Who Done It? by Jon Scieszka

Author:Jon Scieszka
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781616951535
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2013-02-11T22:00:00+00:00

*By cricket, I refer to the bizarre game played with bats and wickets that one must be a native of the United Kingdom or one of its former colonies to comprehend, rather than the insect known as Gryllus assimilus.

What’s that? You’ll have to speak up. I’m partially deaf in one ear and my hearing aid is on the blink.

Oh. Mildew. Right, right, yes, of course. Herman Mildew. Herman Q. Mildew, if we’re being accurate, and God knows we want to be accurate, right? If you wrote a book with something—anything—off-kilter for that son-of-a—

Ahem. You were saying?

Oh. Oh, no, I didn’t kill him. Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. Those books on my shelves, the ones about police forensics, body disposal, and crime scene analysis—they’re research. I’m a writer, for God’s sake. I need to read these things. And I’ve never even touched that samurai sword hanging over my mantle. It’s research, too.

What’s that? Speak up. Oh, yes, right, I see. How could it be research if I’ve never touched it? Quite simple: my character doesn’t use a samurai sword; he just owns one. So I need to own one, too. To see what that’s like. That’s also why I own those guns. And that big ax. And that bottle with the skull and crossbones on it. (Whatever you do, do not add that to your drink!)

I take my research very seriously.

Pardon me a moment. I need to take some pills. I suffer from a number of maladies, in addition to my deafness. There is no pill for deafness, of course. The only cure for that is inserting a small bit of plastic and electronics into my aural canal. If someone would make a pill for deafness, I would take it.

Fortunately, my other defects are treatable with a glass of water and a collection of tiny pills, gel caps, tablets, capsules, caplets, and two different liquid suspensions. These are for such ailments as my upside-down heart, my off-center middle toe (right foot), too-centered middle toe (left foot, natch), my inverted gallbladder, my suspiciously too-normal blood pressure, my debilitating ESS (Empty Sinus Syndrome), the chalky discharge from my fingernails, and what doctors refer to as a “diffident frontal lobe.”

As you can see, I am a weak, infirm man, ancient at forty and could not possibly have—

Oh, all right! All right, damn you! I can’t abide your penetrating, accusatory glare! And that light you’re shining in my eyes is wreaking havoc on my near-terminal case of dry eye.

(Pardon me while I apply some medicated eyedrops.…)

Look, I’m not saying that I killed Mildew. God knows he deserved it—the man made me rewrite a sentence once, which took a whole six minutes and caused my carpal tunnel syndrome to flare up—but that doesn’t mean I did it.

I just can’t say for sure that I didn’t do it.

You see, as I may have mentioned, I take a number of medications. And medications have side effects. One side effect common to all my medications is this one: “May cause or increase thoughts of suicide.

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.