Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction Read online

  Andrew drove down the street as fast as he could, which, because of the slick surface, wasn’t all that fast. In his rearview mirror he could see the truck driver. The guy was swarthy and big, with broad shoulders and a nose that looked like it had been broken. He appeared to be scowling. Andrew turned a corner and accelerated. The truck turned, too, and got closer. Andrew could see the painter gesturing with his right hand. “Jesus,” Andrew thought, “he’s giving me the finger—he must be pissed. Just what I need!”

  Since he was already late for the meeting, the last thing Andrew wanted to do was stop and get into a wrangle, especially with a guy who looked so intimidating. He turned down another street, but the truck followed even more closely. Andrew began to sweat, his head hurt, and his ulcer was acting up. What to do? He was near the entrance to the freeway but realized the painter wasn’t going to give up. And if the guy dicked around with him on the freeway, they might have an accident.

  Shaking, and with great reluctance, Andrew pulled over and let the driver’s side window down. His pursuer drove abreast and rolled down his passenger-side window. Andrew, inwardly groaning, got ready to engage his tormentor, hoping the battle would be only verbal.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said the pickup driver. “Your briefcase is on top of your car.”

  The Perfect Camping Trip

  Gail Denham

  Vacation time! Wife has finally agreed to try camping, one more time; last year you camped in a field where they rounded up cattle early the next morning.

  This year will be different. You have planned the perfect camping trip. That is, if you can cram everything into the van. What is all this stuff? Wife has brought enough food to last until December.

  As you gather the gear, the stove slips out of your hands. Oops! Someone put it away greasy. No cooking bacon this year, you decide.

  Load after load of tents, lanterns, sleeping bags, cooking pots, shovels, buckets, and water toys are hauled out of their winter hiding places and shoved into the bulging vehicle. Boxes of food and soda follow. At this rate, you won’t have room for the kids. You begin pulling things back out.

  Finally! You’re ready.

  Wife makes the sixteenth trip through the house, unplugging everything. “I heard of a house that burned to the ground because of a faulty plug,” she says when you ask. So what’s to stop that from happening when you’re at home, you want to say, but you think better of it. She might change her mind. After all, she voted to stay at a resort.

  “Come on,” you call, tapping the horn.

  The lake is a four-hour drive away. You’ll have to set up tents in the dark if you don’t hurry. At last you’re off. But not far off. “I forgot coffee,” Wife yells. Brakes screech. The van bumps over the curb as you maneuver a U-turn.

  “Anyone who has to go to the bathroom, go now,” you warn as Wife dashes into the house. Kids are busy fighting over a pillow. No answer. They restrain themselves until you reach the edge of town. “Daddy,” Daughter squeaks. “I have to go—now.”

  Bit by bit, with only minor interruptions, such as stopping at every rest stop and service station, you inch your way toward that paradise lakeside vacation spot. Your foot presses the accelerator as you race the sun.

  You lose.

  Wife and kids sit in the van and eat peanut butter on crackers while you struggle with a zillion tent pegs and rain flys.

  “How about a salami sandwich?” you request. “No salami,” Wife replies.

  “$364 worth of groceries, and no salami,” you mutter.

  Your flashlight flickers weakly. They should make these instructions in large print. The lantern fuel didn’t get packed either.

  “Okay, come on out,” you call finally. “I’m going to build a fire.”

  Suddenly it hits you. You distinctly remember seeing the axe leaning against the garage wall. You do not remember seeing the axe in the van. You are correct.

  Building a fire from twigs takes a long time. The sky begins to leak.

  “Only a little mist,” you assure your family. “Won’t hurt anyone.”

  The family doesn’t agree. In a few minutes, they head for the cozy tent.

  You sit and watch newspaper burn, dreaming of long-ago fishing trips with your dad. You remember how you used to trade stories around a roaring fire. The mist puts out your puny fire and soaks your coat. You give up and crawl into your sleeping bag.

  “Listen to the rain on the tent,” you murmur to Wife. “Reminds me of the time…”

  “Shut up,” growls your sweet wife.

  The rain stops. You begin to relax. It will clear tomorrow. Maybe you can get in a little fishing. A cricket chirps. Frogs take up the chorus. Somewhere, something is munching, munching.

  “Did you cover the food?” you whisper.

  “Last one to bed does that,” Wife mutters.

  “Daddy, I hear something,” Son yowls. “Probably a bear.”

  “I have to go—now,” Daughter whines.

  “Probably a bunch of chipmunks,” you assure them as you creep out of your warm bag. You fumble for your clothes and fall out of the tent. Your foot catches on something. You jerk it free.

  “Help!” Wife yells in a muffled voice. “You’re smothering us!”

  The tent collapses behind you. Whirling, you grab a nearby picnic bench for support. Something soft and squishy slimes between your fingers: wet, soggy marshmallows.

  “Daddy, help!” cries split the night air.

  “Quiet!” yells a nearby camper. Dogs bark.

  A twenty percent chance of rain cascades down on your section of the world. You seem to be standing in a river. Your shoes are in the tent with your smothered wife and kids. You wipe hair out of your eyes; marshmallow sticks to your forehead.

