover whatever news happened on the weekend. I was a business reporter, but got to provide color for a menudo cooking contest, cover reactions to the Columbia space shuttle disaster, and interview a mother on the day her daughter’s murderer, who had gone on the lam, was found and brought to justice. All because I happened to be working that weekend.
On your typical weekend shift, unless you were covering a pre-planned event, you would roll in around 3 p.m. and start making calls to all the local emergency services to see if any news had broken while you were out. So one weekend, I rolled in and made my call to the Nampa Police Department. Nothing of import, they said. I called the Caldwell Police Department. Nothing going on, they said. Then I called the Nampa Fire Department.
No fires, the person answering the phone said. But had I talked to the Nampa P.D. about that escaped alligator?
Why no, they hadn’t mentioned it to me, I said.
Yeah, the guy from the fire department said. And you might want to ask the Caldwell P.D. about the guy who was struck by lightning.
Really, I said.
So I called back the Nampa Police Department and asked about the alligator. Oh yeah, the guy said. There was that. Turned out he was pretty new to giving out police blotter type information. I had to coach him through the kinds of information he could give out.
Okay, so what time did it happen? I asked. He told me.
And what city block did it take place on? He was confused. I told him, most police blotter information, they tell you if it happened on, say, the 700 block of 12th Avenue, or the 1400 block of Nectarine.
Oh, he said. It was on the 1820 block of whatever the street it was, I can’t remember. I’m making up that number, too. Thing is, in general, a dispatcher will tell you the 1800 block, not the 1820 block. The 1820 block is often like four houses.
I jotted down that information and then went to the neighborhood with a photographer and started knocking on doors. No answer at the first door. The second door we tried was the house.
I explained to the homeowners who we were and what we’d heard and they were quite eager to point out the fence that the baby alligator had crawled under. My photographer got pics over the fence of the kiddie pool the alligator normally stayed in with the family’s father pointing at it, while I interviewed the mother. Her kids had been playing in the backyard. She was in the house on the phone. The alligator had crawled under the fence while the kids were playing by themselves in the sandbox. They kicked some sand at it, and then one of them ran in to get their mom. Mom saw the alligator and freaked. The fuck. Out.
The episode turned into a four-day saga. The next day, we found out that the couple across the fence had been watching the alligator for a friend, but were arrested while he was gone, so the (again, baby, maybe four feet long but almost certainly would not have eaten those kids) alligator got hungry and ventured out. I wrote a story on exotic animal ordinances in the area. And I was able to cover the reunion of the alligator with its owner, at which time I finally found out the alligator’s name. It was Steve.
I also called the Caldwell Police Department that first day on the weekend and wrote a brief about the man who was struck by lightning. All the basics. Name if they’d announced it yet, I don’t remember. Where he was at the time and what he was doing (construction work, I think). Doing all right in the hospital, as I recall.
Your death by lightning strike, I’m sad to say, was similarly eclipsed by a wild moose attack that left two in the hospital. What can I say? The news loves an animal story.
Today’s prompt: “Pregnant and lost”
Even when you’re giving birth to a normal human baby, it’s probably best to do it in a hospital or with a doula, not in the middle of the woods. I really, really wouldn’t recommend that locale when you’re giving birth to the Antichrist. But hey, what do I know. You do you.
Today’s prompt: “Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. Write some other short rhymes or mnemonics about historic events or important facts that a schoolkid might have to learn.”
On June 19, 1865, for all slaves, freedom came alive.
In 1965, on Bloody Sunday, John Lewis marched for equality one day.
In 2020, Cthulhu came by and ate [insert-your-name] on rye.
Today’s prompt: “You’re a Nigerian e-mail scammer. Write an e-mail that will convince the recipient to send you $200.”
“Dearest friend,” the email begins,
“I write to you today to inform you of a grave thret upon your person. There is a man standing behind you rite now who is holding a very sharp sord. He will execute you if you do no immediatly send $200USD to the account linked here.
“Yours very sincerly,
“Naomi Tunde
“Princess of Nigeria”
You chuckle as you close the email. Of course you’re not sending this scammer any money. And then you notice something moving in your peripheral vision. You turn your head just as the sword comes down on your neck.
Today’s prompt: “What you ate for breakfast”
A breakfast burrito with chorizo, as the medical examiner who performed your autopsy determined.