The Lowest Form

Greetings, WYMOP readers! This one’s short, but sweet.

It was Sunday afternoon, and I was at the New England Horror Writers’ booth at Rock and Shock, the weekend horror/hard rock show at the DCU Center in Worcester, MA.  We’d been selling there since Friday, and Sunday meant day three. Day three meant I was tired. Tired meant I was punchy.

Punchy meant I was punning.

The people I was with did not find this funny. Or punchy. They found it somewhat sad.

“I think I’m the only one here without a novel,” I said. “Well, I did write a vampire novel, but it sucked.”

They stared at me.

A couple walked by the booth dressed as walkers—zombies—from a popular horror show on television. I pointed. 

“Looks dead in here.”

Crickets.

Pinhead (well, a reasonable facsimile with a teenager inside) from the Hellraiser movie series walked past. “Hey,” I said. “That’s a sharp costume.”

Silence.

I grinned. “Get the point?”

“Look,” one of my companions finally said. “What are you doing?”

“Punning.”

“I know that,” he said. “But why? They aren’t funny.”

“Well,” I said, “that depends on your—” My phone buzzed. I looked at the screen. I laughed. Looked again. Laughed again.

My friend was watching me, and eyeballing my phone. “What?”

I held the screen out to him. “Check it out. It’s a text from my son.”

He read, glared at me, read again, then shook his head and walked away.

I looked back at the message:

Dad, be proud of me! Three loud motorcycles just went by,
and I said “Look! The Three Mufflerteers!”

And my heart grew three sizes that day.

Talk to you later!