Storiesonline.net ------- Uncle Tobias by Svengali's Ghost Copyright© 2009 by Svengali's Ghost ------- Description: SF fans should recognize the first line of this little tale of a rather curious family. Codes: humor ------- Uncle Tobias we kept in a bucket... On the kitchen table ... with his picture for a cover. That wasn't the original plan, you understand. But the urn we ordered through the Monkey Ward catalog took six weeks to get here and had a big crack down the side when it finally did arrive. Did I mention that Unc was dead? Now you're going to ask me why didn't we get an urn from the local undertaker? Well, we would have, except the urn wasn't the original plan either. We had Uncle all nicely laid out in a nice pine box, out in the old shed behind the house and invited the whole neighborhood to his wake when George, Unc' s old partner, lit one of the extra-bright, long-life, non-drip, no-smoke candles they'd just invented. Like most of their inventions, something went wrong and the next thing we knew Uncle Tobias, the old shed and the new pine box we'd made for him were just a pile of smoking ashes in the back yard. So while we waited for the Monkey Ward order we stuck Unc in the bucket. Now I know what you're thinking, but it WAS a brand new bucket and since he'd always kept his room lined with tin foil, it probably seemed just like home. Unc used the tin foil to block the radio waves and ultrasonic waves—and Toni home perm waves for all I know—which he was convinced would sap him of all his creative energy. As you can tell from the extra bright, etc., etc., candle, he and George never had so much as half a good idea between them. Or maybe they were just too late with the tin foil. We first tried keeping him by the front door next to the leaded glass window he was always looking through to watch the goings-on in the neighborhood—especially the widow Smith (but that's another story). The only problem was occasionally we'd catch someone trying to use him for an ashtray, so we moved him into the kitchen. He seemed to like it in the kitchen, what with all the comings and goings at all hours of the day and night and always someone to talk to. However we hadn't considered the twins. The only problem with the twins was; if you asked one of them to pass something, they would ... except it was usually a lateral and none too accurate for all that. So, we decided a cover was needed and what better than his picture; a nice 8x10 (no, Arlo, there wasn't a paragraph on the back) of him and George looking only slightly disheveled. It was taken to mark the completion of another of their projects, no doubt. So here we sit, the whole family still together. And I don't care what the neighbors say, we loved Uncle Tobias ... even if he was the strange one in the family. ------- The End ------- Posted: 2009-12-08 Last Modified: 2011-08-29 / 06:08:08 pm Version: 1.20 ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------