Bathroom Monologue: Ways to Read

The reader reads your book.

The good reader underlines things on your page.

The editor corrects things on your page.

The aspiring writer corrects things on your page, leaves suggestions in-between words, and will rewrite entire sentences in the margins.

The master writer will retype your whole manuscript to get a feel for it, changing words, sentences, paragraphs, back story, conflicts and context on the fly as he discovers how it is that he actually writes from rewriting your book.

The typesetter, dreading all these people, stays as far away from bookstores as possible.

“It was his turn” on Blink Ink

Blink Ink has accepted "It was his turn" for e-publication. It's a tweaked version of a 55-word story from last year, about a magician who vanished - and it wasn't part of his act. You can read it here: http://blink-ink.com/content/2009/07/it-was-his-turn/

Bathroom Monologue: Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody…

A bride with a bloody gown and knives for fingers stood in Chantal’s door. Her lipless mouth grinned, asking, “You said Bloody Mary in the mirror three times on October 29, 1984, right?”

Chantal ran for the window, but it was stuck shut. One serrated finger slid up her shoulder and neck, until it caressed her ear.

“The folktale that I come for anyone who mocks my name in the mirror is true. I just never said when.”

Devil Gone Missing on Thrillers, Killers & Chillers

My flash story, "Devil Gone Missing," is story of the day over at Thrillers, Killers & Chillers. It's about something that happened in a dump, because dumps are scarier than supermarkets. You can check it out here: http://thrillskillsnchills.blogspot.com/2009/07/devil-gone-missing-by-john-wiswell.html

Stories set in supermarkets are pending.

Bathroom Monologue: Two Horns, Six Sentences

The agent said they could cut off one of their horns and increase their chances at marketability. Unicorns were always in demand, but “bicorn” sounded like a farm subsidy. Most of them refused self-mutilation to masquerade as their more popular cousins, and stood by their virtue as a taller, sturdier breed with natural handholds for children who wished to ride them through dreams. All their endorsement deals fell through save one with a glue company, and when a protestor explained to them why they’d gotten the deal, they were pretty angry.

Anyway, that’s why those beautiful steeds are down there amongst the army of darkness. Hell gave them work when little girls wouldn’t even draw them on their notebooks.

Channel Surfing

I watched twenty minutes of 28 Days Later on the TV, waiting for my favorite bit, where the camera pans back in the church to reveal the note from survivors of the apocalypse, which reads: "THE END IS EXTREMELY FUCKING NIGH."

Having seen my favorite bit, I switch channels and get some kind of documentary on Ronald Reagan, who says, amidst background laughter, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

I change the channel up to the triple digits to flee this coincidence, only to find a gaunt man on a rooftop, holding a dry-erase board over his head with the question: "WHAT’S THE BAD NEWS?"

Desolate music swells behind him and I change the TV to anything else, and this anything else turns out to be the recently departed Charlton Heston bursting through a door and screaming, "Soylent Green is people!"

I turn off the TV, rub my eyes and wish there was some way I could share this with others.

Bathroom Monologue: Pun Time

(This was written in a challenge to tell something relating to the above photograph)

“Found it out by second base.”

“No way!”

“I thought they were a myth…”

“It’s real, Whitey. Got to be worth at least a million.”

“Never thought I’d see a real baseball diamond.”

Bathroom Monologue: Kiddy Kitty

Despite having the elevator to themselves, the boy stood so close to Ronald that he almost rubbed against his left leg. Ronald followed elevator protocol and stared at the descending numbers, ignoring his juvenile elevator-mate until the kid tugged on his trouser leg.

“Sir,” the boy said in a voice that was almost a purr, “how would you feel if Tigger, your girlfriend's cat who died nine years ago when you went to Hawaii and forgot to get him a sitter, was reincarnated?”

Ronald pushed back into the very corner of the elevator and asked in disbelief, “How do you know about Tigger?”

The boy pulled a handful of Meow Mix from his pocket and popped it in his mouth. He replied as he chewed, spraying Ronald's trouser with crumbs, “I’m nine.”

Six Sentence Week 4

The hits keep coming, and they come in six packs. It's Six Sentence week again here at the Bathroom Monologues, featuring stories about baseball, literacy, reincarnation and more. Please vote for your favorite on the poll, which should pop up Wednesday. Please comment, too, on what you think of what I'm doing with the constraint; It's always helpful to know if people think I'm doing work worth doing.

