Pizza-Pizza: And Other Short Fictions That May Or May Not Be True

I answered the phone at the pizza place. The caller asked me what size pizzas we had. I replied 14 inch and 16 inch. He asked which was bigger.


~


I kissed the most beautiful girl in the world. Turns out she was coked out of her mind, and though the memory of that kiss is still crystal clear to me, to her its more like the ghost of a stranger. Haunting, unfamiliar, and not entirely real.


~


I watched a man die once through the back window of an ambulance. One minute the ambulance was speeding down the road, the paramedics frantically working to save him. The next they were doing nothing, and the ambulance was moving much slower. There was no longer a reason to rush.


~


I almost died in a car accident while walking down the street. I checked both ways and saw no one coming and head down began to make my way across the street, I took two quick steps for some reason and at that moment a pickup truck came hurtling around the corner barely missing me. It smashed into a mustang coming down the side street, the mustang spun around with such force that it hopped a curb, ripped past me, and came to rest back in the street. Everyone was fine, I continued on my way.


~


I saw a falling star while sitting on the bank of the Hudson River. It was May 3rd, 2000 and for some reason I was feeling awfully low. I was sitting there thinking about all sorts of different things that had happened in the past 12 months of my life when I saw a single bright orange streak shoot across the sky. Although I've seen a few since this was the first, and greatest, shooting star I'd ever seen.

~

I murdered a man with an axe once. Though I supposed murder would be an awfully harsh word since I don't even really know if I struck the fellow proper or not. So how's about instead of 'murdered' we just go ahead and substitute 'scared the bejeezus out of'. Did manage to cut my hand somehow or another while doing it and all these years later if it's really cold or you get a careful look and know exactly what you're looking for you can still see the scar on the back of my left hand.

~

I wanted to say hello to someone, but by the time I'd worked up the nerve they were gone. It wasn't that we weren't friendly, or even that any great deal of time had passed since last we'd spoke. Wasn't like anything at all had changed between the two of us. But there it was, something different. And though I spent a good many minutes thinking about just possibly saying 'hi', I never could bring myself to do it. For no darn good reason at all.