Bathroom Monologue: Where the Muses Be

It soothes the artist to think all his ideas came from some person, some Muse. He can’t see it as himself, because the artist isn’t a person. He’s a gaping wound, or a hungry shell, or a mimic of real life, or an adherent to formulas and trends, or a disappointing son. In any case, he experiences himself as a conduit for make-believe. Fantasy and verisimilitude pour out of him, as a childhood reflex, and then as a learned unconscious behavior for the adult. The more he pays attention, the less he understands how it works.

He’s grateful to learn how to get it to work at all, which returns him to the origin. The Muse, that real person in the sky that slips him things to write. It’s an old idea, because people have had no clue why they’re good at things for a good long time.

The artist may be surprised to learn most of his ideas are jerry-rigged memories, experiences filtered or exact, weighed out in uneven proportions, his art imitating art, and sometimes life. His father’s boomerang collection crops up in the robot war story, and his second girlfriend’s hips in a nursery rhyme. No reader can recognize these origins. Often, the artist doesn’t either. He’s guided by a singular notion of a man bleeding ideas from a foreign vein. It focuses him, just as it did all the people who thought it before. It’s the one idea he’s entirely irresponsible for creating.

Where did we get this idea? It’s the one thing the Muse actually gave him. She figured, it was all he needed.

The Worst Father's Day Card

Front Cover:

Interior:

Bathroom Monologue: 10 Fates Worse Than Death

1. Two deaths (if you think death is bad).

2. No death (if you think death is a necessary part of life).

3. Death plus a little more anxiety about it before it happens (only marginally worse, but it qualifies).

4. Immortality plus perpetual childbirth (if you have a vagina).

5. Immortality plus perpetual childbirth (if you don’t have a vagina).

6. Immortality plus spending your entire existence preoccupied with the terror that you will soon die (time squandered and all that).

7. A book by Kurt Vonnegut.

8. Immortality plus spending your entire existence preoccupied with the terror that you will die in the distant future, but the terror is so crippling you never get anything done before then anyway (“The Angst Infinite”).

9. Being painstakingly de-atomized, picked apart speck-by-speck, divided countlessly until you have not died, but have ceased to be anything philosophically identifiable as you (splitting hairs, if you will).

10. Being fired from your coroner’s position which you cherished (you liked your death job, now you don’t have it).

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 16.

To hear him tell his story either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio or click this text to download the MP3.

The order was to maim him emotionally, not to terminate. Back then, he and the Kitty-Kat had a litter, and one of the girls grew up to play superhero. An easy dig. She danced across the rooftops, her purple spandex shimmering in the pale moonlight. She had one of those domino masks. I lined it up like a target: in one eye and out the other. I adjusted the butt in the crook of my shoulder and wormed my eye into the scope. My finger stroked for the trigger. And then…

I squeezed on thick air. It was thick – no cool breeze of a skyline, but the mold of a padded room. My cheek rested on a cushion, my eye lined up with a buttonhole. There was a little slot in the door you could see out. Across the hall, a man looked out his slot and babbled about the importance of today’s date.

“April Fool’s Day. Mark your calendar.”

If you visit that asylum today, it’s got bulletproofed glass walls. No singular doors with slots. I don’t even think the calendar guy exists anymore. The purple spandex girl isn't somersaulting around anywhere, either. Everything's new, except me.

He's still flapping around the belfry. Hates me every time. How much angrier he’d be if he could remember all the times I’ve killed his kids. Instead, he’s grumpy over things I never did. Keeps trying to psychoanalyze me with history that never happened. Who gives a damn about psychiatry? Last time, I seduced a psychiatrist into a sidekick. I think she’s on Suicide Girls now. Not sure what our relationship is supposed to be.

I have no problem hating him back. Self-righteousness in a drab wardrobe. If you stretch your mind, you’ll remember me fighting him in Spring of nineteen-forty. But go to the local archives of your favorite metropolitan paper of record, and the first headline that mentions either of us is from nineteen-eighty-seven. Did every journalist miss forty-seven years of a blood feud? Were they all home sick the times I actually killed him?

You don’t believe me because I smile too much and am too white. Permanently pale, except at least twice, this was make-up. It damned sure was originally. But fine, I embrace the life of an entertainer and that somehow makes me unreliable. There’s a punk out there now – I beat him into a bloody paste, then blew up the building for good measure. Today he’s skipping along the rooftops with vigilante strippers. And I’m the crazy one?

Here’s my litmus test for madness.

Do you remember when he drove everywhere in a blue car with eyes for headlights?

Do you remember when the Amazons wiped out Washington, D.C.? Because I do. Dislocated three ribs laughing. They still ache at the sight of a magic bustier.

Do you remember when I finally offed him? Thought that was actually the purpose of all this. On top of the WayneTech Building, every floor wired to blow, showering the highways with glass as I strangled him and he struggled not to slit my throat with a batarang. We were both carried aloft by the explosion and his cape. We were both dead before we even began to fall.

Never got to finish that fall, neither. I landed in a brightly-lit subterranean office, talking to Lex Luthor about forming a league of villains. There was a wall of monitors behind my head. To my immediate left, Groundhog’s Day was on.

If Bill Murray has taught me anything, it’s that my purpose in life is not killing one man. The three other times I’ve done it and didn’t stop the universe rebooting were just scientific confirmation.

My purpose is about a fuller experience. It’s kryptonite smiley faces, crippled sidekicks and poisoned water supplies. It’s about a joyous history of histories. It’s about spending as much of my account as I can before God changes banks on me.

As a little boy I always thought science was the best evidence of God. Atoms are the smallest. No, electrons are. No, gluons. Time’s linear. Or it bends. Or it forks. Or it’s a web. He makes it up as He goes along, and we just presume that’s the way it always was since that makes you look sane to the others.

