Author: Bukkhead

I'm the writer here.
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I’m Pretty Much Making This Up As I Go Along

Postaday for January 1st: New Skin

If you could spend the next year as someone radically different from the current “you” — a member of a different species, someone from a different gender or generation, etc. — who would you choose to be?

If I could spend time as anyone else, it would be as Lancaster, the evil robot assassin hell-bent on killing every secret agent in the world.

Why is killing all these agents? What’s his end-game? What happens if he succeeds? And why does he choose to kill them in such elaborate and increasingly ridiculous ways? Is killing agents really his main goal, or is there some greater purpose to his scheme?

I need to know, because I invented him, and I have no idea what he’s doing. He’s the main antagonist in my terrible spy novel, A Football Makes a Lousy Briefcase. Note: terrible is a subgenre of the spy novel genre. This is supposed to be terrible. I have whole sections called Deus Ex Machina. It’s a play on words, see, since Lancaster is a machine and all.

Lancaster is an AI based on a program that was built to test agents in the field. But things got out of control. I don’t want to reveal too much, even though I’ll probably never actually finish the novel… and even if I did I wouldn’t bother editing it… and if I somehow edited it I certainly wouldn’t get it published… and if I accidentally published it I just don’t see anyone buying it, much less reading it (not unlike the novel I published A Night Without Sunshine and my collection of short stories Still Life With Zombie).

But nevermind all that. The point is, I need to get inside Lancaster’s metal head and figure out what’s going on. It’s the principal of the thing. I’m struggling with the main plot line of the novel as it is, and if I can just figure out where this is going, maybe I can figure out a way to stop him.

What’s great about Lancaster is I could spend a whole year being him, and not really mess anything up, since he clones himself regularly so that he can personally conduct “exams” on agents in order to kill them. I don’t have to “be Lancaster” to be Lancaster.

And a year should be just the right amount of time. Lancaster once posed as coffee machine at a cheap motel in Reno just to get access to an ATF agent who had stolen a thumb drive from a CISEN operative. (I actually haven’t written that chapter yet, but, gosh, it’s a good idea and I’m totally going to use it.)

CISEN, by the way, is the acronym for Mexico’s intelligence agency. I just found that on Wikipedia, since I’m pretty much making this up as I go along.

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E-Mail to My Cousin’s Best Man re: Bachelor Party

fiction by Jason Edwards

Hey Dave—good seeing you and yours that last weekend. I’m still drinking the beers that were bought and not consumed, which sometimes makes for a rough morning, but that’s the definition of family if you ask me. Anywho, I haven’t heard from Evan yet about your bachelor party, so if you could forward to him the following, that would be great. I’m sure he’s a busy man, and I don’t want to put too much pressure on him or anything, but I figured while I’m sitting here drunk as hell with nothing better to do, I might as well get some thoughts down on paper.

Hi Evan. This is Samuel, Dave’s oldest cousin. I understand that as Dave’s best man, you’ll be in charge of his bachelor party. Just wanted to start off by saying that there are no hard feelings at all that he didn’t choose me as his best man, despite the fact that we’re related by blood and that if one of us needed a kidney the other one would probably be a good match. “You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family,” they say. (I don’t know who they are, but apparently they don’t go to a lot of bachelor parties.)

I have a few ground rules when it comes to this sort of thing, bachelor parties I mean, and I wanted to let you know about them in advance. For example, bachelor parties always means strippers, and that’s fine, but there’s a brand of stripper-body-glitter that I’m allergic too, so if you could tell the strippers that in advance, it would be appreciated. It’s okay if they rub themselves on my face—it’s mainly my upper thighs that will break out into a rash. It only took my three or four parties to figure that one out!

Also, a long weekend with the boys usually means beer, and as a person who lives in Seattle, I, of course, know beer. I would appreciate it if only craft beer made with organic Pacific-Northwest hops is bought for everyone. I’ll contribute to the funds for that, no worries. You have to love the planet or the planet won’t love you back, after all.

