Ricardo lost his marbles, which wouldn’t have been so bad except
that one of the marbles was really cool and looked so sparkley that
losing it made him sad. It was one of the larger marbles, about half an
inch in diameter, translucid, sporting a sparkling azure wispy splash
slightly off center. Ricardo rabidly searched his room for it, tossing
his bed out the window, spilling out the contents of his dresser
drawers (including his extensive collection of poems to his marble),
screaming obscenities at the ceiling light fixture as if it were a
sixty watt God. Maybe his marble rolled under the door and into the
hall. Ricardo wandered outside his room.
Twinkles must have swallowed it thinking it was a mouse’s eyeball.
Ricardo picked up the black cat and threw it at the full length hallway
mirror. The mirror shattered the cat, whose organs lay strewn on the
linoleum floor (bringing him 7 years of mediocre luck). Sadly, the
stomach was empty, as Ricardo had been for weeks neglecting his one
chore of feeding the cat.
Maybe, like a tapeworm, the marble snuck into Ricardo’s nut sack
and
devoured one of his testicles, replacing it. So Ricardo snagged a
pairing knife from the kitchen and began carving away. After
searching
his own and several other scrotums, he was still marble-less and in
very hot water with a eunuch-ed cub scout troop.
His hopes dashed, he began to look for for fulfillment in other
things: enjoyment, relationships, and various religious endeavors. He
got married, had three children and found a very rewarding career as a
counselor and spiritual adviser to homeless youth.
“I love you, Ricardo.” said his beautiful wife Venus. “I also have some news. I just won the lottery again.”
“Oh, again? Well, that’s nice. We’ll use half of it to buy Trinidad and the other we’ll donate to Boy’s Town.”
“Oh, and Ricardo. You got some mail today.”
“Oh really?
“Yes, beloved. It strangely was a box with just a single marble in it.”
Ricardo slit his wife’s throat and grabbed the marble from her. He
clutched it to his heart while he burned his house down with the
corpses of his family inside.
That marble had definitely proved the axiom: “If you love a marble set it free. If it comes back to you, it truly is love.”