Absurd Short Story: -Long Island Smooth-

When I was a lad around the age of 6, my parents made me take up the viola. As some of you very well know it is difficult to comprehend the intricacies of such an instrument at this tender age. I considered myself a decent player, but on occasion my bow would run across the strings in a manner that produced violent scraping noises. These noises were so unbearable to the neighbors in the apartment that they constantly banged on the walls, discouraging me from playing. However, my parents, with strained smiles, cajoled me to keep at it. Unfortunately, poor technique led me to never be able to correct this flaw in my playing.

After a few months, my instructor deemed that I could play sufficiently enough to have my first concert at the senior citizen's center in West Babylon, Long Island, hoping that our soothing sounds would help relieve the elders of their stress. I spent the prior night fumbling with my notes until I was forced to resign at 10:30 PM (a very late bedtime for a 6-year old, mind you) and woke in the morning cranky and devoid of energy. My mother had to splash water in my face that morning to prevent me from drowning in my cereal.

Afterwards, I was driven to the center, ready to give the performance what little energy I had left inside me. The rest of the band started the beat and the elders seemed to be enjoying the sounds for a while, bobbing their heads and tapping their feet. After sixteen measures of rests, my part came, and I, out of fatigue and anxiety, faced my unfortunate flaw as I scratched bow across string. The din that it produced was similar to that of a dying cat, and even the nicer looking members of the retirement home let their hands cast shadows over their ears.

In my attempts to correct my devilish note, I fingered the fretboard differently, but each sound proved to be more horrible than the last. By the time I had finished, most of the elders had been killed, put out of their misery by my deafening tones; those still alive fanning themselves with newspapers, trying to slow their palpitating hearts.

From that disastrous day forth I have never felt the urge to pick up the viola again, and my parents, neighbors, peers, and the entire West Babylon senior community seemed to be eternally grateful. We donated the viola to an arts organization in Wantaugh, and it remains on their wall to this day.

Absurd Short Story: -Cherche-

I think it was around the age of fourteen when I first started grappling with thoughts against my faith, thoughts contrary to everything I had learned about religion up until that point. One of my preferred places to mull over such ideas in solitude was, as it happens, the local church across the street from my house. 

One day when I was there, the stained glass windows cast their light over me, and I sat in a pew with my head bowed down and my hands clasped during a period of transitory meditation. I was alone save for a bald-headed, dark-skinned man who approached me while I was in mid-thought.

The man was carrying a strange container under his arms. His meaty voice reverberated through the ecclesiastical walls.

"DO YOU BELIEVE?" he shouted. I was a bit startled and didn't respond. There was a pause. Then, more vehemently, he called out,

"DO YOU BELIEVE?"

I felt a wave of saliva graze my nose from this yell but kept silent, staring at the container he carried, unsure what to say. Finally, with a heaving sigh, the man pushed the container in my face, torched me with his eyes, and in a voice like thunder, rumbled,

"I'm going to ask this just one more time, boy! DO YOU BELIEVE?" 

There was silence for a few seconds as I looked back and forth from man to container before finally responding. I kept my head down and solemnly shook my head, 'no'. I finally came to my epiphany that this was how I felt, and no matter how much I willed myself otherwise, I concluded that I can't believe it's not butter.

Absurd Short Story: -bird/man-

Samuel Oliver was a man who thought he could fly.

Inspired by crude sketches found in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook, Samuel had engineered his own flying machine, sans modern technology. He'd called his prototype BXJPLMN, which was an acronym he thought up before he knew what the following words would stand for. The device’s unabberviated name became Ballistic X-perimental Jumping Propellant Leveraging Men and Not-Men. BXJPLMN was a curtain rod equipped with gift wrap paper in the shape of wings.

Samuel stood at the edge of Makebabies Cliff, his eyes focused on the tiny baseball diamond at the very bottom. He took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself. However, his hands trembled and involuntarily shook the contraption that he carried on his shoulders. From the depths of the valley he and his invention must have looked like a winged cross.

One inhalation did not placate his mind. Perhaps if he breathed deeper… Samuel gulped the most air he’d ever drawn in his life. Unfortunately, it was too much. He choked and sputtered for several minutes on what he’d ingested. His faced turned red, then blue, and then gray. He slid down from the ledge and his corpse soared across the sky.

A child who was playing in the baseball field stopped at this sight. He saw a black dot gliding past the sun, slowly sinking deeper towards the ground. The child thought he had seen an angel. This child then felt horror encroach as he noticed a lifeless body clinging to some haphazard assemblage, plummeting to Earth. He watched Samuel zigzag across the air and fall to the ground thousands of feet away soundlessly.

