Our dogs, George and Martha\u2014both of them boys\u2014were named such because our parents were literature\u2014not history\u2014buffs, and were narcissists and sadists and had kids (2!)\u00a0 so that we\u2014my brother and I, that is\u2014had no idea why\/how we were the brutal transferences of their lives. We grew up saying painful things as if a game. Maybe it is. Was. But Martha\u2014that is to say, Mother\u2014was the best of all. Or worst. She once told my brother his hair stank! of Eye-talian salami after a half-hour of running her fingers through his locks, that sort of thing\u2014then screaming for him to go wash. Out spot, Out! George\u2014that is to say, Father\u2014was only slightly better. He once ordered me inexplicably to dig a trench\u2014I\u2019d hoped perhaps for his corpse, and maybe it was\u2014and when I was done, he had me fill it back in and took me alone to Carvel and insisted he buy me a whole goddamned ice cream cake. That sort of thing.<\/p>\n
Why am I telling you this? I\u2019ll tell you: in case you might learn. Martha and George, Brother and I, having lived a life of noisy deprivation, died altogether in an automobile accident on our way home from a roadhouse. We\u2014I\u2014never gave thought about an afterlife. It seems fun in retrospect that we\u2014I\u2014might have given it consideration. I won\u2019t tell you what it\u2019s like\u2014the afterlife, if there is one\u2014other than to say I can perpetually hear Martha\u2014that is to say Mother\u2014scream to George\u2014that is to say Father\u2014\u201cHEY, SWAMPY!\u201d as I search for my two boy dogs\u2014that is, our dogs\u2014so that I might say to them: Oh you dear ones, this could be heaven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our dogs, George and Martha\u2014both of them boys\u2014were named such because our parents were literature\u2014not history\u2014buffs, and were narcissists and sadists and had kids (2!)\u00a0so that we\u2014my brother and I, that is\u2014had no idea why\/how we were the brutal transferences of their lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[1164,3828,3826,3830,3829,3827],"class_list":["post-20989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-afterlife","tag-edward-albee","tag-george-and-martha","tag-make-believe-son","tag-narcissism","tag-whos-afraid-of-virgina-woolf","writer-j-edward-kruft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20989","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=20989"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21438,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20989\/revisions\/21438"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}