Roasting in the swampy heat of summer, quarter after 9 pm on a Saturday, with the driver\u2019s side window down and pizza-for-one sitting beside me in the passenger seat, the damn traffic light refuses to change. In my sideview mirror, the tall streetlight flickers, then flashes a spotlight as a bright blue tandem bike\u2019s dim headlamp bounces up and down with each pavement crack. Father and son (the boy has his father\u2019s dark complexion, has the same dimple in his chin), riding towards me, hugging the newly paved bike lane that stole a piece of this once-familiar street. Pedals in sync, smiles on their faces when I decide to run them down.<\/p>\n
They try to swerve when they sense me coming, but it doesn\u2019t make a difference. Candy red front bumper hammering that thick-treaded bike tire, spokes snapping, metal whining, and both riders flying like cartoon characters. The father\u2019s arms high above his head, as if reaching for a god only he can see; his son’s arms flailing too, but not as wild, almost rhythmic, like he\u2019s trying to swim against the current of our thick summer air. Neither of them screams, it\u2019s as if they don\u2019t have the time, their bodies and minds anxious only to regain control.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll tell the paramedics that cruelty happens in slow motion, that this was no exception. I\u2019ll tell them that my right foot hit the gas as my left foot, trying but failing to intervene, reached for the brake. I\u2019ll tell them that the moment to cede power was there, and then it was gone, or rather, the moment became something else once their bodies hit the pavement. When the boy slid across the concrete like a schizophrenic bowling pin and the father landed like a crack of thunder, I\u2019ll explain, I felt in control. For the first time in a long time, I felt alive. I\u2019ll tell them that I\u2019d seen these two riders grinning, getting ahead, maybe even gloating and I knew that if I didn\u2019t stop them, I\u2019d have to wonder why I never had a chance to ride.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Or maybe all of it is.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true I\u2019ve never really loved anyone, no one could ever really loved me. Maybe it\u2019s because my parents didn\u2019t know how to love, most likely were too afraid not to hate. Or maybe I was born this way\u2014with a darkness coiling at my toes.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll want to hear that it was some big blowup, you\u2019ll want a thorny Netflix doc to explain why I pulled the trigger. You don\u2019t want to hear that when she laughed at me\u2014quiet and cruel\u2014half of me wanted to die, and the other half wanted her to.<\/p>\n
It was a lyric from an old Bruce Springsteen song\u2014something about meanness in the world\u2014that filled the room once she stopped twitching. It\u2019s on the record most people think was written by someone else, somebody other than the man who wore high-waisted jeans in a video about dancing in the dark and told us that with just one look we could have our pick of all the blushing girls who were begging to be chosen. But no, the man singing about meanness lived amongst us in the darkness, sounded like he had been born with a seeping, pus-filled hole just behind his sternum. Maybe we\u2019re all born knowing that these two men are one and the same, that it makes perfect sense that they would be. Maybe it\u2019s this that explains why I did it or, at the very least, how I could.<\/p>\n
There was wine and beer and greasy takeout. I\u2019d been telling her about my father, about those moods, about how his swings made me wish I was a ghost. I was telling her that a leather belt on your back feels different than one made of cloth (unless it has one of those shiny stainless steel buckles with tiny teeth), that the welts aren\u2019t the worst part, that the worst part is the room in your mind where you\u2019re forced to escape \u2013 little more than a crawlspace, really, where cobwebs line your lips and thirty-legged beasts gnaw at the corners of your eyes.<\/p>\n
Maybe Mia wasn\u2019t really listening, maybe she was and didn\u2019t care, but after a long silence, she sort of chuckled, pointed to the fucking cat. \u201cIt\u2019s weird, isn\u2019t it? When she rolls onto her back and shows her belly?\u201d And I knew then that she was talking to me, talking about me, talking down to me. And then there was blood and bone, pieces of her spilling into the soupy cashew chicken.<\/p>\n
Then again, maybe it was the silence that destroyed us both. I think we both felt the shotgun blast before we heard it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ll tell the paramedics that cruelty happens in slow motion, that this was no exception. I\u2019ll tell them that the moment to cede power was there, and then it was gone, or rather, the moment became something else once their bodies hit the pavement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-m-m-bailey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19822"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20354,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19822\/revisions\/20354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}