Author - Chris Weagel

Thank god. Oh thank god!
The cider mill burned to the ground.
I'll be honest with you, I'm glad it burned down. Goddamn cider mill. Goddamn any kinda mill. Goddamn grinding. You know what they're really grinding in there. You know. Yeah.
Ugh god what a relief. I can get donuts right here. And the cider, look it wasn't even that great. It wasn't fresh. It's well water. You got any idea how many people come in there every day? They made it back in January, they freeze it in big blocks. I've seen it. And they don't wash their hands.

I AIN'T DRIVING OUT TO NO GODDAMN CIDER MILL! THAT'S ENOUGH!
I don't care how close it is to the outlet mall. They can go to hell with them.
What do we know about apples?
CAN I PLEASE TURN ON THE FAN?

Fall crafting has begun in earnest. People are painting everything orange. It doesn't stop with garden rocks. It's carried all the way through to spare bedroom ceilings and step children. Normally the state would get involved at this point but little-known provisions of the “Stand Your Ground” law keep them uninterested. “As long as it doesn't impair their breathing,” has become the phrase we live by. Everything is orange and there'll soon be plenty of festive “Indian Corn” to tolerate. It has also become customary in these parts to fill every drawer with those decorative dwarf gourds. The kinds with the unfortunate bumps. Another thing to acknowledge but never discuss. Soon after it'll be time to dye one foot black in honor of the...

I can't tell if this piñata is smiling. It's better if they're smiling. It means they're oblivious. They have no idea what's coming. Why make it worse? There's enough misery. Let them think it's normal to be a rainbow-colored pony filled with Tootsie-Rolls. Why not? That's how the world should be, anyway. They should be unacquainted with brutality. We all should.

I have been and remain an advocate of gifting taxidermied dogs. Primarily on first dates and anniversaries, although the practice can be expanded, with little effort, to secular holidays and extended family. Emotive poses can be readily achieved, provided the corpse has suffered little structural mutilation. And though larger breeds challenge display conventions, all dog types are preserved with lightweight fill material making them easy to move, carry and send via parcel post to points in the continuous forty-eight. To give a preserved dog, with marble eyes, stiff tail, vinyled tongue and all is to give peace of mind. Companionship, conversation, something to set in front of the magazine pile all come with a formerly living, now dehydrated, eternally frozen dog. There's even the...

House furniture resigning in disgust. Middle children bargaining their way into heaven. Roller skates reversing the aging process. A senator and a shoe, now and forever. Twenty-one ducks, blind and blonde. The curse of a master's degree. The tambourine wars never ended. A heartfelt hello in an ugly man's mouth. One thousand twenty imbecile sons. Each pointed east. Wet down the hairs, lock down the dreams. You've made wonderful choices. Let me help you into your fit.

Big jugs of syrup. That's what Jennyworth Anderson had dedicated her life to. The year was 1909. Three years before the world would be changed by the discovery of horses. And seven years before Jenny's world itself would be changed by a time-traveling bachelor scientist from beyond tomorrow. For now, though, it was syrup. Catching and carrying and moving and slopping around big buckets of maple run-off on her daddy's tree lot. It was hard work, rotating the jugs so that each got an even layer from every tree. And it was isolating work. It was well known even then that trees warm up to but one person at a time and won't bleed for no other. Jenny, having been born with no mother, had been forced to take over the sap collecting early on as her brothers had been devoured by...

Last night, tricksters bricked up all the entrances of the last drive-thru car wash in the state. Then they tied just enough helium balloons to the superintendent's house to lift it off the ground a few inches, creating a tripping hazard. These same tricksters went on to pry up random chunks of road cement and apply the right combination of exotic postage to pass the threshold of “deliverable.” Then they called up the all night sports talk radio stations and screamed, “Abortion! Abortion! Abortion!” on the air. And if that wasn't enough these tricksters devalued the currency and declared a trade war with neighboring Windsor, Ontario and left notes in random mailboxes written in the finest handwriting exclaiming, “You were adopted. It was all a lie. It...