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The Story of Sunnyville

In Sunnyville, every day was exactly the same. Every family would wake up at 7:00 AM sharp. The parents prepared breakfast, took the kids to school, and headed to work. At 12:00 PM came lunch break. Everyone in the town stopped what they were doing to open their brown paper bags to remove their perfectly cut pastrami sandwich. At 3:00 PM the children got home from school, and at 5:00 PM the parents came home from work, in time for dinner at 6:00 PM, after which the children went right upstairs to do their homework. At 9:15 PM the children would be tucked into bed. The mother or father would read a simple story out of the book on the nightstand, each story taking exactly 15 minutes, so the lights could be off by 9:30 PM. Afterwards, the parents rejoined each other on the couch in the den to watch a sitcom before the 10 o’clock news came on. The news anchors would report that everything was perfect, that everything was going along exactly as it should, just as it had yesterday, the day before that, the day before that, and so on and so on as long as anyone could remember.

There was very little excitement in anyone’s life, but they were secure, and they were happy. Or at least content, which is, when it comes down to it, good enough.

One day, by chance, the Trickster happened to come to Sunnyville. He stood on the hill overlooking the city and watched the industrious citizens go about their daily lives. He sat on the hill for days, watching, waiting for something to change, but of course, nothing ever did.

“This is disgusting,” he said to himself, “I can’t bear to look at a land so orderly and controlled. I’ve got to do something.”

The Trickster sat and thought to himself, trying to figure out the best way to disrupt Sunnyville. He brooded and he pondered, he dreamed and he imagined, he schemed and he planned. Finally, he realized that sewing chaos here would be simple indeed, so simple that he laughed at himself for not realizing it earlier.

Early the next morning, the Trickster awoke at 7:00 AM, just like all the other inhabitants of the town. Unlike them, though, he did not fetch the morning paper, pour himself a cup of coffee, feed the dog or scramble eggs. Instead, he walked straight to the central square of the city and stood right in the middle of the intersection.

Soon, the cars began to pour out of the driveways of Sunnyville, and for the first time in their lives, the people experienced a traffic jam.

It wasn’t like any traffic jam you or I have ever seen, however. The pleasant people of Sunnyville had never in their lives been held up like this before. Rather than getting angry or frustrated, like those of us who don’t live in perfect worlds, they were simply confused.

The Trickster stood staring at the central clock for exactly ten minutes. And then, he simply stepped off the street and left Sunnyville forever.

The people, still confused, tried to salvage the rest of the day as much as they could. While nothing went seriously wrong, they felt as though their whole day was thrown off.

The next morning, though, they felt much better. Most of them woke up at 7:00 AM sharp, exactly like every other day.

But some of them woke up at 6:59. And some of them woke up at 7:01.

Happy Valentine’s Day I Guess

“All I want out of life,” she said, “is to kick the world’s ass.”

I watched her out of the corner of my eye. Her bright pink hair stuck out at angles that shouldn’t even be possible. Every word that she said was one of the most unexpected and obscene things I could imagine. She was the most amazing person I’d ever met.

When we got to her door, she turned and kissed me full on the mouth. I was so surprised, I didn’t even think to shut my eyes.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, laughing, “Never kissed a girl before?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and skipped up the stairs, still laughing.

Her parents hated me. When she brought me home to meet them, her mother cried as her father screamed. They called me names, blamed me for “corrupting” their daughter.

“But she corrupted me,” is what I wanted to say. But of course I didn’t.

“Don’t worry,” she told me that night after she’d snuck out of the house, “I wouldn’t like you if they didn’t hate you.” We’d just made love for the first time.

We were in the park. I had packed a picnic basket and a bottle of wine. She laughed and called me a walking cliché, but I could tell that she enjoyed it.

After we ate, she lit up a joint. “You want a hit?” she asked.

“No thanks,” I said, “I don’t really…”

“Come on,” she laughed, holding it up to my lips, “Live a little.”

What the hell, I thought, and took a drag.

“How will I know when it hits me?” I asked, five minutes later after I’d stopped coughing.

“You’ll know,” she laughed.

