BrendenClawson's profile

I live in Portland, a city populated by exiles and outcasts. I fit right in, for I am the deposed king of the small European nation of Rosaria. For decades, I was a fair and benign ruler, before I was ousted by my closest advisors in a bloody coup de’tat. I barely escaped with my life. One day I will return. Until then, I will continue being a cashier at a hardware store. At this moment, a large man with a moustache comes to my register. He places a saw, a tarp, some latex gloves, a box of tr...

THE TIME MACHINE Oh how they had scoffed at Milo Morgan when he first proposed his unified theory of time travel. “Purely science fiction,” said Arthur C. Hennigan, editor of the Journal of Modern Science. “Utterly ridiculous,” said C. Chesterfield McGruff, Harvard physics professor. “Cute,” said cosmologist Vladimir Ghul. “But you should read my book. Then you’d realize there is no such thing as time.” They were wrong. For in the darkest depths of his laboratory, Milo had created what all ha...

DO YOUR EYES HANG LOW? One morning I sneezed. Now this wasn’t by any means an odd occurrence. I have always been a voracious sneezer. On this morning, however, I found something troubling in the involuntary response that lead me to shut my eyes at the moment of discharge. I suddenly realized how dangerous this was. What if I was driving and inhaled a particle of dust? Being forced to close my eyes while I sneezed could cause me to be caught up in a horrible accident. I could be beheaded, or m...

At the end of days, Jesus will walk the Earth again, and there will be a reckoning. But first there will be a party, and everyone will be there. Everyone who has ever lived. Churchill and Hitler will sit side-by-side, not as bitter enemies, but as compatriots. Then they will take turns snorting massive lines of blow off of Amelia Earhart’s bare tits. Marilyn Monroe and Helen of Troy will dance naked in front of a crowd of strarstruck onlookers, as Homer and JFK argue over which one really had...

The grand elders of the alphabet met one evening and decided there was too much dead weight among their ranks. There were far too many letters doing too little, performing tasks that could be accomplished by other, more qualified ciphers. A culling was in order. They gave this task to the letter T, who was well known for his sadistic cruelty. Q was the first to die, shot in the back of the head while he dined in an upscale restaurant in Pearl. None of his pears attended his wedding, save the ...