Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction (21 page)

You sit up when you hear the front door slam. Martha’s carrying the black suitcase you bought her for her birthday last year. She throws it in the trunk, then goes back inside for the thirteen-inch TV from your bedroom. You are surprised how easily she handles the TV; she’s not a big woman. She yells, I’ve had it, so loud you can imagine Old Lady Peters three doors down looking up from her garden, then slams her car door and drives off.

You decide to take the boat out for a quick spin around the lake. After hooking it up to your car, you go inside and get
more beer and pretzels, and a white towel. You want to take Binky out onto the water, but she jumps out the passenger-side window and hides in the blooming white azaleas by the front of the house.

On the way to the lake, you spot Martha pulling out of a Publix parking lot. Despite being sure she’ll return home in a day or two, you decide to find out where she’s staying, just in case she’s being particularly bullheaded and you have to lure her home with a dozen red roses.

The boat looks like a big white curtain in your rearview mirror. You follow Martha three miles on Highway 50 and then onto a little side street walled by towering oaks heavy with moss. You stay back, with two cars between you and her. She doesn’t seem to see you, or, if she does, doesn’t seem to care. She pulls into an apartment complex.

The complex is pink and full of cars. You park by the curb, at the edge of the lot, so there is a thin wall of palm trees between you and her. The door Martha knocks on opens, and a man—a shirtless, short bald man who looks to be your age, late forties, maybe even fifty—is standing there. He hugs Martha, kisses her forehead, then pats her on the ass as she walks past him into the dark room.

You do not recognize this man. He pulls the pair of suitcases from the trunk, then comes back for the TV. Before closing the door, he looks up at you. He doesn’t seem to recognize you, but instead is admiring your boat, and he gives you a gentleman’s nod as he shuts the door.

Celeste Leibowitz

A
s Ginny opened the pillbox, Grandma’s pills seemed to come to life. Their colors: a bright orange lozenge, two blue dots like tiny dolls’ eyes, and a crimson capsule, appeared to intensify as she stared at them.

The pillbox buzzed loudly, and she barely had time to close the lid for Tuesday Afternoon before replacing it on the shelf. The ominous buzzing continued.

“What’s that?” Grandma called weakly from the next room. “Is that my pillbox?”

She knows! Ginny shuddered.

“Bring it here, Ginny,” Grandma called, and then began another of her dreadful coughing fits.

Ginny picked up the box, which buzzed and vibrated in her hand, and hesitantly brought it out to Grandma. Mommy was out at the store and had made the mistake of leaving Ginny alone with Grandma for a little while. Just who was supposed to look out for whom wasn’t very clear.

The pillbox kept buzzing even when Ginny handed it to Grandma. Ginny expected Grandma to lower her thick white eyebrows and frown at her, but that didn’t happen. Instead, Grandma popped open the lid that read “Monday Morning” and fished out a few pills. She reached out a weak hand and tried to grab the glass of water from the nightstand. Her hand fell short by a few inches.

“Would you get me that glass, Ginny baby?” Grandma asked. She wiggled herself up a little higher against the pillows.

Ginny picked up the glass and put in the bendable straw that lay beside it. Grandma gulped all her pills down in one swallow, sucking hard on the straw. Ginny watched, fascinated and repelled, as Grandma’s Adam’s apple moved up and down in her scrawny neck.

The pillbox had stopped buzzing as soon as Grandma opened the lid, and now Ginny realized it wasn’t like a car alarm that told you to “step away from the car” if you got too close. It was more like an alarm clock. She took the pillbox back into the bathroom and decided that since it wasn’t going to ring and expose her naughtiness, she could afford to study its contents some more.

Mommy had warned Ginny many times. “Never play in Grandma’s medicine cabinet. Never play with her pills, and never eat one! They are good for Grandma but they are poisonous for you. And don’t mix them up. She has to take them in exact order. That’s why she has this special, great-big pillbox that reminds her when it’s time for her next dose.”

But today Mommy was out at the store, and Ginny was curious. She opened the Tuesday lid again to look at the bright colored pills. Then she opened all the other lids. Plenty of orange lozenges. Plenty of blue dots like dolls’ eyes. In the evening compartments, she found some white caplets, too.

The crimson-red capsule in the Tuesday Afternoon compartment was the only one of its kind. Ginny fished it out. It seemed to buzz in her hand and grow infinitesimally larger. She jiggled her hand, and it stood almost upright, like a Mexican jumping bean. What would it do to her?

Ginny threw the pill into her mouth. It felt strangely warm. She swallowed it fast, because it started to expand in her mouth. None of the pills she’d ever taken did anything like that!

Ginny squeaked in alarm. Something was happening to her!

The pillbox, forgotten, fell to the floor. A tide of pills spilled out, all mixed up on the bathroom floor. Before she had a chance
to realize how much trouble she was in, Ginny glanced at the bathroom mirror. She was growing!

Growing, and changing. Her limbs felt sore as they stretched out. Her face was altering, into a woman’s.

But as Ginny watched, she changed again. With horror, she saw her bright chestnut hair turn grizzled, then bone white. Her face sagged at the chin, and deep wrinkles furrowed her cheeks, forehead, and around her eyes.

