The Perfect Genocide
A man and his son were walking in the woods when they came upon a skeleton dressed in rags, a hatchet in its head.
The father said, "Oh my Lord what happened here..." He studied the remains. "By his clothes and height, I'd guess this man was a Goth."
"Who are the Goths, Dad?"
"Well, who were they. They lived here for a long time but then decades ago just vanished without a trace. Excepting of course this poor fellow, looks like somebody did him in before he could take the wagon out. Probably crossed a robber."
"Just vanished? Where did they live?" the boy asked.
"Why, they lived right where you and I live now. When we came here we found their land gone empty and unused, nobody home, so we settled in and started farming. It would have all gone to waste otherwise. What else can you do?"
"Just vanished. Do you know where they went?"
"Nope. No one does. Kind of a local mystery."
The boy looked a little worried. "Oh... Ok Dad let's go home. It's getting cold.”
"Righty ho, son. First..." The man pulled the hatchet out of the skull and swung it onto his shoulder.
"First let me get back my hatchet."
December 14, 1998
Winner
Madame Bleu told a story:
Jim had the will to win. Every night he went out and got in a fight, and every night he came back victorious, no matter how bad the fight was.
One night he came back with a broken jaw, but he just said “you should see the other guy”, or at least that's what we thought he was saying.
Night after night he went out, to bars and the docks and anywhere else you could pick a fight. He kept coming back with bruises and broken bones, an eye on his cheek, but every night he won, because Jim was a winner.
Funny thing about Jim's speech though, it kept getting sloppier and sloppier. And he started walking with a limp.
Then one night Jim came home, a winner as usual, and he laid down and died. The rest of the town heard about it and by and by some of Jim's worst enemies, or their next of kin, came and stole his stuff. They beat up his family too and gave them all kinds of Hell. In the end Jim's house was a heap of ashes and his folks had run away to the four corners of the Earth to where they didn't even know each other anymore.
Jim had the will to win.
2005
Toy
Todd wanted the toy. It was blue and shaped like a stick.
Dad yelled at him "No!". Dad knew it was a cluster bomb, but Todd was too little to understand. Todd hesitated, if it was forbidden it might be something really fun, and the temptation to pick it up grew even stronger.
But Dad was already on top of that nonsense; he knew what Todd was thinking. Dad rushed at Todd and grabbed the little boy, he grabbed him up so fast and ran away that they both fell and rolled together some meters away from where he had been standing.
Todd's arm hurt from being grabbed and he looked up at his dad accusingly, on the brink of crying. Dad didn't care; he was relieved.
But Dad knew it wasn't going to stop here, he had to show Todd to be scared of the pretty blue things we found in the grass sometimes.
Dad had an idea. He pulled Todd even further from the blue toy and picked up a stone.
The old man had a wicked throwing arm; he hurled the rock at the deadly object of Todd's desire and hit it squarely. It detonated with an earsplitting crack, and Todd started crying.
Dad was satisfied that Todd would be afraid of the blue things for a long time to come.
Todd was pissed. He never knew rocks could explode! And Dad's exploding rock had wrecked his pretty toy.
January 29, 2004
All stories by JCA