I believe the Monday Night Football game that will be on when we’re all together will be the Bears at the Jets. I’m afraid this won’t work for me. I went to a Bears game once a few years ago when I was visiting Chicago, and a drunk guy in the men’s room shouted at me, saying “Hurry up, fatso.” (I assume he was talking to me, as I have struggled with an eating disorder since a particularly frightening episode of ‘Growing Pains’ that aired in 1988, the one where Carol is nominated for Homecoming Queen. I was so sure it was going to be a Carrie homage, I ate, like, three bags of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Minis, and I’ve been addicted ever since). I know bachelor parties are where men get to be men and real men like football, but since the Bears are one of my “triggers,” I’m sure everyone else will understand if we do something else instead. May I suggest a few games of Settlers of Cataan?

Dave indicated that he’s inviting my dad and his dad as well. Just wanted to assure you that while they both tend to get a little racist/homophic/mysoginistic/anti-semitic/pro-life/pro-Limbaugh/pro-Hobby-Lobby when they’re drunk, they’ve never actually killed anyone on purpose. Oh, I almost forgot to mention: both my dad and his dad have conceal-carry permits. But don’t worry. As long as Dave and I are more or less sober, we can handle them.

Sleeping arrangements: my sleep-apnea and snoring shouldn’t be a problem if everyone brings earplugs. Also, everyone gives GHB a bad rap but it really does help people sleep through loud noises. So just say the word, and I’ll bring some of my stash to share, and I’ll give everyone a fair price. I’ll also bring condoms if anyone’s worried.

I assume we’ll be showering together, as that’s a bachelor party tradition. I have no problem with this. I take very long showers.

And finally, wanted to let you know that I’m really looking forward to the fun! Ever since the car accident, my wife won’t let me out of the house, much less go to parties! But she had to give in on this one, house-arrest or not, since Dave and I are family after all. And you know what they say, “innocent until proven guilty;” so until the DA finds proof, I’m not letting some stupid ankle bracelet keep me from celebrating with my cuz!

Hope this email finds you well. Feel free to call me at (737) 874-2833 to discuss. English only, please.

–Samuel Hanson, age 42

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Unholy Night– review on Goodreads

Unholy NightUnholy Night by Seth Grahame-Smith

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Got this one from a friend who loaned me a whole stack of books. I’ve been out of the reading rhythm for a while so I decided to start with this one since it seemed light-hearted and silly. It really wasn’t. It was kind of tedious, but I chalked that up to my being a rusty reader. Having just finished it though, I’m not so sure if it was me or just the novel.

Ostensibly a re-telling of the baby-Jesus story and His flight to Egypt. But what do you expect from a re-telling: is it an homage, a parody, straight-up plagiarism? None of these in Unholy Night, I’m afraid. Just a loose framework used to tell a hack-n-slash adventure story.

Which is fine, and don’t get me wrong—if there’s cyberpunk and steampunk, why not history-punk? I’m all for innovative genres. But everything Unholy Night got from this “history” was also the only thing it had going for it. And that included a lot of deus ex machina.

I mean, a lot. A story about one of the three wise-man using his sword and hatred to protect the Messiah as they try to escape Herod- and whenever it looks like they’re trapped, voila, a miracle happens. Please. I feel as if a great opportunity for parody was utterly missed here. I get it—this is The Living God wrapped in his arms, so “deus ex machina” is almost obligatory. Maybe that’s why it felt flat.

Too many conveniences, too many coincidences, too much horror with too little consequence. I guess the best thing I can say about Unholy Night is that, like the Bible itself, it ended up just being a bunch of words, words words.

View all my reviews

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What Are You Reading, Stupid?

Lest you start thinking you’re an intelligent person with discerning tastes, let me remind you that you’re not. You’re an idiot. And I know you’re an idiot because Slate and Flavorwire told me so. They didn’t use the word “idiot” but then they didn’t have to, because people who are intelligent and have discerning tastes can read between the lines. People like me!

So, you’re an idiot. You read Young Adult fiction, Donna Tart, and nothing else. I put those last three words in italics to emphasize them. You should be ashamed of yourselves, and your idea that these books are the kinds of things that represent literature today is completely wrong. Don’t you know that YOU are contributing to the death of literary criticism by buying books that other people will also end up buying?