In a year, or five years, or ten years, you won’t even remember we had this conversation. I’m going to blow your head off, and maybe next week God will get bored and you’ll pop up as mayor. And you’ll pour tax payer money into a committee to discover why my fingerprints and DNA aren’t on record, groping after an origin story that got erased decades ago.

Yeah, I’m the crazy one because I remember back when he had just one sidekick and JFK’s assassination made sense. You all go on pretending this is how it’s always been and I’m just a pathetic headcase. I don’t suffer from this insanity. I enjoy the clarity.

Bathroom Monologue: Monologue for Bill Cosby as a Marginally More Lucid Father Than Usual

“I’m not ignoring her, dad,” said Theo, gesturing to the living room door. “I was just paying attention to the game.”

Bill patted his son on the shoulder.

“That’s your problem, son. You think sanely. But to a woman, there is no such thing as her man paying attention to something else. There is only the absence of attention being paid to her. When you go to the game, put your arm around her and make sure to look at her every five plays. Eye contact, boy, it will save your life. If you want to leave for drinks, start by saying, ‘Sweetness, would you like something?’ Always make it seem like your intentions flow back to her or she’ll go berserk. Now, a woman goes berserk saying things like ‘Fine’ or ‘Nothing’ or ‘You have fun.’ Those words are the steam escaping pipes that are about to blow. And when they blow, you won’t even hear it. You’ll just get burned. She finds a way for you to have forgotten the beef of taco night, and three hours of screaming later you’re sleeping on the couch with the game on mute, because good-Moses you don’t want her hearing none of that baseball. There is no sealing off those pipes. You’ll wrap them in chocolate and duct tape, and the second you turn your back and friend some girl on Facebook, they’ll burn the back of your neck again. Every lucid argument you make will only service the deep madness that is believing all your time ought to be hers.”

Bathroom Monologue: Corpsing

Kill one of their runners. Carve the note into his chest. Leave it in your language, not theirs. You could text them. It is faster. Corpsing is simply clearer. They'll get the message and leave town by dawn.

Bathroom Monologue: Ice Tea

I don’t see the appeal of ice tea. Sure it’s more portable than typical tea, and impossible to spill, but you have to wait for it to melt to drink. In the mean time you have a brick of frozen matter to babysit. It doesn’t have any interim uses. It won’t talk to you about lolcatz or serve as a paperweight. Have you ever weighed your papers with ice tea? The condensation leaves them soggy. Get a long phone call and your hard beverage goes soft and ruins the desk. You can idly lick it like an ice pop, but just try offering that around. Nobody wants a lick of a huge brown block that smells like leaves.

My secretary will ask why I don’t have some of her ice tea instead, and I’ll rebuff, “That’s not ice tea. That’s iced tea. See how your typically hot beverage has ice cubes floating around in it? It’s been iced. Mine has been frozen to the point where it is ice. I have ice tea.”

She invariably leaves before I finish. I don’t know why. Perhaps in search of iced cubes.

Happy Endings and the Nonsense of Realism

Prepare to have a lot of endings spoiled for you.

Sometime in adolescence we learn disdain for the things we like. We still want to watch cartoons, play with action figures and have stories at bedtime, but these are inappropriate desires for ‘grown ups.’ Children grow to feign disgust for the things they actually desire, preparing them for adulthoods of denial. Often those adulthoods are spent desperately seeking childhood freedom, such as the necessary irrationality they can now only get through alcohol or pot. I blame that same anti-rational kickback for why so many people will watch a third awful Transformers movie.

Especially if you aim for an intellectual life, one of the things you learn to disdain is the happy ending. They’re unrealistic and trite. They don’t happen. When they do, it’s still more important to the cynical intellectual to write about when they don’t. Ours is a culture that disdains naïvety but cherishes cynicism, despite those being the same thing. They are bald-faced, oversimplisitic ideologies that prejudge people and the world, glomming onto any supporting evidence while blithely ignoring or making excuses for the exceptions. To be cynical is merely to be naïve in the negative direction. Like the sweetly naive, the cynics claim they know the real world and demand their realism.

Never mind that all fiction is inherently unrealistic – no matter how bleak, it’s just words on a page. Denis Johnson is one hundred percent as make-believe as J.K. Rowling. Not one word of it wasn’t made up at a keyboard. Many in my crowd are suckers for unhappy stories, leading them to universally rebuff me for thinking JT LeRoy was a fraud. That one had a happy ending, I guess.

True tragedy and moments of profound melancholy possess inarguable power. No distaste with darkness robs Of Mice and Men of its closure. Tor.com recently posted an editorial positing that 1984 is a classic because it’s depressing. I’ll freely admit that the best novel I read last year – final got around to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – ended about as bitterly as he could make it.

Despite my fondness for Of Mice and Men and Brave New World, the worst of the unhappy endings is killing your main character. It’s typically a cop-out. Death, even in sacrifice or redemption, bails the character out from having to face future consequences. You’re at least fifty years too late to play the “but those consequences were so bad” card. It’s not deep; it’s the sick-note for Gym Class of fiction tropes.

One of the greatest offenders is the post-Burton killing of villains in superhero movies. Villains in particular should have to stick around in franchises and see what they’ve wrought or develop as characters. How nice would it be to have Doc Ock mentor Peter in Spider-Man 3? Or have Harvey Dent come to his senses after his rampage in Dark Knight? I grasp the desire to kill Osama Bin Laden, but it’s a far better story to have that man meet every widow he’s made.

