Friday, October 29, 2010

Every time Gary showered he felt guilty. How could he not, with so many people dropping dead all over the world? The warm water that fired onto his face and cascaded from his chin down to his neck, shoulders, and legs, no longer brought relief to Gary, or a sense of cleanliness. No, now whenever Gary showered all he thought about were people in third world countries who had no clean water to drink. And then there was Gary, going and making it dirty.

But was he really all that dirty to begin with?

Gary decided he would shower less frequently.

And so it was that Gary decided to only shower every other day. This worked for a while, but soon Gary was in the habit of only showering once weekly.

But this was not enough for Gary, while simultaneously being too much. He decided to modify the way he showered as a whole. Instead of one constant stream of water, Gary would turn the faucet on only when necessary, so as to not waste any more water than he needed to. Gary would turn on the shower to wet his hair, but then would turn it off to apply his shampoo, turning it on again when it was time to rinse. Conditioner and body wash were also administered this way.

This rinse cycle was successful for Gary until the winter came, when the intermittent breaks between hot water eventually led to his catching pneumonia.

Gary died.

But before he did, right before he did, mere moments, mere seconds before his neck went limp and his tongue fell loosely out of his mouth like a sock puppet on the stump of an amputee, he turned to his few remaining friends (The ones who could look past how horribly Gary smelled) and whispered, "At least now there will be more to go around." Then, promptly, he died. One of Gary's friends turned to the other and said, "Just like Gary. Always considerate of everyone else's time."

Gary wasn't buried properly and his dead body eventually contaminated a natural spring, giving an entire small town dysentery.

The End.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Hurricane Season

"If you could sum up your entire life," he said, rolling over top of her, kissing her forehead, her bottom lip, her neck, moving down to her collarbone, down over her still-damp skin, to her navel, where the girl, eyes closed, concentrated on the sound of his shoulders slipping underneath the covers, receding like an ocean, his soft lips and tongue dancing gently over her body, going farther still, she the world, his mouth a careful traveler, his hot breath a hurricane, moving south, slipping past her hips, the equator, where it was clear and warm, where everything inside of her began picking up speed, where she cracked her toes and grabbed the sheets and sighed and with a sharp breath said, "Why ruin it with words?"