“Ginny?” Grandma’s voice sounded stronger now.

Ginny knew how to get rid of poison. Mommy had taught her. She flipped up the toilet seat and stuck her gnarled finger down her throat. A fit of coughing ensued, and she gagged painfully. Nothing. No pretty red capsule came flying back out.

“Ohhh nooooo…” she started to cry. A pain in her back seized her as she tried to straighten up. Her legs were unsteady, and she had to grab the sink to keep upright.

“Uhhh…Ginny? Something’s wrong with me! Call your mother!” Grandma’s voice sounded younger, higher.

Ginny wrapped Grandma’s terry robe around her withered frame and tottered out into the bedroom. She and Grandma froze in shock at the sight of each other. Grandma was now a small child. She lay huddled in the blankets, dwarfed by her flower-print nightie.

“Mommy? You have to come back. Something terrible’s happened.”

“Mother? Why are you calling me Mommy? Is Ginny okay? Are you all right?”

Ginny slumped back on the bed, too weak to hold the phone any longer. Grandma hung it up for her. The little girl who was her grandmother leaned over her, eyes wide with alarm.

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know, Grandma. You’re older and smarter. What can we do?” Ginny felt her heart pounding hard.

“I guess there’s no choice. I’ll have to be you. And you’ll have to be me.”

Ginny nodded. Tears slipped down her wrinkled cheeks as she wept for the childhood and the youth she had lost. Grandma bounded out of bed, full of six-year-old energy, and dashed into the bathroom.

“Darn it, Ginny, look what you did. Pills all over the place. And you tore up all your clothes? Boy, am I going to get it!”

“No, Grandma,” Ginny croaked out. “I got it, and I’m never going to get rid of it.” Her eyes closed, and she waited for her Monday Afternoon pill.

Janel Gradowski

H
ow long do you think the electricity will be out?” Sophie held her breath as a guttural growl of thunder reverberated through the house. She shivered and tucked the blanket under her legs. “What was that?”

“What was what?” Jack walked out of the kitchen holding a flashlight under his chin, casting a demonic glow over his face. “Maybe it’s the boogey man coming to get us.”

“No, you goofball, I thought I saw something moving over there.” She shined her flashlight beam into the corner. A tumbleweed of dog hair sat in front of the bookshelf.

“Dinner is served.” Jack handed her a paper plate. “Saltine crackers and the finest processed cheese product.”

“Ooh, gourmet…did you hear that?”

“Nope.” He settled next to her on the couch. “I think your imagination is in overdrive tonight.”

“How could you not hear that scratching noise? Do you have mice?”

“I’m not the neatest person in the world, but I assure you I am not cohabiting with any mice.”

A massive black beast bounded out of the darkness. It slammed into Sophie’s arm. Crackers and sticky cheese squares took flight then rained down onto the blanket and floor. The thing was panting and drooling.

“No, Milton!” Jack pointed into the murky darkness. “Get back into the kitchen.”

“Let him stay.” Sophie patted the dog’s head. “He’s scared.”

“Yeah.” Jack shook his head. “Scared he won’t get any of our food.”

He watched as the ravenous canine intruder scurried around, devouring cracker crumbs and dust-covered cheese. He was hoping Sophie would snuggle up to him, instead of his dog. Luckily, the storm wasn’t weakening. He figured there was still plenty of time before she would even think of braving the deluge to go home.

“There it is again!” She swept the flashlight beam across the dining room. Another giant ball of dog hair was peeking out from behind a chair leg. “I think your dust bunnies are alive.”

“I think a branch is scraping the window.” He pretended to stretch and draped his arm around her shoulders. “And I need to vacuum tomorrow.”

“That was not a branch.” She elbowed him in the ribs. “Quit playing Romeo and listen.”

“OK, fine. I hear thunder. Rain falling on the roof, maybe a bit of hail mixed in for good measure. Ooh, there’s that pesky branch…”

“What’s that thumping?” Sophie grabbed his arm, digging her fingernails into his flesh. “It sounds like someone knocking. Sometimes ghosts communicate by knocking.”

Jack winced and pried her fingers loose. “Stop petting Milton.”

“What? Why? I don’t see how that will…”

“Just do it.”

“Look at that. No more thumping.” He laughed. “Or should I say tail wagging.”

“I’m sorry.” Sophie laid her head on Jack’s shoulder. “I don’t like storms.”

“Gee, I never would have guessed that.” He kissed her forehead. “What you need is a distraction to take your mind off the storm.”

“I suppose you know the perfect way to distract me.”

Jack shut off the battery-powered lantern. He pulled Sophie closer. The raging storm masked the faint shuffling sounds of the mutant dust bunnies gathering in the shadows, preparing to attack.

Sealey Andrews

K
arin’s sister Camille lacked most real-world skills, though she did consider herself to be well practiced in the art of shopping. Despite this, she still hadn’t been allowed to pick out dinner that night.

“Mail-order clothing by catalog, with a debit card attached to daddy’s bottomless bank account, isn’t the same as shopping at the market,” Karin had told her when they left the house that evening. “You wouldn’t know a good cut of meat from a bad one.”