Story 154: Lucky Twin

            “Hey man, congratulations!”  His friend greeted him at the bus stop.

            “Thanks,” he responded automatically.  “For what?”

          “The promotion!  VP of Sales?  Why didn’t you tell me – I had to read it on the company newsletter!”

            “Cause it – didn’t happen?”  He was very confused.

            “Well they had your photo and everything, with ‘New VP of Sales’ on the caption.”

            “Did they have my name on the caption?”

            “Sure… um… you know, I didn’t look that closely at the words and all.”

           “Yeah, they probably used an old photo from something else and made a mistake.”  He was glad to have that mystery solved just as their bus arrived.

           “Yeah… no, wait!  There was a banner with the promotion in the picture!  And it was definitely you!  You have to pick up a copy of the newsletter today – then you’ll believe me,” his friend said as they climbed the narrow stairs into their cramped mode of public transportation.

            He grabbed a newsletter at the office and, sure enough, he saw himself being promoted to VP of Sales, albeit with someone else’s name in the caption.

            Hm, he thought.  I have a twin out there.  Bound to happen, I suppose.

            *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *         

            “Hey man, great job organizing that fundraiser last night!  The buffet dinner totally rocked!”

            “Oh, thanks, but that wasn’t me, it was the new VP of Sales.”

            “Huh.  He looked just like you.”

            *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *         

            “By the way, I wanted to let you know that I admire you so much for the way you coordinated traffic in the parking lot so well after that mess with all that construction: you really kept your cool there and probably saved a lot of lives.”

            “Oh, that wasn’t me – that was the VP of Sales.  I call him my twin, heh, heh, heh.”

            “That’s odd, he looked just like you.”

            “Yeah.”

            *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *         

           “Hey big guy, congratulations on the engagement!  Don’t take this the wrong way, but you lucked out big time with this one, eh, eh?  How’d you afford that rock you gave, anyway?”

            “I didn’t.  It was my fake twin you saw, the VP of Sales.”

            “Oh.  Right.  Lucky guy, eh?”

            “Yeah.”
            *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *         

            “I can’t believe you didn’t tell us that you won the lottery and are retiring with your wife to Tahiti!”

            “I can’t believe my fake twin has such a cooler life than I do!”

Story 153: Skeletons in the Closet

            He saw his coworker sitting at a cafeteria table as he walked by with his tray: she was eating a salad very slowly, with a look of horror in her eyes.

            “What’s up?”  He joined her without asking – she was beyond that anyway, he could tell.

            “Nothing,” she said as she absently chewed another leaf.

           “Well you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he chuckled as he shoveled food into his mouth with no hesitation; he stopped when he noticed her staring at him with her eyes bugging out.

            “Why did you say that just now?” she whispered.

            He shrugged.  “Figure of speech.”  He drank some milk so he would not need to look at her for a few seconds, since she was creeping him out and he regretted sitting at her table uninvited.

            “All right, since you’ve already guessed it, I’ll tell you everything,” she pronounced.

            “OK,” he replied, having nothing better to offer and 15 minutes to kill on his lunch break.

            “It all started two days ago,” she began her narrative….

           Since it was Saturday, I was free to finally go over to my dead aunt’s house and help my cousins clean it out so they can sell it.  The place was a sty: I don’t know how she'd lived in such filth, but she had managed to for at least as long as I can remember, which is about three decades.  We skipped the basement and the attic and started from the ground floor, working our way upward, with quite a few unhappy evicted multi-legged tenants along the way.  We were making good progress room by room, until we hit THE MASTER BEDROOM.  My cousins and I were reminiscing about the good old days, the place was actually starting to smell clean, and it all was going really well.  Then I found the skeletons in the closet.

          “Uh-oh!”  He laughed.  “What, did you find tawdry love letters from her undercover boyfriend?”

            No, I found actual skeletons in her closet.  There were two of them, and they were human.

            “Oh,” was all he could say.

            Yeah, my cousins and I stared at them for a while trying to figure out what they even were.  I wanted to think they were Halloween decorations, but I just knew that they were real, as in real human skeletons, and that my aunt had killed them.

            “No way!  Your aunt was an actual – ” he quickly glanced around as he lowered his voice to a whisper, “murderer?  Why would she do that?!”

            I’m getting there.  I closed the door and my cousins and I went to the kitchen to talk about what to do and to get as far away as possible from the bodies.  One of them (my cousins, not the bodies) wanted to call the police, and the other wanted to bury the remains in hallowed ground, so they were no help whatsoever.  I then decided to smuggle the skeletons out under the cover of night and get some covert DNA testing done on them to see who they had been in life, in case any relatives would be coming after us for revenge.

