Kill Me Now

by Timmy Reed

  Mister Reese took a deep breath and patted himself on the stomach. “Hell of a day for the race,” he declared, staring out over the lake.

  “What race?” I asked. Preakness had already come and gone a while back.

  “The human race, Miles. Hell of a day for the human race.”

  “Oh.”

  Somehow we began talking about death. He told me about his second wife. She passed away in a hospice. Mister Reese didn't like the place. “It was foul,” he said. “Institutional. The lobby smelled like a bedpan.” He shuddered. “And she couldn't talk in the end. Just growl like a dog. And make monster-movie sounds. She wrote on a notepad. Sad things. Scary things. Paranoia can set in pretty easy once you get that close to the end. She thought the nurses were stealing from her. Keeping her locked up at night . . . I saved some of her scribbles. I don't know why though. I'll never read them.” He skipped a stone out over the lake. It bounced three or four times before falling in. “Maybe they'd make a good coffee table book,” he laughed to himself. “All those scribbles. Oh, stop me. I'm terrible.”

  I asked him if he was scared of death. “No,” he coughed. “I'm not scared of death. I'm scared I might live on forever without getting any younger. That's what's got me shaky.”

  I told him I thought I would like to live forever. I told him I thought time was very precious.

  “Time, huh?” He took out his false teeth and wiped them on his shirtsleeve. His voice sounded different without any teeth. His mouth looked like a worn-out asshole. “Time is precious, you say. But how do you know it's not working against you? Maybe time is not a gift. Maybe time is your enemy. A precious little vampire,” he said, taking a pause to consider something. “Or maybe not. All I know is that it's good to be young. Youth is more precious than time. Keep a youthful head on your shoulders and anything might happen. Let yourself get old and there's only one thing that will happen . . . WHEN YOU'RE GREEN YOU GROW, WHEN YOU'RE RIPE YOU ROT . . . Write that down. It sounds like a cliché and it is, but it's also good advice.”

  I was staring at my reflection in the lake. “I will,” I said. But I doubt he believed me.

  Then we talked about how we wanted our bodies taken care of after we were gone. I said I wanted to be mummified and put on display in a museum or a circus. Mister Reese just complained about how expensive funerals had gotten. He said he wants to forgo burial costs altogether. He said he wants someone to throw his body out past the tides when it's time for him to go.

  “When my earthly trials are over,” the old man said, tossing a pebble out over the dam. “Cast my body out in the sea. You can save on the undertaker bill. Let the money float with me.”

  Everything was quiet for a moment, except the sound of falling water.

  “Are you ever really afraid that you might live on forever without getting any younger?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

  “Heck no.” He slipped his teeth back in his mouth and chomped them in place, like a horse. He looks a lot better with teeth. “Don't they teach science at that school of yours?”

  I just kind of shrugged.

  “No way,” he went on. “But I used to think I might could be a god. As I get older and fouler, my bowels keep reminding me otherwise.”

  I let the last part of my tuna sandwich drop from my lips into the water. I watched as a scaly orange carp popped up to gobble it off the surface.

  “That makes sense,” I agreed, after thinking about it a minute . . .

  I couldn't imagine god having to take a shit. And what would that shit look like, anyway?

  ~

  Thomas Angel woke me up this morning. He was standing on my bare chest, sniffing at my breath when I woke up panicked from a dream. Thomas Angel slipped off and dragged his claws down my rib cage. The blood came fast, like it had been waiting there just beneath my skin for an opportunity to escape. When I saw it, I reacted. I couldn't help it. I threw the cat into the air. He whined like a smoke alarm as he sailed across the room. He hit the wall with a thud.

  Kelly and Katie came running upstairs when they heard the noise. They popped my lock and burst in through the door. Thomas Angel was trembling in the corner. The girls called me a “monster.” They took the cat away from me. They petted his coat and kissed him. They whispered baby talk into his ears.

