"Open House on Haunted Hill" is live at Diabolical Plots!

Today I'm proud to present "Open House on Haunted Hill," one of my favorite stories I've ever written. It follows the loneliest haunted house in the world, which is just desperate for someone to live in it. It's just gone live at Diabolical Plots.

I can't overstate the outpouring this story has gotten so far. This is the most acclaim and attention any story of mine has received at launch. The kind words from readers, fellow authors, editors, and agents has affirmed all the work I put into this little house.

This story began as a joke at World Fantasy in 2018. I was trying to explain to other writers that I love Horror, and read and watch it all the time, but I don't write much of it. If I wrote a haunted house story, it'd be about one that wanted to help its occupants live comfortably. This got a lot of laughs, but also a lot of requests for me to please actually write that.

Well folks? I did.

Along the way, I was blessed by some keen beta readers and cheer readers. A special thanks goes out to all of them: Natalia Theodoridou, Michelle Ann Fleming, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor, Nat Sylva, Cass Williams, Ariel Harris, and Leigh Wallace. The editor at Diabolical Plots magazine, David Steffen, also helped me work some kinks out of the ending. To edit is divine, right?

You can read "Open House on Haunted Hill" for free by clicking this link.

My Mom's Six Reactions to Seeing Star Wars for the First Time

My mom doesn't really like Fantasy and Science Fiction. She barely reads what I write, preferring more grounded dramas like No Country for Old Men and The Ghost Writer. It's hard for her in a way nerd kids struggle to understand, because like many of our parents, she grew up without much access to cartoons or Fantasy books, and so didn't develop the taste that we have. She knows I love the genres, but can't get into Hunger Games and Pirates of the Caribbean. Or, she couldn't get into them until this year.

Earlier this year she watched LOST and started feeling like Genre Fiction could mean something to her. It had a blend of human stories along with its fantastic elements that made them approachable to her, something I'll probably write up later. In October, fresh out of European movies to watch, she binged all of Fringe, which was the true gateway drug for her. It's gotten me to start watching it, just to find out why it was the silver bullet.

That set her up, though. When the Force Awakens trailer hit, Mom called me up and asked something I'll cherish for years: "Can we watch Star Treks?"

Yes, Mom. We can always watch Star Treks.

She wanted to know about the cultural phenomenon she'd missed, about this weird collaboration between John Williams, the Jim Henson Company, and Harrison Ford. In preparation for the new movie, we watched Lucas's original trilogy. Watching her was more interesting to me than revisiting the films, and I had to share some of it.

Christmas Word Puzzle: What is this book?

Every Christmas I give my brother a book. Because he's the inspired sort who prods, shakes and holds his wrapped presents to the light to figure out what's inside, I give him a word puzzle that he can use to figure out what book he's getting. Today he gets the puzzle.

Every reader of this blog is also invited, every year, to try to beat him to it. This year's puzzle is simple: every number below corresponds to a letter, every letter has a clue, and all the letters spell out the title. It's a famous book that has been adapted into a famous movie.

You don't have to figure it out on your own, but instead, share whichever letters you figure out in the comments below. We've had complete strangers figure out the puzzles together before, which was a kick.

Okay, here's the puzzle:

1. The chemical symbol for Titanium is two letters. This is one of those two letters.

2. The next two letters spell a word.

3. The word is a guy thing. We’re starting off easy.

4. Mom's favorite HBO show begins and ends with this letter.

5. The chemical symbol for Titanium is two letters. This is the other of those two letters, not used in Answer 1.

6. There are two possible outcomes of a sporting match, and this one isn’t a ‘W.’

7. The number of work days in a week, in another alphabet.

8. Both a direction and a vowel.

9. The next two letters are completely opposite sides, often reduced to just two letters. They’re so opposed you’ve probably written them in your shoes.

10. Of course, which order the two letters go in is up to you to figure out.

11. The official letter of first-person narration.

12. The third capitalized letter in the name of a prolific Black comedian whose only album had only three letters in the title.

13. One of very few lower case letters in the English alphabet that typically has a dot over it.

14. The last letter in the last name of a famous American radio host who ran for governor of New York State just to fill in all the pot holes. I may have misremembered his reasoning, but he totally ran.

15. The first letter in the first name of a famous comedian whose seventh album was titled “An Evening With Wally Londo Featuring Bill Slaszo”. He hated that title.

16. The next five letters spell a word.

17. It’s a verb.

18. Your fingers can do it.

19. In chest surgery, someone might do it to your ribs.

20. An anagram of this easily makes another, more fun verb.

21. The next three letters spell another word.

22. Two of these letters in this word are the same.

23. It’s supposedly scary.

24. The only consonant repeated in the name of an English rock band, formed in Muswell Hill, and whose last album was titled “Phobia.”

