Bathroom Monologue: God Class is Sweet

God Class was largely empty tonight. It almost always was – in this age when ideas sped over the internet, few deities felt the need to fly. Demeter’s newest daughter peered out the oval window of their plane, blinking at all the blinking lights below.

"No wonder most sky gods have fled,” she said. “The men have put more stars on the ground than there are in the sky. How much they must hate us, to work so diligently to improve on our work. Do you think they want to be us?"

Demeter reached across her field of vision, blocking it, grasping the shutter, and sliding it down to close off the window.

"Now stop that,” she said. “Don't deify people. It's bad enough when they anthropomorphize us."

Bathroom Monologue: The Vampire Plan, OR, What John Thought When He Heard About Vampires Taking Over the World

Quincy slept the entire way. He let Biggs take him wherever he was going. After the biters ripped apart his entire office staff, he was done. His lunch buddies, the fantasy football pool, Gina... There were many ways he'd dreamed of seeing Gina Hernandez from Accounting's sweater come off, and they'd found the one that would give him nightmares. So he was done. Not dead, not suicidal, but ready to close his eyes and let someone else drive a while.

Biggs poked him in-between the ribs, making Quincy contort in the passenger’s seat.

“Quit it.”

“Eh? Eh?" Biggs said. "Am I genius?”

Quincy exhaled slowly and opened his eyes. The light was harsh beyond his window. It took his vision a moment to create contours. A sea of still waves, minus the water. Dunes.

“It sure looks like sand.”

“Right?”

“I think you’re expecting me to like sand more than I do. I’d rather, like, an aircraft carrier.”

“Vampires aren’t going to be afraid of stealth bombers, dumbass. They can turn into fog. You can't bomb fog.”

Quincy rubbed his eyes. “And fog is afraid of sand, why?”

“Look.” Biggs pointed to the back of the SUV. Just like when Quincy had gone to sleep, it was stuffed with cardboard boxes. “Three hundred litres of water. We each get one a day. Doctors say you need more, but doctors say you need riboflavin and we’ve both done fine never paying attention to how much of it we got.”

“Peerless reasoning.”

“Plus a couple hundred army MRE’s, plus enough butane to cook all the baked beans you ever wanted, plus these.”

He leaned his jowls into the steering wheel and fished around under his seat. He produced two foil packs, each stamped with three lines: one pink, one brown, one white.

“Astronaut ice cream. Fucking ten cases.”

“You know they don’t really eat that.”

“Probably why I got them so cheap.” He tore the top of the package and bit into the chalky vanilla part. He winced, as it didn’t taste as much like space or candy as he’d wanted. Still, he maintained a chipper expression. “This will rule.”

“Eating baked beans in a car with you will definitely not rule after a few hours.”

Biggs slapped the rest of his astronaut ice cream into Quincy’s chest. It crumbled colorfully across his grey t-shirt. Biggs pointed out the passenger’s side window.

“We are two hundred miles into the dessert, dude. Off road.”

“Dude. Why is that good? It’s the end of the world and your idea is just fucking sand.”

“Because even if they knew exactly where we were, they’d have to flap their little bat wings two hundred miles without two leaves to hide under come morning. There’s no shade. It’s fucking vampire-proof.”

Quincy took this in. He rested his elbows on the dashboard, staring at the yellowed sand dunes.

“Holy shit.”

Biggs percolated in his seat. “Yeah?”

“When this is over, the Arabs are totally taking over the world.”

“And that’s why I brought you. Interesting conversation. Have an ice cream.”

Bathroom Monologue: Refugee Camp Regrets

I don't regret why I'm in here. They can starve me, beat me. Call me a traitor. I'm not one. What I did was for the good. I was a General in name only, put in charge of the children and the lame. A sea of starving, helpless people, with less than a dozen armed guards, all of whom were routinely called away for more glorious service. I couldn't lead my charges to safety. The raiders would find us in any cave or stronghold I managed to reach. We were ransacked weekly. We lost our supplies and the youngest starved. When the raiders returned to find no more food, they took the near-pubescent girls as slaves. No number of missing or dead on a report changed the minds of those in command.

I remember the fifth attack most clearly. The smoke from tents they burned out of malice. The lamentations of young and feeble. A crippled mother crawling after them escaping raiders, barking for them to return her daughter. I watched her legs drag in the sand behind her, like a split fishtail. It didn’t even flop around. Other men would have found it heartbreaking. I found it inspiring, and I am not sorry for the idea it gave me.

I took arms. Only one per child. I took a couple of hands, but that wouldn’t be enough. I took no legs – every one of those children would grow up to walk. I even mailed them one of the limbs along with the reports and testimonials from children who could no longer write themselves. I packed it in salt. Six mutilated children and one arm were somehow harder to ignore than thirty dead parents.

The next week we had a brigade defending our camp. The raiders were rebuffed by bronze shields and long lances. Able-bodied men did their duty by the meekest.

Which of them gave me away? I don’t know. From the looks, I think it was some of the same children who had sworn by my testimonials. You can’t trust children, even parentless ones, to keep up your stories. I can understand the juvenile mind begrudging me my work. I don’t blame them. But I’m not sorry. Those one-armed children will live behind shielded camps because of me. If my story is spoiled and Command withdraws the brigade, then I’m still here, in a prison twenty days away from whatever carnage happens, with nothing but the story that they are safe. I have no regrets.

Three Year Anniversary Post

The Bathroom Monologues began three years ago this week. Go back to November 17, 2007 and you found me wrapping up my first week, having posted about a dozen microfictions, not knowing what microfiction was, and wondering if anybody would ever read it. Over 32,000 hits later, I want to thank you all for joining me in this wacky journey. I've told some weird stories, some of them true, like my struggle to write at all and then with writing too much, packing the 20th century into ten words, and a rant that could only be called Bea Arthur: A Novel.

But fiction is my love. A boy with an invisible dance partner, nine origin stories for somebody who sounds familiar, Poker Night of the Gods, a conversation without words, King Kong smacktalking Godzilla, shark-flavored beverages, the advertising feud between New York and California, the gardener of clouds, the explanation of why bulldozers make the best pets, Homer complaining about having to invent literature... it's been fun, sharing something every single day for years.

In celebration we're doing a little contest. Name your recent or all-time favorite Bathroom Monologue in the Comments section of this post to enter. The winner will be chosen at random, and two things will come of it. I'll record any one of your flash fiction or a blog post of similar length, no matter the material or how embarrassing it is. Maybe better if it is embarrassing. I'll also republish your favorite Bathroom Monologue with its own audio treatment on Thanksgiving Day. Well, U.S. Thanksgiving. I'll publish it on Canadian Thanksgiving only if you have a time machine you're willing to lend out.

I hope you've enjoyed it and will stick around. It's not ending any time soon. This ride has taken me to my first semi-pro and pro-rate publications, and nominations for Dzanc Books' Best of the Web and most recently the Pushcart Prize. I've met so many friendly and talented writers through communities like #fridayflash. Thanks again, everyone, for all the support.

