I Wanted To Be A Painter
Some Powers Are Not So Super • The Money Launderer
One Minute Wit
I Wanted To Be A Painter
My sad story
I took painting lessons when I was young,
but now I can’t Remembrandt any of it.
Microfiction
Some Powers Are Not So Super
The trials of being extraordinary
Every hundred generations, a child is born with extraordinary abilities. Superheroes, if they use their powers for good. Blessing or curse, I was one of those children.
The powers are great. I have the strength of five men, can run faster than a cheetah, and best of all, I can fly. But not all physical attributes are so super.
Once, I ate a bowl of pea soup. The resulting gas was not only super-stinky but super-powerful. I launched myself into the stratosphere and set off seismographs in five states.
The government called it a seismic anomaly.
Right.
Story
The Money Launderer
Tony was a money launderer. No, he wasn’t a member of organized crime; he just loved clean money. So he washed his currency in the washing machine and hung it up to dry.
“Tony, why don’t you get a debit card, like everyone else? Then you wouldn’t have to wash your money,” Joey asked as Tony pulled out four very clean dollar bills to leave as a tip.
“Plastic has no personality,” Tony replied.
Joey gave Tony a strange look.
“Alright, it’s settled. We will all meet at Paul’s house on Friday,” Carl said.
Tony, Joey, Carl, and Paul grew up together in the same blue-collar neighborhood. They were like brothers. They did pretty much everything together. This weekend they were going camping and fishing.
Friday afternoon, the four friends piled into Carl’s beat-up old pickup truck and headed for Woodglen Lake, which could only be reached on foot via a four-mile hike.
They were about a half-mile into their hike when they saw a plane flying too low pass over their heads. A few moments later, they heard a loud crashing sound. They ran in the direction of the noise and saw the fuselage of a jet smashed against the side of a hill. The airplane had broken in half.
“Shouldn’t it be on fire?” Joey asked.
“How should I know? Let’s see if anyone is alive.”
They looked inside the passenger compartment. It was empty. Next, they checked the cockpit. There were two pilots inside, both dead.
“Look at this!” Carl said, holding up a large shrink-wrapped block of one hundred dollar bills. “The cargo bin is full of them.”
“Listen up, the cops, the FBI, and everyone else will be here soon. Grab a block of money, and let’s get outta here,” Paul shouted.
As they ran back to the car, Tony said, “This block has to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“Listen, nobody speaks a word of this. We’ll meet tonight. Got it?” Carl said.
They all agreed.
The FBI arrived and counted the blocks of money. Four were missing. They scoured the area but couldn’t find them.
“Someone must have taken them,” Agent Smith said.
“When the serial number numbers show up, we’ll find them,” Agent Wilks replied.
The four friends met that evening. They figured the police would be watching for the money, so they decided they should split up and move before spending any. They also agreed not to contact each other for a year. The four of them all moved to places they dreamed of living, and each ended up in a different state.
Two months later, Carl, Paul, and Joey were all arrested at the same time and brought to a central FBI location. During the interrogation, none of them would reveal where the last brick of money went. Agents Smith and Wilks said if they didn’t tell where the last brick of cash was, they would all be going to prison. But they were brothers, and brothers don’t rat on each other.
Eventually, the agents realized the three of them weren’t going to talk. So they told them if they returned the remainder of the money they took, they could go free on probation. The plan was to keep them under surveillance, and hopefully, they would lead them to the last brick. The three of them agreed and returned what was left of their bricks of money.
Six months later, the FBI gave up on the case, and the insurance company covered the lost money.
Tony never opened his block of money. It was perfect. The money inside was clean. And he intended to keep it that way.
At least until the year was up and the four of them were reunited.
Happy Monday. Thanks for reading and responding. You make it fun.
Mark
Maybe you can still make Monet doing something else.
Love your stories, I really liked the Painter ... and the guys finding the money in the plane.