Manhattan Loverboy by Arthur Nersesian

Author:Arthur Nersesian [Nersesian, Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Speculative Fiction, ebook, book
ISBN: 9781888451092
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2000-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

QUIT YER LOOKIN’ AT ME

Unlike TV, fate had let evil once again rule out over good. But fate never let things get too evil, otherwise things would destroy themselves, and there’d be no more evil or TV. When I arrived home, I felt depressed and lonely. I turned on the TV. It advertised one of those party-line numbers “where you can hold a party on the phone.” I dialed. For two minutes while I seethed, eight unidentifiable people with the same voice said hello over and over.

She was a growing evil, a cistern collecting power. She had sucked the life forces out of me. I was estranged from my self-esteem and securities. I could kill her and then myself. It was a fair trade; she was as evil as I was good. Besides, the mild sentences dispensed by our criminals’ justice system made crime quite appealing; hell, I could probably get out of prison while I was still relatively young. I had far more faith in the criminals’ justice system as a criminal than I did as a victim.

How should I do it? I started drinking coffee and doing some drugs to help me think more clearly. The possibilities were endless, and as the drugs catapulted me to greater heights, and my anger became more rampant, each new idea—like rungs of a sadistic ladder—lifted me higher than the prior thought. I worked my way up to abducting her, drugging her, then shackling her, keeping her conscious. If she came down with the flu, I’d fussingly nurse her back to health before continuing the torture. When I’d squeezed out the ultimate drop of pain from her eviscerated body, and she’d finally died, I’d either disappear to Alaska and live with all those burnt-out Vietnam vets or vanish in Arizona with all the pedophile priests.

My fantasy was interrupted by a knock at the door, and there she stood—my tormentor, my future victim, alone, ready.

“May I speak to you a minute?”

I will be your destroyer and therefore I am your maker, I thought in my drugged-out state, but I only said, “What?”

“About today, about this whole thing.”

“I want you out of my house,” I said, instead of saying, I will eat your innards.

“This half of the house is mine.” She pointed to the front half of my apartment. “I just was hoping that maybe we could be on some kind of cordial basis, since we’re neighbors.”

“I’m afraid not. I hate you more than anybody ever hated anyone else throughout both recorded and unrecorded history as well as future history and, for that matter, transcending all planes of possible consciousness throughout our bowl-shaped universe as well as all spatial and temporal planes.” I had finally loosely said what I really thought.

“Well, I don’t really believe that. Do you want me to tell you what I think?”

“Not really.”

“I know that I liked you and I think that you liked me, and you had extra room, and I needed the space, and I think that you realized that if we were roommates, maybe we could become closer.

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.