Very Slight Stories | Like short stories, only shorter.





'Darcy and O'Mara' is a novel by Arthur Cronin.
Click here to buy the paperback or download the ebook for free.


Tuesday, August 22, 2006

 

The Blue People

   This alien is good and that alien is bad. The same applies to these chickens. The blue people jump up and down when they can identify a chicken as good or bad. They live on a quiet street that rises to the top of a hill on the edge of a small town. They wear blue clothes and shoes, and a lot of them have dyed their hair blue.
   They found a box of sugar. They had a vote to determine if this was better than the time they found Art Garfunkel. They always have a vote to see if things are better or worse than finding Art Garfunkel, mainly to convince themselves that they did actually find Art Garfunkel. They all voted that finding him was better than finding the box of sugar, and this put a dampener on finding the sugar, especially seeing as they weren't convinced they'd actually found Art Garfunkel. Some of them thought it was one of the bad aliens in disguise.
   One of the blue people, Eoin, said he met a leprechaun who offered him three wishes in exchange for the sugar, and he agreed. "They gave me all these cobwebs as well," he said.
   "They 'gave' you all those cobwebs?"
   "Yeah. I was stealing their milk."
   Eoin once dived from a springboard into an empty pool. If he had been right in the head before that he'd have noticed the lack of water, and he certainly wasn't right after it.
   Some of Eoin's friends suggested that the leprechaun could be a bad alien, but he went ahead with the first of his three wishes. He wished that they could all understand Russian, because they once found a box full of Russian films. They could have got someone to translate the films, but there didn't seem much point after they unanimously agreed that finding the films wasn't as good as finding Art Garfunkel.
   They were all excited at the prospect of suddenly understanding a whole new language, and they tried talking to each other in Russian as soon as Eoin had made the wish, but they couldn't understand themselves or each other. They ran away when Russian gangsters arrived and demanded the films. This definitely seemed like the work of the bad aliens, and the blue people needed the help of the good aliens.
   The good aliens were hiking in the country. They found Willie Nelson (the bad aliens never found anything as good as Willie Nelson), and he was pointing out all the different birds when the blue people arrived. They paused for a while to get their breaths back, and Eoin noticed spiders in his hair where the cobwebs were. They told the good aliens and Willie Nelson about the Russian gangsters and the films. It was Willie Nelson who came up with the plan to solve the problem.
   He challenged the gansters to a game of tennis, and they accepted the challenge. Their pride wouldn't allow them to look afraid of Willie Nelson. He had trained yellow birds to pretend to be tennis balls. They could tuck their heads under their wings. He didn't really hit the birds when he served. They just took off to the other side of the court, and it was impossible to predict where they'd land. When the Russians served they always managed to find the net, or 'a' net (the spiders were busy building new nets all around the court). The Russians were scared of the spin that Willie Nelson put on the ball, and they eventually ran away.
   Willie Nelson started teaching the blue people Russian, so Eoin believed his wish came true after all. But he wasted the other two wishes on sugar and staples. That probably had more to do with the springboard than with the bad aliens.










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Words are my favourite noises


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very slight stories

They Met a Bear
  They stopped in a small seaside town and they went for a walk. They met a bear.
  This is one version of the story. In another version, they met a sailor, and in this one they ended up being held at gunpoint on a speedboat and becoming unwilling participants in a diamond robbery while disguised as a cow, and sharing in the proceeds of that crime.
  So when they tell the story they just say, "We met a bear. He waved at us."

The Story of the Fortune Teller and the Alarm Clock
  A fortune teller threw an alarm clock at me. This story is deliberately lacking in details to mock the predictions of the fortune teller. Although she was right when she said she'd throw an alarm clock at me.

Counting
  One. Two. Three, the study. Four, a candle stick. Five. Six...
  Seven is missing, presumed dead. One has taken up the case, and two is helping him in his investigations. They both suspect six. Seven was last seen next to six in the garden.
  But seven isn't really dead. He's consumed half a bottle of whiskey and he's currently in the orchard, talking to a rabbit. "One of us is as boring as a gate post," he says, "and it's not..." He stops to count on his fingers. "No, actually it is me."
  Eight nine ten.

Debbie and his dog
  Debbie was sick of people mistaking her for a man.
  "Is your dog my parole officer?"
  "No."
  She was sick of people asking her that too.







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