“Baaa! I beat my lip!” The toddler screamed, her open mouth filled with halfway-chewed eggs.
“It happens to the best of us honey. It happens to the best of us.”
— Bastian Espada
Bastian Espada
“Baaa! I beat my lip!” The toddler screamed, her open mouth filled with halfway-chewed eggs.
“It happens to the best of us honey. It happens to the best of us.”
— Bastian Espada
“Well, death is nothing but another journey,” the man said, staring at the ground below.
“Bah! Another journey.” Imogen reclined back, making the chairlift rock to-and-fro. “There's no journey. Not here not after. There's nothing.”
“But Nana, how can you be so sure?”
Imogen pushed herself off the lift and glided beyond the edge of the snowy slope.
”'Cause, Ronny, my dear, if you had a little bit of empathy, you'd realize this entire universe is one big joke—and humanity is the punchline.”
— Bastian Espada
“So, how may I help you today?” the manager asked.
The man stuck his chest out and adjusted his belt. “I'm here to exercise my right—in accordance with the eighteen forty-seven exception to the federal statute on dueling and the recent Supreme Court's decision to regard First Capital Bank as a person under the law—to challenge this institution to a sword fight, over which the fate of my mortgage shall be decided.”
The bank manager pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “We got another one!” he yelled.
A few feet away, a barely visible door creaked open.
Vladislav Fyodorov, disgraced former fencing world champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist, emerged.
— Bastian Espada
“Dinner is ready!” mom shouted from the kitchen.
Dad, daughter, and son walked through the door.
They sat around the table, the table for four.
“Blood soup again?”
“Blood soup all the time!”
“Blood soup today.”
“Blood soup is all we've got, blood soup is all we have.”
“By the blood soup we live, by the blood soup we die,” Mom said.
The rest of the family looked down at their bowls and clenched their jaws.
They ate.
— Bastian Espada
A priest, a rabbi and a giraffe enter a bar.
The bar moans.
— Bastian Espada
“Last week I noticed a weird lump under my armpit.”
“That could be serious. Have you seen a doctor?” the young man's mother asked.
“I did, yeah.”
“And what did they say?”
“Hard to tell, they were on the other side of the street.”
— Bastian Espada
“Who would've thought your kind would outlive mine?” The last man on Earth smiled, using what little energy he had left. “Don't worry boy, it'll only be for a little bit.”
He scratched the dog's head, then expired.
— Bastian Espada
The five o'clock alarm rang.
The man dragged himself to the bathroom, placed his hands on the counter, and stared at the sink.
“You know, if a genie appeared before me. And offered me a choice. To press a button that would make all things cease to exist—no space and no energy. No past, present, nor future. No laws of nature. No fields and no particles. No universe, no multiverse, no quantumverse. No information, no entropy. Nothing, just nothing.” The man lifted his head and gazed into his own eyes. “I would press the shit out of that button.”
“I would as well,” the reflection said. “I would as well.”
— Bastian Espada
“Daddy, where do people go after they die?”
“Well, it depends, sweetie.”
“On what?”
“Well, if people deserve to be rewarded, they go to heaven. If they deserve to be punished, they go to hell, and if they don't deserve to exist, they come here and hide.”
— Bastian Espada
“May I have the time?”
“Sure,” the man said, then vanished.
— Bastian Espada