Day: April 10, 2018

You’re Glowing

Fandango18 Comments

06FEC7FD-AB4F-454B-BBA6-5B1F07698288“Oh my God,” David said to his girlfriend when she opened the door to her apartment, “Donna, you’re glowing.”

“Thank you, David,” Donna said, a slight blush appearing on her cheeks. “Come inside.”

“I mean it, Donna. Your skin looks luminescent,” David said with a look of concern on his face.

“I know, right?” Donna said.

“Donna, take off your clothes,” David insisted.

Donna laughed. “Before dinner? Oh aren’t you the naughty one,” she said.

“I’m serious,” David said. “Take off your clothes.”

“David, you’re frightening me a little,” Donna said.

“Dammit, remove your clothes!” Once she did as she was told, David gasped. “You look radioactive,” he said.

“How did you know?” Donna asked.

“How did I know what?”

“How did you know that the name of my new body wash is ‘Radioactive’?”

“Show me the bottle it came in,” David insisted. Donna went to her bathroom and came out holding the bottle of her body wash. David grabbed it from her hands. “Where did you get this?” he asked.

“At a booth at Sunday’s farmer’s market.” Donna said.

David looked at the ingredients on the bottle’s label. “Get dressed, Donna. I’m taking you to the ER. This body wash contains radium and you have radium poisoning. That’s why your skin is glowing, Donna.”

Written for today’s one-word prompt, “luminescent.”

FFfAW — The Shuck Stop

Fandango11 Comments

7747A712-E43A-45A6-83BC-AF76E7D33646“It’s perfect, don’t you think?” Oliver asked Dan.

“I don’t know, Ollie,” Dan answered. “It looks kinda ramshackle to me.”

“Nothing a little spit and polish won’t take care of,” Oliver said. “Just imagine, Dan. A bunch of picnic tables in front and on one side. People coming from miles around to buy fresh, juicy, raw oysters by the bucket. Hell, Dan, we wouldn’t even have to shuck ‘em. We can lend patrons shucking knives and rubber gloves and they can shuck their own oysters.”

“But maybe some people won’t wanna shuck them themselves,” Dan said.

“Fine, we can charge fifty cents a bucket extra to shuck the oysters for them,” Oliver said.

“I don’t know, Ollie,” Dan said.

“C’mon, man,” Oliver said. “Can’t you see it? We can call it Ollie’s Oyster Shack.”

Dan screwed up his face. “Why not Dan’s Oyster Shack?”

“Okay,” Oliver said. “We’re partners, right? We’ll call it Dan and Ollie’s Shuck Stop.”

“Hey, I like that,” Dan said, a large grin lighting up his face.

“Woo hoo,” shouted Oliver.

(175 words)

Written for this week’s Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers from Priceless Joy. Photo credit: Yinglan.

I is for IRS

Fandango8 Comments

8CCB8EB3-487B-4C1B-AF50-F06BD93008DCYes, April is tax month in the United States. And that means having to file tax documents with the Internal Revenue Service.

Personally, I find having to file my taxes to be very taxing. Ha! Get it? Filing taxes is taxing. I’m a hoot, right?

Anyway, I haven’t yet filed my taxes because I am going to owe money, both to the federal government and to my state government. And that means having to cut two checks, which is why I’m waiting to the last possible day to actually file.

And this year I am particularly resentful at having to pay federal taxes. Why? Let me count the reasons.

  • I don’t like the idea of my tax dollars paying for a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. A wall that no one except the idiot in the in the Oval Office wants. A wall he promised that Mexico would pay for.
  • I don’t like how my tax dollars are being used to pay for charter planes, first class tickets, large security details, sound proof phone booths, extravagant furniture, and vacations for members of the Trump family and his cabinet appointees.
  • I don’t want my tax dollars going to pay off the federal government’s annual budget deficit, which, thanks to the GOP’s tax law, is set to widen significantly in the next few years, topping $1 trillion by 2020, according to new projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
  • Or to pay down the national debt, which has topped $21 trillion, and is expected to soar to more than $33 trillion in 2028, again, thanks to the Republican tax law.
  • I don’t want to pay tax dollars to have the head of the EPA dismantle most environmental protections. I don’t want to pay taxes to a government that gives enormous tax breaks to the country’s largest and most profitable corporations while taking aware healthcare from most citizens and while cutting back in women’s health options.
  • I don’t want more of my tax dollars to be spent on the military when the U.S. already spends more on defense than the next eight countries combined.
  • I don’t want my tax dollars to pay for the Justice Department or Congress to investigate Hillary Clinton. Or to pay for investigations into voter fraud that never actually happened outside of the alternative facts-base world that Donald Trump lives in.

On the other hand, I don’t want to be a martyr. I don’t want to incur the wrath of the IRS or to have U.S. Marshals knocking at my door and hauling me off to prison for tax evasion.

So I guess I’ll bite the bullet, finish my tax forms, write my checks, and go back to doing whatever the hell it is I do these days to keep my mind off Trump, Republicans, and taxes.

Twittering Tales — Gator River Adventure

Fandango16 Comments

CA21063C-056F-49DC-8749-3518B95632B7“Keep your cameras ready, folks,” the guide said. “The gators love to put on a show.”

He noticed that two people were aiming their cameras up. “Folks, the gaters are in the water, not in the trees.”

Those were the last words heard as the pterodactyl swooped down onto the dinghy.

(277 characters)

Written for this week’s Twittering Tales prompt from Kat Myrman. Photo credit: leoperezwildadventure at Pixabay.com