Berengaria's Best: The Ultimate Short Story Collection

The Disasterist*

Herschel Perlman lay in his bed, hands folded over his chest, imagining disasters that had never happened and could never happen.

The time Aunt Rachel was attacked by a rabid groundhog and chased until she tripped and tumbled down an open well where she survived twenty days on nothing but radioactive moss. Then she was rescued and appeared on the national news, camera-startled, dirty and foaming at the mouth, claiming she was Che Guevara's illegitimate daughter. Her hair was a disgrace.

Or maybe that time when Mitzi Singer from two doors down was kidnapped by a renegade group of End-Times televangelists who --

"Herschel! Hersch!" his mother called from down the hall. "You gonna to come out or am I gonna come in?"

Herschel didn't answer, because he already knew the answer.

A few moments later, his mother's slim form appeared in the doorway. One eyebrow cocked at the sight of how her teenage son was still lazing in bed.

"So, how did I die today?" she asked.

Herschel scratched his chin. "Hard to say. It could have been that run-away mail truck that ran you over. Faulty brakes. Or it could have been the unfortunate combination of flour, salt and rat poison in a batch of Feinman's Premium Bagels you happened to be snacking on at the time."

"What, the truck didn't get me? Boom. Lights out?"

"No, quick-witted witnesses called 911 and you were rushed to the hospital. But due of a flash traffic jam caused by an erroneous report of a UFO sighting in Queens, that rush took three hours. You died at the emergency door entrance. The autopsy report will tell us more."

"I love you, too. Don't forget, Hebrew lesson. Your satchel's by the door."

"I never forget Hebrew. The most interesting things happen there. Just last week. . ."

But his mother was gone.

Herschel sighed. His efforts were never fully appreciated.

No one understood, that he, Herschel Perlman, Disasterist, was better at keeping cataclysm at bay than any mezuzah nailed over a door or blessing from the trembling hand of an elderly rabbi.

If just someone else understood like he did, that if a Jew could think up the most logic-defying series of calamities that even God, in his darkest moments, would never allow to happen, any tragedy that actual did would seem as inconsequential as a hangnail. Of that, he was convinced.

Herschel sighed again and got up from his bed.

His work for the day was done. It was time he found his way to his Hebrew lesson, where Rabbi Shuman was waiting with a test on irregular verbs he'd been hyping like it was going to be God's vengeance on humanity for their sins.

Good thing Herschel had already imagined the worst.

With alligators.