Category Archives: Comedy

Forget that Dimension!

by Zach Zimmerman

Barry hummed as he concentrated, “Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand.”

The dirty technician fine tuned two gigantic knobs at once. The fate of the rest of his fellow man laid on him. Three hundred or less citizens took shelter in the beaten down bomb shelter. The surface was crawling with hard-shelled spider-like aliens, eating the few humans and animals that survived the initial invasion. The foot soldiers carried weapons that would burn anything short of steel in a few seconds.

Barry was lucky enough to have been stationed in area fifty-one when they arrived. He was part of Project Stargate; trying to open a man-made rift into other, habitable dimensions. Each combination of knobs and a few hundred switches were used to tune in to specific frequencies. He could also open a rift for a few minutes, but he only had enough power to keep one open long enough for an evacuation.

He wasn’t even the project leader. Barry was in mid-training for the enormous blue sphere and its primitive controls. Luckily the glowing ball gave enough light to fill the room, so he saved precious energy for his light bill. Still, he whipped out a flashlight for more precise readings on the instruments spread throughout the decent sized lab.

Colonel Amanda Sans entered, “Any progress doc?”

“You know I’m just a tech right? The real doc never made it back to work.”

“I’m aware. So, any progress?”

Barry sighed and twisted around to his personal refrigerator. He pulled off seven pictures and described each, “Here, we got two deserts, one with a constant sulfur storm, the other with a white dwarf for a sun. Here’s a forest with ammonia-based life—”

“That’s bad right?”

“Only if you want to breathe there. That one, sent a drone through to confirm that at least half the planet is covered in very active volcanoes. This jungle could be colonized, if the trees don’t like the taste of humans.”

The colonel shook her head, “Skip.”

“Now this one, is identical to our Earth, but it looks like another kind of alien species wiped out another kind of alien race.”

“Would they like us?”

“They shot our drone on sight, smelled the camera, and ate it.”

“What about this last one? It’s all black.”

“I’m not sure, I got a lot of positive atmospheric readings, but I’m going to send a drone with night vision.”

“Well, it looks like you’re getting closer. Keep up the good work.” The colonel handed the pictures back and nodded before leaving.

Barry looked at the last picture. I got a good feeling about you.

***

Cindy sat at the edge of her bed, hunching forward as she concentrated. At that moment, she had nothing to say or yell into her headset. Her fingers and thumbs had become one with her controls. Left! She threw a knife into the kid that sounded way too young to be playing a Mature-rated game. “How’d that feel you little bastard?!”

Enemy fire to her rear. She swung the analog sticks and jumped right, then she scored a headshot in midair. “Holy shit! Did anyone else see that?”

Crash! Slam! Cindy dove off the bed to the mostly clean carpet. Something as big as a softball put a hole in her closet door. She inched herself over the bed to see a dirty chrome sphere half planted in her wall. Cindy dropped the controller and grabbed an empty beer bottle for a weapon. She still flinched when the metal ball popped free and hovered a few feet in front of her.

“Holy shit!”

The orb twirled a lens to Cindy, then opened up with a dozen kinds of probes, lights and syringes. Cindy hurled the bottle at the drone and ducked behind her bed for a baseball bat. “Stay away!”

A pale man in a dirty lab coat entered from the closet. “No need to panic!”

“Ahhhhhh!”

Barry punched a few buttons on some kind of PDA, causing the drone to clamp shut, and hover back into the closet. “Is that better?”

“Who the fuck are you?!”

“I’m Barry, kind of a scientist. And I need your help.”

***

About ten minutes of talking had finally gotten Cindy to calm down. Barry was still asking about major differences in their worlds. It all sounded fine until Barry glanced at the DVD and Blu ray shelves. “Cindy, I see you only have one season of Firefly.”

“Oh, it got cancelled after thirteen episodes.”

Barry’s face paled. “You told me you didn’t have an apocalypse here.”

“Wait, what?”

