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“Just for Laughs” by Liam Moran

            I swear when I told Pretty-boy Pete this, he nearly lost his shit.

            My dad’s all stern—he’s got those frown lines pronounced so you know he’s serious—and he says to me, “What happened to you? You were at the top of your class in high school. You were always on honor roll. You were always on the dean’s list. And now here you are, drinking, drugging, driving drunk. What happened to your brain?”

            I smile—I can’t help but smile—and I say, “It drowned in bourbon.” And I just laugh my ass off. My dad keeps trying to lecture me and I just laugh louder and louder.

            So when I tell my buddy Pete this—I always do—he busts a big old gut and he says, “Ain’t that a fuckin’ hoot.”

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            That’s what it was—our catch phrase. Any time we found something entertaining, the phrase ‘Ain’t that a fuckin’ hoot’ was sure to follow. It had such a dirty twang to it. It sounded like one of those phrases that some greaseball says in some old-time seventies or eighties movie. So it just kind of stuck. You know those little inside jokes among friends. Try to explain it to someone else, and people will look at you all mouth agape and stupid; but say it to your best buddy, well, you two will be rolling on the floor.

            You see, we were able to see what nobody else could see. Pete ain’t too bright, but he at least accepted this truth: the world’s a fucking joke. Nothing more. It’s just a joke, and if you’re not laughing, then why the hell even come to the comedy club. You stop laughing for more than a day: well, you oughta end it right there. Slit your wrists and exit stage right.

            You see, Pretty-boy Pete got his nickname for his looks, if you’re too stupid to figure that out on your own. He ain’t got a lot upstairs, but his looks were enough to get his dick wet. And that’s where he got his laughs. Find one slut, do what you need, then move onto the next. I swear, he went through more cases of chlamydia than one of those sniveling twerps with bad allergies goes through tissues. He used to have the nickname ‘Penicillin Pete’ for a while, but he didn’t like it. So I had my laughs and then backed off.

            See, I wasn’t so lucky. Sure, I wasn’t fuck-ugly or anything, but I had to work for it. I’ve had a couple of fine pieces of tail, but I really had to work the game. It’s hard, but a little manipulation goes a long way.

            So another night I come home so shitfaced that I bump into my pop’s car. Rich schmuck paid for a brand new one, so you bet your ass he’s fuming. He’s shouting at me, “What the hell is wrong with you?! Are you fucking dense?!” It took all I could muster to stifle my laughter.

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            So then he calms down, and begins his old lecture again. “What happened to you?” He’s all nauseatingly sincere about it too. I can’t decide whether I should bust a gut or spew. “You were at the top of your class in high school…” You know where this is going. He must have given me this speech about a hundred times, so I zone out until it’s my turn. Then he says my cue, “What happened to your brain?”

            “It got lost on its last acid trip,” I belt out and roar another round of laughter. Man, I had a new response for every time.

            Then he starts slapping me, but I can’t help it. I can’t stop laughing. And his feeble attempt to stop me only adds to the hilarity.

            I tell Pretty-boy Pete that one and he laughs so hard, the bourbon shoots straight out of his nose. Then he says, “Ain’t that a fuckin’ hoot.” And we laugh some more.

            I’m twenty-four and I see what nobody else sees. Everyone’s breaking their backs trying to put food on the table. Dipshits who forgot to wear a rubber have children to feed. Everyone’s wasting their time working and growing up, when they miss out on the fun. Meanwhile, I’m cruising down the road with a bottle in my hand laughing my ass off.

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            So this one time I’m in the car with Pete. He’s got one spliff in his mouth and one tucked behind his ear, and he’s taking huge rips off it. The road’s hard to see with the smoke accumulating on the dashboard. So I roll down the window, take a swig of Jim Beam, and press down on the pedal.

            “Hey,” I say to Pete, “hold this and give me a hit.” I hand him the bottle and he gives me the joint.

            I take a good long rip. Then I take another. Then another.

            “Quit fuckin’ hoggin’ it,” Pete complains.

            “You got one tucked behind your ear,” I tell him.

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            “Yeah, but it’s my weed,” he says.

            “Oh, who gives a shit?” I say.

            “Give it, man,” he says.

            I blow out a cloud and concede, “Fine, you fucking fiend,” then I hand him back the joint.

            We drive a bit longer and I feel the cold wind whip my sweaty scalp. The pot blows in my face as if Pretty-boy Pete is trying to tempt me with it. Fucking asshole. I take another swig of bourbon.

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            “Say, know what we should do?” I say to Pete.

            “What?” he says.