Does a semi-colon make it one or two sentences? Will I fool them if capitalize "It's?"

Bathroom Monologue: Umbrellas

"It's bad luck to open an umbrella in the house. Strange things happen, like objects getting knocked off tables, walls getting scratched, and inexplicable increases in the amount of water on my floor. Might be ghosts. Now close you fricking umbrella and wipe your shoes."

Bathroom Monologue: Why Vampires Suck

I originally wrote this for the Fantasy Magazine blog that asked why we loved or hated vampires. It's way too damned long to be a comment, though I did post it over there anyway.

I can’t stand vampires anymore. The children’s expurgated version of Dracula was one of the first novels I read in elementary school, those glow-in-the-dark plastic teeth were the coolest thing in the world in 3rd grade, and I watched Blade an embarrassing number of times in high school. But there came a time when that fiction became dominated by too much trash and pseudoscience for the monsters to be scary or intriguing anymore. I’m afraid they’re reaching the point werewolves and mummies did before them. Their time may be up.

All that is wrong with the modern vampire is not any one element or author’s fault. However, many of the modern vampire’s problems arose from secular influences. There is a pathetic strain running through Horror that sees them tearing through walls, surviving bullets to the head and lifting cars as realistic, but being afraid of crosses as not. I’m not Christian but I could see what very ham-handed writers were trying to do to the Fantasy. They wanted to remove what they didn’t believe from the mythos, but unwittingly insulted the entirely implausible fiction. Suddenly magic was yanked out and there was no cool shapeshifting, no good explanation for the fear of the sun, and the psychic “familiar” phenomenon turned into psychic pseudoscience (when it was explained at all). The clever variations on vampire tropes – like why or how stakes were supposed to work – were dwarfed by a general half-hearted apology for it being fiction, and fiction that apologizes for itself insults both the story and the audience. What the secularization of the vampire did, mostly by accident, was sever the Fantasy creature’s connection to the world. It was like taking night and the moon away from the werewolf. Satan’s overplayed in fiction, but vampires need some mysticism. That they once were one with the night gave them a mythological power they lack altogether today.

In place of magic, now vampirism is a disease – presumably because we’re terrified of STD’s instead of witches these days. But the result is something downright insulting to the ill. I suffer from a neuromuscular syndrome and have mentored a couple of chronically ill girls. Disease does not make you immune to bullets or render you capable of biting through body armor. Reducing vampirism to infectious superpowers is ridiculous, made worse when so many don trendy clothes and black trench coats. They’re the vapid Matrix posers of Fantasy.

The modern zombie does a much better job of expressing the mental and physical degradation of disease, and their far broader potential for infection allegories and apocalypse stories has helped them completely overtake the popularity of their undead brethren. Zombies, popularized in film during the nuclear age, have beaten vampires to the punch. It’s not even a contest. Even in prose, Max Brooks’s World War Z blows away every piece of vampire fiction of the decade on narrative and literary levels.

Then there’s what vampires have actually done in their new pseudoscience domain.

Since Carmilla’s lesbianism and Dracula’s creepy harem, vampires have always had sexual themes. Some directors used those to probe rape and homosexuality when the political climate was less tolerant in visual arts. But Post-Anne Rice, vampires are insipidly horny. Twilight’s teen angst romance and True Blood’s constant banging do little to remedy this. Not to insult the author of a recent blog entry around here, but neither Twilight’s hesitance towards pre-marital sex nor True Blood’s fascination with as much pre-marital sex as possible is interesting. Not with vampires. Not without them. Contrary to popular belief, sex is not mature – kids have sex all the time, and most sexual vampire fiction shows a distinctly adolescent fascination with rutting. That’s certainly part of why I detached from it. I remember when I first turned against the idea of the vampire – reading Rice’s The Vampire Armand, with a slave begging his master not to whip his thighs as he was “disciplined.” Vampire sexuality rapidly descended into the prurient and titillating, which is to say, it became trite. That’s the coffin where vampire sex has laid to rest.

I miss the coffins. Damn, do I miss the coffins. They could be hokey, but at least hokey is the attempt to feel authentic. Somebody who sleeps in a coffin is way more interesting than someone who sleeps on satin sheets, even if a supermodel joins him. Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot was the last truly great piece of vampire fiction I can remember, giving us a town too full of its own trivial drama to realize the layers of evil unfolding around them. King wanted modernize the vampires he loved so much, and so while he had them handling land deeds and swarming in a school bus, he kept the stake, the cross, the coffin, the transformations and familiars. He maintained the regal air of the father vampire while sowing the notion of the local, lesser child, and in doing so maintained the dread of infection and the bravery of the hunt. He also had broader vision than most Horror writers, also including a creepy abstract version of the classic haunted house to play influence over his classic critters.

