A Million Versions of Right by Matthew Revert Read Free Book Online Page A

testicles?”
    They both sat up in bed, wordlessly imploring their mother to continue her story with a series of knuckle taps.
    “It was a good five years before whichever one of you came first was born. I was working at a little company that came up with slurs for some of the premier racist comedians of the day. Your father didn’t approve of my work. He was of the opinion that racial slurs should be saved for the boudoir but I was good at my job and persisted. Pat got so damn angry that he wouldn’t talk to me for weeks at a time and if he did communicate, it was simply to give me a swift kick in the tits. I was stubborn though and wasn’t going to let a little tit bruise stop me. It wasn’t until I started submitting slurs against the whites that Pat would finally get his wish. I was the one who gave Flannigan Bromley the “white shitpecker” slur that ultimately got him killed.
    “I’d somehow managed to drag your father along to a Bromley act with the promise that his jokes were almost solely about soda. Being quite the soda enthusiast, Pat agreed but it was conditional on us staying at opposite ends of the room. So Bromley got up on stage and surveyed the mostly white audience. The first thing he said was, ‘What’s the rumpus ya white shitpeckers?’ At first there was this eerie silence. I don’t think anyone was willing to believe they heard what they’d heard. One fellow toward the front plucked up the courage to ask Bromley to repeat himself. So Bromley, looking a bit nervous now, clutched the microphone and repeated himself, ‘What’s the rumpus ya white shitpeckers?’ Well, there was no doubt about it, Bromley had slurred against the whites and the whites weren’t happy about it. The crowd rushed the stage, devouring Bromley in their mass humanity.
    “Your father and I were the only ones left on the floor. We glanced at each other from opposite ends of the room and I remember giving him a big shrug, at which point my shoulders came clean off at an alarming pace. They shot up to the ceiling and ricocheted back toward the ground. Pat could see my wayward shoulders and got himself quite concerned. He rushed toward me, his arms up like a vigilant goalkeeper. He was intent on stopping my shoulders should they try and bounce past him. He stopped the left shoulder and forced it deep within his trench coat pocket. My right shoulder was still bouncing around like a nutter and in the darkness of the club, Pat was having a hard time keeping his eye on it. Well, it whizzed past his face and he instinctively turned himself around. Before anyone could make sense of the situation, my right shoulder had bounced off the opposite wall and come flying back right into his man zone. The shoulder dropped to the ground and Pat was quick to follow. I ran toward him in a panic and pocketed my other shoulder before it could do anymore damage. Poor Pat was shaking with shock and balled up like a snotty tissue. I kept asking if he was okay but he just muttered something about soda. And all the while poor Bromley was trapped on the stage, slowly drowning in the crowd’s saliva. He was dead less than five minutes later.
    “A miscommunication led to thirty ambulances arriving at the club and Pat got loaded up into one. Another stayed behind to deal with Bromley and the audience went back to wherever they came from. I remember pacing the hospital waiting room in quite a panic and my tears were flowing freely. I had returned my shoulders to their rightful positions but that didn’t really alleviate my anxiety. I knew Pat was currently having his testes prodded and poked by someone who wasn’t me and I got myself all jealous. I started slapping nurses and willing their pain to travel astrally onto the face of those doctors who were violating your father.
    “I knocked about eighty nurses out cold, each with bright red slap marks wrestling with the makeup caked on their faces. A doctor walked up to me looking as grave as you