Last Laugh

Written for “It’s Story Time” where Jolene
has given us four prompts to work with.
They are shown below; here’s where they took me.

The problem with Marlene was the laughing,

Not the warm kind, not the polite titter at the boss’ joke. Marlene laughed at the wrong things …. at the moment the bride fainted while walking down the aisle, the day her friend’s house was broken-into, at the exact second the doctor said malignant and the whole room fell silent. A sound would escape her, high and bright and completely involuntary, like an out-of-control hiccup. She’d clapped both hands over her mouth at her own mother’s funeral and still hadn’t been forgiven for it, seven Christmases running.

She’d tried therapy. She’d tried beta blockers. She’d tried biting her tongue.

Then one very ordinary day, Marlene found herself standing outside a little shop wedged between a dry cleaner and a phone repair place. The sign above the door read simply: Butcher’s Specialty Services. In the window, a small card said: Wishes come true. Ring the bell.

Marlene rang the bell.

The man who answered did not fit the name Butcher. He was slight, sixtyish, in a clean white suit, with the mild expression of someone who has learned not to be surprised by visitors. He looked her up and down once, the way a tailor measures, and stood aside to let her in.

“I saw your card,” she said.

“People usually do,” said Butcher, “when they need to.”

“It was rather direct,” said Marlene.

“I find it saves time,”

She told him everything. The funeral. The seven Christmases. The look on people’s faces …. not anger, exactly, but a kind of flinching, as though her laugh was a stone they kept expecting to be thrown in their direction. When she finished, Butcher was quiet for a moment. Then he reached under the counter and placed something between them: a small glass jar, sealed with wax, containing what appeared to be nothing at all.

“One wish,” he said. “Not three. People always abuse three.”

“What’s in the jar?”

“Silence,” he said. “Just a bit of it. Very old.”

Marlene looked at it. She thought about her mother. The doctor’s office. The funeral.

“And I just …. what? Open it?”

“When you’re ready.”

She picked up the jar. It was light, lighter than empty. She turned it in her fingers, the wax seal smooth and unbroken. She thought about silence, about how much she had wanted, for years, to simply be appropriate.

Then she thought about something else.

She set the jar back down.

“I don’t want it,” she said, surprising herself.

Butcher tilted his head. “No?”

“It’s not….” She paused. “It’s not really the laughing that’s the problem It’s that other people can’t feel what I feel.” She shook her head slowly. “I don’t want to be quieter. I just wish they could feel it.”

Butcher looked at her for a long moment, then a very small smile moved across his face. He picked up the jar and placed it back under the counter.

“Well,” he said. “That’s the first time anyone’s refused a wish.”

“Shhh!” said the jar under the counter.

The laughing never did stop. But Marlene started finding people, slowly, one at a time, who’d look across a quiet room at exactly the wrong moment and catch her eye …. and have to hide their own faces in their hands.

She liked those people best.

NAR©2026

Nancy’s Notes: These are the four prompts: 1) person who laughs at inappropriate times; 2) butcher; 3) wishes come true; 4) shhhh!

This is “Laughing” by The Guess Who

It’s story time!

^{Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.}