For vampire fiction to live it had to outgrow the Dracula model King used, but it didn’t grow into anything compelling to a mind that grew up with it. Buffy and her quirky crew lived on their rapport. Fans watched for the characters, not their challenges, and “Vampire Slayer” quickly became an inaccurate title as they wound up stabbing Frankenstein-rip-offs, giant snakes and demons. Hence why they started just calling her “The Slayer” instead. The current Supernatural is much more entertaining to me, in no small thanks to its openness about a wider variety of baddies going bump in their nights. Those shows are carried by the cast and the characters they make. The Fantasy is a backdrop, and it can be a pretty shallow one.

Where it wasn’t founded on ensembles, popular vampire fiction mutated into exaggerations of old tropes. How many movies have riffed off the classic black and white Nosferatu and Dracula? Anne Rice exaggerated the sexual element to titillate readers. True Blood is now telling a white trash town drama story, plus things that bite and the people who hate them. The 30 Days of Night comics are just Salem’s Lot again, turned much bloodier (and in the film they might as well be werewolves). Marvel Comics dusted off Blade to make an action hero out of the Van Helsing model. Unsurprisingly, Van Helsing himself exploded as an archetype, and then an actual character, including a film bearing the name (and bearing no resemblance to Stoker’s good doctor).

The last vampire story to make me give a damn was the anime, Hellsing. It kills me as a writer and voracious reader that it was a cartoon I liked instead of a book. But the Japanese took the tropes of shapeshifting, night, the bite, the familiar, the dungeons and the legacy of Stoker, and built something visually cool and disturbing. Their Alucard had distinct style in the way he dressed, the way he moved, and the way he dealt with the modern vampire punks (inadvertently punishing many of the crappy stereotypes of modern vampire fiction). Along the way he got a busty, blonde sidekick who somehow managed to go the whole series without getting bent over HBO style.

Yesterday I got my haircut by a young woman who was reading Stephanie Meyer’s Eclipse. I asked her to tell me about the series – just to listen to somebody who genuinely enjoyed reading. Meyer is not for me. Sentence-by-sentence she simply can’t hold me, sparkly vampires are too silly, and at 27, I may be too old for Romeo and Juliet with fangs. Even my friends who enjoy younger-targeted fiction feel they’re too old for this. ‘Vampire sparkles’ are a joke amongst us. But I was happy for the haircutter, because she was excited to read something, and that will always be a gift, no matter how trashy the writer (and there are worse than Meyer). The funny thing, and sad thing, is that in ten minutes she didn’t describe any character, plot or variation on vampires. For ten minutes she only had variations of “It’s good,” and that she hoped there would be a fifth book. Speaking the allure of vampires, she was equally enthused to read The Host, which she described as being about robots who take over the world.

That’s where I am as a lover of the creepy and the fantastic. If, in our world of remakes, somebody could do something cool with the vampire without insulting its legacy, I’d be game. Since Salem’s Lot it seems like my favorite vampire stories have all been riffs – Shadow of the Vampire being a movie about making a vampire movie, and Christopher Moore and other authors straight-up mocking the lore in print. Those were fun, but they walked no new paths. There is no prose equivalent of Hellsing. Even I’ve written a couple of short stories in attempts at novelty in the neck-biters. I’d like to like them again. I’d love for an author to give me a good reason.

Bathroom Monologue: Fawcett Vs. Jackson, OR, I'm probably going to Hell now

The difference between the dead is subtle. Michael Jackson shuttled young boys to his mansion so he could touch them. Farrah Fawcett sold her picture to young boys so they could touch themselves. The difference was customer service.

Scheduled Post Problem

I apologize for stories going up late on here. For over a week now Blogspot has had some glitches. I have several weeks of stories scheduled to go up at 9:00 AM. Blogspot simply isn't posting them. Google claims it's fixed. They are wrong. It's happening on dozens of other blogs, too, though their Help forum is so obtuse that everyone can't gather to tally how many blogs are affected.

