THE NEWS MAGAZINE OF THE COMPUTER SCREEN, VOL. 3

This article is part of the News Magazine of the Computer Screen series.

An air of tragedy hangs over the Midwest like an awesome cloud, dampening everything beneath it in a misty fog of solemn contemplation! After untold centuries, the Great Worm has died, putting the entire future of agriculture in jeopardy.

"Without good soil, my crops will surely wither in die!" yelled one farmer at a town hall meeting, held in a haunted barn because the town hall was being fumigated that day.

The Great Worm, a massive subterranean creature some 20 miles long, was known to enhance soil quality with its excretions. All it ever asked for in return was one human child a month, which it consumed in gruesome fashion.

Now that the demonic bond between worm and man has been severed, how will farmers continue to provide fresh crops for the world? "It is not enough to simply throw our children into the giant holes the Worm made when surfacing," commented Farmer Roger of 127 Country Lane. "We need the Worm to digest them."

Meanwhile, scientists studying the carcass of the worm think they know what killed it. "It swallowed a very large tractor that it could not digest," said a precocious teenage scientist practically dancing for the cameras.

America braces for yet another disaster left in the Mighty Worm's wake! Its massive burrows provide perfect corridor through which subterranean smugglers and bandits might move unimpeded by law.

"Our worst nightmare is realized," wrote the President in a memo discovered outside his locked and barricaded office door.

The early bird is in for a rude awakening!

After a packed jumbo jet crashed down in the wilds of northern Alaska, passengers expected slow and painful death at the hands of nature and each other. What they got was far worse!

"We were all trapped in the wreckage, in pain and stuck," said one survivor, now recuperating in a hospital.

Rescue arrived in the form of a disgusting and despicable dog, loathsome and wretched in every way that can be spoken by man.

"A big ugly dog that I hate with all my heart," said another survivor, who wishes she had died in the crash instead of owing her life to such a vulgar display of nature's perversion.

The rotten and worthless animal pulled each and every one of the 247 survivors from the burning wreckage at great sacrifice to its own hideous form and dragged them to safety. The foul monster then ran 240 miles to the nearest town, where its mere visage sparked the formation of a fiery mob!

The filthy, abominable creation led the angry mob intent on killing it all the way back to the wreckage, where they were forced by good conscience to help the wounded survivors.

"They pleaded with us to kill the dog and then come back and help them, but some were very near death," cried a nondescript member of the mob who looked no different than any of his peers. "We chose to save them first, allowing the dog to escape. I will regret that all my life."

Residents in Alaska are collecting funds to set fire to the forest where they believe the dog lives. "This great shame will die one way or another," pledged the Governor of Alaska in a suicide note found on his emaciated, sore-covered body.

A clown has mysteriously died in Bend, Oregon. He is presumed to have fallen out of a window, but no one can say with any certainty which window it was.

"He shows all the classic signs of a defenestration," said a coroner, speaking through a series of informative hand motions due to a previous vow of silence.

When officials tried to remove the face paint to identify the man, they found he had more on underneath!

"As far as we can tell," spoke an official, "this clown has no real face."

Undaunted, morticians press on for answers. "We've removed 15 layers of makeup and still no original face to be found!"

Each layer is unique and completely different than the last, revealing an entirely different clown.

"What must we do to find the measure of this man?" cried a distraught and frustrated mortician, so beguiled by this farcical cadaver that he has turned to drink and thrown his wife and child to the streets to live and work as common whores.

"Now he laughs at us," said a nearby child under conditions of anonymity, candy, and marbles.

"If ever there was a real man 'neath this pallid façade, long and hard has he suppressed it," spoke The Forlorn Bystander, who materialized out of thin air a mere instance before the impact, powerless to do anything to stop it.

Next time try catching a pie, clown!

This has been a presentation of the SA REEL SERVICE NEWS MAGAZINE of the COMPUTER SCREEN!

– SA REEL SERVICE (@Livestock)