55 Words is the Minimum and Limit for Pen Pricks Submissions

“55 words? 55 words?!!” John punched the keyboard. “That’s not even a round number! Not 50? Not 100? Not a range?”

He paced around his room.

“Intensely arbitrary! Ridiculous! It insults the author!”

John huffed. He went to the mailbox.

On the way back he had 49 words about a rabbit making her magician disappear.

Bathroom Monologue: Practical Werewolf Defense

The werewolves promised blood. Most townsfolk panicked and made silver bullets.

Dixie scoffed. “Melt down Nana’s silverware? For furries?”

Even skeptics rigged their yards with barbed wire.

“Not on my Kentucky blue,” she said, driving home from Target. “I can handle pups.”

When they howled at her door, Dixie switched on her new vacuum cleaner.

Bathroom Monologue: It was his turn

“Magician vanished in front of a full house. Been missing ever since,” Gordon explained, opening the interrogation room door.

“Only have one suspect. Got motive, but won’t say how she did it.”

On the stable was a white rabbit, sitting on a black top hat. When the detectives looked in she chewed her carrot sardonically.

Bathroom Monologue: To each his own triceratops

What do you do when you wake up and your street is overrun with dinosaurs?

Pedestrians crashed when the hadrasaurs herded. The cops tried shooting to scare off an allosaurus. It went so poorly it got on TV. Mom had a nervous breakdown, the most popular response.

To each his own. I got a saddle.

Pen Pricks Week

In 2008 a small site of microfiction rose and fell. It was Pen Pricks, devoted to stories of 55 words. Not one more, not one less. It drove me insane until I submitted to them. They promptly went out of business. I take full responsibility.

So for the rest of the week I'll post the three stories I'd intended to submit, and on Friday there will be a little bonus 55-worder that they probably wouldn't have appreciated.

This little form; what a sad little country, without territory or name.

I guess we’re still looking for a name for micro-fiction. Ignore that we can’t agree if it’s under a hundred words, exactly 150, a few hundred, or between 500 and 1000 words long – we don’t know what to call it. That’s a peculiar problem for a thing that can be identified by a word, like “micro-fiction.” Normally you consider that sort of thing named.

I like “micro-fiction,” but I guess the publishing industry is worried novels will be replaced by macro-fiction.

Super-short-stories reminds them of spandex.

Flash fiction makes me think of sticking a book in a photocopier.

I once had a professor walk into a classroom shaking his butt and singing, “Who writes short shorts?” Ironically, he went on to write Smart People.

If I can’t use “micro-fiction,” I guess I’ll go with shotgun fiction. I don’t know where it came from but I know that’s what I called narrative bathroom monologues when I started typing them out. It’s catchy, because anytime you’re in a room with a bunch of pent-up readers and somebody mentions any kind of gun, thoughts are going to happen. Attention is had. A shotgun has the one blast: stick in the shot, close the barrel, pull the trigger and bang. No extra rounds in the chamber, very few words, and the limit of only hitting whatever point and story you can hit with your rock salt prose. The worst drawback I can think of is somebody naming his micro-fiction sequel “double barrel shotgun fiction.”

Bathroom Monologue: Sandwich: Bread Vs. Meat

It’s true that if the bread is poor then you can pick out the meat and eat it, but seldom are a few slices of turkey satisfying, and eating straight sandwich meats does not a sandwich make. The bread is clearly superior because if it is good you can dump the meat in the garbage and rebuild a better sandwich with your remaining wonderful bread. But if the bread is poor? Then the whole sandwich adventure is doomed. No one wants to carry limp slices of processed turkey in search of new bread. The bread is the foundation of the sandwich, and hence the bread is more important than the meat when you embark in sandwichery.

Bob bless you.

Bathroom Monologue: There’s no war like

The snowmen crushed the wolfmen. It was barely even a battle, really. Have you ever hit a dog in the nose with a snowball? Well then you know why the snowmen won. It helped that everything except their coal eyes and carrot noses were covered under their version of Medicare; nearly every war wound was corrected by a national healthcare system of precipitation. It was a battle born out of centuries of their ancestors being peed on, something they could stand no longer. And when the militant snowmen were through the wolfmen, they set their sights on their vilest oppressors: ploughs. When the county officers reached the parking lot they’d find every last truck in smoking ruins, each with a corncob pipe stuck in its tail pipe.

