The rotund, briefly-statured doctor struck a match to illuminate his patient’s x-rays. Having perused them and astutely penetrated their essence, he turned to his patient while flicking a fly from atop his beaming baldness.

“You’re gonna die, hee-hee!” he giggled, wallowing in the ticklish joy of drilling his nose with the eraser end of his pencil. “Yesirree, gonna die and the coroner’s report will say that the cause of death was death, ho-ho!” – and he giggled again. Meanwhile, he shot a rubberband at the same fly now swinging from the chandelier overhead.

”Hum-mh, die,” mused the patient, a tall, grayly vaporous wisp of a man. He straightened a hair. He flicked lint from a trouser leg. He longingly tickled himself in the ribs looking for the humor traumatizing his physician. He found it. His ribs tickled – “Ho-ho, die, gonna die, hee-hee!”

“Yes, indeed, isn’t that a hoot?” – the doctor waved goodbye to the insect who was winging departure into the furnace duct .

The patient’s humor abated. “There’s nothing you can really do about it, I extrapolate.”

“No one has, have they? Come on, be a man! Admit it, ho-ho, they never have, now have they?” – the doctor sailed off into a combative gale of laughter.

The patient sat for a non-replying moment. “It’s ironic. It’s almost so serious that it’s funny. Right?”

“Like I said, a hoot, a real two-hooter,” the physician rejoined.

As the truth of it all sank in upon them, the two men stared at one another for a moment or so before completely losing it: “Hee-hee! hee-hee! hee-hee! hee-hee-ho!” Remarkably, neither of them was tickling himself or the other in the ribs.

When sobriety had returned, the patient paid the doctor. The doctor returned the money, saying that it had been fun. He leaned over the receptionist’s desk and kissed the secretary goodbye as the two of them left the office.

They then went to a bar where they drank and discussed the deeper issues of life. By dawn they were almost more dead than alive, so much so that the bouncer dragged them out and left them lying in the alley - where they had an enlightening chit-chat with the same fly…

… it seemed s-o-o-o normal!

* * *

The Shortest Long Story

or

Anthem of The Vacuum Cleaners

or

The Cathouse Blues  Yes?

Hysteria… Saw myself in the mirror this morning… Feeling consummately hebephrenic (silly) I rushed forth… Immediately began driving on all the unused places in the road… Resisted the temptation to look excessively malignant… Told a few off-white lies… Squabbled with the birds and bees… Finally got drunk enough to remember everything I’d never done, and well, what more need I say? If life isn’t a cathouse, just why do vacuum cleaners suck? (Did you get it? Uh-h! Darn!).