Electricity is useful and dangerous. The fact that it’s useful means it’s all around us. Yet the fact that it’s dangerous doesn’t mean we all know how to use it properly. Despite WorkCover’s best efforts, safety is still not a sexy subject. So how do I make you read a safety article? By using Barry Butcher. Barry is a happily married father of two who is about to kill himself and his family - including the pets. You’re going to see how he does it.

Barry has a nice home which he plans to renovate. As we enter the hall, we see an old fuse box with quaint ceramic fuses. Because these used to burn out often, Barry has replaced the fine fuse wire with a much heavier gauge. Next time there’s a fault in the home’s antique, cloth-covered wiring, the fuses will hold their own until the wiring ignites the granny flat out the back. The resultant fire will account for Barry’s mother, Beryl. A sleek modern switchboard with automatic cut-off switches only costs around $350 installed, but Barry is saving for a new kitchen.

On our left is Betty’s nursery. Like most toddlers, she is endlessly inquisitive. Barry hasn’t put safety plugs in the unused power point sockets and to Betty, they look like portals to another world. In a way, they are. All she needs is a safety pin or paper clip key.

Compounding the risk is Betty’s mother Brenda, who is understandably concerned about germs. She regularly drowns the live power boards with surface cleaner. All except the one under the crib which has been gathering dust, cobwebs and cat fur ever since Betty arrived. It’s hard to tell which way she’s going to go.

To be continued...

It was Friday. For the first time in months, Tristan followed his peers to the pub. He drank heavily and even shouted a couple of rounds into his social vacuum. In just a few hours, he'd be free. As he got intoxicated, he began baiting the Copywriter and got a pleasing reaction. For once the shoe was on the other foot.

He became increasingly bold, thrilling as the Sales Boys congratulated him on his wit. Goading and taunting, he gradually worked the whole room into laughter at the Copywriter's expense - tapping into deep-seated ignorance and jealousy of the creative function.

Then the Copywriter's mobile rang and Tristan elatedly accepted his first free drink since joining the agency. When he turned back, the Copywriter's furious face was only centimetres from his.

'Alright, Arsehole, if you're so f*cking confident, why don't you double our bet?'

Tristan did a clumsy mental calculation and ended up with his BMW, two weeks' holiday and enough cocaine to dust Danni's entire body. Swayingly he surveyed the assembly, alcohol burning in his ulcerated stomach. Suddenly, all became hushed.

'Doubleall yerbetsh? Yerrr bloody ONNN!'

The cheer was deafening. Tristan smirked at the Copywriter, who toasted him in surprisingly gracious defeat.

The summer sunset moiled huge on the horizon as Tristan slewed into his apartment. Chuckling and dribbling, he tore off his suit and slithered onto his cool Spanish granite. His pupils slid in and out of focus, then abruptly narrowed to pinpricks. At his nose was a tiny plastic toucan.

He scrambled to his feet and seized the mascot. Attached was a letter from Kellogs, thanking him for all the publicity and promising free Froot Loops for the remaining months of his contract.

Underneath was another Smeg printout, confirming that per the recent change in account conditions (as detailed in the brochure emailed to his work), his hopper had been refilled automatically.

Tearing at his face and hair, Tristan ran howling from the giant burning Froot Loop that filled his Western window.

Back at the office, his Help Desk Officer exited Smeg's Client Control Site and deleted her hacker's ID.

'That'll teach you,' she whispered.

The End.

Thank you for reading; I hope you're having fun. Next, 'Stumpy' the kangaroo souveniers part of my Holden Barina, east of Halls Gap.

The agency mysteriously snared the All Bran account and Tristan was assigned to oversee the national re-brand. Bound by his contract, he dejectedly donated his pallet of freebies to charity.

On New Year’s Eve, Tristan breakfasted as usual. Hunched and rocking in the gloom of his filthy kitchen, he failed to notice the puff of powder that followed the Froot Loops through the dispensing chute. Only when his spoon made a gritty crunching sound did he look into the bowl.

Tristan began to tremble, then tore open his curtains to examine the vessel more closely. Under gentle morning sunlight, a faint residue bore witness to a vanished milk tide.

