3
The only thing worse than one bad day is two bad
days; the only thing worse than two bad days was the
day Craig Green was having.
Not only had he been poisoned, shot, and spoken
rudely to, he was also in the process of exploding.
All Craig wanted to do was cash a
$35 dollar check and watch a movie. It wasn't an
important check; just a happy ray of sunshine in
Craig's otherwise painful life. Two weeks before his
current date with personal detonation, Craig had
managed to break both of his wrists chasing a pigeon
with an egg beater. At the hospital he had overpaid
for both of the casts, and the doctor's office had
been kind enough to mail him the difference. Upon
receiving the check Craig thought things were looking
up, but sadly the only thing currently moving in that
direction was Craig himself, and with astonishing
speed.
Wasn't it enough? Craig
thought.
He was surprised at his ability
to think coherent thoughts while set alight - but then
again, he had never suddenly burst into flames and
launched himself toward the ceiling. Still, it was an
unexpected surprise.
Speaking of surprise, three
others were equally, if not more so, startled by the
unfolding events. The girl next to him, Cindy,
clutching in her freshly manicured hands a movie
ticket gawked as Craig's pants caught fire. Behind
Craig, a mother held her purse close in case the
treasure trove of tissues, fast food napkins, and hand
sanitizer inside of her purse followed the example set
by Craig's pants. Next to the mother, a little boy
holding a box of popcorn stood wide-eyed as Craig's
beard burst into red-orange flame. The boy would later
finish the popcorn, be given a vanilla ice cream cone
to help with the shock, and grow up to be clean
shaven.
Craig thought a few other things
in the time he had. He thought: What is
happening? Why am I so warm? and Why was
that melon I had for lunch so tough?
But all of his melon-centered
thoughts stopped when Craig hit the movie theatre's
uniformly soothing light blue ceiling, did the
equivalent of three free falling cartwheels, and
landed on the plastic container that held the used
REAL 3D glasses.
Upon landing, Craig's body opted
became a man-sized grenade, exploding into five
hundred fiery chunks that broke two of Cindy's nails,
ignited the hand sanitizer in the woman's purse and
melted about 80% of the REAL 3D glasses.
Craig's life had not been a
terribly good one. He had been forced to live through
five concussions, two broken legs, three consecutive
bouts of viral meningitis and the humiliation of being
assaulted by a pigeon wielding an egg beater.
Fortunately, this is not the story of Craig's life.
Craig was some three time zones and 6000 kilometres
away from our hero, who was wandering the Canadian
forest, completely oblivious to the fact that
spontaneous human combustion was suddenly back in
style. That hero was Ghost Beaver Kick, and the movie
on the screen was about him.
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