NAILS

     It’s been raining nails for the past week and a half, and it’s starting to annoy me. It was one thing when they were ½", but now they’re up to that inch size and that’s just inexcusable. First it was tacks, now it’s practically drywall nails. Those kind they put in nail guns? Yeah, those. Where does it go from here?
     Most of the nail manufacturers folded outright because of the downpour. And that’s just after three days of rain. Nails are now readily available all over the street. Construction companies haul them out of people’s yards and have already begun dragging rivers, lakes and sewers for them.
     Oh, and the fatalities are, of course, at an all-time high. No work is being done. People are afraid to leave their homes and most cars have been so dinged up that they’re undriveable.
     And who benefits from this? I mean, besides the building contractors and car dealerships. Otha Palmerdale, that’s who. This guy inherited Palmerdale Fabrication from his dad a year ago and has steadily driven it into the ground ever since. That was until three days ago. As the nails pierced the skulls of his factory workers, he instinctively grabbed a slab of unprocessed metal from the shop and made it to the safety of his office. In under an hour, he had constructed the Palmerdale Metalbrella out of that slab and became a savior to a nail-beaten nation, for a price.
     Some say it takes a lifetime to earn your millions. For Otha it took less than a day.
     The initial prototypes were a little bulky. The only people who were able to even open the Metalbrella were younger males with intense upper body strength. I hear that Palmerdale’s making some lightweight models for kids and older people by next season. Hopefully by then the nails would have stopped and Metalbrellas will just clog the landfills like so many 8 track players.
     Still, I’d rather take a nail to the forehead or simply stay indoors for the rest of my life than pay $49.99 for one of those hideous things. I mean, they don’t even come in blue. Although I’m sure the choice of colors will grow as demand does.
     This wasn’t in the Bible. Raining blood, frogs, sure. But not nails. This wasn’t how the world was supposed to end.




-SLL