Bathroom Monologue: So little time

Shrinking is one power I’d never tell anyone I had. Invulnerability or Hulk strength would be made public immediately as I abused the crap out of them, but shrinking? I’d just live a normal life, occasionally crawling into Swedish volleyball lockerrooms and appreciating the view. Every few weekends I’d rent a boxset of DVD’s, buy a tootsie roll, and just live off of the damned thing until Monday morning. The savings I’d have on consumption would be amazing, and do you know how good my surround sound would be at six inches tall? And sometimes I’d randomly abuse it to hide when my manager came through the office or someone was looking for a ride. Maybe even to screw with the secretary at the dentist’s.

Bathroom Monologue: Return of the King Jr.

"I had a dream. Then I had a funeral. Now I have a 2x4 and I’m here to kick some ass. One day white children and little Negro children will play together, but their parents’ asses are mine!"

Bathroom Monologue: She Danced

She danced like no one I’ve ever seen. She made me a fan of ballet inside of one minute. You ever stick your hand out the window of a car and wave it up and down in tune to the breeze? Like it’s a wing in the breeze, or part of an invisible current? You ever done that when you’re tired and your defenses are down, and you find that feeling becomes more important than steering the car? No, you’d never admit it, but I do that. And watching that princess bound and dip like she didn’t have a backbone, it was like watching another person perform the feeling I get in my hand. She wasn’t lithe, but the way she moved would have made a girl made out of wires jealous. It was the only real elegance I’ve ever seen, and so sensitive to the way the music was going that I never would have believed she was improvising, and I never could have believed anything else. I knew right then on the edge of my chair that this was the woman I was going to marry.

It’s a lucky thing I fell in love with her at first sight, too, because Goddamn, she was a bitch. Snuck into the reception early intending to gush at her and discovered the princess chewing out the horn section for being a quarter-beat off. Tried to bring her a glass of bubbly and she blew past me, bumped the glass and spilled it all down the side of my jacket. Didn’t even look back.

Few minutes later I sidled up next to her and she handed me a glass of bubbly. I thought it was an apology. Ten minutes later she turned, looked surprised I was still there and set to chewing me out. Thought I was staff and intended me to take her stale drink to the kitchen, not sip it and listen to the conversation.

That I didn’t smack her across the hall is evidence of love at first sight, or at least extremely patient lust. She was the kind of woman you had to hate, because even with her lips curled and her words condescending, she was beautiful. Normal woman, even a pageant queen, looks like a vulgar animal when pissed off. I guess she’d been in a tiff so often that beauty had settled down and conformed over her angry features as well as the serene ones. The ones she had when she danced.

I tried to weasel into her conversations, but my ignorance of the fine arts served me poorly. I was verbally spanked on the history of dance, and then on the history of sculpture. My attempt to make amends with another flute of bubbly was met with a tirade on the glass not being chilled enough. Overheard her saying she didn’t want to talk to any more of the girls, so when I saw a couple approaching I warned them – but warned them in earshot and was rebuffed and poked in the chest until I was pressed up against the wall. Banging into the wall did something in my head, though, and I ripped off my jacket, still wet with her stale drink, and tossed it in her face.

Even then, I wasn’t really mad. I just wanted to see how mad she’d get at a legitimate provocation. The reaction? Adorably furious. Chewed me out so harsh her flunkies retreated, and the rest of the night when she got tiffed over something she'd seek me out and blame it on me, or at least send me a glare across the floor, like I was an investor in everything that got under her skin. No doubt in my mind that’s how I landed the first date.

Bathroom Monologue: You had to be somewhere

"Did you know that before you were born your mother stood out in the freezing temperatures for sixteen hours just to stand and watch the first black president get inaugurated on a widescreen television next to the Mall of America? She wept with joy, and the tears froze on her cheeks."

"Were you there too, daddy?"

"Hell no. I watched it at home, then got drunk and played X-Box."

