Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction (22 page)

It was the start of one of many lectures Karin had given Camille since she’d shown up on her doorstep, suitcase in hand, four days earlier. Not that it was all lectures all the time. The two of them had had some fun together while she’d been visiting, too. They’d even gone dancing that night and worked up quite the appetite. Besides, it wasn’t so much a lecture as it was a lesson. Karin had an obligation. She couldn’t let little sis wing it out there on her own after being babied all her life, could she?

“Stop staring at the food,” Karin snapped from across the kitchen. They were home now, preparing a late dinner. “Sit down, have a drink—better yet, set the table. Make yourself useful, Camille.”

Ignoring her, Camille stood, unblinking—eyes locked on their meal. She was consumed by curiosity. Karin was pretty sure her sister had never seen raw meat, let alone the process of preparing it. At the table, on a plate, garnished with parsley and drizzled in something exquisite was the presentation Camille was used to.

Not that she didn’t know where it came from. Camille wasn’t exactly stupid. But still, Karin suspected that seeing it in this state would seem a little…cruel. Camille had always been daddy’s delicate flower, though she apparently didn’t find it cruel enough that it made her lose her appetite. From all the way across the room Karin could hear her sister’s stomach growl.

Camille rubbed it and frowned. “I’m hungry. How long is this going to take?”

“Not long.” Karin glanced at her watch. “About another five minutes or so.”

Camille poked at the meat. “It’s oozing.” It sputtered something brown and acrid smelling. “Is it supposed to do that?”

“Yes. You’re supposed to let it simmer in its juices. I’ve been living on my own for a long time now, Camille. I do know a thing or two about preparing a meal, you know. Just leave it. Trust me, it’s fine.”

With a dramatic sigh, Camille reluctantly tore her eyes away from the young man who was flopping around on Karin’s kitchen floor, hemorrhaging a crimson puddle all over the hardwoods. He cried out things like “it burns” and “help” as the venom they’d injected spread slowly through him, liquefying everything in its path.

“He’s loud,” Camille complained. “I didn’t realize cooking was so…auditory.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Next time I demand you sever the vocal cords first.”

Karin raised an eyebrow and balled her fists. But, rather than engage in yet another argument about who gave the orders in her house, she held her tongue and went to the liquor cabinet instead.

She loved her sister. She really did.

“And who is this person he keeps calling for?” Camille continued. “Is this ‘God’ person he keeps talking about going to come for him? Should we be worried?” Her voice rose a little
with concern.

Karin looked over her shoulder, grinned, and bared her fangs while she pulled out two shot glasses. “No. They
all
call for him at some point, and he hasn’t come yet. We have nothing to worry about. Now stop staring; he’ll be done when he’s done.”

“I can’t help it, it’s interesting,” Camille whined. She crouched down in front of the man who was now curled in a ball, knees tucked to his chin. His cries had turned to whimpers. “He’s attractive in a way. Or, he was…you know, before the swelling started. And the oozing.” Camille’s long, forked tongue flicked in and out—an involuntary mixed display of lust and hunger. She ran her fingertip across his sweat-covered brow. His blistered eyes, gray and opaque, turned up to her.

“Gah—he’s looking at me!” she yelped, and pulled her hand back.

“Cut it out, Camille. Just let him do his thing. He’ll bleed out here in a minute and we can eat,” Karin said. “You know what they say about a watched pot.”

“What?”

“It never boils. A watched pot never boils,” she said, resisting the urge to follow it with “you twit.”

“But he isn’t even in a pot…” Camille’s brow furrowed in that way their father always found adorable.

Karin rolled her eyes. Figures of speech were often lost on her sister. “Here.” She slid a full shot glass and a saltshaker down the length of the counter to Camille. She tossed a wedge of lime at her, too.

Camille blinked innocently. “What is this?”

“A before-dinner drink.” Karin jerked her head back, threw down the two fingers of tequila she’d poured, licked the salt on her hand, and sunk her teeth into the lime.

Camille watched in fascination, then sniffed her own drink. She scrunched her nose. “No, thank you, I think I need some
food for this to land on first.” She pushed the glass away. “Those little pink drinks you introduced me to earlier are really doing a number on my stomach. You know, those…Cosmo thingies the bartender kept bringing to me at the club. Er—sorry, not the club…what did you call it?”

Karin pulled the shriveled lime wedge from her mouth and tossed it into the sink. “Meat market,” she rasped, and licked her lips.

So far they’d covered housekeeping and how to plan a budget. Now cooking could be checked off the list. Tomorrow it would be gardening. Because, as nice as the meat market was in a pinch, growing your own was so much more satisfying, fresh, and tasty.

Sean Flanders

F
OR INITIATES:

Your Mission:
Watch the skies.

Fact:
Shooting stars are astronaut feces burning up in orbit; every breath of air contains trace amounts of Neil Armstrong’s waste. This contamination is the true purpose behind all space programs in the world, as orchestrated by humanity’s secret masters, the Woolly Mammoths.

Fact:
Astronauts are fed large amounts of Tang during missions to contaminate their fecal matter. Tang + digestion + extreme heat = mind-control drug.

Mind Control Symptoms:
Interest in new technologies, use of slang and casual profanity, provocative fashion sense, fondness for loud music.

For Your Protection:
There are caves 10 kilometers beneath Bogota, Colombia, that have been undisturbed since the Mammoth-Dinosaur Wars. This air is uncontaminated and can be breathed without infecting you with mind-control-astronaut-waste.

