stories
I wrote when I was 16 and thought I was the next Kurt Vonnegut I. Billy
Buckles Up Billy
Crowe was just fiddling around in his basic home learning center
when he jumped up, very excited.
He had invented a belt buckle
with his junior chemist's kit. It had a dial that displayed four
numbers. When you shook the belt, the numbers spun like a slot
machine.
The belt buckle was a time-machine
belt buckle.
Billy's hands were shaking
as he attached the buckle to his belt. His belt was brown. It
had fake rhinestones.
"Eureka!" cried
Billy. "Eureka!"
The numbers stopped like this:
2-0-0-1. This meant Billy would advance to the year 2001 when
he pressed the belt buckle.
He pressed the buckle. He
did this because he couldn't wait for the future. If he did,
it would then be the present.
He entered 2001 quietly. He
found himself in the middle of the parking lot. Cars floated
by and some honked at him.
HONK! HONK!...HONK! HONK!
Cars pulled out of parking
places near Billy. They each left a cart on a moving conveyor
belt that took them into the store. It reminded Billy of dogs
leaving doggie-doo on the curb. The conveyor belt was a cart
pooper-scooper.
In Billy's time, young men
picked up the carts by hand.
Billy had his hand on his
time travel belt buckle. He turned around. This is what made
Billy turn around.
HONK! HONK!
Then he was hit by a truck.
II. 53-Under-Par When
Billy Crowe was an astronaut, he found it interesting. He was
sent to the moon.
Before Billy went to the moon,
it didn't have any footprints. Now it does.
That's progress for you.
Little did Billy know, but
he would become famous for his moon trip. He was the first astronaut
in history who could say that everyone hated his guts and was
glad to see him go.
Billy went with another man,
Billy Bowels. Billy teased Benny because of his name.
On the moon, Billy wanted
to hit a golf ball. He thought this: "I didn't come here
to collect rocks."
He put the little dimpled
ball on a tee. He'd never done it before, not even on earth.
Of course, he was never famous on earth either.
He hit the ball. He thought
he might have sliced it. The ball was orange. The moon is a par
54.
Some time later, Benny thought
he saw something on the horizon. You see a lot of exciting things
on the moon. What Benny saw was Billy's ball. It had orbited
the moon.
Benny watched the orange dot
get bigger and bigger. His eyes crossed. The ball smashed into
the glass shield on his space helmet.
Benny turned blue. He had
a golf ball blocking his epiglottis.
When Billy looked down at
Benny, this is what he thought: "Oh my God!"
Then he thought: "A hole-in-one!"
These
stories originally appeared in Chip's Closet Cleaner, Issue 7.Link:
Slaughterhouse 5,
or the Children's Crusade (book)Copyright
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