Split House

Everyone called Elloise mad when she insisted on taking half of everything during her divorce from her husband Earl. Half of everything isn't uncommon, half the money, half the possessions, and in these respects, she was reasonable. She took half the books, half the dishes. She took one of their two dogs. With singular items, however, her madness showed. They had only one house, and she wanted half of it. Earl proposed they sell the house and split the proceeds, but Elloise was not satisfied. She wanted half the house. He protested, but she ignored him and took a chainsaw to the walls. In the end, she had half a house. She was crazy, they would say, certifiably nuts. Then one day, she met a divorced man named Ray who also owned half a house. They talked, they fell madly in love, and with a little carpentry, they were able to make a new house out of their two literal broken homes. The neighbors agreed, theirs was a relationship of pure insanity, but all relationships and all people have their insanity, and as Elloise and Ray would say, love is finding the crazy that matches your own. 

Originally mailed to J. Dunn from d'Iberville, Mississippi

Planning Purgatory

The Industrial Revolution played havoc on God's civil engineers. Oh sure, Heaven and Hell were always pretty easy to organize. The people in Heaven were always treated like kings only much much better, and Hell was set up to treat its residents like some combination of prisoners and peasants, only worse. That way everyone felt appropriately awarded or punished. Purgatory, post Industrial Revolution, however, was a nightmare. It used to just be luke warm gruel and a typical day in the fields for the poor and for the wealthy a calf that was kind of fatted followed by a jester who had a couple of good jokes, but were all pretty obvious. Differences between men and women, the quality of tavern food, and complaints about work. With the rise of the middle class, and then further, the striation of the upper, middle, and lower classes into their own self contained upper middle and lower classes and the number of purgatories that God's civil engineers had to coordinate became a hydra to slay, for each slice of the population had to have an afterlife carefully blanded to their own life experiences. A hundred tv channels was a perfectly fine purgatory for the lower-middle class, but was practically heaven to the upper-lower. Supermarket beef wellington and chicken cordon bleu for dinner each night was hell for the lower-upper class, heaven for the middle-middle, but perfectly so-so for the upper-middle. Purgatory's designers breathed a sigh of relieve that at least a long work day with stupid co-workers stayed consistent through each level. After carefully constructing the Nine Circles of Purgatory, funding for the afterlife skyrocketed. Too many special orders, too many administrators. “Maybe it would save us money,” the engineers said to God one day after a budget cutting meeting, “if we just re-widened the gap between the rich and everyone else like the good old days.”

- Originally mailed to M.J. Navoy in Picayune, Mississippi

Tin Men

Once a beloved but clumsy wood cutter, the Tin Man had become a monster since he took control of the forest in a bloody coup. People dreaded the coming of his “justice” which fell upon them as quickly as the blade of his axe. He was a heartless tyrant who cared nothing for his subjects. There were attempts to overthrow him, but most weapons the poor peasants could fashion deflected effortlessly off his metal body, and they learned soon enough that the few that could puncture his iron hyde did nothing, for the Tin Man was as hollow as he was heartless, a foul ghost trapped in an empty metal suit. So great a dissatisfaction cannot go unaddressed, however, and though they dared not speak their thoughts aloud for fear of his axe and they could no more assassinate him than change his mind, they resorted to an anonymous protest, crafting men of tin cans and leaving them hanging from the trees of the forest and the poles in town.

- Originally mailed to J. Cox of New Orleans, Louisiana

Zombie Training

“Be ready, son,” my father would always tell me, growing up. “The zombie apocalypse could happen at any time.”

All fathers have their obsessions. Sports. Model trains. Grilling. His was zombies. At bed time, he would tell me stories of people planning and surviving, or not planning and dying, stories of people keeping a level head and surviving and people panicking and dying. Every night, he would give me the adventures of Goofus and Gallant: Undead Nightmare edition. While other boys' dads taught them to catch a ball, mine taught me to make a headshot from fifty yards with a pull string, compound, composite, and cross bow. He taught me wilderness survival and took me camping the way many fathers in rural areas did, but the advice was different. Sleep in a tree so Zed can't get you. Walk in the stream so Zed can smell you. Don't use guns unless you have to. Guns are loud, and will attract Zed.

At seven, just in case, he gave me an air pistol and would randomly stick targets in unexpected places to keep me on my toes, and at ten, he gave me a real pistol, taught me to shoot just in case (a bow simply will not do you any good within striking distance). I learned to strip and clean my gun blind, learned to make my own ammo. My friends called him weird. So did I when I hit my teens.