Bathroom Monologue: St. Peter, with a Brooklyn Accent, Explaining Gender to Unborn Souls

“The first package is a little more robust than the second. It comes with multiple orgasms, at the price of bleeding from the uterus monthly for a while. There’s a chance of self-esteem issues, weird body shapes, and, uhm… lemme se… ah, pregnancy, which will destroy your figure and hurt like a bitch, but creates the miracle of life and in many places comes with a paid maternity leave. It’s a balance thing. The second package lets you piss standing up. Pick a door and you’ll be conceived shortly.”

"Here Lies John Wiswell" on Flashshot

"Here Lies John Wiswell," about the demise and deceptions of yours truly, is featured on Flashshot today. You can take a read here: http://www.gwthomas.org/flashshotindex.htm

Bathroom Monologue: A Good War

The Owls didn’t see many good parts of the war, but they were there. Pietro and Ilyana attended one of these brightspots, a hotly contested zone of rocky hills and dense trees that no cavalry could successfully charge through, in either direction. Hundreds were dispatched to units on both the Ogrish and the Rin sides. They had entire depots of archers, more than in any other conflict of the war. It was all they trained, and any aspiring archers went to that front because in a giant woods they weren’t in much demand and took work where available.

But when those aspiring archers reached the front they found an unorthodox battle playing out at each skirmish. The Rin would line up on their ledges, and the Ogres would peak from behind the thickest trees. They would unleash three volleys arrows in each other’s direction.

Not at each other, no. The Ogres pelted the bottomsides of the cliffs, and the Rin released not just over the heads of the Ogres, but over their trees entirely. Then they went to supper.

They were missing on purpose, en mass, at every skirmish. At some time two squads had apparently realized they were missing badly and decided to keep doing it, and the deathless game spread to the whole front. Many times one side would shoot the arrows that had been launched at them the previous skirmish.

This lasted for two tours of duty, until a third Owl, Erik, arrived and reported his side. The Rin sent a new field commander, a real fascist whose first commands were to charge.

It had been a good war until then.

Bathroom Monologues: Some Anthropological Notes

You can lie on a mattress in a store to test it. It turns out, though, that you cannot lie down on one for nine hours without expecting disturbance, and the manager will take offense if you respond to his demands for you to leave the premises with a request for scrambled eggs.

Bathroom Monologue: How many of these sins are really deadly?

"I hate these sin-themed clubs. "The Deadly Sins." "The Seven Sins Inn." Give me a break. They're all lust-themed. If you go in there you won’t find any terminally slow people. The girls dancing on the tables won’t be deeply envying anything about you – except possibly that you aren’t embarrassing yourself for tips, and even that will be kept private. Wrath? The bouncers have a strict policy against unnecessary aggression to prevent getting sued. Gluttony? Please, they won’t even let fat people in the door. It’s all lust, and lust isn’t even that deadly a sin. Usually it costs a couple hundred bucks or a dinner. If you're unlucky, it costs a broken heart or syphilis. If lust is getting you killed you’re doing it wrong, and probably so wrong it’s good that you’re out of the dating pool."

Bathroom Monologue: G1 and G2

We stole this idea from Japanese cartoons. Reincarnation is huge over there, and they like to do series asking what it would be like if the Shinsengumi or some mythological characters were born again today. So we’re going to do that here, asking what it would be like if King Arthur’s court were all reincarnated today in the same state. I’m saying Montana, because that place is almost barren as it is, giving us plenty of spacious settings for giant-scale fight scenes. We’ll start off with it just being Arthur and his wingman, Lance. Natural birthing issues will intervene; use of forceps in Sir Galahad’s birth leave him clinically brain damaged, and Guinevere is divided into two monozygotic twins. The multiple Guinevere solves most of the Arthur/Lancelot love triangle, though I’m thinking G1 and G2 swap boys without telling them, just to mess with them. We can play it up if we’re optioned by one of the trashier channels.

Arthur and G2 wise up on the whole reincarnation thing and avoid disaster in future seasons by aborting Mordred.

