Q: A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies instantly, and the son is taken to the nearest hospital. The doctor comes in and exclaims, “I can’t operate on this boy. He’s my son!” How is this possible?
A: The Cuckolarians are a semi-parasitic alien race characterized by a tendency to quietly infiltrate species on other planets with the goal of inserting their children into other people’s families. Dr. Reynolds has been on Earth for forty years, and the globe is seeded with his secret children. At first, he waited daily for a signal from Planet Coucal to trigger a conquest, a revolt, for why else would one want an alien race lying in wait? But no word ever came and anyway he was starting to enjoy Earth, the way the evening sky could sometimes be blue and yellow at the same time without ever quite being green, the way the people at least wanted to be good, most of the time. As he looks down at the still, small form on the operating table, one mere son in a legion of sons, he is surprised to find that he actually loves him.
Q: What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?
A: You have taught your chimpanzee how to walk. Of course you know that his skeleto-muscular structure is not well-suited to bipedalism, but he just looks so cute, standing there like he thinks he’s human. You give him a vest and a small hat to wear; he consents only to the hat and you consider this a fair compromise. As he grows older, he gets more and more aggressive, and you decide to send him to a wildlife rehabilitation center. You say goodbye sadly, but it’s tinged with a distinct relief. You will never know that shortly after his release into the Congo, he is caught in a poacher’s snare and loses the use of his left foot. He gets around okay on one foot and two knuckles, though, better even than he did walking upright, and the jungle is cool and green. Nobody will know if he is grateful for all of this, in the end.
Q: A man is found dead in the middle of the desert wearing only his underwear and holding only a straw. How did he die?
A: The airlocks shut with the sound of sucked teeth, and Agent Z100 mentally rehashes his mission. Recent historintelligence has suggested that WWIII began when Kim Jong Do drew the short straw in a shoju-soaked betting game, his drunken penalty sending warheads weaving west. Z100 has been tasked with going back and ensuring that all of the straws are long. He double-checks the straw — six inches; the uniform – transparent skinsuit ready to morph into accurate couture upon arrival; the programmed date — August 20th, 2049. Hits the button. There’s a part of him that still expects the air to shimmer around him, iridescent or something, but one moment he’s ramrod in the teletube and the next he’s prostrate on hot sand. Hot sand? Something’s not right. Atmospheric oxygen content here is unfamiliarly high, and as Z100 lays dizzy head upon forearm, of all things he wonders where they got the straw. It’s actual bamboo, and he marvels at the crenellated texture on his fingers, the gnarl of the segments picked out in scalpel-white sunlight. He’s never touched real wood before.
Q: Thirty white horses on a red hill,
first champ, then stamp,
and then stand still.
What are they?
A: Colors fluttering in a fitful breeze, the men reined in their steeds at the crest of Hgwynd Hill. Hooves carved nervous gashes in the clayey soil, and Edfyrd passed palm over frothy mane, trying to calm himself as much as his animal. Up this high, the air smelled of elderflower and stone, and for a moment the men were seized with a mad hope that everything would be all right. Even the horses tossed their heads and pranced a little despite their hard ride. But as the sun crept earthward, the troll armies massed up upon the horizon like cumulonimbi and the hilltop grew still and quiet.
The cry of the jötunnhorn skirled closer as the plains turned black under the onrushing trollhordes. Edfyrd looked back at his companions, just thirty men — gods! he wished there were more — meeting the eyes of each in turn with what meant to be encouragement but was secretly an apology. They were the last men. He raised his own horn to his lips and blew. It would have to be enough.
Q: You stand at a fork in the road. One path leads to Paradise, the other to Death. Next to each of the two forks, there stands a guard. One of the two guards always tells the truth. The other guard always lies. You have permission to ask one guard one question. What do you ask?
A: When you’re about fifty yards away, you make a huge production about having a pebble in your shoe. You grimace, limp melodramatically, remove your sandal and shake it violently while gesturing to the sky: what is this shit?! There’s no pebble, of course, you’re just kind of embarrassed about having to initiate this whole exchange. Part of you knows that they’ve done it a hundred, probably a million times, it’s their job, it’s really no different from ordering at Starbucks. And besides, you know what to ask — you took that logic class in college, the one with the TA in acid-wash jeans who always missed a spot shaving.
So you walk up to the gate, but as you look back and forth between the two guards, two identical stonehewn profiles and horizon-straight mouths, you’re suddenly unsure. You think about how many times they’ve had to mediate this dumb conundrum, how they’re almost worse off than the interlocutors that get it wrong, stationed here at this waypoint and forever answering the same questions over and over. You chew a thumbnail and walk up to the one on the left, so close that you can feel the heat radiating off of his bare chest and smell the sweat in his hair.
“Are you happy here?”
As you turn and walk back the way you came in, you cross your fingers, hoping that you’d asked the one who lies.
Q: A woman shoots her husband, then holds him under water for five minutes. Finally, she hangs him. Five minutes later they enjoy a wonderful dinner together. How can this be?
A: -Do you like the pork chops, dear?
-The sour cherry glaze is lovely. You outdid yourself. But…
–Da?
-You did put enough strychnine in, didn’t you?
-Positively poisonous. Are you satisfied now?
-Yes. Well. Almost. Can we try one more time? Maybe wrap me in the carpet again?
-Darling, I’ve just barely got the stains out of the Berber from the last try.
-But you only shot me once that time! I have to get up to at least four. Why don’t you support me in my endeavors? Don’t you love me?
-Of course I do! But, my little beetroot, that pesky Yusupov isn’t even in St. Petersburg right now, and we haven’t been to the ballet in ages.
-Ah! kiska, once I have made myself immortal we can go to the ballet whenever you’d like. Please can we do one more practice?
-Ah! Grisha, you have no idea how my own heart stops every time I bash you over the head with the fire poker. I have nightmares about how the firelight catches on drops of blood in your fine beard.
-You know it’s for the best!
-What I don’t know how is many more times I can assassinate you!
-Only one more time, I promise you, Madame Rasputina, and then we shall be free.
Q: They come out at night without being called, and are lost in the day without being stolen. What are they?
A: The first time the wolves emerged from the trees and ghosted into the clearing, Natasha was frightened. The slinking forms caught grey in moonlight made the space between walls and woods laughable, barely the divot of a thumbnail pressed into a worn tabletop. She sat up all night, peering out of the window to see them still sitting in the yard, occasionally rising to sniff at a clod of earth or piss at the border between grass and pines, but never nearing. Their eyes were yellowy even in the dark. In the morning, the wolves were gone, having left neither track nor spoor, and Natasha thought perhaps she’d dreamed them, but the next night they came back, and again, each night for weeks.
After a while, she came to expect the wolves. She left them marrow bones from the evening’s meal, and her dreams felt incomplete without the lupine chuff and whine from outside. After a while, she even started to wonder what worse horror they might be keeping at bay, what else might be out in the black and bramble-bound woods. And so they continued to haunt her yard each night for years, from darkfall until the sun, until one night they did not come and even the screams that splintered the icy air did not call them home.
[Image via Lord of the Rings Animated Wiki]
