Onion Songs by Steve Rasnic Tem Read Free Book Online Page B

shark’s mouth. Michael’s smile flows to the edges of the sheets and drips off the sides of the bed.
     
    Memory: Allison was walking down the sidewalk with the last of her packed suitcases. He imagined himself stopping her, using physical strength, or argument, or simple expressions of bereavement. He’d seen countless movies, read numerous books and short stories, and he could imagine various scenarios in which any of these techniques might or might not work. He tried to store up images of various lives he might have had with Allison, all for his future use. He imagined the faces of their children. He visualized the photographs in their albums. He experienced all her possible deaths.
    All this before she got into her car, looked sadly out the window. “I’m sorry,” was what he thought she said, before she drove off for what was (maybe) the last time.
     
    And now: He spent much of his weekend talking to the homeless, the derelicts, the bums (he didn’t know what he should be calling them). Whoever they were, they were good at acting. They could sound like his mother, his father, Michael, his lover, even his therapist—whoever they wanted to be.
    “ I’ve seen those blades you’re talking about,” one old man said. “They come mostly early in the evening, about the time the fireflies first come out. Sometimes you’ll see one outlined against the moon, or maybe a streetlight if the angle’s just right. They’re sharp and scary , oh, I know that. But they keep things from dying. They cut out the part where you know somebody died, or where you realized something was over—like it was on a tape or something. That way nothing ever dies, or ever ends. That ain’t so bad, is it?”
    He thought, in fact, that’s horrible, but didn’t say anything.
    “ Leave the boy alone!” The old lady in the broken hat just seemed to climb out of the shadows around the base of the tree. “He don’t need to know about them blades!”
    “ You my wife or something?”
    “ I don’t know—I can’t rightly remember.”
    “ Well, I don’t remember neither, and until I do remember you just butt out, okay?”
    “ I need to prepare myself. Something’s going to happen,” he said to the old man and the old woman. “I’ve already figured out that things aren’t what they seem to be, they never are, and there seems to be no way to tell what they are.”
    “ There’s no such thing as preparation,” the old woman said. “I’m sorry, son.”
    He wondered briefly if she could, indeed, be his mother, but it was too dark where she stood beneath the tree. “It’s being alone, you know? That’s what it’s all about, why it’s so bad, being alone,” he said to them.
    But the blades had come down during their conversation, and severed the old man and old woman from the dark pool of shadows beneath the tree, so that they were in some other weekend of his life, involved in some other conversation.
     
    The Therapist: “What are you most afraid of?” the therapist asked. Today he was lying on the table in the middle of the room and the therapist stood over him, most of her head in the shadows, only the heavy outline of her dark glasses showing. “That is always a good place to start.”
    “ I’m afraid of what is ,” he replied. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”
    “ Perhaps you simply can’t accept.” The therapist made rustling noises as she removed various objects from the drawers beneath the table.
    “ I simply can’t forget ,” he said. “That’s a lot of it. What I remember , is. And that’s become too much, far too much, to bear. One thing becomes just as real, just as important, as every other thing. I don’t know what I should ignore anymore in order to keep on functioning, living. I don’t know what I should forget.”
    “ Pay attention to me now,” the therapist said, slipping on her gloves.
    “ It’s a lot less simple than everyone thinks,” he said. “A lot less simple than I was prepared