Spotlight on Me?

Angel Zapata wrote an article spotlighting my stories over on his blog, A Rage of Angel. He took excerpts from a few of the Bathroom Monologues that circled the internet to illustrate that I'm apparently a versatile writer. That is a relief, given I just wrote a week of the same stuff. You can check out his blog and the spotlight article here: http://arageofangel.blogspot.com/2009/08/john-wiswell-writer-spotlight.html

Bathroom Monologue: Acedia

Come, shrug off the smoke of that place. Let’s be off to the last sight to see. Nicer in this house. No one smokes. The father fought hard to quit, but we’re not here for him. We’re here for what’s melting over him, and his boy.

Every big economy needs its waste adjustors. The ones who come in and turn useless assets lucrative. Acedia really should be on par with busty Luxuria and pot-bellied Gula, but he doesn’t care for reputation. Too much work. She doesn’t do work, allowing clients to come to her. They always will. They cannot help it. They can diet and exercise, keep their energy up, meditate to focus, but eventually everyone becomes tired. How easy is it for Gula to goad you into eating another a bite or a little dessert? How hard is it to fight Superbia’s fingers around your heart when you’ve done something you know as good? Now triple that feeling, and know how hard it is not to lie a little longer when your muscles ache and your dreams are so much more pleasant than the work that waits in the world of the standing.

Alas, it’s Sunday morning and the vices are melting from our eyes. Their bodies, that is. I cannot show you Acedia: The Woman Incarnate. Already she melts into two. Soon she will be all. What is she this second? Look closer.

See that. A father’s brown eye through a crack in the white-painted door, and the fraction of his smile visible over a boy asleep at noon. How could this be vile? How could this be vice? The old one deeply proud, the young one indulging in long slumber. It’s sweet. It’s love incarnate, which we did not plan her to be a part of the tour. Love could not be a vice. Not one of the seven, at least.

And with the sun, here melts the truth of all vices, dear tourist. That none are pure evil. The boy is earnestly tired from last night’s high school football. That game where adrenaline, colorful sports drinks, the budding chests of cheerleaders and vicarious parents made every vice rich again. Was any of it pure evil? Not a drop of it, for that which is pure evil rots and crumbles from the whole. The vices abandon such investments.

They are humanitarians. You can say they write off some of their crueler work like this. Superbia can invest in parents proud of their children, and Acedia here rewards a child after long work. What romantic story does not dip its brush in Luxuria’s wells? You can say they write off their worst work in accenting the best of yours. You could also say they justify their accounts this way. Perhaps they began as good. Perhaps, frightening as it may be, they are always good, in a little way, somewhere. Humanitarians, insofar as vegetarians love vegetables.

But now Acedia has melted from the father and the son. The boy stirs, face rubbing in his pillow. Somewhere, someone sleeps. Look as we like, though, we cannot see Acedia in any of them. Gone are Luxuria in the low and Gula in the high. Gone are Avaritia, Ira and Superbia. Is that Invidia still in the corner? No, it is a doll with a dumb expression. Art imitates them all, and fools us so often. My mistake, not ours. I apologize. It’s Sunday morning, and a tour guide makes mistakes. But do you still see them? Our eyes diverge, but yours are surely still open.

Bathroom Monologue: Invidia

In the corner. When bored, she always drifts into a corner. She’s the one with the flat, amorphous features. Luxuria purposefully switches genders, changing them to hurt. Not this one. Invidia has not the features necessary to attain a gender, and resents all those that do. The more you have, the more she wants them. A flower is more of a woman than she. Her hair can never be too short or long, always cutting it to match someone else’s style, chasing originality by imitation.

The corner is the safe place to find her. When she moves into the room, she’ll disappear into another vice. Can’t actually have anything, that pauper sin. We don’t know why, but the room always seems a little smokier when you notice she’s an occupant. Even now, who has a cigarette lit? Despite No Smoking signs, she touches one man on the shoulder and there’s a haze that burns the nostrils.

