Bathroom Monologue: Girl Scout Sales Leader

She bound for a national commendation until they learned she raised all that money selling Girl Scout Nookies.

Bathroom Monologue: The Last Cat on Earth

Toby slipped on the thick leather jacket. He flipped up the collar to shield his neck and cheeks. Next came a second pair of jeans, buckling them over the tails of the jacket. Gloves and construction boots were necessary. He looked out the window as he donned the ski mask. He watched the undead shuffling on the street corners before flipping goggles to protect his eyes.

He couldn’t risk getting a speck on him. He was the last man who could do the job.

He followed the undead through the windows of his house. Two windows on the west wall, then the one next to the porch. Four of his former neighbors shambled along the driveways. Their eyes were blind, noses turned up to sniff. Maybe they could smell him. Or maybe they smelled Mr. Tibbs.

Scuffling rose behind him. Toby whirled and saw the basement door shake. He rushed over to it, but the button was depressed. It was locked. He heard his sister – his former sister – groaning down there.

He frowned at her through the door. She couldn’t do this job anymore.

“I’ll take care of it,” he told her. “Even though you know I never wanted it here. Do you know how dangerous it is?”

The deck door slid open quietly. There was a little whoosh of air, and then the saddest sound left on earth. A keening, churning whine. As much as he hated these things, it made even him feel a little sorry.

It padded around the plastic deck furniture. It arched its spine, so that when it walked between their legs it would rub its sides. Mr. Tibbs was a self-petter, but that wasn’t enough affection. Even self-rubbing, it looked so damned pathetic.

Toby drew a plastic sheet from the living room and closed the door. No sense in letting dander get inside. This was going to be an allergic nightmare as it was.

“I don’t like you any more than you like me,” he said down to it. It didn’t seem to dislike him, but cats lied with their faces. “This just doesn’t feel right. And you're not eating the food I throw out here. What's wrong?”

When Toby didn’t immediately pet the little bastard, it keened again. It sounded almost human. Kickably human. The kind of humanoid sorrow that’d haunted him up in his safely boarded study the last three days. His wonderful, hypoallergenic study with the view of the wonderfully silent, dander-free undead.

The plastic chair creaked as he squatted into it. He laid the plastic sheet over his chest and lap, hands flattening it into place over his jacket. When it was ready, he patted his thigh. Mr Tibbs quirked its wretched head, then began to climb into the last lap on earth. Even now, there was a little affection left in the world. But only a little. He’d kill the bastard if it got any hair on him.

Bathroom Monologue: Electronic Motions

It was the biggest thing since building critters out of meat. Electronic motion: electrifying the meat so that the critters would not just move, but feel. This existential electricity flowed down a spine, through a head, into and out of fingertips. A critter twitched. A critter writhed. A critter wrote hexameter. The Designer liked it all until one critter’s electronic motion caused it to question whether it had a Designer, or whether that Designer was particularly intelligent. That’s about when the Designer stopped talking to them and spent all the time electrocuting them. It was sort of vengeance, and a sort of function. Electric excitement. Electric enticement. Electric despair. He did it so much that electronic motions required short hand. He shortened it to “e-motions.” Eventually he dropped the hyphen.

Bathroom Monologue: Where I’m Buried

I’m buried all over this house. The golf clubs and my first toolbox, nestled together in the garage. Finger paintings on the walls, underneath just two coats of baby blue. Blankets I spent seventeen years sleeping under, now folded and gathering dust mites in the attic. The Wilson hoody in the hall closet, which hadn’t fit me for three years. You thought I’d trim down some day.

My old room is a mausoleum. Not to me, but you look at the bed like a burial vault. I’ve never seen someone fix the pillows in a burial vault every day like that. Somehow, it suits you. You’re concerned some part of me will be uncomfortable.

Don’t worry, Mom. I wasn’t scattered into the winds over Moosehead Lake. You knew those weren’t me, just like the coffin sitting in Arlington is empty. Those were tokens.

It was an IED. It looked like the kind of paper bag you hide a liquor bottle in, though you don’t see many liquor bottles in that part of Afghanistan. They didn’t tell you that I touched it because the bomb squad was three hours late. I can understand why they wouldn’t.

I’m not in Afghanistan. I was doing things there. Now I’m not. Bits of me are not embedded in the street or plastered against the buildings. I am not camouflaged among bricks and rust, except for the bricks on the back wall of our house. I scraped myself there at four years old, trying to fix the satellite dish. You were right. It was a bad idea. Now there is a bit of me there.

They’ll tell you to grieve. They’ll tell you to let go. I don’t want you to – I can’t imagine why I’d want you to. What balloon wants to drift into the sky? Maybe I’m only here because you won’t let me not be. I don’t think that’s true. But I think it’ll be okay if you have to let me go, because bits of me will always be around you.

Bathroom Monologue: Men Only Want One Thing

I’ve heard it my whole life: ‘Men only want one thing from women.’

For the longest time I’ve struggled over my one thing would be. One morning I stumped on a street corner and accosted forty-seven women in an informal poll as to what the one thing men should want is. It came out a tie between “sex” and “leaving me alone.”

Sex can’t be it: I can’t imagine wanting sexual intercourse with even a quarter of the women I’ve met.

And wanting all women to simply go away? That's isolationist. I wouldn’t put stock in either.

For a while I thought it was stock. Not a bad idea, to want every woman you met to fork over shares of a Fortune 500 company.

I followed that premise and settled that the one I want from women is a million dollars. How happy I’d be, how positively feminist I’d become, if all females handed over a million dollars upon proposition. Unreasonable to expect them all to keep that kind of cash on them, but why lower my standards? It’d compromise the one thing I get to want from them.

Bathroom Monologue: The Pirates Sailed Inland Again

This was originally posted in October 2008. I'm re-posting it for Chuck Allen's pirate blog carnival.

Having heard some hurtful criticisms about their profession on CNN, the pirates sailed inland for more practical ventures. They scouted the homes of the wealthy, and when the occupants went to work, the pirates pillaged. But they just weren’t satisfied with stealing a home theatre or a sweet sound system. It was too small-scale.

First they tried to yank the whole house out of the ground, but the foundation was too strong and the hull was too small.

They tried sawing the floors apart to make them more maneuverable, but when the lumberjacks realized what the pirates were doing with their saws they took them back and broke the first mate’s arm.

Some of the deckhands had the idea to steal shacks and any other structures not attached to the actual houses. The crew had twenty Hummers (and twenty garages) when the captain returned from Starbuck’s. He was most displeased with the operation, but his first question wasn’t why they’d put a sliding electric door on his quarterdeck. His first question was, “How’d you get the ship on land?”