Danny Boyle is making a career partially on subverting the crumby ending. In India, in a secluded canyon, and in the zombie apocalypse, he puts his characters through utter Hell so he can deliver that one moment of climactic relief. He plays the conventions of bleak fiction against its own crowd. He keeps getting nominated for awards, so thank goodness the wrong people haven’t caught onto what he’s doing yet.

Depressive folk always tell me, “That’s the way the world is.” FX’s Louie having no soundtrack, dull lighting in an airport as he laughs at someone else’s distress – this is, according to The New Yorker, “giving reality its due.” This is real life.

Bullshit. That is something that can happen in reality. A man in a Ronald McDonald costume humming show tunes can also happen. It’s less likely to, though art affords the possibility for it. To mindlessly or pedantically mimic some myopic reality any reader can experience more clearly by putting the book down and living – that’s more intellectually bankrupt than a thousand Happily Ever Afters.

This storytelling environment has left the “happy ending” malnourished. We’ll continue to see trite happy endings, where the heroes either win outright or by Deus ex Machina. RomCom Guy gets RomCom Girl. Harry Potter sends his magic kids off to magic school. In many cases these still satisfy. I’ll almost always side with a treacle positive ending over a treacle negative one, because my soul isn’t a black vortex that demands to be fed disappointment. If we’re going to be superficial, I want to smile through it.

But we should do more with happy endings, though. What else could be done with them? Examining what people want.

In my most recent #fridayflash, “She Danced,” the guy gets the girl. But all we hear is how awful she is at the party. The narrator is smitten; most of my audience wasn’t. Some readers questioned if him getting a date was even a happy ending. For the narrator? Yes, it was. Rather than making an objective value judgment, or lurching for something as universal as a death or finding an angelic object of affection, I wrote something where the character wanted a thing most of us didn’t. Your and his values form an moral  kaleidoscope.

I’m hardly the first to do this. Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle literally ends on the line, “we are so happy.” Their circumstances are tragic, psychotic, and yet, enthusiastically desired. The survivors are deranged and consenting to live in something as tragic as any Greek homicide.

Dared on by better literature, I’ll sometimes go weirder. “Up High” was also a happy-ending story. That one ended ambiguously, and despite some grand guesses, nobody picked my actual intention. That’s what I get for being so damned cheeky and metafictional. For those still curious, I’ll spoil what I meant to happen in the next three paragraphs.

It was originally written for an all-dialogue story contest. It remains a story without a single line of description. In it, our ledge-sitter just wants silence to think. The very existence of the interloper annoys him. All the interloper can do in the story is talk – making more noise. Our interloper gets a bright idea, one other than jumping and killing himself. What was his plan?

He quieted. No more dialogue, the story ended, and the ledge-sitter got his wish: utter silence in his world, which only existed on the page.

Jab me for being postmodern, but that’s a happy ending. Nobody dies, the ledge-sitter gets silence, and the interloper gets to help somebody for once after a year of performing layoffs. The “I’ll show you” ending is a gag, since we’ve never been able to see anything they’ve done. All you’re shown is the blank page below the last line, because that’s all there is.

So, great. John’s examples of neo-happy endings are dating a bitch, going crazy and ceasing to exist. He could have at least pumped the first for Princess Bride.

Rather than undermining my position, though, I see this as underlying the real truth: neither the happy nor the sad ending is intrinsically the best. The best ending is the one appropriate to its story. That’s the big tell, and what makes Of Mice and Men and Brave New World succeed: their deaths are wretched but appropriate closure to great stories. A lame story can’t seed and grow a good ending. No matter what you tack onto the end, it won’t be particularly meaningful.

Likewise, going against what’s built up can be harmful. The end of Batman Begins suffers for Batman letting R’as Al Ghul die, tarnishing the hard-worn altruism and aversion to the death of others displayed throughout the movie. “I don’t have to save you” sounds like hokum, or a screenwriter making up for Liam Neeson’s contract expiring.

Sorry. How cynical of me.

Bathroom Haiku: Blowhard

Kid called me “blowhard.”

That’s preposterous. Wise? Yes,

but I’m asthmatic.

"Computer Education" in EDF Anthology

This month I was selected to appear in The Best of Every Day Fiction Three. Apparently they loved "Computer Education," my little wacky robot story, and wanted it for print posterity. I'm flattered and happy to appear in the volume.

The hardcover and paperback editions are available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound and other retailers. You can see the full list at EDF's site here.

I'd like to thank EDF for taking a chance on SciFi Humor, and for pushing it forward into their anthology. I'd also like to thank all of you for reading these stories - you make my work worthwhile.

Bathroom Monologue: She Danced

She danced like no one I've ever seen. You ever stick your hand out the car window and wave it up and down in tune to the breeze? Like it's a wing in the wind, or part of an invisible current? You ever done that when you're tired and your defenses are down, and you find that feeling becomes more important than steering the car? No, you'd never admit it, but I do that. And watching that princess bound and dip like she didn't have a backbone, it was like watching another person perform the feeling I get in my hand. She wasn't lithe, but a girl made of wires couldn't have done all that. She made me a fan of ballet inside of one minute. It was the only real elegance I've ever seen, so in rhythm with the music that I never would have believed she was improvising, and I never could have believed anything else. I knew right then on the edge of my chair that this was the woman I was going to marry.

It's a lucky thing I fell in love with her at first sight, too, because goddamn, she was a case. Snuck into the reception and discovered my princess chewing out her horn section for being a quarter-beat off. I tried bringing her a glass of bubbly and she blew past me, spilling it all down the side of my jacket. Didn't even glance back. 

A few minutes later I sidled up and she handed me a glass. I thought it was an apology and sipped it. But as soon as I tasted the stale stuff, she laid into me. Thought I was staff and wanted me to take her old drink to the kitchen, not sip it and listen to the conversation. Even when I explained her mistake, she had this way of making it seem like I was wrong.