Dad's Phases

"Dad, I’m a fairy princess and I’m off to slay the dragon!"

"That sounds exciting. How do you beat a dragon?"

"I don’t know. I think you need a wand. Can you make me a wand?"

"The library might have some books on it. Want to come read them with me?"

- - -

"Dad, I’m gay."

"Okay."

"Look, I know you’re upset about it."

"I'm not. How did you learn you were gay?"

"We were playing a game at a party. I know you’re upset."

"I’m really not, unless, wait, tell me more about this game."

- - -

"Dad, this is my boyfriend. His name is Vasily."

"So you're not gay anymore?"

"It’s called “bisexuality” Dad. God. Way to make a first impression."

"Pleased to meet you, Vasily. How did you meet my girl?"

- - -

"Dad, I’m not a girl."

"You’re not?"

"I never was, and I've known it since we started using lockers in Gym class. It’s why Mom and I don’t get along."

"Your mother thinks the world of you."

"You don’t notice anything, do you? You’re just in a little cis-cultured bubble."

"So you’re not a girl. What would you like to be called?"

"I don’t need your labels."

- - -

"Dad, I’m pregnant."

"…"

"I know. I’m not married, and I don’t want to be married. This is my choice."

"…"

"Dad? Are you mad?"

"No, I just forgot how to feel this way for a few years. It’s coming back to me."

"You’re so weird."

- - -

"Dad, I have cancer."

"…Okay. Okay, how do we beat it?"

"I don’t know."

"The library might have some books on it. Want to come read them with me?"

- - -

"Dad, I miss you."

Thankful for Ghosts

I’m thankful for having a genius brother. I could always pass a Math test, but Jasper had ambition, whether it was hot-wiring cars or counting bullets left in the revolvers of the assholes chasing us. When he died, it was with a purpose.

I’m thankful that Jasper died with unfinished business. It’s hard on me, and harder on him, but it was smart. He let lovers get away from him, and made promises knowing they’d go unfulfilled, and just about asked the Syndicate’s assassins to pin him down. We knew we wouldn’t get out of Georgia alive. The hopelessness was an investment.

Before we were two teenaged fuck-ups trying to take on the world. The next morning, we were one teenaged fuck-up and one pissed off ghost. We got a lot more work done. All that fancy throwing knife shit the Syndicate teaches didn’t do salt against Jasper. And when they turned and tried to escape, he’d possess their engine blocks and drive them into the ocean.

It once took us eighteen months to find the safe house where the man who strangled our father hid – an ugly labor, even if it’s how I met Hilde. And I’m thankful we don’t have to tail anyone anymore. Jasper sucked salt at tailing people, and I had to bail his ass more times than I’ve got fingers left. After he let himself die, after he died in my place in a sweltering warehouse and under a hail of knives, things got plain easier. He found Syndicate lawyers and magi faster than a GPS.

I almost began collecting a scrapbook of his greatest hits. The suspected heroin kingpin whose elevator malfunctioned. The three demonists posing as patent lawyers who went missing with their yacht.

I almost did it, but I worry that if I praise him too much, that’ll acknowledge his work, and then he’ll be done. If his business is settled, Jasper will cease to be. And maybe Jasper deserves the rest of ceasing to be. I can’t ask him because he doesn’t reckon things that way anymore. He’s still the pissed off ghost of a teenager, where I’m an expecting father of twins. I’m a little scared to tell him about them. I’m a little scared to tell him I’d like to slow down.

But I’m thankful. I’ll never pretend I’m not. Hilde wants to name one of the twins after him, and I owe him. I just don’t know how much further a man can owe.

Bathroom Monologue: Telling Dad

There were only my parents left to tell. I rolled up to the house and found Dad on the porch. An extension cord ran through the window to power a fan that blew into his face while he smoked his pipe. Maybe that’s why he was smiling. It was a rare event.

My bowels tightened as I approached, but it was probably better to catch him in a good mood for this.

"Hey Dad," I said. "Can we talk a minute? I have something to tell you."

"Is it that you're going to pay back-rent for the eighteen years I raised you?"

“You don’t have the legal grounds for that, Dad.”

“You going to pay me back for sending you to law school, then?”

I smiled into my sleeve, not wanting to show him too much positive reinforcement. Dad took encouragement like others took alcohol, and he was an abusive drunk.

“You know how I’ve had the same roommate for three years?”

“How is that lease?”

And down we went. Sucked directly into an inferno of topics on his mind. I bided my time, weathering complaints about the Dodgers’ line-up and the Republicans' concessions to Obama. There was a pause around what we were going to do for Memorial Day. Charcoal was a tenuous issue for him.

