Remedy For
Depression
by Michael A.
Kechula
Frank, a
serial killer, liked oatmeal and corn flakes.
However he realized on days he ate corn flakes,
he had no urge to murder. But, a day without
killing was supremely boring and depressing. To
avoid major depression, he bought and consumed
all the oatmeal on Z-Mart’s shelves within
fifty miles.
To reduce the
number of trips he made to Z-Mart, Frank
contacted the store manager and asked if he’d
divert all future oatmeal shipments to
Frank’s multi-million dollar estate.
Consequently, at any given time, the
mansion’s expansive, circular driveway was
loaded with Z-Mart trucks.
Frank’s
next victim was a woman he garroted while she ate
oatmeal. He mounted her decapitated head on top
of an empty, cylindrical oatmeal container, and
placed it next to all the other heads in his den.
That’s when he realized his latest victim
looked exactly like Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
The only difference was that oatmeal dripped from
the side of her slack, bloody mouth.
Frank raced to
Z-Mart and bought artist supplies. Painting the
dead woman’s portrait, he called it
“Mona Oatmeal.”
The painting
was deemed a masterpiece by the American Academy
of Art. The original was hung in the New
York’s Metropolitan Art Museum, right next t
o Van Gogh’s self portrait which depicted
multicolored oatmeal running out of the ear he
forgot to cut off.
Wishing to
support local artists as a good corporate citizen,
Z-Mart acquired rights to reproduce Mona Oatmeal.
This supplied Frank with royalty money to buy
even greater amounts of oatmeal.
Z-Mart hung
chintzy, framed copies of Mona Oatmeal over
shelves where oatmeal was stocked in each of
their stores around the globe to promote the
product---except those within fifty miles of
Frank’s mansion. No sense reminding oatmeal
lovers that their favorite food was available
throughout the world, except in stores within
fifty miles of Frank's estate. Nevertheless, that
maneuver didn’t prevent the Great Oatmeal
Riots of 2008.
Meanwhile,
Frank’s murder rate climbed to ten a day.
Then came the
great oatmeal famine. Global cooling caused crop
failures everywhere. The US Department of
Agriculture announced that oatmeal would not be
available for at least ten years. But a bumper
corn crop assured that corn flakes would be in
abundant supply during those years.
Frank had no
choice but to switch to corn flakes. He was
awfully bored and depressed, but the world
appeared safe from his murderous binges for a
decade.
Three months
into the decade of the Great Oatmeal Famine,
Frank rushed to Z-Mart and bought a chemistry set.
Six weeks later, he successfully transformed corn
flakes into oatmeal. For this monumental
achievement, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Biology.
Frank was
happy again. So were the world’s oatmeal
lovers.
The only
unhappy people in the nation were Frank’s
murder victims.
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