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Perfect Chili

January 6, 2025 in Food, Love, Marriage, Relationships | Tags: , , , , | by | 7 comments

When the genie offers me three wishes, I’ll ask for gratitude. Let others squander my leftover wishes to fund their dreams or fix the world any way they like. As the one who cherishes whatever I may have, I’ll want for nothing and be immune to both the greed of others and their good intentions. This tepid bowl of chili won’t need sour cream, chopped red onion, fiery peppers, or shredded cheese once the genie has seasoned not it but me. And neither will I be deficient to myself. Already, darling, you and I own more than most humans have ever owned, and eat better, and savor it less. Even this mundane chili is richly exotic in most places on earth at any time other than ours. It’s we who fail the chili if it’s lacking. Taste it again more thoughtfully. Be the spice. You’re welcome. I may not be the ideal partner or even the ideal chef, but, for each other, if for no one else, we could both be. Of course, the genie will have the last laugh. Between the rubbings of the lamp, she has a thousand years to solve the riddle of every desire. However crafty my wish may seem—to live in pure appreciation—she’ll grant it only technically, as everyone knows, grant but not grant it. She could, for example, punish me for neglecting to protect what I already have. And I would surely suffer without your gratitude for my chili, if you catch my drift. It’s worth a second wish. Already I’m like an astronaut too long from home whose most exotic fantasy is lying beside you in our own bed whenever we’re not. If you felt that way about me, too, my first two wishes would do the work of three.

Compatibility

February 14, 2019 in 299 Words, Love, Stories, Very Short Novels | by | 5 comments

Answer these questions, and we will match you with your ideal companion.

  1. What do you want in a wife?
  2. What will you do when that category of human you described, in 1, does not exist?
  3. What makes you think you deserve that category of human you described, in 1?
  4. Whatever happened to the wife we gave you the first time?
  5. If your first wife encountered you accidentally, would she cross the street?
  6. Would you cross the street?
  7. Would you end up on the same side of the street?
  8. Why do you spend so much time on the street?
  9. What is it you can’t find indoors?
  10. When you look deep into your heart, or your soul, or the otherwise random concatenation of incongruent memories that cling to your singular perspective, which emptiness, scarcity, or incompatibility scares you the most?
  11. Do you have a pet?
  12. What car do you drive?
  13. When we asked about your car, and possible pet, did you momentarily relax, equilibrium restored, and regain confidence in the questionnaire, partially?
  14. Do you want to sleep with your pet?
  15. Yes, we mean that kind of sleep.
  16. Why not?
  17. If you were forced to decide between finding a loving soulmate who would be your lifelong loving wife and watching your pet, who, for the sake of argument, had been snatched from your back yard and sold into a dog-fight circuit, forced into the ring to defend her life against a much larger and more vicious predatory sort of fight-trained dog, what would you decide?
  18. We thought so.
  19. This concludes the questionnaire.
  20. No, you don’t get any more questions.
  21. No, that is completely irrelevant.
  22. No.
  23. Thank you for your honest replies.
  24. No, you cannot change them.
  25. Say thank you.
  26. You’re welcome.
  27. An ideal candidate will shortly be knocking on your door.
  28. Be there. Answer.

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299-WORD NOVELS

Character, conflict, emotional impact. And sentences! Everything you want in a novel, without one extra syllable.

Behind the Pseudonym

The pen name davidbdale honors my mother Beatrice (Bea) and my father Dale

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