Sunset Cruise on the River Styx: Dark, Absurd Tales by Mark Nutter

Author:Mark Nutter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2020-05-07T18:38:21+00:00

Usually Found In Pairs

I was coming off a bad breakup. You know how it is. You can’t stop thinking about that person. Stupid pop songs remind you of her. The songs don’t even have to be about romance. I wrote a song the morning after we broke up and recorded it on my phone. It wasn’t about romance. It was just her name over and over again. It really reminded me of her.

I had to distract myself. I thought a trip to a museum might help. I knew it would be a bad idea to go to a museum about her life, if such a museum existed. Neither should it be a museum so far removed from romance that it would look weird if I started crying while looking at, say, an internal combustion engine.

Then I remembered I had a coupon somebody gave me on the street.

“15% off admission to the Museum of Things Normally Found in Pairs.”

That might distract me, I thought, and hurried to the museum.

I walked down a long hall with displays of two berets, two baguettes, two mimes, two bottles of wine...

A helpful guard approached me.

“You look lost, sir,” he said. “You do realize you’re in the Museum of Things Normally Found in PARIS.”

“Thank you,” I said and left to find the proper address.

When I found it I said, “this is more like it.” The Museum of Things Usually Found in Pairs was a hundred times bigger and better than the Paris museum.

There was a shoe... a scissor... Tweedledum... a testicle... Tom (of Tom and Jerry)... an ear... a bicycle wheel... Tom (of Tom and Louis, a forgotten comedy team)...

Usually found in pairs. My god. It hit me harder than I expected. What was I doing here? I dropped to my knees, sobbing.

They took me down to the museum infirmary. There were about twenty other guys down there, all of them sobbing. It was a sad sight. We shared a box of tissue and bonded.

Then I remembered, I had a coupon in my pocket for another museum.

“Guys,” I said, “this other museum is probably better and won’t make us cry.”

I led my new friends down the street to the Museum Of Things That Are Too Large to Be Useful.

Finally we were distracted.

We saw a giant Q-tip, much too large to fit in your ear.

“Can you imagine trying to put that in your ear?” we said to each other, and laughed and forgot our troubles.

We saw a step ladder with the steps fifteen feet apart.

“Nobody takes steps that big. Can you imagine?” we said, and laughed at the image of somebody trying to climb it. We forgot our troubles some more.

We saw a blank check for four hundred quadrillion dollars.

“Can you imagine trying to cash that?” I said.

“Yeah,” said another guy. “And even if you could cash it, where would you put all that cash?”

“Not in normal size pockets, that’s for sure. Hey, let’s see if they have a Hall of Oversized Pockets.”

“Yeah!” everybody said.

We had a great time, except for one disappointing incident.

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