Bathroom Monologue: For Night Drivers

From internationally acclaimed and miserably failed engineer John Wiswell comes the Night Driver's Friend Version 3. The latest version is entirely automated, requiring no effort from the driver of your vehicle. Using four light-sensors distributed across the front of your vehicle, the system registers dark driving situation and specifically senses the peculiarly intense light unique to an opposing car's brights. Upon registering brights-intensity light within twenty-five feet (seven point seven meters), it activates the pneumatic arm. Coated in any of seven realistic flesh-tones, the arm juts from your hood, rear passenger window or moon roof to deliver the offending driver with a sturdy, foam rubber middle finger.

Bathroom Monologue: Should Tweet and Should Not Tweet

You should not tweet that Idol just started. Everyone knows when it started. It has millions of viewers.

You should tweet that you’ve been smoking in my house and often forget to extinguish your cigarettes.

You should not tweet that you’re uncertain if this peanut butter is expired. The expiration is on the side.

You should tweet that this carpeting cost me over ten thousand dollars and is very flammable.

You should not tweet that your cousin Tiffany is a slut. She isn’t, she will read that, and she will cry.

You should tweet that you can’t tell the difference between the smell of popcorn in a microwave and a house fire upstairs.

You should not tweet bragging that you’ve been in my room. I will read that when I’ll already be in a very bad mood.

Bathroom Monologue: Better Than Stenography

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

Three questions led to my current employment.

“How sharp is your memory for words?”

“Does it extend to print?”

“How much would you fancy having your hair trimmed daily?”

Mine is unorthodox employment, but it pays well and relies upon a rich organization, which suggests it will continue to pay well. Some four years ago I was a mere stenographer and clerk at the local courthouse, and there came this curious case. A man was accused of assaulting a barber. He passionately defended himself for eight minutes, then took notice of me. He stared all the way through the guilty verdict and his slap on the wrist.

Afterwards he waited outside the courthouse and accosted me. He had no gripe and stayed a polite distance. This was only about a few questions and a proposition. How sharp was my memory for words? Did it extend to print? And how much did I fancy having my hair trimmed daily?

It appeared some sixteen hundred pages of Benjamin Franklin's papers were in the possession of a London barber. They were family treasures, discarded carelessly during that great American’s tours of Europe and stowed away by a sharp maid. The barber was gregarious and allowed his patrons to read them. He forbade them to be copied or taken; he was very possessive, as they were quite valuable and fetched him some deal of publicity. There was no way to remove them short of burglary, and in addition to being a burly man, he was one door down from the police.

My accoster hailed from a historical society that very much wanted record of Mr. Franklin's words. While most tried to bribe or threaten the barber, one simply sat in the chair, reading them. He took a shave every day for five weeks, verifying these papers and perusing history. But he was very slow and no account he could memorize was exact. That led to his little scuffle and attempt to steal some, which he insisted the barber had exaggerated.

Through me he needn’t actually have the originals. I have a fine memory for words – I can recall several hundred in exact order, maintaining colloquial flair, hours after the fact. It is the nature of my work. Or, it was the nature of my work. Now the nature of my work is a leisurely morning shave, at ten times my previous salary. Whatever I read in the barber's chair, I would reproduce in transcription at lunch time. The historical society also covers my lunches, which I tend to take at historic restaurants.

It has been a jolly four years. I have learned much about Mr. Franklin's hedonism, the founding of the United States, and the simple joy of reading slowly when it pays.

Bathroom Monologue: Verified

Time travel and Creationism were accidentally co-verified this morning when three particle physicists passed through a rip in reality and arrived six thousand years in the past, finding nothing but a bearded giant looking for the light switch.

Bathroom Monologue: Don’t Even Have a Name

Lita sank into serene exhaustion. He couldn't read her - she looked happy and in more pain than he'd ever felt. Part of it was the drugs, but he couldn't even tell if she was asleep. JC drew the curtains to her room and closed the door as quietly as he could, seeing himself out to the hall.

A nurse waited for him, wearing actual candystripers. He didn’t know anyone did that anymore. She pointed a pink fingernail to the adjacent room, then held up four fingers.

Four minutes.

He bowed his head.

The curtains in this room were open to a sunset illuminating triangular clouds, like upside down piles of gold. In the middle of the bed, on top of the sheets, his newborn son twitched his legs. He wore a sky blue knitted cap to warm his hairless head. His eyelids were pink and his face was lumpy, like a fleshy potato. JC hoped nobody said he looked like his father, at least not for a while.

He reached out and pinched one of his son’s feet. It was wrapped in a booty, sent by Lita’s mother. The old bat would be here tomorrow with boxes of gifts and questions about christening.

“You know you don’t even have a name yet?”

His son didn’t seem to know. He waved a tiny hand over the sheets, exploring what cotton felt like. JC did the same, letting his hand drift to his baby’s. Eventually his son grasped onto his middle finger. He was warm and squishy, a little like the wet towels they gave you in first class. JC looked at the little hand. The fingers encompassed the first digit of his finger, and a little more.

“Look at how big your hand is. You could play sports. Wouldn’t even need a baseball mitt.”

His son pursed his face. JC tried to mimic it, but only felt his cheeks contort. Adults puckered their lips; babies, it seemed, could pucker their entire heads.

“Be careful. If you’re a ball player, they’ll hate you.”

With his spare hand, JC drew a chair to the bedside. His boy kept holding on.

“No matter what you do, they will hate you. Be a star for the Red Sox, and New York will hate you. Be a star for the Yankees and the rest of the country will hate you. Be president and the other party will hate you, and a year later you won’t have done enough and your own party will join them. Write the next Great Gatsby and people will call you pretentious. Write the next Lord of the Rings and people will call you a dreamer. I know a guy who hates firemen. Firefighters. Says they get too much respect since 9/11, since they mostly sit around the station. Even if you make a thing that gets a lot of respect, some people will hate you just for that. I hate that guy that made Apple, just because. Reflexively.”

The pile of golden clouds drifted out of view. Now all he saw were three red flashing lights, some airplane headed somewhere. He thought the boy’s eyes were following them. Exploring what planes looked like.

“You can play ball if you want,” he assured. “Play a game I don’t like. Let me hate you, but you’ve got to overcome it. Don’t let other people’s disapproval stop you. If you do you’ll spend every weekend wanting something you can’t find the place to buy. You’ll wind up somewhere – if you’re lucky, somewhere safe. Your mom and I will still love you. But you’ll wind up some place that doesn’t do. You’ll be a chef somewhere, and one night a couple will come in, frowning, ordering expensive stuff that doesn’t please them, arguing in hushed barks. You won’t be able to smile for them. Nobody changes that couple’s night, but you can change yourself despite them, in place of them. If you can’t, that’s when you know too many others got in place of you. Then, the best you can do is do better by your children.”

His boy pinched his finger, then let it go. Now he tried holding onto the blankets.

“You can make beds for a living if you really want.” He assured again. This did not win back his baby boy’s attention. “If anybody hates you for what you love?”

He almost cussed. Then he remembered reading somewhere that kids didn’t understand anything you said, only the tone. So he leaned down to his son’s face. Their noses brushed together in an Eskimo kiss. His son only looked puzzled, perhaps curious what eyebrows were.

“If anybody does, I’ll fucking hate them back for you so you don’t have to waste the time.”