The Enemy:
In humanity’s earliest days, we warred against the Woolly Mammoths. Cave paintings tell us this, but only the Passerville cave paintings tell us the harsh truth: We lost. For 100,000 years, the Mammoths have enslaved our species without our knowledge. They faked their own extinction, evolving to assume smaller forms, walk on their hind legs, and lose their distinctive trunks. They live among us unnoticed, ruling from the shadows.

Their Plan:
Computer keyboards were invented by Mammoth
scientists. Every key on every keyboard in existence contains tiny syringes, too small to be seen or even felt as they pierce your skin, large enough to drain a portion of your bodily fluids with each tap. Your fluids are transmitted to the Mammoths over the Internet for use as a male-enhancement drug.

Fluid Drainage Symptoms:
Wrinkling of the skin, graying of the hair, weight gain (particularly in the stomach region), appearance of liver spots.

For Your Protection:
Do not use computers or cellular phones. E-mail and instant messaging can be replaced with smoke signals and semaphore.

Identifying Mammoths:
To avoid detection, Mammoths must conceal their tusks and shave off their fur on a daily basis. Any person with braces and/or a five o’clock shadow is almost certainly a Mammoth in disguise.

Fact:
If you plot all shooting stars visible during an 82-hour period on a star chart, they spell out correspondence between members of the Mammoth High Council in their ancient alphabet, High Mammothlish.

Known Mammoths:
Attila the Hun (Councilor on Military Affairs). Grigori Rasputin (Councilor on Religious Affairs). John Wilkes Booth (Councilor on Espionage & Intelligence Affairs). Vlad the Impaler (Councilor on Justice System Affairs). Adolf Hitler (Council Stenographer). Joey Yax of Passerville, Indiana (Supreme Emperor of All Mammothkind and Prophet of the Tusked God).

Necessary Supplies:
One telescope, one star chart, one set of semaphore flags, one copy of
Smoke Signals & Semaphore Made Easy
by Rufus Clay, one thermos Colombian cave air, one straw.

Caution:
To avoid suspicion, only purchase from stores under the direct protection of the Human Liberation Front; most stores are owned by Wooly-Mammoths-for-the-Enslavement-Of-Humanity, Inc.

Nearest Protected Store:
Clay’s Hobby Hut in Passerville, Indiana.

FOR ACOLYTES:

Your Mission:
Assassinate Joey Yax (Emperor of All Mammothkind, Prophet of the Tusked God, and owner/proprietor of Yax’s Arts & Crafts Emporium in Passerville, Indiana).

Weaponry:
Use a croquet mallet when attacking Yax. Mammoths are deathly allergic to the wood of croquet trees.

Attack Strategy:
Approach Yax while carrying the mallet. Hit him on the head with it. Repeat as necessary.

Caution:
Target may be surrounded by especially potent mind-control-astronaut-waste gas. Wear scuba suit to protect yourself.

In Event of Success:
Remove Yax’s face. Sew his face onto your own. Assume the identity of Joey Yax. Withdraw all money from his bank accounts. Dump the money and his store’s inventory off a mountain, or into a particularly deep ravine. Set fire to store. Beware of lunatics in scuba suits swinging croquet mallets.

In Event of Failure:
Yax will try to make you breathe astronaut waste and take control of your mind. To prevent this: (1) Remove own lungs. (2) Burn lungs. (3) Await further instructions.

Necessary Supplies:
One croquet mallet, one scuba suit with oxygen tank, one sewing kit.

Nearest Protected Store:
Clay’s Hobby Hut in Passerville, Indiana.

FOR THE ORDAINED:

Your Mission:
Distribute manifesto.

Advice:
Buy Hobby Hut stock.

Deirdre M. Murphy

C
hloe sat at the shoreline, wiggling a bit to relieve the ache from her arthritis. The searing heat from the sun and sand helped the pain, a little, though the tide was coming in, and soon Lake Michigan’s icy-cold water would wash upward to where she was sitting.

She stretched a hand out, trailed a finger through the wet sand, idly drawing a house, a snug little cottage, with cheerful flowers—a wave came and washed over the lines, filling them, and washed out again, leaving the sand smooth. So much of life seemed like that these days; all of her work washed away by time. Dishes cleaned became dirty; laundry neatly folded became soiled; even things stored carefully could be washed away by time, like the holiday tablecloth that had become a mouse’s nest, and now had holes and stains and mildew where she and her sisters had lovingly embroidered sugarplums (the fairy kind) amid holly and ivy.

If she died today, the sands of time would fill her footprints very quickly; she’d never built anything, never written a great novel or recorded a rock song, never starred in a movie or walked on the moon. Her family would mourn her, of course, but their lives would go on. They would sit around the table and laugh as she and her sisters had laughed while they embroidered that tablecloth. It had been done in secret, while their mother was working, and earned them repeated scoldings for putting off their homework until after dinner. Chloe smiled for a moment, remembering her mother lecturing them and her tears on that Christmas morning.

The tablecloth was old, of course, like Chloe herself. The bright thread had faded, and the linen yellowed. If the mouse
had found it when she was young, she might have laughed, made another one. But her fingers were no longer nimble, and her sisters had passed on. Was it time for her to join them? She was strong enough, still, to stand and walk out into the water, to swim out quite a ways. She could let the cold numb her; when she became too tired to swim, if she relaxed, the end would be quick.

She shifted again, leaning hard into the sand with both hands, and stretched her legs out. The left hand was covered by hot, dry sand, and she left it there. Her right hand left a deep imprint in the wet sand. She let the cold water wash over it, achingly cold now, with the arthritis, but still, she felt the familiar thrill of joy from being both hot and cold, wet and dry.