My gaze wandered over to the tree we were sitting under. I was suddenly struck with awe at the intricate pattern of bark covering the trunk. No artist could paint something so detailed, and yet here it had occurred entirely by random chance. Not only that, but no other tree in the history of the world would ever have the exact same pattern of bark. I rolled over and stared up at the leafy canopy. I was astonished at the number of leaves — they seemed uncountable. I turned to look at her, and was overwhelmed with the deepest feelings of positivity, thankfulness to the universe just for the fact that she existed.

“Your eyes are as red as the devil’s dick!” she laughed, “You’re high as hell!”

I laughed too. Why shouldn’t we laugh? We were still young enough that life was funny.

We moved up north and got married. A few years later, I brought up having kids.

“No fucking way am I gonna get pregnant!” she said, “I’m not going through nine whole months of that shit, forget it. Unless you’re volunteering?”

I wasn’t, of course. We adopted. A girl from China. When she turned 17, she ran away and joined the army. We got a letter a few months later saying she’d been killed.

We never talked about it, but we both knew we blamed ourselves. And, to some degree, each other.

She moved out one day. She said it wasn’t my fault. She felt like she’d turned into her mother and couldn’t live with herself that way. I told people she’d run away with some young actor, but as far as I know she never saw anyone else. I know I never did.

I sat by her bed in the hospital. She’d been unresponsive ever since the stroke, but I was there every day. It’s not like I had much else to do these days.

She opened her eyes and looked at me. “Hey there,” she said, a pained smile crossing her lips.

“Shhh,” I said, taking hold of her hand, “Don’t strain yourself.”

She seemed as though she didn’t hear me. “It was a good run, wasn’t it?” she said, squeezing my hand.

“It was,” I said.

“We sure kicked the world’s ass,” she said.

“We sure did,” I said. “We sure did.”

The Unvisible Man

“Yuri!” screamed Zed the Collector, “You son of a devil! I know you stole my brand new Elvis stamp last night!”

Whenever anything in town went missing, everyone blamed Yuri the Unvisible Man, even though as far as anyone could remember, he’d never actually ever been found guilty of stealing anything (in fact, half the time the “stolen” item was actually just lost and the owner usually found it a few days later).

“What a shame,” said Eugene the Thief (who accounted for the other half of the missing objects), shaking his head, “He truly is a menace.”

Yuri, fearing yet another attempted lynching, immediately took off his clothes and ran, bringing Zed’s chase to a halt. Zed spat on the unvisible man’s clothes and cursed.

“A man like that is nothing but trouble,” Zed said, “And not just because he’s a thief — no offense meant to your self, sir.”

Everyone in the village knew that Eugene was a thief, but nobody could ever prove it. And everyone liked him too much to try.

“Not just because he’s a thief,” Zed continued, “But also because I have a daughter. I’m worried what sort of mischief an unvisible man can get up to with the women in town!”

His daughter, Yulia, smiled to herself as she walked home from school with the other girls, because she knew first hand just what sort of mischief Yuri did get up to with the women in town, or at least one woman in particular.

“It’s unholy,” agreed the thief, “A man no one can see has too much to hide.” Secretly, he was just jealous of Yuri’s transparency and thought that he could put it to much better use.

Yulia made her way through the forest to the river bank where she knew Yuri went to sulk whenever he was blamed for a crime. She knew that he was there because of the twin indentations in the ground marking the resting place of the unvisible man’s buttocks.

“What can I do?” Yuri moaned, “I’ll never be accepted, wherever I go! Nobody trusts an unvisible man. Your father will never let us marry!”

“You need to show them that having an unvisible man in the village is a good thing,” Yulia said, “You need to do something good that no visible man could ever do.”

“I’ve got it!” Yuri shouted, snapping his fingers (or so Yulia assumed, he could have been cracking his neck for all she knew). “I’ll finally catch Eugene in the act! That way, I’ll clear my name and also help the village at the same time!”

“That’s wonderful!” Yulia exclaimed, leaning over to try and kiss him, but falling flat on her face because she was three feet too far to the left.

So, for the next few nights, Yuri sat on the roof of his house watching for Eugene. It was difficult work. The nights in this part of the country could be bitterly cold, and of course he had to sit through the whole night entirely naked. Some nights, Yulia would sneak out and bring him warm borscht, which made it slightly more bearable.

