Category: random

He had always been the wrong kind-of-citizen, so Tony was not surprised when they arrested and held him for deportation. What did surprise Tony was the number of good citizens the police had rounded up in their recent city-wide sweep.

Many were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when picked up, often found to be without their mandatory papers on their person. But it did not matter as the police had a quota to fill.

That was more important.

Loaded into moving trucks in the middle of the night, destination unknown, those that survived the trip would never survive the ordeal. Of the ten-thousand sent, only a third would live to tell the tale, but none would ever be allowed to speak of it.

The play for survival began the moment the rolling doors on the large vans closed. Criminals pushed their way around the darkness, assaulting women, murdering any man that offered resistance, and taking what valuables anyone had in their possession.

By the time the two-day journey ended, few men were alive, and even fewer women wanted to be alive. Tony was one of those men still living, having played dead to keep from being strangled or suffocated.

Authorities, not wanting such undesirable people near their town, decided that it would be best if they loaded them onto barges and off-loaded them onto the nearby island in the middle of the river. While they knew the island had few resources for so many people, they believed the deportees would figure out how to make a living from the isolated land.

Once the boat landed, and with no guards present, Tony quickly walked into the Poplars and disappeared. Here, he would stay until the crisis had passed or until he could figure a way off the island.

Day-in and day-out, Tony heard the screams of people, mostly women, and children as they were tied limb from limb between two trees and filet while alive. Men of the most inhumane kind stripped away the choice parts for eating.

Slowly the screams died away, leaving an eerie silence in their place, and death over-ran the camp.

Tony did not witness what happened next. He was killed by a sniper from the other side of the river while riding a raft of three logs towards freedom.

“This is how I know what’s happening over there,” Bryant explained to the town’s Mayor, laying the still-damp note’s on the desk before him. “I read these papers I found in his jacket pocket, where his makeshift raft and body washed ashore.”

Bryant would be labeled ‘undesirable’ the following week and would not survive the following 13-weeks.

My Cousin Elmo says, “If you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes journalism.”

He’d been warned not to go into the old mansion, but Daryl didn’t listen. He was itching to confront whatever the thing was that left people scared.

Armed with a thick bible and a wooden crucifix, he entered, intent on learning the secrets of the dilapidated house. Soon Daryl found himself cornered in a hallway designed to confuse the spirits, but it wasn’t working.

Instead, Daryl was the one confused, unable to find the door he entered, and now the dark mass had him trapped in the exitless hall. In his attempt to escape, he threw his bible at it, then his crucifix.

The demon simply absorbed both without effect.

Helpless and panicked, Daryl resorted to defending himself with all he had left. He pulled off his right shoe and chucked it at the demonic being.

Suddenly, the creature began to wobble and appear weak, so Daryl yanked off his left shoe and heaved it at the thing. That did it, as the shadow broke apart and disappeared like so many atoms in a vacuum.

His odor-eaters did the trick.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford wants a judge to throw out a lawsuit filed after the November election that claims voter rolls contain ineligible names and that illegal aliens cast ballots.

The state attorney general also said in the motion that the lawsuit wrongly identifies Nevada’s secretary of state as the official in charge of voter registration. Deputy State Solicitor General Gregory Zunino wrote in the motion to dismiss the case that the role Barbara Cegavske plays in maintaining voter records is only “supervisory,” and that the clerks in Nevada’s 17 counties are responsible for maintaining voter registration and lists of eligible voters.

The lawsuit, filed in December, came after state and federal courts in Nevada and other states rejected election challenges by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, including its claims of widespread voter fraud. While the suit doesn’t seek to undo the 2020 election, it does cite DMV records of applications for driver authorization cards and claims that nearly 4,000 illegal aliens voted.

While the plaintiffs allege those ineligible votes “diluted” their legally cast ballots, the state’s filing to dismiss calls any allegations of harm “hypothetical” and compares it with the injury that honest taxpayers suffer when someone evades paying taxes.

In 2018, a newspaper report revealed that Ford owed more than $185,000 in unpaid taxes, interest, and penalties. The article came out two years after paying back those delinquent taxes.

The request to dismiss the lawsuit does acknowledge that there are errors within the voter rolls.

“Immigrants who conduct business with the DMV have ended up on Nevada’s voter rolls,” it says, adding, but “immigrants rarely vote,” and to prosecute, the state needs to prove that the person who voted knew it was a crime and intended to break the law. The attorney general’s filing further claims that inaccurate voter information “generally consists of the names of deceased persons and the addresses of persons who have moved.”

Not only did Barney and Rat work in the same department, but the two Airmen were also housemates, living off base. Between the two of them, Barney had the only working car, a 1972 Nova.

After a 14 hour day, Barney was behind the wheel, pushing down the gas pedal, flying through the long loping curve. Ahead was a slight rise in the road before it straightened out the final three miles before home.

Barney fairly flew over the rise, but it was too late. The man, caught in the headlights, went careening over the top of the car with a heavy thump.

The tires squealed, and the car fish-tailed and bucked as Barney pumped the brakes before coasting it to the side of the road. Even before it had stopped, both were out and were looking back at where the man had been standing.