A turn of the head later, and she has invested herself in them. That’s why she’s a pauper – she wants not only to be other vices, but to be full people, and she can never be either. She’s constantly watching or giving in – she can be no more. When she gets what she wants, her mortals no longer recognize what they have. When they can no longer recognize it, they search the horizon for another to resent. That toe-headed boy who returns her gaze right now? He’ll leave with nothing, unless…

Oh, she’s ostentatious tonight. Climbing into his lap and blowing on his dice? How cute, already turning her account over to Luxuria. She’s invited a few people to her room tonight, and he’ll think he’ll be the only one to accept. Tomorrow, he’ll stare like she does, staring at everyone who declined.

Bathroom Monologue: Superbia

Ira’s fight in the alley was not his idea. Up there, just one flight of stairs instead of a hundred. Near the window and the mirror. Such an immaculate man you would think he was Luxuria. Hair combed, suit pressed, muscles refined. Yet Luxuria doesn’t need so many reflective surfaces around. Even now, as Ira commits violence in this vice’s name, Superbia is watching himself.

That’s him. A little above, always near enough to see the thing done, always readily bored by that which does not reflect himself. You need to be good to be that disinterested and last in their business.

You rut and there’s a baby that grows up to rut. You murder and there will be grievance. Easy turnovers. Yet Superbia? The soundest portfolio, constantly refining self-image. Those who enroll in his plan feel him more and more. When that sense is challenged? Bare-chested Ira is there. A history with Luxuria will validate him. Or he will sidestep, let them blame it all on grubby Avaritia, and in giving up some possessions? In seeming selfless they invest in another of Superbia’s stocks. Righteousness and Avaritia alike can serve the vice in love with his own mirror.

Sunday is nearing, dear tourist. Come quickly. It will banish them from our sight, and we would not have you lose out on the last visions.

Bathroom Monologue: Ira

You muttered earlier, asking who Ira was. Perk up your ears, and surely you can hear him bellowing. Let us follow it down the street, and there in the alley beside the homeless shelter. There is Ira. Don’t think he’s always there – he’s worked much finer venues. Burned down churches and art galleries. The last time he was visible to mortal eyes, he was watching people drown from the deck of a yacht.

You’re surprised he’s scrawny? Looks mighty thin when unclothed, we’ll all agree. Shirtless, as usual. Always takes his shirt off, never knows why. You’d think him huge, but he has not the attention span to build himself up. Ira goes from thing to thing, hating whatever he can in the moment. The poor planner, this one. Every vice gets opportunities, yet he sees so little of them coming. He finds them and acts out. An improvisational economist. He lucks into his windfalls, and you can tell by how he wrings every last cent out of his accounts. Not by intelligence, but by sheer tenacity he forces Christians to blame Jews for an execution thousands of years after their man’s demise.

Religion is an easy account, like race and nationality. He needs those, and needs them as dumbed down as possible. If he has to think it through, there’s a good chance he’ll go bankrupt. No, he needs these accounts, the ones that sustain themselves, that turn even geniuses into bickering idiots. Then Ira gathers them up and makes indignation burn as bright and as quickly as possible, caring not when the sun of hate collapses into a cold, black hole.

He can’t handle the more complex accounts, and another vice is happy to pick those from his pockets. They placate him by leaving angry disenfranchised in their wake, and he is so busy jumping on those that he is none the wiser. There are always enough unhappy for him to find clients.

Now you say that shirtless thing can’t be responsible for all the violent evils. Too many are thought out. There are calculative monsters among us, it’s true. Yet those are not his designs. It’s people who shape Ira into lasting grudges and long-term dissent. Even now you can see how blunt is his nature, how ignorant of anything but the man whose hair is in his hands. What good will dashing his head against the floor do? The dead man can yield him no more profit. Ira cares not.

Bathroom Monologue: Avaritia

Down. Much further down. Street level and a little lower, Avaritia is shaking hands and swapping grins with his clients. He’s one of the few who will get in with the cattle. Do you see him, fork and knife in hand, offering as he asks if that soul couldn’t use a little more? So plump, pig-nosed and easy to mistake for Gula. Yet pot-bellied Gula loathes him, which is why you’ll never find Avaritia sitting on high. He can’t sit up there and make eye contact with his fellow vice, or he’d have to share.

