Bathroom Monologue: Telepaths Don’t Exist

“He's erased himself. All these years of tampering with our minds, possessing our bodies and turning us against each other – all of it nothing compared to this. Everyone in the world has forgotten who he is. He thinks this is a vacation. Now he can tinker with minds and no one will notice, first because telepathy is hard to detect, and second because they don't know he's out there. His powers are fiction to them, which makes the world his empire. But there's something he didn't count on. Everyone forgetting him also means that if we can find him, nobody will remember what we do to him.”

Bathroom Monologue: Spill Into Oil

It was like an expressionist painting rolling into the shore. Rusty and black blotches roiling in yellowed water. He couldn’t just sit in his car and watch it. He had to leap out and race across the beach, to stand where powder white sand was stained all those new spill colors.

People honked at him for leaving his car in traffic. It didn’t matter that things were so backed up nobody was moving anywhere – he was somebody to be mad at.

He was somebody who stripped off his shirt, revealing pale flab to the afternoon commuters. He kicked his shoes into the stained surf. When he pulled free from his pants, somebody turned a phone camera on him, betting this would get some hits on Youtube.

He held his arms out like he was Jesus about to be crucified on the Gulf of Mexico. Thinning hair fluttered in a reeking breeze. He sauntered into the inky water, letting it color him. It felt like thin plastic, wrapping him in intimate wetness.

People exited their cars to get a better look. Murmurs circled, asking if this was a protest.

He went knee deep. A new wave splashed oil dots across his belly. It obscured the moles and surgical scars. The smell was overpowering. He felt lightheaded and grateful for the fumes.

Another grotesque wave rolled in. He fell forward into it, faceplanting into the ruined tide. Another wave rolled over where he’d been. He didn’t surface.

Three more waves and somebody stepped onto the beach. Ten more waves and somebody dialed the cops. A thousand more waves and the cops showed, flashing red lights glinting off rainbow oil slicks. They never found the man who subsumed into his living oil painting. All that washed ashore were dead fish, mouths still open, as though caught in a gasp of relief.


John is out of town this week. Any comments, retweets or Facebook posts for the story would be appreciated. Please leave a link to your blog so he can read your material once he gets back. Happy summer, and be careful swimming!

Bathroom Monologue: Making Over Math

"Ask yourselves: what problem have you solved, ever, that was worth solving, where you knew all of the given information in advance?" -Dan Meyer's TED Talk, "Math class needs a makeover"
Denise watched the gum and milk roll down her black rubber conveyor belt. They were only two items, but the customer let them ride down to her. She picked them up, scanned them, then offered the gum back to the customer. He opened it and stuck a piece in his mouth.

She said, “That’s a dollar for the gum and three-thirty for the milk.”

“Whatever.”

“Seven dollars is your total.”

He pulled out a ten. “Can I get change?”

“Oh, we have a cash discount. Now it’s only eight dollars.”

He smiled and blew a proud bubble. She gave him his change. When he left, she pocketed the difference.

The next person came along, a mother with a screaming kid and a cart full of cleaning supplies, cookware and out middle-aged nightmares. She rang this one up honest, because she didn’t have the heart to rip off a mom who had to live with those decibels of crying.

But the next lady in line had Haggen Das and instant cappuccino. She wore narrow two-inch heels and a vermillion pantsuit that reeked of perfume Denise couldn’t afford.

“Three-eighty-three for the ice cream, eleven even for the cappuccino. That’s thirty-one dollars.”

The lady debited it, and didn’t even ask why the teller had her sign two different receipts. She left both behind.

Denise saw her manager coming towards her, trying to wipe his hands on his khakis when he thought nobody was looking.

“Denise, you haven’t been overcharging people have you?” he asked as he came down her aisle. “We got a couple of complaints, but the customers aren’t sure. You know they toss receipts.”

“It’s probably nothing,” she demurred. She popped her register open. “But I have copies of all my receipts. The information’s all here if you want to check.”

“No, I’ll trust you. If the information’s all there, it’s not worth it.”

Denise scrunched up her nose and nodded. “Yeah.”



(This was inspired by Dan Meyer’s TED talk. You can view that 11-minute lecture here. Despite my making fun of it, I think Meyer has a fine point. It’s well worth watching.)

Bathroom Monologue: The Box is Boss

“What if I tell you? If I tell you who our employer is, exactly who he is, will you promise never to ask me about him again? No more questions. No more cockamamie theories. I’ll tell you and then you can never ask anything about Yab again.”