Should have backed down, as I didn't fare much better in conversation than I did as a waiter. Got verbally spanked on the history of dance, and then on the history of sculpture. As I slunk away she complained that she didn't want to see anymore fans, and I warned a couple of approachers on my way out. Apparently I did it too close to earshot. She peeled right between her fans, berating and jabbing me in the chest until I was up against a wall.

That I didn't throw her across the hall is evidence of love at first sight, or at least extremely patient lust. Even charging me, this woman could move, shuffling her feet like a bird. But banging my head was still too much and I stripped off my jacket, still wet with her stale drink, and tossed it in her face.

Even then, I wasn't really mad. I just wanted to see how mad she'd get at a legitimate provocation. The reaction? Angry like birds in rage, all exaggerated head turns and fluttering her arms. Any time she got tiffed for the rest of the night she'd glare at me across the floor, like I was an investor in everything that got under her skin. No doubt in my mind that's how I landed the first date.

This is a new version of an old story that ran in BURST Magazine in 2009. This version is dedicated to five people. The first four are Sonia, Mari, Catherine and Danni, who talked with me on Twitter about the lack of happy endings in flash yesterday. The fifth is Randall, who deserves one.

Bathroom Monologue: Wire Cutters

“The wire cutters,” Chris asked for the third time. He turned from the bomb’s ticking counter and looked at the other guy. The guy was sifting through the toolbox. Chris spat the words directly into his face. “Wire cutters. What are you, deaf?”

Rather than reach into the box, the man raised his hands and signed, “Yes.”

That didn’t feel good. Neither did the bomb going off behind him.

Blurbs for the Greatest Book Never Written

“Danni La Paglia's steamy summer debut is Harry Potter meets Jurassic Park meets The Bible - but better!"

Philip Roth says, “I’m not really saying this, but holy shit, give this lady my Booker.”

“A page-turner you can’t put down. It’ll break your heart, leave you breathless and begging for more. The #2 Newspaper-You-Don’t-Read Bestseller is this season’s must-read instant classic!”

"Remember that part in Holy Grail when the Nazi drinks from the wrong cup? This book will do that to your soul. Danni La Paglia's YA novel is the real fake holy grail of YA novels."

“Sparkling vampires have never been so terrifying or profound as in Danni La Paglia’s timely and timeless e-book.”

"David Lynch to join Pixar, 'solely for privilege of adapting this masterpiece.'"

“Breaking News: Time Magazine revises Best 100 Hundred Novels list, boots Orwell and Pynchon to give La Paglia’s mind-bending blockbuster two slots.”

"Lone message board troll hunted down and beaten to death for three-star review of La Paglia's scintillating opus on the human heart."

"Christopher Hitchens announces that Danni La Paglia's masterpiece has convinced him there is a God, and that ‘GOD is pretty fucking GREAT.' The Pope has similarly announced a shocking change of mind, for this book has convinced him not only is there a God - it's Danni La Paglia."

"Breaking News: Library of Congress to receive one more book, then close permanently. Quote: 'Danni La Paglia has finished literature. English is now complete.'"

"Brazil knocks down last of its rain forests in case La Paglia wants to do a paperback copy of sequel."

"National Day of Mourning announced for the thousands who took their own lives when they realized La Paglia wouldn't have a sequel out before Fall."

"La Paglia's Novel of Mass Destruction case not to be tried at International Criminal Court. Quote: 'We don't want to fuck up her writing schedule. What happens to the ponies, Danielle?'"

"Report: Sun rising faster in anticipation of its rays sooner landing on La Paglia's unfinished pages. Millions freeze on neglected side of earth."

Stephen Hawking says, "Science has dropped the ball on this one before, but we're pretty sure the universe revolves around Danni La Paglia's novel."

"Breaking News: Physicists fear composition of sequel to Danni La Paglia's masterpiece will give universe two centers, thus tearing space/time fabric. Reading public still more concerned if Vlad and the Pony Keeper hook up."

Jesus Christ says, "I heard fears of global catstrophe might convince Danielle not to write the second novel, so I figured I'd show up and talk her into it. Hold on."

"The mere rumor of this sequel causes world to end. 99% of respondents say, 'worth it.' Pre-order now!"

Bathroom Monologue: Possible Origins for Him. 15.

To listen either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio or click this text to download the MP3.

Riddle me this.

What caped crusader once carried a gun?

What dark knight now swears never to kill?

Who would be better at removing evidence and covering his trail than the world’s greatest detective?

Now riddle me this.

Who is as pale as a sheet?

Who does not seem to age across decades?

Whose laugh penetrates the mortal psyche?

Who vengefully torments one troubled soul?

Who is unable to be restrained in this asylum, moving from cell to cell to office to lobby to the front gate, all too often without detection or rational explanation?

Lastly, riddle me this.

Was it never to kill? Or never to kill again?

Haunting questions.

More lastly, riddle me this.

Why does Eddie talk this way?

Is it defensive?

Is it productive?

Is it annoying when I do it, too?

So many questions.

But seriously, Eddie. Shut up.

Let Another One In at Every Day Fiction

Today's story is over at Every Day Fiction. They've purchased and published "Let Another One In," a vampire comedy flash of mine about seeking a safe place to hide for the day. Bonus points to everyone who gets the title.


You can comment on the story here or at EDF. EDF also has a ratings system, and any votes would be appreciated. You can read "Let Another One In" for free by clicking this link.


Thanks to everyone for their support. Let me know what you think!