The candystriper nurse entered in his peripheral vision. He lingered another moment before turning his boy over, from one cradle of arms to another. Watching them depart to the nursery, he entertained letting the boy grow up and pick his own name. That was probably too far. He'd talk it over with Lita, whenever she felt rested.

Bathroom Monologue: Theseus the Cheater

“Tell me a good one, Grandpa!”

“I’ve got a good one. So King Minos, fearing Theseus would take his throne, sent him into the Labyrinth. This was a giant underground maze, dark and so convoluted that no one had ever gotten out. Therein dwelled the Minotaur, the king’s deformed son, who was half-man and half-bull. It was giant and famous for devouring anyone who was trapped in the Labyrinth. No one was allowed to leave without slaying the monster.”

“Wow.”

“Theseus promised to slay the monster and return alive. Minos’s daughter, Ariadne, fell in love with his bravery and gave him a spool of thread so that he could follow it back after he fought the Minotaur.”

“That’s a little less awesome, but still, does he fight him?”

“He came prepared. Though all were to face the Minotaur unarmed, Theseus smuggled a sword in under his tunic.”

“That wasn’t cheating?”

“It was a very large monster.”

“Okay.”

“Theseus crept around the dark the hours, leaving his trail of thread behind. Eventually he heard the clopping of the Minotaur’s hooves. They shook the maze around him.”

“That must have been scary!”

“He stalked the monster for a time, not attacking it right away. Instead he allowed it to tire and go to sleep.”

“Go to sleep? It sleeps?”

“Not for much longer. Once the Minotaur began to snore, Theseus slit its throat with his sword and took off the head as proof that he had won the battle.”

“Won the what? He didn’t even fight it! He cheated it with an illegal weapon when it was bed time!”

“It was a very large monster.”

“Then don’t fight it!”

“He had to fight it. The princess was counting on him. So he took his spool—”

“He didn’t even find his way back out! He cheated again! Did Minos lock the door and punish him for breaking the rules?”

“No, Theseus returned triumphant and escaped with Ariadne, making back off to sea. He was heralded as one of the great men of the ancient world.”

“All for a girl?”

“Actually, next he abandoned her on an island.”

“He ditches the girl? What the hell, Grandpa?”

“Well Ariadne was a witch.”

“Yeah? A dumb witch that falls in love with cheaters.”

“She cast a spell on his ship.”

“What spell?”

“Well Theseus’s father had a deal with him. If he was successful with Minos, he should sail back with a white sail. But Ariadne used her magic to turn it black. So Theseus’s father jumped into the sea and killed himself in grief.”

“That’s kind of cool. Did she ever get revenge on Theseus, though? He was the jerk.”

“No, but I think we’re going to talk about Medea tomorrow night.”

True Stories of John, 5. The Birthday Present of 2010.

So far as I heard, nobody celebrated Nat’s birthday. He got Facebook wall congratulations, a blender from his mom, and that was it. He is a dear friend, a considerably better person than myself, and too affable to receive no birthday festivities. He lives in another state and had an acting gig that day, so I couldn’t intervene directly. I had to wait until he visited.

I set a large box in red checker wrapping paper on my ottoman. It had a small paper note wishing him a happy late birthday and expressing that I hoped he liked this, because it was incredibly hard to get.

When the time came, he unwrapped it. Inside he found a smaller box wrapped in “All Star” sports-themed wrapping paper and another note.

“Try Again,” this one said.

Inside was no present, only a third note.

“Maybe under the bed in the other room?”

He considerately went there, got down on the carpet and checked under that bed. Low and behold, there was a note waiting for him.

“Does that Styrofoam thing look like a gift box?”

He looked around the room. Tucked under the desk was a Styrofoam container my family had never thrown out. It wouldn’t decompose and we might use it for something some day. It was firmly wedged under the desk with several other boxes.

After digging it out, Nat looked unsurprised to find another note inside. But this one was not in English.

It read, “http://www.sendspace.com/file/3ymckv”

For those of you who don’t want to type that URL in, it led to a file download. Nat downloaded the .txt and opened it to see:

“Okay, making you download clues was going too far. Just check the dresser my TV is sitting on.”

There are two drawers in that dresser. The top drawer had a note reading, “No, the other drawer.”

The bottom drawer had a sizable present in it, in gold and white flower print paper. It also had a note.

“You don’t trust this.”

Inside he found a slightly smaller box in “Best Wishes” wrapping paper. It also had a note.

“I don’t blame you.”

Perhaps unsurprising, inside he did not find a present. There was only another note.

“You’re already thinking about it. Go ahead. Go get a knife.”

After chuckling for a moment, he went downstairs to the kitchen. In the silverware drawer there were many knives, including one with a note wrapped around it.

“Grill me a cheese.”

That was an in-joke between the two of us, stemming from our love of the Archer cartoon. It took him a while to figure it out, but to the right of the silverware drawer was my stove, with a covered pan sitting on it. When he lifted the lid, he found a new note.

“Do you get the joke yet? It was under your nose to begin with!”

Nat had spoiled my game early by noticing that my ottoman is hollow. You can store things inside it. Before he’d even unwrapped the first present, he’d opened the thing and discovered where his gifts actually were. So now he came upstairs, set the original giftbox aside and opened up the ottoman.

Except it was now empty, save for a note.

“Fuck you. Maybe you’ll get them when you go home.”

He asked if I’d hidden them in his car. I didn’t say it, but no – I’d had no chance to tuck them in his trunk, though I’d liked to have. By deadpanning, I managed to psyche him out and he went for his coat. As he lifted it, the wrapped presents fell out onto the floor. That was the best improvisation I could do while he’d been downstairs checking the knives and pans.

The gifts had a note.

“Now you get the joke.”

As for the gifts? A collection of old time radio comedies like Burns & Allen and Abbott & Costello, and the deluxe edition of The Dark Knight, featuring Heath Ledger as The Joker. It took him a moment, then he laughed and shook my hand. I wished him a happy belated birthday, internally trying to figure out a more convoluted method for next year. Perhaps a riddle on his Facebook wall, a .txt on an obscure Bit Torrent and freezing a folded note in a block of ice.

Fantasy Novelist’s Exam for John Wiswell's Ito, Book 1

The following is based on David J. Parker’s Fantasy Novelist’s Exam. The exam can be found here: http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/

My answers, based on the first novel I ever wrote, can be found below. Way more of them are honest than you think.

1. Does nothing happen in the first fifty pages?

There’s a chase scene, a banquet in the middle of the woods, an assassination plot, main character looks up a girl’s skirt, she kicks him in the face, another chase scene, he’s saved by a sea serpent, is drugged, then walks in on an execution. So: no. What?

2. Is your main character a young farmhand with mysterious parentage?

No. Why?

3. Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn't know it?

No? What about the farmhand?

4. Is your story about a young character who comes of age, gains great power, and defeats the supreme badguy?

What is your hard-on for Luke Skywalker?

5. Is your story about a quest for a magical artifact that will save the world?

No.

6. How about one that will destroy it?

No, but that sounds cooler.

7. Does your story revolve around an ancient prophecy about "The One" who will save the world and everybody and all the forces of good?