“Okay.”

“He’s not the president. He’s no one in the government, ours or theirs. And, he’s not God. He’s not a man – not a whole man. He might have been a whole man at one time, but isn’t now and has never been during our lifetimes.

“He is a box. It’s about two feet by two feet, chromium steel. Inside is a brain and part of a skull, kept in some unique preservatives. There are wires leading to certain neural pathways that absolutely refuse to die. What the box does for three quarters of the year is anybody’s guess. But every Spring, it thinks very hard and sends us messages by telegraph. Every Spring that this agency has been around for, the box has been right. It nails the correct agents and sends them to the right hotspots every time. Nobody gives it an updated roster – how would you? But the box knows.”

“Hey—”

“Now you promised not to ask anymore. I know you’ll go right back to theorizing on how the boss is actually someone at Interpol or the Pentagon. Even if you could find the box, dig it up and crack it open, you wouldn’t believe it. You’ll sooner believe J. Edgar Hoover is still alive and running the show. I don’t care. The box doesn’t care, and I’ve long since stopped caring about the box. It works without questioning. I look forward to that without.”

Bathroom Monologue: Another Unapologetic Conversational Pun

“Can you hear me? Say something.”

“What ethnicity are people from the Bayou?”

“...What?”

“K, Jon.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Moon Landing Was Fake

The truth was only voiced once, on a local radio station in Montana. The next day G-men showed up and seized all tapes of the broadcast. But the host and staff remember the tale.

The guest had worked on the Apollo missions. He said they’d tried in earnest to land up there, and Apollo 11 had almost done it. Then, out of a clear void opened a wormhole, spitting the craft into a faraway planet. It wasn’t grey or airless, waterless or hopeless; it was actually lush with life.

Because the American people wouldn’t have understood what a wormhole was, and would have gone mad from footage of the intelligent and quite friendly extraterrestrial locals, Armstrong and Aldrin had to find the only desolate-looking spot on the otherwise verdant world. They had to re-shoot four times because jovial natives kept wandering in front of the camera to greet humans in peace and explain the meaning of life.

All these years since, NASA has had to maintain the lie that we landed on the moon. In actuality astronauts have been popping into space to hit the wormhole paradise every time. There are many things we could learn from our cosmic neighbors, but the government doesn’t feel it could live down the shame of exposing the fake moon landing.

Bathroom Monologue: Stones Get Things Done

I’m not saying glaciers didn’t do work. I’m just saying they didn’t do all of it. During the so-called “ice age” a lot of hard-working mountains were moving, and to more than just Muhammad. You think continents drift on their own? We’re talking tectonic plates, and that means serious bribery. You think an overgrown ice cube is going to pay those landmasses off? No. It was earth doing all the work. Soil going soft or brittle enough to break up easily, rocks getting aligned and pushing, and a heck of a lot of members of the Crust Layer Union. Back before we had reasonable golems, it was a wild planet where you walked uphill to school, then the electromagnetic poles flipped and you had to walk uphill back home. If it was snowing when you did it? That sucked, but that was icing on the difficulty cake. Stones, baby. They get things done.

Bathroom Monologue: "Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door" -Emily Dickinson, Part Two: Nature, XXXIX

The nightwatchman caught her by the shoulder and drew her away from the tiger cage.

"Ms. Dickinson," he said softly, as not to bruise her mind, "there's no clock in there either."

She turned to face him, her expression pregnant with pretension. The nightwatchman interrupted before she could continue in verse.

"The dawn will come around 6:30. You're probably just discombobulated by daylight savings time. Let me show you back to your suite."

Bathroom Monologue: TEMPORARILY REDACTED

This story has been taken down for the foreseeable future pending a potential sale.

Bathroom Monologue: Censoring the Internet with Piranhas

"People have said that trying to censor the internet would be like trying to take the pee out of a swimming pool. With high chlorination and water circulation, that isn't entirely necessary. What I want to do is prevent and penalize anymore pee getting into the swimming pool. I want to train piranha that will smell and taste only one thing: urine (or child pornography). They will enter a feeding frenzy and maul whatever person urinates in the pool (or uploads photos of middle school cheerleaders). The hope is that the pee-ranhas would kill off urinators. Their blood would then get in the internet, too, but we'd circulate that out with some anti-malware programs and lifeguards. After a few years internet pirates and people who create ghastly websites would stop out of fear of finding carnivorous fish swimming in their inboxes. If necessary, we would train the pee-ranhas to swim through air so that they could track down the net-urinators to their homes. A few mauling videos on Youtube and fear will spread. They won’t be able to overcome it. It’ll be like pee in a swimming pool."