Not For a Doomsday Weapon as recorded by Max Cantor

Today I'm happy to bring you an audio recording of one of my stories by Max Cantor. This is "Not For a Doomsday Weapon, which popped up a few months ago.

To listen to Max's recording either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio or click this text to download the MP3.

This is all your fault.

So Nothning was running away. You know his name, right? That's the little guy whose soul you hid your doomsday weapon in, or whatever the hell is actually going on there. That's one of the two loose ends I don't understand yet. But you scared the crap out of Nothning, and he ran away, and to the best of my knowledge, you have shadowy goons chasing him.

Nothning has two very dear friends. I'm one of them, and I certainly wouldn't have the brass to talk to you if I wasn't. There's me and Furnhang. The three of us have always been very loyal, so when he ran with assassins at his back, we tailed to protect him. In that horse chase, it was Furnhang that brained your guys with a yoke. In case that story's reached here, that was him. Not me. Yes.

Your eyes tell me the stories haven't reached here. Okay. We're little people, except Furnhang. He's the big guy, flowing golden hair. Obscenely attractive. He's in one of your cells. Was captured protecting Nothning.

You don't care. Why would you? You're evil. You’re powerful. You do things.

You should care because of these two ladies. When a guy is that charismatic, love interests follow. The first was this shopkeeper girl. Don't know her name. She never talks to me. Honestly, she's kind of a bitch. She was bent on following the golden-haired guy on his big adventure, which chaffed Pandling. Commander Pandling.

See, the shopkeeping bitch is in a rivalry with Pandling over who's going to bang/marry/live-happily-ever-after with Furnhang. So when Pandling hears that shopkeeper girl is following him to certain death, she's all, "Let me die for him too, and more tragically! Then he'll love me."

A commander doesn't follow somebody into contested territories alone. She is followed by her command, in this case some five hundred highly trained foot soldiers who unquestioningly followed her highly questionable lead. They crossed over and even your army shrank back. Which we appreciated, because you totally would have had us that night if you kept going.

It was pretty startling on our side, too. So startling that Pandling's fellow commanders thought she was making a power play and moved their forces in to steal the glory. That's why you had three hulking commands bouncing into the contested territories instead of one. None of these people were coming to help Nothning. They didn't even know he existed.

Too late. They do now. I told them.

The next part is entirely your fault. I assume it's you, or some paranoid admiral. Because no sooner are Nothning and I kicking back and relaxing, no longer fearing death amongst the thousand-plus heroes around us, then your freaking Serpent Fleet comes sailing up the coast. So now three commands are looking at dozens of corsairs and cannons. Were those warning shots? Because I thought so, but the commanders did not agree. You fired in the vicinity of three overachieving commanders and immediately they called in the aquatic cavalry. That is seriously the only reason you've got an oceanic stalemate right now.

I don't know what brought on the sky-whales. Didn't think those were real until they swooped through the clouds and started eating people. From the number of ogre skeletons in their droppings, I'm presuming your side doesn't have a much better handle on them. We have no idea what they're after. Commander Pandling thinks your cannonfire woke them up. Nothning thinks they're after your weapon.

Good damned luck finding my buddy, by the way. Thanks to everyone overreacting he's got the biggest, bloodiest crowd in creation in which to hide. And if the commands retreat, he’s going with them and letting them have your stupid weapon, even though as I’ve just described, these people are nuts.

But Nothning extends you this offer: if Furnhang and I go back to him alive before sunset, we’re going underground. Permanent style. Your enemy does not get the big doomsday weapon. You don’t, they don’t, and everybody deals with the sky-whales in their own way.

Up to you how this goes. That’s only how it’s unfolded so far. How it’s actually unfolded. Maybe you can team up with the commands and we’ll all survive this mess. I doubt it - I mean, I'll survive. Providing you don't kill me, I'm digging the deepest hole possible and staying down there until the smell of whale droppings fades. I just presume you're going to charge and get everyone killed, because that's the kind of stupid drama this situation seems intent on heading toward.

Bathroom Monologue: A Familiar Trial

Case: Plaintiff claims the property, "one half of a dead baby," belongs to her, not to the Defendant. Defendant is refusing to yield property. Plaintiff refuses to explain nature of the infant bifurcation, though matter should become transparent at trial.

Witnesses for the Plaintiff: 1) The Plaintiff

Witnesses for the Defendant: 1) The Defendant, 2) King Solomon

Bathroom Monologue: Up High

“Hey, I said no more people! You saw what happened to the last guy.”

“Actually, I didn’t.”

“I’ll jump if you come any closer.”

“I’m not coming closer.”

“You can’t talk me down, man. I just need to be alone. I can’t think today.”

“I’m not here to talk you down.”

“Neither was the last guy, and he grabbed my shirt after a minute. You want to fall like him?”

“Not really. Did he die?”

“No, they’ve got a balloon tarp down there. You come closer, and I’ll make sure we miss it.”

“They’ve got a what?”

“Lame act. Back off.”

“Are you thinking of jumping?”

“I came up here to think, damn it. Let me finish a thought and I’ll tell you what it was. I’d probably have gone home by now if you idiots didn’t keep interrupting.”

“Surprising a guy like you has trouble getting people to leave him alone.”

“You suck at this.”

“I’m really not up here to help you.”

“Uh-huh. Back off.”

“If you wanted to die you could swallow a bunch of pills or blow your brains out. You think about those before you came up here?”

“I came up here to think!”

“I’d worry. If the pills just fried an unnecessary part of my brain, or the bullet paralyzed me. Off the top of a building, though? That’s as close to a sure thing as you get. Liquefy you on impact. Probably doesn’t even hurt.”

“Is this part of some method they teach you in police camp?”

“You know what’s funny?”

“What?”

“I’m really not a cop. I was thinking of jumping off here today.”

