George Epley

Little Tommy had never been to the barber before. His mom said, “It’s just a haircut, nothing to be scared of.” But as soon as he stepped inside the old barbershop, Tommy froze. The overhead light buzzed like a swarm of angry bees. A single barber’s chair sat in the middle, looking less like a place for grooming and more like an electric chair ready to deliver justice. On the walls, sharp scissors glistened in neat rows like surgical tools. The clippers gave off a low, menacing hum, like a hungry robot waiting to bite. In Tommy’s wide-eyed imagination, the friendly barber wasn’t smiling—he was a mad scientist. His white apron became a blood-stained lab coat, and the comb in his hand transformed into a gleaming torture device. The spray bottle? Clearly filled with truth serum. The striped barber pole spinning outside the window suddenly looked like a warning siren, spiraling red and white, saying: Abandon hope, all ye with messy bangs! Tommy shuffled forward, picturing a dungeon hi...

  In a thriving orchard, there was one tree whose branches hung low with bright fruit. From the outside, it seemed as healthy as the rest. But deep in the soil, one root had turned rotten. Slowly, the rot began to spread, poisoning the tree’s lifeblood. At first, the other trees ignored it, thinking, “It’s just one root, the tree will survive.” But as seasons passed, the sickness crept upward—first into the trunk, then into the branches, and soon the fruit itself grew bitter and spoiled. The orchard keeper faced a choice: leave the root and watch the tree destroy itself, or cut it away so the tree could heal. Though painful, the keeper took his axe and removed the diseased root. The tree faltered for a time, but before long, new roots pushed down into the soil—strong, pure, and nourishing. The fruit once again grew sweet, and the orchard flourished.   Moral: When one part of a community turns toxic and threatens the health of all, it must be addressed, even if the action i...

  Bubba Joe was the ultimate right-wing, Republican, mega supporter. He didn’t just like his president—he worshiped him. The man was, in Bubba’s mind, a cross between Jesus, George Washington, and Hulk Hogan. Anyone who dared question this divine hybrid was, by default, a socialist, communist, or worse—a fact-checker. When someone brought up inconvenient truths, like the economy tanking or the president confusing airports with Revolutionary War battlefields, Bubba had a strategy. Step one: ignore it. Step two: say, “Fake news!” Step three: accuse the other person of being a brainwashed sheep who “doesn’t do their own research” (though Bubba’s own “research” usually involved Facebook memes made by a guy named Dale in his garage). His torture methods were legendary. If you questioned his president, he’d strap you to a chair and force you to watch 12 straight hours of conspiracy videos narrated by monotone YouTubers with tinfoil hats. If that didn’t break you, he’d unleash the ulti...

   Old Sam fancied himself a sailor. Never mind that he lived in Nebraska, miles from any real ocean. He had a little sailboat—barely big enough for two people and a picnic basket—that he would drag down to the local lake every Saturday morning. As soon as the sail caught the breeze, Sam transformed. He’d throw on his captain’s hat, squint at the horizon, and bark orders to his imaginary crew: “Hoist the mainsail! Steady as she goes! Watch out for pirates off the starboard bow!” The lake was a quarter mile across, but to Sam, it stretched wider than the Pacific. Fishermen in their johnboats became Japanese destroyers. The geese were “enemy dive-bombers.” When a speedboat zipped by, Sam would shout, “We’re under attack! Brace for impact!” and rock his boat violently to simulate cannon fire. It took him twenty minutes to tack from one side of the lake to the other, but when he landed on the opposite shore, he’d throw down an anchor the size of a salad bowl and declare, “We’ve re...

  George was a man of the outdoors… or so he claimed. He loved hiking, camping, fishing, and sitting under the stars. At least, until the bug world declared war on him. Spiders, caterpillars, ants—even butterflies—turned this rugged outdoorsman into a squealing mess. The moment one crawled within ten feet of him, George would shriek like a soprano and run faster than the Flash on an energy drink. If there happened to be a tree nearby, he’d climb it like a monkey with his tail set on fire, hanging from branches and swatting at invisible insects as though auditioning for a wildlife documentary called The World’s Most Terrified Mammal . George tried to fight back. He went to self-help groups. He sat through psychiatric counseling sessions. He even attended a weekend retreat called Bugs Are Our Friends , where they made him hold a ladybug. The group leaders said, “See, George, harmless!” His response was to pass out cold on the spot. The ladybug flew off in triumph, no doubt bragging ...

  Every morning without fail, Dennis saddles up his bicycle like a cowboy mounting a horse. Except this ain’t the Wild West—it’s the Blue River Trail in Missouri. Still, judging by his setup, you’d think he was about to ride through grizzly country instead of a paved path next to joggers, dog walkers, and teenagers with earbuds. On his handlebars sits a GoPro pointing forward, another one behind him, both blinking red like HAL 9000. Strapped to the front of his bike? A very big revolver, the kind that can shoot .44 Magnum shells or even .410 shotgun shells. Across the frame? A can of bear spray. Wedged in the basket? A full-blown police billy club, the kind you’d expect in a riot, not a riverside ride. “Mountain cats!” he’ll say, pointing at the tree line. “Water moccasins, don’t step near the reeds!” “Bears! They’re out there. Don’t let anyone tell you Missouri ain’t got ‘em.” And of course, “The dogs. Oh lord, the dogs. Meanest, wildest pack you’ll ever meet.” Anyone else would s...