Bathroom Monologue: Missing His Lamp

The rumors were true: a genie was wandering around behind the school. He left blue smoke trails as he floated around, checking behind every rock and bench for something. All the kids abandoned soccer practice, keeping pace behind him and yelling.

“I wish for a million bucks!”

“Two million!”

“I wish for all the money in the world!”

The genie shook his head. “I can’t do any wishes without my lamp. Find it and maybe we’ll talk.”

None of them broke away. Instead they followed and belted out desires.

“I wish for rocket boots!”

“I wish I could see through Stacy Keener’s bra!”

"I wish I was invisible!"

“I wish for an invisible plane!”

The genie rolled his puffy eyes and kept searching.

One kid, who was banking on that two million dollar wish, asked, “Well what can you do without your lamp?”

“I wish for a Helix Dragonoid!”

“I wish for a pet dragon! A pink one!”

The genie looked at the two-million-dollar wisher and answered, “I can wish you’d all shut up.”

Bathroom Monologue: How short can I make this story?

“You know he’s sleeping around, right?”

“I do now. Borrow your gun?”

Awards

It must be award season. This past week I received both the Fabulous Flash and One Lovely Blog Awards. The latter award marks the first time anyone has used the word “lovely” to describe my blog, and possibly anything about me.

Before I play along with the rules, I’d like to thank my benefactors. Thanks to Jon Strother for the Fabulous Flash, and thanks to T.S. Bazelli for the One Lovely Blog.

The request with One Lovely Blog is that you give seven things about yourself. Here we go:

1. Since age 13 I have struggled with a crippling neuromuscular syndrome. The syndrome initiated from a mix of my body going into puberty and a rare adverse reaction to steroids. One month before the doctors put me on the regimen that would unwittingly destroy my body, I received the only chain letter of my life. I threw it away.

2. I distinctly remember spending one Christmas Eve alone. Realizing the quiet was a good opportunity to hit the ten-page assignment I had for High School English, I began writing an extremely violent fantasy. I became so enraptured in writing that I jumped when my family came through the door. I’d lost track of everything: the story was thirty pages, and I’d been writing for four hours. That night I decided that I had to become a writer.

3. I also distinctly remember spending one random afternoon alone. I lay on my bed, trying to think of what occupations would make the most money and require the least effort. Art, directing or being president were possible, but authors seemed to have it the easiest. That day I decided that I had to become a writer.

4. A few years after college I began walking for exercise. On the first day a police car stopped me just twenty meters from my house. I’d been alternately either away at college or so sick that I was a shut in for so long that none of my neighbors recognized me, and they phoned the police that there was a suspicious looking man wandering on the road.

5. Walking was part of a diet and exercise regimen that allowed me to lose 60 pounds. I was very proud until I started having acute pains in my side. It turned out the rapid weight loss had ruined my gallbladder, requiring a surgery that almost bankrupted me.

6. It took me two months to recover after the surgery. On my first day returning to exercise I had a leg spasm and tore cartilage in my left knee. I could not walk for months.

7. The night before my gallbladder surgery I cleaned up my room so it would be easier to traverse post-op. There was so much bare floor that I could actually dance in my room. I did. It was a combination of waltzing and boy band nonsense, lasting five minutes before I entirely lost my wind. It felt wonderful and probably looked idiotic. In the coming months, including both the surgery recovery and the knee injury, I often reflected how smart it had been to dance when no one was watching. Remembering it often took the sting out of immobility, because I knew I’d used the gift well while I’d had it.

There you go. You now know everything about me. People will feel silly reading my autobiography in a few years when they could have just read that.

The rules of Fabulous Flash are to share the award with four flash fiction writers you admire. One Lovely Blog seems to have a malleable number, so I could cheat and give both awards to four people.

Instead we’ll do a little compromise. I gave you seven bits of information, so I’ll give you seven award winners. The first four people below are flash fiction specialists. The last three are also talented flash writers, but their blogs tend to feature other material as well. What material? Read on.



1. Peggy MacFarland is a lively speculative fiction writer I encountered about a year ago on the Habringer*33 project. She tends to share a new tale about once a week, spanning ghost stories, aliens, incompetent house painters – you know, the usual.