Before the first draft it was.

8. Does your novel contain a character whose sole purpose is to show up at random plot points and dispense information?

Do I need one of those?

9. Does your novel contain a character that is really a god in disguise?

And now I want there to be one. Do you see what you’re doing?

10. Is the evil supreme badguy secretly the father of your main character?

God damn you and your Luke Skywalker crush. No!

11. Is the king of your world a kindly king duped by an evil magician?

No.

12. Does "a forgetful wizard" describe any of the characters in your novel?

Describes them as a narrator, or is that an accurate description of any of the characters? If the former: no. If the latter: no.

13. How about "a powerful but slow and kind-hearted warrior"?

No. What is this?

14. How about "a wise, mystical sage who refuses to give away plot details for his own personal, mysterious reasons"?

Actually, that might be one of the bad guys.

15. Do the female characters in your novel spend a lot of time worrying about how they look, especially when the male main character is around?

No, just all the female readers.

16. Do any of your female characters exist solely to be captured and rescued?

No, they exist to trade captures and rescues with the guys. It’s like a date night with more bondage.

17. Do any of your female characters exist solely to embody feminist ideals?

At an early age I was told that for virtue of having a penis I could not do anything that was feminist, so I’m going to say, “No.”

18. Would "a clumsy cooking wench more comfortable with a frying pan than a sword" aptly describe any of your female characters?

“Mountainous psychic politician” or “ninja she-Gandalf” would be closer.

19. Would "a fearless warrioress more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan" aptly describe any of your female characters?

Do you just want eggs? Is that it?

20. Is any character in your novel best described as "a dour dwarf"?

You got me. He shows up at the end. No, he really does. I should probably change his race.

21. How about "a half-elf torn between his human and elven heritage"?

No, but there is a half-orc (his other half is a bear).

22. Did you make the elves and the dwarves great friends, just to be different?

No, I made the goblin and the dwarf friends to be different. For real.

23. Does everybody under four feet tall exist solely for comic relief?

Only in real life.

24. Do you think that the only two uses for ships are fishing and piracy?

No. They also exist to be swallowed by Krakens until Captain Jack Sparrow is on one of them.

25. Do you not know when the hay baler was invented?

No. Yes. Yes, I do not know. No, I don’t know when the thing to be known was… I hate you.

26. Did you draw a map for your novel which includes places named things like "The Blasted Lands" or "The Forest of Fear" or "The Desert of Desolation" or absolutely anything "of Doom"?

…Fuck!

27. Does your novel contain a prologue that is impossible to understand until you've read the entire book, if even then?

No. Writing those is a skill I don’t have and do envy.

28. Is this the first book in a planned trilogy?

Quartet. What? Stop looking at me like that.

29. How about a quintet or a decalogue?

Hey, screw you!

30. Is your novel thicker than a New York City phone book?

It was almost that thick the one time I printed it.

31. Did absolutely nothing happen in the previous book you wrote, yet you figure you're still many sequels away from finishing your "story"?

I really feel like we covered this earlier.

32. Are you writing prequels to your as-yet-unfinished series of books?

That sounds hilarious. Are you doing that?

33. Is your name Robert Jordan and you lied like a dog to get this far?

Yes. No really, what? Do you think he’s not really dead? Because there are rumors.

34. Is your novel based on the adventures of your role-playing group?

No. You’d know if it was, because I’d have cut off my hands by now.

35. Does your novel contain characters transported from the real world to a fantasy realm?

No, from a fantasy realm to another fantasy realm. I feel like that should happen more frequently.

36. Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names?

…Fuck!

37. Do any of your main characters have names longer than three syllables?

You could stretch “Hung Lo” to three syllables if…

38. Do you see nothing wrong with having two characters from the same small isolated village being named "Tim Umber" and "Belthusalanthalus al'Grinsok"?

It took a while to learn that this was a problem, but now I fear it almost as much as the cold shadow of looming death.

39. Does your novel contain orcs, elves, dwarves, or halflings?

It used to and sort of still does! Thanks for the panic attack!

40. How about "orken" or "dwerrows"?

Stop doing that.

41. Do you have a race prefixed by "half-"?

“Half-breed” happens once or twice. But they’re not real. They’re disavowed on the first page.

42. At any point in your novel, do the main characters take a shortcut through ancient dwarven mines?

That’d be sweet.

43. Do you write your battle scenes by playing them out in your favorite RPG?

No, though the appeal of a turn-based novel is great.

44. Have you done up game statistics for all of your main characters in your favorite RPG?

No. I can barely fantasy-cast any of them as living actors. I’m bad at these fetishes.

45. Are you writing a work-for-hire for Wizards of the Coast?

Are they hiring?

46. Do inns in your book exist solely so your main characters can have brawls?

I am seriously considering adding inns to my world in order to accommodate this.

47. Do you think you know how feudalism worked but really don't?

Like everyone who lives in the democratic, electric, heated, wifi world, yes.

48. Do your characters spend an inordinate amount of time journeying from place to place?

At least 50% of the book. You’ll hate it.

49. Could one of your main characters tell the other characters something that would really help them in their quest but refuses to do so just so it won't break the plot?

Only if one of them told the others that there was a quest. That would be handy.

50. Do any of the magic users in your novel cast spells easily identifiable as "fireball" or "lightning bolt"?

There’s an aging ray. Does that count?

51. Do you ever use the term "mana" in your novel?

It might be moaned at some point, but that’s a slur and not the kind of magic you’re thinking.

52. Do you ever use the term "plate mail" in your novel?

There’s an arming doublet.

53. Heaven help you, do you ever use the term "hit points" in your novel?

Missed opportunity!

54. Do you not realize how much gold actually weighs?

No, but given that “arming doublet” appears more frequently than “gold,” I think I’m safe.

55. Do you think horses can gallop all day long without rest?

Only the ones that carry my dreams.

56. Does anybody in your novel fight for two hours straight in full plate armor, then ride a horse for four hours, then delicately make love to a willing barmaid all in the same day?

I don’t know how many more times I can pretend something sounds like a sweet idea I missed and want to include it, but you keep coming up with these.

57. Does your main character have a magic axe, hammer, spear, or other weapon that returns to him when he throws it?

Seriously. You keep coming up with these.

58. Does anybody in your novel ever stab anybody with a scimitar?

No. One guy goes throw an intangible edge from his scimitar. It looks like a rainbow.

59. Does anybody in your novel stab anybody straight through plate armor?

The giant killer gelatin sort of does that with its spines once.

60. Do you think swords weigh ten pounds or more?

My twenty-foot stone ogre’s sword does.

61. Does your hero fall in love with an unattainable woman, whom he later attains?

Trains to do what? Why do I think it’s something with a frying pan?

62. Does a large portion of the humor in your novel consist of puns?

Much more than I assume you’d like.

63. Is your hero able to withstand multiple blows from the fantasy equivalent of a ten pound sledge but is still threatened by a small woman with a dagger?

Clearly you’ve never been in a romantic relationship.

64. Do you really think it frequently takes more than one arrow in the chest to kill a man?

I’d like empirical tests before concluding anything here.