Bathroom Monologue: Constant Change

[GARY and SAMID sit on one side of the booth, both wearing bright pink tuxedos. ARYANA sits opposite to them in a powder blue chainmail business suit. Her tie is made of folded steel. GRUFF STOVER sits beside her, leaning against the window, wearing tactical camouflage that disguises his body as part of the setting. Only GRUFF’s head is visible.]

Gary: If you don’t experiment, nothing changes.

Samid: I disagree. If you don’t experiment, you have less information with which to change things. Experimentation helps you shape change.

Gary: I think the dinosaurs didn’t experiment on giant rocks, and meteors still changed them out of existence.

Gruff: I don’t think funding rock research would have shaped that annihilation much.

Aryana: The meteor theory is bunk. Disease killed them off.

Samid: If we don’t experiment, we’ll never find which of those two theories are more valid.

Gruff: So people won’t be able to change their opinions.

Gary: Oh, people have always been able to change their opinions without information. That’s what daytime talk shows are for.

Bathroom Monologue: Words in Tribute to In Tribute to Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker

If there is a piece of art that has influenced the Bathroom Monologues, I lament that it is not a short-short. It is not microfiction, flash fiction or shotgun fiction. It’s not prose or poetry – it’s not in print at all. The seminal piece of art in the Bathroom Canon is a sculpture.

It is Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker.

If I were a good writer I would lie about the origins of my affections. They would come from values instilled by parents, a deep spiritual connection made upon visiting it at a museum, or from some overwhelming burble of art history.

Instead, the origins of my affections come from Dobey Gillis. It was a black and white sitcom on Nick At Nite about an unusually introspective student. Dobey often opened the show by breaking the fourth wall and talking about issues that weighed on his mind, usually in front of a replica of The Thinker. Dobey, diminutive and not terribly bright, mimicked its position as though in religious ritual. Ever afterwards it was a monolith to thought that could inspire and be emulated by mere mortals like my ten-year-old self. I got the religion of Rodin from Dobey Gillis.

I got A.D.D. from genes, which meant whenever I assumed this position, or began the deep thoughts I associated with the statue, it didn’t last long. So these thoughts would be brief, just long enough to provide a little mental satisfaction. A little contemplation on why Skeletor didn’t save up several of his apocalyptic plans and hatch them at once, since He-Man could barely overcome any one of them given nothing else to do. A little contemplation on whether the bearded giant God my grandparents believed in really was in the flower outside the window since they said He was in all things. And a little contemplation on why Nick At Nite started so late.

The prototype for short-short fiction, don’t you think?

It’s funny because The Thinker wasn’t originally an independent statue. It was meant to be at the top and center of Rodin’s Gates of Hell, a tribute to Dante Allighieri’s Divine Comedy. The Thinker himself was originally to be The Poet, a reference to Dante himself. A version of him can be seen in that massive sculpture, perched just above the break in the double doors, surrounded by naked ladies and looking at the demons emerging from the frame. Think about that. Our culture really has taken a pickaxe to chastity, hasn’t it?

No man, woman or child who isn’t told that was what Rodin meant has ever looked at that sculpture for the first time and thought, “He’s pondering the nature of Dante’s Hell.” Maybe he’s considering a lost love, maybe it’s legal reform, or maybe he’s just taking a dump and has some form of Hell on the mind – but the exact origin has lived independent in the art since it was made. And separate, it has inspired more wonder than Rodin’s complete Gates of Hell entirely. The one man statue has become personal art that begs individual thought. Hell, it’s become the icon.

But think about that again. The Thinker is just one tiny bit, a brief snatch of the grand design reflecting the Italian epic poem. It is the Bathroom Monologue of sculpture. A microcosm torn from the whole, and frayed in context, inspiring more than it is. It’s a shame I can’t chisel words as well as Rodin did his idea.

I’m so taken with the statue that for a good year I intended to photograph myself in such a pose on the toilet as the author portrait for these Bathroom Monologues. What a visual pun it would be. But any time I got the nerve to request a digital camera, a consortium of parts of my brain jumped and beat the crap out of me. You see, there are some puns that even I will not make, and most of those have to do with dragging someone else down. A lot of the time I don’t mind making an ass out of myself, but to do it to someone or something I revere? Doing so will cause me to go somewhere alone, put an elbow on a knee and reflect many of the worst emotions that people have projected onto The Thinker. The offense I might give, even to an unthinking hunk of rock a continent away, will put me before my own Gates of Hell.

Skilled biographers will analyze the use of puns and cheap metaphors in the above paragraph to psychoanalyze me. I request they do it in an original pose.

