Come on Old Wise One I used to enjoy your stories. Give us one. I know you have one in ya.

PLEASE

Hey Mr. O,

Give me a few days here while I try to get up to speed.

Thanks,
Yours,
OWO

Stories?

Short Story 1

OWO Unleashed: Why Bambi's Mother Had to Die

"MoFo." That's what it read. There was "MoFo" stenciled all over the casket, and Wanda just could not understand why. "Who would want to be buried in such a thing?," she was asking herself. "And why?"

It was one of those green-earth-biodegradable ones, a newer model that was supposed to go softly into the earth after a while. When you were up close, you could see the greenish blue tint on the broad white, off-gray surface. Obviously it was a special order casket, and that was just fine -- she could understand that part of it -- but what of this "Mofo" all written on it, that is what her mind could not wrap around.

But more importantly, who had ordered it, and even more important than that, who would be the chosen one to make the permanent use of it?

The man seemed to come out of nowhere, but that fact did not surprise her, not really. His secretary had already told her that her that he would be there soon. She looked up when she heard the door and caught the majesty of it as the sun caught its inlaid bronze.

He entered with his hand in front of him and she could see that his palms were going to be soft and tender, but she didn’t care, she was not there looking for man, anyway – she was there looking for a casket.

“Scottus Underwoodus,“ he introduced himself, “I am sorry for the delay, but I am just so busy that getting away is always difficult.”

She was sure that a soft life accompanied his soft hands, one almost giving life to and telling on the other. But her own hands were not soft, and she looked down at them as he looked quizzically at her. Her own hands were gangly looking, peeling in places, with blotches here and there, as happens from a lifetime of hard work with them. They were the result of a hard, hard, hard existence, but she knew that all of life was suffering for most and this Scottus Underwoodus should be taught that soon.

She looked at him with her tired hazel-brown eyes, and could see that he appeared to be sincere, but she knew that it was easy to be sincere when you have lead a very soft life. Preparing caskets for other people – stenciling them as per odd, dreary, fanatical, tender, religious, or macabre requests was an easy thing to do once you got your mind wrapped around the matter. Especially since the thing was accomplished with the notion of being paid at the end of it all. Very easy indeed.

It would be her last act of kindness she would bestow upon the world and upon this one lucky inhabitant in particular. She would show him. She would allow him to vibrantly taste the misery that happens to most -- the doubt, the pain, the agony of life that most experience. He would experience the sadness of approaching death that by necessity certainly accompanies those who request his handiwork. It was this very thing that he stood apart from, and never a part of. He would know the feeling of being at the end of it all, helpless, watching, thinking, but sad and powerless, and all that goes with it.

She would show him, and from then on he would know it well. It would be a favor to him, sort of like being the lone survivor of an aircraft crash. It would almost be like a Halloween experience. But in the end, she knew that it would not be a here-today-gone-tomorrow type lesson, but one that would awaken him forever.

And then she would save him from it all.

“Tell me, Sir,” she asked with her head still down, “What caskets are available for a person of my size?”

Underwoodus looked at her with the experienced gaze of a craftsman, careful to keep his mental measuring technique impersonal. He did not want to be seen as noticing her thin but oddly buxom shape with her gentle but protruding cleavage.

She reminded him of Gloria, Mark’s wife, who he found himself looking at in church the other day, during the Nicene Creed. It was the part where the Good Reverend Smirrtoff began with ”We believe in one God,” and paused, and the congregation was supposed to rise and respond, “the Father, the Almighty.” It was then that Gloria, two seats down, rose and her program fell from her lap and she bent to pick it up.

“God,” he thought, why did she have to go and do that for?

So there he was in church with a stiffening feeling while looking at her ample bosom, in church, of all places, with her husband standing right next to him, while the entire church was now saying in unison “maker of heaven and earth,of all that is, seen and unseen." It was then that he knew that there was a God, and a merciful one at that, because as Gloria was trying to get her pink frosted fingernails under the program, her husband briefly glanced at her, and, having been married for what seemed like an eternity, was not paying too much attention to her, and therefore did not notice his wife looking up at Underwoodus looking down at her.

“We believe in one Lord,” the congregation continued, and with that, the right side of his brain hissed to his left side to “Stop it! Simply STOP it!”

Geeesh, he thought.

And here he was again, a talented casket-stenciler, steeped in a lonely crisis of faith, looking at the cleavage of a woman who obviously had a lot on her mind.

Double Geeesh.

“Stand up,” he said.

Wanda stood.

“Turn around, please,” he said.

Wanda turned.