What Might Have Been

by Jonathan Wood

Being the Story of a Man Who, Only by the Narrowest of Margins, Avoided A Terrifying And Most Ghastly Death at the Hands of the Beyond Men Who Sleep in the Margins of Reality, Preying Upon the Unsuspecting, Unworthy, Illegitimate, and Forlorn, After Also Narrowly Avoiding the Many Pitfalls of the Nine-Jaded Path That Leads the Lost and Bitter Away From Their Dreams of Redemption and/or Revenge Towards An Untimely End at the Hands of the Aforementioned Beyond Men and Which Lurks, Disguised as Nothing More Than an Ordinary Path The Likes of Which You Yourself Have Likely Seen Many Times Before, Upon The Paths We Ourselves Most Often Tread But Which Selects Its Prey Based Primarily On The Color of Their Underwear (Green Being the Color that Most Appeals to its Predilections) Onto Which This Man was Almost Led by Chriandrix, Agent of the Beyond Men, Harlot of the Nineteen Space Oceans, Mistress to the Lord of the Pits, and All Round Femme Fatale, Whom After A Spat with Her Lover, The Lord, Was Taking A Sojourn Upon One of the Lesser Known Realities and Easing Her Aching Hangover (Brought On, No Doubt, by the Consumption of An Over-Abundance of Soul Devouring and Blood Bathing) Through the Imbibing of Red Bull, Itself One of the Weakest Potions of Hellacious Redemption, Yet Which Was Less Likely to be Being Bought By Someone Who Knew Either Chriandrix or The Lord of the Pits and Which was Available at the Bodega Around the Corner from the Apartment of the Man About Whom This Story Revolves Like an Orbiting Moon of Potential Doom, Verily a Dark Moon Whose Gravitational Pull He But Narrowly Avoids Due to the Fickle Forces of Fate Alone

Waking up, after a night of heavy drinking, Dave squinted at the clock and decided that, screw it, there was no way he was getting out of bed today.

Blacker Friday

by Edd

The CEO turned to Phyllis Baker. “Lunch for four thousand, please,” he said, looking down on the fleet of school buses pulling into the parking lot. “Peanut butter sandwiches, apples, cookies, juice, that sort of thing.”

It was Take Your Child to Work Day. The big day.

Phyllis made a few notes, and returned to her desk to place the order. Then she walked the cubicles where each boy or girl was installed at a workstation laboriously handwriting their letter.

“Dear Santa: I have been nice all year.”

That’s how each letter would start. Each one would go on to ask for CyberMore, Inc’s success. Some would request a share price increase, some asked for increased orders, some for less expensive supplies. A few children in a pilot program asked for disasters to befall the corporation’s major competitor CompuXS, but Child Resources felt such requests endangered those childrens’ naughty/nice ratio for the next year.

Child Resources. Phyllis’ department, one of the best-funded at CyberMore. The equipment to monitor every employees’ child alone ran over a billion dollars. “Can’t have the little darlings getting into mischief,” the CEO said.

Phyllis loaded food on a gray cart and wheeled it from cubicle to cubicle. To every delighted child she whispered the secret of making invisible ink from apple juice. She suggested that they negate their visible wish. “Wouldn’t you rather have a dog?” she’d say, while CompuXS shares multiplied in her account. “I think you really want a toy, don’t you?”