Charcoal is not how most people come out, but it was a break. I jumped in.

"Dad. I need you to know: I'm gay. Danny isn’t just my roommate. We’ve been together for almost a year."

He studied the handrail of the steps. I put my hand on it, and he studied another part of it. There was this big opening, and honestly I didn’t know how to fill it. Then Dad looked up, lower lip puckered.

"Okay," he said. "I tongued your mother's asshole last night."

My mouth fell open a little.

"You... what?"

"Kind of makes you want to throw up, eh?" His lip wasn't quivering anymore. "But you're not going to stop me. So what are we doing for the grill?"

And that was it. He even helped me break it to Mom, which was nice because it was another week before I could look her in the eye.

I swear he's a good man.

Bathroom Monologue: You Didn't Have to Elope

You didn’t have to elope. Okay, your mother never would have given her blessing to you marrying a… one of them. But I would have. You’re my boy. You would have made the decision no matter what I said – that’s obvious because you ran off and got married without asking me! And if you had to do it that weekend, fine. But if you called, I would have come. I would have been on the first plane to be there. I would have gone to your Bachelor Party. I would have paid for dinner after the reception. I will spend the rest of my life wishing I could have been there for this. And I’m not angry at you. You’re a married man now, and you’re going to have a lot more problems than some over the hill guy from the middle class being mad at you. I’m telling you this because I want you to call me. When you buy a house. When she gets pregnant. When my first grandchild is born. I don’t know what I ever did to make you think you couldn’t call me or shouldn’t tell me, but please: call. I will be on that first flight to see my grandson take his first steps or graduate third grade. Just call.

The Perfect Crime

I've been swimming to tinker with my health recently, striving to make across the little lake in our area. I was finishing my one and only lap of the day when I saw the three girls on their inflatable raft.

There was a tiny one, perhaps five years old, wearing a bright pink one-piece. There was also a slightly taller girl in a blue one-piece, and a significantly taller girl in a plaid bikini. Even with lake water in my eyes, they were instantly recognizable as Little Sister, Middle Sister and Big Sister. Big Sister was shoving Middle Sister's shoulders, teasing that she'd shove her overboard. Middle Sister struggled to remain undampened, while Little Sister huddled at the back of their raft, trying to keep it stable.

This was the scene of the perfect crime.

Bathroom Monologue: Mother-in-Law Vs. Mother of her Granddaughter Redux

“Oh God, can we just leave? I can’t take the stares. It's like I'm meat.”

"You look great, honey."

"You think?”

“For a human wheelbarrow? Yes! You should be proud.”

“…for a what?”

“It’s your body. You should be proud of your decisions, like the one to put on more pounds here and there.”

“I’m carrying a child!”

“Not in your thighs, deary. But don’t make excuses. Own it.”

“I haven’t even gained that much weight. My doctor says I’m at the dead-on average for seven months.”

“Dead-on average for the McDonalds generation, sure. But when I was carrying your husband? I was tight as a deer. Almost sinewy.”

“You have that look in your eyes sometimes.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Can we go?”

“We need to get dinner for Christmas, don’t we? Got to feed that fetus. And the rest of you.”

“Oh my God, you’re making more people stare.”

“If you can’t take the stares, then maybe you should take the stairs more often.”

“What the hell? That’s bad for the baby.”

“According to whom? When I was carrying Tim I lived on the seventh floor of a tenement with no elevator. The super always said I was very tight. When she stared, it was out of admiration. Those stares would have been grounds for divorce in six states.”

“This explains so much about Tim.”

“What was that? I can’t hear a thing in here. You'd think shoppers would use their in-door voices.”

“I said you’re not going to see this baby until she’s got her Masters degree.”

“Goodness, it’s noisy in here. Maybe we should leave. Want me to push the cart? We know how you feel about exercise.”

“…That’d be great. That’d be great.”

Bathroom Monologue: Three Laws Concerning Children

"Don’t have sons. If they survive childhood, they’ll be drafted off to war, sentencing you to spending every day dreading news. You’ll imagine them sweating, and fleeing, and crying out for you, all while you have to pretend how proud you are, instead of how your life is defined by dread of mailmen.

"Don’t have daughters. You’ll fear for their safety every time they leave the house, and you can’t fix the world that wants to abuse them, and you’ll never be able to prepare them for everything out there. They’ll be degraded, and paid less, and attacked more, and expected to appreciate it.

"Don’t have no children. Then you will spend your entire existence haunted by who should have been born, and the successes they could have wrought, and the mud they could have tracked onto your carpet. If you keep your carpets clean for fifty years, they will not be as valuable to you as will be if they suffer a single indelible foot-shaped stain. It will be an accident that fills all the empty moments, and emptiness is something the soul can not abide. You must have children.