Avaritia steals, you see. He takes hunger’s work and claims it for his own, and does so with any instinct he can subvert. Arousal. Fatigue. Most often he’ll sneak into Ira’s profession, as that one is the least witted of vices.

Fooling others into handing over their earnings never gets old and never yields enough, as Avaritia is neither envious of their hauls nor proud of his accomplishments. He’s never sated, not with billboards, web ads, radio jingles, television commercials, movie trailers, logos on t-shirts and Buy It Now on eBay. Merchandising is easy and you cannot want enough. That’s why he’s down there, shoving forkfuls of ham at people who are full. He’d take all of the vices into himself, if he could truly have anything to start with.

Bathroom Monologue: Gula

See that man up there? No, not in the window. The men in that window are serving Luxuria, even though they think to serve themselves.

No. A hundred flights up, standing in the room with all the windows blown out. Gula doesn’t like windows. Like pants, he finds them constraining. All he wears is that sheer robe, fallen open so you can see whatever disgusts you. Ironic that he’s got only a bit of a pot belly, no? If you’re looking for symbolism in his form, see the wind go through his greasy hair. Though his hair flutters, it’s the wind that leaves moved. Breathe deeply and you can smell him from down here.

Luxuria has it easy, but this one? This one has it like you wouldn’t believe. For while mankind must rut every generation if the game of life is to continue, they have to eat every day. In the worst corners of the world they will mix a little grain with mud merely to have something to fill their bellies. How can one compete with him in such a market?

He began with red berries, so long ago that there wasn’t a word for them yet. Then sweet berries. Tart and tangy berries. Berries with noticeable seeds that crunched, and softer, plump grapes. They stained his lips so deeply those thousands of years ago that you can still see juice at the corners of his mouth. Women invented bags to carry them home. He could take credit for consumer culture, if he cared.

Eat to comfort. Eat to commune. At the very height of blasphemy, he made them eat and drink their savior, though in turn that savior scorned him by making them take it in moderation. Just a sip and a single wafer of salvation per piece. It is one of the few investments Gula lost. Some vices gossip that he’s been compensating ever since, getting people to gorge after bloody battles to celebrate the carnage, and gorge on drive-thru in their cars, not even having to stand up to order sandwiches that come with complimentary fried goods. He’s managed a portfolio of increasing obesity against dozens of diet fads. In an environment where militant vegans measure their vitamin intake and show slaughterhouse photos to children, he’s got the average body fatter than ever. Nor is he threatened by the thin and healthy, for fetishizing diet is as gluttonous as the obese pounding Big Macs. He’s been into alternative forms of worship since people divided into hunters and gatherers. A varied portfolio is tucked under that left arm there, stained with fetid sweat, built on a habit second only to breathing in its popularity.

Bathroom Monologue: Luxuria

What a week to visit, good tourist. There are fifty-two weeks in a year, so it’s easy to toss one away for the next as soon as it’s over. But there are fifty-two cards in a deck and we all respect aces. This is a joker of a week, good tourist.

All seven vices are walking the earth for seven days. Not men stuffing their faces and bank accounts. No mere metaphors. The very vices themselves. Touch my shoulder and we will see them, these gods. Be they gods to you? Demons? Leaches on the back of greatness? To my eyes they are investors. Insecurities Brokers, if you will.

Whatever they are, we must not name them directly. Tread lightly and speak them not, for to speak a vice’s trade when beholding her will alert them all. Silence is the wisest course, as the focus of a vice is untenable.

Look now. Grip my shoulder and see her. You would know her in a crowd of a hundred harlots, though she’s the only one at this dinner. Nearest the host’s seat, hoping to occupy it with him. Let not her modern name fly. This week, let her be Luxuria.

Doesn’t it seem to always begin with her? Easiest to spot in a culture of plunging necklines and micro-skirts. Except she’s not a “her.” She comes off that way because most of her artists are men. Her slaves see the master they want, but her practitioners straddle genders. In truth she’s androgynous, slipping into your bed, getting your toes to curl, and only then becoming what you didn’t want. That’s the trick with Luxuria, making you beg for what you’ll regret. She’ll enjoy it enough for the both of you, and make you mistake being enraptured in her for the actual joy of anything.

