Bedtime Stories

There was once a man who went on a long flight into space. He had no reason for doing this, other than that he was bored, and sadly he was even more bored in space, which consists mainly of nothing.

One day he noticed a nice little planet and decided to get out and stretch his legs. A group of half-naked human-like creatures ran through the fields eating nuts and berries and cavorting like they were at a sixties rock festival.

Some of the women were cute, and he figured he might see some action, given that he was an interstellar traveler with a slick-looking space ship. However, as he approached the group, he noticed that the women all smelled like left-over tofu buried for months in the back of a refrigerator.

There once was a helicopter who was different from all the other helicopters. Unlike them, he wasn’t conscious when he was on.

The moment the other helicopters were turned on, it was as though they would wake from hibernation, from oblivion. And then when they were turned off, they would enter a state of zero consciousness, as though they were dead.

But this particular helicopter had no awareness of being turned on, no awareness of his propellers spinning, of rising through the air and flying over the city. Instead he would come to life at the moment he was turned off.

So he would be on top of a particular building for a long time, and then someone would climb inside him and suddenly everything would go blank, and then, in what seemed like the next moment, he would be in a completely different place, with no idea how he had gotten there. Because of course he had no way of knowing that he was a helicopter, and that he could fly, and that he did fly, and that this was how he had come to be where he was.

There was once a man who signed up for Facebook. He kept hearing about it, particularly at work but also in the news and in magazines, and so one day he went to the website and filled out the form. Unfortunately he didn’t know anyone to invite to be his Facebook friend. He was friendly with some people at work, but they weren’t really his friends, and anyway he had no way of knowing for sure if they had Facebook accounts, and he didn’t feel comfortable asking.

So each day, although he had no Facebook friends, he would fill in the text box where you’re supposed to write what’s on your mind. The first time he did this he was excited to see his thoughts appear on the page, but soon the excitement wore off and he was left with a feeling of emptiness – or really, a feeling of no feeling in particular. Still he returned each day and wrote whatever he was thinking at that moment, up to a maximum of four-hundred and twenty characters, which was the most the text box could hold.

In time he came to think of the text box as a journal that could only hold one entry at a time, like a journal written on an Etch-A-Sketch. This appealed to him for reasons he never understood, although he had many theories about it. Each time he thought of a new theory, he would write it in the text box.

The end.

K: Is this true?

M: What do you mean is it true?

K: Is it a true story? Is it you?

M: [Laughter].

There was once a boy who lived with his parents in a house in the rocks. It wasn’t really a house, it was more like a cave, but it was a home and it was where they lived together.

One day there was a terrible flood and everything got washed away and the boy got washed away and he ended up in a place he’d never been.

He saw many things there but didn’t know what they were or how they had come to be. This frustrated him and made him confused and afraid, and so he kept trying to go back to the place he was from, but that place was underwater.

The boy’s name was Bill Gates, only he wasn’t the Bill Gates who is famous today. He was just a boy named Bill Gates who had lost everything, including his parents.

As the years passed, the boy slowly adjusted to the new place, so much so that he began to forget the place he was from, which each year seemed to sink farther underwater.

The End.

K: What happened to his parents?

M: He never saw them again.

K: So we don’t know if they’re alive?

M: No.

K: Make something up.

M: What? That would be lying.

K: No, make it part of the story.

M: Sweetie, I’m telling you what happened. I know it’s sad but at least it’s the truth. The End.