Bathroom Monologue: The Saddest Sand Castle

She ran all the way down to the end of the towels. Her father pointed her further, so she went further, but as soon as the old man relented, she paused and scouted her realm.

Beige sand, fine as powder, swallowed her toes. She watched the waves come in, refreshing the sand at the end to dark brown. Anything she built there would be destroyed.

She took two handfuls of the wet stuff and carried it to her construction site. She dribbled it in a spiral that wound up looking too much like dog poo. She nearly kicked it over when she spied the waves again. Whatever she built, they’ve consume it. Unless she was careful.

She dragged her heel to make a square foundation. This was her true domain. She hunkered on all fours at the outskirts of that domain, heaving sand into dunes that were half her own height. When it exhausted her, she slumped her chest against the protective sand-walls and regarded the sea. Still it ebbed and flowed. Closer now, too. They might eat through one defense.

So she sprawled over her barrier dunes and scraped into the beach. She dug a moat around her barriers; a sand canyon after a sand mountain range. To her dismay, she struck water. If she went deep enough, the stuff had already gotten under her foundation.

Moats were imperfect. So she took all her new-dug sand and formed a second wall. She trolled the beach for shells and rocks, and jammed handfuls of them into every wet lump of building material. It had to be a stern wall. They all had to be.

She was on the fourth wall when her father hollered. Time to go to dinner and home. She jerked her head up. But she hadn’t had time to build the castle this was supposed to defend. Her father, a tyrant of a brick-and-mortar castle, refused to listen. She cried and was dragged past her foundation, past her lonely dog poo-shaped sand structure.

As they pulled from the parking lot, she could see the insipid tide. It was already eating her fourth wall. All that time and she’d never built the amazing kingdom. The beach provided only weak materials. Next time, she’d have to bring her own. A sand castle made of cement blocks. That’d show the tide.

"Sologamous" in Print!

Untied Shoelaces of the Mind has published an anthology of their favorite stories. I'm flattered that they've included my "Sologamous." They also nominated it for a Pushcart Prize. My gratitude is fairly obscene.

"Sologamous" was the tale of a man seeking to legally marry himself.

The anthology is available in both print and e-book editions through Lulu. I want to thank them, and every reader whose demand has left the zine interested in publishing more of my work. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. The top of my heart is, naturally, reserved for legally marrying myself.

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 17.

Click the button on the left to hear this story, or click this text to download the MP3.


That isn’t a skyline. It’s Babel’s legacy. These people got so big they don’t know right from wrong anymore. Bernie Madoff and Oswald Cobblepot. Global Warming and Mr. Freeze. Rome’s burning and they don’t think it’s their fault.

He’s the worst of it. He’s not a registered bounty hunter, and if he was he’d have lost that registration years ago. Go down his file. Uncounted cases of breaking and entering. Possession of weapons-grade technology. Assault and battery. His car doesn’t even have license plates.

He savaged his suspects. Broken ribs. Shattered femurs. Dozens of mobsters leaching workman’s comp and state services. His first week he tossed someone off a building for not talking soon enough. Those tactics don’t work, and even if they did, do you really think it isn’t a crime just because he catches them before they hit the concrete?

The funniest thing about it was the hypocrisy. He’s just a man, and just one man. He can only be one place. When some masked jackass is threatening to gas a billionaire’s party uptown, he couldn’t and didn’t appear as two dozen sailors were held at gunpoint by Kahndaqi terrorists at the harbor. Shows you his interests.

I was the second man into the warehouse. Security cameras caught our charge. Flashbangs and suppressing fire, all high efficiency behavior. No hostage fatalities, and we took two terrorists alive. I collared both of them.

That night we were the second story from the top, beneath a vigilante's rescue of a bunch of rich socialites.

The next day, though? I was the top story.

“UNNECESSARY VIOLENCE BY G.C.P.D.?”

Had I tackled one of them too hard? Was the taser necessary? Kicked the poor mercenary too many times? They went from “terrorists” to “victims.” Suddenly the fact that a guy with an AK-47 had been seventeen under his ski mask mattered to this city.

They wouldn’t even cover my handcuffs as they led me outside. Mayor wanted a public example. My arraignment was the same day that he busted the other sleeper cell. Beat all three of the Islamists into unconsciousness and earned an op-ed about his effectiveness. He was, according to our city’s paper of record, the hero we deserved. We shared one copy in lock-up after the guard was done with it.

Even buried under his cape and press, there was no lenience for us brutal officers. The D.A. refused to meet me. I was probably helping his career, a prime example of how he rooted out evil in the department.

You want to know where I got these scars? You have the department disown me and the D.A. toss me into general population. My first week in Black Gate, I had three visits to the infirmary. I took seven of them with me, so no hard feelings. We laughed it off eventually. I vowed not to take any of this too seriously. This city certainly wasn’t. We’ll all laugh it off - you, me, this whole city – at his funeral.

Bathroom Monologue: Phallus for the Sky

This story was inspired by one of Icy Sedgwick's photos.

"Hey honey."

"Oh for God's sake, Earth."

"I know you see it. It sure sees you."

"Put that away. It's not even morning. I'm tired."

"I can see the sun behind those clouds! Come on, it's the weekend."

"Where'd the romance go? You're all architecture these days."

"I sent you that shuttle!"

"I know it's the last one, Earth. All your TV satellites are floating in me."

"Have I told you that you look spacious lately?"

"I'm going back to bed."

"I bet a full moon will be out!"

"You're the worst planet I've ever dated. Pluto never needed artistic viagra."

"And look what happened to him! No, baby. I got you figured. You go take a nap. Dream on all this. "

"The single worst planet I've ever..."

Writing Challenge and Promise

Only a choice few have heard the story from the convention I hit in August. They keep telling me to post it, but I'm not sure. It's rather ridiculous. It can be summed up in one line.

"I've only been in this perfectly nice hotel for ten minutes and I'm already naked with blood on the floor."

I did really say that. After some cajoling, I'm going to propose a bargain: if ten or more people write flash fiction based on that sentence, I'll post the true story. It probably won't be as ludicrous as your ideas. That's part of the point, isn't it?

Do we have a deal? You write 'em, post 'em, and link me here. Ten people wins a little of John's shame.

Bathroom Monologue: The Box From Y.

“You have to wear all of it.

-Y”

That was all the note read. Not even, “Love, Y.”

Not even, “Don’t get your soul swallowed, Y.”

But at least he hadn’t rambled at him about being a good cowboy this time. So his son was growing up a little.