“Oh, bullshit.”

“No lie. I work in human resources on the 7th floor. Been firing people all year. Hard not to think of killing myself, hearing a hundred people hang up those phones for the last time.”

“Bullshit.”

“Want my card?”

“You come near me and I’ll jump.”

“You won’t. You know, I’m kind of mad at you.”

“What the Hell, man?”

“I punched out, said goodnight, and went to the bathroom instead of my car. Counted the tiles until the floor cleared out. Figured I’d come up here, no one would interrupt, and I’d step off into Heaven. Except when I left the bathroom there were cops everywhere. I came up to avoid them, and here you are, dragging half the city to break my fall.”

“You’re nuts.”

“I’m going to sit here. If you don’t like it, move over. We’ve got the whole roof.”

“Whatever.”

“That is weird. Looks like a parachute. They want to catch you on that?”

“Maybe. I don’t care. I’m not going to use it anyway.”

“What’s going on?”

“Sitting on a ledge, man.”

“Trouble at home? Wife cheating on you? Can’t find a wife? Blue balls?”

“It’s got nothing to do with women.”

“Fired? Can’t find a job? I can relate, after a fashion.”

“No.”

“So you were fired?”

“I’ve been unemployed since college.”

“Is that why you’re on my roof?”

“No. I told you, I can’t think.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“No, asshole. I can’t think. I can’t finish a thought in this city. I hear the clock in the hall ticking. The hands moving. The heating system groans. Somebody’s always got a TV on somewhere if you listen carefully enough, and I can’t stop listening. Cars in the road outside. Somebody’s stereo. Shrill horns. The wind and weather. Planes overhead. Sometimes rats in the crawlspace. Conversations! I hate conversations. Somebody is always talking thanks to fucking cell-phones. What’s worse than being distracted by a couple yakking outside your window? One of them giving you half the story. They pour noise on you down there.”

“That seems reasonable.”

“Please, shut up.”

“You came up here for a little quiet?”

“Not just a little. No rustling clothes. No denim scraping on the brick. No breathing. I don’t want to hear you breathe. Can you do that?”

“I’ve got an idea.”

“You’re not going to jump, are you? Because I don’t want them saying I pushed you. I’ll get enough crap for the other guy.”

“No. It’s a better idea.”

“Which is?”

“I’ll show you.”

Bathroom Monologue: Athenaists

Athena slapped the newspaper against her gilded breastplate. Her grey eyes brightened with joy.

“Did you see that headline? Fastest growing group in America.”

Aleus looked up at his mistress. “The unemployed?”

“Atheists!”

She was on the verge of dancing on the edge of Olympus. Her bare feet skittered and wove along the edges of clouds.

Aleus set the tea aside. He approached cautiously, uncertain if this was one of her jokes.

“And you’re… excited about that, Madame?”

“It’s been ages since I had so many adoring fans. Really pissed me off when the feminist movement didn’t worship me.”

“Pardon, Madame?”

“I barely got three prayers out of the whole cult.” She clutched the paper to her chest and doubled over the heavens to peer down onto the mortal coil. “You know I was at the first bra burning. Heroic endeavors and all that.”

“You think the atheists worship you?”

She straightened. Aleus thought this was when the punchline would come, but instead her face contorted with disdain. She pointed to herself. “Hello. ‘Athena?’ All those Atheists must love me. It’s the clearest endorsement since Athens.”

“Madame, I don’t think…”

“Look at all the scientists in there. I’m the goddess of wisdom. Of course they love me. I’m going down to earth immediately. What do you think? Classic robes or modern power suit? I don’t want to come off too… you know. Hillary Clinton.”

“I really think that’s just going to upset them.”

“You think it’d intimidate some to meet me in the flesh?”

“Something like that, Madame.”

She resumed her perch over the mortal coil, grey eyes singling out her special little folk. “Maybe I’ll go as a talking owl. Ease them into the grace of their mistress.”

“Perhaps that’s for the best, Madame.”

Bathroom Monologue: Conscience Transplant

"Neuroscientists have tried many ways to alter human behavior. They've strapped hoodlums into chairs with classical music and horror videos playing. They've wired men's nerves into living terminals. But we believe the human being is a human body. If you want saliva, you need a tongue. If you want pancreatic juice, you need a pancreas. A good person requires some good organs.

"Submitted for your approval, an organ extracted from electric eels. Sewn amongst the appropriate part of the human being, it will shock the patient upon inappropriate behavior. The shock is both more severe and more targeted than mere electrodes in the brain. Thirty-three percent of test subjects even reported a pleasant buzz upon appropriate behavior. Electro-shock therapy is a sham if it doesn't come from a human being's own conscience. The brain can lack empathy and fail to trigger the appropriate response to evil. But this organ? It's the world's first ever conscience transplant.

"The first three subjects were investment bankers and loan officers. Before you get ideas of vengeance for recent depressions, know these were the panel of experts that denied our lead engineer funding for his aquarium. It was going to be beautiful. It still will be, once the conscience transplant takes off.

"We just need a little starter cash."

Nobody’s House – Rough Draft is Done

Today I finished the rough draft of Nobody’s House. Approximately 110,000 words, split across thirty-five more manageably-sized documents. I split them up in March when the single document got too big to navigate during construction. Tonight I get to paste them all together into their Voltron-like literary glory.

I’m celebrating. Tomorrow I’m going to sleep in, possibly beyond 9. If I told my childhood self that’s how we’d celebrate, he’d probably throw Transformers at me. I’ll throw in some pizza and funny movies to appease his memory.

