Every morning: the Ritual of the Pills. A bowl of high-fiber cereal with skim milk and a tall glass of water to go with it. Wait thirty minutes. Take pills. Go on with life. It’s a ritual I never fail to go through. I’m a more devout pill-taker than I ever was a Catholic.
There are four pills in my morning cocktail. One keeps my heart from spasming out of control. Another keeps my kidneys open so that I flush toxins effectively—and piss no less than fifteen times a day. The third helps prop up my half-dead liver and keeps the toxins from seeping into my brain. And the last one is the greatest insult: a multivitamin to keep me strong and healthy.
Every day I wake up at seven. I have two alarm clocks, and one of them is across the room, plugged into a pair of extra-loud stereo speakers. I wake up at seven without fail. If I don’t wake up at seven, the Ritual will be interrupted, and the gods of cardiac arrhythmia, of kidney failure, of liver failure, of rickets may well smite me. Mine is a Greek- or African-style church: a church of a great many small gods. The god of fiber keeps the pills from eating holes in my stomach or boxing my fragile kidneys. The god of water makes sure my blood stays relatively nontoxic.
(more…)
Burt moves. A lot. From the constant tremors in his palsied legs to the jerky contractures of his arms that start up whenever he gets upset, his body is in constant motion. The cerebral palsy imprisoned him in a wheelchair, and the Tourette’s confined him to his parents’ living room, where he sits every sleepless night, his skeletal face illuminated by the harsh glow of the television, his hooded eyes blinking slowly, closing every few minutes before a palsy tremor races up his spine and shakes his whole body like a one-man earthquake, rousing him.
His doctor tells him that his insomnia makes the Tourette’s worse. Involuntarily, he clears his throat, mutters something, and his arms jerk briefly forward. Then he sits back, looks up at the doctor with red-rimmed, dark-shadowed eyes, and gives a thin-lipped smile that manages to look exactly like a frown. He explains to Dr. Gorman that he can’t sleep because of the palsy tremors, and that the muscle relaxant still isn’t working. Dr. Gorman adjusts his dose and sends him on his way.
(more…)
“I want to show you something,” Nala said as soon as I was through the door. With predictable excitement, I followed her into the bedroom and licked my lips as she undid the zipper on her rubberized safety suit. I started to get confused when she stopped halfway down her back. I blinked, trying to re-direct some blood to my brain.
“What are you showing me?” She gently tugged the back of the suit open, the way Superman always pulls his shirt open to reveal that big “S.” I still didn’t see anything. I told her as much.
“Look closer,” she said. I paused for a moment, and walked stiffly up to her, suddenly aware of the absence of something. I brought my face as close as I dared to her back, and for a second, I still didn’t see anything. Then, I realized what was missing. She didn’t smell like anything. Usually, Nala and all the rest of her species smelled like sweet, semirotten fruit from a distance, and like acrid ammonia closer up, although it’s not considered wise to get that close too often. But Nala didn’t smell like anything, even from a handbreadth away. Then, I finally saw what she was pointing out: a long, inflamed scar running from the base of her neck to just below her shoulder blades. The angry orange of the scar slashed down the brilliant yellow of her back, bisecting one of her iridescent ring markings, the one that I always thought looked a little like Antarctica. It took me a few more moments to process what I was seeing.
(more…)
Originally published by 365 Tomorrows.
Little Tyler looked around nervously, his eyes as dull and empty as always. Tim dragged him into the reception area by the hand, a scowl engraved on his face. He marched up to the reception desk, hoisted Tyler by the armpits, and sat him down in front of the receptionist.
“I want a refund,” said Tim. The receptionist’s eyes flashed red, and she continued staring into the middle distance. After a few minutes, her eyes turned green and she looked up at him, a well-practiced frown on her face.
“A refund, sir?”
“Yeah. My son’s a dimwit.”
(more…)
Hello, and welcome! I’ve spent a lot of my life scraping a pencil on a piece of paper or clumsily bashing my fingers against a keyboard, and the result has been an impressive heap of words—of stories, essays, ideas. Now, I think it’s time that I unpack some of those words and air them out, see if anybody’s interested. So, welcome to Stranger than Truth, a sort of garage sale of fiction.
