Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Leaning back, he let loose with one drop, shifted to the other eye and let drop again, as he’d done every day for decades.
After a moment, he realized he’d dropped both into his mouth, and laughed. How silly he was getting as he got older.
It wasn’t so funny the next time he did it.
But the third time…well, the third time, it wasn’t even noticed.
A bathroom at last. Now he knew how his father felt, and his uncle, having to take a piss, asking with a fast, low voice almost everywhere they went, as soon as they arrived, “Excuse me, where’s the bathroom? Is it near? I need to go, like now.”
And now it was him, just like them. Had to be genetics. More than pissing, though, he had to do a dump. Sitting on the commode, he sighed relief as his body did its thing, and mourned what he was seeing of his future.
He’d forgotten his phone. “Fuck?” For real? Where the fuck? What the fuck? Where? When? Shaking his head, he farted and grunted and stared at the floor in concentration.
The floor…was kind of cool, like those photos NASA or someone put of nebulae on it. His uncle was always pointing things out to him about space, using an app on his phone to show him constellations and nebulae from the bubble telescope. “That’s the crab nebula. See how it looks like a crab?”
No, Dylan never saw how it looked like a crab, but the floor looked like it had nebulae. His uncle would love this fucking floor. One possible nebula looked like a friggin’ crow outlined with stars, and another —
Reaching for the T.P., he stared, eyes growing wider. That fucking thing looked like a dragon nebula, like a dragon flying through space, like a profile of a friggin’ giant dragon flyin’ through space on ginormous friggin’ wings.
Holy shit, the dragon nebula changed.
The dragon nebula was facing him.
The dragon nebula…was growing larger. He could see its wings flapping. In seconds, Dylan made out its heads, its teeth, its eyes.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Dylan scrambled to wipe his ass, pull up his underwear and pants — and flush — all at the same time so that he could leave, leave, leave, because that friggin’ giant dragon nebula —
“Is here,” he said in a whimper, pants still down.
The dragon’s head burst up out of the floor. Falling back, Dylan said, “Fuck,” not noticing that his hand went into the toilet as he fell backward. The head was soon huge, breaking the walls out. A long fucking neck followed. As it rose, breaking through the roof, he heard people screaming. Then he was looking at the beast’s pale, scaly chest. He wanted to scream but he had no air in him. All he could do was gawp, except the smell was such a stench, like the bear’s slobber on his backpack once when the bear stole it when he was camping out. He wanted to puke but he didn’t want to move. He couldn’t move.
“Hey,” he heard.
The dragon was speaking to him.
“Hey,” he heard again. “Up here.”
Dylan looked further up. No, the dragon was looking down at him, but above the dragon’s head was a girl’s head, or maybe it was a dragon’s head, maybe the dragon had a second, human head, or some strange shit. Whatever the fuck?
The girl was smiling at him.
“Hey,” she said. “You okay?”
“Where’d you come from?” Dylan said.
“There.” She pointed at the floor. “Want to ride a dragon?”
Calmness washed through Dylan. “Sure,” he said. “Fuckin’ right.” He was going to ride a dragon. Fuckin’ right.
But first, he was going to wash his hand.
He had no sense of direction, she noticed, but then she observed other oddities. When he entered a room, if the door was closed on his arrival, he left it open. If the light was off, he turned it on and left it on, and if it was on, he turned it off.
As she realized these things, she also saw that he was always confused about which pull to use on the up/down blinds, lowering them when he meant to raise them, exclaiming, “I don’t know why I can’t remember which one of these to use. I’m always doing this.” Of course you are, she thought without telling him. When she asked him to look right, he looked left, and when he was told to turn right, he often began turning left. Sometimes, she heard him tell something that he’d said as something that she’d said, insisting that the false memory was true.
With these traits piling up, it didn’t surprise her to realize that he always thought that lies were the truth, and that truths were lies. It was, she decided, that he lived in a mirrored world. With that observation, she understood him much better, and could use words to get her way.
And she lived happily ever after…
He’d dissolved his cloak of invisibility, and shredded his veils of anonymity.
He’d uninstalled his mute button, replacing it with an amplifier and speakers.
From now on, he’d seen and heard.
He just hoped he could stand the attention.
He put his dirty clothes in the recycle and tossed his used tissue in the laundry.
Returning to his study, he reached for his coffee, and remembered, he’d gotten up to get his coffee.
Leaving his study, he realized he put his dirty clothes in the recycle. Getting them out, he found the used tissue in the laundry, blew his nose into it, and threw it in the trash.
Then he fed the cats a few treats and went into his study to read, where he reached for his coffee.
Remembering, he’d gotten up to get his coffee, he laughed at himself. At least he was getting a lot of steps in today. He checked his wrist to look at his Fitbit —
Where did he leave his Fitbit?
Getting up to go find it, he left his study, went to the kitchen, and made a cup of coffee with his Keurig. Satisfied, he returned to his study with his coffee to read, and then checked his wrist to look at his Fitbit —
Where did he leave his Fitbit?
Then, he remembered, he’d put it in his shoe.
Leaving his study, he went into the other room, fed the cats a few treats, and made a cup of coffee.
This was going to take some time. Coffee would definitely help.
He bought a fire pit and bottle of wine for Solstice, and filched a log from the neighbor’s stack. He lit the log and drank the wine, taking a sip each time the he fed the fire a rejection letter. One hundred sixty-five letters, two hours, and a bottle of wine later, he felt much better.
The cache was cleared. Good things were going to start happening for him now.
Saw a headline slug, “Driverless Cars Return”.
An imagined television news report about a driverless car getting lost and living on the streets by itself for years climbed into my head, and then came the happy reunion, when the driverless car returned to its family for a happy reunion.
“We thought our car was gone forever,” Patty McLaren said about the brown four-door Ford sedan. “We looked for it for everywhere for weeks. We never gave up, really. Every time a driverless car went by, we looked to see if it was our car. Though I never stopped hoping, I never really believed it would come back, though. It’s like a dream come true.”
The car is a little older and rustier, with bald tires and faded paint. Its radio and speakers are gone, apparently torn out by thieves, and the engine smokes.
“Who knows what it went through?” Mrs. McLaren said, stroking the car’s front fender. “I’m amazed it’s still runnin’. I’m just so happy it’s back.”
Mrs. McLaren said that they were going to get the car a new coat of paint and tires. “Then we’re just going to put it in the garage and keep it there, and pamper it.”
Her daughter expressed disappointment that she wouldn’t be allowed to take the car to college with her.
Seven in the morning. It’d had already slid into another shitty day when Don’s mind shrilly and loudly said, “I can’t take this fucking shit.”
That tone cut Don’s ear drums. As Don winced and clapped his hands over his ears, his mind stomped through his brain. “I’m fuckin’ outta here.”
Looking up, Don said, “No, wait,” beginning to stand as all this happened. His mind wrenched his brain’s door open.
Used to being closed, the door shrieked, “Hey, what the fuck? I was sleepin’, man.”
Stepping out, his mind slammed the door shut behind him, rattling Don’s empty head. The door said, “That’s fuckin’ better. Now keep it down. I need some zzzs.”
Just like that, Don’s mind was gone again.
Sitting, Don sighed. Sipping his soda, he picked up his phone with his little hands and opened Twitter. It was gonna be another mindless fucking day for him.
“I always worry about you injuring yourself with that tool that you say that we don’t have, the chain saw,” she said.
“The one you never see me using?” he asked.
She nodded. “That’s the one.”
Michael Seidel, writer 