Fiction Special Feature: “Self-Care,” by Brett Hymel Jr.

33 minutes read time

Web and Media Editor Bess Winter:

When you read thousands of stories for a living, only an elite few take up residence in your memory as not just stories but visceral reading experiences. Brett Hymel Jr.’s “Self-Care” is one such story. This piece crossed our desks and was passed around almost furtively. Were we supposed to like this this much? It felt wrong to like it this much. Were we supposed to laugh this hard, or did that reveal something about us that we didn’t want to admit even to ourselves? In any case, we laughed. We cried. We hurled. Now we’re sharing it with the internet so it can make its way to all the right subreddits.

Artist’s Note

Anything good about this story comes from the inspiration I got from M.O. Walsh’s terrific short story, “The Freddies” and from the edits suggested by my wonderful first readers, Emma Mott and Rose Torres. I couldn’t be happier that this piece is at The Cincinnati Review, and I’m immensely grateful to anybody who takes the trouble to read anything I write. This is the first romance story I’ve ever written. I hope it gets you off.

Self-Care

The first fifteen minutes of morning sunshine provide an important opportunity for self-care. In these first fifteen minutes, Brett Hymel Jr. (no relation) gets out of bed and counts his blessings, which are: He is alive, and in generally good health, he has received no calls from his asshole brother, and he sleeps next to the love of his life. The love of his life is a doll made to look exactly like him, down to the asymmetrical fuzz of the upper lip and the strands of long, greasy hair. Its skin is made of silicone, and despite the rubbery feel, even the moles and tender arm hairs are copied to perfection. “Good morning,” Brett greets his doll, kissing it on its open mouth.

Then, he does something disgusting to the doll.

What he does can’t be described, since it will cause illness and lower the esteem of Brett in your eyes. It won’t be explained, for example, how he pulls on his doll’s hair (made from his own hair), how he says his own name into his doll’s open mouth, how he takes himself from behind, how he inserts his irregular cock, shaped like four or five Styrofoam packing peanuts tied together with a rubber band, into the open lubricated butthole meant to resemble his own. The process of orgasm is especially taboo, the earthy scent of mushroom jism, the way climax makes Brett feel as if he’s dying and being reborn again, this time into somebody who has done something as shameful as empty his balls into a replica of himself. After the act, he cannot look his beloved sex doll in its honey-mustard eyes, which are made from a special glass and retain a glossy, moist texture, giving the impression that the doll is always filled to the brim with emotion.

All of this in fifteen minutes. An important opportunity for self-care.

* * *

Guru,

The phrase la petite mort, from the French and meaning “little death,” called also “the devil’s laughter” by Schopenhauer, describes the particular emptiness that arises as a result of the aftermath of orgasm, suggesting that there’s perhaps some kind of ruse in the hedonistic pleasure, that the dispersion of seed into whatever receptacle—person, rag, life-size sex-doll replica of oneself (hypothetical)—is an act that only ever results in emptiness.

Guru, I have been mort-ing two or three times per day.

You have taught us that sex is the pinnacle of the masculine purpose and the key to enlightenment. If that is the case, then I’m certainly an enlightened man. Clarifying question: Is enlightenment supposed to leave one ashamed to look in the mirror?

Another, semi-related question: How might one go about cleaning sperm from a silicone-based cavity? My baby yogurt is viscous, and it reeks, and I worry that this cavity, if left uncleaned, will become a breeding ground for beetles or spiders or some other kind of unpleasant insect that might enter and feed on the rich protein of my spunk.

Yours in care and discovery,
Brett

Brett licks half the envelope flap before realizing it’s a peel-off adhesive strip. He seals the letter, opens the door, and drops it into his mailbox, hoping that this will finally be the letter that earns him the title of Chosen Elect.

Guru Hoobastanklover67is an internet celebrity whose professed goal is the elevation of men. His name is a relic of his cyber origins in the early aughts, kept all those years as proof that people might have a reason to change who they used to be. He doles out a series of politically confused diatribes, conspiracy theories, and generally bad advice.

Brett spends his days browsing the Guru Hoobastanklover67 subforum on the website Circle Jerkz, posting half-concocted philosophies that are endlessly upvoted by other men, in the hopes that they all might reach the status of Chosen Elect.