            “Let’s go fuck up Ron’s car,” I say.

            You see, Ron’s this asshole we used to know. He always used to pick fights with me for no reason at all. He just had some grudge against me. I don’t know why he singled me out, but I ain’t somebody who forgives easy.

            “Ron?” Pete asks and I nod. “Why Ron? I haven’t heard from him in years.”

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            “You got something better to do?” I raise an eyebrow.

            He shrugs and says, “Whatever.”

            He didn’t seem too enthusiastic at first, but the moment we took the baseball bats out of the trunk, he looked like a kid in a candy shop. We fucked that car up: broke his tail lights, busted his hood, shattered his windows; ain’t nothing in that piece of shit mobile was untouched.

            We start driving back fast, fleeing the scene, just cracking up. “Ain’t that a fuckin’ hoot,” Pete says, and we laugh some more. We haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. So then the laughter dies down, and Pete says, “You sure that was Ron’s car?”

            I look at him, then start to grin, then we both start laughing louder than ever. Was it? I thought it was. But I haven’t seen or heard from him in almost five years, so maybe he moved. God damn. Ain’t that a fuckin’ hoot.

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            So we’re feeling that nice crossfaded buzz—just cruising with the pedal down—and damned if we didn’t finish that entire fucking bottle of Jim Beam. We must have also killed an eighth of bud too. We’re all numb and tingly and warm and fuzzy and not entirely sure if we’ve pissed ourselves or not. But one thing was for sure: we were laughing our asses off. That’s the way we were: always laughing.

            So then my song comes on: it’s “Blinded by the Light”. God, I love that song.

            So I turn to Pete and I say, “Roll another joint; this is my smoking song.”

            “We’re out of bud,” he says.

            “What do you mean we’re out of bud?” I ask.

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            “I mean just what I said,” he says. “We smoked damn-near an eighth.”

            “Well give me a cigarette,” I say. “I need to smoke something.”

            So he hands me a cigarette, and—you’re gonna love this—I’m so fucked up I light the filter. What a fuckin’ riot.

            So I get another one and succeed this time. I tell you, lighting a smoke while driving when you’re seeing double is no small feat. So I spark the square and keep driving with my eyelids at half-mast.

            Right when we get to my favorite part of the song, it happens. Right after Paul Jones tells his momma where the fun is for the last time, and Manfred Mann starts his iconic keyboard solo, our car comes to a violent halt.

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            We smash right into another car; I have no idea how many miles per hour we were going. Pete wasn’t wearing a seatbelt—I told you he ain’t got a lot upstairs—and he goes flying right through the windshield. Can you imagine that? Just broke through the glass headfirst and flew through the air.

            The airbag explodes in my face, and the car crumples and shatters my leg in three places, and the empty bourbon bottle shatters and imbeds itself all throughout my busted up leg. I mean, what are the fucking chances, right?

            So when I finally am able to drag myself out of the car, I see Pete lying twenty feet in front of the car dead as a fucking doorknob. I walk up to him, crying my eyes out, dragging my bum leg, and he smells rank. And—get this—he literally shit himself. I’m not making this stuff up! A complete bowel discharge! I’m screaming in tears. I’m devastated. My only friend is lying there stone-dead. I mean, what are the chances?

            So now I’m sitting in a courtroom before a judge. I’m facing vehicular manslaughter, reckless endangerment, driving under the influence, and the prosecutor is pushing for life. You see, the car that I crashed into was carrying a husband and wife and their only son. The mother is still in a coma, the father only suffered a few broken bones, and their son died in the accident.

            And—this is the real kicker—they were celebrating their son making honor roll again. Get a load of that! He was honor role, dean’s list, top of his class, just like I used to be. What are the fucking chances?

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            My mother is clinging to my father, and in both of their eyes it’s Niagara Falls. They’re sobbing and holding each other for support. My only real friend is now being turned into soil by hungry worms.

            And then—get this—the judge, he leans over and asks me, “What happened to your brain?”

            Now ain’t that a fuckin’ hoot.

Author, Liam Moran

Liam Moran has been published in Coffin Bell Journal and Ripples in Space and his novels, ‘Saving Fiction’ and ‘Love is Delusional’, are available on Amazon. Originally from Levittown, New York, he now resides in the suburbs of Chicago. He invites fans to follow him on his Facebook page @LiamMoranAuthor or on his website at amazon.com/author/liammoran.

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Original Series

Nightmarish Nature: Horrifying Humans

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So we’re going out on a limb here in this segment of Nightmarish Nature and exploring one of the most terrifying, most dangerous, most impactful species to walk this planet. I’m talking about us of course. Sure, as humans, we may not seem all that horrific to ourselves, but to many other creatures we have been a force of nightmares.

