Selected Short Stories Featuring Cockfight Read online

did a regimen of push-ups, so I figured I stayed presentable enough. But the worst part of growing old, aside from being old, is having to watch yourself go south, and having to watch everyone else watch it.

  I married once for a stretch, mostly cause I had more time on my retired hands than I could figure for, but it didn’t take; my mind was always elsewhere, and I always felt guilty my wife knew it. But I never fell out of that first love. I'm not saying through the years I was celibate, and I'd feel a fraud to say I never strayed, but while my eye wandered, my heart never did. So it tears up my insides to say what I’ve got to, but bye bye, Betty.

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  DID Have

  Cheryl:(I just think, because of our relationship, that I should be the one to start.)

  W: And I just think, because of your relationship, that you should go last- because no matter how big a homophobe douche Edgar was, you’re going to fellate his memory’s memory while we’re all literally forced to listen- unless we can figure out how to toaster-tub ourselves, too.

  I’m still piloting this meat rocket

  -ephraim: that didn’t sound how you meant it to -e

  Thanks, ‘Fram- but I’m in charge here, is what I’m saying- at least of the fingers. I’m happy to let this be a collaborative effort, but if anybody insists on getting grabby- or shouty- again, they’ll just have to edit in their contributions on their own time.

  W: That doesn’t seem fair- we only get two hours with the meat rocket

  Cheryl: (I think that sounded exactly how Walten meant it)

  W: Cheryl, please, please please call me Walt. Walten is dumb, if only because it emphasizes that my mother didn’t bother looking up the name of the crappy Thoreau novel she was naming me for- while being largely ignorant that it was also the name of a crappy pond.

  -ephraim: and she has asked you repeatedly to call her doctor

  W: Yeah, but I’m not on her couch, not even metaphorically, so no cake. If she gets a doctorate in sharing room in a brain with four guys then we’ll- three guys, I meant.

  Yeah. That’s actually why we’re sitting down to have this “conversation.” Edgar’s dead. I mean, Edgar’s been physically dead for twelve years, since he slit his wrists and passed out in his hot tub. But last night, Edgar was dead again. Um, I was asleep, but Ephraim, um, found him is I guess the best way to describe it.

  -ephraim: yeah. it doesn’t make much sense, i guess, but we’re all, well, all but one of us, anyway, just thoughts -e

  W: Collections of electrical current and simulated neuronal cells that basically function as a deceased person’s brain would have, all hitching a ride on our meat pilot’s cortex.

  -ephraim: walt's better at the technical things, though i wish for the life of me he wouldn’t interrupt so damned much of the time. but we’re all just zaps and artificial chemicals inside a still-living person’s head- so i didn’t find edgar doing anything, but when it came time for my two hours at the helm of our shared body, he wasn’t in control like he should have been. when I tried to think of him, to talk the way we can amongst ourselves without having control of the mouth muscles, there wasn’t anything in his direction, the parts of the brain where he’s usually at. at first i thought i was just glitching, and worried the others might not be able to find me. but then cheryl came back up online, and she couldn’t find him, either -e

  Cheryl: (I’m ashamed to say it, now, but I panicked. Since nobody was controlling the body functions, I took over and flooded us with adrenaline, woke everybody up. But I could feel it in what I used to want to call my bones that he was gone.)

  W: Heh heh, bones.

  -ephraim: i’ll never understand your phallic obsession -e

  W: Because I spent my life life in a chair with severe muscle weakness. Besides, I don’t just sit and watch porn- I also continue my work as a physicist.

  Cheryl: (Yeah, at the same time; something tells me Einstein’s Relativity wasn’t inspired by girl on girl action.)

  W: It completely could have been- our records are so sketchy that it’s hard to say what kind of a sexual deviant Einstein might have been. I still say his attitude on the unified field paints him as a donkey puncher.

  -ephraim: i don’t care if you want to spend your full two hours pleasuring yourself- though the pleasure lock-out is imperfect, so sometimes i feel it, and it’s a little disconcerting- but i'm not going to put up with coming to crusty every damn day like edgar. god help me i'm not sure how he lasted as long as he did -e

  W: Oh my God, Edgar did not kill himself because of a crusty tummy.

  Cheryl: (I don’t know. You remember how homophobic Edgar was… imagine what it would have been like, waking up day after day with his belly hair glued down with someone else’s seed.)

  W: That is not cool. You two are trying to take away my one joy in life.

  Cheryl: (We thought you also loved physics.)

  W: That’s like saying it’s okay Lois is dead, Superman, because you can always knock boots with your tomboyish best friend Lana- who, while a hottie, has become like a sister or at least that weird cousin you have strange feelings for, especially when she sits on your lap because there aren’t enough seats in your uncle’s minivan.

  Cheryl: (Nerd! And ew. Respectively.)

  W: That doesn’t seem very compassionate for a shrink.

  Cheryl: (No, but as you pointed out, I’m not your therapist.)

  W: Still, don’t your ethics dictate you be less of a you know.

  -ephraim: i'm not sure we do know, walt, but her ethics and her title are really the only reasons she’s here. they usually don’t like to upload coed memories- because of the identity issues that can cause -e

  W: Yeah, but she’s here right now because she put the “the rapist” back into her title with Edgar. And seriously, how did you manage to get named Ephraim in the 21st Century? Did you grow up on a farm… in a rip in timespace that happened to be stuck in the 1930s?

  -ephraim: one of these days, i’m going to break the time lock on motor functions, and take over one of the arms while you’re alone, and punch you in the balls -e

  W: What makes you think that wouldn’t turn me on?

  Cheryl: (Ephraim, it’s sweet of you to defend my honor or whatever, but honestly, when he gets like this, he’s just acting out. Not to psychoanalyze you or anything, but when you start acting like a jerk, there’s nothing but time and space that will get you to be quiet. To psychoanalyze you just a little, I think you’re going to miss Edgar. I think you had disagreements, I think his politics and personality oftentimes pissed you off, but I think you’re being a dick to us because you’re sad, and that’s the only way for you to deal with it. Of course, even if I were right, I’d expect you to say something dickish to save face, so I’ll just assume I am.)

  W: I feel like a rampaging 1960s robot whose logic circuits have been overwhelmed; did she just say that I loved Edgar, and no matter how I respond she’ll remain convinced of that? I cannot, in effect, win this argument?

  -ephraim: it does seem that way, yeah -e

  W: Okay. Fine. I admit it. I did love Edgar. In fact, Edgar and I had figured out how to share control, and on nights when you were asleep, he and I would two-hand my one-man job. It started out as something purely carnal, but it really started to get intense, and he’d actually take over the mouth to whisper how much he loved me while we were at it. He even swore he was going to leave you, as soon as he could summon the will to break your hold. But he told me you were fighting him, too, that you were willing to try to destroy his fragile psyche rather than lose him. I think, looking back on it, that not only did he no longer love you, but in a very real way, it was your domineering and willingness to go against your ethics that killed him… King me, bitch.

  Cheryl: (Oh. My. God.)

  I think you actually found a way around her circular logic.

  Cheryl: (I’m impressed. By how gigantic a prick you are. But still, impressed.)

/>   -ephraim: heh. but because I think we’re straying from our purpose, let me say a few words. edgar could be a bit of a prick sometimes, but he lived here with us for twelve years. i won’t say i loved the man- i can barely say i knew the man, but he was a man who lived the way he damned well wanted. he didn’t compromise, not for politeness sake nor political correctness, and while he could be infuriating, i think edgar liked being alive, and once he no longer did, he tried something else. i'll always admire the courage that takes, if his flaws made it hard to admire the man -e

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