What is sexy about her bare midriff? No mortal in the parlor can take his eyes from it. Barely any meat on her flank and they’re licking their chops. What would that bank manager do if he got his hands on it? Copulate with her belly button?

This absurdity is nothing new. Before naked bellies, it was fat butts. Before fat butts, flat ones. And always with the tits. What exactly are a pair of milk-secreting glands going to do for you during sex? They don’t serve as useful handholds. They’re erotic garnish she passes off as steak dinners. But fraud has always helped investors. That’s Luxuria’s business, turning a necessary act and a grand pastime into an industry of insecurity and embarrassment. Hers is an insured portfolio, for if the game of life is to continue, everyone must succumb at least once a generation. In the game, Luxuria can safely tithe life itself.

Bathroom Monologue: Bottle Them

If I knew why this was hilarious, I would bottle it and sell it. On the black market. No way could it be legal. If mushrooms are illegal, this kind of irrational, convulsive laughter is probably a low-scale WMD. A WLD, I guess. Weapon of Lesser Destruction. Weapon of Laughter Devastation. Weapon of Fall Out of the Chair and Hurt Your Kidney Against the Garbage Can. Which is a tough acronym, and a tougher bruise to explain. Almost as tough as explaining why the greatest laughs happen. But boy, if I could, I’d bottle them.

Bathroom Monologue: Stop the Watch

When I said the stopwatch could pause time I didn't mean you could just click the top and go rob a bank while everyone stayed still. I certainly didn't mean you could yank the batteries out and freeze the planet in place. I understand you’re dissatisfied with the purchase, but it’s user error. It's a precise mechanism, balanced and crafted down to the molecules to operate in singular fashion. It's like a woman: you've got to be careful with your touch or you're not getting anything out of it. You damn sure can't just jam the batteries back in and expect it to work like I advertised. Hey, are you listening? I said you can't just put those back in. Put them down. God knows what'll happen if you

Next Week, Vice Week

Next week there will be a different sort of serial on the Bathroom Monologues. Check in from Sunday through Saturday for a guided tour of the world of vice.

Bathroom Monologue: A Snide Moment

Cole picked a shell up off the beach and put it to his ear.

His wife snickered. “That’s too small. You’ll never hear anything in that.”

“Good,” he said, adjusting the shell over his ear. “That’s what I’m looking for.”

Bathroom Monologue: Take the Other Side

Of all the controversies in abortion, none is so contentious as the decision of several fetuses to abort their mothers. These super-intelligent fetuses argue that they didn’t agree to be here and ought not to be the ones who get flushed. Their lawyers liken the current mother/fetus legal paradigm to slavery, with things only getting worse as they near birth and will soon have to deal with global warming, meteor showers and girls.

“It’s very stressful, thinking of living a life I didn’t ask for. I’m not a vengeful man yet, but the option to abort my mother for it seems fair,” said one fetus, by tapping Morse code on his mother's abdomen. The fetus is not anonymous by choice. His parents have not yet chosen a name. It is one of his many grievances.

His lawyer, Sherman Goldstein, argues, “If his mother has the right to abort him, then certainly he ought to have the right to abort her. That’s like saying only one combatant in a war has the right to shoot.”

Mr. Goldstein is currently arguing for fetuses to have the first choice on whether or not to abort mothers before the South Dakota Supreme Court. The Justices declined to comment.

A hotter judicial topic is late term mother-abortion, which is only legal in three countries, and only in cases that put the health of the fetus at risk. In one country this has recently been broadened to include mental health, a dangerous loophole as labor draws near and fetuses, as M.R.I. prenatal brain scans suggest, grow more nervous.

One mother argued her own case in a French court this April, claiming she feared her baby would terminate her just because she couldn’t promise that the doctor wouldn’t spank him. While not so extreme, other expecting mothers have resorted to contract negotiation, promising to carry the baby several trimesters after the expected term in compromise for a “cease fire” agreement.

