Bathroom Monologue: Why Youtube Hurts My Soul

Watch the ad that sponsors the video that is a trailer for the movie that’s the first of a trilogy that you’ll have to buy on DVD to see uncut, upon which you’ll see ads for the BluRay which has even more content including the trailer for the spinoff that will have the tie-in videogame for the system you want that you’ll have to sift through six blades of ads to launch before you see eight studios advertising their brand on the load screen, all company logos flashing directly above the manufacturer of your TV or monitor, which is eternally stamped before your eyes. And you pay for the bandwidth.

Bathroom Monologue: Me, Myself and You

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

You take a hundred dollars and tomorrow's newspaper. Bet everything on and win the first, second and third races. In the fourth, bet a thousand on the most favored horse that loses. Sit out the fifth, then bet everything and win the sixth and seventh. Blow five thousand on any horse you like that loses in the eighth. Before the ninth, go up to the window and make a show of being unable to pick a horse. Even ask the teller for his advice. He won't say anything – every man can see enough of the future to know it’d get him fired. Wind up not betting on any of them and go home for the day with your winnings, which will be comfortably over a hundred thousand.

It's not the millionaire's scoop you want. I know because I wanted it, back when I was you. But you've got to lose some of the time, and never come out ludicrously far ahead. Humility is a smokescreen, and in time you’ll come to realize owning just one percent of the company that topples Apple makes you plenty rich enough. It's a principle you'll soon be applying in the Commodities Market, in politics, and at the lab when you purposefully get every equation wrong and convince the company that these new particles are useless. Your co-researchers cannot be allowed to figure out time travel too. This only works if we're the only one in on it - me, myself, and you.

Bathroom Monologue: Thanks Anyway

They were pale and pink and puffy people. They wore too much and it did not keep them warm. Though they arrived on large boats, they did not return to them or sale away to wherever they were meant to live. Instead they dug at frozen ground, hunted drunkenly and starved sober. The Woman of Myth hollowed out a gourd and stuffed it with crops. She held it aloft, commanding, "Give us your poor and your tired."

Fifteen Authors Who Influenced Me

There's a game running around where writers name fifteen other writers who influenced them. I did it for Paul Brazill, but people kept tagging me on Facebook about it anyway. Reading a few, I was annoyed not knowing how these authors influenced the people listing them. So I'm going to do it again, but I'm also going to say a little about them. Prepare to watch a man admit he stayed up to 1:00 AM Fridays to watch TV and compare cartoonists to classicists. Dignity, I'll miss you.*

1. J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit was one of the first true novels I read from cover to cover and is partially to blame with me getting into literature at all. Tolkien’s world-building and sense of gravity for all the fantastic elements drew me into prose in ways no modernists and post-modernists did. I still remember reading the end of Fellowship of the Ring at my grandmother’s and trying to hide under the bed, for terror at the prospect of someone as great as Gandalf being killed. By college I wasn’t writing anything like Lord of the Rings, but I had the “Tolkien Instinct.” If there was any question of what to do in a story, I’d ask, “What would Tolkien write here?” It was almost always the wrong answer for what I was doing, and it took me another two years to get a grip on it. Imitation was not how I needed to pay homage to the father of Fantasy. Just writing good Fantasy should do.

2. Akira Toriyama – Most famous for his comics Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, which actually had a bigger impact on me than Lord of the Rings. It was reading those bizarre comics that I realized how hard it is to come up with truly alien stories. I loved Tolkien’s Norse and Medieval fantasies, but they were still familiar enough to the Arthurian stuff I grew up with. Toriyama had the advantage of drawing on thousands of years of Asian culture and classics, so my little white ass in New York was baffled. Monkey-tailed boy living in a dinosaur-infested wilderness that is sometimes invaded by sentient plants that might be the devil, then escaping on adventures with a perverted bipedal pig in a car that fits into a capsule. Delightfully outlandish. First I imitated it, actually writing fanfiction that helped me ace my Humanities class. Then, around 180 pages in, I realized this thing wasn’t publishable and wasn’t mine. This was someone else’s world. Lord of the Rings, X-Men, Dragon Ball – worlds that were hard to make, shouldn’t be made again because someone had already done it, but that if I really wanted to write towards, I should study. Oh, and Majin Buu is my role model.

Imagine them high-fiving. Imagine it!

3. Stephen King – The biggest influence. At age 13, I was crippled by a neuromuscular syndrome. I was in constant pain and bedridden. The only reason I made it through many sleepless nights was having a King audiobook. I was entranced in Needful Things and Desperation. It wasn’t escapism. It was immersion. I was where I was, could not forget any of it for how badly I was suffering, but I wanted to know what happened next. I’m not exaggerating to say that curiosity about fictional events gave me the will to live. Ever since I’ve been dismissive of academics who look down on fiction for being entertaining. I’ve mined a lot about voice and the nature of endings from King’s writing since, but saving my life is a little bit more important. You can’t do more for a reader than that.