"It's so hard being a parent. So hard not being one. The weight of being both has about broken me."

Bathroom Monologue: Anton and Anton

Anton sits on his knees before the grave of Anton. For a while, Emil and Yulia's son holds Anton's left hand and does his impression of prayer; at three years old, he no better understands prayer than he does who is buried beneath his soles.

"Amen," Emil and Yulia's son mutters, releasing Anton's hand to rub at his eyes. The drive here has made him drowsy, and Yulia stoops to pick him up. She bows a quarter of the way she normally would, dipping herself and her child toward the headstone.

Instead of 'Amen,' she says, "Thank you for saving my husband, Anton." She says nothing more, and ends her bow. She did not think much of Anton, the drunken shadow of her Emil. She is two paces behind Anton when he checks her, her gaze already on the car.

It is four years to the Saturday since Anton Behrs was blown up pulling Emil from a foundry. That is what everyone knows. They commemorate it on Saturdays because Emil Behrs has never in eleven years missed a day at the exchange, and Anton will not let Emil fail now. He misses absinthe.

Neuropathy, a Stroke, and While I'll Be Gone for a While

Wednesday was not the day I bargained for. The neurologist has no theory on why my legs are losing feeling or motion. Her best advice was to stop crossing my legs since that might be damaging circulation - even though the tests she held her in hands said there was no such damage. Even as I went in for the consultation, I joked that this wasn't so bad. There are, in fact, many worse things in the world than losing use of a limb or two.

God didn't think I was sincere enough.

I came home to discover my grandmother had collapsed, gone to emergency and was in hospice care. Was it a stroke or heart attack? Complications from influenza? My sister didn't know, but had heard she was so disoriented that they suspected acute dementia. At 95, anything is serious.

Old friends of mine know that I hate Easter because my grandfather died on it, just a few months before I was born. I'm named for him, which always feels like a crumby legacy this time of year. Now my grandmother might go out on the same holiday.

I'll be gone for a few days. My #fridayflash is already cued, the finale for The Only Thing Worse is the Cure. I had the first three A-to-Z Challenge entries set, too, so daily posting will go on without me, though I may miss the beginning of the blog hop. The composition end is all I can hold up right now. I've got to be there for my family.

May you all have splendid weekends. Remember that it matters less what you haven't done, and matters more what you do for those who remain.

Bathroom Monologue: The Only Thing Worse Is the Cure

I have never encountered an illness like that of the Young Master. What more rational name there is than “illness,” I am unaware, though it is an admittedly uncanny affliction.

Never had I wished for a thing so as to continue in my employers’ service when they announced they were expecting. The Master and Mistress had gone to great strains to conceive, importing all number of chemicals and powders, and seeking all number of blessing. One night I even witnessed the Mistress reading an occult tome, though the next day she ordered our precious blind cook to burn it and toss it out with the morning dregs.

The Mistress conceived it was time for me to retire. I could not deny the charges of my posture, of my trembling hands whenever I carried a tray of dinner to the Master’s upper study, and of my liver was deteriorating in much the same pattern as had that of my father and two forebears. It was only upon extreme begging of their charity that they allowed me to serve in reduced capacity through the birth and entry of a new member unto the household.

The Young Master was born of perfect health. I checked him myself as the doctors swarmed our Mistress, chanting of “internal aberrations," though I cannot recall her ever complaining of such conditions before. I carried the Young Master out of the room so he might not witness such pain as his first experience on our earth. It would be unseemly.

In the weeks that followed, the Master spent his days either in utter solitude in the upper study, or with the Young Master. How he stared at the the child, I sometimes feared he was going vile. I was almost relieved when he took ill and could no longer visit the lower floors.

It was by these emergencies that I was charged with finding wet nurses for the Young Master. Never have I heard of such trouble. Six we went through, six sturdy women, every one of them documented and with fine history. Four suffered anemia after their initial visits, and the other two were bedridden from unknown malignities.

We had such weather the night our Master finally slipped away. Nearly all the staff remained by his door, and it remains a regret that I could not join them, yet the Young Master required attention. I had to call upon a wet nurse of no documentation, who swore upon her life that her malignity was exclusive to her person and in no way transferable. Had I not been so shaken, I never would have admitted her, and yet?

The Young Master took to her breast immediately and found no complaint. Her milk was as fine as any of the women who had attended him before. No illness beset him that night or any night afterward, whereas, and I appreciate the sound of irrationality about it, but the wet nurse’s sallow malignity seemed to dissolve by morning. Even the boils on her neck waned. By Friday, she was comely for her age. I’ve had letters from her since that claim a total remission.