I mean, look at you. With your education and your job and your family and your, ugh, life. Are you on Reddit? Are you even on Tumblr? Then how in the HELL do you even KNOW what’s even REAL? You wouldn’t know good literature if it glued you to a chair and made you watch Shakespeare. Did you know that Teller of Penn & Teller fame is currently directing The Tempest? Of course not: you read Divergent and The Goldfinch instead of listening to podcasts. Scum.

You are scum. You read your books (plural!) and listen to your music (collective plural!) and watch your television shows, when the real, actual critics don’t even own a TV. Who has time to own a TV when there’s Netflix and Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime subscriptions to maintain on laptops? Who has time for, what are they called, sports? Who has time for sports when the World Cup is on in bars that sells beers you haven’t even heard of?

I’m avoiding the H word, because it would hurt your feelings, but I am so tempted to use it. You know the word I mean. Rhymes with “dipster.” You dipster. I haven’t found it yet, because I only read websites even I haven’t heard of (like Flavorwire), but I know there’s a website that describes how my calling you the H word means I’m an H word and admitting I’m an H word means I’m not really an H word and so you are one.

The point is, you have got to stop. Stop reading things that you enjoy. Stop getting so much satisfaction out of your entertainment choices. Stop being an idiot. Literary criticism (which, for the purpose of this essay and the ones on Slate and Flavorwire is the same as writin’ reviews, even though it’s not at all, even) will die if you don’t start reading… well, reading things that are so good no plebian like you would read them.

And if literary criticism dies, how will people adequately contextualize my essay about some essays that were about reviews of books that these essays say you shouldn’t read? Idiot. Scum. Dipster.

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Staring at Faulty Films

Movie reviews by Jason Edwards

Three movies have hit theaters this week, all with similar titles and themes. Has Hollywood become nothing more than an incestuous cesspool of ceaseless drivel, devolving ideas back to a single primordial ooze of consciousness, or is this just coincidence? Crackpot conspiracy theorists and elite critics, at least, can agree that this bumper-crop of sameness is nothing to be trifled with. Unless you eat your trifle with a fork and a knife!

First up is a movie called The Fault in Our Stars, about a young girl battling a terrible oxygen addiction. She walks around carrying a can of the stuff with her at all times, and is meanwhile wooed by a handsome, tall man who’s literally half of twice her age. She’s conflicted, however, because she read on Slate.com that people who read young adult novels should be ashamed of themselves, and her suitor reminds her of her stint as a pregnant high-schooler who’s senior project was to overthrow a corrupt government via virtual-reality dreams. Alas, terminally illness ensues, Mtv style.

Next is The Fault in our Stairs, a fictional-documentary about blind paraplegics fighting for better handicapable ramps to be installed next to government building steps. Look for the director’s signature “slow pain“ camera shots, a play on the word “pan” and, by coincidence, always featuring one young girl playing a boy dressed in green, tortured, and flying. Not your average art-house flick, but not for young or old or in-between audiences either.

Finally we have It’s Fred Astaire’s Fault, a film about a man who wakes up every morning and says “Good job, brain,” thanking his mind for getting him through the night unattended. Over time this practice creates a disassociation between the man and his brain, until the two become separate entities. Eventually the brain falls in love with the man, and tries to woo him by learning complicated 30s-style dance routines. The twist, of course, is that the man is a blind paraplegic. A hologram of Cream drummer Ginger Baker makes a guest cameo as Ginger Rogers.

Altogether these movies would make for a heck of a Red Box rental binge, although seeing them now in theaters would perhaps ruin such an orgy. Suffice it to say that if you only see one of these films, you won’t have seen the other two. That’s not tragedy in the Greek sense, unless by “Greek” you’re referring to the American Fraternity System. In that case, feel free to skip these and play beer pong. Pro-tip: ice keeps the beer cold and sometimes makes the balls bounce out. Peace.

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Stories from Precinct 17: Hub-Bub, Hold the Ado

fiction by Jason Edwards

The door to the captain’s office burst open like it normally does and the captain himself emerged, holding something in one clenched fist, shouting, “God damn it, Marcus, what the hell is this?”