Humans male as drawn by Jennifer Weigel
Humans male as drawn by Jennifer Weigel

Why are we terrifying?

Humans are among those species that engage in massive modifications to our environment to serve our needs, like beavers who dam rivers, elephants who eat all of the new growth scrub to keep the savannahs tree-free, and so on. Yeah, all creatures have some impact on their surroundings, but some take it up a notch, and we do so at an order of magnitude higher still. And we have gotten so good at it that we have managed to exist and thrive in places that would otherwise be inhospitable. We are outwardly adaptive and opportunistic to the point of being exploitative. We are the apex predators now.

Sabertooth cowering as drawn by Jennifer Weigel
Sabertooth cowering as drawn by Jennifer Weigel

We have forced many creatures into extinction, intentionally and not, and have sped up these effects enormously. The National Audobon Society chose the egret as its symbol after it made a comeback from being hunted to near extinction, and it was one of the lucky ones. Many weren’t so lucky, especially if they came in direct conflict with humans, such as wolves and the big cats who were in direct competition, or those who were really specialized in really specific niche circumstances that we pushed out of the way. And this is in only a very very limited scope of our earth’s history, and has since been even more ramped up with industrialization.

Humans female as drawn by Jennifer Weigel
Humans female as drawn by Jennifer Weigel

But humans aren’t all bad are we?

Depends on who you ask… We have created all sorts of incredible opportunities for some species too. Take mice for example. And coyotes. And kudzu. And a whole host of animals whom we’ve domesticated, some of whom wouldn’t have continued to exist otherwise or certainly wouldn’t exist in anything resembling their current forms. And the most massive extinctions occurred long before our arrival, when the earth was still forming and underwent rapid catastrophic changes and swings, decimating critters as they were trying to get a foothold. Nothing is constant except for change; that has always been true.

Wolf begging for cheezborger drawn by Jennifer Weigel
Wolf begging for cheezborger drawn by Jennifer Weigel

So it isn’t my goal to get all eco-con​scious and environmentalist here. Just that I feel if we are going to explore some of the more terrifying aspects of nature, we need to look in the mirror. Because if a consensus were taken right here, right now of all living beings globally as to what is among the most terrifying creatures among us, I’m sure we’d appear on that list.

If you enjoyed this closer-than-kissing-cousins segment of Nightmarish Nature on Horrifying Humans, please check out past segments:

Vampires Among Us

Perilous Parenting

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Freaky Fungus

Worrisome Wasps

Cannibalism

Terrifying Tardigrades

Reindeer Give Pause

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Komodo Dragons

Zombie Snails

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Original Creations

Werewolf-ing It Well, Part 3 by Jennifer Weigel

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Continuing our junkyard dawg werewolf story from the previous two St. Patrick’s Days… Here are Part 1 from 2022 and Part 2 from 2023 if you want to catch up.


Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel

So apparently it really was my lucky day at that suburban gas mart last St. Patrick’s Day. I got the mother lode of all Scratchers. I hit it big time. I had no real idea of what that meant, but it looked promising. Maybe I could get a Cadillac to tour Route 66 AND a cabin in the woods… But who was gonna drive?

Now apparently you can’t just cash these things in at the register. You have to mail them in or something. Why does life have to be so complicated? Anything involving those good for nothing mailmen has to be rigged or part of some larger conspiracy, I’m sure. But I pocketed my prize and made some plans. I couldn’t rely on old Sal not to just pocket my prize for himself; he wasn’t the sort that would let me have my dream. Or even understood that I had dreams beyond just chasing rabbits (though those are the best).

The next full moon I whined and howled at Sal to take me in to work with him. Sal just patted me on the head. Didn’t even offer a treat or nothing. Seriously, I had to get out of there, this suburban situation was the pits. I couldn’t do another year of it, watching my life tick away. So, when that didn’t work, I gently grabbed my Scratchers ticket like I was retrieving a very important slipper and slunk over and hid in his truck under that ratty blanket he kept in the back.

I managed to creep into the junkyard office and hide there while Sal was sleeping on the job. Those mastiffs nearly ratted me out, but fortunately they were chained up, and they weren’t all that bright anyway. Just growled a string of profanities at my cur form, like I hadn’t heard that before. Anyway, I waited it out and before long I heard Monty’s car pull up, rattling like the dilapidated Honda Civic held together with duct tape that it was. Sal’s truck pulled off, spitting gravel and exhaust in its wake as always.