It seemed as though Eugene was living easy off the profits he had made from selling Zed’s prized Elvis stamp, because the village was free of any larceny for two weeks (though Yuri was still blamed when the widow Ivanova’s cat batted her favorite necklace under the dresser). The cold, sleepless nights began to wear on Yuri’s resolve, and he feared that he’d missed his chance.

However, a stroke of luck came into his life when a famous merchant came through town. The people in the town were so pleased to see a foreigner, they insisted he stay the night free of charge in Nikolai’s inn. Yuri knew that Eugene wouldn’t be able to resist the call of the merchant’s many riches, and late that night, his suspicions were confirmed as he spied Eugene sneaking towards the inn.

“Stop, thief!” he shouted, leaping off of the roof and landing on Eugene, knocking him unconscious. He shouted “Thief!” until a crowd began to gather.

“What’s the matter?” shouted Ivan the Sheriff, running up to the scene, wearing his uniform over his nightclothes.

“Yuri’s attacked Eugene!” shouted Zed.

“He’s too dangerous,” Ivan said, shaking his head. “Back when he was just a simple thief, we could let him roam free. But a violent unvisible man is too dangerous to have in town. There’s nothing left to do but to throw him in jail.”

So they did.

The Bright Man’s Burden

Chuck Richards sat across from the doctor. He fidgeted nervously with the tie his wife had made him wear for the occasion.

“Well, Mr. Richards, we have the results here,” the doctor said, pulling a file out of his drawer, “And I have to say, congratulations.”

Chuck looked at him expectantly.

“No offense, Mr. Richards,” the doctor said, “But I have to say I’m rather astonished. Your IQ is 185, putting you at extreme genius level.”

Chuck’s face sank. “Doctor, say it ain’t so!” he shouted.

“I don’t understand,” the psychologist said, taken aback, “You should be happy, you’re one of the smartest people on the planet.”

“That’s exactly the problem!” Chuck groaned. “Do you know what kind of responsibility that is?”

“Responsibility?”

“Before, when I thought I was just a normal guy, life was good! All I want to do is go to work, love my wife, raise my kids, drink some beer, watch the game on TV…I only took this stupid test because my wife wanted me to!”

“I still don’t understand,” the psychologist said. “Having a higher IQ doesn’t limit you, it only increases your possibilities in life!”

Chuck shook his head. “You said it yourself, I’m one of the smartest people on the planet. I can’t just waste that. I have to go be some kind of inventor or miracle doctor or president or something. Hell, I haven’t even been to college, this is going to be a lot of work.” He put his head in his hands and started sobbing.

A secretary poked her head in the room. She shuffled over to the doctor, whispered something to him, and handed him a sheet of paper.

“Mr. Richards,” the doctor said, “I’d like to apologize. The computer mixed up your results with someone named Charles Richardson. I have your true results here.”

Chuck stared at him, fear in his eyes.

The doctor glanced over the sheet. “It turns out that your real IQ is actually 71.”

“What does that mean?” Chuck asked suspiciously.

“That’s the lowest possible IQ you can have without being considered mentally retarded.”

It was the best news of Charles Richards’ life.

The First Time

“I’m a little nervous,” she said, frowning a little. “I’ve never done this before.”

“To tell you the truth, me either,” he said, grinning sheepishly.

“Oh!” she said, brightening considerably, “Well that makes me feel a lot better.”

“Why?” he laughed, “It makes me a hell of a lot more nervous to know neither of us know what we’re doing.”

“Well,” she said, grinning devilishly, “At least I know if something goes wrong it’s not my fault.”

“I guess that’s true,” he laughed.

“Besides,” she said, “It can’t be that hard. Total morons manage to do it just fine all the time.”

“Maybe it’s because they don’t think too hard about it,” he said, “We might think too hard about it and mess it up.”

“I guess that could happen,” she said.

“It’s something that has to be done though,” he said.

“Oh definitely,” she said, “It’s not something that you can just not do.”

“And you know, with you, I just…it just seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she laughed, “I wouldn’t be able to do it by myself after all.”

“Well, I guess we should get it over with,” he said, sighing.

He turned back to her car and stared at the front wheel. “Let’s get this tire changed.”