"Nobody Used the Toilet All Night."
A Short Story by Brandi Wells
There were probably fifteen of us crammed in the cell. No benches or beds, just a ledge jutting four or five inches out of the wall. We were all sort of half leaning, half sitting on the thing and I could feel the edge jabbing into my ass. There weren’t any bars like you’d expect, just a door with a square piece of yellow plastic for a window. Over in the corner was an old rusted toilet, not much white to it anymore.
There was me and a couple guys that looked about my age. Then there were some younger kids, who looked scared and uncomfortable, and had already smoked through all their cigarettes. They kept trying to bum cigarettes off the rest of us, but we knew better. You have to make them last.
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Tagged as:
Literature in the Media,
New Literature Online,
Short Story
R.I.P. Keith Waterhouse
Twelve hours of heavy rain can not stifle our sunny disposition this Monday. It already feels like fall here in the great Northwest, and that makes us happy. Autumn heralds new books, which instills in us the same spinal glee that comes from the beginning of the college football season and the MLB playoffs. But first, the bad news: Keith Waterhouse, creator of Billy Liar, has passed. He was 80. Donald Rumsfeld. It’s almost enough just to utter his name. But The New York Review of Books goes further, examining the former Secretary of Defense’s lasting impact. Good news: The new books lineup is stacked with talent. Chekhov’s Mistress talks tech, noting the wonders of the literary iPhone. A new tome of Raymond Carver’s work is available. The LA Times pages through. A film version of The Brothers Karamazov? The Onion knows. Teddy Roosevelt was an avid outdoorsman and Douglas Brinkley captured his larger than life persona in a compelling book. Finally, David Foster Wallace was a splendid writer who wrote difficult books. Most people struggle just to read them. John Krasinski, of The Office fame, decided to film one. His adaptation of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men was screened at Sundance. Read an early review and watch the trailer below. Let’s just say the movie is taking on water. Time to break out the galoshes. — Kevin Murphy
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Tagged as:
Literature in the Media,
Monday's Body of Work,
Rest in Peace
