Fiction Korner

I've always wanted to write the perfect story. To encapsulate the energy of all the weirdness I see in the world. I was talking to my local newscaster (and good friend), Ron Jason, about this one day. We were sipping coffee from a communal bowl at Tsarry Night Diner. He glanced up at me with the glazed eyes of a man resigned to the fact that he was utterly at odds with the world around him.

"I can't help you. You know I can't. I feel like you're asking for help just so you can remind me of my disconnection from the world. I'm a friend, too, you know. I'm not just a pretty face on the television."

"We don't call it television anymore, we just say TV... But no, I don't think you're out of touch. I think you're wonderfully insightful."

In my haste to reassure him, I reached toward Ron's arm, upsetting our two-gallon coffee bowl in the process. Hot java went everywhere, the creeping edges of the puddle forming the shape of a stegosaurus. Ron began to weep.

"Am I going to be like that dinosaur?" He sobbed. "Am I going to be extinct because I'm no longer fit for this world? Is my brain the size of a pea?"

After that, I left. I was trying to write the perfect story, not comfort an overemotional newscaster with two first names.

-Ronald Raygun