Another Rather Short Story

I wasn't quite happy with the other short short story.

I come home alone to a series of dark rooms. I fashion an easy supper of sufficient nutrition. I sit on the couch and turn on the television. A square jawed man in a suit tells me to have a good evening, America; tonight on Channel Seven we hear from authorities concerned with a new drug concocted from table sugar and acrylic paint, often abused by middle school students. In other news, the Federal Drug Administration has detected exotic bacteria causing numerous and excruciating symptoms in spinach, chicken, ground beef, peanut butter, chocolate bars, tapioca pudding, and other foods, more details at eleven.

I set down my dinner.

Locally, several witnesses have observed a lamp-eyed creature with the gait of a wolf mauling pet dogs in a nearby subdivision. Expert cryptozoologists believe it to be the third cousin of the Jersey Devil, and think that it may have a taste for human flesh. A serial killer yet to be apprehended by spotlight-bearing helicopters and K9 units (as recorded by the indefatigable Channel Seven News Team) was seen in the area yesterday. Police say he favors crawling into residences through unlocked windows and murdering his victims in gruesome fashion with his signature circular saw.

I wonder why I have not yet purchased a dog.

The inoffensively attractive anchor leans forward and says that a gentleman with long pale pianist’s fingers and feverish eyes will sprinkle anthrax spores onto a Luddite manifesto (wrathfully composed on an antique typewriter) before mailing them to you. He says that a strange new disease, incubated in the fecund backwaters of rural China has made its way to the United States of America, where it is has hospitalized hundreds. His muddy eyes and neutral expression and Midwestern accent suggest that he thinks I have little chance of survival. He tells me that scientists believe that an asteroid the size of the African continent is now approaching Earth. Impact is imminent and ineluctable. Here comes the end.