Twittertacular

joined twitter today. text limit is constrictive. won't do much fiction there but

But thankfully this isn't Twitter. I won't do much fiction in their 140-character universe, but it is a good hub for personal updates, news and links. I try to keep the Bathroom Monologues neat and feel uncomfortable advertising what blogs I read, where I get my news, what games I'm playing, my favorite writers and comedians, net resources and funny videos. Twitter is also a more efficient place to link any potential readers to my longer works, provided they get accepted. I have eight floating around at six different places right now. Here's hoping.

You can follow me at http://twitter.com/wiswell

Bathroom Monologue: Freewrite on blind quote, "loves labors lost"

When love goes into labor, you lose. Love is fun and sticky before then, but only sticky thereafter, and sticky alone is a love that one cannot abide. In labor, love will grab you by the hair and bite through the towel wrapped around your hand. Love will look and sound surprisingly like hate, especially if you make eye contact. Love is helped substantially by an epidural. Love's labor is a labor you must lose. Do not fight back. Abandon your feelings and any rational argument; being right in her time of labor will only make love lose it, and perhaps let loose with an I.V. drip stand.

Previously On as a Regular Serial?

You've probably noticed that today's monologue is a direct sequel to last Wednesday's. I think it's about time some of the Bathroom Monologues crossed over - so many brief scenes and character sketches that I bet most of you thought would never go anywhere. But I'm curious if any of you actually want to see more of this. Please leave comments on whether you'd like to see more, or if this should stay a shorter and more random house of prose.

Long time close readers of the Bathroom Monologues will be unsurprised to find Apollo is the villain.

Or is he?

Bathroom Monologue: Previously On #002

A girl went to a diner because she was hungry, not because gravity had disappeared.

And some gods formed a poker group.

And now...

Wendy waited for her pancakes. She spent the time playing with the slack in her tether. She hardly needed the whole chord and found she could bunch it up to practice shoelace knots. She’d need that skill someday.

Up in one corner of the diner was a TV, tuned to the news. There a female reporter in a plain suit was clearly trying not to freak out as she interviewed a man whose entire house was covered in cushions. Apparently he’d built expansions, too, so that he could get the mailbox. How the cushions and the expansions were linked, neither Wendy nor the reporter could figure. A belt fastened a pillow to his head, making it difficult to hear the questions, and so he kept returning to his declaration that he had seen something like this coming. He blamed it on an underwear company.

The man who entered was easily the most interesting one Wendy had seen today, passing even pillow-man from TV. He looked like he had been spray painted gold and was very proud of it, for he wore only a white thong and some leaves behind his ears. His blond hair looked downright shabby next to his flesh, so toned he could have passed for a giant Oscar statue.

He passed Wendy’s table with his nose turned up, walking regally, as though he weren’t doing something wrong by being naked here, but that everyone in the diner was experiencing the privilege of seeing him. It was like he owned the world, and maybe he did, because he didn’t have any trouble staying on the ground today.

The door to the kitchen opened and the waitress with one eye stared at him a moment.

“Honey,” she said with a light blush. “We're a free-thinking diner so you can wear whatever you want, but the floor is a little grimy for bare feet. Might want some sandals."

He waved her off with a gilded hand, and she returned to the kitchen muttering something about how he could wait for a menu.

He stopped by the group of old men in battered clothes, placing his fingertips on their table. The crow on the old man’s shoulder hopped off, flapping to the windowsill. It eyed him. So did all the men.

Wendy struggled with her tether and crept a couple of booths closer to eavesdrop.

"I want his account," said the golden man in a voice that made her ears feel warm.

"You want all of our accounts, you glory-whore," said the man nearest to Wendy. He had long, white hair and a beard like Santa Claus. The rest of him was un-Santa-like. There was what looked like chain mail under his jacket and he wore a patch over one eye, though the scars of whatever had taken it were visible around its edges. Wendy wondered if he was related to the waitress.

The golden man curled his fingers into fists. Wendy didn’t know if he knew this, but when he got angry his butt clenched in an unflattering way.

"I've been working with the sun since the world began. Attractive forces were never properly claimed in the Greek pantheon as it was. There’s an opening and I can handle it."

The raven kawed in the golden man’s direction. Everyone in the booth looked at it intently. A man further down the booth, this one black and very thin, nodded as though agreeing with the bird.

