Author Archives: Bruce Goodman

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About Bruce Goodman

My day is astronomically fantabulous, inordinately splendid, incredibly superb! Hope your day's not its usual crap.

3598. Long awaited mail

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It was a very misty morning when Constance went missing. You could barely see our little white mailbox at the end of the garden path. Mist? Fog? I don’t know the difference. Mist or fog you could hardly see the front gate.

Constance had gone out to check the mail. She was quite excited. Her uncle had died and left a sizeable fortune. Constance had been told she was the heir. I wasn’t surprised. She was the only surviving member of the wider family. She had been checking the mail daily for the last few days. And this morning when she went out to check a very heavy mist hung over everything making it impossible to see very far. However I suspect that what she was waiting for wouldn’t be in the mailbox today.

I myself checked the mailbox yesterday to see if anything had arrived. Of course I would leave it there. It would be a thrill for  Constance to discover the awaited envelope herself. But of course I was as excited about the possibility as her, so I had a quick peek in the mailbox when she wasn’t looking. Who wouldn’t want all that money? I certainly would like it.

Constance was from a fairly large family but all had passed on one by one over the last few years. Some hereditary condition I should imagine.

I don’t know if she found anything in the mailbox this morning. I could hardly see a thing. All I know is that she never came back. I had watched her disappear into the mist down the garden path.

You what? What’s that? No mail on Sundays? I thought today was Saturday.

3597. It’s in the chase

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It’s all in the chase and not in the capture. I’ll tell you what I do. I get on a bus at random. Maybe the first bus that comes along; maybe not. I like it when a bus is crowded and there’s nowhere to sit. I look around trying to find someone interesting. It might be their face or their clothes or something they’re carrying. It’s spontaneous. I never know what I’m looking for until I see it.

Having selected someone. I follow them. I get off the bus when they do. I keep my distance but follow where they’re going. Sometimes they go to quite a few places. Sometimes they shop for things which can get quite dreary. One even caught another bus. That caught me off guard a bit but I managed to keep following.

When I have enough information I go home. That’s when the planning starts. Now that I know their schedule a bit I’m able to follow them several times more. I definitely learn most of their patterns. I plan meticulously. And then I strike. That’s the boring bit. I get a bit of a buzz reading about it in the paper, but it’s a bit of a nothing really. I’m on to my next bus passenger in no time.

As I say, it’s the chase that’s the thrill of being a serial killer.

3596. Wonderful Caribbean cruise

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I’ve saved all my life for this. Ever since I was a kid and read about it I’ve wanted to go on a Caribbean cruise. In a gigantic cruise ship with sunshine and swimming pools and ball courts and sun umbrellas and deck chairs and …0h… How wonderful! How wondrous! But so expensive.

Well, I’ve thrown all caution to the wind. If I’m ever going to do it I have to be drastic. When I get home from this cruise I can start over again – saving for a retirement down the track, one day buying a house, all that. I’ve spent almost everything I had to get this cruise. I’m here! It will be an expensive, but life-lasting memory. Yipee!

Well yippee-do. I’ve never been so disappointed in my life. I can hardly stand up in my little cabin room. The decks are so crowded there’s nowhere to move. The swimming pools are sardines in a can. It’s frightful. I’ve not once found an empty deck chair. The food seems alright, but a few apparently have gone down with salmonella. They reckon it might have been the chicken.

Yesterday we arrived at our first port of call, and we were able to alight and wander the city and shop and sightsee. It was more like an average little town with a few shops. And things were so expensive! By the time I’d bought a coffee and a sandwich I was heading for bankruptcy. The only people I met were off the same boat as me. So much for meeting the natives.

And now I’m all sunburnt. They said to wear a hat. Yeah right. Who needs a hat? I’m back on the cruise liner all red and sunburnt all over. Thank God it’s raining.

3595. A life of pills

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Dallas Prentice was a bit simple. He wasn’t always simple. Old age had diminished his faculties. He and his wife Lillian were both in their mid-80s. There were a few aches and pains that came with age, especially for Lillian.

The problem was that Dallas would take on all the symptoms of Lillian’s health problems and start taking her medicine to counter his “disease”. Lillian would run out of medication before she was meant to. Next time Lillian went to the doctor she asked for placebos. She hid her real medication and left the placebos in the medicine cabinet.

Lillian got more and more ill. Had she perhaps hidden the placebos and put the real medication in the medicine cabinet? There was no telling. Everything looked the same.