2. Gracie Motley, author of Crone’s Cauldron. She posts at least twice a week, once with her Fantasy “Fire and Water” serial, and once with the weekly #fridayflash offering. Since going twice-weekly she’s displaying admirable versatility.

3. Laura Eno is a funny lady. Her Death and Chronos series was one of my favorites. Though she’s buried in a novel right now, she continues to share amusing flash fiction.

4. Karen Schindler. I’m putting her last in the Fabulous Flash category because she’ll have an amusing comment about it. She is pell-mell and free. If you think my sense of humor is wacky, she may be even further out there. Or perhaps we're like Saturn and Uranus - two planets so far out there that it doesn't even matter anymore, because the Sun doesn't talk to us that often anyway. Did that not make sense? Well it did to us.



5. Eric Krause is branching out all the time. He writes speculative fiction flash, but has also included book reviews and writing prompts.

6. Anthony Venutolo’s “Bukowski’s Basement” may have a short story about life in America, or the latest trailer for an HBO series, or a reflection on Harvey Pekar. A news editor elsewhere, this is the destination for his personal creativity and whatever relates to it.

7. Mark Kerstetter. He probably won’t appreciate that I cognize his name as “Marker Starter.” Mark’s blog, The Bricoleur, features some of the finest regular free-to-read literary essays around. He is cultured in fiction yet enamored with that culture, rather than mourning it in the way scares off so many young readers. His fiction has distinct art about it. I won't bother describing it. Just read it.

T.S. originally worried about giving me an award that was pink. I've now given it exclusively to men. She didn't know about my historic support for pink's manliness.

Bathroom Monologue: Fox, goose and grain riddle

The wizard swept his hands over the three items. The first was a bag of grain. The second was a goose, which immediately stuck its bill into the bag. The wizard pulled it out and thrust it aside, at which point the third item, a fox, leapt up and bit the goose. The wizard grumbled, grabbed each by the neck and held them apart.

Struggling with the animals, he continued.

“So this is your challenge, boy. You must get all three of these items across the river safely, but there is only one slot for items in the canoe. Take the fox, and the goose will stay behind eating the grain.”

The boy nodded along. “And if I take the goose across first, then the fox second…”

The wizard beamed in that malicious way that old folks learn when their grandchildren don’t visit often enough.

“Then one will eat the other while you’re paddling for the third item. Exactly. This is your riddle. Pass it, and then I’ll let you live and cross my river.”

The boy rubbed his hands together, studying the goose and fox. The wizard released them, and immediately the fox bolted for the bird. The boy stepped in, sweeping the fox into his arms. When it nipped him, he rapped it on the head to pacify it.

The wizard raised an eyebrow. “Going to try that one first?”

“Sort of.”

The boy picked up the sack of grain, letting it yawn open. Then he dumped the stunned fox inside and drew the string tight. Before the wizard could complain, he climbed into the canoe and dropped the sack into his one item slot. The fox pawed at its burlap prison while the boy started rowing.

“I think I’ve got this riddle!” he called. “Can do it in two trips.”

“You’re very clever, sonny! I’ll let you keep the goose as a reward.”

When the boy was out of earshot, the wizard grumbled and waved his wand over the goose. A poison spell would teach that brat.

Bathroom Monologue: The Apologies of a Shit Head

Thank you all for meeting me here today, especially members of the media whose microphones are forming this black bouquet in front of my face. I appreciate both the support of my many fans and the outrage of so many individuals.

I want to take this opportunity to apologize for being a shit head.

I apologize that so many of you read and/or heard the horrible things that I said to my girlfriend. You don't know either of us and you shouldn't have heard it. I cannot apologize enough for, in pursuit of being a shit head, enabling your addiction to voyeurism.

I apologize that in having a private dispute I failed to notice myself being taped. I apologize further for not bribing my girlfriend with enough money to prevent her from selling those tapes to media outlets. Had I taken either precaution, you would have been spared this dark national day of hearing a man be an unforgivable shit head to the mother of one of his children.

I apologize to all the women who will be the victims of gender-based violence in the next few weeks, for having my outburst publicized when your stories should lead. In my hateful rant I also used some racial epithets, and I would like to apologize to all of the people of any color who will be unfairly treated in the next few weeks, for similarly my story will lead while yours will almost certainly go underreported. Even if my story wasn’t there, the media and nation would ignore you, but I can only apologize on my behalf.

