HELP! A Bear Is Eating Me! - Mykle Hansen [32]
I started to wonder when Dad would get around to shooting me. As we rented our clothes for the funeral I thought he’d shoot me because I buttoned my shirt wrong and couldn’t figure out how to fix it. On the drive to the funeral I thought he’d shoot me when the car started making an unfixable noise. On the drive home from the funeral I was sure he was going to shoot me soon, because he kept talking about how brave you have to be to get along in the world all by yourself, with no family. Somehow I thought he was talking about himself getting along without me, not vise versa. I didn’t know what suicide was. But the following week at school I was called to the nurse’s office and Mom was waiting there, looking eternally tired. She made me sit down on the school psychologist’s sofa and explained to me that now I was the Last of the Pushkins.
If you weren’t so god-damned imaginary you might be wondering why I’m telling you all this. Here’s why: when I found out that Dad had died and I would live, I decided right there and then I would never allow anyone to shoot me, nor would I die for any other reason. Other people could go ahead and die if they wanted, but that was not for me. I wouldn’t die or lose or be told no, I would have it all my way every day. Other people could suffer, other people could starve or have accidents or get cancer, but not me. And I would take care of myself, because my parents obviously couldn’t be trusted. I would put myself first, for my own safety.
I was born anew that day, the day I made that decision. And it’s a strange, beautiful joke of human nature how, once you decide that you are worth a little more than other people, you start to meet other people who think they are worth a little bit less than you. The more you take care of yourself, the more others want to take care of you. Not all the people, but enough of them. The road to the top is paved with other people’s smiling faces, and those people, by and large, volunteer their faces to be stepped on. It’s a funny fact of life. Knowing that, I’ve climbed, and I’ll keep climbing. I’m climbing over Edna and Baumer and Image Team, I’m pulling myself from the twisted wreckage of this weekend and I’m not slowing down. I will not die. I will not lose. I will not starve or go mad or have accidents. I’m doing everything right from now on. I am going to win. I will return to Wilson & Saunders with the bloody trophies in hand, and ascend, Christ-like, to the gilded halls of the top floor.
I’m tired, though. I need to take a little nap, while I’m waiting for the drugs to come on. Rest up for the action.
HUNTER AMPUTATES OWN LEGS TO ESCAPE MARAUDING BEAR. My god, the film rights will be huge. Brad Pitt can play me. John Goodman can play Edna.
Very tired. Nice to finally get tired. Quick nap. William H. Macy as Mister Bear. Or they can use computer graphics. Or a trained bear.
Can you believe they train bears? BRAD PITT AND WILLIAM H. MACY DEVOURED IN STUDIO BEAR CATASTROPHE! Hah. That’d be funny.
Bear bad. Sleep good.
11
Then, like a dream soft and moist, Marcia from Product Dialogue comes to me, squeezing in under the car to warm me with her hot, needy body. She has on the fur coat and hat I bought for Edna, and nothing underneath. She climbs on top of me, pushing me into the mud, she pulls apart her coat and crushes her twin pleasure zeppelins in my cold stubbly face. She’s hungry. She rubs up and down against me like a cat, lubricating her crotch with the dark brown Ranger Steve’s Bear Bait on my pants and coat. Her eyes are closed, her mouth open in an O, her tongue protrudes slightly as she sniffs my neck, my face, my hair. Now she rips asunder the buttons on my Ralph Lauren flannel-cotton outdoorsman shirt, scraping my chest with her long nails. Now she is biting my ear. Biting it hard. Oh shit, Marcia from Product Dialogue just bit my ear off. She raises her head above me and the bloody ear drips in my eye. Oh baby! I am hard like a two by four. She grinds