Leigh laid the white note aside and cut the white string on the white box. White packing chips spewed put, raining down on the hotel room’s burgundy carpet. He swept a gnarled hand through the box, sending out a torrent of chips until he felt leather.

He pulled out two bandoliers. They swayed before his chest, the material smooth under his fingertips. He held them to his nose and inhaled the musty smell he associated with stale wafers. Treated with holy oil, so his prey wouldn’t be able to grab onto them. In the worst of times, they doubled as whips.

He set them aside and fished around in the box. Unmarked boxes of tinkling bullets. He popped one open and admired the silver casings. Each head had a little cross carved on it.

“Yes sir,” Leigh told his absent son. “I will wear every one of them until they are put to use.”

He found a heavy lump. Styrofoam chips clung to the wrappings as he lifted them. He couldn’t even brush them off; too much static. So he unfolded the bandanas to admire the twin revolvers. Pearl-handled, silver plates over sterner stuff. Freshly built to order. They vibrated under his palms. New friends calling to his muscle memory. He kissed one on the hammer the way he’d used to kiss Y on the top of the head before bed.

He lay them down on his bed and frowned at the box. It was an awful large box, even for this precious a cargo. He swirled his left hand inside the remaining chips, imagining some new-fangled body-armor vest, or some very old-fangled crucifix to ward off what Y.’d been afraid of as a little boy.

He pinched something thin. It gave, then rebounded when he released. He lifted it halfway out the box, then scoffed and dropped it. It rustled in the chips.

Using his middle finger, he poked Y.’s note, and then all those damnable bullets.

“Really, boy?”

He bided a long moment before taking it out of the box. The interior was padded. The band was stiff, but looked resilient. He’d never actually seen one of these – didn’t know they actually made them. Maybe Y. had made it himself. It was that thought that convinced to wear the white hat into town.

True Stories of John 13: Do Not Post Until 9/12

It’s one of my earliest memories in which I suspect I’m sociopathic. The girl across the hall was having a fit that morning. She threw a tantrum over something every morning.

“They blew up the subway!” I heard.

I dismissed it. I showered and readied for class. As I pulled on a t-shirt, I checked CNN.com. It was down. That was a first. I didn’t know it could go down.

I stopped in the Commons building to check my mail. There was one cable television in there. Both entrances to the TV room were stuffed with people. I looked over a boy’s shoulder and watched the plane hit the second tower. It was probably a replay.

I couldn’t move. Not for terror or awe, but because that’s what I felt the room wanted. In social situations I’m keenly aware of what I think is acceptable in the group. In seconds I had all the news the TV had to share. I was ready to leave. No one else was. I only knew that walking away would break an unspoken covenant with these dozens of stunned strangers. That was my strongest feeling.

“Bullshit,” I heard from my left. “Bullshit. This is why everyone hates America.”

It was the Eastern European accent of one of my few friends. He was a prickly personality. We’d met during a Shakespeare workshop. When I confessed to the workshoppers that I’d taken it because I found his works unbearably stilted and desired understanding, everyone but him stared. He laughed his ass off.

Now he was cursing his ass off in two languages. His face scoured all the silent Americans, seeking argument. Most eyes remained on the TV, but some shifted with indignation. It grew hotter without the temperature going up.

I got up and touched his shoulder. He tensed as though to clock me, but I spoke before he could ball up a hand.

“Why don’t you tell me about this?” I asked. It was all tone; I don’t really know what I meant. I only knew that the attacks on TV were raw voyeurism, and that this was an act of violence I could actually prevent. My tone of voice engaged him enough to follow me into the mail room. There, he was completely unable to articulate what offended him. Something to do with our media and our excessive self-pity. After two minutes of spitting and spinning in place, he departed for class. So did I.

I sat in the classroom, greeting my fellow students and letting them know why everything was cancelled for the day. In half an hour, I went to the lawn for the dean’s little speech. I spent hours lending shoulders for people to cry. I knew enough to get out of the way of kids whose relatives might actually be in jeopardy, and enough to check up that no more attacks had happened. Once it seemed certain that it had ended with the fourth plane, my mind actually shifted to thoughts that if I could write a book about this fast enough I might ride it to publication. I knew enough to chastise myself for the thought, even though I didn’t feel shame.

There was no fear for myself or country. I knew enough to go stolid when others came around. I knew enough not to say a lot of things. I wondered if everyone around me was acting, or if the majority possessed empathy I lacked. Was I fundamentally broken? Or were they all going through imitation shock, out of the same social instinct that had kept me glued to the TV room?

But then, my potentially broken self had defused the situation with my foreign friend. Later I heard from two people that I’d probably saved him from a fistfight. And my potentially broken self knew enough to want to appease and help others around me all that day, and for the ensuing weeks. It was just that something in my head went too immediate and pragmatic to be shaken by tragedies from afar.

Ten years later, I’m still not comfortable with this feature about myself.

No, that’s not true. I feel like the group would prefer I wasn’t comfortable with it. Just like I felt I shouldn’t post this story until 9/12.

Bathroom Monologue: Roadie Story

He had some foresight; simply not enough. He always opened the door quietly, but it always slammed behind him. Lucky him, what he lacked in foresight, she compensated for in forgiveness – or sound sleeping.

Bathroom Monologue: In the Mirror at 30

I lean across the sink and take a close look into myself. How did I get this divot on my nose? I’ve never been attractive. Scratch that – as a boy, I was probably attractive to some pedophiles. But few people since would have given me a thumbs-up.

My mind steeps in culture. So when I look into the mirror, I think what other people might think. Elderly folks pining for youth. Women who aren’t old wishing they weren’t old. Men reflecting on athletic teenhoods. My guts tense and I try to tease up regret that I’ve aged.

But I’m a man of parts and evidence. I see things.

This guy’s got more moles than he used to, and maybe even more freckles. Pot marks. He needs a shave. When he squints, he spooks up a murder of crows feet.

His face is fatter. He’s lost sixty pounds in a few years, but it’s fatter than it was a kid. He could regret that. But, so what? He smiles more easily than he did as a teen. I like the way that face spreads with his smiles.

He’s trained that smile on more people this week than he did in many months of his earlier life. He’s made so many more people laugh. He’s been there at crucial moments for people he thinks are better than him. He’s suffered what others insist is too much, and he might just be right in suspecting he complains less than they all do.

I see an affable, durable man that emerged from a bitter boy. There’s shame that I feel no nostalgia. This is another social ritual I fail to share. If only I were more like others – if only I’d been an idyllic boy, or could fool myself into believing I had been, I could despair in lost innocence and spent privilege.

