new gags
A woman is giving birth in a hospital. She has been in labor many hours and appears in poor health. She is not expected to survive. The doctors urge her to make one final push. She grits her teeth, throws her head back, and screams. The doctor leans in to take hold of the baby as it exits, but is bowled over by a flock or crows bursting from her womb. Out slide the bones of the child, picked clean. The woman suddenly looks much better (sweat gone, hair loose but neat). The crows are perched on her arms, shoulders, and head. She laughs in delight at their antics as they idly peck at one another.
Two police officers pull up to the sidewalk in their car to deal with a vagrant who has passed out against a storefront in the middle of a day. The vagrant is wearing a trench-coat and gloves, and his chest appears to rise and fall. He is also holding a bottle in his lap and his hat is placed over his face. The police attempt to speak to the vagrant but he does not rouse. One of them removes the hat, revealing the head of a broom. The police angrily pull the effigy apart and find a baby in the bundle, who begins to cry.
As the sun begins to sink, a man comes around a streetcorner to open his bar. He unlocks and lifts the shutter, then leans inside to turn on the outside lights and neon “OPEN” sign. As he enters the bar, obfuscating him from our view, the sign begins to flicker. After a moment, he re-enters our line of sight as he peers out a window, frowning at the sign. Through the window, we see him rest his cigarette in an ashtray, disappear again briefly as he moves around the bar, and go back outside to examine the sign; by the time he arrives, the sign has ceased flickering. He returns inside, but the sign starts to flicker again. He appears at the window and reclaims his cigarette, but does a sudden double-take, noticing the sign. Very agitated, he puts his cigarette down again and storms out of view on his way back out. The sign stops flickering on it’s own again, but the man never reappears. After a long period of stillness, a second, identical man comes around the corner, expectantly holding out the shutter keys, and is completely dumbfounded to find the bar already open and the lights on. One can just barely make out the smoke from the cigarette in the ashtray condensing on the window.
It is night. A woman is waiting at a train platform. There is a lamppost, a bench and a small ticket window, which is closed and dark. The trees and scrub around the platform are bare and pale. Other than a small road leading away, there appears to be nothing around for miles. In the distance, she hears a train whistle, and stands up with her bag expectantly. The sound of the train grows louder, and reaches a crescendo, but the train itself never arrives; the woman looks up and down the rails in confusion as the sound gradually recedes. Suddenly, it is now daytime and there is pouring rain. The dried out, dead foliage is now lush and green, partially overgrowing onto the platform and ticket office. The women spins in confusion, then flees, dropping her suitcase in flight.
A child runs into the street. A hearse swerves to avoid him, and then swerves again to avoid collision with an oncoming truck. The child falls flat and passes safely beneath the hearse. Both vehicles veer off course–the hearse smashes into a tree, killing the driver, and the truck overturns and smashes open, dumping it’s cargo into the river. The child stands up and cackles maniacally–he was the devil in the shape of a dwarf.
