One themed story by Craig Sernotti

Being Responses to What I've Heard My Wife Mutter in Her Sleep
By Craig Sernotti


"No, please, I love chocolate chip cookies."

The ceilings were producing chocolate chip cookies. Small limpid embryos formed, and after a gestation period of about two to three hours they popped like balloons stretched too far and a half dozen or so oven-fresh cookies rained down on our heads. I ran around with a trash can collecting them. I had one or two for myself (they were pretty good, considering the source), and tossed the rest to the famished guinea pigs who had congregated outside our house. Jen protested, but I couldn't allow her to have any. She was dieting.

#

"What happened to Wade Boggs?"

After battling a terrible nine-year addiction to deep fried asparagus, he convinced NASA he could successfully and safely navigate an interplanetary probe. Officially it was said he had just drifted past Jupiter. Off the record, though, his ship is rumored to have crashed on Umbriel, one of Uranus's moons, where he took a mid-level government position among an ancient race of endoskeletonless, good-humored blobs, whose population—the males, females, and k'plith'euzs (a native word; loosely translated: "Two times the orifices, two times the guilt")—at certain angles remarkably resembled Dolph Lundgren, Charo, and Frank Grimes a.k.a. Grimy, that one-shot character from the "Homer's Enemy" episode of The Simpsons.

#

"The blanket's not being a good listener."

It's downtown now handing out flyers calling for a Hannity-Limbaugh ticket in 2012. Yesterday he flushed half of the pictures from our wedding album down the toilet. I just found last month's bills stuffed inside the couch cushions; guess who did that? And if you read its diary, you'd find a detailed plan to kidnap a cadaver and take it swing dancing at the high school prom. I think it's about time we had a serious talk with Mr. Blanket.

#

"Don't blame me, the X-Men did it."

A crash, a bash, a thundering boom. I raced into the bedroom. "What's going on in here!" Everyone stopped what they were doing. Cyclops, Iceman, Colossus, Wolverine, Jubilee, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Jean Grey, and Psylocke on one side of the room, Magneto, Juggernaut, and Omega Red on the other. Gazes diverted. Thumbs twiddled. Jen stood between the two factions, shaking her head, accusing fingers pointed in both directions.

#

"No."

Okay look, I am aware that my nose hair is so long it wraps comfortably around my wrists, and that the rash has spread to my lips, and that my toenails are a shade of Garbage Pail Kid snot green, and that I can't get my left eye back into its socket properly, and that my breath smells worse than a dead dog's rotting rectum, and that I have amassed so much belly button lint it deserves sovereignty, and that I have that uncontrollable projectile vomiting problem, but c'mon, can we? Please? I'm tired of masturbating.


Author bio:

Craig Sernotti is a sometimes writer and editor from New Jersey. He has been published in and accepted to St. Vitus Press & Poetry Online, Sisters of the Page, and Gloom Cupboard recently. More of his vuglar nonsense can be found at Inscribed.org, The Dream People, and Wretched & Violent.