Ten seconds into the New Year, Tristan activated his RBG again. Amid a blaze of re-aimed downlights, his prayers were answered: Froot Loop dust. With a mad cackle he leapt onto his bench and tapped one of the hoppers with a cleaver. The pentatonic note was loud and pure. He hit another, and the sound was the same. Forcing the machine around on its axis, he banged each cylinder in turn, frantically searching for the one that had to be almost empty. But the Italian steel was too thick to permit differentiation.

Undeterred, he loaded his owner's CD and pored over the specifications, then calculated the volume of Froot Loops he'd eaten during the previous months. He carefully rechecked his figures, concluding that there could be no more than five serves of the hateful food left in the machine. If Smeg thought he were going to authorise a refill, they had another f*cking thing coming.

That week saw a transformed Tristan. Though pallid and overweight, he cut a commanding figure among his peers. Even the creatives began to look nervous. With each new dawn, Tristan happily devoured a growing portion of dust until only one possible Froot Loops serve remained.

To be continued...

'Your Smeg RBG bathroom sensor has detected undigested breakfast material. Please remit proof of your medical condition to avoid breach of contract. Get well soon!'

Irradiation did more than keep the RBG's cereals fresh and sterile, it made them easy to track. Tristan sank to his knees and stared long at the strobing sensor peeping from his s-bend. Suddenly it all seemed too much. What was poverty, compared to this hell? In a year or two he'd be back in the black. He'd had enough.

Riding in the office elevator he felt a faint stirring in his guts. His body seemed to be affirming that his decision, however painful, was the right one. The door dinged open and he exited with a faint smile - straight into a phalanx of manic colleagues.

'He's here; he's not sick! Wooo hooo! We're in the money! We're in the money!'

Tristan's image stared from every terminal, a crimson 'WARNING ISSUED' plastered across his Smeg file. The Copywriter began an exponential conga line and Tristan choked as Danni sashayed past - a hairy pair of sales hands at her supple hips.

For dinner, Tristan fished one Froot Loop at a time from his toilet, rinsed it in a bowl of vodka and washed it down with more.

**********

Mountain dawns and ocean sunsets swept unheeded past Tristan's picture windows. The odds of Froot Loops were now so titanic, the metrics monitor expressed them as a formula.

In return for a month's free consumables, Tristan had allowed Smeg to run an article on his freakish statistical experience. Now he spent his evenings bitterly declining invitations from chat rooms. Smeg's home page had even begun scrolling up to the minute data and commentary on his progress.

At work the mood was hostile. It was almost Christmas and Tristan's colleagues were sweating on their windfall. Their premature jubilation had soured to resentment at his stubbornness. Surely it was only a matter of time.

To be continued...

The probability of two consecutive identical cereals was 1 in 900. This figure appeared in the RBG's metrics monitor, which also advised Tristan that the odds of his next breakfast being Froot Loops were 1 in 2,700. Though tempted to test them, Tristan's contract constrained him to wait until the following day, whereupon his china bowl rang again with little coloured rings.

The same thing happened the next day.

And the next.

He didn’t even like Froot Loops. He’d put them thirtieth - too timid to chance the nasty looking offerings from Yemen, Belarus and Chad. The cereal was painfully crunchy. The coating, which could only be dissolved by pancreatic amylase (thereby freeing radioisotopes for NanoBot detection), could be optioned to keep every morsel milk-free.

Tristan rued his choice; preference changes were only free at the annual major service. He couldn’t believe that having crunchier cereal than anyone else in his suburb had ever seemed like an edge.

**********

After two weeks of the sickly fruit treats, Tristan's bowels became capricious. He called Smeg and a voice synthesiser offered a service visit, provided he undertook to pay for it should no fault be detected. Miserably he pressed ‘1’. The voice then asked him to confirm his apartment access code so the Technician could plan his or her day without constraint.

That evening, a crisp printout on Tristan’s dining table informed him that comprehensive diagnostics had shown the RBG to be in perfect working order. He converted his remaining share options and went to bed defeated. At 3:00am, the self-clean cycle scared the bejesus out of him yet again.