"Raven’s got a point. This is why no one likes you, Apollo. Athena is out there trying to get him some therapy. Demeter and that nymph-boy son of hers are covertly rescuing people from floating into the ionosphere. You? You just want to serve yourself."

The man with the eye-patch added, "You're pretty much the god of serving yourself."

The black man straightened so he could look the golden one at eye level. “If anyone is going to take over his account, it’s me. I pretty much designed this universe.”

“So you say.” The golden man sniffed. “But Gaia, Jehovah and a Peruvian fisherman all make the same claims. Bottom line is Gravity gave up.”

"He has not given up on the world entirely. The planet is still clearly in a fixed orbit around the sun. This is a punishment against men."

"And women."

"Gravity's been punishing women ever since they lived to hit middle age."

The raven kawed and they all chuckled guiltily. Even the golden man laughed, then looked around like he was worried someone had seen him do it. Wendy ducked behind the booth.

“We’re being watched,” he said in his warm voice. Even scared of being caught, Wendy felt that cloying warmth. It ran from her ears to everywhere.

“Humans always watch our work,” said one of the men. Wendy thought it was Eye-patch. “It’s how the mythology gets going. Now settle in or bug out, Apollo. If you want to be the new God of Gravity, play him for it at the next poker meet.”

“Gravity doesn’t play cards with the universe.”

The raven kawed and all the voices of the booth laughed. All but the warm voice of the golden man. He turned and walked away. Wendy saw his scowl come around the edge of the booth.

“You’re lucky,” he said, eyeing her. Now his words weren’t merely warm. They were a fever. “If Odin wasn’t around, I’d turn you into a plant.”

“This isn’t that kind of diner,” came a female voice. The waitress came over with a tall stack of pancakes on one arm, the other hand clasping the counter near the cash register. The lack of gravity was still giving her trouble, but a lifetime of handling trays had given her a good sense of balance.

“Why don’t you leave the underage girl alone and get out of here before I call the cops?”

“I think they’re busy today,” he answered, but he was already leaving. When he exited the door Wendy looked out the window for him. He was nowhere.

The waitress set the plate down before Wendy. A few pancakes drifted up, but the waitress skewered them on a fork and pushed them down. She handed Wendy a knife to go with the fork and asked, “You want maple or strawberry syrup, honey?”

On the TV, the man with the house of pillows was offering the reporter a throw cushion.

Bathroom Monologue: Unknowable Skill

Tristina and Willem knew how large the baby would grow from the size of his hands and feet, and the duration and difficulty of the labor. They knew what his voice would become from the pitch of his cries for the tit. Before he had developed will or reason, they read to him from the classics, and only fed him a butterscotch when he could name the author of a randomly selected passage. So they treated him to sweets, but fed him culture and dignity, and he grew quite large.

Thirty years hence he was the tallest man in the parliament, with the longest strides and the furthest echoing voice. No man could shy from his gaze in debate. They instinctively feared him in the most cordial settings, struck by the irrational intimidation of a man who would never unholster his pistol, but who had one nonetheless. It was pearl-handled, a gift from his parents.

He became Minister of Affairs, and his acceptance speech brought wives and children to tears. Even the partisan press applauded. When asked why he was such a great orator, he said he didn’t know. Old Tristina overheard the answer and rolled her eyes at Heaven, hoping somewhere Willem was rolling them down.

Bathroom Monologue: As Many As the Beast

“Right now you’re wondering why the beast is on my side. I mean, you’re wondering a lot: how I got into your bedroom, how long before the beast devours all of your watchmen, and certainly why both the prince and the beast are both alive. I’d wonder such things, with the sword were to my neck. But back when you tricked the beast into kidnapping my bride and I hunted it down for vengeance, we had a talk. It’s remarkably reasonable for a man-eater. When I’d stabbed it right about where I’ve stabbed you now, it opened a dialogue. We wondered if two folk as driven to the destruction of their antagonists as we couldn’t have better enterprises for our energies. If I could kill him and he could kill my entire hunting party, then what could we accomplish together? And it’s days like this when we’ve brought down your entire castle and managed to get inside your panic room that we really realize that potential. We’re much better at rescuing princesses together than competing over them. Now, if you would be so kind… where is my bride? Or should I poke the other kidney? I doubt you have as many to spare as my friend.”

Bathroom Monologue: All-Father’s Day

Just before sunrise God came down into the Foyer of Heaven, shaking something at St. Peter. Peter was the only one on duty at the time.

"He... He..." stammered the omniscient entity. Peter perked up, straightening his uniform.