Bathroom Monologue: “Shit rolls down hill.” –Popular excuse for insensitive behavior

The turd fell in the freshly mowed grass. It rolled for an inch before sticking to the green blades, turning them a premature brown. It clumped and stuck.

Felix looked down the rest of the hill.

“I thought it was supposed to keep going.”

Redge shrugged. “Guess it doesn’t always.”

“Does this mean we have to deal with our own crap and not just pass it on to our subordinates?”

“I don’t know. This can’t be a legal precedent.” Redge looked down at their car. “All the same, got a baggie? Or a dog scooper? I don’t want to tempt fate. Or justice.”

Bathroom Monologue: Boo

Night vision goggles that allow him to see in zero light environments. Tactile fiber bodysuit absorbs all motion such that he makes no noise. It also covers the entire body, reducing the chance of any smells. With access to that kind of arsenal, he certainly has access to odorless, tasteless chemicals that can kill us with only a drop in our toothpaste. Or maybe he'll spray it on the bed and you'll think I wet myself when you find my corpse. He spends six nights a week working at the gym, which is why he's always gone by the time you come. That's why you haven't caught the boogeyman, daddy. But he’ll be back. You don’t make that kind of investment into something you won’t finish.

My Contributions to Max Cantor's #flagofmycountry Challenge on Twitter

-The flag of my country must touch the ground, to connect with the earth it represents. However, it may never be trampled.

-The flag of my country can be stained, dirtied and even bloodied, so long as we the people maintain what it stands for.

-Also, the flag of my country comes with a complimentary Best of Queen CD.

-The flag of my country is more absorbant than a shamwow. Even when wrung it retains some juice in its patented moral fibers

-The flag of my country has many stars and one asterisk, for the places we aren't done with yet.

-The flag of my country is actually a hologram so that even if the U.N. kicks us out, we can project it onto their building.

Bathroom Monologue: Totem Polls

In recent Totem Polls, Bear came in last place with two votes. "No one votes for the second from the top. Eagle with his spread wings gets all the attention. Fuck that guy."

Bathroom Monologue: Inspector Conan, an anime about a teenager stuck in a child’s body who solves crimes, has gone over 500 episodes, OR, Could you..?

-The guy who replaces sodas in vending machine is found dead in his own soda dispenser.

-The guy who collects all the soda cans from the recycling bin is found dead in his own sorting machine.

-The guy who owns the store where those soda murders took place sells it, only to be found dead by the new owner the next morning in his old office, safe open and all the doors locked from the inside.

-NRA president chokes to death on a peanut. But he didn’t eat peanuts…

-Dog walker is strangled to death when his neck was entangled in the leashes of his flock of dogs. But he’d never be so careless!

-A Horror novelist dies of no apparent cause at all. No marks or cuts, drugs in the house or poison in her system. It’s as though… but that can’t be!

-A Mystery novelist is killed in a curious way, found dead in her car on a stretch of back road she’d never visited before. It’s curious because it follows exactly how the victim died in her upcoming book, but that book wasn’t finished. Or was it?

-Wealthy socialite washes up on a beach, seemingly mauled by a shark. But there are no sharks in those waters.

-All the counselors at Camp Crystal Lake have gone missing. People in town say a boy drowned there years ago due to counselors ignoring him, and now he’s back for revenge, but Conan is not so superstitious. Or is he?

-Crossover with a remake of The Good Son. Just have him deal with a psycho murderous child.

-Speaking of crossovers, the Child’s Play series enjoys getting ridiculous. Have Conan fight a haunted serial killing doll.

-A lighting rig falls, nearly crushing a rising pop star mid-finale. She made many enemies on her rise to celebrity. That’s always fun.

-Internationally successful marathon runner disappears on a jog and his coach seems conspicuously nervous when interviewed despite having an alibi with his other clients.

-The upfront psycho murderous child returns the same day as a neighborhood child is slain, and all evidence points towards Conan! Can he clear his name?

-A psychic helped the police solve several otherwise unsolvable mysteries, but she couldn’t foresee her own death. Now it’s up to Conan to bring justice to her memory, but if the claims are true, all his suspects can see him coming.

