This month’s theme:
Towels

Douglas Adams died on May 11, 2001. Two weeks later, fans named May 25 to forever be known as Towel Day, so that everyone would remember the value of their towels—whether at the Big Bang Burger Bar or end at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. You can swim with dolphins or contemplate life, the universe, and everything, but don’t do it without a towel… although there’s a solid argument, of course, for forty-two of them. Don’t panic—all of this is mostly harmless. If you don’t understand anything you’ve just read, then you really must read Adams’ HHGTTG. And if you don’t understand that acronym, then you really need to read HHGTTG. Anyway, here are a few shorts about towels, with female protagonists in honor of Trillian, who so many of us had the hots for: readers, Arthur, Zaphod. Really, just read the books.

“Bath Towel and Goblin”
Contemporary Fantasy
By David M. Fitzpatrick

Melora had mostly dried off, but had wrapped the big bath towel around her. “Big” was relative; it covered from just above her nipples to just below her crotch, but it wasn’t like there was anyone around. She could run around nude if she chose—something Dale would never allow. Running around nude always flustered him. Then again, their rare sex was always in the dark. And to think that he’d dumped her.

She flipped her hair over her head and wrapped a smaller towel around it. She twisted it and stood up, coiling it like a terrycloth turban atop her head. She loved doing that. It was something no man could understand. Brett had been like that, only to a fault. He always harped on her, demanding to know why she didn’t just towel it dry, and he was always annoyed by it. When she asserted herself about why she enjoyed it, she thought she’d ended it—but a week later he ended their relationship.

She left the bathroom, not ready to get dressed. She liked relaxing after a shower, wrapped in her towel, turban on her head, so she snatched a random book out of the living-room bookcase. She rarely had time to read… which, of course, brought Jim to mind. He was a TV nut—shows, movies, sports—and always insisted she sit with him and watch whatever he was watching. She always complied, although rarely interested in what he was watching. Jim wasn’t a reader, and she began to think that maybe he just didn’t want her to read either. She wasn’t too sad when he broke up with her.

She stopped at the couch, realizing she’d been reflecting on the men who had treated her poorly and tried to control her. A wave of misery washed over her. She wanted to wrap her head in towels and read books and streak around her house, but she kept getting involved with self-centered men who she was too timid to stand up to. Maybe if asserted herself from the outset of a relationship, she’d weed out these idiots before investing months of her time just to get dumped.

As she stood on the Oriental carpet in her living room, book in hand, towel on her head, another around her middle, she became aware of a shadow at her feet. At first she thought it was the cat—but then remembered that Allen had made her get rid of the cat months before—after which he’d left her. She’d lost Speckles for nothing—had caved to yet another man and lost her pet. So… what was at her feet?

She stepped back and looked down, and there, grinning up at her, was a little man. He was just a foot tall, with pointed ears and a baggy brown jumpsuit. She sucked in her breath in shock, taking another quick step backward.

“Do you mind?” he said in a squeaky voice. “I was enjoying looking up your lady parts.”

And he scurried forward, between her feet, staring up under the towel.

She screamed, leaping up onto the couch like a 1950s housewife afraid of a mouse in the kitchen. The little guy laughed maniacally, jumping up and down and waving his hands in the air.

“Good idea!” he squealed. “Great angle. Now lift up that towel and show me that bearded clam!”

Revulsion put her terror on hold. “You disgusting pig!” she cried, jamming her hand down to stuff the towel between her thighs. Even so, she felt naked. “What are you doing in my apartment? And what the hell are you?”

“Just a man in need of some of that,” he said with a leering sneer. He groped at the front of his jumpsuit, and she could see a disproportionately large bulge there. “Drop that towel, bitch! I’m here to stay, so you might as well do it. I’ll grope your tits in the shower. I’ll grab some ass when you’re changing. I’ll play a bit of stinkfinger while you sleep. Now show me that snatch!”

And for a moment, Melora was about to do just that: Drop her towel so the disgusting little creature could ogle her. But common sense took over. He was no different than all the other guys who’d convinced her to do what they wanted. A foot tall, maybe, but no different.