The Holy Grail will be the trophy for the state football finals. The reincarnated Gawain will fulfill the legend of being the only one who reaches the grail by transferring to another school at the last minute and winning the thing. The last episode will focus on his retrospective, reading hard history on how Arthurian folklore was almost entirely bogus, leaving him to wonder how all these crazy stuff happened if they aren’t living an actual mythological cycle. He’s about to figure it out when he gets eaten by a dragon.

If it’s successful we’ll do a spinoff with the Founding Fathers. Ben Franklin will make an awesome cheerleader.

Bathroom Monologue: A Thmale’s Pace

Currently it is not legal for same sex couples to exercise the privileges of different sex couples in many states. The biggest issue for many couples is a same sex partner not being allowed to visit his or her spouse in the hospital or make decisions for him or her when he or she is incapacitated. This legal right is reserved for different sex couples and is the topic of some dispute. For those trapped in this dispute I recommend not moving to some crazy hippie state, but simply inventing a new sex.

Take me. I am male, heterosexual and some day might get married. However, being rational and having great experience with many women, I have no desire to let one do whatever the heck she wants with me if I’m in a coma. Thus I will happily cohabitate with her, but will instead partner with a man – preferably a Quaker ACLU lawyer will study me like I’m the Bible in order to carry out whatever I might want.

But you may say, “Hogarth, this QuaCLU lawyer may be a male!”

True enough, but I will not be male for the marriage. Instead I will add some tufts of hair to new parts of the body (I’m thinking along the hamstrings and my collarbone), and add some new genitalia I’ve designed using a scented candle and half a bottle of Mountain Dew. Henceforth I will be a “thmale.” I won’t share the design because you might then steal it and copyright my personal form of sexual liberation.

When one studies the human body and realizes that the external differences are little more than the differences between an innie and an outie, it shouldn’t be too hard to invent your own gender at home, in the deli, or at an arts and crafts class.

Reproduction with your new sexual identity may be more difficult. I recommend adoption, and sterilizing your new genitalia before application. All the penicillin in the world won’t take the embarrassment out of explaining thmales to your doctor.

Bathroom Monologue: Philociraptor

The scariest thing about them is that they can open doors. That means at 2:00 AM one of these bipedal creatures can come busting into your dorm and lecture you on Kierkegard, and if your eyes glaze for even a second she can gut you with her retractable toe claw. The retractable toe claw is not unique to philociraptors, though most other species of philosophy professors are subtler about it, having taken to wearing more expensive shoes. My worst experience was when I thought I was stealthily avoiding one in line at the dining hall – he was terrorizing some freshmen about his upcoming Immanuel Kant seminar – and just as I passed the lime jell-o, ba’am, his teaching assistant got me from the side. They spent the entire lunch hour chewing my ear off about cloning and bio-ethics.

Bathroom Monologue: Chlorophyll is Green

The yellow man tapped his cigar on the plate, letting the ashes mingle with the remains of the red cuisine as he lectured, “Money is not the root of all evil, but in every story of evil there is a bill. Money is a conduit of evils. It links one state to another. You being hungry on the street can be linked to you eating pork roast in here by a Chinese fingertrap made from a rolled-up twenty. But you eating pork isn’t necessarily evil, nor is you paying someone to prepare it for you. That’s where the evil really gets in, you see, because there’s no evil in owning a gun. There’s no evil in walking to streets of Baltimore at midnight. Sometimes a gun is purchased with evil intentions, and sometimes you go out at night with evil intentions, so sometimes evil exists before the action. Sometimes you get carried away while the action is going on, and suddenly her painting is ruined. Sometimes you carry out the action with a mistake at the end, and the wrong man sits in the electric chair. Evil can be an accident, and evil can creep up at any point in it. Money so expedites things and so attracts the attention that the moral sense is dulled. But money isn’t the root. Money is the chlorophyll in the evil plant. It’s necessary to keep it going, but it’s just one part.”

Bathroom Monologue: Obsessive Compulsive Order, OR, Love You, Deirdre

Husna Selznick suffers from many conflicts. She is a second-generation Pakistani immigrant that married a Russian Jew, a publishing agent that constantly tries to sell Literary novels to her contacts at big agencies, and a pork-lover that cooks Kosher for family. These conflicts, she says, are “arbitrary amusements” in the face of the one thing that has truly pursued her. Some call it Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, though if you mention the complex to her she will correct.