The last chapter came about by accident. Following the climax, I had a good idea for the first paragraph of the following scene. I popped open a new document and set it up. That paragraph became three, fleshing out the introduction. Then I set up the major actions, and cleaned the plot skeleton for the chapter. A few things were easily described. I kept adding “just one more thing” until I realized I was writing the last sentence of the book. Just like that. If only the whole draft could have been so easy.

I hesitate to say “the book is done.” It’d be swell to pronounce it, but it isn’t. It’s not even a first draft.

The opening chapter needs to be split in half, and the conflict therein needs a complete rewrite. Hees is not the extortionist anymore. The motivations and dialogue in the climax also need rerouting. And there are hundreds of smaller things I knew needing fixing as I was writing the flawed copy. One of the better senses I’ve developed since college is what problems can be fixed immediately, and what can be marked and edited later. When fact-checking is necessary, or dialogue is spotty, or an invention requires tweaking in an earlier chapter, I leave myself commands in the text rather than interrupting the flow of the current work. Likewise, when I simply can’t get the feel for a scene, I’ll make a bullet list of the events that need to happen, then jump the gap and keep on working. This is how I completed the draft at all.

I have a physical today. Got to see how the syndrome is coming along. Friends are visiting later in the week. There are ample excuses to not work on this for a little while. It’s a necessary breather, especially since I’m feeling the middle stages of writer's exhaustion again.

After my visitors leave, I’ll follow the notes and fill the gaps. Streamlining naming conventions, seeding plot points, weeding out crutch words. I’ll smooth it into a proper first draft, then shelve it for a little longer, because I firmly believe in distancing oneself between drafts, and the second draft will be ruthless. I'll read it with fresh eyes, not the enamored dad-vision I have for my baby right now, and tinker accordingly.

I’ll fill that next inter-draft break with short stories. I’ve had to suppress five ideas in the last two weeks; now some of them will get their chance. “Great White Hunter” will be a little zombie comedy, while “Architect of Epics” might spring into a novella.

That’s the plan. Maybe family will have crises or the earth will explode. For now, I only know I’m sleeping in tomorrow. Thank you all for your interest and support. I will do everything I can to make this worth reading.

Bathroom Monologue: The Message

Our digital affair was over the instant she suspected I wasn’t really laughing out loud.

Bathroom Monologue: Why We Need a Pool

“And a pool. A pool is the only place you’re safe from sharks. The ocean? Sharks live there. The sea? Sharks live there. The lake? Don’t delude yourself. In nineteen-sixteen a great white shark swam up a lake in New Jersey and bit off a child’s legs. You can’t just go swimming anywhere. Only a closed, heated, chlorinated pool is safe from sharks. I guess a bath tub is, but you can’t swim in that. You might say we’re safe from sharks on land, but what if they develop mechanical legs? Then the highways would be unsafe. Even your bathtub, in your bathroom, would be accessible to a killer techno-shark. Only the pool would protect us, because the mechanical legs would malfunction in the water, so the sharks wouldn’t go in there. You’ve got to get us a pool, Dad, or you’re essentially killing us all.”

"Simply Lost" at Calling Shotgun

This week my flash story "Simply Lost" was featured at Laurita Miller's Calling Shotgun. It won an Honorable Mention from her and Alan Davidson's Lost contest. Their challenge was to write something on the theme of being lost. Naturally, I wrote about the show Lost. Even though I thought the story was a little dreary, it won points for humor with the judges.

You can read "Simply Lost" at this link.

Some folks are having trouble leaving comments at Calling Shotgun. I've left this post open if you want to leave your thoughts here.

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: Flower Over a Man OR, Write a Tweet-Length Story About This Picture

"Even as that," said Zeus. "I'll have that Lothario offer me to her."

Apollo snickered. "She won't fall in love with a flower over a man."

True Stories of John 9: What Men Want

I spent most of my first term at college in my dorm. I studied, played videogames, rested from the exhaustion brought on by my syndrome, and perhaps hid from having to grow a social identity.

That night I studied with my door open. My roommate was across the hall, wooing a New Yorker girl. I could hear them talking about punk bands and the expensive crap her dad was sending her. I was reading Daniel Dennett bitching about B.F. Skinner’s philosophy. My roommate was probably having the better time.

Two girls came to my door. One was stout, and the other was half a head taller. For anonymity, let’s call them Stout and Taller.

They stood in my doorway as though purposefully blocking my only exit.

“Hey, Stout’s doing a survey for her class.”

“It’s a science paper about gender.”

“You’ll be our first subject.”

“Sure,” I said, happy to put the book down. “Science is good.”

“Great!” Stout perked up. “It’s about men and relationships.”

My palms sweated a little. “Okay.”

Stout and Taller looked at each other. I noticed neither had any paper with them. Maybe it was a fast survey.

Taller looked at me. “So the first question is, what do men want?”

“What do men want?” I repeated, which probably not helpful.

“You know,” said Stout. “What can a woman do to keep a man happy?”

“Well the first thing you’ve got to realize is that not all men want the same thing. A lot of us want very different things.”

I was going to elaborate, but Stout and Taller looked at each other again. The look made me doubt science was at stake here. Then Stout said something that I’ve remembered with pride ever since.

“We need a dumber man.”

Taller said, “Thank you,” without looking at me. They retreated to the hall. A moment later, I heard them conversing with my roommate.

It was back to Dennett and Skinner for me, neither of whom I particularly wanted.

No Facebook in Heaven, OR, E-mails From Heaven

ElElleMarino                                                                May 21 (5 hours ago)

thx 4 the pics. sunrise sooo pretty. nice clouds

also, glad 2 c u wrn’t raptured either

TortoiseManwise                                                          May 21 (2 hours ago)

Who says I wasn’t Raptured? I could be in Heaven right now. Those are photos of clouds, after all.