            “Uh-huh,” he nodded, sneaking a look at his watch since his break was almost over.

            I wrapped up the skeletons in garbage bags and snuck them out of the house in the dead of night (no pun intended, really).  I have a friend who works in a secret lab and for cash he was willing to do some tests on the skeletons, but first he wanted to look at samples under an electron microscope to see if there were any pathogens or whatnot we should be worried about, so I said “Sure.”

            There was that thunderstorm last night, so the lightning flashed and the thunder crashed as my ethically challenged friend turned on the microscope and slowly examined the slides.  He drew back suddenly in shock, and I also jumped: he said he had seen –

            “Oh gee, I have to go back to my desk soon, lunch time’s almost over,” she said as she looked at her watch.

            “No!” he cried.  “You have to finish this!  What did he see?!”

            “Oh.  All right, I guess I can take another minute – I’m almost done."

            He had seen… plastic.

            “Plastic?”  He dropped the fork he had not realized he had been holding.

            Plastic, he told me.  Turns out the skeletons were for Halloween after all.

           “Wait, but you said you knew they were human and you knew that your aunt had killed them!”

            It appears that I was mistaken.

            He tossed his napkin down before standing and picking up his tray.  “You know, all you had to say was that you cleaned out your dead aunt’s house this weekend and found some Halloween skeletons that you thought were people until your crazy lab friend told you they weren’t.  Why do you still look freaked out about the whole thing?”

            She had returned to eating her salad slowly in the meantime.  “My crazy lab friend kept the skeletons, and for the life of me I can't figure out why.  I find that very disturbing.”

Story 152: Car Dealer Correspondence

            Dear Customer,

           

Thank you for being such a loyal customer all these years.  Our records show that you have bought several automobiles at this dealership, you always have them serviced at this location, you have referred other buyers here, etc., etc.  We really appreciate it; such behavior is increasingly infrequent nowadays.

We turn to you once again, constant patron.  We recently have found ourselves in a bind where, for reasons that we are reluctant to share, we need more cars to sell.  Cars that are only a few years old, well-maintained, still have the original paint, the works.  Bottom line: we specifically need your car.

We need it, and we need it desperately.  All the cars currently on our lot are absolute garbage, and only yours will do.  We actually are willing to pay you more than you would ever see with a regular trade-in deal, plus we will even take money off any other new car you want from us – any one that is not absolute garbage, that is.  You will never find a better deal, not ever.

So please.  Sell us your scrumptious, irresistible car.  You will not have cause to regret it, trust us.  What do you have to lose?  Nothing, that is what.

Sincerely,

Your Local Car Dealership

Dear Local Car Dealership,

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat???????

Sincerely,

Customer

Dear Customer,

We write to you at the metaphorical end of our metaphorical rope: we need your car by this Saturday, and we will offer you the amount that you originally paid for it.  If that does not adequately communicate our dire straits to you, we do not know what would.

Please hand over your car to us on Saturday – we also will be giving out free candy bars that day, if that is your thing.

Sincerely,

Your Local Car Dealership

Dear Dealer,

You are not getting my car.  At least not until after I’ve driven it into the ground, when it’ll be no good to anybody anyway.

Stop writing to me.

Sincerely,

Customer

Dear Kind Customer,

I, a desperate man, write to you today to appeal to your humanity.  If you ever wanted to save lives and be a hero, for the love of all that is good in this world please sell us back your car ASAP.  You can drive any other car you want right off the lot, no fees, nothing – we do not care.  Just please, look into your heart and choose justice.

With love and affection,

Manager, Your Local Car Dealership

Dear Manager,

I’m intrigued – you’re still never getting my car, but why do you need it so badly?

With curiosity,

Customer

Dear Customer,

None of your business why, just give us the car!  Please.

Hugs,

Manager

Dear Manager,

Hmmm, no.  Good luck with the whole life-saving business, ahahahahaha!

Weirdos.

Sincerely,

Customer

Dear Customer,

This letter is to inform you that Your Local Car Dealership is no more.  It did not go out of business: it simply ceased to be.  Apparently, it could have been saved if only your specific car had been brought in to anchor it onto this realm, but alas, `twas not meant to be.  For future service appointments, please contact us, Your Distant Car Dealership.

Regards to you and yours,

Your Distant Car Dealership

Dear Distant Car Dealership,

Learn from them and next time don’t send cryptic letters!

Sillies.

Sincerely,

Your Former Customer