The Devil Still Has My Lawnmower & Other Tales of the Weird

By Giando Sigurani

A loving father and good neighbor ventures into the depths of Hell to retrieve his lawnmower from the Devil himself, or else face a fine by the Homeowners Association. A spectacularly boring man finds the secret to universal peace, prosperity, and happiness in his chicken nugget. A frustrated writer launches her manuscript into deep space in a desperate hope of getting published on another world, accidentally causing an interplanetary war in another galaxy.
All these short stories and more from the author of Mister Mercury.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Giando Sigurani
• Release date: Apr 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476109800

Giando Sigurani

Giando Sigurani likes to write things. He has a website/blog he frequently neglects located at http://www.giandosigurani.com. He lives in Oregon and is frequently rained upon.

Book preview

The Devil Still Has My Lawnmower

& Other Tales of the Weird

A Short Story Compilation by

Giando Sigurani

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Giando Sigurani

ISBN: 9781476109800

Cover by Kent Mudle http://www.beretcomic.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Title Page and Copyright

Introduction

The Chicken Nugget of Peace

The Panel

8-ball & Ouija Board

The Ancient Persian

A Shot in the Dark

Danny Dizzle

A Marriage of Magic and Science

The Devil Still Has My Lawnmower

About the Author

Also by Giando Sigurani

Introduction

A loving father and good neighbor ventures into the depths of Hell to retrieve his lawnmower from the Devil himself, or else face a fine by the Homeowners Association. A spectacularly boring man finds the secret to universal peace, prosperity, and happiness in his chicken nugget. A frustrated writer launches her manuscript into deep space in a desperate hope of getting published on another world, accidentally causing an interplanetary war in another galaxy.

These are just a few of the funny, tragic, or just plain strange stories in this collection by science fiction mastermind Giando Sigurani.

The complete collection includes:

The Chicken Nugget of Peace: A spectacularly boring man finds the secret to universal peace, prosperity, and happiness in his chicken nugget. Now he has to decide: is he too uninteresting to do anything about it?

The Panel: Hostile aliens have taken over Earth. An emergency panel at the House of Representatives is assembled to address it. Hopefully, they'll actually get something done this time.

8-ball & Ouija Board: By sheer coincidence, a genuinely magical 8-ball and a possessed Ouija board have wound up in the same house and under the same Christmas tree. Now it only remains to be seen whether there is room in this world for both of them.

The Ancient Persian: While cleaning house, a college student finds an old Persian carpet that turns out to be both magic and ill-tempered.

A Shot in the Dark: A frustrated writer launches her manuscript into deep space with the incredibly slim hope of getting published on another world. Unfortunately the aliens that find it take it just a bit too seriously.

Danny Dizzle: A powerful Rudyard Kipling poem about a soldier being hanged... translated into much less powerful Snoop Dogg. (With apologies to Mr. Kipling).

A Marriage of Magic and Science: Aleister Crowley, L. Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons travel to the middle of a Nevada desert to cast a spell that will end the world. Stop me if you've heard this one.

The Devil Still Has My Lawnmower: Alan is a loving father, good neighbor, and stand-up American citizen, so of course he has no problem loaning his lawnmower to his neighbor. But when it comes time to mow his own lawn, he learns that his neighbor is not who he once believed, and that he must venture into the fiery pits of Hell to get his lawnmower back. Either that, or face a fine by the Homeowners Association.

The Chicken Nugget of Peace

George Smith woke up in the usual way, with the sun shining into his eyes from the window next to his bed, and against all reason, he smiled.

He knew what day it was. It was the day he had marked on his calendar two weeks previously, the day he looked forward to every time he threw himself upon the lumpy mattress within his tiny studio apartment to catch a few snatches of sleep before the next shift.

It was a Sunday. It was the only day off he would have from both his jobs for a very long time, and he was going to spend it doing something spiritual.

Not spiritual in the same way most people consider it to be. He would not spend his morning going to church, to be followed by donuts in the lobby and a discussion about the family picnic to be held next week, no doubt the sort of things God wanted of him. No; today, George had a much more important goal. It did not sound as significant or profound to other people as it did to him, but he was not in the least bothered by this. It was significant to him for the very simple reason that he planned for it.

He did so when he noticed that the two jobs he had, the shitty retail one, and the other shitty retail one, had coincidentally given him the same day off– Sunday– which had inspired him to rush off to his little black book and crack it open.

The little black book was nothing special. Within it was a list of things he wanted to accomplish in his lifetime. They were not spectacular achievements: about as exciting as British cricket, as one co-worker had put it.

He picked the item that occurred furthest up on the list that was not also crossed out, and marked it on his calendar.

The task was this:

He was going to be first in line at the Chicken Emporium when it opened.

He was going to buy the freshest batch of chicken nuggets.

He was going to take the first chicken nugget made that day.

He was going to dip it in Honey Mustard sauce.

He was going to eat it.

That was it. It was not by any means an amazing feat, but it was special to him in that very same way it was not special to absolutely everyone else.

As it happened, not only did George have among the most boring names in the history of uninteresting nomenclature, but he himself was also a very uninteresting person. Even when his co-workers pestered him to get out more, he would tell them that he had no intention whatsoever of becoming even remotely compelling.

Stamp collecting, birdwatching, chess, even the hobbies that were regarded by most of society to be terribly dull were each shunned by George, for fear that they might interfere with his personal beliefs.

His personal beliefs were another thing that raised eyebrows. They were concerned with everyone’s particular purpose in life, including George’s. If, George reasoned, there exist those with great, world changing, awe-inspiring purposes (Einstein, Gandhi, Genghis Khan), then there are those on the opposite side of the spectrum that didn’t have one at all.

George firmly, adamantly, and passionately believed that he was one of them.

He had explained it, painfully thoroughly, so many times and to so many people that he had very nearly gotten sick of it. It seemed that each time he did, someone would tell him that he had a terribly bleak outlook on life, and each time he would turn his nose up and say that it wasn’t the point. George’s purpose in life, he constantly attested, was to not have one. He was there to balance the scales. He would be trite, bleak, and plain so that some day, somewhere else down the line somebody else could be fascinating.

When asked if this upset him in any way, he would say no to that as well. Does a bolt get tired of holding things together? Does a hairpin grow weary from keeping hairstyles in shape? Does a hammer, God forbid, ever get sick of having to hit things? No, he would say, they did their jobs without protest, and so did he.

It was for this reason why all the appointments in his little black book were not even slightly exciting to the average person. George did not want any of them to be unique or fascinating for fear of taking the glory away from someone else in the future, and that’s how he wanted it to stay. He had designed his agenda so that each seemingly un-fulfilling appointment would make him think he was unique, without actually being so. It was the closest thing he allowed himself