Instead, I’ll drive to the store, buy whatever I want, and cook some dinner. Three things the bitter boy couldn’t do. As I eat, I’ll entertain myself thinking how he’d mock the man who now smiles in the mirror.

Bathroom Monologue: Can't Beat Them

"Two years he’s turned us out of the playoffs. Their training camp looks even sharper this year. You’re going to have to do something more than trade for a draft pick. And I’ve got something to think about. Something to keep in your pocket, in your office safe. Something you should burn before November, whether or not we do it.

"I know a woman at an escort service. She's not from here or their town. I think she’s from Baton Rouge. We met once. She's… frightening in how persuasive she gets.

“We can hire her through an intermediary who will have no direct connections to you or our team.

"Now, if he's too good a few weeks into the season, we call an innocuous disposable cell. She'll single him out at a club. Get him alone. He's already had so many indiscretions that he practically has this coming. He’s had so many that whatever she claims, people will suspect. ESPN will discuss. Blogs will believe. The bruising will be artificial. The photographs convincing. The distractions? Perpetual. Even if her suit folds, he will miss at least one game against us. In all likelihood, he'll miss the season and wind up on a crap team next year, possibly in the other conference.

"It will cost us less than any of our defensive linemen make. Her life will be pulled apart by media and she won't care, because she doesn’t like her life. You wouldn’t agree to this if you did. With this money, she can make another one somewhere she likes better than Baton Rouge. And we hamstring the biggest team in our division.

"It's a thing you can do."

Seriously Cute Blogger Award? Alright...

Danielle La Paglia has bestowed upon me The Seriously Cute Blogger Award. I guess she’s had a stroke or something. Canny people don’t do things like that. Since I am in the habit of humoring stroke victims, I’m playing along. The game is to discuss five books, television shows and/or books you’ve consumed lately. This compliments my new podcast, Consumed, which is entirely about reading, watching and playing things.

1. Apollo 18

My sweet old mother wanted to do whatever I did for my birthday. I wanted to see a movie? Just name the time. Did she know it was about-- But that was okay. She drove, paid for tickets, even smuggled me in a Butterfinger Crisp. She was so chipper about watching the fake documentary about an eighteenth moon mission and the nightmares found up there. So I got to see the woman who gave me life have the crap scared out of her twice by lunar debris. That was pretty cute of her.

2. The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson

Just finished it this week. Matheson was a great damned storyteller and no book of his has disappointed me yet. Here he turned the gimmick of a gradually shrinking man into a reflection on what masculinity means, and what can replace it when it's taken away. Manages to walk the line between pulpy adventure stories and John Cheever malaise, without the annoying bits of either. And, uhm. He's little. So he's cute.

3. Coffee Samurai

Saw it with a packed theatre in August and tracked down a DVD to buy as soon as I returned home. It is my favorite anything of the year. A Korean short animated film, Coffee Samurai follows the story of a brave warrior who fell in battle centuries ago. As he died, he wished to be reincarnated with an iron body. Fate smiled on him, and he was reborn today: as a coffee vending machine. A drunken girl wheels it home and takes care of it. They fall in love, when they aren’t being attacked by zebra assassins. In half an hour it manages to go through every possible level of absurdity, including deliberately inserting plot holes into itself. It’s the best thing.

4. 127 Hours

Getting your arm smashed under a boulder is cute, right? Listen, the award didn’t specify that my things had to be cute, but I’m making the effort here. The point is: nobody told me 127 Hours was this good. James Franco delivers a deep one-man show of a film trapped in canyon with no one to help him, desperately devising ways to pry his arm from beneath a rock, and just as many ways to stay sane. Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire) does not mess around as a director. It takes some great acting, lighting and cinematography to make the one set not get dull after an hour. True stories usually wind up weak films because the artists have only so much leeway with reality, but everything about that poor man’s experience is re-crafted into a sharp portrait of grit.

5. Blockade Billy by Stephen King

For much of his career, King was dogged by the unfair assertion that he only wrote Horror. In the latter stage of his career he's dogged by the equally unfair assertion that he only writes needlessly long tomes. So here's a 100-page novella about baseball. As a non-baseball fan, what struck me the hardest was the narrator’s use of jargon and colloquialism. He’s not just colorful. The world of baseball reads like a vibrant Fantasy world, all brought out almost effortlessly, little exposition needed to set up anything, so much with its own terminology and so much accentuated merely through enthusiasm rather than backstory. For non-baseball fans, this might be a better primer on how to write Fantasy than any of King’s actually Fantasy. And I adored Dark Tower.

So that's my five. I stand behind them all. Now for the three recipients...

1. Helen Howell. Often feels like my own personal Twitter grandma. I don't think she's even close to that old; she just has that adorable warmth about her.

2. Sonia Lal. Another Twitter-buddy, one so young she didn't know John Carpenter's The Thing! Young'uns are cute. Plus I admire her pursuit of the classics. Most recently dug into Herbert's Dune.

3. Cathy Webster, the Bride of #fridayflash. I figure she'll go nuts with this one.

Writing For Millions

Everybody wants to be a writer and they should. Go to any bookstore and read the names. Stephanie Meyer. J.K. Rowling. The Da Vinci Code Guy. I never hear about these people collecting garbage or working at Wal-Mart. Writing must be all they have to do, which means they have to get paid a lot. Now look at the whole bookstore. That’s a lot of writers, all getting paid millions of dollars. And it’s so easy to write!

I read a book by Mark Twain once and it sounded like how people talk. Imagine how easy it was for him to just write what he’d say. You could talk into a tape recorder for a while and then pay someone else to type it out for you with the millions of dollars all writers get paid.

But if you are old fashioned and want to write by hand, that’s fine. All you have to do is sit and type. You don’t even have to type that much. Ernest Hemingway once said that if you write a page a day then you have a 365-page novel at the end of the year. I’ve never checked his math but assume he’s right because he’s famous. So if you write about a page, you’re pretty much done for the day. Thanks to Spell Check you don’t even have to edit anymore.

Also, I never heard of Hemingway doing anything but writing and getting drunk. Again: writing is a sweet job since you don’t have to do anything else in your whole life.

I don’t really know how publishing works, but you get paid in a lot of ways. There’s the advance before you even write it, then they pay you when you give them the book, and royalties when they start selling it. Since you get millions every time, that’s three million for one book. You get even more millions after they make a movie out of it. A lot of movies are based on books, so I assume all books become movies that pay you extra and you don’t even have to pay taxes on that.