Similarly, I apologize to spokespeople from organizations that help battered women, mistreated minorities and other valuable projects, because the few of you who will be selected to appear in media outlets will be pressured to discuss my story, largely in utter ignorance, rather than your vital work, which deserves more public support and awareness. If somehow bashing my name, image or the very idea of me helps drum up more money and attention for your efforts, please do.

I apologize for having some talent in film. Had I not built such a strong career, it would not have pained so many strangers to hear my bile spill. In fact, you would not have heard it at all.

I apologize most strongly for the illusion I've allowed you to create. Before, when you thought me an eccentric member of Hollywood who was handsome and probably troubled, frankly, I enjoyed it. But now you think me some unusual domestic monster. I have enabled an illusion in which every one of you doesn't personally know somebody who has used the same language and been equally awful to a loved one, and by the distant nature of your illusion of me, I've allowed you to pretend that when those horrible things happened near you that you didn’t voice nearly so loud an opinion as you did about me. This in no way excuses my language or behavior. I am a shit head. I was before you heard these tapes and, barring miracle, I will continue to be a shit head until my death. However, I am not rare or exceptional in any of these ways. I apologize to everyone who I allowed to think, even for a minute, that if they were recorded at their worst and broadcast across the nation that they would not be reviled.

My closest associates in the film industry have urged me to apologize to my ex-wife here today, on camera, before the entire world. I won't, because it's none of your business. As I see it you are either using gossip about my personal life for entertainment purposes or you have an unhealthy obsession. In neither case are you an audience that deserves to hear me apologize to the mother of one of my children.

Thank you all for meeting me here today.

Bathroom Monologue: Doing the Undoable

Jenkins scooped it up as soon as he saw it. Its smooth swirl pattern made this dog shit perfect. He stored it in a hot room all week, with liberal use of air freshener. When it was properly dried out, he sprayed it with a few firming chemicals and snuck it into work in a cake container. While everyone went to lunch, ignoring him out of anger for not sharing his cake, he jimmied into the supply room and laminated it. He gave the dog crap three gentle coats, until the surface had a stable sheen. With this achieved, he took out some clear nail polish and the lightest brush he could find, and made for his boss’s office. He lay in wait by the secretary’s desk. When his boss emerged from the elevator, Jenkins dipped the brush in the nail polish and began rubbing it gently over his prize.

“Mr. Dumas,” he called. “You said something about promotions for anyone who could polish a turd?”

Bathroom Monologue: “I’d rather be a rising ape than a fallen angel.” –Terry Pratchett, interview with The Guardian

The demon watched as hairy mammals played on the forest floor. Their forelegs had nearly evolved into arms, and in a few more strokes the species would adapt hands.

“They grow up so quick,” the demon said wistfully to himself. His wings, so dark they were invisible, fluttered. For a moment, he wished he were one of those rising apes.

Then he reflected on his amazing physique, eternal existence, and knowledge of the meaning of life. Boy, was the lack of those three things going to fuck with the primates’ descendants. He used his cosmic awareness to look ahead, chuckling at the inventions of skirts, headscarves and landmines. There was culture coming, that was for certain, but in all that culture he saw himself. There he was tormenting thousands of primate descendants, in naughty dreams and vivid visions, in unmedicatable madness and morning wood. He even caused a war.

“Which is only fair,” he told himself. The primates had caused his kind a nasty war, one cosmic week ago. The trouble he’d start by puppeteering a European oligarch would be payback. And besides, they’d cause themselves a thousand wars for any one his kind dropped in the bucket.

Across the ether, a succubus waved at him to join the coming poker game. He looked down at the mammals, which were now feasting on each other’s young.

“No,” he decided. “I think I’d rather be me.”

Bathroom Monologue: Literary Heritage in Five Lines

The teacher says, "For Monday I want you to read up to page 102 in Melville's Bartleby."

The student perks up. She asks, "China Mieville?"

The teacher thinks, "When did Melville go to China?"

The student thinks, "If I get out early enough I can get in line for the midnight showing of Inception. I hear the comic book was great."

Inception was not based on a comic book.

Bathroom Monologue: When the World Stops Vibrating

"We want to take your word over theirs..."

"Everyone in the department is heartbroken over Janet..."

"If there's anything we can do..."

"Just for now..."

"...and your badge."

"I understand."

He rose from the table and looked down at the captain. The captain said nothing.

