Uncle M smiled his infinite smile.
"Good. This is progress. But you don't really want to use that on me, do you?"
"Nope." Deena turned the gun—an old police .38—and poked the end of the barrel, surprisingly warm, into her right breast, then in her pubic hair, and at last against her inherited, indented temple.
"Good! But I know that you still have the safety on. So let's sit back down again, shall we?"
Deena snickered deep in her throat. Lowering the gun, she grabbed her water off the floor and went to the couch. Uncle M joined her, leaving the width of a very skinny person between them.
"Where'd you get it?" The eyebrow was elevated again.
"Cop I was fucking. He showed me where the safety is. I know girls are supposed to take pills or slit their wrists. Fuck that."
"You're considering suicide."
"Uh yeah. Like I'm out of options, right?" He was silent. "Maybe...it'll finally bring me...peace, whatever."
"No. It won't." He looked off, then smiled at her again. "It'll just end you. You can't have peace without being alive to know it."
"How do you know?" she sneered. "You die once and come back?" But now she looked away. "I see no reason to keep living."
"No, Deena. You just don't see it yet. Living is winning. The sweetest victory is to outlast. Trust me on that. Watch enough people die and you become God."
"No. That's wrong. My father died, and it made everything worse."
"It has to be people your own age, or younger—after a while, everyone is younger—"
"I don't want to feel like God. And I don't want to be like you."
She waited for him to lecture her. Instead, his smile faded and in that avid way he touched his skull, let his hand slide down his neck and chest. "Are you sure?"
She didn't bother to answer. His eyes lowered modestly, crept back up. "In that case, may I make a proposition?" He took her silence as permission to smile again. "What I said before, about what's inside you, that vital element, nourishing it...well, there is another way to nourish it." When she didn't ask him what that was, he went on: "You think you're already dead. Untrue. It is just as strong in you as it is in me—stronger, even. You just haven't connected with it. I've offered to show you, and that offer is still open, but...well...it's something that should not be wasted. If you won't let me help you, then how would you feel about helping me?"
"Making me feel dumb again." She tittered and though he smiled through it, the smile had no connection with his darting, urgent eyes. "Is this some kind of vampire thing? Like you want to suck my life force?"
"It's more like a battery charge. Won't hurt you at all, but it will help me...a lot."
"I thought your 'it' was so strong and vital. So that's bullshit."
He shook his head. "No, but it can always be stronger. After all, Deena, I am three hundred and twenty-three years old today."
"You've done this before. How many families, how many people? My father, that why he's dead? You did it to him?"
Another slow headshake. "No. He was dying when we met. And for all his shouting, he wanted to be dead more than you do."
You should spit in his face, she thought, blow his brains out. But she did neither: she felt sapped of anger, of any desire to resist him. "OK. Happy birthday. What do I do."
She must have blinked because now there was no space between Uncle M and herself. "You don't have to do anything," he said. "Just relax...give me your hand."
All her fear of touching him vanished with a word: "Fine."
He drew closer, so that his knee pressed the side of her leg, and he took her left hand in his right one. wrong bett, Deena mentally text-messaged her cousin, not waxy not hard or soft, justa hand...Then his other hand appeared, and both closed over hers.
His smile was gone and his lips parted. His eyes bore into her until she was able to close her own but still see him. She felt crushed, like a massive door had fallen on her; and then the door lifted and she saw not Uncle M but a landscape, neither bright nor dark, rather like a photographic negative, but in colors she did not recognize; the landscape rolling toward her, flying past her, or perhaps it was she who was flying in this negative space, and planets, comets, stars came and went like traffic lights, swung like dark fruits from branches. Her momentum squinted, sharpened, and now she sped through inner space, on collision course with a green, throbbing knot, his heart or it, and then that opened into nothing, and the openness blasted her, every cell, every atom. And wasn't this the peace she craved, this annihilation? But Deena's eternal reflex kicked, she did the opposite of what she and he wanted: a shrieking blast blew out of her, blasted and blasted for what seemed like infinity. Gradually this, too, subsided, leaving the image of Stanley the cockroach, on his hind legs, clad not in his shell but a brown three-piece suit, twitching his antenna to greet her, then turn her away. And then Stanley became Uncle M, his hands loosened and every feature of his face transformed by surprise and collapse.
She freed her hand and pulled back from his knee.
"You OK?" she said.
"You little bitch." His voice was clear, powerless.
Deena stood, put on her clothes. She glanced at the backpack and her scattered things and decided to leave them. She picked up the .38, then let it drop. She said, "Goodbye, Uncle M," and passed through the open front door.
In the elevator, she turned her phone back on. It bleeped. A text from Crazy Betty: seeim yet? whats happening? Deena replied: i dont know.
But when the cold street air touched her, she felt her pulse flutter in her ear and realized there were two things she did know. Uncle M would die; and, at least for the moment, she wanted to live.
Tim Millas is between 23 and 323 years old. He lives in New York City. His stories have been published or are forthcoming in Adirondack Review, Amarillo Bay, Cause & Effect, Confrontation, Conte, Eclectica, Exquisite Corpse, Fiction Warehouse, Scarecrow, and writeThis.com.
Comments (closed)
lisa latourette
2008-07-05 12:17:42
brilliant & crazy. addictive writing; it speared me right away & held me all the way through.