4. E.B. White – Through whose pen I also got the wisdom of William Strunk. I’m somewhere in the middle of prescriptivists and descriptivists. The only thing dumber than literary totalitarianism is literary anarchy. But there are general rules for the way most prose functions. Especially interpreting White (and Strunk via White) for the spirit of the rules, like why “Omit needless words, omit needless words, omit needless words” has six technically needless words in it, has given me a decent sense for editing.

5. Eudora Welty – Possibly hazardous to my career, but Welty’s versatility in the short story impressed me more than any other feat of any other author in literature. “Why I Live at the P.O.” is airy, trivial and funny. “Where Is That Voice Coming From?” is profoundly disturbing in its violence and racism. “A Still Moment” is ethereal. They tell you to find a niche and stick to it, that way you become a solid commodity. I can’t stand that.

6. Dante Alighieri – My worst influence. Dante convinced me to always do another tangent, to throw in another point or observation. Thank goodness I learned to edit them out later.


7. Douglas Adams – The perfect sense of humor. He seemed to make fun of everything and hate nothing. The first hundred pages of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy dismisses God, logic, friendship, government, and the earth itself. But any jackass comedian can do that. The big trick with Adams was to mock a thing and hug it at the same time. It was the comedy that accepts even the absurd and the intolerable. He could always invert a character to soften a criticism, deflating didactics in the service of pure humor. I still can’t listen to those radioplays without getting ideas. Horrible, stupid, purple ideas that I hope someone, somewhere will laugh at.**

8. Mark Twain – He was so easy to read that his were several of the first novels, after The Hobbit, that I read cover-to-cover. His narration achieves mental voice very quickly. I spent a decade trying to work out how. While recently I’ve become disenchanted with fiction that exists to make a point, his observational fiction still gets me. Even in a boys book like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the fence painting anecdote illustrates a great principle I’ve never read put better. Re-reading my favorites (The Diaries of Adam and Eve, Joan of Arc, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court), I think I’m pinning down how he drew me into humor writing, and why the humorist establishment in literature disappointed me so badly. Twain wrote humor to make people laugh and think. Today many writers, especially those who think they are “edgy,” write humor to make people think and luck into laughs, which shows a distinct lack of thought. I think about that. One more way in which Twain influenced me, and continues to be ahead of me.

9. GK Chesterton – How did I make it through college and never hear about this guy? He was the writer I spent years looking for: the one with whom I could disagree frequently and respect entirely. God, sound way too full of myself. Listen, he was rad. The Man Who Was Thursday has aged to perfection, time robbing its original context and adding a second edge. Now it satirizes both Chesterton’s opposition and allies. He stood up for orthodoxy and satirized satire. That's Welty-like range in non-fiction. He and Twain duel in my head these days, as I’m trying to weed out the impulse to reach for good quotes in my writing. They duel almost entirely in good quotes.

 Very funny men.

10. Gail Simone – I actually gave her closing run on Deadpool to a college professor. I walked in on him one day laughing his ass off, and before recognizing it was me, he actually tried to hide the comics behind his back. At a certain stage in my life she specialized in the irreverence of dangerous people and irreverent people in dangerous circumstances. Humor was not just a defense mechanism or an excuse for a point (like it’s treated by too many humorists), but a reason to be, a mode of existence. I loved that so much that it wound up at the core of my first novel, and will probably keep showing up until I go sane. She (and writer #11) almost made me recognize that I love a dynamic cast. You can drop them into the most enticing or boring circumstances, and I will read them. I will read three hitmen in spandex chatting about existentialism while they monitor the Prom. Gail Simone has not written that. Perhaps I should, but if I do, it's because of her sense of casts, which existed in Deadpool, then Agent X, and right now in Secret Six.

11. Aaron Sorkin – Television writers should also count. Literate people of my generation still watched more than twenty-five hours of TV for every book they read, and it influenced us. In high school I’d stay up to 1:00 AM on Friday nights to catch reruns of Sports Night, for its wit and profound monologues. There was a solid year when all dialogue I wrote on my own was a bad imitation of Sorkin’s repetition. He was for me what certain titanic playwrights were for others. Even after I grew out of the imitation phase, I credited his shows (and M*A*S*H) with making me realize my favorite thing in fiction is to establish a few interesting characters and just listen to them talk.