65. Do you not realize it takes hours to make a good stew, making it a poor choice for an "on the road" meal?

So you want a McDonald’s in my fantasy realm?

66. Do you have nomadic barbarians living on the tundra and consuming barrels and barrels of mead?

No.

67. Do you think that "mead" is just a fancy name for "beer"?

Now I do.

68. Does your story involve a number of different races, each of which has exactly one country, one ruler, and one religion?

No.

69. Is the best organized and most numerous group of people in your world the thieves' guild?

There’s a thieves’ guild?

70. Does your main villain punish insignificant mistakes with death?

Maybe in Book 2.

71. Is your story about a crack team of warriors that take along a bard who is useless in a fight, though he plays a mean lute?

Maybe in Book 3.

72. Is "common" the official language of your world?

Maybe in Book 4.

73. Is the countryside in your novel littered with tombs and gravesites filled with ancient magical loot that nobody thought to steal centuries before?

No.

74. Is your book basically a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings?

Yes.

   75. Read that question again and answer truthfully.

Okay, no. Of course it isn’t. Listen: is your sense of humor a rip-off of every passive aggressive comedian who attempts to dismiss a thing by vaguely describing some of its characteristics? I appreciate the passion for literature, but you may need a nap.

Bathroom Monologue: Parental Guidance for AMC’s The Walking Dead

This program contains violence, strong language and sexual situations. It may be too intense for some viewers.

Parental guidance is advised.

Of course, it opened up with a married woman yanking off her shirt, her husband’s best friend sucking on her belly button, and them proceeding to fuck in the dirt. So if your kids got passed that, we assume you’re either okay with it or unaware the TV is on.

Also, we’ve spent millions of dollars promoting the fact that decomposing bodies came back to life to eat people in our show.

Also, “dead” is in the title.

We’re just saying, you’re half an hour into an hour-long episode in which people were eaten alive, put guns to each other’s heads, a white man called a black man “nigger,” and several undead skulls were crushed with baseball bats. Your kids are totally going to hurl on the carpet in the dismemberment scene at 10:36. If you don’t realize this is inappropriate for children, we don’t feel guilty. We’re only putting this warning out there in case you’re dumb enough to sue.

Again, parental guidance is advised.

Bathroom Monologue: Monologue composed while John grilled during a tornado warning. He worries himself, sometimes.

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

Have you ever seen the emerald dawn rise across a sapphire sea, precious waves breaking upon ruby shores and bruised opal mountains? Does the azure sky not part, not for a sun, but a cloud shining brighter than any celestial bauble? No more? Then why did it when it did?

Sing to me, oh leaden muse, perform thine heavenly alchemy upon tin minds, and reveal wars waged between not men, but gems. See mastodons with golden wool, and silver-eyed chieftains sitting astride forces more valuable than life. For what is war fought? For why does the world spin? The answer, too expensive to know. Greed, what is greed? Admission that all this is wanting, so wanting that we want when we see not all that we already have.

They clash, crystal spitting lightning, great granite bodies breaking, cleaving and tumbling. Knights brave as steel and foolish as ore throw themselves, toss themselves, skip from ships across waters and land in piles. Even the diamonds die, going cold and coal beneath where we now stand. This silt? This sand? The corpses of courage, treasure lost to sea shells and high tide. To war, no more. They were living riches, and battle has spent them.

Item: Witch Doctor Spin

Item: Beginning November 8th all county police departments will receive one Witch Doctor. The new public servants will pray to reduce crime and cast hexes on all potential criminals. If it won’t stop them altogether, it will at least give them worse luck in high speed chases. The Witch Doctor program is a follow-up to the initiative for rain dances at inner city fire departments.

Bathroom Monologue: A Still Moment

In the last moment of the game, every piece on the frontier chessboard is in motion.

Red Casey looks north up Main Street. The sun is against him, but his eyes are keener, and he is righteous. His fingers splayed at his hip, he can feel the temperature of his iron, though not yet the touch. At touch, they’ll both unholster. He will put a hole in that thieving Kid before his former partner can even finish the draw.

The Kind Kid looks south down Main Street. The sun is vindictive on his neck, burning old rope scars. He knows he doesn’t have Red’s draw speed, but his six-shooter is lighter and the parts are filed down. He doesn’t want to have to gun the best partner he’s ever had, but he will not abide a thief.

Double K, the ten-year-old adopted Kid of the Kid, clutches his cowboy hat to his mouth. His eyes peer out from the side of the road. He wants to yell at Red that he was playing cards with his daddy all night and there is no way he could have stolen the money. This close to guns, though, Double K has no breath with which to yell.

On the opposite side of the road cluster whores and drunks, spilling out of the saloon for the best show all year. The scoundrels who robbed a train without killing a man are going to shoot each other down. The saloon owner doesn’t know what this is over, but watching through the window he wishes he could sell tickets. It’d be an instant sell-out.

Near the center of the mob, like the blossom on a hedonistic rose, is Anne-Marie. Her eyes and bosom are pink from weeping and worry. She has breath this close to guns, and screams an alibi for Red. The Kid simply will not hear it.

On the north side of the saloon’s porch, Deputy Randolph hangs his hands. A rifle is leaned against the banister, and he could use it to stop this, but he hasn’t the authority. Only the sheriff does. And so Randolph must wait, though how long Red and Kid will hold their standoff is a matter of moments.

Sheriff Motley sits on the second floor of his house, the biggest on Main Street. His three hundred pound girth makes his rocking chair creak for mercy. He hears the churn of the mob down the road and chortles to himself, counting dollar bills. All this, he thinks, for a two-bit tip to the saloon owner on when both Kid and Red wouldn’t be in the room with that burlap bag.

The sheriff’s wife watches him from their drawing room. She does not introduce herself into this business, even now. She is forty years and two hundred pounds his junior, just a slice of patience and a chestpang away from inheriting money nobody knows is there. She could almost kiss her husband for keeping it so secret. She won’t do that. Then he’d know that she knows.

On the first floor of the biggest house on Main Street, the Motleys’ butler sprinkles poison into their tea. He’s seen their cash loaf and doesn’t care where it came from; it’s enough for him to finally flee this dusty town. If he can serve the refreshments in time he’ll run down the street. He’s heard there might be a gunfight today, a splendid way to finish his time here. He may even wager some of his newfound riches before catching the next train east.

Bathroom Monologue: In the Car Wash

Little Sal clutched his action figure as his mother drove them into the car wash. It was dank and blue rubber strips hung down like giant teeth. They slapped wetly against the windshield and clung on, making him sink into his cushioned seat. White foam sprayed over all the windows. His mother put it in Park and the car jerked as the conveyor treads began pulling them in.

Little Sal pulled his Green Lantern to his chest, as though to protect the superhero from this onslaught. His mother patted his shoulder.

“Do they scare you? It’ll just be a minute. It’s been forever since we got a wash on this rust bucket.”

“It’s not them, Mom.”

The conveyer drew them further down the mechanical gullet. What had once been a whirring was now like sitting inside a jet engine. They couldn’t hear outside the car, and the windows were all covered in foam and spinning rubber strips. What little light made it through the foam looked yellow. Little Sal squeezed his eyelids closed.