  The cries from the tent grow desperate. Spotlights glare from next door.

  At last you locate a flashlight and the tent opening. Arms, legs, and heads emerge from the sagging, dripping tent.

  Wife doesn’t speak. Children and blankets under her arm, she marches through the mud to the van. With a mournful look at the drenched fire pit, you follow. In minutes, the van smells like wet dog.

  No matter which way you squirm, the steering wheel gets in your way as you try to sleep. The kids fight over a pillow.

  Four more days. No axe. No lantern fuel. No salami. It’s raining. Your perfect vacation is ruined. Wife will never agree to go camping again. “Daddy,” says a sleepy Son. “Tell us a story.”

  “This is fun,” Daughter sighs. “We get to stay up late, sleep in the van—and we had bears in our food. Wait till I tell the other kids.” Wife reaches over to hold your hand.

  “So what’s a little rain,” you say. “We’re together, that’s what’s important.”

  “Yuk,” says Wife. “What’s all over your hand?”

  Settling back against a perspiring window, you begin your story,

  “It was a dark and stormy Labor Day weekend when the mystery began…”

  The Unseeing Eye

  Marsh Cassady

  I stood on the passenger side of the car, an old gray Plymouth from the ’40s. On the driver’s side stood someone I realized I knew, though I couldn’t remember his name or how I knew him. I glanced down and saw my head in my hands. It looked as if it had been pulled off, as happens occasionally with a hanging. All ragged! But there was no blood, either there or on my neck. At least I didn’t feel any on my neck.

  How was it possible for me to see? To hear? To talk? I don’t know, but I could do all three. I was particularly intrigued that I had no trouble seeing. Was it the head in my hands that saw? My head! Did it somehow transfer the act of seeing to my body? This was weird.

  At the same time I marveled, I was curious. It made no sense that I actually could look around and see. Mostly what I witnessed was similar to a watercolor with jagged edges. I saw the car, this person I knew I knew, and the entrances to two or three buildings, storefronts. Everything else was blank.

  Should
n’t I panic? Shouldn’t I behave like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off? Actually, I did panic a little. If my head and the rest of me somehow became separated, would I still be able to function? And come to think of it, how could I think? My brain, after all, was lying in my hands. Somehow my body was thinking, though apparently not clearly since my surroundings were only a fragment of a whole.

  What would happen if my head and I separated? Separated at a distance, I mean! Certainly, my head wasn’t a part of my body just then, but it was in my hands. I called to the man on the other side of the car. A shadowy figure, almost. I couldn’t see his face. Was it a blank? Possibly. Did it look hazy? I don’t think so.

  “You there.”

  “Yes?” He reacted as if the situation were ordinary.

  “I’m concerned about how I can see,” I told him.

  “I’m pretty sure you can,” he said. “After all, you know I’m here. I wasn’t making any sounds. And I’m sure I don’t stink. Ergo, you must see me.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Let’s not get all philosophical.”

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t understand how my body is seeing. It’s certainly not from the viewpoint of my head. I’m not seeing you sideways or looking up at you. In a strange sort of way it feels as if my sight—not my eyes, mind you—but my sight is working above my neck the way that it usually does, in the same relative distance from my chest as usual. But it would have to be floating above my body. Does that make sense?”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  I inhaled, even though, of course, I didn’t have a nose or mouth. SO HOW WAS I ABLE TO INHALE? But I couldn’t think about that now. My immediate concern was how I could see. My eyes weren’t working; I knew that now. They lay there in their sockets unmoving. “Will you take my head, please?” I asked the man.

  “What?”

  “I want to hand you my head. Then you walk a few steps away. But do be very, very careful.”

  “Has anyone ever told you you’re very strange?”

  “Just let me place it in your hands. Gently. Very, very gently?”

  Again he shrugged.

  “Take it please and walk around to the other side of the car.”

  “You got it.” He came to the passenger side and held out his hands, palms up. I gave him the head. He started to walk away.

  At that very moment I awakened. I realized I’d had a weird, weird dream. I felt thirsty. I reached over to the pillow beside me, felt around a bit, picked up my head and screwed it back on. Then I walked to the kitchen for a drink of water.

  Aftermath

  Corey Mesler

  Right after the crash Ralph went around talking about it as if he were the ancient mariner. “The guy came out of nowhere,” is a phrase I remember from numerous renditions. It was soon reported that there was trouble at home, his still-young wife was spotted at Arby’s with Jack Diamond from the church choir. Later Ralph would say he could have predicted it all, the dirty affair, the acrimony, the loss of his self-respect and then his job. Ralph really went downhill. “The only thing I didn’t see coming,” Ralph was saying, “was that goddamned Plymouth.”

  Rusty the Pirate (A Historical Feghoot)

  R.W. Morris

  Rusty O’Toole loved Honey Flanagan. Unfortunately, Honey was beautiful and Rusty was not. Her real name was Brigit but they called her Honey because she was a statuesque creature with flowing tresses the color of old gold. Rusty was an alarmingly thin boy with unruly red hair that shot out from under his cap at disturbing angles. It was said that his Da made him stand in the garden for an entire morning while the scarecrow was in for repair, and on the day he was born the midwife slapped his Ma instead of him.