12. Joseph Campbell – Made me look at structuralism. I’d already had most of his key thoughts on culture and cross-culturalism (actually got very angry upon first exposure to him at 12, claiming he stole my ideas thirty years in advance). But his breakdown of the hero’s journey made me diagram stories in a new way. He sort of made me a post-modernist, when I tried to tell a story that was a purposefully backwards version of the heroic arc. Part of me still go back to his lectures when I ponder cultural and religious resonance.

13. Homer – My gateway into Literature. While I don’t pretend to know a mind thousands of years old, he appears to have had a sense of glory, of riveting action, and of sanguine humor. His Iliad caught me at an early age, for being similar in structure to those massive superhero crossover battles I liked so much. Even through translation he had ways of expressing the magnitude of a hero and the intrigue of action. As I grew older I appreciated his way of expressing things, comparing a lance tearing out an eyeball to the blossoming of a flower. That’s repulsive, but it also speaks to why war was waged. There are big pictures hidden behind every book of his poems. The dozen translations of read of his two surviving epics were my analytical training ground, and a significant reason for me giving the rest of literature a chance.

 This list is pants-optional.

 
14.  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - I'm pretty dismissive of melancholy and bleak fiction. I think attraction to these usually indicates a life that hasn't been hard enough and a resultingly lethargic mind in dire need of exercise - say, the kind by getting its owner off its ass and living, doing some work in soup kitchens or clothing drives or relief work in a disaster zone. But if I'm bad now, I was impossible about this stuff earlier in life. You could not bother me to finish such tripe. I dismissed even classics of world literature as defeatist, authors who were regrettably celebrated for lying down before hardship. Nothing t swayed me until One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. This is an inescapably bleak novel that used bleakness for purposes, particularly to show how a person may refuse to be destroyed by it. Solzhenitsyn was almost doing bold political work in prose, but it was his character in the face of these things, and the character of his characters in the face of these things, that shook me. I've already commended Gail Simone for writing funny people who don't yield their humor. The big thing in Solzhenitsyn's work was creating austere or severe men who did not yield and made me admire that position, something I'd long given up on as valid. Here is work that does not lay bare some discontent and masturbate over how unfair it all is, or how bad life sucks, or how it's meaningless, or you don't like the meaning. It's not the wishywashy unhappiness that dominates so much of modern literature, and that is really just a well-dressed and bourbon-soaked negative of the Care Bears. Reading any Solzhenitsyn is distinct, purposeful, and disturbing in ways Horror can't be. It's an entire border of fiction. There was that time when I asked, "What would Tolkien write here?" Now I am more prone to ask, "If Solzhenitsyn hated this, would I have the balls to stand up for myself?" If I would, then I feel I'm doing right.

15. Flannery O’Connor – Like a lot of these writers, she taught me little things, such as desiring character descriptions that seem sharp but are actually just vague and short (these work amazingly well, at least when she did them). But the big thing for me was learning that this shrewd, frequently shocking storyteller struggled with illness and questioned if the work she did in the hospital counted. That’s a kind of doubt I have – am I responding too much to my conditions, is sickness holding me back or tainting my work? No rational argument makes this doubt go away. You’d think rational people would realize that, but they keep trying with their rational arguments, and thereby disproving the existence of actually rational people. This sick-doubt is something that haunts. The closest thing to curing it is that O’Connor produced an amazing body of work. So, maybe I’m tainted and ruined, but that’s all just an excuse. Good work can be done. Thanks, Flan.

*No I won't.


**Honorable mention goes to Terry Pratchett for writing several thousand more pages of Adams, and convincing me that’s not what I wanted to do.

Bathroom Monologue: Clarifying Lies about the Internet

I need to the clear the air. The internet has not diminished attention spans. People were never able to take in more than four paragraphs of information unless it was formatted into The Top Ten Best Asses in Hollywood. There were never newspapers, magazines, novels, letters, or epic poems that entire tribes memorized verbatim. No one ever intended you to finish a short story in a single sitting. Man did not evolve to read the entire Nutrition Information on the side of a cereal box, and certainly not to figure out how much saturated fat he was actually consuming in four bowls of the stuff, unless someone first designed an app for doing so. Except man has never had the patience to design an app. They are found in the wild, caught, captured, domesticated and price-coded by Apple. Contrary to your memory, you could not spend all day reading for pleasure when you were a child. You sat by the window and dreamed, wished and prayed that someone would put videogames on a phone, and you sat there doing nothing more than this wishing until it went on sale. You should not feel badly for skimming Cracked to get to the next item, or for only reading the funny captions under their stock photos. Nor should you feel bad for having the same NYTimes article open in your browser for two weeks, perpetually intending to finish it. It cannot be finished. If you had the superhuman will to consume every sentence, you would find that the writer herself did not finish it, instead trailing off into a series of vowels and punctuation marks. This was the result of her bravely passing out from the effort of trying to sustain thought. This is hazardous and should not be attempted for so long as you can get Angry Birds at a discounted price. I’d go on, but then I wouldn’t have the mental stamina left to tweet about Twitter going down for half an hour tonight. Farewell.