"Lord?"

"It's a Father's Day card!"

God thrust the card at St. Peter. On it, two bears held fishing poles. One bear was bigger and wore a fishing hat.

"Look at it. A dad and a son bear!"

"That's... good, Lord."

When St. Peter did not show the appropriate enthusiasm, God repeated, "It's a Father's Day card!"

Peter tapped his record book, then his eyebrows perked.

"Father's Day! He finally wrote to you?"

"I thought he'd never get over that," said God, clutching the card to His omnipotent chest. "But he says he's close to forgiving Me. You know, about that earth business."

"Forgiveness was one of his big things, Lord."

"I know, but some matters you just can't believe until you see them."

He reviewed the picture on the card, then the message inside and laughed until all the clouds shook. Then he pushed it at Peter again.

"See? The father bear is teaching him how to fish rather than giving him one. It's a family in-joke. Get it?"

Peter smiled meekly enough to inherit the earth.

"Yes, Lord."

God left the hall, babbling something about it being the best Father's Day since Adam moved out. He was in such a good mood that Queen played over Heaven's loud speakers for the first time in decades. The first song was, of course, "It's a Miracle."

Bathroom Monologue: "Las Vegas: What's Your Excuse?" -Tourism ad trying to get you to visit Nevada

Dear Las Vegas,

John can't come in today. He doesn't want to lose several thousand dollars to statistically unfair games only to be consoled by a complimentary room and syphilis.

Best,
Mom

Bathroom Monologue: Bio I composed in the bathroom and feel I really shouldn't use

John studied Literature at Bennington College. Long before that he was thirteen and crippled, and the works of Mark Twain, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King and various others gave him the will to make it to the next day. Now that he is able to walk, he feels he owes Literature something. Bennington College now feels that is somewhere in the six-figure range.

He writes The Bathroom Monologues, a blog of micro-fiction, list fiction, character sketches, monologues and other brief prose at www.johnwiswell.blogspot.com, which is now at over 750 entries. He also writes short stories and novels in various genres, because a stroke victim and a guy who thinks the world is full of evil pod people are both really interesting. He has been published at Inside Pulse, Alien Skin Magazine, the Story Library, Flashshots, Microhorror.com, Powder Burn Flash, and by Acorn Press. He is always looking for new venues for fiction, online and off.

Bathroom Monologue: Brutally Honest

“Et tu, Brute?” Julius asked, turning to his old friend.

“Not well, really,” Brutus said, shrugging his shoulders. He hated doing this. “I’ve got a lot of issues with you.”

“Que?” asked the leader of the empire.

“Your refusal to abdicate consolidated power makes a mockery of our republic, many of your domestic decisions show incompetence, and your war lust both taxes the treasury and threatens to dissolve our empire.” He pulled his right hand from behind his back and showed Julius the knife. “Frankly, I’d come here to stab you. That’s how bad it’s got. And your hygiene…”

BM:“Do you people even know how to play this game?” –some jerk on Left 4 Dead, OR, What I came up with once I’d left the game and went to the bathroom

“Yes, I do. There’s a gun sticking out of my camera. I point it at things and fire until they stop moving. It’s very simple. It’s you who seem to think we’re playing another game, one where the object is to walk in front of me while I’m firing as often as possible. But I figure you can’t really think that’s the object, because if it was a high score logo would have popped up on your screen by now. Man, this is such a good burn. I’ve got to log back in, find him and use it.”

The Nearest Thing in Flash 40 Contest

This week voting began in the Editors Unleashed Flash 40 contest. Winners receive cash prizes and see their work published in an upcoming e-book. Anyone who registers with that forum can view and vote on all of the entries up until the 25th, and those who receive the highest public votes get better weighing in the judgment. I'd sincerely appreciate it if any readers could head over there and check out my "The Nearest Thing." It is a stringently revised version of "The While Walking from Borders to Home Depot Monologue," following Felix and Creed, two boys from the same town who barely ever met, even after they ran away from home in the same direction.

If you think it sucks, vote like it sucks. But I'd appreciate the eyes. You can see the story itself at this URL: http://editorunleashed.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1318

Bathroom Monologue: Previously On #001

Previously on the Bathroom Monologues...

A girl woke up with questions.

A waitress dressed as she pleased.

And gravity turned against us.

And now...



