This is Where I Leave You

by Jonathan Tropper

If he was at all aware, he had to be pissed at how long it was taking him to do something as simple as die. Dad didn’t believe in God, but he was a lifelong member of the Church of Shit or Get Off the Can.

Genetics help some more than others, but they are all like melting ice cream bars, slowly sliding down the stick as they come apart.

“Thanks for understanding, Judd,” she says, and she must be joking, because, Alice, honey, I would travel to the ends of the earth, kill or die, just to find one single thing that I could understand.