FF #34

It was either a pill or a piece of candy, but whatever it was it was not going to work. Since chemo, I'd been through these "blind tests a dozen times and my cancer just kept growing...I was going to die. The doctors knew it, my wife knew it and I most certainly knew it.

Once, we were fairly well-off but the only thing I did right was to place enough money in irrevocable trusts to see the kids through college. Otherwise, we are now broke.

I used to scoff at "Socialized Medicine"; now I realize what a blessing it would have been to be under such a system. We would not have lost our house, my wife's income could have seen us through this (no matter what the outcome) and she would not have to drive herself to a worrisome grave worrying about our children and how the next illness would be handled.

So it's now up to me. The false hope is gone, the bills keep coming in, and the pain is constant throughout my whole body. Only I can do what has to be done. My life insurance is substantial and will provide for my family and I have planned this very carefully:

The screw I twisted into my rear tire is slowing working its way through the tread as I speed down the road, as I knew it would (after all, I am a race car driver) and when it blows I can control the car until I see the tree I've picked (a substantial old oak)...ah yes, there it is, a half mile ahead. I turn the steering wheel slightly back and forth...just so...and the rear tire blows. I jam the accelerator and put the car into a controled skid at ninety miles an hour and slide--driver's door sideways-- into the tree.............

FF#33

Before you assume that I must be mistaken about you seeing my wife dining with some gent yesterday, let me say you are wrong.
(So that's what the bitch was doing instead of that phoney story about visiting her sister...)

Come on, Ernie, why would I lie about that?

Because you've been after her for a long time.

I don't think so...

(Now you're lying!)

She was visiting her sister...all I have to do is call her and she'll tell me the truth.
(She would lie about it too...)

Go ahead, call her, Ernie, I dare you!

(I don't have to prove anything to you.)
I'm not calling her-- you're being rediculous.

So you're staying with her?

(You're damn right, I am. She'd wipe me out if I divorced her...she knows I've been screwing around on her for years, and can probably prove it.)
I've told you before, Shirley, I'm never going to get a divorce. Now get your clothes back on and get out of my office; fun time is over.

Bastard!

FFF #32

The sound it made when it broke was like the crack of a sawed-off shotgun.

I'd been on the front porch since the hurricane had moved northeast and the wind had shifted to the south. It was blowing a steady eighty or ninety miles an hour now, battering the back of the house with twigs sounding more like BB pellets from an automatic machine gun.

In the woods on the east side of the house, tall pines were bent down, swaying like infantry charging an enemy, but the old giant oak behind the pines had withstood the higher winds until just now when it broke in the middle and fell among the pines like a wounded General.

The rain came again in horizontal torrents and I went back into the house, fell on the bed and dreamed again the nightmare dreams of Vietnam.

FFF #31

"Disease? I suppose you could call it that, although it could be a psychosis...or maybe a psychosis caused by a disease...or maybe some kind of allergy, after all it is spring and the pollen is out...but no, my dear, I believe you're just experiencing the last symptoms of a rare, lethal drug I've been slipping into your coffee for the past week. You might have tasted it if you didn't load your coffee with such large amounts of cream and sugar. Didn't I tell you long ago that it was healthy to drink your coffee black?
My, my, how wide your eyes are: you look like you'd like to scream...or perhaps you'd like to call nine-one-one? So sorry, my dear, but the paralysis obviously has set in as you seem unable to even close those frightened orbs. Not to worry, you'll be quite painlessly dead in a few more hours. I'll be quite rich off of your life insurance. Of course there'll be a short investigation, but your death will be attributed to a massive stroke; the poison mimics it quite nicely. Even Doctor House wouldn't be able to figure this one out."