He opened his jacket. He unclasped the holster and put his service revolver on the table. He removed the badge from his belt and placed it above the trigger and beside the barrel of the gun.

He pulled the wallet from his pants pocket. He opened it and removed his unit identification card. This he placed next to the badge.

He returned his wallet to his pants and buttoned his jacket back up.

The captain pushed a pen and papers across the table. He did not read them. He picked at the lower right corner of the pages, looking for any blank line. He signed his name, complete with a line instead of a dot over the i's.

He pushed the papers and pen back to the captain. The captain took them and looked them over.

"Thanks, Tim." "What are you going to do now?"

"I'll fill the time. There are still two Mendez Brothers left."

Bathroom Monologue: Excerpt from Imaginary Submissions Guidelines

Expect responses within 4-16 weeks. We regret that most of our rejection letters are pre-typed "form" letters. Please do not be discouraged by them as they do not reflect on the quality of your writing.

Alright, they reflect a little bit. One out of every ten thousand stories we get is so hilarious and creative that we five out of six house editors will quote it for in jokes, spontaneously pull out the MS to hug it, and pool together on a brief personal rejection letter explaining why it doesn't fit our magazine's theme. So if you get a form rejection, it reflects that you didn't write that 1/10,000 story.

On the flip side, one out of every five hundred stories winds up on Ted's desk and is so rife with typos, grammatical errors and cliches that he writes a personal rejection that reads more like a political attack ad. You can tell it’s Ted and he’s angry because your envelope will have been stapled shut. If the offending story is about zombies or Tolkienian elves, he may even blow his nose on your MS before mailing it back. So if you don't get a snot-strained personal rejection letters, it reflects that you aren't that bad or Ted didn’t read it.

If you do not hear from us in 16 weeks, feel free to query.

Bathroom Monologue: A Necessary Getaway (Redux)

He moved north at the first opportunity. Way north. He cut all ties, even to his mother, which was the hardest on him. He was a mama's boy. His hair went white from all the stress, including his beard. He took that as a sign to change his appearance and began dressing in pants as soon as they were invented. All the sedentary hiding made him gain tremendous weight, face filling out, giving him rosy cheeks in the snowy environment. He stayed in doors as much as possible, but always came out around his birthday. It was too lonely, even with the elves that had found him and made camps all around his house. They fashioned him thick, orthopedic boots and gloves that comforted his scarred extremities. It allowed him to take up carpentry again. The gregarious wee folk did so much for his spirits that he reached out to a similar-sized people: children. He still only went south around his birthday, but brought a sack of the toys from his workshop for those boys and girls who had the right attitude. There were always more gifts to give, too, as the elves copied his work and began production for every good child. And associating with children turned out to actually help, for in his old life he had been an average-sized Jew, but to them he was a giant. So his new identity was a jolly mammoth with a white beard and a bag of presents. He was safe. No one down there ever guessed that Santa Claus was an alias.



Today's story is a redux. Above is a slightly modified version of one of my favorite Bathroom Monologues. I've re-posted it for three reasons: to show the touch-ups, as an entry in Deanna Schrayer's Birthday Contest, and in celebration of its Honorable Mention in the Lands Edge Holiday Contest. You can see the republication of the original at Alan Davidson's Lands Edge (and all the wacky comments) by clicking here.

Bathroom Monologue: People Are Worse Than Clowns

"Clowns make me a little nervous, but they’re not bad. Some are really talented. They’ll follow you around trying to get you into the carnival spirit. Those ones? Okay, yeah, they wig me out. But clowns only scare me because they're people under that make-up. If they were demons, or shapeshifters, or juggling incubi, there'd be a chance I just didn't grasp what they were really like and this was their way of communicating goodwill. They could have their own nature. They could all just be misunderstood aliens. But clowns are people, and I understand people. There was one famous clown who turned serial killer; there are dozens of active people who are horrible serial killers. Sometimes a guy uses a clown mask to hide his face in a bank robbery; every day people shoot each other to death in muggings. There’s a song, “Send in the Clowns,” that jokes about sending a brigade of clowns to fight; people are currently carrying out more than a dozen wars across this world. Clowns can make me a little nervous. People scare me."

Bathroom Monologue: Dialogue for two soldiers sweeping for snipers in Iraq, OR, Things John mumbled to himself watching Hurt Locker

"Gunman spotted on the minaret!"

"Where?"

"11 o'clock! On the minaret!"

