Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction (34 page)

Lisbeth Mizula

T
he dog didn’t leave a message, a forwarding address, or even a thank-you for all the years he received two meals a day and all the water he could drink. The mongrel simply disappeared. However, he did leave something. It took me two hours, a trip to the drugstore, plugging in a heating pad (made sticky with my own blood from a day-old scratch by an overly-curious squirrel), and a powerful flashlight, but I held forty-seven of Rufus’s fleas hostage in a small, covered-glass aquarium that used to house my favorite mold specimen till it started resembling my ex-husband.

I made my face into a cold mask and held the canister of Be Gone! flea powder against the side of their tank. “Where’s Rufus?” I asked, searching their miniscule, unblinking eyes. “Or would you prefer, a light
dusting
with…
the powder
?” I shook the unopened canister over their tank menacingly.

I withheld blood and water from the tiny creatures for twenty-four hours. The next day, I tore back over to Sackit’s Drugs on my bicycle, got a second canister of Be Gone!, and placed it at the opposite end of their tank. As I suspected, they couldn’t casually go about their lives within constant sight of the twin vehicles of murder.

After much hopping around, the fleas arranged themselves on the floor of the tank to form the letter F. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and, F is my favorite letter (!). I could work with this.

“He went to Fisk Park,” I guessed. The letter went fuzzy, then jerked itself back into sharp F formation.

“Ferdy’s Bakery,” I guessed. Again they fuzzed up.

“Friendly’s Ice Cream,” I said. Then, “Fall Park. Feinman’s Pond. Fredericka’s Frankfurters. Fishy’s Fried Sticks.” The longer I guessed, the louder my voice grew until I was shouting out the names of every F establishment I could remember.

“Faulkner’s Library! The Firefighter’s Forum!
The Fruit of the Loom underwear plant!
” My memory used up, I opened the Yellow Pages and called off an hour of Fs.
I even made some up
.

But the fleas sat there, quiet, in formation. Or maybe they were lying down. In the end, in desperation, I uttered the name I’d been hoping to go the rest of my life without hearing again,

“Frankenmeyeramousadamdavidbilltedtom.” The name fairly flew off my lips. It was the name of my ex-old man. The fleas jumped over themselves in excitement then spelled out a thin, weary looking, “Yes.”

Hearing his name aloud, even though it was just me saying it, I went into a murderous rage. White powder filled the air.

Now, forty-seven small grave markers line my driveway. Most people think it’s spilled gravel from the road.

Richard Holinger

D
ear Author,

Thank you for submitting your work to
Calumet Review
. Unfortunately, it does not meet the needs of our magazine. Please do not take this rejection personally. You may be an excellent writer, but this particular piece does not fit our magazine. Good luck in placing your work elsewhere.

We recommend you read our magazine before submitting again. Perhaps you would consider a subscription. Most magazines our size are supported by generous donors, not by the authors who appear there. Don’t take this personally, but you have not committed to a subscription, and that makes you a parasite. Apparently you imagine we wait around for your next submission to arrive, every day clawing through hundreds of large envelopes to find your return address so we can rip it open and begin a communal reading of your latest revelation.

If so, think again. Don’t take this personally, but when Kara, the graduate assistant, finds our magazine name misspelled (one “l,” not two) in your sloppy handwriting, she arranges a conference call among editors. “Are your wills in order?” she queries, “Because you will die laughing.”

We do. We die laughing. That’s a trope. A hyperbole. You might try using some in your writing. Because—and don’t take this personally, but I tell you this because the creative writing instructor in me can’t stand someone suffering from a total lack of creativity—your manuscript contains not one memorable phrase, not one original idea, not one stylistic innovation.

In fact, as long as I have your attention (assuming you know how to read), I want to ask you something: Do you own any contemporary fiction, poetry, or nonfiction books? Have you ever opened anything other than
Where’s Waldo
? When did you decide on Spark Notes over the texts? Are you aware the
New Yorker
is something more than a Big Apple resident? Do you skim even the cartoon captions? Take my advice: Study them, if for no other reason than to learn to write realistic dialogue, using the vernacular, contractions, and sentence fragments.

Again, don’t take this personally, but your plot couldn’t keep a vampire awake at a necking party. Deus ex machina went out with Dickens, and your happy ending reflects your fantasies. We look for the crafted manipulation of mimetic particulars to superimpose an aesthetic reality upon subjective and objective perception.

But why are we wasting time telling you all this when you couldn’t write anything more convincing than a grocery list? We don’t know, especially because you probably stopped reading our rejection letter at “Unfortunately.” We inform you of these matters for the same reason we publish our magazine, because we hope someday we’ll be read.

So now it’s on to the next slush-pile submission. Don’t take this personally, but I look forward to whatever crosses my lap after yours because I know more surely than my wife will want to eat out tonight that it will be an improvement.

Sincerely yours,

Malcolm Joy Goodfellow

BTW, don’t take this personally, but if you really want our advice, here it is: Stop writing or kill yourself. At the very least, don’t send anything else. Anywhere. To anyone. Save postage, paper or, if e-mailing your work, time.

Also, your manuscript arrived without an SASE, so this letter will not be mailed. Naturally, you thought we would accept your work and would call with good news. Don’t take this personally, but you’re delusional. Seek help. But not here.

