A Hero of Our Time by Naben Ruthnum

Author:Naben Ruthnum [Ruthnum, Naben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2022-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

8

I’ve figured out why I hate my body so much. I know you probably hate yours too, but as you’ve seen, it’s more than that for me. I can’t tell what any of this looks like anymore, or even quite how it feels around me. It’s just tissue. I just know that this is where I’ll be when they finally get me. I’m going to die in here. Whether I’m round with skin so stretched it bruises purple simply by coming in contact with existence, or whether my bulges flatten so quickly that I’m flat over my skeleton and my skin hangs off me like a folded collection of elephant ears underneath my sweaters, this is where I’ll be when they come for me, this is where I’ll be found.

It’s tiresome to read about, to hear about. I agree. When I talk to myself out loud, or to Sameen’s voice mail, or to my dad in the shower, it’s to relieve the pressure of this one internal conversation. Emergency venting, that’s what my schizo face-slapping babble is, my Bluetoothless arguments with the air. If I could get into anyone else’s head, I would. I wouldn’t choose this one for a second longer. As badly as you do, I want to switch into Nena’s perspective at this point, to give her another, proper chapter where I’m finally able to expose every motivation and truth and intention. But I can’t do that. The Beagle one was hard enough and I still think I stuck too much of my own horrible voice into her mouth and brain. My imagining of other people’s conversations is bound to be unconvincing, because I can’t properly imagine people enjoying speaking to each other, or learning something from their exchanges. So that’s it. If I’m trapped in here, and I am, you should be too.

Nena looked at me hard after our intimate shower conversation and her sales pitch warm-up and rubbed a thumb over my cheek.

“I think that treatment finally cleaned your face. You’ve lost your favourite pimple, that one you’ve had since junior high. I’m so sorry.”

We were able to go to the meeting after that. The ghost of Edmund Bak rode with us in Nena’s rental car. We focused on the pitch ahead, on the exultance of the word and the threat of the unsaid, on the promises we could make, which was every promise we could think of.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.