"What's a minaret?"

"The tall building. Eyes up!"

"Why didn't you say tall building?"

"Because it's a fucking minaret!"

'The Sea' over at 10Flash

Today's story is "The Sea in Which the Most Men Have Died." It's about Foreman and Aftman, two servants perplexed by a riddle: what is the sea in which the most men have died?

It was published in the July issue of 10Flash. 10Flash is a semipro-paying venue that cares more about theme than genre. The theme for July is "Are we there yet?"

You can read The Sea in Which the Most Men Have Died by clicking on this text. You can leave comments here or over on the 10Flash site.

Bathroom Monologue: Ogre/Troll

Many people have trouble telling the difference between ogres and trolls. They’re terrifying and come in a range of deformities that make taxidermy more difficult than figuring out if the emo teen with super strength and whose skin sparkles in sunlight is a vampire. There is a handy test, though. If the troll/ogre isn’t eating you, engage him in a conversation on things that matter (discounting topics like when or why he might eat you – these are dangerously suggestive). Make some platonic remarks about the gulf oil spill or the state of contemporary religion. It may respond with a dull stare, in which case it is an ogre. If it responds with clever but offensive observations that incite you into rage, it is a troll. Terminate conversation immediately. Trolls do this to upset people to the point where they can eat them and claim self-defense. Do not feed the trolls.

Bathroom Monologue: Tomorrow Man

"I’m not going to magically become competent tomorrow. That’s not the point. When all us residents run around celebrating like we’re becoming adults, we’re indulging in metaphor. We changed the bedpans and fixed the blood bags. We oversaw the surgery and broke the news to the widow. We earned our God-damned metaphors. I’m already competent, which is why I’ve been covering your rounds while you sneak off to hit on your ex. Tomorrow, do I transform some magic being? The Tomorrow Man, who’s never worried his diagnosis is wrong? Whose every patient has deluxe insurance to cover whatever she needs? No. Tomorrow I have more responsibilities, I get paid better, guaranteed steady employment, and you off my shoulder every time I meet a new patient. I will be no smarter, no braver, and no more confident than I am tonight. The Tomorrow Man will be the same guy I am every day. But if I want to put a red and yellow ‘T’ in the Superman font on my lapel, I can. Because I’ve earned that. So put on a party hat or run back to Sharon. Tell her I said hi and to close your blinds."

Bathroom Monologue: Thor the Jetstream

So Thor sits down next to Odin. Ever since Loki moved out, Thor’s been coming up with wackier conversation starters to keep dear-old-dad on his toes.

He says, "I'm thinking of being a jet stream."

Odin’s one eye widens. Even his eye patch looks perplexed. "A what?"

"A jet stream.” Thor takes his hammer and waves it around, illustrating the idea very poorly. “It's this thing air currents move along, building and carrying storms. I have a great resume for it, if there's an opening."

"You're the god of lightning!” thunders Odin, unironically. “What do you need with manual labor?"

"There's not so many worshippers, pappy. It's a bit dull out here."

"I bet just as many people believe in you as this jetstream business."

"That's only because they haven't heard what a jetstream is. They’ve all heard of me and the best I get is a slot in a superhero team-up movie."

"Now they'll hear of Thor the Jetstream and they'll think it's a new military bomber plane."

Odin throws a raven at him, but Thor catches it. He strokes the bird’s black feathers in the nefarious way his brother used to.

"That'd be pretty fun, though, wouldn't it?"

Bathroom Monologue: Pitch for “Odysseus: Dumb ****ing Author Killer”

After thousands of years, the craftiest hero in Greek history is back. And no, he’s not here to fix the government: he’s here to fix publishing. Odysseus ventures the wine-dark seas to slay godless writers who sent zombies to Regency England and turned Abraham Lincoln into a vampire hunter. His literary odyssey will take him to any corner of the globe with Creative Commons and authors who trample on it. See him trapped by a one-eyed publishing executive; see his men reduced to mindless pigs by a witch from Maxim Magazine; see the hilarious look on his face when he reads Clive Cussler’s remake of The Iliad. This summer, Odysseus is going to pop culture… right in the face.

Bathroom Monologue: Change

He said nobody changes. I shot him between the eyes. He looked surprised, but even if he thought I'd always been capable of murder, he suddenly couldn't talk anymore. That's change I can believe in.

Bathroom Monologue: Off

This story has been redacted. There was an offer to publish it. So here's hoping!