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October 17, 2005

Volume 7, Issue 17

Somebody wants one of your internal organs.

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D: Custody Battle

I light up, my hands still shaking. He’s talking but my ears have blocked him out. How? How could she do this to me? This shyster, this shark, this crook that she's sleeping with who comes into my house and stands in my kitchen and hands me papers signed by my wife. Ex-wife! God-damned ex-wife.

How did it get to this? She takes half the money, half the house, half of the possessions, and now one of my lungs?

Visitation rights? I'll give her visitation rights. I light up another three and jam them all in my mouth at once.

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Stacy: Cover Band

I watched in amusement as he nervously pushed up the sleeves of his zippered naugahyde jacket and straightened his absurdly skinny tie. I hadn't seen a tie like that since high school, 30 years earlier.

He stalked around the store, an overdressed banty rooster, stumbled as he turned too quickly on his high heeled boots. I stifled a snicker, shouldn't laugh at the paying customers.

He stopped suddenly, eyes wide. "The Casio CT-615 Tone Bank Synthesizer," he whispered reverently. "61 full size keys, 10 note polyphonic PCM sound generator, and 210 sound programmable Tone Bank!"

I smiled. "Cash or charge?"

Read more from Stacy's .

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Michele: My Cup Runneth Over

I know it’s wrong, but nourishment is scarce since the plague; healthy blood is hard to find and I’d rather not wither to dust.

I entered the church at midnight and located the sacristy. Still feeling uncomfortable about what I was doing, I did a quick sign of the cross (that does not kill us) and drank. Lucky me, it was blessed. I could feel the life coursing through me.

Then I saw the priest standing there.

He cut my stomach out with a pocket knife, squeezed and drained my fluids into the wine vessel.

Good thing I’m already dead.

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Ted: The Rest of the Story

Rotten eggs. They told Mary she had rotten eggs. Sterile. That was how come she had never had a period. That was how come that now matter how much she and Joe fucked like bunnies, she could never get pregnant. Her life was hopeless. What with the Romans scourging, and the Pilate a big political pussy trying to curry favor, she knew it was only a matter of time before she got traded in for a fertile wife. So when the alien showed up and told her he could make her have a baby, it seemed like a good idea.

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From the Comments: Jim Parkinson

“Here’s another one,” Goldstein grunted, slapping the paper onto the desk.

Levy rolled his eyes. “Chapter 13?”

“Worse. Court ordered Chapter 7. We won’t get bubkis out of this one.”

“We need to pick up the pace, Goldstein. We’re already two months behind on the quota.”

“Umm. Wouldn’t we be more successful if we changed the contract a bit?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t mean to kvetch, but why don’t we start charging monetary interest on our loans instead?”

“Don’t be such a meshugeneh! ‘A Pound of Flesh’ is our motto here at Abrams, Abraham and Shylock.”

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The Eschatologist: Exchange Rate

It started back in the day with simple prosthetics; a new arm here, a replacement leg there. Then the artificial heart. Lungs, and then brain. Biochems that were certainly human in appearance, but carried a melancholy in their eyes (when they were real) that slapped you across the face. There was something less than a person in there, they'd strayed too far.

Harvesting organs was a thing of the past. Barbaric, even. Never would it be assumed that they could replace the original. The copies were better. Manufactured with rigid quality controls.

We can rebuild them. We have the technology.

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