“What is it, honey? The noise?”

“We can’t hear outside. If there was a monster, you couldn’t hear it.”

“No, honey. But the noise will be over in a minute.”

“And if a bomb dropped, you couldn’t see it.”

The jet engine sound punched through Mach-1 as they passed what was presumably the central power source of the car wash. Thicker foam was squirted over the windshield and was swirled about by mechanical mops.

“We wouldn’t know if the whole world ended, Mom.”

“Don’t be silly.”

The mops retracted and went lifeless. The conveyor pulled them through curtains of water, like so many thin rainstorms, rinsing away the last of the foam.

Then the car lurched to a stop. The conveyor ride was over. The machinery clunked, hummed, and went dormant. His mother popped the car back into Drive and they rolled forward. Bright sun spilled through the freshly cleaned windshield. Mother and son squinted together into daylight.

As vision came back, they saw the rubble that had once been the parking lot. Asphalt had crumbled like so many Oreo cookies. No cars rested here, and there were none on the road. There were no buildings, and only a curlicue of black smoke on the horizon.

“See honey? No monsters. No more bombs. There was nothing to worry about. Nothing changed.”

She squeezed his shoulder, and drove them onto the scorched remains of the highway.

The Development of a First Line

When I was in high school the opening line might have read:

“The fat, red-bearded train worker struggled with the wooden boxes, shoving them with his shoulder until the last one was in place.”

Sometime between high school and now, the opening line became:

“Stanlauf pushed the last of the crates into place.”

It’s funny to think about that. He went from a couple of physical descriptors to a name. The name suggests familiarity; you know Stanlauf, while you don’t know the fat, red-bearded train worker. I’ve traded an image (and verbiage) for a suggestion.

In college I definitely would have told you where Stanlauf was. The “train worker” in the high school version hinted. In the contemporary opening line, though? He could be anywhere. The literary sense in me tingles a little. It suggests there will be intrigue. You’ll wonder where he is, as well as what is in those crates and why he’s doing it. Or maybe you won’t asked any of those questions, and I’ll just use the information for fodder later as the story comes together.

Sometime between the me of thirty minutes ago and the me of now, the line reads:

“Stanlauf loaded the last of the crates.”

Omit needless words. Omit needless words.

Though I wonder if “pushed” isn’t more active than “loaded.” “Pushed” is more physically precise; you can load a thing a dozen ways, while pushing is one of them.

But “loaded” suggests something. You don’t load crates into your bedroom. You load them in a few specific loading-friendly places. Like loading docks. “pushed” doesn’t suggest setting as well as “loaded.”

Is it just that way in my head? Will readers pick up on that? The influences either way are weak. The ensuing paragraph will cement things anyway. Have I changed so much as a writer, or have I only shuffled around the traits that don’t matter?

I wonder if these questions will change the writer that I will be in thirty minutes, or in thirty years.

Bathroom Monologue: TheBrightness’s Avatar

PMs were sent. Who was that in TheBrightness's avatar? He was too old to be from Twilight and too poorly dressed to be famous, unless it was an ironic Paparazi photo. Was he Latino? chegvra420 was asked, since he had Che for an avatar and at 2:00 AM on a message board that can become a credential. He didn't know (he was also a she). Was he American? RonaldMcFondle thought he was Simon Bolivar. Goatcemaster then googled Bolivar and made the suggestion that that suggestion was stupid. Whoever was in the avatar was too pudgy. Around 3:00 somebody suggested it was a musician. Nobody listened to Mexican music so they couldn't say for sure. The instant TheBrightness logged on he was hammered with forcedly casual requests. Was the guy in his avatar Santana? "i don't know who santana is," he replied. "thats carlos from my walmart. hes nobody special. i thought that was fitting. im not fooling anybody."

Bathroom Monologue: Measure of Love

"How much do you love me?"

She demanded this of every suitor. And because her dowry and bosom were second to none in the land, many came to describe their love. They climbed the ebon stairs of her ivory tower and beheld her gilded throne.

A knight bent at her knee. He clasped his breastplate.

"I love you with such force that my heart nearly bursts through this steel."

He was ejected two seconds later.

A biologist bent at her knee. He pointed to his forehead.

"Do you see this?"

"Yes," she said, though she was looking at something else outside the window.

"I love you as much as the contents of this, firing very brightly."

He was ejected two seconds later.

A cynic bent at her knee. He did nothing special with his hands but had a cavalier smirk.

"I love you as much as you wish me to."

He was ejected ten seconds later.

Bathroom Monologue: “What is Halloween in The States?” –Interviewer from EU PS Blog

Halloween just is. It is one of those rare holidays, like Christmas, that illuminates the entire month with its colors and festivities. It’s decorations for your locker, office and front door. It is free candy to people who are young enough for one night, but it’s also terrible pranks for people who are terrible enough on another night. It is movie theatres bubbling up with scary and spooky films, and television chasing after with serial killer marathons. It is a childish grin carved into a pumpkin with a candle for a brain, but it is also the sexiest witch you have ever seen. It is toilet paper mummies and $10,000 designer costumes. It is a myriad of externals, many commercial and many personal, all desperately trying to get something out of yourself that you are not supposed to have and that, even in a post-ironic society, you’re normally not allowed to express. It is the night when a disfigured girl becomes Dora the Explorer and looks like every other kid behind her plastic mask. It is the week when the people who have irrationally and faithfully adored the shadowy story finally feel like they’ve come home. It is a place as much as it is a time, and it makes no sense, and I’m very glad we’ve got it in stock.

Bathroom Monologue: Saul and the Plymouth Fury

It was an authentic 1960’s Plymouth Fury. Over two hundred thousand miles and, if the previous owner was to be believed, still ran. No car Saul’s father ever owned lived that long. He ran his hands over the black hood, letting his fingertips trace the dimples.

Two hundred thousand miles was the easiest part of the deal to believe, and Saul took it all seriously.

“Hey there,” he said, speaking to a car for the first time in his adult life. As a kid he’d talked to them all the time. They’d never spoken back, barring the radio. “I hear you’re haunted.”

The Fury sat in his driveway. It did not speak. It did not honk or flick its radio to a rock ‘n roll station, which the previous owner claimed happened sometimes.

“Did you really kill that guy’s wife? Or was she just a bitch who texted while driving?” He took a step back and collected a brown paper bag. “I’m not taking anything away from you. I just want you to know, I’m on your side.”

He produced a bottle of Castrol GTX3 and set it before the Fury’s front left tire.

“This is the best oil in town, and I’m promising to change it every 5,000 miles. Screw what the owner’s manual says. Plus we’re only getting Premium gas. It’s already damned expensive, and if a couple pennies more makes you happy, we do it.”

Saul canted his head around one side of the Fury, regarding the two dents in the driver’s side door. “I’m going to offer something more. I know a parts dealer out of Michigan that can get you a new door, off another car. No way to hammer those dents out as-is. But I don’t know how you’d feel about that. So let’s say, if my foot doesn’t get mysteriously caught in the door like that guy warned me about, for the next three months? Then we do it. If it does, that’s all that needs to be said. Regardless, you get this.”

