DAVID CROSS MARRIED ME

("DAVID CROSS MARRIED ME” is a short-short story that dances through Charlie Kaufmann territory without stepping on toes.

Your brain will do the twister trying to make sense of this here story.

Enjoy !!!

DAVID CROSS MARRIED ME

Mark Shofliegger, Grade 8 Social Studies, shuffles his way into a sit-com sized staff room full of morning faces.

"Morning," he yawns, as he heads towards the coffee.

Several "mornings" come back in half-hearted response, sounding more like the moans of ghosts than greetings.

Arriving at the sink, Mark opens the cupboard door to find his favorite mug missing. A souvenir that he got on vacation in Hawaii ten years ago.

I'm too tired to care, he tells himself.

"You would not believe the dream that I had last night !!" Tarl Waters, Grade 10 Math, bursts into the staff room with Susan Obermiller, Grade 10 English. Their laughter lightens the mood of misery hanging in the staffroom.

"What was it about ? " she asks, anticipating the ridiculous.

"I dreamt that I was getting married and David Cross - you know that bald actor in Arrested Development who plays the gay husband ? - he was conducting the wedding ceremony. Everything he said was just dripping with sarcasm and he kept rolling his eyes like, Oh my God I've got to say this shit ?!"

Susan laughs uproariously.

Mark stews in his silence over the absence of his coffee mug. Coffee is my fucking laughter in the morning, he thinks to himself.

"And then when he says, you may now kiss the bride I go to lift her veil and who is behind it but David Cross !! I look out over the pews in the church and it's David Crosses everywhere. Its like that movie with John Malkovich where there's a whole bunch of him all over the place. What was that movie called ?"

"John Malkovitch ! It was called John Malkovich," she laughs hysterically.

Mark slams the cupboard door shut: "That wasn't your dream !! You always come in here with your dreams, your stories that sound like they were written by a joke writer !! That shit doesn't happen in dreams."

He starts throwing the coffee mugs at the high school staff.

In the court case that will follow the mini-rampage, Mark Shofliegger will confess that he's never had a single dream in his waking or sleeping life.

When the judges gavel comes down, that's when you will wake up.

Next to the sarcastic smirk of your lover David Cross.