The night laid across the road and the grassy field to either side, so they could not see where the man might be. Rat ran back to the top of the rise as Barney made a quick U-turn in the two-lane road to get some light on the area.

As Rat walked up and down the side of the road, Barney drove beyond where he was sure he had hit the man. But neither one could find him.

After another pass, they drove to their trailer house to call 9-1-1. The dispatcher routed the call to the Sheriff’s Department.

“Can you meet the deputies there?” the dispatcher asked.

“Yes,” Barney answered. “We’ll be there in less than five minutes.”

Shortly after they arrived, two sheriff vehicles pulled onto the side of the road. The first order of business was to have Barney and Rat fill out an incident report as the deputies searched the roadway and the grassy gully on either side of the road.

“You sure it was a man and not a deer or something?” the older deputy asked.

“No,” Barney answered, “I looked him in eyes. It was a man.”

“Well,” the younger deputy said, “We can’t find anything.”

“Then how do you explain the damage to the car?” Rat asked.

“We can’t,” stated the older deputy.

He walked over to his unit and pulled the microphone to his mouth, and said, “We need more help out here, can you activate SAR?”

“10-4,” came the reply.

Within half-an-hour, the first of the search-and-rescue team arrived on the scene, bringing floodlights and dogs. Before long, they were trotting the K-9’s up and down the roadside.

To the west, they found a trail in the grass beyond the barbed-wire fence. The flattened grass led to some volcanic rocks, and it was there the dogs either refused to go any further or lost the scent of whatever they’d been tracking.

The search for the man continued for another two hours after sunrise before it was called off. However, nothing was found other than a patch of blood on the asphalt where the two men said it happened.

Still, in uniform, Barney and Rat returned to the base and to work.

It wouldn’t be until that weekend when the two were sitting outside their trailer, enjoying the sunshine and cold beer, that they would strike up a conversation with the elderly neighbor lady. She quietly listened to their tale.

“You know,” she started, “I’ve lived here all my life and not always so close to the city. Tell you this, there are more things in the wilderness than meet the eye.”

“What does that mean?” Rat asked her.

“It means you might have hit a man, but the Googliwooglie made off with the body, thinking it was fresh roadkill,” she said with a straight face.

“A Googli…” Barney started.

“…wooglie,” she interrupted. “Not an ‘a,’ but a ‘the.’ It’s a Bigfoot-like creature and he’s been seen many-a-time in the Buffalo Ridge area.”

Over time, and with no one reported missing or a body ever found, the incident was relegated to the cold case file.

that is me
a 6-year-old boy
riding the bicycle
with training wheels
staring at an old man
with white hair on his face
sitting alone in the cafe
i had never noticed before, and
having a profound feeling
of I don’t know what.

that is me
a 60-year old man
sitting alone in the cafe
staring at nothing in particular
suddenly overcome by a sense
of déjà vu as my eyes
lock with a boy on a bike, and
who looks eerily
like the schoolboy version
of me.

Time to put down some thoughts truths maybe not me not till later another zit I’m too old to be getting zits shake the mental cobwebs loose Internets slow again they’re choking it down neighbor has fired up his truck it’ll run for thirty minutes now the sheets are already dry I jus’ put them in shit make the beds-time I need a shower got do it before I can wash the towels coffee in the bathroom gonna have to heat it up again three times now I wish I’d never found that pimple wanna pick it this is Friday right paper is due out today glad I have a calendar this stupid-assed Internet I swear they’re choking it down so slow need a new keyboard is there one in storage still need to check gotta pull that old camera out too wanna show it off coffee that’s right bathroom shower time add ellipses run through Grammarly need to clip my nails must write two news articles today watching Grammarly will be fun reward myself with reading something not work-related phone calls to make need my list of chores no to ellipses that is sixty-seconds I’ll never get back coffee

One day, when my son was four or five years old, we were heading somewhere in town when we came up behind an enclosed cattle truck. Back then, there were no car seat laws or laws demanding that you keep your little one in the back seat of your vehicle.

I side-eyed him as he leaned forward to get a better look at the cows.

“That one looked at me!” he squealed.

I smiled because he was never much of a talker, so to hear that much come from him was a joy.

The truck went straight while we turned left. I never gave the cattle truck another thought.

However, he’d been thinking about it ever since we’d first seen it, asking, “Do we get hamburgers from cows?”

I gulped, wanting to lie my way out of the question, fearing it would upset him to know that we do slaughter cows for hamburger meat.

In the end, I said, “Yes, we do.”

“Seeing those cows made me hungry,” he grinned, “Can we go to McDonald’s?”

My Cousin Elmo says, “Lost the pizza slicer, so I’m using an old Bryan Adams CD. Cuts like a knife.”

I was trying to outrun myself.

Tooling along near the Arizona-New Mexico line on I-40, it was approaching nighttime, the sun setting behind me. And since I couldn’t find a music station, I had resigned myself to listening to a radio preacher sermonizing on John 21:17…

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

“Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?”

He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”

Feeling Peter’s pain, I pulled off the road and started crying. After I finally composed myself, I got back on the highway, sure that I should become a preacher.

Twenty years later — it has yet to happen and I’m still awaiting the third rebuke.