Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction by Bathroom Readers’ Institute Page B

catches on something. You jerk it free.
    “Help!” Wife yells in a muffled voice. “You’re smothering us!”
    The tent collapses behind you. Whirling, you grab a nearby picnic bench for support. Something soft and squishy slimes between your fingers: wet, soggy marshmallows.
    “Daddy, help!” cries split the night air.
    “Quiet!” yells a nearby camper. Dogs bark.
    A twenty percent chance of rain cascades down on your section of the world. You seem to be standing in a river. Your shoes are in the tent with your smothered wife and kids. You wipe hair out of your eyes; marshmallow sticks to your forehead.
    The cries from the tent grow desperate. Spotlights glare from next door.
    At last you locate a flashlight and the tent opening. Arms, legs, and heads emerge from the sagging, dripping tent.
    Wife doesn’t speak. Children and blankets under her arm, she marches through the mud to the van. With a mournful look at the drenched fire pit, you follow. In minutes, the van smells like wet dog.
    No matter which way you squirm, the steering wheel gets in your way as you try to sleep. The kids fight over a pillow.
    Four more days. No axe. No lantern fuel. No salami. It’s raining. Your perfect vacation is ruined. Wife will never agree to go camping again. “Daddy,” says a sleepy Son. “Tell us a story.”
    “This is fun,” Daughter sighs. “We get to stay up late, sleep in the van—and we had bears in our food. Wait till I tell the other kids.” Wife reaches over to hold your hand.
    “So what’s a little rain,” you say. “We’re together, that’s what’s important.”
    “Yuk,” says Wife. “What’s all over your hand?”
    Settling back against a perspiring window, you begin your story,
    “It was a dark and stormy Labor Day weekend when the mystery began…”

The Unseeing Eye
    Marsh Cassady
    I stood on the passenger side of the car, an old gray Plymouth from the ’40s. On the driver’s side stood someone I realized I knew, though I couldn’t remember his name or how I knew him. I glanced down and saw my head in my hands. It looked as if it had been pulled off, as happens occasionally with a hanging. All ragged! But there was no blood, either there or on my neck. At least I didn’t feel any on my neck.
    How was it possible for me to see? To hear? To talk? I don’t know, but I could do all three. I was particularly intrigued that I had no trouble seeing. Was it the head in my hands that saw? My head! Did it somehow transfer the act of seeing to my body? This was weird.
    At the same time I marveled, I was curious. It made no sense that I actually could look around and see. Mostly what I witnessed was similar to a watercolor with jagged edges. I saw the car, this person I knew I knew, and the entrances to two or three buildings, storefronts. Everything else was blank.
    Shouldn’t I panic? Shouldn’t I behave like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off? Actually, I did panic a little. If my head and the rest of me somehow became separated, would I still be able to function? And come to think of it, how could I think? My brain, after all, was lying in my hands. Somehow my body was thinking, though apparently not clearly since my surroundings were only a fragment of a whole.
    What would happen if my head and I separated? Separated ata distance, I mean! Certainly, my head wasn’t a part of my body just then, but it was in my hands. I called to the man on the other side of the car. A shadowy figure, almost. I couldn’t see his face. Was it a blank? Possibly. Did it look hazy? I don’t think so.
    “You there.”
    “Yes?” He reacted as if the situation were ordinary.
    “I’m concerned about how I can see,” I told him.
    “I’m pretty sure you can ,” he said. “After all, you know I’m here. I wasn’t making any sounds. And I’m sure I don’t stink. Ergo, you must see me.”
    “Yes, yes, yes. Let’s not get all philosophical.”
    He shrugged.
    “I don’t understand how my body is