The Convulsion Factory Read Online Free PDF

just have to see about that,” he said, “won’t we?”
    And Elle wondered if she could convince him to hang onto that one last arm at least until she went in for her other leg, so that Adam might be the one to hold the scalpel for that first ceremonial incision.
    That would be divine.
    It would almost be something like love.

Childhood At The Lost And Found

    His favorite thing to watch is MTV and he likes it best when they show the metal and the rap videos, because he sits in front of the tube and wonders what it would be like to step into their world. Those guys have the power and the women and the attention, all they need, and he thinks he’d like to try living with all those quotas topped out. Someday, maybe someday. Dad once bought him a guitar. It stands inside the closet, probably dusty by now.
    Not that he doesn’t want to learn to play. It’s a white Fender Stratocaster, “Just like Jimi Hendrix used to play,” the salesman supposedly said, and that was enough to convince Dad of its merits at the pawnshop. But one of the strings was gone and another one broke before Dad got it home, and now he doesn’t quite know how to restring the thing or tune it if he did, and even so, no one said anything about lessons and he’s not about to mention it to Mom and Dad because they’ll just say something like, “Don’t be ungrateful. Isn’t the guitar enough for you?”
    He hears them talking upstairs in the kitchen, and they’re using that tone of voice again, and he knows his number is about to be called. He leans forward and turns down the volume on MTV because once they appear at the top of the stairs, that’ll be the first request anyway, so might as well beat them to the punch.
    Sure enough, seconds later there’s Dad at the top of the stairs, he can hear the footsteps and then the pause, like his old man is gauging decibels and finding them within the acceptable range and is vaguely disappointed about it. And then he’s calling down, “Alex, come up here a minute.”
    So Alex leaves his traditional perch and saunters upstairs, forsaking Marilyn Manson on the tube for the real live dynamics of home. The kitchen is bright with tile and gleaming with chrome, and he doesn’t feel comfortable in here because he’s never very hungry these days, and anyway, he clashes with the decor since he’s wearing a ripped black T-shirt and black jeans with the knees wearing through and his hair is kind of spiky and once they said he looks like he came to vandalize the place instead.
    Dad is pointing toward one corner, wearing that face again, and he’s saying, “You do remember that the trash is your responsibility, don’t you?”
    Alex nods meekly, mutely, looking at the can, and it’s not really that full, is it, but you’d think the thing was overflowing with used plutonium.
    “Can’t you show a little more responsibility, Alex, you’re fifteen years old, for crissake,” Dad continues, so he nods some more and tunes Dad out because it’s the same speech he’s heard a trillion times before. Must be the first one they teach you in Dad School. The only thing about it that changes is his age, and it always seems to take about a century for that number to click up one higher.
    Dad goes through it all note by note, and Alex figures he could probably recite it along with him, like the parishioners with the priest in Mass when they tried Catholicism a couple years ago. Mom backs him up, silently nodding, the oft-present cocktail glass in one hand and her Valium prescription in the other, and she wears her bleary eyes like a pair of false ones from a novelty shop.
    Dad finishes and Alex promises to keep a more vigilant watch on the can in the future. Dad, his patriarchal duty exercised, smartly turns on one heel and exits the kitchen, probably back to his very own corner in the rec room. Alex cinches the trash bag and notices that Mom lingers behind.
    “Are you feeling all right?” she asks, and she hardly slurs