It’s not all fun, though. Eventually your hand cramps up from signing so many autographs and people who are scared of crowds might get nervous from being stopped and fondled on the street by their flocks of teen fans. I’m sure it gets annoying eventually. It’s probably why Hemingway drank. I don’t know because I’ve never read his books. But what I’m saying is that if you’re not ready to be rich and really popular, writing might seem overwhelming. Fortunately book tours and interviews are totally optional since they pay you the same no matter what.

I’d tell you more but this is almost a full page. So in conclusion, I want to write because it’s easy and pays a lot.

Bathroom Monologue: Time Machines

The universe is a time machine. It's set to "ON."

The human mind is a time machine. It's constantly lagging toward the present.

Light is a time machine. It makes the most of it.

A black hole is a time machine. We're uncertain of its settings.

Time is not a time machine. It lacks ambition.

Machines are not time machines. However, all geese are birds.

Bathroom Monologue: The Infinite Jest

HAMLET

Let me see.

Takes the skull

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio:

a fellow of infinite jest...

SKULL

Lower jaw rattles

Hey Hammy, why did the chicken cross the road?

HAMLET

Not now. I'm soliloquizing.

SKULL

Sorry, Hammy. You know me.

Infinite jest. If I didn't jest now,

it'd be like the play was poorly written or something.

HAMLET

There’s no way I’m iambing about being borne

on your back a thousand times now.

Drops the skull, enters next melodrama

SKULL
Hey Horatio. Knock-knock?

HORATIO

Retires

My Big R.A.Q.: The Rarely Asked Questions of 2011

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this year's Rarely Asked Questions. Hopefully I'm in a cake-coma right now, but rest assured when I regain consciousness I'll be very grateful to you all. Cheers!

Harry Sanderford asked: Why is it, "The Bathroom Monologues"?

We’re starting seminally here. Back in college I was assigned so much reading and non-fiction composition assignments that I feared I’d lose my creative drive. Almost any time I was at my desk I was either working or decompressing with a videogame. I decided that any time I got up to use the bathroom, I’d improvise a story on anything other than what I’d been working on at the desk. These were usually first person monologues on vital topics like what happens to an anthill if the queen gets cancer but won’t relinquish power. Sometimes I thought I was really funny and typed them up for friends. Sometimes my friends said they were actually funny. I started saving them to a Word file, and a friend gave me a subsection on his site to post them. Later when I created my own blog, it felt natural to maintain them.

Alan W. Davidson asked: Do you think that Gilligan and Mary Ann ever 'hooked up' while trapped together on that island?

Not with the human chastity belt that is The Skipper walking the earth. But if he should one day fall, then Gilligan’s latent libido might rise to prey upon all untouched women.

Helen Howell asked: Why was Tinkerbell so infatuated with Peter Pan? ^_^

Because he always kept dog treats in his pocket. It’s a trick most of us use.

Tony Noland asked: Why do so many people think "Seinfeld" was a funny show?

As someone who does find Seinfeld funny, I think it’s about investment in the characters. The core cast of four are play simple roles with absurd depth beneath. If one seems watchable, you latch on and sink into their sundry absurdities. Entire episodes go by without you laughing, but it was funny as hell. Somewhere inside your head, you’re pleased – but it might not get to the surface. The more you watch, the more your mental snowball consumes until decades after its cancellation you can still quote your favorite lines. But if you can’t latch on and get rolling, the show is a baffling phenomenon. The best current example is The Office and its resultant pseudo-reality knockoffs. Why anyone would like them is utterly beyond most of the people who don’t watch them.

Garner Davis asked: If you had to choose between a) flashing a crowd of complete strangers ... at an elementary school, or b) watching the entire "Jersey Shore" TV series back to back in one marathon session, which would you pick?

I’m a multitasker. I can, for instance, let my sister watch Jersey Shore on the television while I play a mindless videogame on the PC, or fold my laundry, or construct a sixteen action figure wrestling tournament. And those are the sorts of things I would do while I marathoned this show rather than go to jail for the rest of my natural life. Plus this way I don’t have to go to an elementary school. Children are more annoying than clubbers.

Ross “Chaz” Rostopher asked: Why do humans like things that make our tongue hurt, such as chilis, wasabi, cilantro and curry? (This was a post-sushi question.)

With the rise of vegetarianism and veganism, the plant kingdom has increasingly seen human beings as violent bigots. Citizens such as wasabi and chili peppers are the highly ethical suicide bombers of the plant kingdom, and are doing in their power to bring down the horrible hedonistic human hegemony before all is lost.

Karen Schindler asked: What, to your knowledge, is something astonishing you can do with your body that few others in your current social circle can?

I can pick my nose with my tongue.

Mr. FAR asked: How do you get by without a dayjob, you lucky so&so? :-)

See: answer to Karen Schindler’s question.

Mary from GigglesandGuns asked: Is it true if you malted milk balls while drinking beer you won't get drunk?

From experience, I only know that if you eat malted milk balls before drinking beer you won’t get drunk because the damned things are so addictive you won’t have room left. God, I hope somebody got me candy for my birthday.

Cassie Nichols asked: What three authors (living or dead) would you most like to spend the day with? What would you spend the day doing? Would you take any of them to a carnival?

Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and Homer. They are all dead and would leave me alone to write. In the event they came back from the dead for the visit, they would be highly lyrical and interesting to talk to, plus I’d solve the mystery of who Homer was. In the event they came back as flesh-eating undead, I would take them to a carnival so that they might eat somebody else.

Cassie Nichols also asked: Would you create a unique language in your books if you knew that 20 years from now hundreds of your fans would greet you in that language at conventions? Be married in ceremonies where they only spoke that language?

I couldn’t even retain French. I don’t know how I’m supposed to invent this new language. But I guess I’d at least begin going down that road just to see what I wrote that apparently affected that many readers so deeply. It wasn’t the language; it damn sure wasn’t the language that got everyone into Star Trek to the point where they conjugated Klingon. So I’d at least like to observe me crafting work that stuck so hard to people.

And Cassie Nichols also asked: How many blows with a pillow *does* it take to slay a moose?

One. It is to the back of the head of the troll slumbering in yonder forest, rousing her from her slumber and wakening her hunger. You will likely also perish this day, but so will that moose. It is a recourse only viable when justice is due.

Tim Van Sant asked: WTF?

AABD.

Danielle la Paglia asked: What book would you like to live in? Who would you be? Why?
The Norton Critical Shakespeare is very large. If I had to hollow out a book and live in it, I believe this might offer the most spacious living environment.

Danielle la Paglia also asked: What movie would you like to live in? Who would you be? Why?

I would like to live in my favorite movie. I would be myself, living with that cast of people, because it is my favorite movie. Feel free to guess what my favorite movie is. Unfortunately, “What’s your favorite movie?” is a Frequently Asked Question.

