Hard Bite and Other Short Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

eating poison, crushed by an object, electrocution, suffocation, drowning in sink, bathtub or wading pool, or my favorite: starved to death and eaten by animals. There was location. Should it be at home, at work, on vacation, or just after church?
    I personally favor the scenario of Brock torn apart by wild dogs, but they aren’t very plentiful in the suburbs where we live.
    I wrote down all the possibles on yellow recipe cards and put them in three piles. And when I pulled one from each pile, the cards read that he was supposed to drown in bed at home. Now how the heck was I supposed to make sense of that?
    Well, technically, when a person’s lungs fill up with liquid, they drown.
     
    ***
     
    “ Here kitty, kitty.”
    That’s how I called the neighbor’s cat. He scooted right in the door, as soon as he smelled the tuna. I coaxed him on the bed and wrapped a pillowcase around my hand and stroked him from head to tail, picking up hair and dander.
    When the pillowcase was coated front and back, I tweezed off the hair, but left the natural oils and invisible dander intact. Then I slipped the case on Brock’s pillow, and smoothed it back into place on the bed. By that time, the cat had the plate licked clean and allowed himself to be shooed out.
    Mama always said, Work with what you got. And Brock’s allergy was my gift from God. I worked with those allergies. Bad, bad allergies. If he drank his usual two beers in front of the TV before bed, with half a sleeping pill dissolved, he would wake up much later into an asthma attack. And if the inhaler happened to be lost, he might die while I pretended to find it. Mixing beer with pills is bad, but not suicidal. Insurance don’t pay for suicide. People do die from asthma attacks. Insurance pays for that.
    And that’s pretty much how it went. I’m just waiting on the check.
    All the living room furniture got moved out right away. Said I couldn’t stand the sorrow of looking at it. Really, it was to make room for new stuff, soon as I’m done with the black dress. The only thing I don’t like is the living room got a funny echo in it without the recliner and hide-a-bed.
    When I walk past the living room, out of the corner of my eye, I still see him stretched out in the recliner. Makes me jittery as a squirrel. Words flash on my tongue, “Turn that TV down!” Or, “Stop drinking that beer and put the garbage out!” But I have to fight it back. Only a crazy person would shout at an empty room.
    Sometimes I do it anyway.
    An old saying keeps coming to me; To a widow the sweetest sound this side of heaven is a man snoring. Mama and I used to laugh at it, taunt Daddy with it, that we’d never feel that way. So I can’t understand why I’m thinking about it, like it’s tormenting me...
     
    To a widow the sweetest sound this side of heaven is a man snoring.
    To a widow the sweetest sound this side of heaven is a man snoring.
    To a widow—
     
    Sleep is gone, seems like forever. I walk past a mirror and hardly know that woman with straw hair and dark hollows under her eyes, so black they match her widow dress. I lie in bed waiting and don’t know what I’m waiting for, remembering the sound of him coming up the stairs to bed, with a sucker in his mouth.
     
    Tinkle,
    Tinkle,
    Rattle,
    Clank.
     
    Here it comes, it’s coming to me...why Mama died so suddenly after Daddy...
    The screams rise in my throat and keep on and on until they bounce off the walls and jump back down my throat. “EEEEEEEEEEEE!!! Mamaaaaaaa!
    I never heard the neighbor thumping at the door, nothing but my own screeches ricocheting off the empty walls, bouncing around my skull. I only remember when the paramedic bashed through the door with a hypodermic needle outstretched, I was howling with all my force, like I was staring death in the face and trying to scream it away.
    “ Mamaaahhh! HOW DO I LIVE WITHOUT A MAN TO HATE? MAMAAAAHHH— †

 
     
    Organic Chicken Tortilla Soup with Chopped Finger