Nothing Is Terrible Read Online Free Page B
Author: Matthew Sharpe
hundred bees in much the same way as Myra, more slowly, had carried him night after night to and from their tender, erotic bath. I laid him down on the ground and felt but did not fully register the sharp jabs on my neck and under my arms.
“They’re in my shirt,” he said, as someone might complain with casual annoyance, I stubbed my toe.
I took off his shirt and brushed away the dirty yellow-and-black bees that were writhing and the ones that were already dead. He had nipples all over his body now. They protruded farther from the surface of his skin than the original two and were growing larger in circumference.
I knelt above Paul, studying him. He looked at me sweetly. “Paul, I can’t breathe so well,” he said.
“What should I do, Paul?”
“Just stay here with me for a while.”
“Okay.”
“This is not so bad.”
“It isn’t?
“I’m glad Tommy and Myra aren’t here. It’s nice to just be alone with you.”
“Yeah, it’s nice.”
“What are you gonna do, later tonight?” he asked, as if asking about the customs of children in a country he would never visit.
“I don’t know. Have dinner.”
“What else?”
“Play catch with Tommy.”
“I think you should mate with Myra,” he said. “It would make her feel good to have a baby to take care of.”
Some of the pink bumps on Paul were connecting up with one another, making long, thick, pink fingers along the surface of his belly. He said, “I’m glad it was you, Paul.”
“You’re glad what was me?”
“You know.”
This was his final puzzle, not a hard one. Then—at least this is the way I remember it—my brother became an idea.
1 The Horror of Grade School
Please indulge me here, reader, as I ease out of the “prologue” and into “chapter one” of “my” “life”; take a moment and try to think of everything that happened to you every day for a week of your life starting in, say, September of the year you were ten years old. Did you try it? It’s really really difficult, right? In my case it’s especially hard since around that time my mind, unbeknownst to me, began its own program of forgetting. My mind’s reason for forgetting was, I assume, to banish grief from its domain, and in this it was only partially successful. Some of the grief remained, while certain other virtues of mental and emotional life fled; kindness was one, memory of daily events was another.
So what your humble memoirist is doing now, for your reading pleasure, is she’s opening the gate of her mind, flinging it open to memory, to kindness, to grief. Well, okay, she’s nudgingthe gate open. She’s leaving the gate ajar with the security chain still attached. Let’s not get carried away here—a memoirist needs her amnesia, her cruelty, her euphoria.
Here’s something I wish I could remember that I can’t: my parents, the original ones. After Paul died, I began to forget them. All that lingered were certain songs my father had often sung to me, but I am uncertain even about those. To this day, when I sing the songs, I know that some of the words are wrong, but I don’t know which ones. “Love, oh love, oh careful love,” I sang, the autumn after I killed my brother. (Which word is wrong there?)
School began again that fall. I stopped working in the garden with Myra, and I stopped playing catch with Tommy, and I did not ever do those things with them again. I became preoccupied with people my own age, and I developed my ongoing involvement with myself. I had some difficulties with the other children in school, and without parents or a brother I sometimes felt desperate, so I took refuge in the sensations of my deluxe body. After school, I ran around and around and around the house, with no interest anymore in being timed but only in exhaustion. At night in bed, I softly tickled my own arms and legs and chest. I lay on my back and hummed with my mouth open and lightly punched my breastbone in varying rhythmic patterns.
“They’re in my shirt,” he said, as someone might complain with casual annoyance, I stubbed my toe.
I took off his shirt and brushed away the dirty yellow-and-black bees that were writhing and the ones that were already dead. He had nipples all over his body now. They protruded farther from the surface of his skin than the original two and were growing larger in circumference.
I knelt above Paul, studying him. He looked at me sweetly. “Paul, I can’t breathe so well,” he said.
“What should I do, Paul?”
“Just stay here with me for a while.”
“Okay.”
“This is not so bad.”
“It isn’t?
“I’m glad Tommy and Myra aren’t here. It’s nice to just be alone with you.”
“Yeah, it’s nice.”
“What are you gonna do, later tonight?” he asked, as if asking about the customs of children in a country he would never visit.
“I don’t know. Have dinner.”
“What else?”
“Play catch with Tommy.”
“I think you should mate with Myra,” he said. “It would make her feel good to have a baby to take care of.”
Some of the pink bumps on Paul were connecting up with one another, making long, thick, pink fingers along the surface of his belly. He said, “I’m glad it was you, Paul.”
“You’re glad what was me?”
“You know.”
This was his final puzzle, not a hard one. Then—at least this is the way I remember it—my brother became an idea.
1 The Horror of Grade School
Please indulge me here, reader, as I ease out of the “prologue” and into “chapter one” of “my” “life”; take a moment and try to think of everything that happened to you every day for a week of your life starting in, say, September of the year you were ten years old. Did you try it? It’s really really difficult, right? In my case it’s especially hard since around that time my mind, unbeknownst to me, began its own program of forgetting. My mind’s reason for forgetting was, I assume, to banish grief from its domain, and in this it was only partially successful. Some of the grief remained, while certain other virtues of mental and emotional life fled; kindness was one, memory of daily events was another.
So what your humble memoirist is doing now, for your reading pleasure, is she’s opening the gate of her mind, flinging it open to memory, to kindness, to grief. Well, okay, she’s nudgingthe gate open. She’s leaving the gate ajar with the security chain still attached. Let’s not get carried away here—a memoirist needs her amnesia, her cruelty, her euphoria.
Here’s something I wish I could remember that I can’t: my parents, the original ones. After Paul died, I began to forget them. All that lingered were certain songs my father had often sung to me, but I am uncertain even about those. To this day, when I sing the songs, I know that some of the words are wrong, but I don’t know which ones. “Love, oh love, oh careful love,” I sang, the autumn after I killed my brother. (Which word is wrong there?)
School began again that fall. I stopped working in the garden with Myra, and I stopped playing catch with Tommy, and I did not ever do those things with them again. I became preoccupied with people my own age, and I developed my ongoing involvement with myself. I had some difficulties with the other children in school, and without parents or a brother I sometimes felt desperate, so I took refuge in the sensations of my deluxe body. After school, I ran around and around and around the house, with no interest anymore in being timed but only in exhaustion. At night in bed, I softly tickled my own arms and legs and chest. I lay on my back and hummed with my mouth open and lightly punched my breastbone in varying rhythmic patterns.