  Now my sisters aren't speaking to me, whatever that means. But I don't really mind. I feel a little sorry for Thomas Angel though. I wish I could apologize. I wish he could understand me.

  ~

  Secret: I will be forever shocked and amazed at my body's infinite ability to produce things like boogers and wax and dead skin. When will the supply ever run thin?

  And sometimes I make turds so big I can't believe that it was I who created them. I'm filled with awe. Their size, their shape . . . It shocks me to think I could have been lugging something like that around with me all day. And in my belly no less! Times like these I stand over the toilet and take a short pause before flushing, then watch as those whales get sucked down into the deep where they'll disappear from my life forever.

  Goodbye, turds.

  ~

  I knocked on Mister Reese's door today and waited, but nobody answered. The door was unlocked and I went inside. Upstairs, I found Mister Reese with his feet up, wearing a bathrobe and a black top hat, with a digital thermometer sticking out the corner of his mouth like a cigar. The same black woman I had seen from before was sitting next to him, taking his blood pressure with one of those pumps that wraps around your arm. Her sweatpants were ratty and covered in bleach stains I noticed, but she was wearing full makeup. Her eyelids were painted blue, the color of a swimming pool. It was kind of sexy in a weird way. When she saw me at the top of the stairs, she licked the fuzz over her lip with her tongue.

  She poked Mister Reese on the ear with a long purple fingernail. “I hadn't an inkling that you were in the possession of such handsome young friends, old man,” she said, sounding all mock-proper and Caucasian. Mister Reese just shrugged.

  “I didn't know you had a nurse, Mister Reese,” I told him, taking a seat. “That's, uh . . . something.”

  “She is not my nurse,” Mister Reese mumbled around his thermometer.

  “I'm the closest thing you got to a nurse at the moment.” She put away the blood pressure machine and took the thermometer from his lips. She barely glanced at it before tossing it in her bag. “People can be so ungrateful sometimes,” she said to herself. Then, to the old man, “Why don't you introduce me to your little friend already?”

  “Nurse Brown, this is Miles. Miles, Nurse Brown.”

  She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. Her lips were soft and wet, like they were covered in Vaseline. “I ain't no real nurse,” she said, shaking her head. “Call me Diamontay.”

  “Dimetapp?”

  “Diamontay, honey. Say it like Diamond—minus the d, plus the tay . . .”

  “Minus the d, plus the tay,” I repeated.

  “Oooh, and he's smart too. What are you doing hanging around this old head case for?”

  “Go check on your snake already, why don't you?” Mister Reese cut her off. “I think I saw him trying to swallow himself earlier.”

  “I sure he's fine as long as you fed him,” Diamontay said. “Me and Tickles organize our own visiting schedule, thank you. And guess what? It's not even a bit of your business.”

  “Tickles is your snake?” I asked. Somehow it didn't fit that this woman would be someone who keeps reptiles.

  “Tickles is my baby,” she said, hugging her purse like she was holding an infant.

  “Some baby,” Mister Reese snorted. “I have nightmares about that thing.”

  “Oh shut your mouth. He's lying, Miles. Don't even listen to him. He secretly loves having my Mister Tickles around. He enjoys the company.”

  “Oh, that's rich . . . But you mig
ht be right. Frankly, I prefer the company of a snake to most humans. Who doesn't? That Tickles is quite the conversationalist.”

  “Very funny. Don't let him hear you say that or you just might wake up from your catnap with a snakeskin necktie one of these days.”

  “That's what I keep him around for.” Mister Reese produced a pipe from somewhere inside his robe and lit it. “Death by snake is a personal fantasy of mine. Very adventurous, don't you think?”

  “I'm sorry, Miss Diamontay,” I heard my little voice saying. “But if you don't mind me asking, why did you give Tickles up? Seeing how much you love him, I mean.”

  “Had to. I live with my sister and her husband and they just had a baby. They don't want the snake around the child, which I understand . . . They don't want no kind of pet to tell you the truth, Miles. They don't want that little boy having to confront death too early. And they're afraid that if the kid has a pet, that pet might die eventually, and the boy will have to deal with that shit.”

