short story #4

A sad child, crying on the bus. They are unsure why they are sobbing. Loud noises? Hunger? Pain? Nothing here was certain but they were crying, and doing it loudly. 

A person, attempting to console their crying child. Nothing was working. They wouldn't pick up their toy, they wouldn't take the pacifier, and they just wouldn't shut up. This person begins to feel embarrassed. Did others see them as a bad parent for being unable to take care of their kid? Were they a lousy father? An uncaring mother? An apathetic guardian? Others around them didn't know, and they didn't care. They just wanted the child to be quiet.

A woman, sitting on her own. She takes this bus regularly on her regular commute. She's going to visit her two wives for a picnic by a beach and hears the child crying. She doesn't mind, however. She is the only one who doesn't mind, as she knows that the crying will soon cease. 

The bus stops and scores of people get off, leaving only the woman, four other passengers, and the person. The child is still crying when they leave, and even after the woman walks up to them. The woman glances at the parent and says that she knows how to calm them down. She moves closer to the child and looks them in the eye. And she tells them something. 

"Apartment complex? I actually find it quite simple."

The child stares at the woman, its large blue eyes shimmering up at her. It has stopped crying and now has begun to laugh. The parent breathes a sigh of relief and thanks the woman. The woman smiles and sits back down. 

Abigail is unsure of when this ability began. All she was aware of was that at some point, she wanted to make people laugh. That this world, boring and bleak as it was and shrouded in the gas of despair, could potentially bring forth fire and the warmth of happiness. All she had to do was become the spark. 

At first, it was just jokes for her friends. All she had to do was say something with comedic intent, and the entire room would burst out laughing. She liked it, this feeling. Camaraderie, built upon by joy. She thought about being a stand-up comedian, but that seemed a little daunting. Regardless, she continued to tell jokes, and people continued to belly laugh until they were crying. It didn't matter whether she spent several minutes coming up with a complex story with several well-placed elements, or spent no time at all. She was funny. She was liked. And she was loved. And in the end, wasn't that all that mattered?

At some point, she began to feel different. Imposter syndrome, she found it to be called. She started telling others that her jokes weren't that funny and that she was entirely comedically bankrupt. That she was humourless. They scoffed at this and applauded her once more, telling her that she wasn't humourless, but rather, "Humourlass". The name somehow stuck, and she was lauded as a sort of superhero, able to make even the most depressed people with the worst sense of humour guffaw with all their heart. This only annoyed her further, but she didn't make a big deal about it.

Eventually, she found that, with enough concentration, she could cause people to laugh with a certain intensity for certain periods of time. If she wanted, she could make chuckle for a bit, or choke on their laughter for an hour straight. She tested for more and more, trying to find her limit. Then she had an idea. 

She tried recording herself telling a joke and playing it back. It didn't make her laugh. Then she played the audio for a friend, and they began laughing. It occurred to her that all she had to do was record herself saying even the most stupid of sentences, and as long as they were meant to make *someone* laugh, it would. She visited hospitals and therapist offices, trying to give them the tapes. Eventually, someone caved and accepted a tape. And as they played it, they suddenly felt like this was the best joke in the world. Their patient felt the same way. And they searched for her to ask for more tapes, for more jokes, for more laughs. They couldn't find her, so they continued to reuse the same recording, and it still worked. It didn't matter who it was for, or what it was about. People were laughing. People were happy again. And this was nothing short of a miracle. 

Abigail still felt as if she was lying to others. After all, she wasn't even telling jokes anymore. She could read off a line from an old computer science textbook about data structures, and people still behaved as if it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. This felt too much to bear, so she told both her wives what she was feeling. The other two women, concerned, decided to try and make her laugh. With many failed attempts, they eventually succeeded. They watched Abigail laugh, and Abigail felt herself laughing. This was different, however. Unlike her own jokes, which she told half-heartedly to make strangers laugh, the two loves of her life, without any such abilities, were able to make her laugh. They didn't use well-structured humour, either. Their jokes were bad. Really bad. But they still make her laugh. She cried, no longer feeling like a fake. She began to understand her abilities a bit better. It didn't matter if she wasn't telling actual jokes. It didn't matter if her humour consisted of fart jokes and humour about genitalia. People were laughing! People, the sad, the lonely, everyone was laughing. And she was the reason. 

Abigail found that people were much more friendly when they were happy. If she could just get people to open up a bit more through her ability, she may be able to change things about the world, and how it was run. She could paint the walls of this grey existence with the yellow of joy and blue of happiness. The red of love and the green of friendship. The pink of relationships, and the orange of family. And all people needed to do was laugh. So she decided to get to work. 

Abigail went to legal conferences and met with business representatives. She told them her jokes, imbued with a joyful giggle, and got them to open up. She didn't want to use violence here, even though it would have been easier than talking them out of their decisions. She very easily could have made them laugh uncontrollably for hours, restricting their throats until they signed whatever sheet of paper she needed them to sign. Then, she would simply tell them a small joke to wear off the effects of the original one. It would have been so much easier, but she didn't do it here. For now.

She helped those in positions of power reconsider their ways by replacing their selfishness and greed with laughter and relaxation. She made them reconsider what they were doing here, with all their money. 

Slowly but surely, she worked her way up to more and more powerful people. This task, terrifying as it was, was one she knew she had to do. Far too many people suffered at the hand of tyrants and oligarchs that favoured profit over lives. Far too many people believed their suffering to be justified, because "it could always be worse". Abigail didn't believe that. She knew that people's lives were being taken advantage of and that the world was crumbling. She was not about to let it be taken over. 

Eventually, she got a stroke of luck. There was a presidential campaign and the campaigner was open to the public. She walked up to the campaigner and told them a simple joke to ease them into this. Joke after joke, and laugh after laugh, caused the politician to ask to speak privately with her. Careful wording, aided by big jokes sprinkled in, caused the politician to reconsider their platform and the goals they wished to achieve. They thought about this woman in front of them, how she seemed to speak so passionately about her prospects, and how convincing her arguments were. And they decided against what they were doing. After all, if the woman was right, and millions of young people had such hopes and dreams, who were they to crush them? It wasn't right nor was it fair. So they decided to switch their platform entirely, offering completely new deals. Abigail watched as this person began to gain the respect of a lot of people. They said what the people wanted to hear. Healthcare, commutes, the climate and more. Change needed to start somewhere. So why not here? Why not now? There was no reason to keep avoiding this. They had kids too, and they wanted them to grow up in a world where everyone was equal. So they did.

Abigail then watched. And watched. And waited. And, surely enough, the county began to turn. The politician won their election, and they promised to make sure to follow up on their promises. So Abigail decided to help out in the ways that she could. She began telling jokes to the public again. She began to see the colour seep back into the world, with faces alight and laughter abound. She watched as the world transformed into one where people didn't need to worry about money to fix a broken bone, or if they would be fired if they tried to take a day off work to visit a sick relative. She watched as the world healed, no longer stuck in a drought of despair, but rather sitting on a hill, full of might. A happy place. 

Several years later, when Abigail was old, she sat on a bench with her two wives at a dog park. She saw a dog digging a hole hear a pond, tail wagging furiously. They were talking casually when Abby decided to do something she hadn't done in decades. After waiting for one of the other women to stop speaking, she spoke.

"What da dog doin'?"

Her wives laughed, but Abigail knew something else. She didn't use her ability this time. This was a joke she made, speaking from the heart, not from some bygone god's blessing. She laughed with them. And Abigail sighed in content.


"Humourlass", by me. A commission for a friend :]
Thanks for reading!