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Postcards from The Pug Bus

Lifting a satirical leg on popular culture

Persons in the Ether

Question of the Week

Passion or stability?

Mavis Drouk, emotional escrow officer

Believed to be near Harrisburg, PA

Stability. Passion is what people choose when they still believe a staircase can be made entirely of sparks. Stability may not sing outside your window, but it does remember where the insurance cards are.

Rufus Clenn, freelance thunder consultant

Last reported west of Tulsa, OK

Passion, obviously. Stability is just boredom wearing shoes with arch support. I want life to arrive late, smell faintly of lightning, and explain nothing until several lamps have been broken.

Nora Vell, deputy curator of small regrets

Possibly sheltering in Eugene, OR

Passion is useful for beginnings, stability for the paperwork afterward. I prefer both in moderation, which is another way of saying I would like to be ruined briefly and then driven home safely.

a man's hand touching a rose crowing in concrete

"You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses. (Ziggy)

Flash

A Rose in Any Other Place

Chip Hilton 50-Word Stories, Brevity is the Soul, flash fiction, Micro Satire 10 months

She bloomed in a crack of concrete, defiantly. Commuters passed, blind to her grace, but one man paused. He knelt, wept, and whispered her name–forgotten… Read More

a man sitting at a computer that's got all these slips of paper flowing out of the screen

"All I did was click the box for pepperoni."

Flash

WTF?

Biff Scuzzy 50-Word Stories, Brevity is the Soul, flash fiction, Micro Satire 10 months

The box I checked while ordering pizza online was for extra pepperoni, supposedly. Now I’m getting daily updates on cryptocurrency, cat yoga, artisanal soap, Bolivian… Read More

"Eenie Meanie Mynie Mo, catch a cookie by the toe."

Flash

Cookie-Jarring, v

philmaggitti 50-Word Stories, Brevity is the Soul, flash fiction, Micro Satire 10 months

Cookie-jarring is the romantic strategy of keeping one poor fool on standby while you binge on others. It’s like emotional meal prepping–except instead of Tupperware,… Read More

a man's face contorted because he just ate some poisoned pastry

"Nooooooooo"

Flash

Revenge Is Sweet

Biff Scuzzy 50-Word Stories, Brevity is the Soul, flash fiction, Micro Satire 10 months

She bakes one special pastry with care—cinnamon, apples, and arsenic. At the reunion, Eric alone has that one, still laughing about prom night, unaware she… Read More

a couple reading in a luxurious bed in a glamping yurt

"Roughing it is when the mini-fridge in the glamping pod isn’t fully stocked."

Flash

Glamping: Because Nature’s Just Better with Wi-Fi and Wine

philmaggitti 50-Word Stories, Brevity is the Soul, flash fiction, Micro Satire 10 months

Forget dirt, bugs, and lack of dignity. Try glamping. It’s camping for people who hate nature and demand artisanal s’mores. Why rough it? You can… Read More

"Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it. (Hunter S. Thompson)

Flash

If It Weren’t for Bad Luck

T.J. Eckleburg 50-Word Stories, Brevity is the Soul, flash fiction, Micro Satire 10 months

Albert wore his “lucky socks” to the job interview. On the way he stepped in gum, then a sewer grate. He didn’t get the job.… Read More

schrodinger's cat breaking out of its box

"There isn't any litter in here."

Flash

Schrödinger’s Cat Seeks Closure

Biff Scuzzy 50-Word Stories, Brevity is the Soul, flash fiction, Micro Satire 10 months

Schrödinger’s cat has filed a massive lawsuit, alive and dead, claiming emotional distress from years of quantum gaslighting. “I just wanted a nap, not a… Read More

a young woman sitting on a porch drinking tea in the rain

“Rain is just confetti from the sky.”

Flash

Rain

philmaggitti 50-Word Stories, Brevity is the Soul, flash fiction, Micro Satire 10 months

Rain tapped on the tin roof in Morse code, urgent, indecipherable. She sat cradling tea and old regrets, watching the world blur into watercolor. Puddles… Read More

The Pug Bus Breaking News

The Pug Bus Breaking News requires no email address, no mother's maiden name, no first pet's nickname, and no DNA sample. You simply mash the link below and read.

Deliver It

⚡ Scholars at the Royal Institute for the Advancement of Obvious Things have concluded, after eleven years of exhaustive inquiry, that people who speak at great length in meetings do not thereby become more correct. The findings have been submitted to a committee for review.

⚡ It has been determined by authorities in several jurisdictions that the phrase "I just want to be honest with you" reliably precedes the portion of the conversation one would most prefer not to have. Legislation is pending.

⚡ The Bureau of Perpetual Reassessment has announced that this is not, in fact, the most divided the nation has ever been, a distinction that continues to belong to a prior era when the disagreements concerned rather more consequential matters and people occasionally died over them.

Adverse Effects

The following lines of prose cleverly arranged as poetry may induce brief clarity, misplaced certainty, and the sense that something has already been decided without your approval ...

By seventy you know which doors you walked past without opening,
can name the rooms you never entered,
hear the echoes anyway.

Read It All

By seventy you know which doors you walked past without opening,
can name the rooms you never entered,
hear the echoes anyway.

The years do not accuse.
They simply pile up like newspapers you meant to read,
each one carrying news that is no longer news.

You think: I should have said that differently.
I should have stayed. I should have gone.
The mind is efficient this way,
filing the same cases under the same wrong headings,
finding them again at 3 a.m. in perfect order.

What surprises is not the weight of it
but the patience —
how regret waits,
how it has nowhere else to be,
how it sits across from you at breakfast
and asks for nothing,
knowing you will offer it everything
on your own.

The body slows.
The catalog does not.
You carry the unlived lives
the way old houses carry
the smell of people who are gone —
not haunting exactly,
just present,
just there,
just refusing
the simple courtesy
of leaving.