Year Of Atonement

The Grim Reaper took things slower, started to travel by tricycle during the week and by donkey on the weekends. At night we kept warm around matchsticks and dumpster fires. For entertainment we compared peanut butter and jelly recipes. Snooze buttons recorded high anxiety days. Snooze alarms provided the year’s soundtrack. Almost everyone drank alcohol to mournful excess. Even coffee was served wrapped in brown paper bags. Coincidentally, that was the last year for the Miss America pageant. The final talent show, with an extra-large flame thrower, was really something. For months afterwards people sold charred auditorium remains as souvenirs.

From Guest Contributor Mike James

Death

Death. That was all his card said.

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

He knew the machine was perverse, playing with a person's fate in the most ironic ways possible. Academics and the intellectually insecure called it the Sophocles, because only the ancient Greeks could match the machine for its macabre sense of humor.

But Death?

Was he supposed to die from fear. Was the machine getting philosophical? Should he avoid anyone in a Grim Reaper costume for the rest of his life?

All in all, Bill could think of better ways to have spent that twenty dollars.