  “It will die,” Mister Reese chimed in. “Eventually.”

  “Oh don't you be such a pessimist . . . I just as soon leave Tickles over here since I have to come around anyway. That way I can still come see him.”

  “But you aren't Mister Reese's nurse?” I was surprised to find myself asking all these questions so easily. Normally I'm kind of shy about meeting new people.

  “Not technically. I'm not certified or anything. But I do the job. Check his vitals, you know. Do things around the house.”

  “She checks to see if I'm still breathing,” said Mister Reese.

  “Excuse me for asking, but how did you two meet?”

  “I found her in the paper,” he started. “I was looking for somebody to come over a few times a week. I was afraid I'd drop dead and nobody'd notice until I started stinking up the joint.”

  “Oh.”

  “And Diamontay here had an ad in the classifieds. For nanny services.”

  “I was looking to drive a few children to the pool is all,” Diamontay said, rooting through her purse. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Did I, you old coot?”

  Mister Reese flicked his top hat back onto the crown of his head and coughed a cloud of blue smoke in the air. “Not even the vaguest notion,” he wheezed, shaking his head as Diamontay reached up to pat him on the back.

  “You two are good for each other,” I said. “You help each other out.”

  “I needed her for a reefer connection, until you came along,” Mister Reese said. “Now I can't get rid of her.” His eyes were watery from coughing and laughing. He looked pathetic, but cute. You could tell he was only joking, even though it was probably true. You could tell they cared about each other.

  “I'm just praying the old bastard puts me in his will,” Diamontay said. “That's the only reason I'm still around . . .”

  “Mister Reese told me he wanted someone to throw all his savings out into the ocean when he dies,” I told her, glad to be able to contribute something to the conversation.

  “That's the kind of fool thing he would say.” Diamontay reached over and snatched the pipe from Mister Reese's hands. “Smoking too much of that stuff,” she said, striking a flame with her Bic. “Throw his money in the ocean, sheeee-it . . .”

  Mister Reese leaned forward and slapped me on the knee. “She's only angry because she can't swim well enough to come after me,” he joked. “She doesn't have it in her genes.”

  “We'll see how good you swim the next time you need me to help you out of that bathtub, old man,” Diamontay countered. And it went on like this into the afternoon, with me high and grinning and soaking it all in like a once-dry teabag bobbing in warm water.

  ~

  I had a dream and in the dream I was sleeping nude in bed while a ceiling fan blew a cool breeze down against my skin and gave me goosebumps. There was a green night-light glowing on the wall near the bed I was lying in. It was shaped like a butterfly. Or a moth. I rolled over onto my stomach and stretched out my arms. I flapped them like wings against the mattress. I could feel something odd in the fabric. I probed it with the index finger of my left hand. A hole. Like a bellybutton. It was moist and warm inside. My fingers were drawn in deeper and deeper until I could feel something wiggling inside, wanting to get out. I started to panic. The mattress was covered in all these weird little recesses and there were moles scurrying out of them, on the bed all around me and on top of me. In fact, there had never been any ceiling fan at all. The cool ticklish feeling had been the pitter-patter of their tiny feet on my skin. And the longer I looked at these moles, I realized that they weren't normal moles at all but sleek, grinning, cartoon moles. They appeared to be running away from something, something beneath me, deep inside the mattress. That's when I began to hear the buzzing and feel a dense rumble below . . . Millions of red-eyed locusts stormed up from the bowels of my mattress, blasting the cartoon moles up into space and smothering me in a cloud of wings. I covered my mouth with my hands. I tried to think happy thoughts.

  When all was said and done, I lay perfectly still on the pockmarked bed, waiting for the insects to rain their dry, spent exoskeletons down on top of me like confetti.

  And then I woke up.