And the field was silent, mourning the fruition of a dream postmortem.

Absurd Short Story: -Swole-

Jack loved going to the gym. It was his favorite feeling to work out- he would alternate days for his legs, arms, and abs, and working in construction, Jack found these muscles to be very helpful whether holding steady a raging jackhammer or carrying immensely heavy bags of cement. Now, construction is a dangerous profession with hundreds of annual workplace injuries. One such tragedy befell Jack while he was lifting a refrigeration unit. Droplets of water condensed on it, and while it was physically no challenge for Jack to hold, he had to be wary of slippage. Unfortunately the unit did just that. Jack's fingers fumbled in desperation but his leg was torn open by the falling sharp side of the unit, and the hundred pound cooler had fallen directly on his foot. He was bleeding profusely but decided to hop to a hospital rather than freak his manager out with a workplace injury. All the while, slowly dragging his dying leg to the hospital, all Jack could think was, "Looks like tomorrow's definitely an arms day."

Absurd Short Story: -Spoiler Alert: The Chocolate Is God-

An hour ago, Mom, Dad, Junior, and Junior Jr. had pulled into the lot of God’s Non-Sacrilegious House of Chocolate (motto: “Where a kid can be a chocolate!) to get some dessert. Dad ordered the “Lethal Fudge Injection” and Mom asked for “one Chocolate Holocaust, please”. Junior got the “Pie” and Junior Jr. was told repeatedly by his elders that he was not allowed to have dessert here as he was too young, and GN-SHoC had a reputation for turning customers into diabetics overnight. I mean, they were still customers, so it was a pretty lousy magic trick, but they were then also diabetics. 
Junior Jr. watched his father happily insert an unclean needle filled with some brown colloid into his vein. Then, Junior Jr. saw Dad actually begin eating his dessert. He watched as his Mom committed genocide on the Chocolate Holocaust (imagine a Kit-Kat bar but larger, with a thicker chocolate 
coating, and shaped like a swastika). Most horribly, Junior Jr. watched Junior. Eat. the. Pie. There was really no reason for me to break up that sentence into several smaller ones, but I can do whatever the hell I want, can’t I? 

Junior Jr. then began to cry, hoping that at least his tears would contain enough sodium content to sate him, but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. To Junior Jr.’s horror, he saw his parents and older brother throw out the remnants of their desserts, despite their remaining half-portions. 

“Children in Africa are starving, you know!” Junior Jr. said as he noticed his relatives drop their food in the trash.

“They are?” asked Junior in shock. Junior then ran from the table and out of the door. That was the last anyone had seen of him since that day. I secretly suspect he had been looking for a tenuous excuse to escape that family for his whole life, and found one in that moment. 

“Uh-oh,” said Dad, reaching down to pinch one of Junior Jr.’s many cheeks (he was quite a malformed child). “Sounds like somebody’s not appreciating their relative privilege based on the social class they were born into. Let’s look at some of the games, shall we?”

Junior Jr. and Dad left to stroll by the games. I don’t know what Mom was doing at that time. I’m not really that omniscient. Pretend she was reading a book or something.
 
Anyway, Junior Jr. and Dad strolled by the Chocarcade, which had many games, such as: Pac-Man: Chocolate Edition; Pong: Chocolate Edition and Street Fighter: Chocolate Edition. These games were all created when the arcade companies were struggling to appeal to a wider demographic. Unfortunately, all these games were deemed “racially insensitive” by “experts” who “know” a thing “or” two about “video” games.

They passed a game in which children were supposed to throw a Himhe’s chocolate bar through a hoop. They then walked past a game similar to Move Move Uprising, but the floor panels were replaced with pudding. Then, they strolled by a fun game for adults in which men gathered up money in a pile, soaked it in gasoline, and lit it aflame. It was called “Stock Market”.

Junior Jr. wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. There was malted milk ball billiards and Tootsie Roll minigolf (arguably one of the few things Tootsie Rolls are actually good for). Junior Jr. was so overwhelmed by this shocking amount of opportunity coupled with disorienting lights and scary noises that he passed out. 

Junior Jr. never woke up from that coma. I secretly suspect he had been searching for some flimsy reason to pass out for his whole life, and now presented with one, finally took the opportunity. 
Mom and Dad left the House of Chocolate now liberated from the burden of providing for their children and lived happily ever after.