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Save Me, Popeye
by Amit Parmessur

I loved her without hesitation. She dumped me without hesitation.

Even Popeye despite being so Herculean needs his Olive Oyl. I too needed my girlie. But I think she misjudged my feelings for some old straw hats full of dirty cockroaches and stuffed them into a box of Tiger kitchen matches.

She unjustly threw the box of honest feelings into her fireplace and added some more wood to the already raging yellow fire. I guess she took my pure heart for some dry heart-shaped tomato. Why did she crush it so cruelly as if it were some cheap Kleenex tissue paper?

She killed me, throwing my heart into the Amazon River as if it were a worn-out Gianna Meliani high heel shoe. She could instead have wiped her running nose with it. Or she could have written ‘Welcome’ on it and used it as a brown doormat. My heart wouldn’t have objected to being utilized as a Ralph Baer Chat-Mat too. At least it would’ve been of some importance to her and her family.

I worshipped her, fulfilling all her demands. She’d been crueller than Sylvia Ganush in Drag Me to Hell, Lisa Sheridan in Obsessed, Colonel Quaritch in Avatar and Bluto combined! I guess she mistook me for some chicken-flavoured Twisties and Blue Diamond Almonds too, ate me and then went for her nightly brushing with her preferred Arm & Hammer toothpaste after hammering my love so expertly between her teeth. I helplessly swirled down her dark porcelain sink.

I surely want to be in a packed stadium but I just didn’t know I would end up among some controversial Jabulanis. She took my whole personality for an Adidas pumpkin and kicked me hither and thither in the endless disloyal streets of her heart. At least millions of people would cheer if a pumpkin is hit into the nets one of these days. She has surely turned me into a laughing stock while I have forgotten how to laugh.

I’m not Popeye, who by simply eating cans of spinach would become supernaturally strong and forget pain. Even the ashes of a silly drunkard’s Benson & Hedges cigarette now have more worth than my burnt feelings.

I am not Popeye.

How can I become strong again? Every night I feel red-bellied Amazon piranhas, uncompromising crocodiles, bullish bull sharks, sinuous snakes and vampires of all shapes, ages and sizes assailing my poor heart. If it manages to escape my heart will need years of intense surgery to be itself again.

I’m no phoenix bird either to jump out of the ashes and start life anew. I would still love to have her back one day but then I guess her worth isn’t more than that of an oily rotten olive. I might need magical toothpaste if I taste her.

Just mix all the colours in this story; you’ll get the colour of her heart. She’s not human certainly.

Give me some magical spinach. Please.

Please.

Pleeease.

Oh Popeye, save me.