A coincidence, if not for this personal factor: since the Young Master came into my hands, these fingers have never been so steady. The pleasure of snapping one’s fingers is a thing I had forgotten, and now reclaim. I stride through these halls with endurance and posture unknown to me for fifteen years at the most conservative. And the pain in my liver? I have not felt it bleed in nigh on a month, and I should, for the Young Master takes to prodding at it whenever I carry him about his estate.

Census of the staff confirms my conviction: arthritis is extinct, and malignity seemingly out on vacation, while every able-bodied servant has taken to bed or had to excuse himself. I took my census to our precious blind cook for advice of one who thinks without the clouded vision of sight. Her answer shook me to my core, for after I asked her, she looked upon me for the first time in our long tenure together, and I realized that was her answer. She saw me, and it brought a tear to an old man’s eyes.

She has no more notion of what to do with the Young Master than I. Is this a condition that can be cured, and is it something that even ought to be cured?

So I must indulge in an indiscretion. Tomorrow, before the authorities arrive to take the Young Master into their care, I will shuttle him to the insane asylum on the other side of the mountain. I have known numerous educated men who claimed insanity to be an illness of the mind. Well if this is true, then after I push the Young Master’s pram through those halls for an hour, I may find several dozen cured and grateful minds with whom to discuss how best to serve him.

My apologies to any orderlies who catch the annual chill from our visit. I hear it is quite savage this year.

Click here for Part 2.

Bathroom Monologue: Exorcising Mother

It’s still surprising Mom lived so long. She was a sweet lady, always donated to UNICEF and Make-A-Wish. She worked as a maid at one of the Chicago Hyatts for thirteen years, and again at the Radisson for eighteen more. She cleaned rooms, folded toilet paper into white roses, and occasionally spiked visitors’ medications or the minibar with untraceable chemicals. As Aunt Theresa put it, she was a prolific but unassuming professional.

When she died, it wasn’t by a hitman. It was liver failure. I was there, bawling my eyes out, and the only assassins to blame were diet and genetics. She’s why I eat so many salads.

She’s also, I think, the reason why all my ex-boyfriends are dead. As far back as I can think, Mom was very supportive of who I was. Dad still doesn’t understand – he thinks I can just like girls if I try hard enough. Mom understood and coaxed me to love who I loved, though she refused to lower her standards. The boys I liked weren’t good enough for her. When I was dating Micah, she actually went to his concert to watch how he behaved. I saw her halfway through his set. She made a little “swish” sign at her neck, which meant I wasn’t seeing him again. Like, romantically again. She didn’t kill him. Heroin killed Micah. I’m pretty sure heroin killed Micah.

It was a month after Mom’s funeral that I noticed a problem. I was with… Jake. It sounds tackier than it was, but Jake was a Canadian brewer hoping to turn full-time hockey player. I know, it’s terrible, but he was so earnest. Or he seemed earnest. Actually, he was an asshole who called that he was sick the morning of Mom’s funeral, and it turns out he was actually drunk with his team. I saw the pics on one of their Facebook Walls. I was so mad, and I was plotting to dump him via that same Facebook Wall when other status updates came in. Jake, who was almost born on ice, had slipped in his shower that night and broke his neck.

I was devastated. Like, Aunt Theresa and my friends thought I was going to kill myself. These two girls from Mom’s church actually drove me to grief counseling sessions, to and from, and took me out to lunch afterward every time. Mom knew really nice people. I mean, except for the mob ties.

It was at one of these sessions that I met Hunter. Hunter. God, I can’t believe I ever dated someone named ‘Hunter,’ and that name hurts twice as bad in retrospect. It turns out he would go these sorts of grieving sessions to prowl for easy lays. I kind of suspected it, but he had the nicest hands I’d ever seen. Hands are a thing. Don’t judge.

Anyway, Hunter tried to sneak out of the house with my wallet and was, by means I still haven’t figured out, decapitated by the screen door. You probably read about it. It was kind of a big deal in the newspapers. I hear it made the front page of Reddit for a minute.

Then there was D’Angelo. He restored vintage cars, and we made out in the back of the only Rolls Royce I’ve ever been in, and a week later a pneumatic press broke and the Rolls fell on him. And then Gustav and Aleksei, who I wasn’t really in a thing with, but they both fell through the same patch in the ice. I remember them because right before my cell rang, I swear I saw Mom in my mirror. She looked like she was cleaning the frame.