And Danielle la Paglia also asked: Who, what, when, where, why is Bruno Mars?

I had to Google to find out: he’s just some guy, you know? But before that, my imagined definition for Bruno Mars was a high-school mystery show starring a 6’6” middle-aged muscle head who had been held back so many times that he actually travelled back to the 1960s.

Jen Brubacher asked: What is the most mysterious number?

Negative zero. The only witnesses that claim to have seen it are unreliable. What is it hiding?

Mari Juniper asked: What does your bathroom look like? (interpret the question as you wish)

Dark. I should turn the lights on in there.

Mari Juniper asked: Since my verification word is "unitypen" I ask you: if there was a pen that could unite the whole world, what would it look like? How would it work? What about its effects?

You’re asking about the Ballpoint Black Hole Pen. Remove the cap and put the tip to paper to open a super-giant black hole. Almost instantaneously the entire world will be condensed to less than a single micrometer of super-dense united mater. We’ll never have been closer to each other.

Mari Juniper asked: Do I get to think of other Qs and post them later?

You were allowed to up until Saturday. Now you have to save them up for next year.

Chuck Allen asked: What's one question were you hoping no one would ask? And what's the answer?

I was hoping no one would ask me to explain the true Tao. The answer would be a punch in the eye.

Chuck Allen also asked: What's one book/movie that is so good you wish you had written it?

There are actually a lot of these. Several of the Lupin the 3^rd television episodes and feature films evoke that so strongly in me that I’ve invented a few fictional characters as outlets for my inferiority. The last book I read that had such an effect was G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, which is such an effective satire and condemnation of satire that I quaked with envy. He wrote that a hundred years ago.

Liminal Fiction asked: As you edit your novel, how often (approximately) do you decide to completely rewrite a paragraph or page or chapter vs. touching up existing work? At what stage(s) during the editing process do you like to ask a reader to read for you and provide feedback?

Several years ago I began honing my senses for reflexive editing. Anything I judge as addressable in a few minutes, I do on the spot. Everything else? The rough draft of my current novel is replete with bolded sentences, bullet points and notes IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. They serve as flags for me to come back and address a problem later. That sort of tool lets me continue with a story’s momentum even when I know what I’ve just done is broken. The best example is my first chapter: I wrote six drafts in one day before I realized I was wasting my time. I set up a final temporary first chapter, then continued to the second. Months later, I had finished the whole novel and read over the first chapter. With my handy retrospect, it took an hour to bang out exactly what it needed to be. I’ve given that kind of utter rewrite treatment to three chapters out of forty. For paragraphs? I couldn’t even count them. More need re-ordering or cutting a few details rather than utter rewriting. It was actually a stronger draft than I anticipated as I wrote it. That doesn’t mean there are hundreds of things in need of work, but a writer doesn’t need to make a perfect thing, only to make a broken thing and fix it.

A Racist VERSUS I Hate Gay

A funny thing happened Friday morning.

Friday followed Wednesday by some hours. It usually does. On Wednesday night I was exercising and watching M*A*S*H, and something in Radar’s unacceptance of Colonel Potter’s possible mistress triggered thoughts about how people come accept alternative lifestyles. I started rattling off items on a list a comical bigot might experience, then repeated them in various orders until I had the idea for a narrative. Ever since I left the novel to simmer I’ve been experimenting with any ideas that wander along.

After soaking and letting the tremors subside, I played around with my bigot’s timeline on the page. I soon feared the whole thing was hideously offensive, but it kept me laughing so I finished it. As soon as it was done, I e-mailed several friends in the hopes one would say, “Yes John, this is awful and you shouldn’t post it.” Just one person’s distaste would have convinced me to never publish it.

The height of inconsideration: they all thought it was fine. Three thought it was hilarious. The bastards. Still struck by doubt, I saved the document and decided to sleep on it.

Thursday morning followed Wednesday night (they’re fast companions). I woke to find hundreds of visitors had hit my site overnight for one particular story: “I Hate Gay.” It’s one of only three stories about gay issues I’d ever published in my years of daily writing, this one from back in December. People liked it back then, but it had been dormant for months. There was no reason so many people should suddenly have read it. Having just slept on my fourth-ever story about gay issues, I felt uncanny.

People say I don’t believe in coincidences. This is untrue. I believe too much in them. This is God dressed as the universe dressed as a wolf dressed as my sick Grandma beckoning me to come a little closer. Even after the Wipeout Homophobia on Facebook group took credit for the traffic, I felt uneasy.

Not only were these two stories similar. They were also insultingly different. “I Hate Gay” is raw introspection following a hate crime. “A Racist’s Acceptance” is the goofy tale of un-PC tolerance. The latter might well piss off any well-meaning folks who liked the former. I became petrified that the story was now less opportune than it might ever be.

So I did the capricious and logical thing, and posted it. I do capricious things really early on Thursday mornings. No Grandma Wolves devoured me, but it did strike me strongly enough to blog about it. You’ve got to cut me that much slack; tomorrow’s my birthday. But I am almost interested on any feedback between the two stories.

Bathroom Monologue: A Racist's Acceptance of Gayness Over Time

1. I don’t see them ever. I don’t know if they’re around me. I imagine if they do exist, they don't really make out with each other.
   
   
2. I know some of them are around me, but they don’t make out on top of my desk. When I go home, I imagine they still aren’t making out on top of desks anywhere.
   
   
3. I know some of them are around me, but they don’t make out on top of my desk. However when I go home, I imagine the hot girl ones are making out on top of my desk.
   
   
4. I use the internet to find free videos of the hot girl ones making out, sometimes on desks.
   
   
5. I break down and pay the monthly membership fee to a website with really hot girl ones. I do not tell anybody. However, when a guy in the office is a dick to one of the guy ones, I tell him to shut up because I’m trying to get work done. Guy thanks me. He is Sal. I have to hide the monitor from Sal because I am actually checking the website. I imagine they don’t know that. I still imagine that the guy ones don’t make out on desks anywhere.
   
   
6. Tropical storms are just lame hurricanes. My car skids into a ditch. I spend forever trying to get service on fucking T-Mobile. A guy actually stops and helps. He has really nice hair and his clothes match. Is he one of the guy ones? I don’t know. His most activist bumper sticker is about meat being murder. I like beef. I imagine some of the guy ones like beef.
   
   
7. My car slides into another fucking ditch because these hurricanes don’t know when to stop. I throw my piece of crap T-Mobile into the storm drain that the front tire is lodged in. A truck stops; inside are a guy and girl. They offer to help. The guy has really nice hair and gives off no sexy-vibes at the girl. Is he one of the guy ones, or am I racist? As they winch my car, I ask him. He looks at me like I’m the weird one. It gets awkward from there.
   
