"Holworthy and Main, please."
	"I'll get you as close as I can."
	"What?"
	"A dentist's office lost a beam. Teeth all over the intersection,
and cops blocking off the streets a block away."
	"That must have been Dr. Hamming. I was headed there."
	"Sorry to hear that, man."
	"Can you just take me to the Roxy, then?"
	"Still closed... smallpox scare."
	"Is that right?"
	"Yup. Want to go the the Fireside stop?"
	"What, and get out of town? No, I think I'll just get dessert."
	"At the Tiger Lily, right? You a Tiger Lily man?"
	"Yes..."
	"Someone turned a bunch of sheep loose there last week. And the
health inspector can't get back to re-certify them on account of the guys
at the airport with mopeds tooling around on the runways."
	"What do sheep do when given their freedom?"
	"Same thing as before, I think."
	"Nothing bad has happened to the outdoor booksellers' fair, I
hope."
	"I wouldn't go there unless you like air horns."
	"All right, I'll just head into work."
	"Where's that?"
	"Near Crosby Plaza."
	"Lots of people left where you work?"
	"Why wouldn't there be?"
	"The Rapture. Happened this morning."
	"Millions of people bodily assumed into heaven?"
	"Yup."
	"Planes falling out of the sky?"
	"No, they handled that okay.
	"How about that."
	"You don't listen to the radio much."
	"Not really. I don't see the point."
	"Isn't usually one. I hear this stuff from my dispatcher."
	"Could I get out right here, in front of the Visual Arts Center?"
	"You're the boss."
	"You haven't heard about anything awful going on there?"
	"Nah, I was just funning you about all that."
	"Is that right?"
	"It helps pass the time."
	"I can't fault you for that."
	"Appreciated, sir."

written for the Sunday night Scrabble players at Rhythm & Muse 10/28/01

I went to Rhythm & Muse with a friend of mine so she could play Scrabble and I could write. I didn't really get any takers for a story, but someone said I should use the first ten words from their game. I'll try anything, I thought. (I seem to have ended up with only nine. I can't remember if there was a reason.)

The piece didn't turn out so wonderfully well, but the real reason it wasn't posted or even assigned a number until almost a year later is that my friend read it as soon as I finished and said some pretty harsh things. Worse, she had that look on her face like she was holding back for fear of insulting me, which was probably more insulting than whatever she was avoiding saying. Well, no, I don't think she really likes any of my writing, so perhaps she had something utterly soul-crushing in mind and kept a lid on it. I don't know. The fact that the words hadn't come from anyone in particular did make the writing less satisfying, as well as depriving me of the variety that most clients try to give me. So I made it a scapegoat for the criticism I'd gotten and forgot about it.

However, I'd reserved the number 40 for something else that I never ended up doing. When I came across my copy of this story again recently, I checked the dates and realized that I'd written it right when #40 should have happened anyway. I also recalled how much I had otherwise been committed to tossing all the other stories written in this format up on the web whether I liked them or not. So it's #40 and my friend can go read an actual published author if she wants satisfaction.

The punchline was meant as an anti-climax of sorts; that is, the passenger doesn't care. However, as written the timing might lead one to gloss right over it and not realize the cabbie was lying from the very beginning. So that's no good. And I can't make up locations very well, it seems. Nor is the joke funny or original. But other than that there's nothing WRONG with it.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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