Four hours later, the RBG presented him with another pristine serve of Froot Loops. Tristan regarded the bowl white lipped, then flew to the bathroom and smashed it into his chrome toilet. Flush after flush failed to sink the impermeable rings, which bobbed gaily like so many life preservers.

Then Tristan's mobile bleeped with a text message:

To be continued...

Smeg contracts were Draconian by design. Tristan was glad; it was going to take a lot to make up for his failure to stop the Sales Boys pissing in his spa. He scanned the pages over his first random breakfast of Froot Loops, left buttock still aching from his NanoBot injection. In a few hours, the implant would advise Smeg Client Service that Tristan's meal had entered his duodenum and was past the point of return.

Tristan's favourite Account Coordinator approached the bar, achingly lissom in a Christopher Kronos spray-on. Tottering on her Nine Wests, she hefted Tristan's Orrefors pitcher and sent a sparkling fragment into the salad centrifuge.

Tristan the Advertising Cadet tossed fretfully on his futon. He really needed All Bran this morning. Fifteen days of Froot Loops had left him twitchy, constipated and more than a little paranoid. Once again he fantasized about sabotaging his Smeg Random Breakfast Generator.

We can perhaps conjure memories that we would trade on the spot for two slabs and a bottle of Bacardi. But which memories can we truly afford to renounce: those that are repetitious (our daily commute), those that are substandard (some of the later 'Muppets' episodes) or those we'd like to experience over and over (first pet, first car, first love etc.)?

'A' gives up smoking by having all pleasant associations with the habit removed. These are so numerous that his personality alters dramatically and his friends desert him - whereupon he turns to alcohol.

Barbra is a Mobile Consultant for Piece of Mind Inc. A seasoned psychiatrist, she earns more than most of the folk at Accenture - which is a sh*tload.

In a desperate bid to reclaim market share, a Swedish homewares firm will purchase the right to produce a complementary range of 'Hurt Furniture'. Its first product will be a banana lounge that delivers high-tension piano wire wounds to incautious recumbents. Insufficient field-testing, however, will result in a string of gruesome self-assembly accidents.

Hurt Couture's logo will be prominent and actively lit on every creation. Inside, fibre optics will feed a powerful central processing unit. Depletion or compromise of any countermeasure mechanism will disable the glowing scissors, defeating the purpose of wearing the item.

Countermeasures will be categorised, allowing clients to nominate their level of risk. Elegant contracts will set precedents for signing away common law rights. To the dismay of Hurt Couture's left wing founders, this will quickly spill into the industrial relations arena.

In a little while, an extremely avant-garde fashion house will be formed. Rejected by all established organisations in their respective fields, two bright graduates will form a partnership. Their names will probably be Oskar and Vivienne and their company will almost certainly be called 'Hurt Couture'.

Of course, most organisations are only really scared of losing senior staff. I find this endlessly amusing, since it's generally the loss of 'little people' that causes the greatest havoc.

I've been a driving bloke for 40 years now, but it wasn't always the case. I first felt the call on my Schwinn tricycle at kindergarten. When I got sent home for piloting Virginia Folvig onto a wooden peg (a' la 'Midnight Express'), my parents bought me a pedal car. I was horrified at what I'd done and resolved to take public transport thereafter.

I guess it's in our blood. For me, it always starts as a tingle in my right thigh - deep down where I can never scratch. I can be driving the same route I've been on for months and then suddenly, I know I simply have to nail that Finance Director who's exiting the Melbourne Club. Uncle Roy gets a nervous tic in his left eye; brother Norman wets his pants and cousin Enid… well, let's just say she really looks forward to getting her 'message'.

G'day. I'm a bloke. I drive a bus. THE bus. The bus people get hit by when they're least prepared for it. In layperson's terms, you could say I'm the bloke who drives the bus. Except that sometimes I drive a truck. I don't mind; it makes for variety and the results are generally the same.

Welcome to Surreal Short Stories! Here you'll find bizarre tales of adventure and revenge.

There are grains of truth in every character, so I hope you find them thought-provoking and enjoyable.