-A zoo keeper is mauled to death by what seems to be a big cat. Yet all his animals are locked up and there is no evidence any of them touched him. Besides, how could one have gotten into his sixth-story apartment?

-A two-part drama where Conan finds a boy identical to himself dead in his bed. The cast mourn his death and for no readily apparent reason do not recognize Conan to be Conan anymore. What happened to his identity? Is he himself?

-482-part drama where Conan goes to Chucky Cheese. Corporate America will pay.

Bathroom Monologue: Shadowing at the Oscars

I’ve shepherded many authors over the years. Agents hire me to shadow a consultant and keep him from doing anything too dumb or dangerous on book tours. Of all the drug abusers and self-destructive self-help gurus, he was the worst. One of those novelists, you know.

His book was turned into a movie, and no matter what he says, the movie was better. It was nominated for an Oscar the same year he was snubbed for a Pulitzer. Out of graciousness and idiocy, he was invited to the Oscars, and in his style, arrived ill-fit. You think straps on a dress are faux pas? He arrived on the carpet in khakis and a blue floral print shirt. I think most of the paparazzi mistook him for a tech guy – how many authors can you name by faces? – but one came over. I knew there’d be an issue, and my client tried to oblige.

“This isn’t Florida,” said the reporter with this slappably sick grin.

“Oh,” said my client, fixing the lapels of his floral and admiring the Oscar crowd. “All the young models dating old Jews fooled me.”

There would have been a P.R. firestorm the next morning, had the movie about gay ranchers not lost to the movie about L.A. being racist. Now I only work with children’s book authors. The job hasn’t changed as much as I wished.

Bathroom Monologue: Deaf Leading

It was dumb, but she was nervous to take them to the beach. She'd always had fat hips, and there was no way she could tone up her arm flab. She felt disgusting in a bikini no matter what her husband said. Even one-pieces rode up her butt uncomfortably. She settled on a humiliating combination of men's shorts, a one-piece and an optional t-shirt to wear over it if she chickened out.

And nobody made fun of her. The blind kids were just happy somebody took them swimming.

The Nearest Thing in Flash 40 Anthology

My short story, "The Nearest Thing," has been published in the new Flash 40 Anthology. It is available free at Smashwords and comes in PDF, PDB, RTF and TXT formats, so it can be read on palm devices as well as computers. My story is about two boys who grew up on and ran away from the same street without ever meeting. You can grab it here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/2942

Finalist at readingwriters.com

I made it to the finals of the Dialogue-Only Story contest over at Reading Writers. "Up High" is about two men on the edge of a building, with two very different agendas up there. Whether or not I'll get the Grand Prize is still up in the air.

Bathroom Monologue: Cave Man Logan

“Following impressive sales for Old Man Logan, Mark Millar and Joe Quesada announced today that Millar will return to Wolverine in 2010 with a new year-long story. Following the last remnants of civilization being destroyed, the elderly Logan lives a solitary life of fighting Savage Land dinosaurs and mutant bears for food. He will reside in a cave under the rubble of the former X-Mansion, painting panels in memorial to all the friends and enemies he has lost on the walls. The story will return Wolverine to his animalistic roots as he wears nothing but an animal hide and appears to have lost the ability to speak. Cave Man Logan is scheduled to begin in February 2010.”

Bathroom Monologue: Balls

The ball was actually invented by September, the Goddess of Disease. It was an act of mercy, not athletics, as no gym teacher divinity could have designed it. It was round, like the planet, and while entertainment was intrinsic, its primary goal was to transmit bacteria from person to person. From floor to person. From wet rugby field to person. And so on.

Consider all the germs it would collect by merely dribbling it on the floor of the Wal Mart in which you purchased it, upon which thousands of other people had previously walked, fell, spit, sneezed and occasionally bled. And what is filthier than the human hand, which scratches the buttocks, cups the sneeze and generally touches more alien materials than any other part of the non-sexual anatomy? The only thing filthier would be the ball, which passes from human to human, hand to hand, wet rugby field to person.

