Projects > Story-of-the-Day > literally

God looked down and said, "I've literally had enough of this."

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It's Sunday and I haven't even opened my eyes yet. Last night was literally the best night of my life. I open my eyes and look over at my girlfriend. She opens her eyes as she wakes up.

"Hey, you want breakfast," I ask.

"There is literally nothing I could want more than bagels and lox right now." The pupils of her eyes dilated like saucers.

I put my hand on her waist and look up at her, "Are you sure there's nothing else I could offer?"

She cast down her eyebrows and moved my hand off. "No. We need to get food. Come on, let's go to Murray's Bagels. They have the best cream cheese."

I look over at the clock. Honey, it's 10AM. There's going to be literally a million people there. Let's just stay in bed and..."

She was already up and getting dressed.

The doorman approached us as we were about to walk out, "You might want to stay in. There's a huge crowd out there. The city is estimating that there's upwards of 800,000 people."

I look at them and don't see any signs that it's a protest, "What are they doing?"

The doorman shrugged, "Apparently they all want to eat at Murray's. It's like somebody coordinated the biggest flash mob ever, but nobody's taking credit."

My girlfriend exhaled sharply, "Well, this is literally going to shut down the subway."

I looked at the crowd. "We were just going there too... I literally can't wrap my head around this." And this was true.

The doorman's walkie talkie crackled in as we sat staring at the crowd: "Please advise all residents that the subway system is down. All lines affected."

"Wow, that's weird." I point to my girlfriend. "You really called that one."

We thank the doorman and walk back up to the apartment. I don't have any salmon, but I offer to make some bagels from scratch. My girlfriend is completely set on Murary's though. No substitutions. We both look out the window at the masses.

She says, "This is literally insane," as she gestures out over everybody. Suddenly the calm crowd turns into a riot. People are hitting each other and destroying everything they can around them. We watch in horror as the glint of knives become visible every once in a while. Then the sound of gunshots starts ringing in.

We both run inside for cover. I yell out, "I wish they would literally disappear. This is crazy." All of the noise stopped. We both carefully peeked out the window. There wasn't a single person on the street. All the evidence of their destruction was still there, including blood. But not people.

My girlfriend looked at me in shock. "Did you do that?"

"Umm, no. I just said I wished they would disappear. There's a large difference between expressing that desire and actually making it happen."

She shook her head, "No, no. I think you did. You said it and it happened. Try something again."

"Ok, I wish a million dollars would appear in our living room right now."

We both looked around and saw nothing.

I could see the gears turning in my girlfriend's head. "No, I think you have to use the word 'literally'. That's what you did to make them disappear."

I laughed, "Ok, I -literally- want to see a million dollars appear in our living room right now."

There was a pregnant pause for two seconds. Then we heard something that sounded like the sucking of a vacuum and a modestly sized stack of $100 bills appeared in front of us. Both of our eyes widened.

She picked up one of the bundles, and flipped through it. Then said, "This is literally making my head explode." I saw a look of horror in her eyes before it happened.