Toilet Tom is a darkly funny horror story which proves that some of the best surprises come from behind.
Included with Toilet Tom is a preview of my second novel, Surviving Immortality, available on Smashwords as of August, 2012.
IMMORTALITY
CHAPTER ONE
Later, the news agencies and history books would report that Edward Savois was the first person not to die. In fact, Louise Hubert was first, Francis Blondain was second, while—a full sixty-seven minutes after Ms. Hubert—Mr Savois was the third person not to die.
In the Montreal suburb known as NDG, on that twenty-third day of November, Louise Hubert awoke alone at seven AM, as per her usual routine. She did so not because she was some eager go-getter anxious for an early start to the day, but because she was eighty-two years old and trusted the tensile strength of her bladder about as much as she did the prognostications of the weatherman—meaning not a whole hell of a lot.
After relieving her bladder of its burden, Louise Hubert made her way to the kitchen where she filled her blender with frozen mixed berries, half a banana, and a cup of vanilla yogurt, then blended the fruit and yogurt into an anti-oxidant-rich sludge. The smoothie had been her morning meal for the past twelve years, ever since an episode of Oprah had convinced her of the cancer-fighting properties of anti-oxidants and fibre. Her husband, Clarence, had died of colon cancer fifteen years ago and Louise had no plans of joining him. Not like that.
Her breakfast consumed, Louise Hubert fixed herself a cup of coffee and moved from the kitchen table to the living room couch to watch the morning news and knit, as she did every morning. The news was dull or depressing, but it helped fill the silence while she knitted. That morning she was completing a pair of slippers for her daughter, Rolande. She planned to make matching ones for Rolande’s three kids.
Rolande Patry, née Hubert, visited her mother often. She was dumb as toast and not much more interesting, but she was a good woman and a good daughter. She’d married an equally dull-witted man by the name of Denis Patry who made his living selling motorized lawn-ornaments to people even dumber than he. Upon meeting the man who would later marry his only daughter, Clarence Hubert had whispered to his wife, Seems like a nice guy . . . but boy, their kids are gonna be capital-S stupid.
Clarence had not lived long enough to meet his grand kids, but he’d been right. Rolande and Denis had produced a trio of mental-miniatures the likes
