Fool's Gold (standard:other, 391 words)
Author: Dan Tana	Added: Mar 21 2011	Views/Reads: 3299/0	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
An unusual young man follows a popular rule in a very literal way.

Freddy the Fireball flickered his eyes and expanded his limbs.  Still
half asleep, he shuffled into his kitchen.  There he poured a pile of 
kindling into a bowl, squirted a bit of lighter fluid onto it, dropped 
into his favorite chair, and began spooning the twigs into his mouth. 

After breakfast Freddy scooped out the ashes that had accumulated in his
flames overnight and tossed them down the disposal shoot.  Then he put 
on his new suit, made of the finest asbestos, and headed out the front 
door of his house. 

As he walked along the path that led to the refinery where he worked he
crackled happily to himself, thinking that life is good.  Just the day 
before he had been promoted to chief cooker, in charge of all the 
furnace workers who heat the ore that the refinery processes into pure 
metals.  It meant a substantial increase in his salary. 

Freddy thought about his new promotion, and daydreamed of all the
promise that his future held.  Then a sudden, deadly chill seized him.  
A soggy, sick feeling drenched him to his core.  This frightful and 
unforeseen experience hurt worse than anything that Freddy had ever 
imagined.  Mercifully, he did not have to endure it for very long.  
Moments later his last ember extinguished in the deluge of water that 
fell on him from above. 

Wally the Waterfall looked down from the overpass, laughing maliciously
at the mess of ash and charred twigs that was all that remained of 
Freddy. 

Then Wally picked up his bucket and began to flow toward his home.  When
he entered the house he found his mother in the living room watching a 
breaking news report on the unexplained, brutal murder of that innocent 
fire man. 

When she saw her son carrying that bucket a dreadful feeling seized the
water woman. 

"Where have you been?" she asked Wally, suspiciously. 

"Out," he replied. 

"What were you doing with that bucket?" she asked, fearing the answer to
this question. 

"I was doing the morally correct thing," he responded with mock
innocence. 

Her concern growing by the moment, Wally's mother asked him what he
meant by that vague and unspecific statement. 

"Oh, you know," he said to her, "It's like you are always telling me.  I
was doing unto others as I would have them do unto me." 


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