Yet kind September’s gift didn’t cause plagues. Athletes became the paragons of fitness because they were exposed to more exercise and more germs than anyone else. Their immune systems buffed up. Sports were a side effect of her ball. So yes, contrary to the intuition of every kid to ever suffer asthma – disease invented sports, no matter what Apollo has tried to claim since.

Bathroom Monologue: Thinking of the Phone in the Bathroom

Here's a prank call nobody makes. You look up a number in the phone book, then call.

"Hello?" she answers.

In your deepest voice, ask, "Is this Valerie Nab?"

"Yes?" she answers in a half-question.

"That's good." Then, taking your mouth away from the receiver, say loud enough that she'll still hear, "Location confirmed."

Then hang up.

Nobody makes that prank. No clue why.

Bathroom Monologue: En Medea Res

En Medea Res, the literary device where Euripides goes right to the fun part of a witch going ape shit on her husband and kids. No sissy romance, heroic month-long voyages or unhygienic labor - we're going right to flaming chariots and a "That bitch!" moment worthy of Dallas, only a few thousand years before there was a Texas.

Bathroom Monologue: Unwatchable Edition

Hot on the heels of the Watchmen Director’s Cut Bluray (TM), author Alan Moore will be releasing his own cut of the blockbuster film. The Definitive Author’s Cut Watchmen Bluray (R) is promised to feature exclusive commentary and tells the entire film as Moore intended. The Bluray case will be empty.

Cover art by David Gibbons.

Bathroom Monologue: Grocer Chat

[GARY sits on one end of the booth in a pink tuxedo. GRUFF STOVER sits on the other side of the booth in red and green flannel. ARYANA between them, back to the window, wearing a chain mail pant suit. GRUFF pushes a bowl of fruit towards GARY. A chair is pulled up to the front of the booth, but no one sits there. His is an absence that weighs upon us all.]

Gary: No.

Gruff: You have to eat healthy.

Gary: The experience of teeth biting into a banana is like that of sinking your boots into thick mud.

Gruff: You’ve been impossible since you took up poetry.

Aryana: Try an apple.

Gary: Don’t kid me. Snow White went down to an apple. Apples kill.

Gruff: It’s like you’re morally opposed to fruit.

Gary: My colon is. It’s not my fault media has conditioned me to not to eat things that fall dead off of trees. Between fairy tale poisons and razor blades hidden in rinds, fruit isn’t trustworthy.

Aryana: He has a point. There’s no haunted candy.

Gruff: Maybe America would lose weight if there were more stories about evil. Butterfingers.

Gary: I doubt that would do it.

Aryana: Also, Gary’s British.

Gruff: Venomous Mars Bars, then.

Bathroom Monologue: Split Swords

“Wrong! It is my other personality that has post-traumatic stress disorder. I compensate for him by handling even the most mind-breaking situations with a debonair ease that brings women to their knees. Where he could barely operate a pocket calculator, I have unmatched skill with a basket-hilted rapier! Antagonists of my other self, en garde!”

Bathroom Monologue: Previously On #003

Previously on Previously On...

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

Apollo showed up at that diner, wanting to take Gravity's job. He may not be alone...


And then...

A shut-in with a pathological fear of the Hanes underwear people expanded his house to provide safety from anything they dropped on him.

Somewhere in middle America there is a psychic who spends more of her time than she’d like helping people who don’t believe her.

And a long time ago someone built an iron army. They were not just a cute prose poem.


And now...

“That went well,” Lawrence said to himself, watching the reporter leave. Most were out of commission today, but she had real gumption, using a fire extinguisher to fly cross town in the absence of gravity. If her small talk was even half true, this would be a much more carbon-friendly method of travel. He watched until her white exhaust foam trailed out of sight, then turned back into his hall. He braced his hands on the low ceiling and began to waddle towards the living room.

He’d built the ceilings low so the bastards at Hanes couldn’t hide out of his peripheral vision when they eventually attacked. Though the reporter had played dumb, Lawrence thought she saw the truth. She’d wanted a story about a zero-gravity-proof house, but he’d dropped enough hints that when this aired, it would blow the lid off the intentional Hanes conspiracy.

