GOOD BOY, NOW SIT

I was imagining being walked naked on my hands and knees like a dog on a leash through the town square when the mayor walked up to me. “Have you heard the news?” he said. “No of course not, I don’t believe in mainstream media,” I told him. “There is a rumour going around that Jon Bon Jovi – lead singer of the band Bon Jovi – which began its career with the album “Bon Jovi” – is a violent necrophiliac who exclusively eats apples with worms in them. Can you believe it?” he spouted off. “Sure, yes, God as my witness I believe it. Bon Jovi? Of course, the bastard!” I told the mayor. The mayor walked on and I imagined the fabric of the leash. Carol, of Carol’s Fine Cakes and Cleverly Named Desserts, walked by. “Carol, you wouldn’t believe it! God dammit, it’s a shock Carol.” I yelled over. “What? What is it?” She ran over and asked, no flour on her apron, her eyes looked dead to me. “Bon Jovi? You know?” I posed. “No, what? The band or the singer?” she asked. “The singer of the band,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe the rumours. He eats apples with the worms in. Seeks them out, like a bird. Our world is going to shit Carol, and it’s rolling downhill.” Carol walked on shocked and appalled, who wouldn’t be? She walked on, they all walk on in some way. But I just sat. I just sat and imagined breaking free of my leash. I just sat and imagined running into oncoming traffic, barking the whole way, while the people cried out “good boy! good boy!” I just sat and imagined being free.

GOOD BOY 2: THE HAND OF GOD

I walk into a room of the things other people remember. There is a very small man there, inhumanly so but still, I am sure it is a man and not something from somewhere else. How could he be from anywhere else when there is nowhere else, is what I tell myself.

“Eat this,” he says to me and offers his hand with nothing inside. I eat his hand, how could I not?

“Eat this,” he says to me and offers the other hand, in it, the chewed hand I’d just eaten. I feel fucked.

“This is a game,” I tell him. “Who are you to game me when I’ve come in here starving to remember something?”

“What do you wish to remember?”

“Anything at all,” I say.

And suddenly I remember being hit by a car and my legs collapsing under me.

“Not that one,” I say.

I can see a bone from my leg pointing to God.

“Stop,” I say, but it’s clear he does not intend to, so I eat the hand again and the memory stops. As soon as I’m done I hear people screaming, the pavement feels warm around me. I start eating the arm and the memory goes away. It wasn’t even my memory. It wasn’t mine but my knees still ached with it.

I move on to the shoulder and the neck. It won’t be long now. My mind is as free as the sky.