Am I crazy, or is my mom’s ghost killing all my boyfriends? Dad said he still feels her presence, but I don’t have the balls to ask him if that presence feels like it strangles people. He’s lucky that he doesn’t want to date anymore. It’s also frustrating, because if he would, and those women died, I’d know Mom was looking after me. I mean, stalking after me. Poltergeisting after my sex life, because it isn’t hard enough being gay in America.

It’s super-weird, but I moved twice, and it hasn’t stopped. I could probably get the Match.com people arrested as an accessory at this point. Last week a cute guy cut me off in traffic, and ten minutes later I drove past the smoldering ruins of his car. “Afternoon Delight” was on the radio. That was Mom’s favorite song.

I once saw a psychotherapist to find out if Mom is just a useful delusion, expressing latent telekinetic abilities. What if I was actually killing all of those people with mental powers, and schizophrenically projecting it onto my late mother? The doctor thought this was all a scam to get prescriptions. He’s dead now.

It’s lonely. I mean, I guess Mom is stuck in a homicidal purgatory which is probably pretty lonely. I still have friends, and Aunt Theresa, and Dad, while Mom doesn’t even have Twitter. I’ve tried telling her, and praying to her, and praying to God to maybe finally take her away, but if you believe that omen on the turnpike, it hasn’t taken yet. It feels too harsh to have my mom exorcised, especially just for my sex life. I don’t know. It isn’t fair.

So now I just tell people the truth. Nobody believes my cute maid of a mom is now snapping necks from beyond the grave, and I need this stuff off my chest. I don’t know. What would you do?

Goodbye, Grandpa - Scattered Look at a Life

At 12:06 on October 15th, my grandfather passed away. I've been prepared for this for too long, and it's left me with too many thoughts about a man whose life was too much larger than my own.

When my grandmother passed away, I feared I was too sentimental in talking about her. There are many good uses for sentimentality when dealing with death, but I gilded her character, ignoring harmful flaws and major dimensions of who she was. This is not to attack her, or my grandfather, but to recognize the complexity of any given life. The whole package is who now lies dead, not only the good or the saddest or the most popular parts.

Patterns are real and narratives are useful, but they can also oversimplify people, and delude us into thinking life isn’t messy. With your permission, I’d like to share a few things about my grandfather, not in any particular order, since every item is true. You can consider this prose poetry, or meta-non-fiction, or simply the eulogy I’m not going to say on Thursday. Regardless, these are some things I’d like to relay about a man I knew.

-My grandmother forced him onto a diet around when I was born. It grew increasingly strict, and he chaffed for junk food. My first memory of visiting them alone was Grandpa putting a hand on my shoulder, almost hiding from her behind me, even though I was tiny. I remember his voice going cagey as he said, “Well, I have to take John out for pizza.”

-He was one of six boys in an Irish Catholic household. His mother died so early he never knew her, and his father had little time for him. When he came back from World War 2 almost bedridden with malaria, his father told him to, “Quit your bellyaching.”

-He lied about his age to sign up for the marines early. His service put him in the Pacific, where he was issued one rifle. His unit was instructed to decapitate the dead bodies of Japanese soldiers and keep their skulls to protect the barrels of their rifles from rain. He kept the skull after the war, usually hidden in his attic, up at least until ten years ago. Why he did that is a subject of family urban legends.

-He worked with Job Corps on the East Coast of the United States, and helped hundreds of poor black families find work in a tense city. He made some friends during that period who still visited him even in his last year. I never met any of them, but heard amazing things.

-He was never comfortable visiting a Chinese restaurant. I watched his fists clench and eyes dart around the waiters; they made him nervous, giving him flashbacks to combat with Japanese soldiers.

-He held the most exuberant conversations with Jehovah’s Witnesses I’ve ever seen. They never came close to converting him, nor did he seem to try on them, yet he always perked up when he saw them coming.

-He and my grandmother helped finance my college education; it wouldn’t have been possible without them. One time, when I needed to get home but Mom was busy, he picked me up, driving from Connecticut, to the college in Vermont, to Mom’s in New York, and then back home to Connecticut. He didn’t seem to mind it at all. During the drive, he lectured me on how fiction was evil, being fundamentally a manipulative lie. When he couldn’t convince me to give up fiction, he said he was certain one day more articulate people would show the world that it was only deception.

-His senility and dementia humbled him in ways that saddened me, even though I’d often been at odds with him before it. One great change was my writing. On no day could he remember what I wrote about, and often he forgot that I wrote novels at all. Yet whenever I mentioned that I was writing, he would encourage me, tell me I deserved to be proud of myself, and say that I seemed very serious about the work. For someone who could remember so little, every few months he’d ask how my book (or “your thing”) was coming along.

