Bathroom Monologue: "Las Vegas: What's Your Excuse?" -Tourism ad trying to get you to visit Nevada

Dear Las Vegas,

John can't come in today. He doesn't want to lose several thousand dollars to statistically unfair games only to be consoled by a complimentary room and syphilis.

Best,
Mom

Bathroom Monologue: Bio I composed in the bathroom and feel I really shouldn't use

John studied Literature at Bennington College. Long before that he was thirteen and crippled, and the works of Mark Twain, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King and various others gave him the will to make it to the next day. Now that he is able to walk, he feels he owes Literature something. Bennington College now feels that is somewhere in the six-figure range.

He writes The Bathroom Monologues, a blog of micro-fiction, list fiction, character sketches, monologues and other brief prose at www.johnwiswell.blogspot.com, which is now at over 750 entries. He also writes short stories and novels in various genres, because a stroke victim and a guy who thinks the world is full of evil pod people are both really interesting. He has been published at Inside Pulse, Alien Skin Magazine, the Story Library, Flashshots, Microhorror.com, Powder Burn Flash, and by Acorn Press. He is always looking for new venues for fiction, online and off.

Bathroom Monologue: Brutally Honest

“Et tu, Brute?” Julius asked, turning to his old friend.

“Not well, really,” Brutus said, shrugging his shoulders. He hated doing this. “I’ve got a lot of issues with you.”

“Que?” asked the leader of the empire.

“Your refusal to abdicate consolidated power makes a mockery of our republic, many of your domestic decisions show incompetence, and your war lust both taxes the treasury and threatens to dissolve our empire.” He pulled his right hand from behind his back and showed Julius the knife. “Frankly, I’d come here to stab you. That’s how bad it’s got. And your hygiene…”

BM:“Do you people even know how to play this game?” –some jerk on Left 4 Dead, OR, What I came up with once I’d left the game and went to the bathroom

“Yes, I do. There’s a gun sticking out of my camera. I point it at things and fire until they stop moving. It’s very simple. It’s you who seem to think we’re playing another game, one where the object is to walk in front of me while I’m firing as often as possible. But I figure you can’t really think that’s the object, because if it was a high score logo would have popped up on your screen by now. Man, this is such a good burn. I’ve got to log back in, find him and use it.”

The Nearest Thing in Flash 40 Contest

This week voting began in the Editors Unleashed Flash 40 contest. Winners receive cash prizes and see their work published in an upcoming e-book. Anyone who registers with that forum can view and vote on all of the entries up until the 25th, and those who receive the highest public votes get better weighing in the judgment. I'd sincerely appreciate it if any readers could head over there and check out my "The Nearest Thing." It is a stringently revised version of "The While Walking from Borders to Home Depot Monologue," following Felix and Creed, two boys from the same town who barely ever met, even after they ran away from home in the same direction.

If you think it sucks, vote like it sucks. But I'd appreciate the eyes. You can see the story itself at this URL: http://editorunleashed.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1318

Bathroom Monologue: Previously On #001

Previously on the Bathroom Monologues...

A girl woke up with questions.

A waitress dressed as she pleased.

And gravity turned against us.

And now...



It took Wendy fifteen minutes to make it to the diner down the street. She held onto the neighbors’ bushes and made a slow go of it, watching as cars hit the mid-street speed bump and floated away, their drivers honking angrily. She waved with one hand, but held onto shrubs and mailboxes with the other.

Once inside the diner she happily drifted up to the ceiling, kicking off it with her slippered feet and landing on one of the tables. She scurried across it, navigating the edge until she could scoot her legs under the table. Then she was secure, though she kept at least one hand gripping the booth’s cushions at any given time.

The diner was almost empty, save a group in the far corner. There were tall men, all old and in beat-up clothes. One had a raven on his shoulder and seemed to be talking to it. Wendy wondered how much the raven understood. The tone of their conversation was grumpy, though all seemed relaxed, none apparently bothered by the lack of gravity in the town today.

After a moment, someone popped out from the kitchen. It was a stocky woman wearing an eye patch and a blue military uniform. She carried a menu under one arm and walked cheerily towards Wendy’s table. Wendy stared, asking before the woman had even circled the counter.

“How can you walk on the floor?”