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Dusk was setting in and I could feel the change starting. Nothing to do for it, guess I’d just have to run with it then. Monty had settled in as usual, watching bad porn and staring off into nothing. He still smelled like day old jelly donuts (the kind you can get a whole bag for $1) and coffee, as usual. Good boy Monty, how I’ve missed you and the occasional stale donut, even if it wasn’t a cookie. I approached him from behind and coughed.

Monty nearly leapt out of his skin. He blanched as if he’d seen a ghost before he managed to find his voice. “Shit, that wasn’t a dream,” he stammered, pointing. As he realized I meant him no harm, he regained his composure and even offered me a day-old jelly donut, which I accepted gratefully. I think he could tell that my tail would have been wagging if I’d still had one at that time.

“Lucky, what in all of hell are you doing here?” he asked, eyes still wide as saucers. “And for Christ’s sake, put on some pants.” He offered up the spare uniform that still just hung from the hook behind the door. I guess in my fervor to talk to him I’d forgotten to dress. Oops.

Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel

“Monty, old friend, I need a favor,” I barked. I handed him the Scratchers. His eyes grew wider.

“Shit, where’d you get this?” That’s a lot of money,” Monty exclaimed. “They’ve been looking for the winner of this one…”

“I’d stashed it in my hidey spot under the place where the carpet peels up after I got it… It’s our ticket out of here,” I retorted. “You don’t think I want to spend the rest of my days laying around suburbia with tightwad treat-skimping Sal do you?”

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“I suppose not,” Monty quipped. “But what’d you have in mind?”

“You and me, we could get a cabin in the woods, live off the land. Get out of this shit-hole. Hell, you could even get a real car, one of those big-boat Cadillacs with the wide tongue-lolling windows…”

“Um, you could do a lot more than that with this, but I catch your drift. And I want out of this hellhole too. But, like…? I mean, you aren’t gonna bite me or anything, or get all weird.” Monty fidgeted like he did when he was nervous. “I guess I knew but didn’t want to admit it – dude you’re a freak show.”

“Gee thanks. Trust me, being a dog is better any day except that you can’t drive or get your own treats and crap,” I retorted. “And if was gonna bite you I’d have done so a long time ago. It doesn’t work that way, anyway. Seriously, you don’t believe all that werewolf mumbo jumbo on Netflix too, do you?”

Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel

Monty shook his head tentatively. “I don’t really know what to believe. I mean, I guess I always knew you were like this, but I didn’t let it sink in.”

“Well, get over it and help me get my dream cabin,” I snipped. “Seriously don’t just stand there gawking all night; I put on clothes and everything. I only have tonight.”

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“You mean before you turn back into a dog?” Monty asked.

I nodded, still licking the jelly off my lips.

“But I thought werewolf changes happened every full moon,” Monty asked.

“I do, but these Scratchers change like the wind. We gotta cash in quick,” I growled. “And if you try to turn on me, I’ll hunt you down. That’s OUR ticket outta here.”

“No, no, I get it,” Monty said. “I’ll make good on it, I promise. I can follow up on the ticket first thing tomorrow; it says to mail it in or go to the courthouse or something. I’ll figure it out… I guess you can stay with me until we get it sorted, but you have to be really quiet about it. I’m not supposed to have pets in that crap apartment for all that a little dog hair would be an improvement.”

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Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.

Check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s writing here at Jennifer Weigel Words.

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Lighter than Dark

LTD: The Firing Squad

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So you’ve just gotten the pink slip.

Work is letting you go. Amidst all of the layoffs, you just didn’t make the cut. Well, I’m sorry to say, but it behooves you to go quietly. And quickly. Because you don’t want to stick around for the Firing Squad…

In fact, if your HR department is outsourced to one of those Eldritch contractors like so many are nowadays, get outta dodge NOW. Like seriously. Leave the lunch you brought in the fridge; leave the personal items in and on and around your desk. Hell, leave your coat and purse if you are not near them. You can get new ones. Maybe one of your ex-coworkers can help you retrieve your stuff later. Because you need to get out while the getting is still good.

The Firing Squad is coming.

And if they so much as see a pink slip anywhere in your immediate vicinity, it is complete and total annihilation…

Ready Aim Fire...  The Firing Squad appears digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Ready Aim Fire… The Firing Squad appears
Wing Shot...  The Firing Squad takes aim digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Wing Shot… The Firing Squad takes aim
Sharp Shooter...  You're a goner! digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Sharp Shooter… You’re a goner!

I warned you… Those Eldritch contractor HR departments mean business… It’s like going to the Library. Or making Jell-O.

Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.

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