  Charlie was 67 years old, but he swore the mall’s benches had aged him another ten. He sat slouched on one near the food court, watching a parade of shoppers pass by like it was a moving exhibit at a human zoo. In his lap was a paper cup of lukewarm coffee he’d been nursing for an hour. His wife, Marlene, was somewhere deep in the labyrinth of yet another boutique. She’d darted in with the same glint in her eye she always had when she spotted a “50% Off” sign, as if she’d just discovered buried treasure. Charlie loved her—no question about that—but he couldn’t understand this unshakable obsession. Over the decades, he’d tried to nudge her toward other hobbies: gardening, hiking, even ballroom dancing once. But every attempt had been politely declined in favor of “just popping into a few stores.” As he sat there, he thought about how they used to spend weekends picnicking in the park when they were younger, laughing about nothing in particular. Now, weekends were fluorescent-li...

 Once upon a time, an adventurous artist named Hamid the Rope Weaver decided he was done taking ordinary pictures of flowers and trees. He wanted to capture something that existed neither in the sky nor on the ground, but in “the in-between world of knots.” One day, as he sipped a cup of cinnamon tea by the window, he heard a strange sound. Not the rustle of leaves, not the patter of rain… but the whisper of countless ropes dancing in the breeze. Hamid followed the sound and stumbled into the workshop of a legendary macramé master. The master, with a mysterious gaze, said: "To take this picture, you must pass through a thousand knots, learn a secret from each one, and weave a story from every secret." Hamid thought this was just an artistic metaphor—until three days later, he found himself literally tangled in a mountain of ropes. With only one free hand, he pulled out his camera and, in the exact moment when the ropes lined up like an army of patterns and lines, he pr...

  At 8:42 a.m. on a Wednesday, the IHOP off Exit 23 was running at peak syrup capacity. At one table sat Marla , staring down at her pancakes like they were a jury she needed to sway. She wasn’t eating; she was plotting. Divorce was on her mind—not in a bitter way, but in the same way someone might plan a kitchen remodel: “Messy, expensive, but boy, the end result will be worth it.” She’d been married to Carl for twelve years, and for the past two, he had been, in her opinion, about as exciting as cold toast. She absently stabbed her short stack and thought, I’ll keep the dog, the blender, and the good coffee mugs. Carl can have the treadmill he never uses. One booth away , Stan was swiping on his phone with the intensity of a man assembling a bomb. His dating app bio said he was “adventurous, spontaneous, and financially stable” — which was 33% true. Between bites of omelette, he muttered, “No… no… definitely no… oh, wow—yes… oh, nope, she likes hiking.” He longed for “the one”...

  In the sprawling grasslands of Blue Springs, Missouri, on a dew-slicked Tuesday morning, local Olympus enthusiast Carl “Shutter-Fingers” McGraw spotted the Holy Grail of Missouri wildlife photography: a full-grown turkey vulture, wings outstretched, gliding low over the park like a feathered hang-glider that had seen some stuff. Carl, a retired mailman turned amateur nature documentarian (and self-declared “avian paparazzi”), was armed with his trusty Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II and a telephoto lens roughly the length of a baseball bat. He had just finished watching a 3-hour YouTube video titled "Zen and the Art of Wildlife Photography" and was feeling spiritually and optically aligned. The moment the vulture crested the hill, Carl dropped his breakfast granola bar, screamed “ACTION!” (despite this being real life, not a film set), and took off running across the field. Now, if you’ve never seen a 62-year-old man with a camera the weight of a brick sprinting through wet gras...

  Out on the glassy lake, time hung like mist in the early morning air. The water shimmered in peach and lavender, painted by the brush of the rising sun. The fishing boat floated as if suspended in a dream — no ripples, no birds, not even a single bug to slap. Just silence… and the two men in the boat, staring out into the surreal, alien beauty of it all, each caught in their own mental whirlpool of disbelief. Stan, with his jaw still sore and a half-melted worm dangling from his line, finally broke the silence. “You know, Carl… I still can’t figure out how that goat got into the motel hot tub.” Carl didn’t move his head, just blinked slowly like a lizard on a heat rock. “Worse part is, I think it was wearing my pants.” A long pause. The sun crept higher, casting golden halos around their heads like saints of chaos. Stan squinted. “You think they’re gonna charge us for the vending machine?” Carl finally turned. “The one we set on fire, or the one you tried to baptize?” Stan...

  The Last Light on the Moon There was once an old man who lived alone on the Moon. His name was Elric Thorne, and for the last 37 years, he had been the solitary caretaker of Lunar Station 9—long forgotten by Earth. He wasn’t always alone. When the first wave of lunar colonists arrived decades earlier, the Moon was full of hope. They planted crops in sealed domes, built long tunnels lit with artificial sunlight, and watched Earth rise together like it was a nightly prayer. Elric was an engineer then, younger and eager, with grease-stained fingers and a heart full of wonder. His wife, Mira, tended the lunar greenhouse. Her laughter once filled the echoing halls. But the Earth changed. Funding dried up. New priorities took root back home—Mars, space elevators, and faster-than-light projects. One by one, the lunar colonies were decommissioned. Most returned. A few stayed. Elric stayed. He stayed when Mira fell ill and the return mission was still years away. He stayed when she p...