This week’s short story from my collection Upon The Ground is up at GreenSpotBlue (Here). This time it is a comedy entitled “The Duck.”

Here is the beginning of the story:

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“The Duck”

“Do you know what that is?” The Interviewer asked in his deep, rough, slow voice. He pointed at an object on his desk. I didn’t have the slightest idea what it was. Whatever it was it was bloody and very disgusting. I quickly thought back to all my classes on job placement and interviews. No… No… No…. None of them said anything about bloody objects. The only experience I had in college with bloody objects was when I dissected that frog in Biology 101, but that wouldn’t come back to haunt me now (would it?). I decided to be honest with the interviewer. “No, sir, I don’t.”

“That is my spleen,” he said. He sounded very proud.

“Why, that’s nice.” I made a mental note that this man had no spleen in his body. It sounded important at the time.

“So can you figure out why I have my spleen on display?”

My mind frantically jumped from thought to thought. Can there truly be a good answer for why a person has their spleen removed and placed on their desk? I decided to go with the honest answer. “No, I don’t, sir.”

By the look of disappointment on his face, I instantly knew I had given the wrong response. “Because,” he said making sure to emphasis every syllable. “I want my clients to know that I am hiding nothing from them.” He waved his hands in front of his suit. “This is what I have on the outside.” He pointed at the spleen. “And this is what I have inside.”  He made sure to make eye contact with me. “I am an open book.”

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If you would like to read the rest of the story, please visit GreenSpotBlue here.

Thanks for reading!