Bathroom Monologue: Could James Joyce Succeed Today?

“I’m trapped in a hypothetical.”

“What is the hypothesis?”

“People are wondering what I would do if I were to publish my work today. Not today-today, as is the only sense of today that I, James Joyce, would know, but in the today of some people in America in 2010.”

“That is a ways off. These hypothesizers want to know what you would do with your life?”

“Specifically in regards to my fiction. They wonder if I would be able to publish as lucratively as I have today-today.”

“If you were to publish today instead of today?”

“What’s more, it seems I have dramatic influence on the future. I essentially give English literature the tools of the anti-hero and stream of consciousness. Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake are highly influential. Even Dead End creates a certain existentialism amongst short story writers.”

“I didn’t think you cared for that sort of infamy.”

“I don’t, but they do, so the James Joyce of their imagining does.”

“I’m a little relieved the short story has survived so long.”

“It survives, though it is in questionable health.”

“So the hypothesizers want to know how successful your works would be if published many years in the future?”

“Yes.”

“But in the future, your works have already been published. Are you going to live in a future where your influence has already spread?”

“It would be difficult to market new fiction that had been canon for so many years. I’m not even certain if I transported to the future by some ugly Wellsian means, or if I grow up there, raised in a world unknown.”

“Something a little too clever for Wells to think up, that one.”

“If I were to mature in a world where all my ideas had already spread, I would not be myself, but the product of influences from my-other-self. I’m completely uncertain what I’d produce. I’d be a different James Joyce.”

“Though if you retained your style exactly, and your style is popular, you should be popular.”

“I think style has become exceedingly unpopular, in favor of populist entertainment and plot. The hypothetical is about challenges I’d face where I was a fad that had passed.”

“Well, I’m sorry you don’t have lasting success.”

“But publishing old or new fiction in a world where I’m no longer the same James Joyce, and have an entire different literary establishment to rebut, seem like much greater qualms to me than whether or not I could sell what I’m compelled to write today-today.”

“Oh, selling’s not the thing. You would rise through workshops, lectures, a university scene and fellowships. You would meet the people you need to impress in order to garner publication and doubtless succeed, if not amongst the masses, then in the intellectual niche that’s bound to develop.”

“I detest this hypothetical. Time traveling. A plot flare to distract from dim style.”

“Only one thing worse.”

“And that is?”

“John Wiswell’s attempt to write you.”

“Oh, I sound nothing like that.”

Bathroom Monologue: Stay Where You Are, OR, Composed during a bathroom break from Marathon Man

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Stay where you are! Both of you. I said stay! No, I don’t care that you’re not with him – I don’t care who sent either of you. I’ve got a gun and even if you’ve got something, I’ll shoot at least one of you first. Faster than me, smarter than me, more than me, but this is pointed at you two. So stay where you are.

Good. That’s good.

Uh. Hands up. Yeah. Take off your jackets. Shrug them off. I know I said hands up, but take them off! One at a time. First you. Move and I’ll shoot. No, I know what I said, take it off! Drop it in the mud. Who cares how expensive it was, I said drop it.

That’s good. For what it’s worth, it did look nice.

Now you. Take it off slowly.

Slower.

I knew it. You’d have gone for that gun, wouldn’t you? Do it now and I’ll shoot.

Okay. Reach behind yourself and unfasten the holster. Slower. Let it fall. Now kick it halfway to me. If you grab it or kick it into me, I will blow the top of your head off. Swear to God.

There. Okay.

Both of you step out of your shoes. Kick them off. I don’t care if your socks get dirty. Do it.

I don’t care if you’re not with him. Why would I care? One or both of you has been chasing me all fucking day and now… Now, you know what? Rub your feet in the mud. Do it or I’ll shoot right in the socks. Both of you. He was an ass and now you’re both going to have disgusting toes.

You wouldn’t be willing to admit who sent you, right?

No, of course. It’s all a misunderstanding. My car always blows up in this kind of weather. Shut up. We’re almost done.

Whichever department sent you. I don’t have anything against you guys personally outside of being scared shitless. I just want you to know that, and to wish you the best of luck chasing me with no guns or shoes. Please stay where you are at least until I’m out of eyesight, or I really will shoot you.

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.