One last thing: The editorial staff pooled our resources and came up with the postage to send your submission back to you, as we didn’t want it in our shredder. That’s hyperbole again, but you will fail to find it funny, much less offensive, because you think so highly of your writing you will think we are in the wrong, which clearly we are not, as we edit a literary magazine and you are dependent upon our judgment for your self-esteem. It’s also ironic, but you wouldn’t know irony if it swallowed your tongue. You wouldn’t know ambiguity if it pole-danced for you.

Hey, look, AUTHOR, just kidding about all the above. We really loved your submission and would like your permission to publish it in our next issue. We just wanted to know if anyone appreciated the work that goes into writing a sympathetic rejection letter enough to read it. Congratulations! Proofs will arrive in about a month for your revision/approval. Thanks again for thinking of us. We invite you to send more work in the future. By the way, your name has been bandied about as an “Advisory Editor.” Let us know what you think.

Best wishes,

Mal

Eric Cline
has sold two stories to
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
. The first, “Two Dwarves and Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs,” appeared in the June 2011 issue. He has published three stories in
Every Day Fiction
.

Corey Mertes
is an attorney and a former craps dealer and ballroom dance instructor living in North Kansas City, Missouri. This is his third published story.

M. Garrett Bauman
’s stories have been in
The New York Times, Sierra, Yankee, Utne Reader, Gettysburg Review,
and
Story,
and he won the Great Books fiction contest in 2010.

Joe Novara
has written a number of humorous stories for
Mother Earth News, Horse and Rider,
and others. Other works include a young-adult title (
Wa-Tonka
, Pelican Publishing) and a collection of short stories (
From My Side of the Fence
, Syncopated Press). Read more at
smashwords.com/profile/view/Joenovara
.

Sally Bellerose
is the author of
The Girls Club
(Bywater Books, 2011) and was awarded an NEA Fellowship based on an excerpt from it. The manuscript was a finalist for the James Jones Fellowship, the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, and the Bellwether Endowment. Visit
sallybellerose.wordpress.com
. “Dead Man’s Float” was also published in
Boston Literary Magazine
(Winter 2006) and
Sniplits
(Summer 2008).

Andrew S. Williams
is a science-fiction writer living in Seattle. His work has appeared in
Jersey Devil Press
and
Every Day Fiction
. His website is
offthewrittenpath.com
, where he writes about life, writing, travel, and body-painted bike riding.

Merrie Haskell
works in a library with over seven million books and finds this to be just about the right number. Her first novel,
The Princess Curse
was published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2011. “One Million Years B.F.E.” first appeared in
Escape Pod
(2006).

Florence Bruce
attended Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, and later the University of Memphis. She is a constant reader, especially of American history, and has worked at learning to be a writer all her life.

Christina Delia
’s writing is featured in the anthologies
Random Acts of Malice: The Best of Happy Woman Magazine, In One Year and Out the Other
(Pocket Books), and
Best of Philadelphia Stories: Volume 2
. She resides in New Jersey with her husband, Rob.

Katherine Tomlinson
used to be a reporter but discovered she preferred making things up. Her work has appeared in
Astonishing Adventures, A Twist of Noir, Dark Valentine, Eaten Alive, Powder Burn Flash, ThugLit,
and
Alt-Dead
. Read more at
katherinetomlinson.com
.

Skye Hillgartner
attends Smith College where she studies English literature and costume design. She plays the ukulele, has attended Elf School in Iceland, and calls Ashland, Oregon, home.

Jess Del Balzo
’s work has been published in various journals and anthologies, most recently
Knocking at the Door: Poems About Approaching the Other
. In 2007 she released an album of spoken word and music called
Lampshade Girls & Other Renegades
. She lives in New York City. “The Newest Edition of Richard Phlattwaire” appeared in
Thieves Jargon
in 2003.

James Sabata
obtained an M.A. in creative writing from the University of South Dakota. His short story “The Gossip Hounds of Sherry Town” was published in the Library of the Living Dead’s anthology
Malicious Deviance
. His short story “The Hole” is available in Static Motion’s
Like Frozen Statues of Flesh
.

Johnny Gunn
’s story collection
Out of the West: Tales of the American Frontier
(Bottom of the Hill Publishing) was released in December 2010. He recently published a story in
The Storyteller
. He lives with his wife, Patty, two horses, and many chickens about twenty miles south of Reno, Nevada.

Phil Richardson
lives in Athens, Ohio. He is married and has two sons; one of them is a clown and one isn’t. Two of his stories, “The Joker is Wild” and “Garden Ornamentals,” were nominated for the Puschcart Prize. More stories can be found at
web.me.com/philrichardson
.

Adrian Dorris
’s short fiction has appeared in
Blackbird, Portland Review, Slush Pile,
and
subTerrain
. “Precision Forged” was published in
Pindeldyboz
in September 2009.

Siobhan Gallagher
graduated from Arizona State University. She lives in the Tucson area.

Charles N. Beecham
spent the first half of his life in the Air Force, earning the distinguished Flying Cross in World War II and retiring as a lieutenant colonel. He became an artist, sculptor, and actor, appearing in movies and TV shows such as
D.O.A., Dallas,
and
Walker, Texas Ranger.
His paintings are displayed in museums in Ohio, Oklahoma, and Oregon. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame in 2007. “Jiggs and Bob” appears in
Grandpa Remembers
, written for his grandchildren.