Sunday, October 24, 2010

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 8.

There is an audio edition of this story. To listen either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio, or click this text to download the MP3.

I was in high school. Like now, I was a gangly kid. Very into photography. Mostly funeral photography, but you know, you can only take so many rolls of a corpse in so many poses before they say you're "different." So I helped the school paper. One day I hopped over to a science expo. They were irradiating clowns to see if they'd be funnier when exposed to plutonium. One of the clowns got loose and bit me. I fainted dead away.

Woke up in a hospital room with chattery teeth stuck to my sternum. The doctor said I had two days to live at best and there was nothing modern science could do to save me. Well my father was a super-physicist before he died in a tragic fall from a trapeze, so I set about updating modern science. I constructed the most advanced containment field known to man to keep the chattery teeth from reaching my heart. It all plugged into this purple jumpsuit. Sort of my prototype.

My family was overjoyed and we went out for a picnic. There we were, on the lawn outside a carnival, when this black car rolled by. It turned out my mother was a witness to some mob crimes and they wanted to send a message. So they sent it, at eighty bullets per second. In less than a minute, every relative I'd ever known was dead. I swore revenge over their bodies.

I returned to my family mansion to plot this revenge. I needed a symbol. Something to strike fear into the hearts of superstitious criminals and lazy cops. But what?

It was then that a clown flew through the window. How he got in, I don't know. I couldn't get him out and eventually beat him to death with a broom.

To get the homicide off my mind I went spelunking into the cave beneath the family mansion and was shocked to discover a letter from my dear departed dad. He'd been hiding it for when I was older. Turned out I wasn't actually his. Ma and Pa had found me in a field when I was just a baby amongst the remains of a crashed spaceship. I was the last son of a dead world. A planet of mediocre stand-up comedians. My birth parents had sent me here because the yellow sun would imbue me with superhumor abilities. So the letter said.

Anyway, the next week I got caught in a nuclear test site and the gamma explosion turned me into this. True story.

9 comments:

  1. Coffee with John Wiswell --great way to start a day! lovin' this story.

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  2. A super physicist falling from a trapeze, and chatter teeth... wow. Another good one.

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  3. The clown got me luaghing, John. Baet him to death with a broom! Fantstic wrting as always, yuo Troll...er.. Ogre.

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  4. ... and the reading was top-notch as always, John...

    Hope you're well.

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  5. That was brilliant, it made me laugh. Glad the clowns weren't *too* creepy. Great mix of ideas in there.

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  6. John, this was incredibly creative, like I was reading an improv scene developing and reaching a very satisfying ending. You hooked me with the funeral photography bit at the beginning. That was a great way to describe the character's issues up front. Fun piece.

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  7. An excellent comic twist.
    Adam B @revhappiness

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