The Asteroid Thing
Fshht. Zipt. Wuh-wuh-boom. There was an asteroid coming. He got out of the shower and looked up into the sky and there was a ding-dang asteroid on its way. “Everyone is doomed,” said the news. “Seriously, oh no.” A fucking asteroid. Jeez.
He was ready though, he was ready for this. He put gel in his hair and texted his Mammy (she was at a spa retreat and he didn’t want to call cross-country) and then he clambered under his bed and got out a box, an entire shoebox, of unsent love letters. He was doing it. He was going to tell Jenny he loved her.
He’d always loved Jenny, from since they first met, with her blue eyes. He remembered when he’d bought her a Sheryl Crow Greatest Hits CD for her birthday and she gave him a chaste little hug that made his palms damp. He remembered that time they just sat there watching Pretty Woman and eating popcorn and she’d referred to it as ‘gals night’. And what in the dang there were five other cars in the driveway?
“Hey,” he said, when she opened the door. “I, uh… I love you, and stuff.”
“Ohh,” she said. “The asteroid thing?” He nodded at the sky and looked sad. “Yeah, Brad got earlier and said. Also Lance, plus Warren.”
“Hey Warren, Lance.”
“Hey.”
“So anyway you wanna come in? I put out cheese snacks.” Of course she put out cheese snacks. That’s why he loved her. That’s why he spent his last 45 minutes on earth eating savoury biscuits while she kissed on Brad.
The Hole
The Scientist woke up. He had been cryogenically frozen because his brain was brilliant, and occasionally they put him on defrost and tasked him with solving far out future pickles. “Phew,” he said. “Hell of a ride.”
“Hello, Mr Scientist, Sir,” said the Government Agent. “You were cryogenically frozen in the past.”
“I know.”
“We woke you up.”
“I know, yes,” said the Scientist, squinting into glasses. “What is it?”
“We got this thing, here” said the Agent, swiping at an iPad. “We want to know how we can fuck it.”
“Hmm,” said the Scientist. “Hmm.” He took out a pad and pen, scribbled down some science-looking equations and such. “Hmm,” he said, again. “Couldn’t you put like, a hole in it?”
“Ha ha, we never thought of that!” said the Agent. “Put a hole in it! Yeah!”
“So, well, thanks,” said another agent, suddenly, zipping up his body bag, turning on the oxygen. ”Until we next have to fuck a computer: goodnight, sweet prince.”
The Dance
He had passed the first Boy Test (he smelled nice, of musky oranges) and sailed on through the second (capable of making eye contact) as well as the third (bought her a drink without blanching at the cost of a double vodka because fucking seriously have you bought one of those on the lates?). In the lingua franca of rough teenagers who wear sporting clothing and have ever in their life thrown a brick from a great height into a skip for laughs, he was in.
“Hey,” he said. “You wanna dance?” Boy Test #4. This was it, it was finally it. She slurped the last of her wetted down Coke through two pink straws and tussled her hair. Kid was gonna get it.
A Lesson We Have Learned: this [narrator points to crotch two times, fingers pointed into vague approximations of pistol, bites bottom lip and says “Yee-haw!” before taking off top, licking finger pistols and touching his eyebrows] is not a dance move and the taxi home cost much.
The Slap
“Oops,” he said. “Dang.” He was walking through the train station all aflap, all elbows and umbrellas and shifting his bag from one shoulder to the next, when he slapped a passing lady just square as heck on the bottom. Made a sound like a kid learning how to chew bubblegum.
Here is the thing: show me a dude who ain’t never touched a lady on the bottom by accident, even ever-so-lightly, and I will show you either a liar or an unfortunate with nubs for hands. Anyway: eight years in prison.
The Condition
“I’m sorry, but you have a condition,” said the doctor, shaking his head with clinical precision. “It is called stress boner.”
He knew he had stress boner already. It had been messing with his golf swing for weeks. “Oh jeez,” he said, bleakly swelling, tears in his eyes. “Don’t stress this.”
The muslin screen that was supposed to secure his anonymity while his just hella anxious erection was paraded Elephant Man-style to med students a week later was old and thin, the elastic saggy, and his eyes could about peep over the screen at this just vision of a first year on the front row. “If you could just get stressed now, Patient #011.,” said the Doctor. “Just think about the economy or whatever.”
He heard shouts before he heard words. “He won’t get a boner!” it came to him in waves. “He can’t get stressed!”
Anyway, A Thing Medical Science did not Know Before This Whole Thing Happened: you can die of a stress boner.
The Clone
‘Yawn,’ you know, ‘good morning’. The lab technician was making coffee, with precision and care. It was early in the morning and he and the Scientist had science to do, electrons to count, frontiers to cross. He went to the storage cupboard for more of those tiny little packets of sugar.
“Hmm,” he said. “What.”
“Oh yeah,” said the Scientist, stirring in creamer, “that.”
They looked down at the dead and crumpled body of what appeared to be the Scientist.
“Did you clone yourself?”
“I cloned myself, yes, though it went wrong and I had to kill him with a science hammer.”
“Wrong how?”
“Wrong: ‘clone me wanted to fuck real me’, how.”
“Oh.”
“Wrong: ‘clone me wanted greatly to deliver personal kisses onto real me’s dinky,’ how.”
“Okay, yes.”
“…”
“So why are his trousers down?”
The Femidom
He was a man, you know, the type who always bought the ‘For Men’ range of toiletries. “Why do you always buy the ‘For Men’ range?,” she asked once, fresh from his shower and smelling like a dude. “Because I am insecure,” he would sob into her bosom, later that night.
So it transpired that when he bought female condoms on accident - and wrestled one on to himself in the dark, like flapping the sails of a storm-ridden ship - it about made him have a deep down man crisis in his rod and have to take two weeks out at a men’s retreat. Some folk.
The Time Machine
They had done it, they had finally done it. They had invented a time machine with which to kill Hitler.
“Okay,” said the Scientist. “Just to go over the plan again: I go back in time and kill Hitler with a gun, you stay here and read the newspapers and make sure I did it.”
“Okay,” said the other Scientist. “Yes.”
ACT TWO
[The second Scientist watches furiously as a headline shimmers into view: ‘CREEPY FUTURE DUDE ARRESTED AND KILLED FOR TRYING TO TOUCH MARILYN MONROE’S HAIR’]
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