“No,” she said.

He laughed maniacally again. “Suit yourself. I’ll have my way with you. I’m too little and too fast for you to ever catch.”

He ran suddenly about the house: from one side of the living room to the other, into the kitchen, back again, up the wall, across the ceiling, back to the carpet—all in seconds. He struck a “ta-da!” pose, arms and legs wide.

“So what’s it gonna be?” he said.

She sighed. “Okay. Fine. I’ll drop my towel and let you look.”

She took a deep breath, reached up, untucked the towel, and let it drop. Cool air hit her breasts, and she felt herself flush with embarrassment as he looked her up and down like a starving man checking out a buffet.

“Ohhhh, yes…” he said.

He was touching himself through his jumpsuit, thoroughly engrossed in staring at her, and never realized what she meant to do as she twirled her towel into a tight coil. And before he knew what was happening, she snapped it at him like as bullwhip—THWACK!

The little guy went airborne, smashed into the wall, and crumpled to the floor. Melora raced over, screaming, and raised a foot—and brought it down onto the creature. He exploded in a flash of light and was gone.

She stood there, naked save for the terrycloth turban, almost disbelieving what had just happened. She suspected the little bastard wouldn’t bother her again.

Melora uncoiled the towel, feeling a sense of independence. It felt good to control her life for a change. She prepared to wrap the towel back around her—and stopped.

Her house. Her life. Herself.

She tossed the towel aside, picked up her book, and flopped naked on her couch.

“Beach Towel Genie”
Contemporary Arabian Fantasy
By David M. Fitzpatrick

It was Emily’s vacation, and she’d chosen a privately owned island off the coast—one she’d paid a king’s ransom to rent for two long, expensive weeks. It was barely two acres, a wooded little dot in the ocean, with a nice log cabin and a sandy beach. She’d had to rent a small boat to get there, and had to buy a GPS device to find it.

It was almost ninety degrees out, sunny and beautiful, on her third day, so she put on a skimpy red bikini and sandals, grabbed her giant, banana-yellow beach towel, and headed down to the small beach. There, she spread the towel out and sat on it, kicking off her sandals and reaching for her sunscreen.

She paused, looking out across the ocean. There were no people; she was miles off the coast, utterly alone. She didn’t need a bikini. She could strip down, lay out all day with no tan lines, and worry about nothing. She grinned at her bravado and reached back to untie her top.

That’s when she saw it.

It was a bottle, mostly buried in the sand at the high-tide line. It was big and ornate, opaque and blue, with an elegant stopper held in place by a metal clasp. It intrigued her, so she got up and danced through the hot sands to retrieve it.

Back on her yellow towel, she surveyed it. It was about the size and shape of a bowling pin and it was heavy. She wondered: Could someone have put a note inside, perhaps centuries before? Eagerly, she undid the metal clasp and popped its top off.

It was like a fairy tale: a flash of red light, a puff of purple smoke, and then a spray of green smoke flowed steadily out of the bottle. She let out a cry and dropped the bottle in the sand, watching in shock as the green smoke took shape. When it cleared, there was no doubt a genie stood before her on the sand: big, imposing, muscular arms crossed, clothing decidedly styled from Arabian mythology, a turban on his head, black eyes looking at her from above a mustache and a Van Dyke beard.

“You’re a genie!” Emily cried.

The big man bowed his dark head in answer.

“Do I get three wishes?” she asked, feeling like an idiot.

“Just one,” the genie replied. “And let me warn you: I will interpret your wish literally, even to your detriment.”

“That seems rather ungrateful, given that I released you from your bottle.”

“I make not the rules,” the genie said. “My curse is to live in this bottle. I owe you a wish for my freedom; in one month, I shall be reimprisoned in the bottle, which will be cast across the world. There shall I hope again for freedom soon—in a day or a decade, never can I be sure.”

“That’s terrible,” Emily said. “Then I wish for your curse to be lifted.”

