Meet Today's Monster: The Technicolor Yawn

Meet Today's Monster: Chauncy D. Goatman

Meet Today's Monster: Horky the Romantic

Your Daily Monster: Dick Shonary

Fairy Tales for the Sensible: Jack and the Beanstalk

His head heavy with dreams and his pockets light with coin, Jack hummed a merry song as he led the family cow to market. Scatterbrained at the best of times, it was not long before Jack lost his way and found himself at an unfamiliar crossroads. Scratching his head, Jack pondered which way would right his course.

“A proposition.”

The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Without knowing quite how, Jack soon found himself face to face with a hooded stranger. His cloak was bedecked with trinkets of all shapes and sizes, making him appear more curiosity shoppe than man.

Jack, taken aback by the sudden appearance of this mysterious stranger could only stammer “Yes?”

“It would seem that responsibility weighs heavy on your head, lad, as you have been tasked to sell this creature your Ma deems worthy enough to call a cow”. The stranger motioned vaguely to the heifer. “Instead of suffering the disappointment of a meager market offer, why not simply give him to me. It would save your family any disappointment you would bring back.”

“You must take me for a fool” said Jack, growing bolder at the insult. “I would not simply give away my family’s only asset. What would you offer in trade?”

“Ah!” smiled the stranger, his trinkets clattering together as he rummaged through his many pockets “A wise boy! A remarkable boy! I can see that you haven’t simply fallen from the tree yesterday. What I offer is nothing more than treasures beyond your wildest dreams. Adventure beyond anything you could imagine. And it all starts with this!” With a magician’s flourish, the stranger opened his hands.

Jack looked down at his offer. “Why, these are just beans!”

“Just beans?!?” scoffed the mysterious figure “Magic beans Jack. I’m offering you nothing less than paradise! And all for a measly cow.”

The man raised an eyebrow at Jack.

“Magic Beans!”

He jiggled them enticingly.

“Your wildest dreams! A reality!”

Jack’s brow burrowed in concentration, staring at the offer. Suddenly, his face snapped into a smile as realization dawned upon him. “OH! Now I understand. You’re one of those crazy people types!”

The man stared at Jack for just a moment before hitching up his garbage-lined cloak and skipping down the lane, whistling a tuneless melody and meowing intermittently.

Jack shrugged his shoulders and went on to sell that cow at market for a very fair price. And his family was able to live a very modest and happy life thereafter.

Barry Talks to His Waffles

Every morning around 7 o' clock, Barry Whitmore walks into Sal's Diner and orders his usual: two eggs, sunny-side-up,  a cup of coffee, strong and black, and two hash browns, shiny with grease. He eats his meal in the far corner booth, alone and in silence. His shoulders are hunched, his head low to the table as he masticates his food quickly. His routine snakes out and becomes June's routine, as the waitress wordlessly pours one refill of his coffee. It is an unspoken agreement between the both of them that this is performed after the eggs have been consumed, but before the hash browns enter Barry's waiting maw.

Twenty minutes later, Barry is done. He leaves five dollars and fifty cents on the table and exits as silently as he enters. No check is needed. No change is wanted.

Barry walks the seven blocks home to his single bedroom apartment. There, sitting on the table, still radiating warmth, sit two waffles, heavy with butter and light on syrup. The butter drips slowly, steadily from the waffle onto the plate beneath. To Barry the drips are fingers tapping the plate anxiously, the increasingly soggy waffles regarding him as though to say "and where were we this morning? Hmmmm?"

Barry sits in the chair facing the abandoned waffles. His hand cover his face, sobs of guilt creeping through the cracks of his fingers.

"I'm sorry!" he hiccups between tears "I'm sorry. You know that I love you. That you were always my first love and shall be my last. Never again! I promise! Never again!"

Barry wipes his face with the back of his hand, picks up the plate of neglected breakfast, and tosses it into the bin overflowing with stale and mouldering piles of waffles past.

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day." he says to no one.

Fairy Tales for the Sensible

Tale the First

The Princess and the Pea

A princess was invited to stay the night as a guest of the royal family. It soon became evident that the family was seeking a bride for their handsome prince. Upon retiring for the evening, the princess saw that her bed was made of not one, but twenty mattresses stacked almost to the ceiling. “Surely such a bed would be offered only by a mad man” thought the frightened princess. She fled for her life in the cover of night, and was never heard of again.