-Every single time in my adult life that I told him I loved him, his warmest response was awkwardness. His typical response, even at his most senile, was disdain. He enjoyed affection and sentiment from his wife, daughters and granddaughters, but not from any man I ever recalled. Over a hundred times in the last two years I accidentally ended a phone call with, “Love you, Grandpa,” to which he’d respond with something like, and often exactly, “Uh, well, goodbye.”

-There is an infamous Christmas in my family. It was the winter after my father moved out, and my grandparents made a power play. I was withdrawn from religion and holidays at the time, and made my desire to abstain explicit at multiple points before the day. I simply attempted to sleep in and let the family do what they wanted. My grandparents visited early in the morning with presents, commanding everyone to open them in order, woke me up and urged me into the living room. They told us where to sit, what to do, letting us know they were in charge, and I remember how helpless and uncomfortable my mother looked in the throes of what should have been kindness. I tried to avoid the gift-rituals by making coffee and fetching things for people. When I said I didn’t want anything, my grandfather stormed up to my face, a fist clenched suggestively at his side. I saw his eyes soften with concern when he realized I was taller than him, and the taint of fear that I might win. Before I could say anything to calm him, he circled around me and walked out of the house. I did not talk to him for several years after that.

-After my grandmother died, the family quickly realized he was too senile to live on his own, or even in a private house with live-in care. He was placed in the best nursing home they could find, but I knew he hated it. Readjustment is even harder for people suffering from dementia, and at the funeral one thing I clearly saw he longed for was family contact. The next night I called him, and we chatted for a few minutes. I repeated that for almost every night for the next two years, sometime between 5:30 and 7:30. We did the math last month, and counted around 700 calls – we’d talked more recently than in the rest of my life. It took very little time from my day, and meant unfathomable things to him. At his absolute cognitive worst, he still recognized my voice and, according to anecdotes, would brighten when someone said John was calling later.

-My sister was incredible about visiting him at the nursing home. My visits were fewer, since my distance was greater and health weaker, but I remember my first visit to him vividly. He hadn’t enjoyed the home’s lunch very much, and Mom worried about how to appease him. I put my hand on his shoulder, standing side-by-side with him, and told her, “Well, I have to take Grandpa out for pizza.”

Thank you.

Bathroom Monologue: Cleansing

This absolutely did not happen, and is especially not about me or anything I said to my niece, no matter what anyone tells you. It is entirely a work of fiction.

Once there was a family of three, a mother and father struggling with their impulsive daughter. Despite buying her anything she wanted and bribing her with trips to the movies and theme parks, she refused to do any chores. This girl loathed cleaning her room with the passion that God loathed sodomy. Eventually they said she could not have dessert on any night when she didn’t at least make her bed. On the first night, she tore the sheets from her mattress and screamed so loud the neighbors phoned the police.

This girl had a loving and helpful uncle. He went over for dinner on the second night and witnessed her punting her iPhone across the house. When he inquired why, she yelled, “It’s a form of protest!”

After her parents explained things to this loving and helpful uncle, he asked for a moment alone with her. He shut the door and had a private chat in her room. When he re-opened the door, her anxious parents found their little girl hastily putting toys away in her closet. The parents took it as a miracle and hugged this genius uncle with a gratitude he wishes they remembered now.

When they inquired what he’d done, he said he’d merely talked reasonably to her.

When they inquired to his niece, she pursed her lips together, avoided their gaze, and asked if dessert were available.

Immediately after school the next day, she put her Adventure Time knapsack in exactly the right spot. After her father made her a sandwich, she washed her own plate for the first time in her life. As dusk rolled in, she rushed to her room to make sure it was tidy, and no sooner was dinner over, then she nervously circled the table and ensuring her parents’ chairs were pushed in correctly.

This routine lasted a few days, until an unusually strong storm knocked out the power in their neighborhood. The entire family woke up late, and she almost missed school. Her father honked from the car twice before going back indoors, discovering her hastily smoothing the sheets on her bed. He had to drag her away from the room, at which point she punched him square in the groin and threw an incomprehensible tantrum, yelling something about “him finding us.”

When her father asked who “he” was, she froze up and babbled that she couldn’t talk about him. He’d come sooner then.

While her father was befuddled, her mother was suspicious. She’d never been as nice to her brother as she could, and needlessly sought to blame him first. She phoned him in the middle of a very busy writing session, completely breaking his train of thought. It was only because he was preoccupied with writing-thoughts that he let slip that, maybe, he’d told his niece a fib.

The mother asked, as rudely as humanly possible, what story he’d told.

The uncle answered, as polite as could be, that there might have been an axe-murdering clown loose in the city, psychically attracted to families who left their rooms dirty. He tended to sleep in closets that were not properly organized or beneath unmade beds.