“That’s your stapler, captain,” I said.

“God damn it!” The captain shouted and went back into his office, slamming the door again. The hub-bub of Precinct 17 went back to hub-bubbing.

Sergeant David Marcus, detective, Seattle PD. Been on the job for about ten years now, and I have seen some shit. I’m far passed my wide-eyed phase, but not quite to my cynical phase. I’m sort of in the middle of a wild-cannon phase, and probably will be for a while.

That’s how my writer’s setting me up, anyway. Mostly he just fakes it as he goes, more worried about word choice than character development. Still, it’s not all bad. I have a captain who yells all the time, a partner from the Paleozoic era, and all the donuts I want without getting too fat. Not sure if I have an alcohol problem or not— my writer likes his tropes, but he shies away from cliche, when he can.

It was a typical Tuesday in Seattle. The sun was fighting the clouds, the office was a hub-bub of felony arrests and misdemeanor paperwork, and the Mariners were getting ready for their October vacation. Day game. On the radio. Noise lost in the hub-bub, Mariner’s losing in the 6th.

The captain’s door burst open again. Captain Chauncey DelaCourt, six three, black, about 290 I think. Second stringer on his college team, straight into the academy, honors, beat cop to dick to captain along the usual routes. Some claim it was a case of affirmative action, but he was a pretty god damn good captain, and nobody said no when we got that door of his reinforced for his birthday three years ago. On account of all the slamming.

“Marcus! Get your skinny white ass in here now!” He left the door open. A good sign.

I shrugged off torpor, clicked off the game, put on my jacket. It never sits right when I don’t have my service piece in the shoulder holster, but I’m no idiot— gun goes in the desk lock box when I’m not on the street. Safety before vanity, my writer likes to say, for no reason I can think of.

I went into the captain’s office.

“Did I tell you to shut the goddamn door, Marcus?”

I took that as my cue to shut the door.

“What the hell is this?” He was pointing at a folder.

“It’s a folder, Captain.”

“I know what it is god damn it. You think I’m some kind of idiot, Marcus? Is that what they taught you in that college of yours! That police captains are idiots?”

“Captain, I never went to college, I—”

“God damn it, Marcus! You’re a loose cannon! I got the mayor breathing down my neck, I got the newspapers dragging the one-seven through the mud, and do you want to know how many calls I’m getting from the citizens of Seattle about your god damn shenanigans?”

“Uh-”

“Three! So you listen to me, you no good twisted piece of waste of god damn dirt bag piece of filth! You take this case, and you do it by the book, you hear me! Or its your badge this time, Marcus! I’ll have your gun, I’ll have your pension, I’ll have you writing parking tickets in Renton! You hear me you piece of what I said?”

“Loud and clear captain.” I picked up the folder. Cold case, homicide from about 25 years ago. “What were the calls about?”

“God damn it Marcus, do I look like some kind of Dictaphone to you?”

“No, but-”

“One from some lady saying thanks for helping out on the Jenkins robbery, an anonymous call asking for a large with pepperoni and olives, and one from your wife, asking me if Tilda and I were still on for dinner this Friday, you-”

“What did you say?”

“I said yes you god damn piece of low-life no good son of a piece of now get the hell out of my office before my foot parks itself in your ass!”

I walked out, shutting the door behind me.

“And close the god damn door on your way out,” the captain shouted.

I walked over to my desk, sat down, flicked the game back on. Mariner’s still losing. Made me wonder if my writer even cared about the team. This is fiction, after all. Throw ’em a bone, let ’em win one maybe? God damned verisimilitude.

I perused the file. A grisly murder, a priest, hammer to the back of the head. I sighed a few times, read a few of the newspaper clippings attached. Homeless kids, a shelter, a foods program.

I stood up, walked over to my partner. Mezzoni, 59 years old, a year away from retirement. “You’re under arrest, Mezzoni. Get up.”

Mezzoni got up with a heavy defeated look on his face. “That priest was runnin’ an underage prostitution ring, ya know. He had them poor girls hooked on skag.”

“I know, Mezzoni.”

“How’d you figure it, Marcus?”

