Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction for Free Online Page B

“Don’t forget your sickle thing.”
    “Scythe. Yes. I’d be lost without this. I’m just so busy, I’m always forgetting stuff.”
    “Can I ask you one more thing?”
    “Yeah, I guess. But then I really need to go.”
    “Do you get to pick how people die or is it like predetermined?”
    The Reaper laughed. “For the most part, people pick how they die. Every now and then, when I get to do it, I try to be as creative as possible. I’ve helped win six Darwin Awards. I really should go now.”
    Andrew smiled. “Now I’ll never know the meaning of life.”
    The Reaper reached for the door. “Oh, fine. That’s an easy one.” The Reaper leaned in. “Do you have cable?”
    “Satellite.”
    He threw his hands out. “Even better. How many channels do you get?”
    “Three hundred something. They claim 450, but some don’t come in right. And there’s all those music channels I never use.”
    “So you don’t watch them all, right?”
    Andy shrugged. “Of course not.”
    “Why do you have it then?”
    “To watch the ones I want to watch.”
    “Precisely, Andrew. God doesn’t have television. He has you guys. Humans, I mean. You know, and the others.”
    Andy’s eyes grew. “Others? Like aliens?” He smiled broadly. “I knew it.”
    The Reaper opened the door. “You said Malory is on third, right?” Andrew nodded. The Reaper’s right hand waved goodbye.
    Andy stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, practicing his “surprised” face. He knew he’d have to use it when he heard the news about Malory’s unfortunate demise.
    As he stepped away, his shoe slid on the water puddle. Andy’s head bounced against the automatic hand drier and then against the linoleum. By the time they found Andrew Singleton, the Reaper had moved on.

Cold Is My Love
    Johnny Gunn
    H e stood just across the driveway, agonizing over the distance, unable to make his love, his passion, understood. “Oh, to dance about, grasp those lovely hands, plead my feelings.” She’d arrived in the neighborhood just a few days after he had, and he had not been able to keep his dark, dusky eyes off her radiance. “If only she would look this way, just once.”
    Romance as sincere as this only comes once in a lifetime, he realized, and he was well aware of just how short his time had become. “How will I let her know my thoughts, and what will I say when I get her attention?” Inside, deep inside that old, cold body, he understood this one great truth: A snowman cannot have a relationship with such a beauty as this wooden idol, this replica of Sacagawea. “After all, she at least was once a living and beautiful thing.” Were those tears that coursed down his cheeks, forming deep rivulets creasing the surface, loosening that which holds his smile, or simply the ravages of today’s sun? “So frail, but I must continue to gaze on her beauty.”
    He was well aware he could have this love only until spring, barring of course those rowdy Anderson children, the ones that stole his nose.

No Sweat
    Phil Richardson
    H arry was bored. He had bought all the latest electronic gadgets—a GPS, an HDTV, an iPod, a satellite radio—and mastered their capabilities. He had a new truck and a new car and they never seemed to break down so he really couldn’t justify working on them. He had, reluctantly, filled in his fishpond after he accidentally killed all the fish by breaking the winter’s ice with a sledgehammer; Helen would not let him forget about that.
    So, he was bored.
    “Maybe I’ll have an affair,” he thought. “Something to get me out of the house. No, Helen would know right away. Maybe I should start exercising. Wow! That’s a really good idea.”
    As was his usual mode of operation, Harry went on the Internet and looked up the consumer data on exercise machines. It was confusing, all about calories per minute and stress tests and stuff he didn’t really care about. He decided to make a list of things he wanted from an exercise