Contributor: George Sparling
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The intruder, my brother, stood there, mouth down-curved. He frowned as he scratched his crotch. I walked closer, sickened yet drawn to his peculiar stench. I bent close and smelled vomit, urine, whisky, and dirt. And the stench of blood? He never moved as I sniffed him. His mouth open, his mien neutral, he said, “You were always a freak.” Fear snaked through my entire body for the first time in my life, a cartoon of affliction, filthy squiggles above my electrified hair.
I always thought I had spoken truth, too frightened of lies, how they eat away at your memories until you’re no longer human. She had slung those big legs around my thighs too many times to count while Dad jetted around the world on business trips. One night he found her on top of me as I squealed like a pig. The annulment soon followed.
“Her letters to Dad. I never knew her until I read them. Can’t tell whether it was good or bad to have read them,” he said, rubbing his shaggy beard, and looked at me with eyes the color of mine. “She must’ve read Henry Miller’s ‘Sexus’.”
“I guess you saw those photos, too,” I said. “Did you smell my sperm on them?”
“I saw her face blurry, stained,” he said. “Who took them?” I wouldn’t tell him my twink boyfriend had. One showed my erection slipped to one side, its bulbous tip aroused me whenever I pulled myself off. I had a second set of photos.
In high school, shopping for pants in our small town, she used to lightly graze my crotch with her hand, always the ring-fingered one, as we shopped for pants. “Is there enough room?” she’d ask the saleswoman. What else could I do but let her reign over me.
“Anyway, stepmothers don’t count. It wasn’t incest.” I wanted to put on Mahler, transcendence I badly needed. I resented his presence in the living room, especially when he rubbed his muddy boots on Mom’s oriental rug.
“It’s hard eking out beneath the causeway, dirty stinking clothes that give normal folks the creeps. Of course, that doesn’t matter when some 300 pound psycho dude tries to poke me with his filthy, warty bone.”
“You hate me for kicking you out of Mom’s house after I placed her in a nursing home, don’t you?” I thought that the stumbling block.
“You made her go mad, that I hate.” He trembled as he spoke, hands balled up, face reddened, and I saw a red scar along one cheek I hadn’t noticed when he walked through the door. He must despise me for being clean and unblemished.
“I expected you sooner or later,” I said, but I hadn’t, thinking he was untraceable or dead.
“You don’t know me. I’m a blamer,” he said, “and you know that means?”
He stood up, taller than I was, stronger, too. His brawny hands squeezed my neck, harder and harder until I’d no breath left, until he released me and I fell on the carpet.
I recovered my breath. His knife gleamed in my eye.
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- -
The intruder, my brother, stood there, mouth down-curved. He frowned as he scratched his crotch. I walked closer, sickened yet drawn to his peculiar stench. I bent close and smelled vomit, urine, whisky, and dirt. And the stench of blood? He never moved as I sniffed him. His mouth open, his mien neutral, he said, “You were always a freak.” Fear snaked through my entire body for the first time in my life, a cartoon of affliction, filthy squiggles above my electrified hair.
I always thought I had spoken truth, too frightened of lies, how they eat away at your memories until you’re no longer human. She had slung those big legs around my thighs too many times to count while Dad jetted around the world on business trips. One night he found her on top of me as I squealed like a pig. The annulment soon followed.
“Her letters to Dad. I never knew her until I read them. Can’t tell whether it was good or bad to have read them,” he said, rubbing his shaggy beard, and looked at me with eyes the color of mine. “She must’ve read Henry Miller’s ‘Sexus’.”
“I guess you saw those photos, too,” I said. “Did you smell my sperm on them?”
“I saw her face blurry, stained,” he said. “Who took them?” I wouldn’t tell him my twink boyfriend had. One showed my erection slipped to one side, its bulbous tip aroused me whenever I pulled myself off. I had a second set of photos.
In high school, shopping for pants in our small town, she used to lightly graze my crotch with her hand, always the ring-fingered one, as we shopped for pants. “Is there enough room?” she’d ask the saleswoman. What else could I do but let her reign over me.
“Anyway, stepmothers don’t count. It wasn’t incest.” I wanted to put on Mahler, transcendence I badly needed. I resented his presence in the living room, especially when he rubbed his muddy boots on Mom’s oriental rug.
“It’s hard eking out beneath the causeway, dirty stinking clothes that give normal folks the creeps. Of course, that doesn’t matter when some 300 pound psycho dude tries to poke me with his filthy, warty bone.”
“You hate me for kicking you out of Mom’s house after I placed her in a nursing home, don’t you?” I thought that the stumbling block.
“You made her go mad, that I hate.” He trembled as he spoke, hands balled up, face reddened, and I saw a red scar along one cheek I hadn’t noticed when he walked through the door. He must despise me for being clean and unblemished.
“I expected you sooner or later,” I said, but I hadn’t, thinking he was untraceable or dead.
“You don’t know me. I’m a blamer,” he said, “and you know that means?”
He stood up, taller than I was, stronger, too. His brawny hands squeezed my neck, harder and harder until I’d no breath left, until he released me and I fell on the carpet.
I recovered my breath. His knife gleamed in my eye.
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Author:
George Sparling
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