   
8. After several months on the paid website, I realize the girl ones and I are on the same team. We have the same enemy: other girls. I go out to a bar with some people, including two people I suspect of being girl ones. They give me pointers. I feel less racist.
   
   
9. I press my luck too hard. I go out to a bar with some people, including two people I suspect of being guy ones. I think I’m being amazingly cool telling them that I understand that I am their prey and feel unthreatened. I think they are amazingly uncool telling me I’m not “their type.” A fistfight may break out. I am informed “racist” does not mean what I think it means.
   
   
10. Somebody is pissed at me. He/she/they makes a drawing of two guy ones making out on my desk, and the picture itself is left on my desk. I figure it’s Sal, because he’s a bitch. I leave a dildo on Sal’s chair. The entire office has to go for “sensitivity training.” It is bullshit. The two who are totally girl ones and I sneak out early to smoke. They mock me ceaselessly over the picture from my desk.
    
    
11. So now some asshole keeps leaving the same picture on my desk every morning. The worst part: it becomes really funny. It winds up on everyone in the office’s desk. Then it winds up on the C.O.O.’s desk. She does not think it is funny. Even though I totally saw Sal sneaking out of her office that morning, I don’t rat on him. He’s just a guy.
    
    
12. Office goes out drinking to celebrate two months without a natural disaster. Some guys are total dicks to our girls. I step in and promptly lose a fistfight. Because that wasn’t embarrassing enough, I also get arrested. Spend night in cell with Sal. He throws up on my jacket and I realize I don’t see him as a guy one anymore. Same for our girls. I just see them all as people now. Well, except for the hot ones. Hot ones automatically default back to “hot girl ones.” I use my new phone to look up if that makes me racist.

Bathroom Monologue: Chess Scares Me

“Chess has always terrified me. It’s not the patriarchic implications. It's not the potential Marxist critique, or all the Pawns rushing to certain death. It's that they aren't really Pawns. They're all tentacles of the player, each with as little against as the Queen. One person dispatches them all, seeking to kill the pieces of the only other person in the chess world. The Bishops. The Rooks. The Knights, so brave and so dumb they only know one letter in the alphabet. They’re dispensable in pursuit of getting to the other person’s King. If the King’s in play, the other person you say down with is alive. The King is the vital spot of the chess organism, and the whole point is to rip the other person apart so you can put his one vital spot in peril. Stopping at Checkmate doesn’t mean anything other than, “You know if I felt like it, the only part of you that matters would be dead.” And it’s as good as dead, because whether or not you knock it over, the game ends. That other person is vanquished. I’d much rather play Halo or Gears of War. They feel much less personal.”

Bathroom Monologue: "How can you be militant non-stamp collector?" -A.C. Grayling

It takes some effort, much as it takes some effort to turn anything you don't do into an annoying hobby. Just imagine.

The first step can be as simple as looking where people get stamps. Whenever you see someone purchasing, applying or even mentioning a stamp, engage in vitriol over what a loathsome thing it is. If you tire of berating hobbyists, you can also harass your local mailman or protest federal funding for the post-office (it's not the primary form of communication and doesn't deserve privilege). There's such an easy thrill from being against something, especially from the safety of not being for anything else, that soon you'll wonder why all the other non-stamp collectors aren't militant.

With the help of bestselling literature you'll find ways to believe that stamp collecting poisons everything. And once you learn to look at the world selectively, you’ll be able to take offense anything stamp-related. Before long you'll establish a dogma against arguments those stamp apologists always use, and you'll be able to bring up counter-arguments before they even finish voicing an opinion. They become less like conversations and more like exhibits of your superiority.

Being right is hard, though. Find a supportive community in the world around you or on the internet. You might think that seeking social solace for non-stamp collecting is psychotic, but you’ll find that after pornography, the internet was invented for hating things (including hating pornography). You'll enjoy countless hours of blogging about how dumb some stamp apologist was in the news today. Seem far-fetched that any group could dig up something every day to take umbrage over? Then you have underestimated the willpower of angry people in groups.

Once you get into it, you'll realize non-stamp collecting is a vast hobby. You can research the neursoscience behind why anybody is dumb enough to like stamps. You can become a stamp historian and cherry-pick resources to prove how stamps have always been a bane to human society. You can embrace futurism and promote e-mail as the righteous and pure way humans will ascend above postage. If you’re feeling uninspired, just go to the comments section of anything on the Huffington Post and go nuts. All this and much more asinine hatred of other people's passions will be available to you through whatever modes of expression you desire: books, blogs, billboards, music, Youtube channels, Twitter feeds, podcasts, documentaries and conventions. Take it far enough and you can start your own non-stamp collecting university. Do it right and you'll make quite a living.

Thankfully, there aren't many militant non-stamp collectors. Anyone like that would be insufferable.

Bathroom Monologue: Full Body-Waxed Stubbornness

“Would it make you feel any better if I shaved my head? Because I'll do it. I mean, not right here. I'll go to the bathroom and do it now if you want, though. Or Hell, sure, I'll do it here on the sofa. Just let me go get my razor. I wish I’d bought an electric – do I have time to buy an electric? I’ll do it just with the Mach-3 if that’s what you want. If it will make you laugh or make you feel more comfortable. I don't mind. Of course it's more suitable for men to go hairless, so maybe that doesn't seem like such a big gesture. What if I go around pantsless? I can shave my crotch, too. That’s less normal for guys. I could do a full-body wax, though then I’ll definitely have to leave the sofa to go buy appropriate materials. I’m just saying, you won’t go bald alone if you don’t want to. Chemo hasn’t got shit on my stubbornness. My pantsless, full body-waxed stubbornness.”

My Big R.A.Q.

Do you have any questions you never ask anybody? Something too impolite? Too esoteric or downright weird?

Ask them to me.

We're a week away from my birthday. On September 4th I'm going to celebrate with my big R.A.Q., the antithesis of a Frequently Asked Questions page. The day will be devoted to Rarely Asked Questions. The R.A.Q. is your questions and my best efforts to answer them.

It starts here. Ask every darned thing you want in the Comments of this post. Ask what Caesar thought Brutus was up to right before the stabbing and why gravity is such a weak force. Ask what I watched on TV last night and how many blows with a pillow it would take to slay a moose. Ask me whatever you never get the gall to ask anyone else.