The genie blinked in surprise. “For millennia I have been so cursed, and hundreds have freed me and earned their wishes. You are the first to show compassion for me. But it is a wish I cannot grant.”

“Then I’ll destroy the bottle,” she said.

“It is indestructible, and the curse sound. You cannot wish to control me, or destroy the bottle, or undo the curse. I appreciate your kindness, but please… make your wish.”

She thought hard. This was supposed to be a relaxing vacation—one she had to rent a boat and buy a GPS tracker in order to experience.

Then it hit her.

“I wish to always know the location of your bottle,” she said.

The genie raised his brow in curiosity.

*     *     *

Her third wish was for a modest amount of money to live on. That was after she found the bottle in a gravel pit in Maine. Then it was in a junkyard in Mexico. Later, she found it in an African jungle, then in New York City, then on the banks of a Scottish loch. When it ended up in Antarctica, that was a challenge, but with every new wish the genie gave her more.

This time, it was in a forest in Saskatchewan. When she released the genie, he greeted her warmly.

“I have been in there barely a day,” he said. “So quickly have you arrived.”

“Thanks to you,” she said.

“And what is your wish?”

“How about something simple? I wish that the island where we first met would be mine.”

“Your wish is my command,” he said.

“Now, how about we get dinner and see a movie?” Emily asked. “You know, before you go off on your month of freedom.”

“Lead the way, fair lady,” he said, and his booming laughter echoed through the wilderness.

She flew into the air aboard the second wish she’d been granted. She’d asked for the ability to fly, and he’d given her that wish—sort of. Even in his gratitude, he had to mess with the wish a bit. Fair enough.

Arabian mythologists would certainly be confounded, but she flew into the blue sky aboard her magic carpet—rather, her magic yellow beach towel.

The genie, trailing green smoke, followed her to dinner.

“Hand Towel Gremlin”
Fantasy
By David M. Fitzpatrick

There was a gremlin in Mary’s house. She was an easy target, of course; her husband had died after the last harvest, so she was just one woman in a small house ninety leagues from the center of the kingdom. There was nobody to help her. She had to provide for herself—but she didn’t know how.

She’d endured most of the gremlin’s nighttime mischief: dumping out her water bucket, throwing the door open, extinguishing the hearth fire, ripping out the socks she’d just darned. But when it upended her stew into the ash can, that meant her food for the next few days was lost. She resolved to wait up for the creature.

She’d almost hit her breaking point two night before that, when the creature had ripped her only towel to shreds and chewed her only leather belt to pieces. For a woman with so little, they were serious things. Her only towel, which she used for everything—cleaning up, bandaging wounds, covering pots, and so much else—was like gold to her, but had been reduced to a dozen strips of frayed cloth. And her belt—her only belt, the leather belt that had belonged to her great-great-grandmother—had been chewed into a hundred useless pieces.

She’d hoped then that the gremlin would tire of her, since she hadn’t responded by crying or swearing or anything, but ruining her food came next. It had been the final straw.

So she spent the evening hauling bricks in from outside, and using a bit of female ingenuity to deal with the gremlin. Then she stayed up that night, turning the flame in her lantern down almost to nonexistence, so only the soft glow of the hearth’s embers barely lit the room. And she waited.

It was the deepest part of night when she heard the clinking of metal, and she snapped awake. In the dimness, she could see the shadowy form over by the shelf—messing with her flatware, by the sounds of it. She reached over and turned up the lantern’s flame, and the room lit up.

The gremlin spun about in surprise. It was three feet tall, with a face like a frog and a tail like a lizard. Its sky-blue skin contrasted with the spiky tufts of fire-orange hair that grew in bushes from its head and neck, down its spine, and along its tail. Its big yellow eyes grew wide, and it threw up clawed hands as if to threaten her.

“Please, leave me alone,” Mary pleaded.

The gremlin cocked its blue head, confused. “Say again?” Its voice was scratchy, raspy, monstrous.

“I’m a helpless woman,” Mary said. “You destroy my things—like my only hand towel.”