“It’s Obsessive Compulsive Order,” Husna says in her living room, minutes after vacuuming over the steps my socks made in her carpet. “I obsess. I am compelled. But I am obsessively compelled to order, and I know exactly what I’m doing.”

She has a series of hooks for brooms, moops, vacuums and steam devices on the back one of closet door to prove it.

Husna was diagnosed with OCD some twenty years ago. In her first series of treatments she realized much of her disorder was intentional.

“I liked things being clean. My compulsions were mostly conscious,” she explains. “Even when I was bitchy down on my knees re-grouting the kitchen, I was happier than I was thinking about fighting with Papa or figuring out credit bills. The funny thing was that afterwards all the stress was gone and I could react reasonably. Plus I actually felt happy. There’s a buzz to order.”

Aaron Selznick, Husna’s husband, adds, “Beats Zoloft.”

Aaron does not suffer from OCD or OCO, but claims to sympathize with it thanks to a life in Accounting. He likens her perfectly aligned series of clay doves on the living room windowsills (which she attended to twice during the interview) to the squeeze toy in his desk.

“When I get worked up over something, he tips something over,” she says, eyeing a part of the floor that looks as clean as any other part to the mortal eye.

During the interview Aaron, her husband, explained that she’d been very nervous to meet me and have a photo printed. When she got too nervous he simply squirted a little ketchup on the floor. When Husna was through yelling at him and scrubbing it, she didn’t feel any anxiety. They spent the rest of the night watching Monk.

Bathroom Monologue: Thirty-Three Wiswell Squats Next to the Shower

This is part of my exercise routine from last year, dropped when I realized a dozen doughnuts are much easier than a dozen laps. Thirty-three Wiswell Squats. I’m the only Wiswell that does them, so it’s actually a recessive feature of family, but names are important to me. Get the hand weights, squat bending the knees and pushing the chest out until your ass is parallel to the floor, then straighten back up to proper posture, moving your arms in semi-circles until the weights are high over your head. One makes you feel like an idiot. Thirty-two make you feel like you’re alive. Thirty-three, provided you stop on it, makes you feel like your body has fired you from the company. Legs turn to linguini, the arms ache, the back screams, and because you’re a Wiswell and never undertake exercise too far away from comfort, you flop onto bed. After a while you’ll catch your breath and be able to walk about decently, but if you doubt the Wiswell Squats took effect, take the stairs. The sudden feeling that gravity is auditing your records will give you faith in the exercise.

Thirty-three is my maximum before asthma kicks in, no matter how I pace myself. Last year I was doing three sets of thirty-three a day. Every other day. There are only so many audits a man can take.

Bathroom Monologue: Science Vs. Religion, Edition 3.5

The battle between science and religion raged until a freshman at Cal Tech pointed out that neither was actually a person with opinions nor a thing with physical properties, and that all of the conflicts happened between homo sapiens who were neither science nor religion. Thus far science and religion had been incredibly selfish, allowing third parties to do all the fighting for them.

One of the technical institute’s extracurricular clubs devised a proper competition between the two, writing “Science” on one index card and “Religion” on the other, giving them equal physical representation, then leaving the two on a table top outside the dorms. Whichever was left standing would be considered the victor.

Two hours into the combat a slight breeze flipped Religion upside down, viewed by part of the crowd as a sign of inferiority. However the act of flipping made it land on top of the “Science” card, suggesting its superiority via pinfall to another segment of the crowd. A third segment, composed primarily of people from the Gay/Straight Alliance, considered it kinky.

Fifteen minutes later a second breeze came by and blew both cards into the mud. The contest was ruled a draw by a visiting poetry lecturer. The few people who still cared by then went off to play table tennis. A similar form of conflict resolution will be applied to Star Trek and Star Wars next semester.