Bathroom Monologue: Fruit of the Infinitely Tiny Tea Pot

You can only brew it in an infinitely tiny tea pot. The only known pot currently orbits our sun; only the omniscient know for certain who put it there, but rumor says 'Apollo.' You boil it on a stove of solar winds and pour it into the evanescent tea cup. Quantum steam wisps up, bifurcating realities into those where it does billow and those where it doesn't. This strange brew can only be poured in universes where it doesn't exist. If you can ponder that nonsense, then you can bend over the cup, mind the scalding pot, and inhale the divine aroma of God's own private stock. It's not ambrosia or dark matter or the meaning of life; it's the stuff you drink to get up and invent all those things.

Vote for Best of #fridayflash

The #fridayflash community is gathering up a second anthology. While the editors run over submissions, a poll has opened up for the readers' favorite stories. Readers and writers are responsible for every story on the ballot. I had the honor of being nominated for two stories: "Thoughts Down from 40,000 Feet" and "Three Bindle Stiffs."

It says something that they're both comedies. It says something else that 40,000 is as informal as possible, while Bindle Stiffs purposefully includes one hundred obtuse words and phrases. Presently 40,000 is in third place and might have a chance of winning, which is another thrill. The contest also features several very talented writers and friends of mine, including Danielle La Paglia and Karen Schindler.

Regardless of which story is your favorite, please stop by and vote. The whole #fridayflash community thanks you.

Bathroom Monologue: The Titan of Lonesome Road

They got flippant naming their roads in Middle America. Michael hadn’t thought it would be real, but several hundred miles down the interstate his headlights caught the sign and he pulled onto “Lonesome Rd.”

No buildings greeted him and only the first fifteen feet off the interstate were paved. From thereon Lonesome was only dirt and divots. Michael slowed to ten miles an hour, letting his eyes drift closed. He barely needed the sense to tell where the giant was sleeping, though. It was so big that he’d felt it for the last half hour, growing as he got closer. Here it was oppressive, almost like it was in the car. When it got heavy enough, he rolled to a stop.

He wished Yab had warned him deserts got so cold at night. Chill came through the rental’s windows. Michael rested his hands on the heater. It felt like the giant was stirring out there, making the world tremble. He hoped it wouldn’t wake before the rest of Yab’s plan materialized.

Lights flooded the rental. Michael turned to see that it hadn’t been his giant rumbling; it was an eighteen-wheeler. He rolled his window down, wincing at the cold as he stuck his head out.

“Hey!”

“Listen, dude,” the truck driver yelled from inside headlights’ glare, “there’s a big critter sleeping under this road. It’s going to wake up real hungry. You just get back on the interstate and keep going to Nevada. It’ll be a better weekend for you.”

Michael yelled back, “Yab sent you?”

The trucker’s silhouette stiffened, then hustled over to Michael’s car. When he got near Michael could see his vaguely Hispanic face and long, oily hair. He stuck his hand through the window. Michael shook it.

“You’re here for the titan, too?”

Michael nodded. “Yeah.”

“Cool, dude. Meet me in the back.” He shuffled his legs uncomfortably. “Aren’t deserts supposed to be hot?”

Michael grabbed a jacket from the backseat and followed him.

The trailer was open. White track lights illuminated the floor, helping Michael make out the metal oval that took up most of the trailer. It was bolted to the floor. A red LED panel was similarly bolted to the rear side, attached to a crude computer and keyboard.

“Hey, dude.” The trucker rubbed his hands together. “I’m Miguel.”

“Miguel? I’m Michael.”

They looked at each other.

“That’s weird.”

“Kind of.”

Michael gestured at the keyboard.

“So what is this? A bomb?”

“A-bomb, I think.”

“Yab sent a nuclear bomb? You know how to work one of these?”

Miguel stuck his hands in his armpits. “Hell no. All I do is drive.”

“You just drove it here?”

“I drove a truck twelve-hundred miles keeping an eye out for a road that isn’t on my GPS and a guy who was supposed to mark the spot. That’s all Yab asked. Figured whoever was waiting would handle this.”

The trailer lurched, throwing both men to the floor.

Michael braced himself against the wall. “Titan’s waking up.”

“So what do we do?” Miguel asked, looking for a handle and trigger on the casing. “Point and shoot?”

“It’s not a gun. Nuclear bombs destroy cities. We could be killed. Yab isn’t asking that, is he?”

Miguel shook his head. “The titan wakes up and it’ll kill a lot of people, dude. Yab’s sent me after three titans before and he’s never gotten one of my partners hurt. He sent a bomb and a dude to wait for it. There’s got to be a plan. You got codes?”

Michael at the floor. “I’m not a bomb guy.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m a psychic. I found the titan and hung out for whoever came. That’s all Yab asked.”

Miguel frowned. “You supposed to ghost whisper the code?”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“This doesn’t seem like Yab. There must be something. You check your pockets?”

“For nuclear codes?”

Michael checked his jacket– Yab did get clever sometimes – but only found half a pack of gum. He offered it to Miguel.

“Trident?”

The trailer lurched again, this time so badly that the men almost flew into the ceiling. The truck came to a rest at an angle. Michael pulled himself up in front of the panel. It flickered, but it was still on.

“Not funny, dude,” Miguel said from behind him.

They heard tapping behind them. They wheeled to find a white-bearded man in a brown parka standing at the door of the trailer.

“Yab people?” he asked in a Jakob Smirnof accent.

Michael asked, “Yab sent you?”

“Yab sent me, yes,” he nodded. “I am teleporter, yes.”

“You teleport?” Michael asked, then looked at the bomb.

The bearded guy disappeared, then flickered into being next to Michael. He tapped him on the shoulder.

“I am teleporting people, animals, okay?” He pointed to the LED screen. “Not big bombs. You do bomb yourself.”

Miguel looked him over.

“You Russian?”

“Belarusian, okay? I am Mikhael.”

Miguel offered him a hand. Mikhael shook it.

“Sorry I am late, but I am parking ten miles away.”

“Ten miles?”

“You drove here?”

Mikhael nodded like his partners were developmentally challenged.

“I am teleporter, okay? I give you code, I teleport us safe from bomb, we drive rest of way home. It be okay. Okay?”

“Code?” Miguel smiled.

Mikhael produced a piece of translucent orange plastic and handed it to Michael. Paper was folded inside.

“Code is your job, okay?”

Miguel snickered. “Code is your job, dude.”

Michael frowned, snapped the plastic and read. He typed the code on the keyboard. The LED flashed numbers.

1:00.

0:59.

0:58.

Mikhael gripped both men by the shoulders. Miguel crossed himself. Michael rubbed the bridge of his nose. Psychic and bomb guy? Well, at least Yab wasn’t asking him to do PR. That guy was going to have a difficult morning.