Barry was already moving back to the closet, “The only thing that keeps my people going, is knowing that President Whedon will continue to bring us the best damned television we’ve ever known. I didn’t even watch the season ten finale before coming here!”

“Take me with you!”

***

Colonel Sans entered Barry’s lab and rested her palm on the pistol at her hip. “What’s this?”

Barry stopped in his tracks, ready to throw a small box into the rift sphere. “This world needs our help. Every show that keeps our people motivated has been cancelled in there.”

“Is there a hostile alien invasion on the other side?”

“Just humans.”

“Exactly like us?”

“Yeah.”

“Then how about we evacuate and bring everything with us?”

Barry felt a little stupid, “I guess that’s a better plan.”

 

 

Back and Forth

by Eric Toribio

The city glowed neon in the nighttime. Maybe it was just my goggles. They made everything look a little funny. Not that everything wasn’t funny. Not “haha” funny. Peculiar funny. The kinda funny where crooks and politicians do things that don’t make a whole lotta sense. But who’s the crook and who’s the politician?

I’d been followin’ this guy for the better part of an hour. Waitin’ for him to slip up. My client had their suspicions, but I knew he was guilty. They always were. My feet kicked up water from the puddles forming from the rain. It was making my socks wet.

The world flickered. Damn goggles. Hadn’t worked right since I got ‘em. But as much as they failed, they also helped me keep track of whoever I was following. It helps in the private investigation business. Made my job easier, that’s for sure. The guy I was followin’ turned and entered a building. Finally.

I turned to follow and the world flickered again. Instead of a door, I found a brick wall. Smacked m’damn nose on it. I stepped back and tried to make sense of it. The world flickered back and I saw the door again. I grabbed the knob and then-

Brick wall. My hand was encased perfectly in brick. This was a helluva conundrum. What the hell was going on? I didn’t see anybody else on the sidewalk.

“Little help!” I called. No reply. Looks like I was stuck. I’d have taken my goggles off if not for fear I’d get stuck in that personless void. I tried the usual. Kick the brick wall. Punch the brick wall with my free, non-dominant hand. Headbutt the brick wall. As usual, nothing. I just had to wait for the flicker.

***

Hours passed. I actually started to think about life and philosophy. I didn’t like it. Thankfully the world flickered back just as I was getting too deep for comfort and I shoved the door open and dashed inside the building. I ripped the goggles off my face and threw ‘em to the ground. Then I went down the stairwell and into whatever dive bar this guy led me to.

I saw him. Sittin’ there like a typical bastard. He gave off the stench of the type-a rat you wouldn’t even let touch the bottom of your shoe. He was chattin’ up some broad. They held hands and I saw the transaction. When they got up and started walkin’ to the door, I got in their way.

“Norton,” I said with my best mean face on. I stepped forward and grabbed his throat.

*flicker*

I held nothing. I stood in the middle of an empty room, losing my balance. I fell flat on my face. My patience was wearing thin. I ran around trying to find a door. I found it and ran out to the empty street. No cars or anything. Weird. Without rhyme or reason I just started running.

*flicker*

I bumped into somebody and we fell to the ground. The back of his head looked familiar. I flipped him over and it was HIM. Norton.

“I caught you, you son of a bitch!” I said. I went to smack his face for the trouble.

*flicker*

My hand flew through the air. I nearly smacked my own self in the face. I just sat down. What was the point?

*flicker*

Somebody’s knee hit my nose, breaking it. They’d been running. They tripped over me. I was in pain, but not showin’ it. I stood up and hailed a taxi, asked him to take me to my office. I was done for the day. Everything was getting a little too crazy for my taste. We made it halfway there, no incident. Then-

*flicker*

I was sailing through the air at a good forty m-p-h. There was no way this was ending well. I flew through the air for a long time. Before I hit the ground-

*flicker*

I landed on an oncoming car and was terrified, the wind nearly blowing my face off. The startled driver stopped the car and it threw me forward. It took a bit to get my head straight. The driver was angry at me, of course. I threw him aside and, uh, commandeered his vehicle. Bless my stars, I made it to my office. I quickly called my client and told her I discovered her husband cheating. I didn’t want any more part of it. There was no telling if it was the case that made these weird things start happening or if it was just a coincidence. I looked out the window. How could I even be sure what was real anymore? Through the window I didn’t see any people. No cars. No lights. No rain. The buildings looked like cardboard boxes. Everything bland and lifeless.

