Mira Corpora by Jeff Jackson Read Free Book Online Page B

spreads across my palm like a rash. I try to calculate the odds the pill could be hazardous, then I take a deep breath and swallow it. It has a distinct sweet-and-sour aftertaste.
    Now there’s nothing to do but wait. The house is eerily still. The rain pounds a frenetic tattoo against the windows. Droplets of water accumulate in a remote corner of the attic. Mice burrow
deeper into the soggy folds of insulation. The wooden planks groan in concert with the barometric pressure. Dust motes gently blanket the furniture, moldings, and floorboards. After a few minutes, my vision starts to cloud and the edges of the storage room whiten. At first I think I’m going blind, but then I realize there’s nothing to fear. A veil is being lifted. I watch as the house transforms itself around me. The paint on the walls, the furrowed lines of my palms, the oracles huddled in the hallway with their twitching shoulder blades—everything is slowly becoming blank.

I CONTINUE
    I record the events of my life, filling up one notebook after another. Maybe I’m not getting the details exactly right, but it doesn’t matter. The strict facts hold no currency here. What counts is the saliva I just spat on this very sheet of paper. The thick gob slowly dissolves a small circle in the text and turns the words translucent. The ink starts to bleed. The fibers loosen. If you run your fingers along this paragraph, you’ll feel the site where I stabbed my thumb straight through the page. There is an entire world in that hole.

CHAPTER 4
MY LIFE IN THE CITY
    (14 years old)
    Â 
    Â 
    â€œAll true freedom is dark.”
    â€“Antonin Artaud

    THERE’S THIS TAPE. IT ARRIVES ONE MORNING IN the mail, which is surprising because I don’t have an address. I’m between places, as they say. Specifically, I’m shuttling between a cardboard refrigerator box in the alley next to the Emerald Mountain Chinese restaurant and a wool blanket on the concrete floor of the municipal shelter. But the mailman hand-delivers the package to me just the same. I’m coiled half-asleep in my box and he leaves it at my feet.
    This is just the latest in a string of strange happenings in the neighborhood. The Luchos have relocated to these scabby streets and started marking their territory. Every morning freshly shattered glass shimmers on the sidewalks like dew. Kids casually cross the avenue with newly stolen car batteries tucked under their arms like purses. There are stories about winos waking up to bloody incisions and missing kidneys. Someone set a pack of wild dogs loose to roam the rooftops. At night, you can hear them hunting the local cats.
    When I spot the package, I let out an involuntary yelp. But it’s nothing more than a small parcel wrapped in brown paper and addressed in a blue magic marker scrawl that reads: “The Kid in the Alley behind the Chinese Place on 1st Avenue.” I can’t recall if I’ve ever received mail here before. I’m curious but hesitate to pick it up. For the months I’ve been living in the city, I’ve been trying to avoid any intrigue. I’m still struggling to navigate these streets. My world consists of a few square blocks and ritual activities. My focus is keeping body and soul intact.

    I open the package with shaky fingers. This cassette tape is a genuine audio relic, tattered and beat-up, but someone decorated it with obvious care. A piece of notebook paper is neatly folded inside the plastic case and a dozen song titles are inscribed in a barely legible hand. Despite myself, the gesture touches me. It isn’t some menacing totem, it’s a gift. The first present I’ve received in ages. Of course I don’t have any way to play it. So I depart straightaway to see Mister Pastor, the man with all the gadgets and a heart large enough to share them with the likes of me.
    The park is nearly vacant. The sky is pitch gray. A chill wind blows loose litter over