The mother went utterly hysterical, forcing the kindly uncle to drive all the way to their house and explain to his niece that there was no such clown. It took two hours of his day to convince her that the whole thing had been a joke and none of her family were at risk of axe-based homicide. Even after using his whole afternoon to debunk it, her parents showed no gratitude, screaming at him on his way back to his car.

The kindly uncle has since heard that his niece is back to leaving the entire house a mess, and that she broke some expensive plates when they asked her for help tidying the garage. He chooses not to believe the story. Let his sister and her husband learn on their own that monsters are absolutely real.

Bathroom Monologue: Be Another Yourself

“They don't want you to be yourself. And it's not just because deep down people are insecure, scared, misinformed, hungry and horny. Your base characteristics are not your real safe. No grandma that pats you on the shoulder and says, "Just be yourself" is saying "Go be a braindead animal." But that grandma doesn't want you to really be yourself, either.

“That grandma and her society don’t even want you to like Yu Gi Oh cards. It certainly doesn't want the full person inside you. Not the one who finds that anodyne department store music helps her concentrate. Not that one that will never be a full crossdresser, but certain days doesn't understand why a long skirt isn't an option for him. That one that, every few Wednesday nights, wants to cry to reruns of Barney the Dinosaur.

“Society does not want your personality. It wants a norm we've all unconsciously assented to, so nobody gets weirded out and everybody gets home with minimal eye contact. You and me both signed the contract in invisible ink. If you don’t remember anyone else being there, it’s because we were all ignoring each other. That’s the benefit of suppression.

“You must be this tall to ride this girl. You must look this sad to enter this funeral. You must be this embarrassed that this number of your countrymen don't know where Yemen is on a map, even if you know that the economy is so bad that none of those people will ever get the chance to visit that hemisphere. You must, above all things, suppress your bullshit in favor of the bullshit of society. This is because none of us want the real you. We want the real us, and if we can't get the real us, then why the fuck would we want the real you?”

Bathroom Monologue: Loving Cannibals

Because they lived near The Z, there were some customs they couldn’t discard. Leaving their uncle to die would only make him wander into their camp later that night, hungry and distant. Conferring him to the soil would likewise assure his rise, and the buried rose with the strength of the land. His liver was too grave and they simply had had to behead him to prevent the turn, and soon it was impossible not to submit to other customs.

As they ate his feet, they told stories of the walks he took at dusk and where he might have gone, and the times he carried medicine back from the east with nothing but rags tied around his ankles.

As they ate his hands, they recollected the many pots these fingers had spun, and their mother reminisced on how these palms had helped deliver two of them into the world.

When they ate of his ribs, they spoke of his heart and courage, his lungs and broad voice, and of his infinite guts and gall. No one was allowed to remain silent, no mouth empty, and no metaphor unplumbed.

When all from littlest to eldest ached with fullness, they committed what was leftover to their stock of jerky, mixed and unsorted so that no one could avoid consuming his remains, and so no one who ate in the weeks ahead could forget him. To those outside The Z they seemed a mad folk, unwelcome to any but the keenest opportunists. To each other, customs made them family.

Emergency: Liver Donor Needed for Teen Boy

This is my youngest cousin, Will Corcoran. He’s the only son to Jodi and Bean Corcoran, and brother to three loving sisters.  Will was born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that attacks almost every facet of the human body. He’s no longer strong enough to go to school, he's routinely rushed to the hospital for infections his body can't fight, he's endured every kind of invasive test medical science has to offer, and yet he and his family have kept fighting. This kid has endured outrageous pain and disability in his life, and now if we don’t help him, he won’t live.

Recently we found out that Will’s liver is failing. The cystic fibrosis is destroying it, and he needs a transplant to live. A healthy person’s liver will repair and re-grow itself; one donates only a portion of his or her liver and lets it regenerate. Will's body simply can't regenerate the tissue anymore and needs your immune system’s help.

Will’s blood type is A, and so he requires either an A or O-donor. I don’t match and my health is too poor to donate living organs, but I can at least open this up to the people I know.

Will's family is asking for donors who have strong health insurance just in case. I'm told the healing process for a donor is typically two months. Bean has told us, "in a nut shell my insurance pays for the entire surgery all blood work and some traveling expenses depending on how far away the donor lives. There should be very little, if any out of pocket expenses."

Will lives in Connecticut. I’m certain his parents will help you travel for the procedure if necessary. If you or anyone you know can help this boy live past his teens, please message me here, by Twitter, by Facebook or e-mail. I will put you in contact with the surgery team and Bean Corcoran.

Any responses and any continued forwarding of this message is extremely appreciated.