Ugly Behavior

Ugly Behavior by Steve Rasnic Tem Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: Ugly Behavior by Steve Rasnic Tem Read Free Book Online
Authors: Steve Rasnic Tem
a
smoked screen, but all he could think about was how was she ever going to
market this, how was she going to sell this, how was she going to put the best
face on this, and, at least for the moment, this was no longer a place he was
prepared to go.
    Hours later he could hear them across the courtyard of the mews
arguing, and if there had been screams he would have gone over there and
stopped them. He would have played the Silver Surfer in his mask that is no
mask, and he would have stopped whatever was going on.
    But there weren’t any screams that night. Perhaps there had never
been any screams.
    Instead he stood and waited in his doorway, listening to the
rhythmic rise and fall of their argument that might not be an argument,
studying the tree that had never been a tree, admiring the way the cool halogen
of the streetlights washed the rounded stones of cast concrete.
    When he finally went back inside, he went first to the bathroom
where he washed his face a very long time, then shaved away at the rough
stubble of his beard until blood had welled in numerous nicks. The face that stared
out at him was both terrible and new, one he had never seen before, and most
likely would change to fit the given situation. It was the kind of face he had
always wanted, it was the kind of face that might win him jobs and women, but
he knew that at least for a few nights he would sleep with one eye open, a
knife ready in hand for peeling the image away at the first sign of rebellion.
    On his web site the self-portraits had apparently disappeared for
good, broken and scattered into the ether. Just before dawn there was email,
and an attachment: a picture of a fattened, battered cat with his face, so
professionally done as to be seamless, so much of the cat in the line of his
jaw and the tilt of his head, so much of his own terror as the feline head shifts
to see the thing in fast pursuit.

The Cough

 
    A tickle like the sound of a truck rumbling in the distance, felt
in the chest, where bones join tissue and there are quantities of liquid for
lubrication. Something was coming. Something was clearly out there. Something
he didn’t want to know about.
    He’d had the cold for weeks. Three, four weeks. It didn’t seem
right, didn’t seem natural. Weren’t colds two week affairs? His wife had told
him that at some time or other. He remembered the time last winter he’d been
moaning and groaning, thinking he was going to die, angry because she wouldn’t
take care of him, wouldn’t even sympathize, and she’d said, “Two weeks and
it’ll be gone. It’s just a cold. Drink your orange juice.”
    Women had little sympathy for men. That had always been true. It
was a way at getting back at their ill treatment under a patriarchy, he
supposed. It was a man’s world, and women had little sympathy. He really
couldn’t fault them for that, but it felt bad just the same.
    Suddenly his body exploded into a fit of coughing. His face felt
flushed. He could feel himself filling with fever. He could feel the tube of
his throat constrict as he coughed, twisting at its root, trying to rip itself
out of his body. Something was coming from a far distance. Something that
didn’t agree with him.
    He spat something milky into the sink. His wife would have hated
that. “Men have such disgusting habits,” she used to say. He leaned over the
sink and looked at what he had coughed up. Men did that, too—periodically
they felt compelled to look at whatever came out of them. The globule in the
sink was creamy, yet somewhat solid, like a small bit of half-digested flesh.
    He wondered if what he was suffering from was akin to what they
called “consumption” in the old days. He had no idea. But he was a man.
Naturally he felt consumed. Men had a lot of things on their minds.
    Suddenly the cough racked him again. His head jerked as if he’d
been slapped. His wife had slapped him a couple of times, because of some dumb
thing he’d said to her. He’d never

Similar Books

Chroniech!

Doug Farren

The Strivers' Row Spy

Jason Overstreet

Space Plague

Zac Harrison

Killing Her Softly

Beverly Barton

The Property of a Lady

Elizabeth Adler

Jilted

Rachael Johns

The Score

Kiki Swinson

Hold My Hand

Serena Mackesy

The Plague of Doves

Louise Erdrich

A Jane Austen Education

William Deresiewicz