
Good news this morning: I discovered I am a finalist for the William Van Wert Prize in Short fiction. Big thanks to those judges at Hidden River Arts who selected my story! It was funny, I didn't know I was selected until a friend in Australia noticed it and told me over email. What a strange world we live in.
What follows is an excerpt from the story. It's about a rural kid, Travis, who lives in a trailer with his mom and dad. They are in a bad way—his sister is dating a meth addicted county sherif, and his dad has kidney failure. But the boy is keeping a stiff upper lip. He's even found a helping hand in an online personality named Frank. With a little help from Frank's Five Rules for Life, Travis hopes to make it through.
In this section, we find him in the hall of the trailer, staring at the posters he has plastered on his bedroom door.
#
First thing I put up there were these posters Freedom and I won at the Evergreen State Fair back in the day—got terrorists on them as targets. We shot ‘em all to hell and the man said it was pretty good because the guns at the fair aren’t made to shoot right and I got hella tickets. Next thing was Kenny, from South Park? He just cracks me up, man. Quiet-like, always watching, knows the right thing to do but can’t do shit, dying over and over again—like that time Stan pushed him into the woodchipper! How do they come up with that stuff? Mom hated Kenny so one time ripped him down and I found him in the trash and saved him (Haha!), taped him back up and hid him for a while before posting him up again, big eyes blinking down the hall.
Over him I got Iddy—he’s this sick-ass rapper whose videos I used to watch on MTV. On the poster he’s pointing at you and calling you “Bitch,” which I thought was funnier than hell, but got Freedom riled up and one time we got in a big fight and he marched up to Iddy with his razer knife and cut fuckin’ holes in his eyes, and I caught him doing it and pushed him away and he cut my cheek with the knife—not sure if it was on purpose—but I hauled off and hit him except I never hit no one before and it didn’t work right, wrist got all folded wrong in his big fat neck, and just sort of crumpled there. Then he hauled off and hit me. Hard. So I started crying—ain’t proud of it!—said fuck you and he said fuck you and I split for a couple of days. Slept under a bridge with Ricky Smith and huffed paint outta socks and stole hot pockets from the corner store until Freedom came and found me—he found me!—dragged my ass back in the dually and didn’t say a goddamn word ‘til we got home, and when I walked down the hall and saw my door, Iddy was still there but his eyes were gone too.
Then, almost right after, to spite Freedom, just to get into his head, I found this poster of Marilyn Manson, like almost naked, just some leather straps over his tits with his cock tucked back so it looks like he’s got none, and I think Freedom felt so bad about kicking me out of the house that he didn’t say anything! And I was, like, surprised because if he didn’t like Iddy... But that’s around the time when he got his condition and went to the hospital and started getting into politics and watching them videos in the computer room, so I don’t even know if he noticed.
Anyways, I found Frank and things started to turn around. Five Rules, you know? I went down to Kinkos and printed them out so everyone in the house could see I was changing, that I was getting my shit together—posted it right over Manson, Rule #1 just between his legs, like they was getting born right out of Manson’s tucked-in cock.
Door open. Room feels refreshing! Clean, man. A place of control. It takes my breath away. There it is. Suit hanging where I left it. Gonna brush that fucker up and be ready to face the world and Freedom and whatever. Got a little wire brush and brush it every day because suits ain’t like other clothes, you know? They take vigilance, like all good things.
I admit, when I first read this rule on the website, I was suspicious. Nobody I know wears suits, and I didn’t get it, how people judge you when they see you, size you up and see whatever you’re showing them, as if you were speaking, as if you were telling them your life story.
And anyways, I was in a bad way, feeling way down, huffing bleach too much, coming off bad deals, Googling how to fucking kill myself, which, I know! bad idea, but that’s what I was doing: fifty pounds heavier, jerking off, clicking pictures of dudes hanging from baling wire or holding plugged-in toasters in the bathtub, hands all charred, hair sticking up, water all grey and muddled, but through it all, thank God, I clicked on a link that said “how not to kill myself,” which I thought, you know, why the fuck not, I was high. So I scrolled around and clicked on a link that said DON’T BE A PUSSY.
There it was, The Five Rules, the organization. First thing I saw was a little GIF of a barn on fire which flashed to a picture of Uncle Sam which flashed to a picture of a cat, circled in red with a line right through its middle. I was like, what the fuck? But I kept scrolling and started reading to my salvation. It said,
You’re going to die. Everyone you know is going to die.
Your grandma and grandpa are dead, probably, or will be soon.
Their parents have been dead for years.
You’d say that you already know this. You’d tell me, “duh, Frank, what the fuck else is going to happen?” To which I respond, fucking-A. But how come you’re acting like you have all the time in the world, like you can just sit on the couch and touch your balls?
You want to off yourself, go for it, makes no difference to the rest of us. But ask yourself one thing. You going to pay for your meal? Or are you going to leave the bill on the table for somebody else to pay? Pathetic.
And that was it, man. Frank got me—and Frank is awesome, funny dude, super driven, helping all us motherfuckers get our shit together, posting the videos, got the Podcast, helping us get the fire started!—showing me all kinds of ways I been sitting back, thinking just about my own little horseshit life, not living for anything bigger, not thinking about other people, not participating. That's the thing. Got to participate. Can’t let life just happen.
Frank got these meetings everywhere, all over the country, and they have one down in Smokey Point at the VFW hall. So I cleaned my room and took the dually and went to K-Mart and bought a suit—you ain’t showing up to meeting without a suit on. That would be a bad idea, Frank makes that clear in all the videos. And they was fresh out except for the one I’m brushing right now. On the plastic man under a light, all the shelves around it empty on account of that K-Mart going out of business; and it was weird that the last one left was probably the most fucking awesome—badass-like, Neo in the Matrix kind of shit, all black, cool green stripes all up and down.
When I tried it on in the dressing room it was like, whoa—a little small, but whatever—who is this guy, you know? And I got it. I was like Holy mackerel. I ain’t got no friends because I been telling the world I’m a piece of shit, my clothes all sweatpants and free t-shirts and blaze orange whatever. And who wants to hang out with a piece of shit? I don’t. I want to hang out with this motherfucker, right here in the K-Mart dressing room.
Comments