I shrugged, putting a hand on his shoulder and turning him around so I could cuff him. “There’s always a twist, and my writer wants to wrap up this writing exercise so he can go for a run.” We walked towards the holding cells while the hubibub kept on hub-bubbing. “You have the right to remain silent. When I think of something clever to interject here, my writer will come back and edit it in. You have the right to an attorney…” etc etc etc.

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Thou Shalt

You ever heard that phrase, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live? I guess I have to kill a witch then. I got one living next door to me. This is a full-on, black dress, pointy hat, green skin, hook-nose-with-a-wart witch. We’re talking cauldrons, cats, the whole bit. And I have to kill her.

Not that I believe in that Jesus stuff. Not that I even own a bible. But a rule’s a rule, I guess. Not sure how I’m supposed to do it though. Do you just shoot them? Hang ’em? Drown ’em? Does it work like The Wizard of Oz, I just got to throw a bucket of water on her or something?

Thing is, it’s my own fault. I bought the place, and the real estate agent told me and everything. “Just so you know, the lady next door, Agnes, in that scary hut looking thing, she’s a witch, an actual poison-the-neighbor’s-cow type witch. She eats children. Just so you know. Sign here, here, and here.” So I only got my self to blame. Sweet deal on fourteen hundred square feet though, let me tell you.

Maybe I thought the agent was joking, but, I don’t think I can even use that as an excuse. I mean, when I moved in, I didn’t think about how there was a pasture nearby, even though I finally noticed it last week and it wasn’t even a surprise. And there was plenty of cows in it, but there’s fewer these days. And children too, running up and down the street, until one day they just stopped, like something happened.

Now it’s up to me I guess. I mean, you would think the guy who owns those cows would do it, or the parents of them kids. Get together a regular mob with the torches and the pitchforks. But they don’t. They just go about their business, shifty glances up the hill where the witch’s hut is, next to my house. And like with the pasture, I guess I knew I was buying a place sort of removed from the main thrust of things. As long as I had access to the highway. But the other day I was talking to Gena in Accounting and telling her about the place and had to admit its more or less like we live in a little village, me and the other folks ’round here.

I was looking at the shotgun I keep propped up next to the front door, just mulling over nothing, and I thought I’d maybe go for a walk, clear my head. It was one of those cold autumn nights, big fat sliver of a moon in the sky. I walked down to the village, along the dirt road and passed the usual shoppes, like the butchers and the farriers and the apothecaries. Everything lit up by candlelight, iron-bound doors shut tight. And there goes Agnes, hobbling along like she does, cackling under her breath.

And I’m thinking, what year is this? What century? Have shot guns even been invented yet? I looked at my watch, which glows in the dark and has one of them batteries that recharges itself whenever you move. It was nearly midnight. And I’m thinking, what if the crops don’t come in? Or did the crops already come in? Are we going to have rats in the grain silos? Are we going to make it through the winter?

I went back home and turned on the TV. Typical, three hundred channels, nothing to watch, so I switched it off. Sat there in the dark. A wolf howled somewhere off on the moors. A chill set in. The fire was out, just a few coals left— don’t recall having started one earlier, but I must have. Never really occured to me that I was buying a house with a fireplace in it, me, a city boy my whole life. I looked down at my plain clothes, hand-stitched, my woven shirt and rough pants. The smell of earth coming off my thick beard from spending all day in the mines. I mean at the job where I’m the assistant tech support manager. I mean the mines.

Why do witches even do it? Why do that cast spells and spoil crops and eat children? What’s their end game? Is it like, I dunno, Nintendo for them or something? Are they just mean people?

I’m looking over at my shotgun, which is basically a scythe at this point, a huge thing, looming in the corner. The clouds outside shift, the moonlight catches the edge of the scythe blade, and I guess I got some work to do.

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So Much Blogging

Quickly: Had a job for twelve years, got laid off, got another job. Joggle. We make a free brain train gaming for your iPad. Go download it right now. I am the Community Manager, in charge of keeping an eye on Google Adwords, curating scholarly articles about the brain, helping with in-game and website ad copy, etc. There’s six of us. Every download we get, it looks like I’m contributing. SO GO DOWNLOAD IT. And tell your friends. Tell all of them.