He shimmied along the halls that connected his house to the sidewalk, another Hanes-related addition. So were the pillows and mattresses along the walls. Oh, they’d all looked crazy until today. But now who was crazy? Reporters were riding fire extinguishers.

As he shimmied around one corner, his cell rang. Instinctively he pulled it from his pocket, lost his balance and floated face-first into the ceiling. It did not feel as uncomfortable as you’d think.

After a moment of swimming impotently, he let himself drift and answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello. This is the Melrose Psychic Hotline.”

“What?” He jerked, and accidentally rotated until his butt was level with the ceiling cushions. “You people can’t call me. That’s not fair.”

“I am calling you.”

Like a true shut-in with nothing else to do, he pounced.

“You can’t do that! It’s a 900 number. I’m not going to pay you, and you can’t call me expecting me to pay. You can get all this stuff online free. Is that why you’re calling people? Reverse the charges and bilk them with your scam?”

“You’re not being charged, fool. I’m calling to warn you that a catastrophe is about to break out.”

“You’re a day late. Has the gravity not gone out there?”

“It’s gone out everywhere. That’s not the catastrophe I’m trying to warn you about.”

“Then what is?”

“Remain calm. Know that whatever happens, the spirit of your house always loved you.”

“I don’t believe in this stuff, lady.”

“You watch too much TV. You are wearing green socks. You have a pathological fear that the Hanes underwear company is out to kill you.”

Lawrence paused. He stared at the receiver. Was she one of them?

“I am not one of them,” she said so loud that he heard her with the phone away from his ear. He put it back to his ear and listened on.

“There is no them, Lawrence. So listen to me. Remain calm and follow the redheaded man as soon as it’s over.”

“As soon as what’s over?”

“Clairvoyance isn’t Google. I only see parts. If you don’t follow the redheaded man, you’ll be crushed by the giant—”

Lawrence didn’t hear whatever the giant crushing thing was going to be because a giant iron foot came smashing through the ceiling.

For a micromoment he thought it was thunder.

Then he thought it was Hanes, having dropped not just a ton of their tagless underwear, but an entire jumbo jet on him.

And just as the cushy ceiling came down on him, he thought this might have something to do with what the psychic was saying.

The impact tossed him down the hall leading to the garage, feeling like the ball on a foosball table. Any part of the padded construction that caved sent him flying away before it could hurt, though he thought he felt a bruise forming when he struck the door to the garage.

From there he looked up through the gaping hole that had once been his gloriously low and gravity-friendly ceilings, and saw a giant, rusty foot. It was flat, with a few claw-like prongs on the end, like toes on a toy monster. Except this toy was several stories tall. The feet led to a leg, which led to an iron skeletal body, atop which glared a giant iron Jack O’Lantern. Its eyes blazed like cartoon furnaces. It looked right at him, then looked away. He’d never been so happy as when a giant robot showed no interest in him. Thank God, these things clearly weren’t working for Hanes.

Through the wreckage of what had been a totally sweet low-ceilinged media center, Lawrence spied someone in a black cloak running from his basement. The man showed no trouble running, though when Lawrence checked himself, he found the gravity still out.

The man had long, red hair.

“I wonder…” Lawrence began. Then another giant foot came crashing through his ceiling. It convinced him to run away, or at least, to get moving.

Since he was already floating helplessly, Lawrence kicked his legs. They struck the garage door and sent him shooting forward through the air. When he reached another wall, he braced and kicked off again. If some part of his mind weren’t terrified, and another grieving that he’d lost part of his house, he would have been delighted at a sensation so similar to playing in the town pool.

“Hey! Hey!” he called.

The redheaded man continued running, not looking back. So Lawrence torpedoed further, hoping to grab the bastard’s cape. He’d at least find out why he’d been in his basement, if not why psychics found this man worth following.

The redheaded man did not looking back. Lawrence, preoccupied with the redheaded man, didn’t either. Had either looked back, they would have seen several giant, iron Jack O’Lanterns changing course to follow them.