ER

Tyler had seen too much television. Taken to the ER with vomiting and diarrhea, he expected to be dumped on a gurney and forgotten for several hours, while nurses and interns rushed by with anxious faces. He expected a crying mother being soothed by a wise-looking older doctor. And where was the gruff cop not allowed to question his gunshot victim? Instead, it was all clean, efficient and quiet. The only part Tyler recognized was being forgotten.    

Brute

A Polish lagomorphologist, Antoni Bubalov’s trial breeding of mountain hares with bull hares has produced a calf-sized specimen he calls a Brute hare. The professor has faced difficulty obtaining financing after several elderly citizens suffered heart attacks when confronted by the giant Brute hares and a kindergarten class was suddenly trampled by seven stampeding hares excited by a tractor. Continuation of Dr Bubalov’s research is now in doubt.    

Potluck

Several members had begged Laverle to make her famous curry for the Zion Church potluck. So there she was stirring the curry roux, a rich mix of spices, pork and vegetables bubbling in a giant pot. Soon she would add the surprise delight of rat poisoning, savoring in her mind the death throes of that dogpoot Deacon Billy who put hands to her baby girl. Sadly, in her 40 watt brain, it never occurred to Laverle that others would also eat her curry.    

Mermaids

Tired from long travel, the couple at last came upon an odd valley tucked among pink hills. A room was prepared at the inn overlooking a jeweled river where mermaids frolicked and doubled as waitresses. Fern was shocked by their retractable feet. Too tired for such, she fell into bed but a bellman soon knocked with a basket of soup spoons, the desk clerk called to say the champagne had gone flat and that the mermaids were on their way up to sing.    

Flim-Flam

Weldon had been seeing Dr Kronig three times a week for two years. The doctor never said much but Weldon felt like he was getting better, whatever that was. At his Friday session, in the middle of describing a fantasy about raw liver, the door burst opened and two men with badges came in and took the doctor away in handcuffs. Weldon saw it in the paper the next day. Bill Corn was a flim-flam man, a scam artist who had spent half his life in jail.