But to this day, every time I step outside the cabin and put an arrow through one of their heads before I even consciously realize one was shambling toward me, I say a little prayer of thanks for everything he taught me.

- Originally mailed to P. Walker in Diamondhead, Mississippi

Getting Rid of Fairies

Terrance's bathroom had a serious fairy infestation. He couldn't turn on the lights without seeing them flock to the mirror to primp and preen and admire their wings. They would take the caps off of his toothpaste to use as cups. They would destroy his cotton swabs to make dapper walking canes, even though they rarely walked. They would hack his wash clothes and hand towels to ribbons to make dresses and they would use his lotions to, well, to moisturize their skin, which wasn't weird so much as annoying, because that lotion was his, darn it. He considered hiring the Ghostbusters to deal with his infestation, but the cost of supernatural pest removal, even pint sized sprites like these pixies was cost prohibitive on his retail cashier salary. Thinking himself a clever man, he fashioned a “Protected by Ghostbusters” sign and ensured their commercials ran continually throughout the day to discourage the tiny menaces. His plan failed miserably, however, because it hinged upon one tiny logical flaw, one reasonable assumption that as it turned out was completely false. He assumed if he put up the warning sign and played the commercials, they would be fearful and leave, but he assumed wrong. What he should have assumed when dealing with fairies is that they do not care in the least about anything he does.

- Originally mailed to A. Perkins in Metarie, Louisiana

Wrestling Flies

Phinneas, the current world heavyweight fly wrestling champion, pinned Hector “the Nectar Protector” to the mat and went in for the Pinned Wing submission hold, only recently taken off the banned move list and only then due to a clerical error. Hector buzzed in rage and spun hard, trying to shake his opponent free so he could fly to a better vantage and swoop in for the pin. Phinneas clung tight and spun with him, throwing the Nectar Protector off balance. Things weren't looking good for the underdog and people's champ. That's when Hector had his brilliant idea. Dragging Phinneas on his back, he charged for the edge of the mat. The rules said they couldn't be outside the ring for more than ten seconds without being disqualified, but that was plenty of time. He dove off the edge. With Phinneas pinning his wings, he couldn't fly, but if his opponent kept him in that hold, neither could Phinneas. It was a dangerous game of chicken they were playing as they plummeted to the floor. At the last second, Phinneas broke free, and Hector, who always made in aerial precision what he lacked size zipped in like a bullet toward Phinneas, who blinked first and changed course to avoid a head on impact. Hector used the moment to pull an immelmann turn and come in square on Phinneas. Inches above the table, Hector latched on to his opponent's wings and put him into the dreaded Pinned Wing. They both crashed, but at such a low altitude, Phinneas took the brunt of the crash, and Hector, triumphant, held the pin for the full ten seconds. He had done it. Hector the Nectar Protector was the new world heavyweight fly wrestling champion.

- Originally mailed to J. Germany of Biloxi, MS

Hidden Style

You would never know it to look at the guy, but Hansel Feinstein was a sharp dressed man. He kept his trouser creases so sharp they could cut. He coordinated his various ensembles like a special forces surgical strike. He had no fewer than fifty sets of cufflinks for every occasion and he kept a man on retainer just to keep his closet of shoes, from loafers to wing tips and every other piece of footwear imaginable, polished and ready to go at a moment's notice. He had closet after walk in closet dedicated to shirts alone with every possible attractive combination of cut, cloth, and color. His suit guy was so talented, Italian tailors imported from him. Hansel was a clothing god.

But it never did any good. His silk double breasted charcoal pinstripe, a textile work of art, never swayed a single negotiation, though its very appearance could make the hardest CEO yield to anything. His two-tone zoot suit with the white gold and pearl buttons could make the most chaste women chase him, but they never had a chance to, for they never saw it. Hansel's drive for the perfect outfit was so acute that though he wore his exquisite clothes constantly, he could never reveal them for fear that a touch of dust here or the wrong lighting there might ruin the effect and present him in an unrivaled but still inferior light. And so the world's best dresser walked the earth in a protective plastic suit, no one ever the wiser at the immaculate clothing hidden beneath that sixteenth of an inch of yellow vinyl.

- Originally mailed to J. Womack in Brooklyn, New York