The one-eyed woman chuckled, one hand gripping the edge of Wendy’s booth.

“Restaurant floors get pretty sticky from spills and people not wiping their shoes. I haven’t mopped in a while.” She deposited a menu in the girl’s lap, instructing, “Don’t let go of that. Lot of menu-related injuries today. I knew we should have put rounded corners on them.”

Wendy braced her knees under the table, gripping the menu to her chest. She looked over the woman’s uniform again.

“Are you a marine?”

“No, honey,” the woman smiled. When she smiled her eye patch got stuck over her cheek and rode up, like a giant eyebrow. “I’m your waitress.”

“Waitresses don’t dress like that.”

“They let me dress up however I please, and I wanted to be an astronaut today given current events.”

“But you’re wearing marine clothes.”

“A navel officer, actually. I don’t have any astronaut suits and this was the closest I could get.”

Wendy frowned, then shuffled through the menu.

“Can I have pancakes?”

“You sure can, but it may take a while. Fred hasn’t got the reflexes down yet and they keep floating away when he flips them.”

“He should use a second spatula to keep them in check.”

Wendy flattened her hands and mimed one spatula hovering over the skillet, slapping down any imaginary pancakes the other hand flipped up. Her waitress laughed.

“Capital idea, honey. I’ll tell it to him with your order. For now, here, take this.”

The waitress reached under the booth and produced a pink nylon tether. One end was fixed to a table leg, and she tied the other to Wendy’s right ankle.

“Compliments of the chef, so you don’t drift away while you wait.”

“That’s a good idea,” Wendy said, running her fingers over the nylon.

“They’ll probably be mandatory by law in a week,” the waitress said. “If the weather doesn’t clear up.”

“Is this weather?” Wendy tilted her head out the window. It was mildly overcast out. Could that nullify gravity?

“What else could it be?” the waitress asked back, heading to the kitchen. Her shoes squelched on the sticky floor, and Wendy thought she heard her making Darth Vader breathing noises.

Bathroom Monologue: Penultimate, Ultimate, See Older Posts

The first end came when God was browsing creation and hit the back button too many times. Suddenly the perfect world was deleted. He fretted and hit undo, to no avail. The recycling was similarly unhelpful – it was stuffed with too much crap downloaded and deleted on whim for even the omniscient to be able to find a single good file in it. He went back to older drafts and found no good saves. Most of them were made up of notes and things He ought to try in later writing. He sighed and tugged on His infinite beard in frustration; He’d never be able to get the world that right again. Nothing ever topped the good draft that got away. So He opened all the documents He hadn’t lost and began copying and pasting, hoping none of the life forms that popped up on this planet would notice the gaps.

Bathroom Monologue: Broadcasting From Unconfirmed

"Listeners, all we know about the situation is that we know nothing. We can only report that the dead may or may not be rising. We’d like to tell you more, but that would require us to make something up. That would be lying, and listeners, we do not lie. We are here to inform. Unfortunately all we can inform you of is that we know nothing. We are the Socrates of radio and this is the Agnosticast. We cannot confirm that a satellite from Venus crashed near a cemetery and started this. We cannot confirm that a strain of viral rage extracted from monkeys broke out and started this. All we can confirm is that our very dead stationary manager just came in and tried to bite me. Is still trying to bite me. God dammit, Karl, will you please him in the other room? Listeners, I’ve just been informed that Karl does not have the key to the other room. I cannot say where it is because – Jesus, get him off of me!"

Bathroom Monologue: “What’s your sign?” –Guys throughout the ages who thought you were pretty but didn’t have anything to say

-“Stop.”

-“Smoke signals. Do you mind if I set you on fire while we talk?”

-“Cancer. It’s terminal.”

-“The sea anemone, made up of four stars visible from your planet and nine that aren’t. They map the way to my homeworld. Do you have any spare rocket fuel?”

-“Cancer. I have crabs.”

-“Taconic Parkway 7. Then it’s just two miles, and I’ve got a waterbed.”

-“.” This one was in sign language.

-“Cancer. That’s why I’m bald and emaciated. Am I really the most attractive woman in here or do you have a horrid fetish?”

-“The dollar sign. Before you sit down you may want to speak to my pimp. It’s almost 12:00 and rates change at midnight.”