1/23/2024 0 Comments Devour up wallpaperDid you piss yourself? You did, didn’t you?” He barks out a laugh that tells me something bad is coming. “Hey, someone needs to cheer-“ The corners of his mouth tick up into an evil grin. The smell of ammonia stings my nostrils and I frantically wipe at it with a nearby paper-towel, hope to soak it up before it sets into my jeans. “Leave me alone, Roger,” I mutter into the floor.īefore I have a chance to brace myself, he’s behind me, whipping my wheelchair around, sending the contents of my catheter bag all over my lap. The bathroom door bangs open, and even before he speaks, I know it’s him. Joints that lock up like rusted old latches.ĭespite this, like I said, most people are nice. I have eyes that are encased in sharp sockets and my mouse-brown hair sprouts from my head in weird directions that don’t quite make sense no matter how hard I try to smooth it down.Īnd the pain. The right side of my face droops like a stroke victim, the muscles frozen in place and not quite working right, the other half compensating with a strange twitch when I talk like I’ve stuffed my mouth full of sour candy. I mean, I can’t even stand to look at myself in the mirror. Who wants to spend time talking to death warmed over in a wheelchair? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Oh man, do they drive me nuts with those big, fake plastic smiles and the way they talk to me. I mean, sure, they stare a little too long and nod a little too hard when they say hello, but they mean well. Most people are nice enough when they see me. The Wallpaper Man is used to kids who can run. Its taste: a bitter copper-like when I bite my lip-like how I imagine battery acid would taste. When those things don’t work, when I’m too afraid to think about anything else, I focus on the fear. About how she smelled like lavender when she hugged me. It’s crooked-perfect, with a little gap between the incisors that lights up the room when she laughs. I think about things like Piper’s smile when I tell her my stupid knock-knock jokes. Sometimes, when I’m feeling brave, I try to tune him out. I shudder in my bed and pull the sheets higher, close my eyes and hope to snuff it out, to drown it in the black void of my dreams anything to make it stop, to make it go away. “Will it gives it to me? Will it gives me the pain?” The Wallpaper Man’s voice is brittle and flutters through the air of my room like a wisp of acrid smoke. Some writhing, webbed-over treat to devour. A sinister prickle that blooms through my feet and spreads up my legs like a swarm of hatchling spiders in search of a meal. ![]() The fear always starts in my toes when he speaks. So one day in late October, he pulled up in front of my school with a U-Haul tacked to the back of our rusted-out ’98 Chevy Silverado and we left. ![]() ![]() And at home, the trash cans boiling over with empty vodka bottles and crumpled-up cartons of Camel Lights. I could see it in his nervous, washed-out eyes every time we went to the store, darting this way and that, looking for the I know what you did looks. We need a fresh start somewhere else.”īut I knew it wasn’t a fresh start he needed. ![]() Every night I can feel her in the room haunting me. “Nick,” he’d say with the nicotine lines sprinting away from the corners of his mouth. Some bullshit line about missing her too much. Not exactly what I expected when Dad told me we were moving to the coast. A faded-blue clapboard construction fronted by a yellow-piss lawn and a view of the Safeway parking lot across the street. Just me and Dad and Piper and an old, salt-rusted Victorian with big dormer windows and a swooping front porch. Originally published in Hinnom Magazine, December 2017
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