She thought she would start taking both – the placebo and the real medication. That meant in the mornings she had to take eighteen pills. And it didn’t solve the problem of Dallas and his psychological illnesses. However, she persisted in her decision for a good month. Things slightly improved. And then the problem was solved. She died.

3594. The perfect pinecone

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Kenneth was collecting pinecones for his open winter fire. A nearby land owner had a bit of a pine forest, and Kenneth had asked if he could collect a few pinecones. So that’s why Kenneth was out there with a sack filling it with pinecones.

The bag was full, so Kenneth headed for home. On the way out of the forest Kenneth bent down and picked up one more pinecone. It lay on the track Kenneth was taking. It was a perfect pinecone; beautifully round. Almost good enough to use for a Christmas decoration! In fact, Kenneth nearly put it aside for that purpose. He had to carry it in his hand because the bag was totally full.

Who would have known? It was the stuff of novels.

That was the very pinecone that rolled out of his open fire in winter, set fire to the house, and burnt it down.

3593. Thank God for small mercies

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All that Linda could say (she kept repeating it all day) was “Thank God for small mercies.”

“Thank God for small mercies.”

Friends were calling into her house all afternoon and all she said was “Thank God for small mercies.”

Her boyfriend had been hit and killed by a bus. Friends streamed in to express their condolences. She was swamped with messages on social media, and all she could say was the same thing.

She’d been trying to muster up the courage for six months to tell her boyfriend that it was all over, and then this happened.

“Thank God for small mercies.”

3592. To each their own

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This story may seem incredulous but I swear by my Senegalese ancestry that it’s true. A ferocious bear went to a music teacher and said he wanted to learn to play the trombone.

The music teacher said, “Don’t be silly. You haven’t got the right lips and the appropriate mouth shape to blow into a trombone.”

So instead the music teacher taught the bear to play the guitar.

3591. The take-over

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There could be no doubt that what Jeremy Cottle had to say was a complete revelation. Perhaps that should be rephrased… There could be no doubt that what Jeremy Cottle had said in the past had been a complete revelation. Today he stood at the rostrum vindicated. People had pooh-poohed him over the years. Now, as he stood and spoke to the huge crowd at the “Are We Alone Conference” everyone to a T had to admit he had been right. He was just an “ordinary bloke” – and yet he had been prophetic in his statements.

 “And so, ladies and gentlemen, for too long we have presumed that extra-terrestrial civilizations are like ourselves – violent, warlike, jealous, vengeful. They visit Earth to take it over; to destroy; to demolish. How wrong can we be? How very, very wrong.”

“These extra-terrestrial beings have evolved differently from us. They do not hunt to survive on meat and prey. They do not kill plants by pulling them from the ground and destroying them in order to nourish themselves. They survive by a process very similar to photosynthesis. They get all the energy they need from their sun. There is no need for violence. They come in peace. And now, at last, the whole world agrees with me.”

“Well ha ha ha! How wrong can you be?” laughed Jeremy Cottle, shedding his human camouflage and revealing the most hideous, evil, extra-terrestrial visage the world has ever seen.

3590. Church on Sundays

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Kerry-Lizette always looked forward to Sunday mornings. The rest of the family went to church. Kerry-Lizette stayed at home and had the house to herself. Not that she necessarily did anything special, but things on Sunday mornings were done with “space”.

Two doors down lived Christophe. He pretty much kept to himself. No one quite knew what he did. He noticed that the neighbours two houses up went to church at the same time every Sunday morning. Now that the house was empty, it was a good opportunity to put his skills to professional use. He was a burglar – and a very good one too.

When he broke in through the backdoor, what a surprise he got to see Kerry-Lizette sitting in an armchair in her living room.

If Kerry-Lizette had gone to church she’d still be alive.

3589. A miraculous escape

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When James fell asleep at the wheel while driving a huge articulated logging truck along the highway, little did the four in the car following realize that this would be the last moment of their lives.

The truck ran off onto the rough grassy verge and jack-knifed. Astoundingly James wasn’t injured. “It was an absolute miracle,” declared onlooker Martyn Webb. “He could easily have been killed. Thank goodness the truck didn’t roll.”

James’ wife was jubilant. “A miracle indeed!” she kept saying. “A miracle indeed! He didn’t even need to go to hospital. It certainly was a wake-up call in more ways than one. The only things lost were a couple of logs!”

The following Saturday they had a barbeque on the back lawn, with invited friends, to celebrate James’ miraculous escape. “I feel we have been blessed by the Lord,” said James’ wife, raising her glass.