“Suffering’s good for you,” the creature said, smiling with sharp teeth.

“My belt was my great-great grandmother’s,” she continued. “You shredded it to bits.”

“Tasty,” it said with visible glee, licking its wide lips.

“And my food,” she said, “dumped into my ash can. I’ll go without.”

“You’re too fat anyway,” it said with a cackle. It lashed its blue tail about, and the orange hair lining it seemed to blaze in the firelight.

Mary took a deep breath. “I know it is your nature to cause trouble. I cannot forgive you for making me go hungry—and cannot forgive you for my towel and my belt. But please, gremlin, I beg you—do whatever you must, but leave my husband’s toolbox alone.”

The gremlin perked up, its spiky red hair seeming to get spikier. “Toolbox?”

“In the corner there, near you—it was his prized possession,” she said. “It contains his fine woodworking tools. They’re all I have left of him. I beg you, cause what trouble you must—just stay out of the toolbox.”

“Ahhhh, you mean… this toolbox?” the gremlin cried with a blue face that seemed brighter with his excitement, and with that he leaped to the corner and threw open the toolbox lid.

As soon as he did, Mary’s trap sprung—and the bricks in the loft above fell and buried the blue-skinned, orange-furred gremlin.

*     *     *

It was a beautiful, sunny day, and Mary had spent most of it outside. But it was time to make dinner, thanks in part to some edible wild roots, berries, and herbs she’d found.

She headed inside to cut them up. She used her best knife, slicing and dicing until they were ready, and then threw them into the pot. Then she grabbed her heirloom towel to clean the knife. The towel, of course, had seen better days, but she’d sewed all the shreds back together using the new orange yarn that she’d spun.

She returned her knife to its shelf, and then adjusted the buckle on her new belt. The blue leather looked so nice about her middle, she thought.

She was eager for her stew to cook, The meat within smelled pretty good.

“Paper Towel Glamer”
Contemporary Fantasy
By David M. Fitzpatrick

“I’ve worked a great spell.”

“Well, you’ve always been a very good sorceress. So what is it? Control a world leader? Turn the moon green? Time travel?”

“No, far better this time. Extradimensional magic. This one will change the world. You know I’m all about making the world a better place.”

“Yes, my lady, that you are. So what’s special about this spell… which needs to be demonstrated by our in-ground swimming pool?”

“It’s simple, yet profound. I’ve cast it on this roll of paper towels.”

“Seriously?”

“Of course, seriously. Tear off one sheet and toss it in the pool.”

“All right, then… what the—? By the gods! It’s… it’s soaking up the whole damn pool!”

“You’re welcome.”

“I… I’m amazed. Every drop of water is gone! You’re amazing!”

“After centuries of practicing sorcery, I’d hope so.”

“Wow. You absorbed an entire pool in one sheet of paper towel.”

“It takes a lot of water to initiate the magic. You know, that way a person touching it won’t have all the water in his body sucked out. I had… well, a few unfortunate accidents with some rats before I added a failsafe into the spell.”

“But how will this make the world better? Less paper waste? Instant cleanups? Because, darling, that is truly the real ‘quicker picker-upper.’”

“Think about it. That roll has two hundred fifty sheets. Throw a hundred rolls into a lake, and you can dry the entire thing up in seconds.”

“And how will that make the world a better place?”

“Global climate change, silly. Melting polar caps, rising sea levels? By casting my spell on a paper-towel factory, we could drop enough rolls into the oceans to lower the seas.”

“That’s brilliant!”

“There’s one thing stopping me.”

“What’s that?”

“Weight. That single sheet of paper towel at the bottom of the pool holds over half a million pounds of water. It can’t be picked up.”

“Ahhh… I get it.”

“Yep. So I need a new spell to transfer waterlogged paper towels to, say, the Moon.”

“Hmm. Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out, dear.”

“I am woman. Hear me roar.”

“Well, roar me up some supper.”

“Roar up your own supper. And don’t forget who you’re talking to.”

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.