FanStory.com - Be Careful What You Wish Forby michaelcahill

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door. Sherwood Snerdpuddles no longer looked forward to knocks on his door. He had received everything he had wished for. He hadn't been careful.

Snake's Last Stop Gutter Hop was the scene of many a disappointment for Sherwood. Snake's was the lowest of the low when it came to dive bars. It was much worse than the quaint come-hither name that flashed at an angle above the unpainted front door of the establishment. Even the missing "G" that implied that milk filled cows might be inside proved to be optimistic. Every udder in Snake's was dry if I can extend a vague metaphor even a little more too far.

Sherwood had tried every other bar in Millville. There were a lot of bars there. There was little to do since the Mill closed some eighty-four years earlier. In Millville, you either collected welfare, drew Social Security or worked at the Walmart twenty miles away in Onthemapnow. The Snooty-Snot Snooker Room was a nightmare for him. They took to making quite a bit of sport of his lame attempts to find a lady friend. "What's your sign" is bad enough, but Sherwood thought it sounded classier to say, "What might your astrological affiliation be?"

The most humiliating rejection came from The Fart Girl. No one knew what her real name was and she seemed at ease with The Fart Girl. It was a name well earned. Many a hairdo was set aflame with a deep breath, a Bic lighter and a good aim. Sherwood asked her to come home with him for a drink.

"Not if you were the last man on earth." She had told him and then farted a tune that sounded like it might be a classical piece, maybe Chopin.

That was the night he found the old Jack Daniels bottle in the alley on the way home.

He thought it had whiskey in it, but found out otherwise when he got home. I suppose it could've been whiskey at one point, but it had to have been filtered through a kidney at least once.

He looked at that bottle and spoke to it. "Why the hell does everything in my life turn into a bottle of piss?"

The steam that had been rising from the bottle took a wavy human form and began to speak to him. "I'm Jack dad gum Daniels, you sum bitch. I'll take you on anytime anyplace any year any color any flavor. What's your wishesess?"

"Wishesess?"

"Right. Okay. WWWiisssshhhh. Is that bettteerrrr. Wiii……..iiiiissssssshhhhh."

"I get a wish?"

"Yesh, one wissssh. Ya don't see no turbine on my noggin does ya. One wissshh."

"I wish that all my competition vanished off the face of the earth and that I would get the girl for a change."

"Dippity doodle doo. Good talk son. Pleasant dreams." He vanished back into the bottle.

Sherwood replaced the cap and passed out on his couch. The next day he went to Snake's and took his place at the bar. He ordered his usual peppermint schnapps in a Sprite. He noticed a couple minutes later that women surrounded him.

"What's going on ladies?" He suspected they were up to no good.

"We are lookin' for a good time," they said in unison.

"Oh. What's your astronomical conflagration?" He was nervous, no doubt about it.

It didn't seem to faze the ladies. They fell all over themselves to get his attention.

"I left my panties on the moon. How's that for a sign?"

"I used to be a Virgo. Now, I'm a naughty asssssteroid?"

Sherwood couldn't help but think that these ladies might have a double meaning in what they were saying, but he couldn't be sure. Finally, he left the bar. They all followed him home.

That was a week ago. It turns out that Sherwood was the least desirable man on earth. Thanks to the ghost of Jack Daniels, he was now the only, and thus, the most desirable man on earth. It was a very tiring position to be in.

There was a knock on the door. "I'm a Capricorn… a bare-naked Capricorn." About the last thing he wanted to do was answer it.

You would think being the last man on earth would provide a little solitude at least.