Growing Things And Other Stories

by Paul Tremblay

Jake drops the curtain on his yellow teeth and he slouches into his chair, his marionette strings cut. He tells us everything he said is bullshit. He tells us to fuck off. He hates our fucking guts because of our health and youth and beauty. He hates us because we expect and demand him to be brave in facing his own withering existence, because we expect him to make our own lives seem better, or tolerable. He tells us we’re selfish and he’ll die angry and bitter if he wants, that he’s not here to die the right way for us, fuck you, you fucks, he tells us, he doesn’t give two shits about us and he tells us that we’ll all die the same way he will. Alone. He limps out of the room, limbs shaking and moving in the wrong directions.

In the year-plus since Mom’s health had deteriorated, Dad descended into the fortress of himself, and like a bucket dropped without its tether into the deepest well, he had become unreachable.