"No One Expects..." by Richard F. Yates
After yesterday's super long post (2,800 words), today's is going to be a bit slimmer... Or more accurately, it's going to be about "chores" day (with a bonus short story at the end.)
I didn't get much done around the house, yesterday, because of the long writing / editing project, so today, I thought I'd try to be a bit more domestic! I've already started a load of laundry, loaded the dish washer, unclogged the bathroom sink, and taken a shower. Still have tons of laundry to fold, a bed to make, garbage to take out...etc., etc., etc.... (Domestic bliss... I'm SURE this is all fascinating reading... I hope the story at the end is funny enough to make this junk worth wading through!)
And I'm listening to an old MonsterTalk episode on "ghost hunting equipment" while I work; it's all gloomy outside, so it's a good day for thinking about ghosts... I've also started watching my next Spook Show 2019 review movie---although I have a hard time sitting still for two full hours (unless I'm painting or typing), so I paused the movie part way through to work on chores... (It's not because the movie is boring! It's MY inadequacy, not the filmmaker's!)
Okay, if you managed to stick with me through all that "LIFE" junk, here's a bit of a story to (hopefully) make that slog worth slogging through!!! Enjoy!!!
"Stanley was a Stick-Gator"
Stanley was a stick-gator, a super skinny gator who could slip under doors and through cracks to bite his victims with his gator fangs. He was also a kind zombie---but not an UNDEAD zombie. He was a somnambulist, who attacked most of his victims while he himself was deep asleep!
One night, however, Stanley paid the ultimate price for his nocturnal wanderings, when he shimmied between the panes of a sliding glass door and drank from the veins of Poisonous Peter---a toxic accountant who was born in a septic tank before getting his CPA at night school.
Stanley woke up ill the morning after dispatching Pete, having no recollection of his murderous outing the night before, but instead of immediately contaction Poison Control, Stanley just soldiered on and went to work (by day he was a line editor at a travel journal), only to collapse over a piece about Wild West Ghost Towns just before lunch.
His editor, an albino newt named Loretta, found him moments after his collapse and called 911, but paramedics declared him too far gone to bother with when they arrived, and flushed him down the toilet instead of trying to resuscitate him... Poor Stanley, the murderous, somnabulistic, vampire, zombie, stick-gator...
As luck would have it, however, Stanley WAS an unsung hero, however inadvertant that heroism might have been, for the very morning after Poisonous Pete died, he had PLANNED to do something awful. Pete had never been happy as an accountant, you see, believing that MOST of his clientele were crooks, cheats, and swindlers who just wanted to use Pete's expertise to cover their misdeeds, so for the last several months, Pete had been placing bionic brain modification chips into the skulls of the hundreds of wild goats that roam Flashbulb City, and these chips, once activated, would have turned the otherwise harmless goats into vicious, relentless, nigh-unstoppable assassins programmed to murder each and every one of Pete's clients, and all of their families and friends. Pete had intended to unleash his DEATH-GOATS on Friday morning...but Stanley the Stick-Gator had appeared beside Pete's bed late Thursday night...and then died himself less than 12 hours later...
Meanwhile, the implanted goats are still at large---but everyone should be fine as long as no one finds Pete's secret remote triggering device (which looks like a normal television controller) and accidentally hits the "Tools" button... I think we're good...
---Richard F. Yates (Holy Fool)
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