It took Wendy fifteen minutes to make it to the diner down the street. She held onto the neighbors’ bushes and made a slow go of it, watching as cars hit the mid-street speed bump and floated away, their drivers honking angrily. She waved with one hand, but held onto shrubs and mailboxes with the other.

Once inside the diner she happily drifted up to the ceiling, kicking off it with her slippered feet and landing on one of the tables. She scurried across it, navigating the edge until she could scoot her legs under the table. Then she was secure, though she kept at least one hand gripping the booth’s cushions at any given time.

The diner was almost empty, save a group in the far corner. There were tall men, all old and in beat-up clothes. One had a raven on his shoulder and seemed to be talking to it. Wendy wondered how much the raven understood. The tone of their conversation was grumpy, though all seemed relaxed, none apparently bothered by the lack of gravity in the town today.

After a moment, someone popped out from the kitchen. It was a stocky woman wearing an eye patch and a blue military uniform. She carried a menu under one arm and walked cheerily towards Wendy’s table. Wendy stared, asking before the woman had even circled the counter.

“How can you walk on the floor?”

The one-eyed woman chuckled, one hand gripping the edge of Wendy’s booth.

“Restaurant floors get pretty sticky from spills and people not wiping their shoes. I haven’t mopped in a while.” She deposited a menu in the girl’s lap, instructing, “Don’t let go of that. Lot of menu-related injuries today. I knew we should have put rounded corners on them.”

Wendy braced her knees under the table, gripping the menu to her chest. She looked over the woman’s uniform again.

“Are you a marine?”

“No, honey,” the woman smiled. When she smiled her eye patch got stuck over her cheek and rode up, like a giant eyebrow. “I’m your waitress.”

“Waitresses don’t dress like that.”

“They let me dress up however I please, and I wanted to be an astronaut today given current events.”

“But you’re wearing marine clothes.”

“A navel officer, actually. I don’t have any astronaut suits and this was the closest I could get.”

Wendy frowned, then shuffled through the menu.

“Can I have pancakes?”

“You sure can, but it may take a while. Fred hasn’t got the reflexes down yet and they keep floating away when he flips them.”

“He should use a second spatula to keep them in check.”

Wendy flattened her hands and mimed one spatula hovering over the skillet, slapping down any imaginary pancakes the other hand flipped up. Her waitress laughed.

“Capital idea, honey. I’ll tell it to him with your order. For now, here, take this.”

The waitress reached under the booth and produced a pink nylon tether. One end was fixed to a table leg, and she tied the other to Wendy’s right ankle.

“Compliments of the chef, so you don’t drift away while you wait.”

“That’s a good idea,” Wendy said, running her fingers over the nylon.

“They’ll probably be mandatory by law in a week,” the waitress said. “If the weather doesn’t clear up.”

“Is this weather?” Wendy tilted her head out the window. It was mildly overcast out. Could that nullify gravity?

“What else could it be?” the waitress asked back, heading to the kitchen. Her shoes squelched on the sticky floor, and Wendy thought she heard her making Darth Vader breathing noises.

Bathroom Monologue: Penultimate, Ultimate, See Older Posts

The first end came when God was browsing creation and hit the back button too many times. Suddenly the perfect world was deleted. He fretted and hit undo, to no avail. The recycling was similarly unhelpful – it was stuffed with too much crap downloaded and deleted on whim for even the omniscient to be able to find a single good file in it. He went back to older drafts and found no good saves. Most of them were made up of notes and things He ought to try in later writing. He sighed and tugged on His infinite beard in frustration; He’d never be able to get the world that right again. Nothing ever topped the good draft that got away. So He opened all the documents He hadn’t lost and began copying and pasting, hoping none of the life forms that popped up on this planet would notice the gaps.

Bathroom Monologue: Broadcasting From Unconfirmed

"Listeners, all we know about the situation is that we know nothing. We can only report that the dead may or may not be rising. We’d like to tell you more, but that would require us to make something up. That would be lying, and listeners, we do not lie. We are here to inform. Unfortunately all we can inform you of is that we know nothing. We are the Socrates of radio and this is the Agnosticast. We cannot confirm that a satellite from Venus crashed near a cemetery and started this. We cannot confirm that a strain of viral rage extracted from monkeys broke out and started this. All we can confirm is that our very dead stationary manager just came in and tried to bite me. Is still trying to bite me. God dammit, Karl, will you please him in the other room? Listeners, I’ve just been informed that Karl does not have the key to the other room. I cannot say where it is because – Jesus, get him off of me!"