Read Online Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction by Bathroom Readers’ Institute - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
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Schwarzenegger. Except for the tusks.
He’s just another applicant, just another…person…looking for a job.
He looked down at me, eyebrows raised over his big green eyes. He tilted his head to one side, and I was reminded of the distorted cats and dogs on the calendar in the corner. I hate those things. Another bug buzzed by, colliding with my forehead and spiraling off wildly across the room.
“Okay,” I said, straightening my tie and easing down into my chair. “So, uh, you’re looking for a job?”
The ogre grunted.
“Excellent, excellent.”
Wood creaked as he sat on the floor just inside the room. An odor began to grow, like wet puppies and moss. The bugs sure liked it. A dozen flitted around the ogre’s head, but he was oblivious.
“So…this interview is for an exterminator. Mega Pest covers the whole range of vermin. Until today, I suppose.” I chuckled, but the green eyes just stared. “Yes, well. Mister?”
The ogre grunted.
“I see. How do you spell…” I let the question trail off and took out a blank application. “What are your qualifications?”
He reached into a leather bag at his side and flopped a heavy object onto the table. I flinched. A grimy rope threaded through the eye sockets of a dozen animal skulls. The big one in the middle could have been human. He followed my gaze and casually triedto turn the bony stare facedown on the table. But nothing with hands the size of holiday hams can move casually, and I had to fight the urge to leap through the privacy-glass window behind me.
“I see,” I managed.
Some of the bugs had grown bored with the ogre and resumed dive-bombing me, zooming in, snatching at strays hairs on my head, scratching at my ears. One hovered, bouncing in the air in front of my face like a hummingbird. A glint caught my eye before I could smack at it.
No way.
She was a tiny woman by shape, with dragonfly-style wings, her body covered in glistening, glitter-size specks. Cute, except that the head was wrong. Bulbous eyes, faceted like a fly’s, and a wide grin filled with needle tips. The bites on my neck and arms throbbed.
Well, I’ll be.
The ogre grunted.
I snapped my attention back to the hulking creature and his macabre collection of endorsements strung across the table. “You certainly seem able to handle the, uh, larger varieties, but the world of pest control is always changing—vermin of the day, you might say. What unique qualities do you have to meet the needs of Mega Pest?”
The bug-girl nipped at the back of my neck, drawing blood, and flitted away beyond my reach. One of the ogre’s eyes tracked her for several seconds. A tongue flashed from his mouth, snatching her from the air and into his waiting maw with a satisfying crunch.
I dabbed at a bleeding bite with a Kleenex. Worse than any wasp sting.
I looked into the applicant’s eyes. He stopped chewing, the corners of his mouth attempting a grin and almost succeeding. “You’re hired.”
The ogre grunted.
My First Foreign Woman and the Sea
Robert Perchan
T here was a blind woman who fell in love with a stout sailor from a distant land. He was a good man and did not touch her, though she wished him to in her heart. He was a stranger to her city, but he took her out to various eating houses and described for her blind eyes the rainbow colors of the food set on the table before them. But it was an exotic culture to him, and the hues were subtle and beyond his range of language, for the blind woman and the sailor spoke to each other only haltingly in a crude lingua franca.
Sometimes they returned together to her narrow room above the seamstress shop where she made her living stuffing scraps of colored cloth into pillows for the rich. He drank beer there and snacked on the dried fish and dark sausages that she prepared for him from memory. The sailor was a fat man, a man of the gut, and did his thinking and feeling down there in the labyrinth of the guts. He broke wind one
He’s just another applicant, just another…person…looking for a job.
He looked down at me, eyebrows raised over his big green eyes. He tilted his head to one side, and I was reminded of the distorted cats and dogs on the calendar in the corner. I hate those things. Another bug buzzed by, colliding with my forehead and spiraling off wildly across the room.
“Okay,” I said, straightening my tie and easing down into my chair. “So, uh, you’re looking for a job?”
The ogre grunted.
“Excellent, excellent.”
Wood creaked as he sat on the floor just inside the room. An odor began to grow, like wet puppies and moss. The bugs sure liked it. A dozen flitted around the ogre’s head, but he was oblivious.
“So…this interview is for an exterminator. Mega Pest covers the whole range of vermin. Until today, I suppose.” I chuckled, but the green eyes just stared. “Yes, well. Mister?”
The ogre grunted.
“I see. How do you spell…” I let the question trail off and took out a blank application. “What are your qualifications?”
He reached into a leather bag at his side and flopped a heavy object onto the table. I flinched. A grimy rope threaded through the eye sockets of a dozen animal skulls. The big one in the middle could have been human. He followed my gaze and casually triedto turn the bony stare facedown on the table. But nothing with hands the size of holiday hams can move casually, and I had to fight the urge to leap through the privacy-glass window behind me.
“I see,” I managed.
Some of the bugs had grown bored with the ogre and resumed dive-bombing me, zooming in, snatching at strays hairs on my head, scratching at my ears. One hovered, bouncing in the air in front of my face like a hummingbird. A glint caught my eye before I could smack at it.
No way.
She was a tiny woman by shape, with dragonfly-style wings, her body covered in glistening, glitter-size specks. Cute, except that the head was wrong. Bulbous eyes, faceted like a fly’s, and a wide grin filled with needle tips. The bites on my neck and arms throbbed.
Well, I’ll be.
The ogre grunted.
I snapped my attention back to the hulking creature and his macabre collection of endorsements strung across the table. “You certainly seem able to handle the, uh, larger varieties, but the world of pest control is always changing—vermin of the day, you might say. What unique qualities do you have to meet the needs of Mega Pest?”
The bug-girl nipped at the back of my neck, drawing blood, and flitted away beyond my reach. One of the ogre’s eyes tracked her for several seconds. A tongue flashed from his mouth, snatching her from the air and into his waiting maw with a satisfying crunch.
I dabbed at a bleeding bite with a Kleenex. Worse than any wasp sting.
I looked into the applicant’s eyes. He stopped chewing, the corners of his mouth attempting a grin and almost succeeding. “You’re hired.”
The ogre grunted.
My First Foreign Woman and the Sea
Robert Perchan
T here was a blind woman who fell in love with a stout sailor from a distant land. He was a good man and did not touch her, though she wished him to in her heart. He was a stranger to her city, but he took her out to various eating houses and described for her blind eyes the rainbow colors of the food set on the table before them. But it was an exotic culture to him, and the hues were subtle and beyond his range of language, for the blind woman and the sailor spoke to each other only haltingly in a crude lingua franca.
Sometimes they returned together to her narrow room above the seamstress shop where she made her living stuffing scraps of colored cloth into pillows for the rich. He drank beer there and snacked on the dried fish and dark sausages that she prepared for him from memory. The sailor was a fat man, a man of the gut, and did his thinking and feeling down there in the labyrinth of the guts. He broke wind one
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