Earnest Anthony
Earnest Anthony was SICK OF IT. He was sick of U.F.O.s. He was sick of ghosts. He was sick of aliens. He was sick of talking snakes. He was just plain old sick of it!
What he wanted was a little PEACE AND QUIET! Just wanted a weekend away from the weird... One night... Just an HOUR!
But the STRANGEST THINGS seemed to happen whenever Anthony was around.
He tried to go hiking in the mountains, but ran into a Bigfoot who was hooting and throwing rocks at a park ranger.
He went to the beach---and just happened to pick the same day that a giant squid attacked the small beach town he was visiting. (It had been almost thirty years since that last happened...)
He went out into the dessert, only to find a highly improbable mummy spouting curses and swatting at walking cacti.
Exasperated---tears in his eyes---he fled into the city, where zombies marched in the streets and vampire bats where darting in and out of apartment windows. He rushed down an alley where a spandex clad superhero was battling a mad scientist and his killer robot, and rounded the corner across the street from a public library. Hordes of haunted cars and unseen, psychotic truck drivers tried to crush him as he crossed the road, but he survived and raced up the stairs to the library's entrance. He pressed the brass latch with his thumb and threw open the heavy oak door and dashed inside...
A librarian looked up at him from her desk and put a finger to her lips. "Hush," she mimed.
Anthony looked around and saw a few people on computers, a couple working on some papers at a table, and several folks in comfy chairs reading...but that was it.
No ghosts, no giant rats, no carnivorous plants. He walked into the stacks, hearing only the sound of his shoes on the tile floor. He started to breathe a little easier. He spotted a book on the history of greeting cards and grabbed it off a shelf. He carried the book under his arm, while he searched for a place to sit, eventually finding a burgundy colored, stuffed leather couch. He sat down, opened the book, and fell almost instantly asleep...
All he wanted...
---Richard F. Yates (Holy Fool)
