A Foaming Mind

Okay, so I was having my monthly issue-of-the-moment facebook comments debate with a conservative-but-not-unreasonable friend of mine and I made an offhand bear mace joke. Then I took a shower and spent twenty minutes thinking about bear mace - and came to the conclusion that it is superior to guns in virtually all home defense situations. For those of you that haven't used it, bear mace is about twice as concentrated as human mace. It comes in massive cans and has a much wider spray cone - since, you know, you're trying to push back a BEAR. It's also been proven in countless studies that it's more effective in providing safety in bear encounters than guns are - by a HUGE margin . Gun make bear angry. Hello, angry bear. Mace cloud make bear no want to be here anymore. Goodbye, angry bear. So, let's imagine a few home invasion situations. You hear a thud downstairs. You rush down, weapon of choice in hand. You encounter a man with a gun. Unless you have a habit of be

                  The board was like a magnet. Questioned about the unusual situation in years since, Markus Blane couldn’t recall the size of the old man’s room, the color of the walls, or even where he was in the room. All he could remember were two things: the checkered board on the table in front of him and the old man’s face. A man with minutes left to live.                 But then, that was the job.                 “They said I have about forty-five minutes left,” he said as Markus entered the room. “So come on in.”                 He was oddly calm, with kind eyes. Somewhere in his mid-eighties, perhaps. Markus had seen him before, waiting in line at the cafeteria – or the mess hall, as the guardsmen called it. This man wasn’t in the national guard, though. He was a volunteer.                 Markus sat down, coughed awkwardly, and remembered the things he had been practicing in the mirror of his tiny room, hoping to god he’d never have to say them.                 “M

 [Ahead of an inevitably bumbling NaNoWriMo attempt, I'm writing a bunch of short stories to improve my fiction-writing efficiency. They're quickly written and largely unedited, so please leave vicious critique in the comments. This was written on October 11th, 2020.]   

 [Ahead of an inevitably bumbling NaNoWriMo attempt, I'm writing a bunch of short stories to improve my fiction-writing efficiency. They're quickly written and largely unedited, so please leave vicious critique in the comments. This was written on October 10th, 2020.]

  [ Ahead of an inevitably bumbling NaNoWriMo attempt, I'm writing a bunch of short stories to improve my fiction-writing efficiency. They're quickly written and largely unedited, so please leave vicious critique in the comments. This was written on October 9th, 2020.]

    [ Ahead of an inevitably bumbling NaNoWriMo attempt, I'm writing a bunch of short stories to improve my fiction-writing efficiency. They're quickly written and largely unedited, so please leave vicious critique in the comments. This was written on October 8th, 2020.]