But now: blogging. It all started when I started this job and was told we would be blogging. So I began writing some bits and pieces about the brain. Turns out our blog is going in a different direction. So I created a quickie Blogspot account and posted them there. It’s called The Great Brain Robbery.

Get this: one hundred page views the first weekend. I was immediately addicted. I have no idea if those page views are meaningful or not, don’t care. I started posting twice a day. Then I read that more than once a day and people won’t read it. So now I’m down to once a day.

Meanwhile, I published a book and decided to blog to support that, too. Zombie For Life is the blog that supports Still Life, With Zombie, a collection of short stories. Buy it today. But some for your friends.

And finally, there’s ‘Other,’ which was my “original” blogspot/blogger blog, back in the day when a lot of friends where blogging and I wanted to be on the same platform as them. That blog has also become a daily thing, too, a place to sort of dump my thoughts about taking the bus and working in an office and just getting over 12 years of working from home.

That’s a lot of writing. what about good old fashioned Bukkhead? Yeah, I know, I know. sad and abandoned for a while, just a repository for book reviews and the odd short story. Tell you what, NaNoWriMo is happening right now, so  maybe I can discuss that now and again. Maybe. I mean:

That’s 3476 words today.

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The 9-Volt Battery

fiction by Jason Edwards

Hey what’s up, my name’s Frank. I’m a battery. That’s not a metaphor; I’m an honest-to-god 9-volt battery. And I know how it is, you guys like to make fun of me. Double-A gets all the work, even triple-A comes in from time to time. And all those little watch batteries with their special ops. And me, old Frank, old has-been 9-volt, no good for anything except smoke alarms.

Well, you know what, mofo? It’s a quarter to four in the morning, and yeah, I could wait a few hours until you’re awake—hell, brah, I might even make it to the weekend. But no, screw that, I’m using up the last of my juice to let you know, loud and clear, in seventy-five second intervals, that I need to be changed.

Joke’s on you, jerk, because: am I in the smoke detector outside your bedroom, easy to get to? Nope. Am I down the hall in the office, close to where you keep the spare batteries? No sir. Maybe the kitchen, the smoke alarm that gets all the work whenever you fry bacon and forget to turn the fan on, ya terrible cook? No such luck for you.

Go ahead, try closing the bedroom doors to drown me out. Did it work? CHIRP! No it did not. Turn the fan on high, right next to your head, dry out your sinuses for all I care just for the white noise… CHIRP! There you go, pillow over your head, have to tweak your neck at a weird angle, your arm flopped over the top to-CHIRP! Better come find me, doofus.

Walk into the hallway. All is darkness and silence. Waiting, waiting for the sound. Where will it come from? Was it just a dream? Should you go back to CHIRP! Made ya jump!

I’m in the one above the front room, that lofty space, about 15 feet up. You know where I’m talking about. Yeah, you wanted “organic lines” and “free-flowing space” and “lots of natural light” when you bought the house. Time to pay the piper, dumb-butt. Time to get the ten-foot ladder.

The one in the garage. Punch in your house alarm code beforeyou go into the garage. Man that’s loud, how does your wife sleep through it? There’s the ladder, hanging on the wall, almost wedged in there where you parked your car too close. You idiot. So open the garage door. It’s louder at four in the morning, isn’t it? Now get in your car, to make room in the garage. Aw, you forgot your keys? CHIRP!

Get your keys. Get back in your car. Start it. TURN OFF THE DAMN RADIO! Jesus pleas us, who listens to NPR at THAT volume? Wow. Anyway, ease into your drive way. Turn off the car, set the parking brake, get out, step on a tiny pinecone with your bare feet. Are you loving this yet, suburbanite? My 9-volt ass is loving this.

At least it’s sort of calm out here, in the night air. Not too cold, not to warm. The sound of the highway, sort of like the ocean. CHIRP! Yeah, I can ruin anything.

Get the ladder, drag it inside by the light of baseboard night-lights because you don’t want to squint against regular lights. Carefully! You’ve already risked the wrath of wife with stumbling out of bed, closing bedroom door, turning fan way up, opening door, punching alarm code, opening garage door, starting car, shouting wonderful colorful curse words into the night air when stepping on pine cone! Don’t up the ante shattering vases with your Three-Stooges-ladder-carrying-technique, chirp!