  I went downstairs for a drink of water and found Thomas Angel in the kitchen, beating the crap out of a dead cicada. He purred when he saw me. I purred back.

  ~

  Katie and Kelly have noticed me strolling around the neighborhood with my new friend and of course they're giving me shit for it. They still think Mister Reese is a serial killer or something, even though I told them he wasn't. They'd rather pretend that me and the old man are dating. Kelly called me his “trophy wife.” I'll bet they tell Ashley Vidal all about it.

  But fuck it. Mister Reese is my friend. Stupid bitches.

  They've already got my mom in a panic. Last night around dinnertime I came home from lighting firecrackers on Gary's roof to find her sitting alone in the dark. All I could see was the orange tip of her cigarette, but I could already tell she'd been drinking. I could just tell.

  “Miles, we need to talk,” she said, trying to sound firm but breaking down entirely instead. She had heard that I was involved with a pedophile, she said.

  “Where did you hear that?” I asked her, trying to stay calm.

  She told me that she couldn't possibly reveal her sources but not to go after my sisters about it anyway. I swore I wouldn't lay a hand on either of those little bitches.

  I tried to comfort her at first. I went over and sat on the arm of her chair. I gave her a hug. “I swear to Jesus, Mom,” I told her. “I'm fine. He's just this weird old dude I hang out with. He's funny. He does magic. He's been teaching me songs on the banjo. For free.”

  Then she started bawling again, even harder now than before, as if I had confirmed something.

  I couldn't take it. I hate seeing her cry. It pisses me off.

  “Are you dead fucking serious with that shit!?” I snapped. “You think I suck old man dick!?!”

  I stood up and stomped over to the light switch. I flicked on the lights. Mom squinted and covered her face like a vampire. She looked pretty bad. Her eyeballs were full of red veins and her face was wet. She had circles under her eyes. I hated to yell at her. But I did anyway.

  I yelled at her for a while. Then we talked. Eventually she came around to see that nothing sinister was going on between me and our neighbor or me and anyone else for that matter. She said she would try to learn to trust my judgment sometimes and to not always assume the worst. And I think she really meant it this time. I think.

  But, man, do I hate my little sisters.

  ~

  The thing is, besides scrapple and eggs over light, my favorite breakfast food has always been a toasted English muffin, dripping with melted butter and honey. I enjoy them this way, with the honey. In fact, I have always th
ought honey was better than sugar. More natural or whatever. What do I know though? Probably everything is natural. If it exists, it must come from some kind of nature, right?

  But today I woke up late on the couch at my mother's where I had passed out watching Shark Week on Animal Planet. After picking my butt for a minute or two, I stretched and headed upstairs to make my second favorite breakfast in the world, only as I was waiting for the honey to crawl down the inside of its plastic bear-shaped container, something happened inside my brain. I started thinking about where honey comes from. The bees. Not that I had been clueless about honey coming from beehives before today, but I had never put any deep thought to the matter is all.

  It's really gross. Bees themselves are gross insects and poisonous too. But how exactly do they make the honey? It's not like they have farms and factories. Or tools or whatever. Does it come out of their butts? All that sweet, gooey honey the byproduct of millions of little bee butts? Is it sweet because they eat flowers all day? Maybe it's some kind of fluid leftover from constant intercourse with the queen bee? Even if it just comes from the wax in the hive somehow, how do they make the wax?

  No, there was no getting around it.

  In one way or another, the honey comes directly from the bees.

  So I put the little bear back in his cupboard and used brown sugar instead, which melted into the nooks and crannies of my English muffin and turned it into some kind of foul caramelized sweet-tooth biscuit. I threw it off the balcony after one bite, figuring the birds would probably like it.

  But now I can't eat honey anymore and I feel weird about it. I feel like a pussy. Would a caveman turn down honey when he discovered that it was made by insects? Fuck no! He'd be happy as a caveman on a belly full of honey. I should learn from this somehow, I think, but what should I learn? Maybe I'll talk it over with Mister Reese . . .