Bathroom Monologue: Diversity Two

Quinting stands as one of the most popular artistic film directors of his generation, with Wild Tulips Limited, Crossed Veins and Mr. Rogers: A Documentary each reaching blockbuster status almost despite their critical success. He had been nominated for four Academy Awards and heralded by the New York Times as “the most creative… and visionary director in our out of Hollywood.” However culture critic George Hausen dismisses Quinting’s work, saying that while his films are striking if you have only seen one or two, that he only makes two kinds of movies: pell-mell comedy about sexually frustrated, financially irresponsible idiots, and post-modern noir about love. When approached about the criticism, Quinting said he was relieved Hausen thinks so highly of himself, “as that’s two more kinds of movies than most directors make.”

Bathroom Monologue: Rob Vs. Rob (no relation)

Rob Roy (no relation) had a stalker. He had never seen him, except for fleeting glimpses in the mirror, but he knew well of his existence. This stalker even had a name: Rob of Tomorrow. To Rob this man was a parasite living off the efforts of his present, spending the money he now worked for and tapping the girls he now only chatted up. This “plan for your future” business didn’t interest him. It was raw propaganda in favor of some later self that would bask in your good work. He threw obstacles in Rob of Tomorrow’s path, like racking up a credit card bill that the son of a bitch would never be able to pay off. Whether or not he did wasn’t Rob’s problem. Not presently.

Bathroom Monologue: This one’s almost done

“Almost” counts in way more than just horseshoes and hand grenades. A nearly perfect holiday dinner with both your relatives and hers is pretty damned miraculous. The bomb destroying almost the entire city darned sure means a lot to the people in the buildings that were only almost destroyed. And trust me, if a bunch of monkeys chained to typewriters wrote up to:

“How does my project gather to a head:
My charms crack not; my spirits obey; and time
Goes upright with his carriage. How's the d32g45a54”

before their manuscript disintegrated into random keystrokes, you’d be impressed.

But if you recognized those lines as the opening of the last act in the last play William Shakespeare wrote independently, and connected it to the popular theory that an infinite number of monkeys hitting keys at random could write the entire works of that playwright, well, that’s almost unbelievable.

Bathroom Monologue: Bathroom Monologue Over the Phone

“You think being a psychic is all glamour and illusion? What do you know? You ever been up all night because of the chirping the birds are gonna make in the morning? You ever been on a date with a girl way out of your league but you rode into the spot on pity, only to have to blow it off because you foresee a murder and know being at the scene as a potential witness is the only way to stop it? Of course you haven’t. Keep your cynicism to yourself. It’s the only way you’ll ever get married. And if you want to know whether that’s a snap judgment or a prophecy, you’ll have to sign up for our Premium Service. It’s only 7.99 extra. Would you like it? Not that we both don’t already know the answer to that.”

Bathroom Monologue: Bathroom Break from the John Adams Miniseries

Doreen stopped before the procession of soldiers. She stared not at their crude uniforms nor homemade rifles, but at the flag flapping at the head.

It was a flag of seven red stripes and six white, with the snake that represents the thirteen states running across it. On the bottom-most white stripe read the demand of each young man in the militia: “DONT TREAD ON ME”

Her sons stopped behind her, clutching at her skirt. A hitch went up her throat and she put a hand to her mouth to stifle sob.

“Those boys… in such a hurry …” she muttered. Another sob came.

Her sons looked up at her and frowned. Was it that the older boys would die in battle? Did she simply hate war? Was it too futile an effort? Did she think of how other mothers would feel when news came of the fallen? Or fear for them, when they grew of age to serve?

“Hurrying so …” she gasped, “that they hadn’t the time to put an apostrophe in ‘Don’t.’ Their poor, poor English teacher…”

Bathroom Monologue: “hannah montana” –6th fastest rising search term on google.com in the United Arab Emirates

The pop star glanced around the arena. Clearly wearing this sort of skirt here made her nervous.

“Don’t these people demand all women wear the veil?”

Her agent shook his head, as well as a fistful of dollars.

“Sixth fastest rising search term, Hannah!”

“I still think the outfit could get me stoned… And do these people even speak English?”

“Doesn’t matter if they get the lyrics. Probably better they don’t. If they’re offended, we can afford security.”

“Couldn’t we at least research this first?”

Her agent shoved her through the door to the stage, yelling, “But google!”