There you go. You awake now? Well. A little foreshadowing—you will not fall off the ladder. That’s not part of my story. Your story. It’s our story now. Set up the ladder—Ah heck. Looks like the geniuses who built this house with its organic and its free-flowing and its natural decided to put the smoke detector on a part of the ceiling sort of but not quite above the staircase. So the ladder is sort of but not quite in the right place. Ha ha ha, chirp, etc.

Climb up anyway. Your halfway there. You forgot to get a fresh battery. You freeze. Your life now moves in 75-second intervals. Maybe you can just stop right there. You can stand halfway up this ladder, and maybe not move, and maybe time will stop too, and you can sort of just be, for all eternity, and that would be just fine. A tableau in frozen dimensions—you on the ladder, me silent forever, your wife all snug in her wee little bed… CHIRP! THIS AINT NO CHRISTMAS CAROL! GO GET THAT SPARE!

Sheesh, can I just lighten up for a second? NO. WAY. Off the ladder, up the stairs, quick little revelation- pinkie toes and ladder legs do not get along. Seriously, dude, WHERE did you learn to curse like that? There’s stevedores working the docks who’d blush to hear what you say. It’s just a toe, man, calm down. Go get the god-damned battery.

It’s in the laundry room. In the cabinet above the washing machine. No, not that cabinet. Yes that one. Not that shelf, that one. That little boxy drawer thing. Not that drawer, that’s spare keys. That’s one’s old keys that don’t open anything but you can’t throw away for some reason. That’s one extra rolls of Scotch tape. Nope, no clue why your wife keeps them here and not in the gift-wrap box. No, that drawer’s old mailing labels… don’t ask me, maybe people sometimes have to address packages of freshly washed clothes or something. This drawer DOES have batteries in it—but they’re all double A! Ha! A lot of good they’re doing you now!

Oh, way in the back, one 9-volt. Just the one. Not even in a package. And you, you have this tendency, don’t you, of not keeping track of your used batteries. You leave them lying around. And you can’t just throw them in the trash. You can’t recycle them, as it were. So what do you do? And later, your wife finds them, or you find the ones she’s left lying around, and sometimes they get put back in the battery drawer.

Which you only realize is the case when, for example, you swap out the batteries in the TV remote, and then it only works for a few hours before it dies again. As the kids say, WTF, man? You’re getting nervous, aren’t you. What if this is a used 9-volt? When was the last time you swapped out one of me in another alarm? A few years ago, or only months but enough months to feel like years? Are 9-volts sold individual or in multi-packs? Is this one fresh, was it bought with another, or has it been so long, even unused it’s still going to last only a few hours? Damn it damn it damn it.

Well, nothing to do about it now but try it and see. Chirp, by the way, as a reminder. Gurgle, your stomach says. Your bladder has finally decided this is not a quick wake and flip the pillow and go back to sleep situation. You are up, probably for good, and there are certain morning rituals your body has gotten used to. Chirp. Burp. We’re a regular rock n roll band, your body and me.

So there you are, sitting in the dark, in the bathroom. The guest bathroom, just in case wife finally wakes up, decides to use the bathroom herself, opens the door, startles you, making you yelp, making her absolutely scream, and hilarity and 911 calls ensue. Chirp. Your sitting because you have nothing manly to prove to anyone, and besides, it’s difficult to aim in the dark. Chirp. Did you leave the door to the garage open, the garage door itself open, your car door open? Aw who cares. Chirp. Once you’re done here, you can change the battery, put away the ladder, park the car, close up the house, go back to bed, wait for your wife to nudge you and tell you to stop snoring. Chirp. Where’s that spare battery? In the pocket of your pajamas, which are pooled around your ankles. Why do pajamas have pockets? For chirp like this, I guess.