I’m in the other world. Maybe it’s better here. No funny stuff. Everything’s just the way it is.

I’m hungry.

The Lazy Blink

by Jacob Gehman

Light flickered in the laboratory, the cold fluorescents illuminating a metal table.

“Do, do do, do,” sang Brils under his breath. “BANG, BANG, BANG!” he said, not under his breath. He shimmied around the table, grabbing his scalpel, “Pirate skulls and bones,” he sang, “Mmm, mmm, mmm, weed and bones.”

He wielding the scalpel, maneuvering with deft flicks of his wrist. Blood started spurting onto his labcoat. And more blood. He reached for thread and a needle, humming the whole time.

“LETHAL POISON IN THEIR SYSTEM!” he shouted, almost in tune, and hit the “off” button on his CD player.

He stared at the table. “Welcome to your new life, Mittens.” Brils suppressed a chuckle, but not his lopsided smile.

***

“Ok, it’s simple,” said John, trying to remember the instructions given that Brils gave to him. “We, um, put the cat in the building. We’ll see what the cat sees on our computer monitor. When the cat sees what we want to blast, we push the red button.”

“Will the mods to the cat set off metal detectors?” asked Perry.

“Uh, I didn’t ask.”

“Well, is there metal in its doohickey?”

“Probably! I mean, what do you want me to say? Brils didn’t specify.”

“So we have to get the cat in and past the metal detector.”

“I guess, although I did tell Brils our plan–”

“What do you mean you told Brils? That is need to know information! And the only two people on this planet who need to know are you and I.”

“Well, I mean, I thought it would be helpful for the construction…”

“No matter. That just makes Brils as culpable as anyone. If the shit hits the fan, we can frame him as the mastermind.”

“Yes! A framery!” shouted John, pumping his fist.

“You are an absurd person, did you know that? Now, let’s reconfigure our plans to get the cat past the metal detector.”

***

The unmarked white van was parked a half-a-block away from their target. It was rather dark in the van, even though it was midday. Perry held a flashlight under his chin and John pointed his cell phone at him.

“Are, are you recording? Good. Ok. The government has been dicking around with us, the people, for way too long. It’s time to bring the whole thing down. By the time you see this it will be too late; the revolution will have started and society as we know it will become transformed, like a butterfly breaking out of a cocoon because, like, once it was in the cocoon, but not as a butterfly, but as a caterpillar, and the cocoon, which the caterpillar spun itself, transformed it into a butterfly.”

John gave a thumbs-up sign and uploaded the video to YouTube.

“Alright, Johnny-boy,” said Perry. “We are at the point of no return.”

John crawled out of the van, Mittens in a basket. He was wearing all black, including a handkerchief over his face. He was also wearing yellow gloves because there was a sale at Michaels and they were out of black.

Several pedestrians stared until he ducked behind some shrubs and made his way to the back of the building. The male restroom window was propped open with a stick: his handiwork from earlier in the day.

“Ok, Mittens. You know what to do!” He slipped the cat into the building, looked around him to make sure he wasn’t seen, and sprinted back to the van, anticipating the screams at any moment. Foot, pavement, foot, pavement, foot, pavement, until he dove into the van.

“Did she find Mayor Horton’s office yet?” he asked panting, squinting, trying to see the computer screen with the sweat on his brow.

Perry said nothing.

John wiped his brow, using his shirt to clear sweat away from his eyes. He blinked.

“Why’s the screen black?”

“Well,” said Perry, suppressed rage coloring his tone, “I’m pretty sure Mittens took two steps into the room and then curled up and started taking a nap.”

