Mr. Patrick's Depression

Mr. Patrick frowned. It was all too easy. What's the use of doing this if there's no challenge? They all died without a sound. Most of them never even woke up. He enjoyed this sort of thing when he wasn't so good at it. There were mistakes then. Sometimes they fought back. He had to react and adapt and still manage to get the job done. Now all of the excitement has gone out of it. Maybe he needs to listen to his shrink. Time to step out of the comfort zone and give that bungee jumping thing a try.

Sexual repression as a defense mechanism

The creepy old guy sits at the strip club stage

but turns down every offer of private attention

Mostly he watches the foolish young men, envying their lack of sense

The only man in the place who is aware of his own pathos

The young girls see him as a challenge

The older ones know better and leave him alone

Fidelity pushed slightly over his own personal limit

He grins at the beautiful woman with the odd lipstick and large rear

She approaches him

He buys her a drink, some hideous cinnamon liqueur,

but rejects her offer of a shower show

She asks for his business card but he feigns their existence

She tells him a phone number that he promises to remember

but doesn't

The Ball

The phoenix came to the party dressed as a peacock.

The eyes on his borrowed feathers saw the truth of us all.

Masks and costumes, beer and wine, fear and ecstasy.

Lonely creatures stalking willing prey.

Hungry freaks tasting flesh previously forbidden.

A mass illusion held together by tawdry string.

At midnight the phoenix shed his false eyes.

He toasted our mutual folly and burst into flames.

The Open Door

Walk past the open door
Don't even look inside
that door is not for you

Maybe the next door
or the one after that
always the one after that

100 Words - Thunderstorm

Beaufort the Grand banished thunderstorms from his land. They were driving his dogs crazy so he sent them away and then they had to make their noise and lightning far out at sea where they wouldn't bother anybody. The people cheered the silence and welcomed the soft summer rain that remained. The mandoleers composed tributes to Beaufort's grandness. The young maidens lined up to offer their pleasures in thanks. Merchants laid golden trinkets at his feet. Old farmers brought him the first squash of the season, which is the sweetest of them all. And, most importantly, the dogs slept undisturbed.

100 Words - The Trap

Randolph sat in his car eating his quarter pounder. The Pest Busters truck pulled up across the street and two men got out. One had a clipboard, the other a large box. Every ten feet or so along the small office building they placed and noted a series of rat traps. They circled the whole building then drove away. As Randolph was finishing his fries a rat appeared from a drain across the street. It sniffed its way along the building and into a trap. A few seconds later it and all the other traps exploded, leveling the office building.

100 Words - Graffiti Jesus

Randolph stood across the street from the graffiti Jesus. The body was painted normal, in proportion to the cross to which it was nailed, but the head was huge. A giant caricature head hanging down in despair like a bobble-head with a busted neck spring. The savior’s eyes were security cameras, not painted, real. They were there long before graffiti Jesus appeared. These eyes really did follow you as you walked by. That's why Randolph stood here. He wanted those eyes to see him. Wanted the slime-ball he knew was glued to the monitors to know that he was coming.