  Rusty was not a complete fool. He knew he did not stand a chance with Honey, but he was smitten, and he could no more forget about her than he could make his hair lie flat.

  One morning, when he was down at the salting racks working with the other boys, Rusty was in the grip of one of his many fantasies. It was the one where he ran away and made his fortune. He just got to the part where he returned to ask for Honey’s hand, and she was about to accept for the 786th time when he heard the music. All stopped and stared at a tall ship rounding the headland with pipers piping and fiddlers fiddling all over its decks.

  “Berserkers in the bay!” was the cry as a black flag flew up the ship’s mainmast. “It’s the musical Welshman! It’s Black Barty and his corsairs! Run for your lives!” And everyone ran. Everyone except Rusty.

  He was transfixed. His eyes were locked on the ship’s name embossed in huge gilt letters along the bow. It read: FORTUNE.

  Rusty hit the water and windmilled his way to that ship so fast none on board had time to reload his musket for a second shot at him. They hauled him aboard and chained him to a mast until they finished plundering and sinking all the vessels in the bay, then they brought him before the captain, who listened to Rusty’s mostly incoherent account of how Fate had intervened to show him the way to the heart of Honey Flanagan.

  The captain kept turning Rusty around during the interview, and finally gave him a lingering pat on the backside before agreeing to take him on as a cabin boy for a one-eighth share.

  Three years later—most of it spent hiding from the captain—Rusty had amassed enough booty to provide Honey Flanagan with everything she could possibly want. He had neither drank, nor gambled, nor caroused. He had spent all his free time dreaming of his Honey.

  He returned to Ireland a rich but wary young man. He did not know how he would be received, so he hired a man of doubtful character to spend a few days finding out.

  He learned his Da had disowned him for the shame he brought down on the family O’Toole. The Chief Herald of Ireland had taken away their O. Rusty was no longer an O’Toole—he was just a Toole—but that mattered naught, because Honey Flanagan had not married! The man of doubtful character had managed to strike up a casual acquaintance with her, and she had tearfully confided that she could never marry, because she had allowed the only boy who had ever truly loved her to run away to sea and seek his fortune.

  Wonder of wonders! Miracle of miracles! Rusty was in there like a burst of grapeshot, scooped her up, grabbed his sack of gold, and they were married up north a week later.

  The morning after the wedding, Rusty woke up to find his wife gone, his gold gone, and the man of doubtful character nowhere to be found. Which proves once again that old Irish adage: A Toole and his Honey are soon parted.

  Note: For those of you who may not be aware, a Feghoot is a story that must end with a groan-worthy pun.

  Between the Trees

  Daniel Chacon

  The man picked up a stick and stuck the pointed end into the mud and drew an image of his lover’s face.

  It must not have been that good, because when he pointed at the indentions in the dirt, the curves, the round dish shape that looked a little (he thought) like the shape of her skull, and then pointed at her, she didn’t understand. She stared at it, and he kept pointing at it and then at her and nodding his head as if to say they were the same, but she shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t understand. She took some of the dirt on the tips of her fingers and tasted it, and then she spit it out.

  It wasn’t until much later, equipped with language, that he stuck a pen into a bottle of ink and wrote the second draft. His lover, standing near the doorway, was pouring a cup of steaming water. The sun slanted through the window and lit her up. She wore a red robe, and her lips concentrated on pouring the hot water into a cup.

  He was so moved by her image—and there were peach trees outside, pink flowers newly blooming, and he could smell them. He wrote about her, trying to capture her.

  The second draft turned out to be nothing like he had set out to achieve.

  Somehow the peach tree pushed her from the center frame of his syntax, so that she was only a small dot on the bottom corner of the page, and when he read it aloud to her, she recognized the peach tr
ee and the smells, because he merely said the words “smelled like,” but she had no idea what that dark dot at the bottom corner of the page was supposed to be.

  Later, he hired actors to say words on stage, and they wore masks that expressed the emotions that, to him, made his lover so beautiful. For the first time he added drama, that is, a story, but the real reason for the work was the beauty of her face. It would be delivered through a tale, a face that could launch a thousand ideas. The story was an excuse for the image. Her spirit was in the language, sliding in and out of the curve of words, her sex wetting every sentence, tingling the curve of every comma, or so he wanted to believe.

  He thought he had captured her so elegantly, but after the play was over and the people went home and masks and swords were hung in dark closets where moonlight leaked in from the beamed roofs, she sat waiting for him in the theater. He stood on the stage and held out his arms like a tree and said, Well? What did you think?

  Nice, she said, but it was clear she didn’t recognize herself.

  Then she picked up a pen, and as he tried to capture her, she tried too, and they were on opposite sides of the house, both writing about her, and while he continued to write about what was visible about her and what she meant to him, she found that she was able to discover parts of herself that had been hidden away. When she read her first draft aloud, her voice cracking with emotion, he recognized her immediately. It occurred to him that he should be writing less about her and try to write about himself, so for many years he worked on the next drafts, but he hated everything he created. He wanted to start fresh, with a new first word.