Playing The Old Man Card

As we walked into the first bar, I turned their ribbing of my being a few years older than them around and told them that my 'Old Man Card' would only be good to play once. They asked if I was playing it after the first round of beers, but it was forgotten as we moved onto shots, then the second bar, more shots, the titty bar, the Jagerbombs, the getting hands on, and then the cops got called.

But as the boys were 'interviewed' this old man was on the other side of the club, clearly not with them.

Inner Babysitter

Curt looked over the mess Mr. Fuzzlebucket had made of his home, paint and candy strewn everywhere. He looked at the yellow fuzzy catman that had been his childhood friend.

"Look, I've grown up, and-"

"You've forgotten your inner child!"

"I'M HAPPY!

I like having people rely on me, I love my wife, I even like broccoli now, with blue cheese sauce."

"But blue cheese is smelly!"

"That's... I don't need you anymore. I'm sorry."

"So am I. But if you're happy, I'm happy." said the catman as he slowly vanished.

Curt died of a heart attack three years later.

Kill Code

"The code you have entered is incorrect. Please try again."

I stared blankly. I reentered the code.

"The code you have entered is incorrect. Please try again."

I sighed, silently cursing modern technology, but not too hard as I knew all the positives it gave. I retyped the code, comparing it against the one I wrote down, and hit enter.

"The code you have entered is incorrect. Please try again."

I looked at the time, then in desperation looked again at the code, then replaced the zero with an O, getting in just in time to see the first killing.

With Their Dying Breath

Most the traps leading into the chamber had been set off decades, if not centuries prior, or were so rusted, worn, or broken, that they were easily avoidable.

I entered the chamber slowly, looking around in confusion as to where the light was coming from, until I saw the gem, sitting on a plinth, a nearly fully decomposed corpse lying next to it, one hand on the stone. I assumed that anything someone with their dying breath would try to claim must be valuable, so I took it.

How was I to guess their last action was putting it there?

Weak Arm

His arm would just shutdown every so often. It was over a decade old, and the firmware couldn't update past Version 5.7, so he treated it as just a thing he had to deal with.

Certainly he knew he was lucky to have one at all, he could easily be stuck with one of those claws, or even the suction cup models that never worked properly. So he put up with the arm just locking up and going dead until he could reset it.

Until the day it happened while he was driving, and his arm cost him his leg.

Hand On The Wheel

Trying to describe the lifeforms using only human analogies is difficult, you understand. It's sort of like your fungi lifeforms, but with viral characteristics, but silicon based, but with a bee style social structure but not really...

...

It's a smart rock that can grow and eat metal. Ok?

Right, so it was picked up in an asteroid belt, must have ruptured a hibernation vessel. Took out the shuttles before they learned what it was, and then they tried to blow up the ship, but by then we'd infected the human boobies.

Bodies, sorry, still learning how to steer this human.

The Talk

The radio in the corner of the diner was declaring that the Yankees had won the '56 World Series as World Champion wrestler The Masked Mountain, sans mask, and his doll, Betty, were squeezed into a corner booth as they had The Talk.

"I don't like to use the word 'fake', but the fact is that it's all a show. The moaning and groaning is for effect, the sweat is real, but only because of how hard I have to work to make it look real!

So that's why I'm leaving you, I need a man who's good in bed."