All done? Good. Brief wiggle, stand up, pull up your pajamas, ignore that plopping sound, flush, wash, all in the dark. You’ve lived here a long time, you know every square inch of this house, working in darkness is no problem. Hands washed, out the bathroom door, square-inch my ass, there goes your pinkie toe against the side of the door jamb. You can’t even curse this time, can you, just bite your bottom lip and makea sort of “FFFGGGFFF” sound. Hand in your pocket despite the pain to get the spare.

Hand finds nothing. Other hand in other pocket. Also nothing. Pause, in pain, and wonder why Satan would choose this exact time to drive you insane. And then a revelation, and you can feel your soul sinking out of your stomach and through the floorboards. That plopping sound.

This is where I decide I’ve won. Frank the 9-volt has won. You don’t even curse anymore. You don’t even care, do you. Turn around, back into the bathroom, flip the lights on, blazing steely-hot javelins of light stabbing your eyes. There in the still trembling water of the commode, the 9-volt, at the bottom. You’re reaching in before you have time to think about it. Hauling it out. Back at the sink and casually soap and lather and rinse and repeat four or five times in water so hot that if you cared you’d be in pain. But you don’t care. Nothing matters.

Your bed and your wife and your house and your car. All of it, pointless. All of it meaningless because you had to make fun of me, Frank, me, a 9-volt battery, make fun of ME even though I AM THE ONE who alerts you if your house catches on fire. ME. FRANK the FUCKING 9-VOLT BATTERY helping to make sure YOU and your BED and WIFE and your HOUSE and your shitty little CAR in your GARAGE don’t burn down because SOMEBODY forgot to blow out the candle or turn off the stove or some other DUMBSHIT move that only YOU and not BATTERIES LIKE ME could ever do.

Get back downstairs. Get up that ladder. Open up the smoke detector. Pull me out. Put another me in. Did you remember to check which way I go? Is it positive left, negative right, or the other way around? Well, it’s too dark to tell, so you’ll just have to wait. Up there, 15 feet above the floor, perched precariously.

All those times you cooked bacon, forgot to turn on the fan, and the smoke detector goes off, and you got MAD. Idiot. MAD that the thing that keeps you from dying actually still works. Oh, the things you said. The number of times you pulled me out and let me dangle there by wires so you could unplug and replug me. Just dangling like a, like a… like a I don’t know what. But it sucked, man. It really sucked. You shouldn’t have treated me like that, man, you just shouldn’t.

But look. I mean listen. Hear that? Nothing so far. Maybe you got it right your first try. Count to something. I don’t know, count to one hundred. Slowly! There you go. Yes, sixty… seventy… man you’re on edge now, hey, better grip the top of the ladder tighter, in case the detector makes that sound and startles you off into a 15-foot fall. Break your ankle, if you’re lucky, your hip, old man, your spine, your neck, wife widowed, who’s going to change 9-volts for her when you’re gone? Ninety… one hundred.

You’re still not moving. Maybe you counted too fast. No, you didn’t count too fast. I think it’s okay. Descend, human. Fold up the ladder. Yeah, it’s probably okay. And you know what, if you’re wrong, if you did put in the battery backwards, or it’s an old one, so what, right? You’ve learned your lesson. You can set up the ladder again. Hop in your car and go to the 24-7 convenience store, whatever. Life’s too short to hate chores and make fun of 9-volt batteries.

Ladder folded, back in the garage. Yeah, yeah, you knocked over that broken lamp on the shelf next to where the ladder hangs, so what. Car back into the garage. Garage door closed. Door to the garage closed. House alarm set. Back up the stairs. Back into bed. Aaahhh. You thought you were wide away. But this feels sooo good.

Almost worth it, am I right? All that petty agony, that minimal suffering, all that suburbanite angst. Almost worth it to get back into this cozy bed. Wife snuggling up to you. A few hours left before the clock radio alarm will go off. So nice. No chirps for several minutes now. The torpor of drowsiness settling in. Wife murmurs “big spoon” as she rolls over. So with the last of your energy, roll over to hold her.

That used 9-volt battery, me, Frank, still in your pocket, and now pressing against your hip, smashed into the bed, very hard. But it’s okay. “Motherfucker,” you kind of chuckle. You’ll have a bruise when you wake up. So what. Small price. We’re friends now.