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Irritan
by Lora Grillo

It's tough doin, he thought.

This whole business of days and nights and how they all sort of blend together like the hairs that stick out of his nostrils. He should buy a nose hair clipper, one that doesn't hurt. He feared the sting that would come from clipping his nose hairs with his nose hair clipper; so instead, he let them grow longer than he should.

The day before the day before, they didn’t seem as long as they do today.

Tomorrow, they will probably be longer than today. The nose hairs. The ones he needs to cut. The problem with the hair is that it keeps growing in places that you don't want it to, but not growing, growing, not growing, in places you do want it, he thought.

He realized as he thought this, he had thought it before.

Not sure if it was yesterday or the day before yesterday.

He counted thirteen nose hairs in his left nostril and eleven in his right. Counting took longer than he imagined it should take to count nose hairs or any hairs, but his eyes were not so good these days. Not that he would ever agree to wear glasses. He didn't need em.

Nobody’s eyes ever got any better after wearin glasses, he always said to anyone who would listen.

He “always” said a lot of things, he thought. He liked saying certain things better than other things. “Tough doin” was a favorite, but he didn’t much care for anything before or after that in any particular sentence. Come to think of it, “par-tic-ular” is a pretentious word that he wished he hadn’t thought of in the first place.

No glasses. Nothin doin.

He slowly made his way toward the kitchen, where he would search for the scissors his wife uses to cut chicken strings.