“Eh?” John looked closer at the screen and realized it wasn’t pitch black. It was a similar reddish darkness to whenever he’d close his eyes during class. “What do you know. A nap. You want me to go back and wake her up? Give her a caffeine tablet?”

Perry tapped his finger a few seconds, and then a few more seconds. “No, no. You said the lasers Brils installed in her eyes were powerful, right?”

“As powerful as they get, sure.”

“We may have to push the red button and hope its strong enough to annihilate the target from where she is.” Perry shrugged. “Could work.”

***

This was a superbly dumb idea from the outset. And Perry’s little fix to the cat’s sleep problem was even dumber. There is no way it should have worked. None of this should have worked. No one should have cooked up their idea. No one should have agreed to take a cat and replace its eye with a laser. And certainly no one should have made a laser as absurdly strong as Brils made Mittens’s lasers.

The moment Mittens flopped on her back (lazily blinking in the process), Perry hit the red button.

Everything happened so quickly. Lasers move at the speed of light, or 186,000 miles per second. A second after Perry hit the button, the laser beam was already two-thirds of the distance to the moon. Within that second, many things happened:

1. Big, red beams shot out of the confused Mittens’s face.
2. They hit the ceiling of the restroom, immediately bursting it.
3. The beam continued upward, shattering every room directly above, including the Mayor’s office.
4. The building structure become completely compromised and collapsed.
5. In order to avoid the falling debris, Mittens began swinging her head back and forth, redirecting the beam into multiple directions.
6. These beams destroyed everything within reach, including: nearby houses, trees, people, and pets, not to mention two birds unlucky enough to be caught in their path.

***

Chaos.

Rubble.

Screams.

Life slowing down as emergency personnel race toward the scene.

Ash and debris hung in the air.

John was found curled in the corner of the van, shaking. Perry had disappeared. A part of the van roof was gone.

It didn’t take authorities long to peg the van as suspicious. Let’s just say the amount of evidence within was ample.

Reporters everywhere. FOX. CNN. Channel 8. That guy with the nasally voice you always hated. That girl who speaks with a perfect Hollywood voice. The new guy who has a southern accent and no one trusts. All elbow-to-elbow for their respective stations, trying to get the scoop, trying to flag police officers or firefighters or anyone to give an account of what happened.

And as John was pulled out of the van, cuffed, and thrown into a police cruiser, those same reporters shouted questions at him.

***

“Why’d you target the, uh, Delta mayor’s office?” asked the agent.

“To make a political statement.”

“In Delta? Uh, ok. So you took the cat around back? Why didn’t you go through the front door?”

“Because we needed to get her past the metal detector. I went in earlier in the day to prop the bathroom window.”

“And you didn’t notice that there was no metal detector?”

“I didn’t.” John looked confused. “I didn’t even think about that. There wasn’t a metal detector?”

“Nope,” said the agent, pinching his nose. “Ok, so you let the cat in and your partner hit the button.”

“Yeah, but Mittens didn’t go to the mayor’s office.”

The agent blinked at John. “Didn’t go to the mayor’s office?”

“Yeah, Mittens was supposed to go out of the bathroom, down the hall, to the elevator, and find the mayor.”

“To the elevator. John, how was a cat going to push the button?”

“Oh.”

“Well, we found poor Mittens alive and scared under a whole lot of rubble.” The agent sighed. “This is the weirdest fucking case I’ve seen. Honestly.”

***

“Hello?” said Brils, holding his cell phone.

“I hear you’re the guy to come to with weapon surgery needs.”

“Perhaps. You tell me what you want, you send me half up front, I deliver. You pay the other half on pick up.”

Fifteen minutes later Brils closed his phone, an odd little smile playing his lips. He hit play on his CD player.

“You feel so heavy, you just can’t stop it,” he sang. “this sea of madness turns you into stone.” Brils hummed a few words he didn’t know. “Shoots like a rocket, all the time.”

Brils hummed and checked his PayPal account.