I was writing the new fiction, which was to encapsulate the absurdity of postmodern existence in an ironically detached manner. My wife was in the other room. She refused to be in the same room as the new fiction. It’s absurd, she complained. It’s ironically detached, she complained. Its conflation of surface and substance serves neither to entertain nor to illuminate, she complained, plus the new fiction is always talking you into going to the bar where you spend too much money and why can’t the new fiction get a job? She usually says these kinds of things in an angry whisper while the new fiction is outside, smoking, as if the new fiction can smell when conflict is in the air.

I was late for work but the new fiction wouldn’t get out of the bathroom. It was obsessed with the accumulation of banal detail as a bewildering substitute for depth. I pounded on the door. The shower had been on so long that the mirror hanging in the hall outside the bathroom had started to fog. I am late for work, I yelled. I am late for work, I smell bad, and I need to use the bathroom, I yelled. I heard the new fiction turn off the shower, plug the drain, and begin to draw a bath. My wife stood behind me, arms crossed contentedly across her beautiful chest. I told you, she said.

I was out drinking with the new fiction and pretending that the appropriation of tired clichés was a form of trenchant social criticism. My regular bartender was out, and the new one wasn’t used to serving the new fiction. He stood with hands on the bar and shoulders pulled back. He still used those tiny arm suspenders, which immediately endeared him to the new fiction. What does it drink, he asked. Scotch, I said. The new fiction nodded solemnly, then significantly arched a brow towards the top shelf. The bartender glanced back to me for approval. At least he can tell who’s paying the tab around here, I thought.

The new fiction is a muscular, virile enterprise. The old fiction had been hanging out at coffee shops, effeminately chain-smoking with a palm cocked to the sky and reciting German philosophy when the new fiction finally tracked it down. I had driven it all over town, as my wife refuses to let the new fiction borrow the car unsupervised. You. You’re done, the new fiction said, you’ve been superceded. The old fiction looked up lazily. Aren’t you that creative writing instructor who got fired for sleeping with students? said the old fiction. Shut up, said the new fiction. I’m the new fiction, bitch! it yelled. When the new fiction told me this story, I stopped him here. You said, “I’m the new fiction, bitch”? I asked. Yes it said. Really? You really…why would you say that? I asked. What? Do you think I’m lying? the new fiction said, are you calling me a liar?

I have seen the new fiction get beat up by: a bartender (black eye), a bike messenger (black eye), a third grade reading coach (bruised ribs, sprained groin), a clerk at a pet store (black eye, broken wrist), and a homeless man in a wheelchair waiting for the bus (broken toe, dislocated shoulder). To avoid further injury and embarrassment, the new fiction has begun only leaving the house during “banker’s hours”. The new fiction is fond of telling people it has just met that it “keeps banker’s hours,” though, when pressed, will eventually cop to having no idea what “banker’s hours” means.

I was on the highway north of Denver and the new fiction was in the passenger seat. My car is ancient, so the steering wheel shuddered and bucked continually. I hate your car, said the new fiction. Outside, the prairie was dizzy with dew-soaked soild and flowers purple unfurling, sky brillantine exhaling, etc. Don’t you have anything good to listen to? said the new fiction, digging around through the radio dial. I was thinking about how I would like to be a writer, but it was difficult with the new fiction always around.

The new fiction is constantly writing about itself. My apartment is filled with scraps of paper, backs of receipts and recipes covered with self-eulogies and amber tinted auto-nostalgia. My wife accuses me of never throwing anything out, of filling my pockets purposefully to dump them out across her nightstand. It’s the new fiction, I tell her. Fuck the new fiction, she says. The new fiction is in the living room watching itself listen to albums it hates and it hasn’t paid rent in three months, she says. I check. The new fiction is in the living room watching itself listen to albums it had carefully picked out for their complete lack of quality, taste, and talent in order to savor its superior cultural skills in a bemused ironic manner. That’s totally different, I say.

I was playing checkers with the new fiction and it beat me in a spectacularly inconclusive and unsatisfying way. I won you, it said. You won the game, I said, but you can only beat me. Whatever, it said, I won you. I told the new fiction it was misusing language. The new fiction called me a pedantic elitist. At some point I tossed the checkerboard aside with every intention of beating the living hell out of the new fiction. Chairs were left to wave their legs helplessly in the air. I had my fingers clutched around the neck of the new fiction. I won you, it gasped. I won you, I won you.

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