XIV.
When I was 8 I killed a snail with my bare fist. I did it because the other boys dared me to. It was either that or tell the truth that I had kissed dirty Jodie in the sandbox underneath the slides. I hit the snail on the pavement with my fist so hard that it felt like I had killed nothing. Until the bits of shell and mush oozed down the side of my hand. I felt like throwing up right there and then, but I managed to hold it in until I got outside the school fence. I wiped the slug guts onto my pants and thought about my deed. The snail couldn’t have felt anything. It was a swift execution. Not like Tommy’s snail. Tommy said that he had boiled a snail alive once, but that it was no fun because the slug hid in its shell the whole time. I bet he told that story so he wouldn’t have to get slug guts all over his hand.
I don’t know why I remembered that just now.
I like lying on the bed with her, staring up at the cracks in the mirror. I know it’s probably not normal to keep a cracked mirror on the ceiling. And we’ll have to take it down soon before it breaks into a million shards, impaling us in our sleep, or when we’re making love. Yes, I’m tired of just fingering and rubbing and kissing. I want to make love. She laughs and says that when we take down the mirror we might as well remove the roof as well. Unlike the ceiling, the night sky is great and vast and open.
The Hungry Artist 