Today’s writing prompt is on the nonfiction side: Describe your morning routine using the most eccentric words and phrases that come to mind. Hoo boy. You asked for it, you got it, pal.
Stately I arise, arm stretched forth to my invisible court to have them behold my profoundly handsome and rounded countenance. My breath is tainted sweetly with the stench of dead megafauna and live microfauna. I gather my garments: vestments for my feet; a cache for my sex that in my century is quaintly called a boxer brief; cotton leggings for the twin, hirsute trunks that bear my form boldly upward; a flowered shirt blessed by the sacred isles of Hawai’i. I am ready to face my day.
I assume the throne and think deep the deep thoughts of a Twitter philosopher for however long it takes for my ruminations to download and be flushed out to sea. Suitably cleansed in body and mind, I delve into crevices with the finest waxen strands of Wampa hair, clearing the previous evening’s repast from between my teeth. I then pound and scrub the yellow lacquer at the gum lines into utter submission with the munificent force of rotating and vibrating bristles coated in some horrific, vaguely minty concoction that most mortals would not consume if they had any sense.
The rows of uneven, stained pearls thereby sandblasted, I move next to mowing my face with the aid of a blue slime that froths agreeably when rubbed into the epidermis. I then guide the three-bladed instrument—lubricated by a strip of yet more slime—across the grey grass in random patterns until the slime has been removed along with the offending hairs. Only an uneven Van Dyke tuft around my mouth and chin is left undisturbed.
I do all of this willingly and on purpose, which might be odd, given that I type words for a living in my own abode. What doth the world care if I wear a smooth face or not?
Next comes a moment of brief nudity. I know what I look like, so I hath no need to describe the magnificence of a body nearly half a century’s passing, dented and puffed from the hard living of each of those years. Contusions, striae distensae, more silver lawn, cetacean blubber. Truly, it is a marvel to behold, but still in need of a daily (sometimes twice-daily) flensing. The rules of my tribe frown upon the true smells of our species perfuming the air.
There is order and disorder, method and madness in my showering: soaping head to toe, but always in a different order day to day, to keep my order-loving mind (and any potential spies) from knowing my true patterns. (And yet, is a daily randomness not a pattern in itself? Am I not mad?)
The marvel of indoor sluicing comes to a stop and I bury my skin in the fine white terry of Bangladesh, using a black-toothed tool to shift the random silver lawn on my head into something approaching an orderly patter. I slather the undersides of my arms with something allegedly more wonderful than my body’s own scent.
On comes the raiment: the uniform earlier described of this, a fully vested Scriptor Technica. I am now ready to challenge the random demiurges of the planet’s latest rotation. Excelsior!
The Real Bart Leahy 