He added a bottle of wax behind the Castrol. It didn’t look impressive, but had cost the most of anything at the shop.

“Is it true they found a hobo dead in your backseat? I don’t think so. I think that’s crap. But again, I just want you to know, I’m on your side. Oh.”

His eyebrows went up as he remembered. He reached into his jeans and pulled out a pine tree air freshener. It dangled from his middle finger for a couple of seconds, wagging in front of one of the Fury’s headlights.

“I promise you will never see one of these. That shit has got to be offensive. You’re not a forest. You’re one of the best cars ever made and that smells good enough for me.”

With that, he pulled back on the air freshener and released, slingshotting the thing into the adjacent bushes. It could hang out there. Even if they were haunted, smelling like plants wouldn’t offend them.

“Think it over, okay?” he asked the Fury. It did not rev its engine or flash its headlights in magical compliance. He walked inside to get a soda, and to give the car a chance to run over the bottles of oil and wax before its tire in case they made it unhappy. It was only a few inches of the car to roll, and Saul was open to signs.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins For Him. 9.

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

“Why are you this way?”

I wake up and can’t move. My forearms catch on something. I try to roll over, and that’s when I notice the straps. Leather restraints around my wrists and ankles, across my knees, chest and forehead.

I’m in a small room, empty. Three walls are white, one with a little window. The fourth wall is all Plexiglas. On the other side are three people in suits and white coats. One is a blonde, two are brunettes. The brunettes are men – that’s what you call a guy with brown hair, right? A brunette? A bruno?

“Why are you this way?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say. “Can you please come loosen this? I can’t feel my legs.”

They look at their palm pilots and clipboards. They look nervous, like I’ll bite them through the glass.

“How did you access the air conditioning system?”

“Where did you find that many amphetamines?”

“Why did you strangle that orderly to death with a rubber chicken?”

I don’t know what they’re talking about and they won’t listen. My legs tingle. I’m thirsty. There isn’t even a mirror – I don’t remember what I look like. I ask who I am and seconds later they shuffle away. They leave together, like just one of them doesn’t dare stand outside my cell on his own.

Across from my cell is another with a Plexiglas wall. Its inhabitant is a big man. Half of his face is scabs, like he’d laid down on a hot stove and stayed there. I don’t know if that’s true. He tears a button from his cot and keeps flipping it. His bad eye, the one without a lid, stares at me. He’s not restrained. I am. What did I do?

Security walks by often. There’s a camera with a steady red light in one of the corners of my ceiling. It’s not enough. At least one guy comes by ten times that day. Nine times to look. One time he has a newspaper. He presses the front page against my glass. The headline reads: “STATE SEEKS DEATH PENALTY AGAINST INSANE MAN.”

I can’t make out the photo. It looks like a cartoon face. The guard speaks through the glass to me.

“I hope they get you, you sick fuck.”

Night falls through my little window. I feel like I’m not alone and don’t realize for a while that I’m right. There’s a man in a black mask glaring through the pane. We’re however many stories up and he somehow got there. I call for help and nobody comes. I try to smile, to put on an unaggressive face, and he bares his teeth at me. If he could get through the glass I think he’d strangle me.

I blink and he’s gone.

I can’t get up to see if he was really there, and the people who work here won’t help me. It doesn’t matter what I yell. My fellow inmate, the scarred man, wakes up and stares at me with that eye. He calls me a clown and tells me to shut up or he’ll kill me. That’s the only response I get in this world.

Let’s say I’m not an amnesiac. That I just want to stop. To put down my knives and joy buzzers. But everything else is true: the shrinks are terrified of me, the law wishes I was dead, and there are masked faces following me around in the night. What are the choices? Play dead, or be “this way.”

Bathroom Monologue: Familiarity Does

Matvey stood under the 40-watt bulb in the garage, sizing up the body. He pulled on some latex gloves and picked up the wire cutters, nodding like a lumberjack sizing up a young tree. He took the cadaver’s left hand and began snipping off the fingertips so that the authorities wouldn’t be able to run prints if they found it after he dumped it in the river. The fingers swished into the wastebasket as he responded to Nikola’s assertion.

“They may say familiarity breeds contempt, but I’ve always considered that glib. Sure, you’ve got to know what something is to hate it, but that isn’t always why you hate it. Sometimes you hate something because you can’t figure it out.”

He dropped the left hand to start on the right. It lolled off the side of the workbench, bushing against Matvey’s knee. He kicked it aside and continued.

“Now your country’s Mark Twain said familiarity breeds children, which is funnier. Also less true, I think. I am mighty familiar with my siblings, but unless I blacked out one holiday, I never fathered a baby by them.”

He dropped the wire cutters into the basket along with the fingers and the last of his low mein. Prying open the mouth, he squinted, angling the head so the garage’s dim bulb could illuminate inside.

“No, Nikola. I think familiarity breeds ability. The more familiar you get, the easier it is to do something. You get on a unicycle enough and you don’t even have to think about pedaling.”

Matvey grunted at Nikola’s bridgework and reached for the pliers.

True Stories of John 4, Spookiest Moment

I’d just picked up a friend from the train. Let’s call her Gladys, because it’s a nice name and I don’t want to give her real one out. We rolled down the hill in my little Camry and onto the small concrete bridge. At the end was a stop light, with just one vehicle paused there. It was a white transport, like a short bus for school, but with state and police markings.

Waiting behind them, Gladys and I chatted idly about her job search. We looked around my empty car, to the stone walls that artistically lined either side of the bridge, and at the overcast sky. Anywhere but the police transport in front of us. There was a mix of that awkwardness about looking into other people’s cars, and the intimidation of police.

Eventually the light turned green and the transport remained at the intersection. I frowned at the transport. Then Gladys asked something.

“Is there anybody in there?”

I craned my neck and looked through their rear windows. You could see up the aisle of padded benches. There was no one in sight, even on the driver’s side. I stuck my head out the window and noticed the driver’s side door was open. So was the passenger’s exit. The transport simply sat there, engine off, under the grey light of an overcast day.

“Where do you think they went?” I asked. I didn’t have many ideas.

Gladys shifted in her seat, trying to see over the stone wall to our right. It was only a couple feet away, and only a couple feet high. On the other side was a slope leading to the river. My imagination, being my best friend, and best friends very often playing horrible tricks on you, suggested a serial killer crouched on the other side of the wall, lying in wait for a dumb enough local to get out of his car.

Gladys asked, “Should we wait?”

I didn’t know what to answer. Could you pull around a police transport? Was this a traffic sting? I felt like, at best, I would leave this intersection with a ticket.

The light went yellow, then red. No one came back. No driver, no maniac, no state troopers escorting a convict after letting him take a leak. We sat there behind this hulking vehicle, until the light turned green again.

Gladys developed this magnificent two-face act. She would look at the transport and seem pathetically nervous, then look at me like this was no big deal and I should go. She swapped between the looks dissociative brilliance. No argument had to be made; she quietly convinced me that something awful was waiting around here and we should let it be.

I gave in and pulled us around the left side of the transport. We looked through all the windows. No one was there. The driver’s side door was gaping open, and we could see through to the side of the road and the grassy hill on the other side. I turned us onto the main road and looked down the hill, expecting to see some explanation. There was no one there. We didn’t even see another car on the road for another ten miles.