ElElleMarino                                                                May 21 (1 hour ago)

o they have gmail in heven? ;p

TortoiseManwise                                                          May 21 (1 hour ago)

Wifi everywhere. Every movie ever is streaming. It’s pretty sweet.

Plus there’s no Facebook.

ElElleMarino                                                                 May 21 (1 hour ago)

i like facebook!

TortoiseManwise                                                           May 21 (20 minutes ago)

Maybe that’s why you’re not up here.

ElElleMarino                                                                 May 21 (10 minutes ago)

:(

TortoiseManwise                                                           May 21 (five minutes ago)

o:)

Versatile Writer Award 2: I’ll stab you if you make a Breakin’ reference

Last week Mr. FAR gave me this Versatile Writer award. I’d previously received it from Mari Juniper last year, but it’s very affirming to know a year later I’m still dexterous at the keyboard. The game requires seven seldom-known facts about the recipient, and for it to be passed on to someone else. It’s a little like visiting an unlicensed brothel.

1. When I was very little my uncle would hold me over the edge of his apartment building by my feet. I was probably annoying enough to warrant it, but it instilled a decades-long fear of heights.

2. In high school I seldom swore, disdained any sort of misbehavior, and was generally grumpy. In my Business class they called me "Grandpa." They'd mockingly ask me to tell them about the war. My stock response was to ask, "Which one?"

3. Last Tuesday I listened to Beethoven's symphonies for six straight hours. It helped me knock out a troublesome scene. There’s probably a blog post coming soon about listening to music while writing. I’ve joked about sending Hans Zimmer a royalty check for all the help summoning emotion his scores have given me.

4. I watched and read through nine of William Shakespeare’s plays, desperate to find one I actually liked. I feared disliking so much of Shakespeare would invalidate some useless but socially desirable part of me. Thank God Hamlet was good.

5. I enjoy 24-hour super markets because I like to dance with the cart in the empty aisles after midnight.

6. I have the terribly offensive habit of seeing humor in sickness and death. Meeting a fibromyalgia patient, I told her we should get our medical records and compare, because, “It’ll be like a game of Yu-Gi-Oh, only with decks of shitty lives.” It’s taken years, but now I’m quiet during most tragedies and funerals, not because I’m mourning, but because I’ve tired of being chastised for going against the accepted mood.

7. I watch way more Japanese professional wrestling than you think. That might actually be “any Japanese professional wrestling.” Kenta Kobashi is my all-time favorite striker. Once per week I hook up with a fellow writer Randall Nichols online to watch a simulcast of Dragon Gate Infinity. When Dragon toured the U.S. and hit Boston, I sat in the second row. Shingo Takagi and I had a moment where he was about to destroy a dude and I gave him the double thumbs-up. He looked down at me like he wanted to eat me alive. It was a highlight of my year.

So now that I’ve admitted those things, I’m sure you’re highly interested in my list of versatile writers. Here are five:

1. Stephen Book has to be first. He attempts a new style or genre for nearly every #fridayflash. Despite shifting so much, he has a routine standard of quality in the upper class of the community. More people should be reading his blog.

2. Chuck Allen, whose blog includes arguments against auto-flushing toilets, activism against slave trafficking, and sometimes Westerns. Diversity! Versatility.

3. Danielle La Paglia was tinkering with some ideas, but decided to do a YA project just for her daughter. Think about that – could have written other stuff, went into this for her daughter. That’s pretty cool. Also demonstrates versatile. Her thematic serials also span an impressive range of emotions. Well worth checking out, especially since they pop like candy.

4. Tony Noland, the first writer I met through Twitter who actually conversed with me about versatility. He also blogged about the importance of experimenting, and fears of losing his audience for writing different sorts of things. As someone who has proudly lost plenty of people because he wrote one thing instead of another, I endorse this fella.

5. Now I mentioned Randall Nichols in the previous list, so he precedes everyone listed here, but he’s also last on this list. What does that mean? As Lex Luger would say, “I don’t know.” Based just on the scripts I’ve critiqued for him, Nichols has done modern kung fu, backwoods vampires, checkout clerk angst and nudie bar suicides. You should go talk to all of these people, but when you talk to Randall, ask him about his love for Clash of the Titans.

Bathroom Monologue: Self-Defeating Prophecy Audio Redux

This story originally ran on April 19, 2009. Since it got no comments then, I'll presume none of my current readers read it. And if you did read it, please enjoy the brand-spanking-new recording below.

To listen to this brand-spanking-new recording either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio, or click this text to download the MP3.



It wasn’t that the end of the world got here, but that too many did. The frost giants wanted to freeze the world, the fire gods wanted to burn it, and the deities of science had all manner of diseases and bombs that would let the humans kill themselves off. Irony was a big seller in the market of The End.

Well humanity saw the many apocalypses arguing and came up with a clever idea. One would-be leader went up to them and proposed the agents of Armageddon end each other, and whichever was left would be announced the most effective, and then get to end the world. The last doomsday standing, as it were, would win.

Eager to get some sort of destruction in, they began ending the crap out of each other. Polar ice caps melted and extinguished exalted volcanoes. Meteor showers decimated android armies. Cataclysmic earthquakes swallowed up dragons, rendering global warming utterly irrelevant.

And yet not a single human was slain in the battle royale. Only the Angels of the Rapture wised up, and only in time to see the last humans' spaceships leaving earth for new worlds. Then the dragons and gods had nothing but an empty planet to destroy. And frankly, with all the trees and none of the pop music, they didn’t want to. They leveled a few cities and had a picnic in the shade of former skyscrapers instead. The sum total of all destructive potential grabbed some sun tan lotion and relaxed.