There was nothing about it in the paper the next day or blotter report that weekend. I asked a couple of people who were in local law enforcement, but nobody knew what I was talking about. I never found out what was going on that day.

Bathroom Monologue: What’s Scary About the End of the World

I listened to him because it was his fire that kept the dogs away, and his beans we ate. If I was good he might even crack open one of the last remaining beers in New England. I could see three bottles in his satchel.

“Dying isn’t what scares anybody about the end of the world. Everybody thinks he’s going to make it through to see Mad Max. Because if you don’t? Then it’s the end of you, and who cares about the rest?”

He stuck his poker in the flames, stirring the logs. Scintillas flew up, like he’d angered a flaming hornet nest.

“What’s scary about this was never dying in the atomic blast. It wasn’t even that all the fun would be over. No more new movies. No more spring fashion. No more daycare, low fat food, or bitching about the price of gasoline.”

He threw up his arms and announced to the abandoned building, “Ladies and gentlemen: the internet is closed!”

He sat back down beside me, the poker dangling from his fingers.

“All that stuff blows away in the wind. The closest to culture you’ll get is a shred of The New York Times in a tumbleweed.

“No, that’s not what’s scary. That’s what’s depressing.

“What’s scary comes right after scavenging for food and fighting a stray for shelter before it rains. And it’s not the lack of food or shelter, or the plentiful irradiated dogs.”

He jabbed the poker at the nearest window. Its glowing orange tip accused the rest of the planet, perhaps for not being frightening enough.

“It’s that it’s out there. Observe the toppled buildings and wilted flowers. Look past them. Somewhere, out there, is the legitimate shit. The wide steel doors that the government has kept locked. The Devil himself, riding horseback down the highway, weaving amongst a graveyard of dead cars. The gurgling noise in a pit from the earth, and there’s no CNN let to tell you why it opened.

“Yeah. That’s the legitimate shit. The bogeyman that’s been waiting in your closet all your life for the day when the door would be knocked over. It’s stuff that’s waiting for you at the end of a long and leveled field. That’s what’s still scary when you’re scrounging for canned food and a place to sleep.”

Bathroom Monologue: Reasons why I should write the new Legendary Pictures Godzilla reboot.

Dear Legendary Pictures,

I am aware you are in the planning stages for a new American Godzilla franchise. As a writer and longstanding fan of giant monsters, I am concerned for the film. Nobody needs another TriStar Godzilla. I am a versatile steward, capable of writing a screenplay featuring series favorites like King Ghidorah, lesser Toho rogues like Gorosaurus, or recognizable creatures in the public domain, like one of those giant Buddha statues in China that is animated by science gone wrong. Yet I am not offering myself merely as a writer, but in every facet of my being to ensure a quality film.

You may wonder what services a professional writer can offer besides a dynamite screenplay featuring a minimum of five giant monster battles. Well for one thing, hiring me will make storyboards obsolete. I will slouch, pull my elbows to my chest and enact any Godzilla sequence for directors, actors and/or catering staff whenever necessary. This way you will know exactly how stage directions are supposed to go. I make a very believable radioactive breath sound, too.

Scientists suggest that between seven or eight hours of sleep are optimal for the human body. Thanks to a lumpy mattress I haven’t slept a full night in months, and believe these scientists to be sissies. I will gladly sleep only three hours a night, spending the remainder of the dark hours showing your actors how to portray realistic fear of titanic threats, patching up and airbrushing dinosaur costumes, and setting up tiny Lego towns.

Do not mistake these services as a smokescreen for lazy writing. Not only will I produce a screenplay immediately upon request, but I’ll stay on set to re-write any lines you dislike, and to play sounding board if the actors try to adlib. I will set up a tent near the fire escape, my pen living within the range of your beck and call. My screenwriting will only cease once the film is distributed to theatres, at which point I will happily deploy to any theatres where you would like audiences to have their reactions scripted.

I cannot stress my devotion to the project enough. If at any time you feel the extras are slacking and someone needs to literally be crushed to death to appropriately express Godzilla’s magnitude, I will sacrifice myself. I can’t think of a better way to die than beneath a mammoth foot.

And I will do all of this for one dollar. Being a professional writer I do not work for free. But realistically, even if you throw it away and keep two gag jokes, it’ll have been a worthwhile investment in your eight-digit-budgeted film. Not that you’d want to throw this screenplay away – it’s going to be awesome, especially when Godzilla and Jesus team up to take down the Idolatrous Ro-Beast, Mecca-Jesus. I am fully knowledgeable about series history, having seen every Godzilla film multiple times. Even Godzilla’s Revenge, one of the worst films to ever be screened on multiple continents, and I’ve seen that sucker eight times. Thanks, WPIX New York.

Sincerely,
John Wiswell

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.

"To Each Her Own Triceratops" at The NOT

A micro-story of mine appeared in Michael Solender's Dog Days of Summer anthology. The theme was summer. Because my imagination likes to be difficult, mine was about the summer the dinosaurs came back. The story, "To Each Her Own Triceratops," was featured this week over on Solender's NOT. You can read it here.

As an aside, thanks for all the kind wishes over the last week. I'd tell you how hard it is to abstain from writing, but then I'd have to write about it. Oh no - am I cheating right now?

Bathroom Monologue: People Want Dark Fiction

The reader rolls her eyes at her friend and pushes the YA novel away.

“I don’t like that simpering crap. Fiction needs to be dark like real life. Lives don’t end with the good guy winning and faeries dancing. It’s twisted and gutwrenching—”

At which point an author looms over the divider between their tables and smashes her square in the mouth with his laptop. It’s a construction-yellow Toughbook, folded up into a tidy bludgeon.

The reader shrieks, while all the other diners freeze. Even her friend is shocked. The author, dressed in tweed and khakis, climbs the divider and mounts the reader’s table. Everyone’s eyes go up, not at the author, but at his direction. They’re like deer.

“You want it bleak, right?” he asks. It’s a rhetorical question, something that he can seldom pull off on the page but is so easy when you’re speaking out loud. “Got to be bleak! And violent!”

She scrambles to exit the booth, but he swings overhand and connects with her chin. She flails back into the cushions, stuck in the corner of the booth. Before she can contemplate another escape route, he begins swinging the Toughbook into her nose and mouth repeatedly. Its yellow plastic is speckled with red bits in no time.

The diners-cum-deer scatter for the exit. Even the reader’s friend, abandoning her French fries and YA Fantasy.

“Because you lead a joyless and hollow life, I’ve got to write stories validate it! If I write happy things you might be challenged to change. If you laugh at something other than sarcasm, you might grow a soul, and we hate believing in those!”

Her face is a red and pink paste. If she’s conscious, we can’t tell it by her eye movements. They’re erratic in an absent way.

“You want a dark ending?” he asks down at her. “Then don’t press charges. I won’t get brought to justice and you’ll live happily ever after with a mangled face. Choose your own adventure.”

He hops off the table and looks for napkins to wipe off his Toughbook. He hates writing with them dirty, and he has a great story idea.