These Chosen Elect go to a house party at the guru’s mansion. Brett reads on the subforum that there are catering boys who bring vials of cocaine around on silver platters, and a confetti cannon that shoots shredded money, and a tiger that wears a pair of pink panties and swims in the pool. The thing Brett wants most in the world is to attend one of these parties. He sits at home reading about them, practically mort-ing his pants over the thought of meeting the guru, whom he knows would love him for his strong wit and the little dimples he gets when he smiles.

Brett wonders if he spends too much time online. “I think my letters are getting lost in the mail.”

Brett’s beloved sex doll sits on the bed across from him, hands folded over its lap, and sometimes there is such care in those postures that he swears the doll can understand him. Brett has decided that he will send the Guru letters instead of private messages on Circle Jerkz. He views this as more professional, and he knows the Guru will appreciate this initiative. Nobody knows exactly how to be selected for the Chosen Elect, but Brett has heard that money helps. Every time he opens his wallet, however, it’s full of cobwebs.

“It must have gotten lost in the mail,” Brett repeats. He grabs his doll’s hand. This hand, which is really his own hand, comforts him.

“Tell me that you care for me,” Brett whispers. For a moment, he even expects the mouth cavity to move. We’re not just fucking,it could say to Brett, we’re making love.Sometimes, Brett gets so lonely that he moves the doll’s mouth himself.

“I care for you,” Brett mimes, holding the doll’s chin between his thumb and forefinger and manipulating the mouth cavity. “I treasure you.” He lets the chin go, and the doll returns to a static position, unmoving, inert.

* * *

Brett wakes up in the middle of the night because he hears a noise. He’s afraid of the dark and reaches out, eager to be comforted. The space next to him is empty.

Brett jolts up, shaking off sleep. Is somebody in the house? Is he being robbed? He reads about this all the time on the Circle Jerkz subforum. “You must remember that many people are angered by our quest for enlightenment,” Guru Hoobastanklover67 often says. “We are the most persecuted people on earth.”

Still, Brett doesn’t understand how he could possibly have enemies. He barely has a friend.

Brett hears a noise from the kitchen and imagines all the ways he could die. He could be stabbed to death. He could be shot. He could be strapped to a car while a brick is placed on the gas pedal. He could be strangled. He could be lit on fire. He could get cancer. Home invaders can’t give you cancer—how did that one get in there? He stuffs his nightshirt into his mouth to stay quiet and turns the door handle. He cracks it an inch, then another. A shadowy figure slips out the front door.

Brett runs to the kitchen window. He can feel his heart in his esophagus. Outside, the intruder is waving down a rideshare, and Brett realizes it isn’t an intruder at all. He watches as his beloved sex doll steps into the sleek black sedan and motions to the driver. The car disappears.

Brett makes a noise of surprise in the back of his throat and spits out the saliva-coated ends of his nightshirt. “It’s impossible,” he mutters. And, even worse, the sex doll is wearing his sneakers, the newest, cleanest ones he has.

* * *

The black sedan is easy enough to follow. Brett thumbs through Circle Jerkz while he drives. If he goes even ten minutes without ingesting some form of content, he begins to feel as if he were dying. I cut off my ears to keep my male ego safe from my mother,one man says. I ate nothing but raw meat for forty days in my mission to kill God and grow my hair back,another writes. My (42M) wife (19F) keeps having a p*riod. Is it wrong to ask her to sleep outside? a third person asks.

Brett writes a response, but his mind is scattered, and he smashes everything together. If a man bleeds his meat, it simply means he’s rare,or something to that effect. His response is instantly showered with upvotes and digital trophies. It’s no surprise, really. Brett has half a writing degree from an accredited university. He’s very good at tricking people into thinking he’s profound.

As he fiddles with his phone and tries to watch the road, Brett accidentally accepts a call from his brother.

“Brett?” his brother says. “Wow, I wasn’t expecting you to pick up.”

“It was an accident.”

“Happy little accidents, right? Ha ha. Anyway, here’s an update on Mom: She’s shitting through a tube now. You won’t believe how much shit she’s pumping out. They’re really squeezing her dry with it, I guess. Like an upside-down Capri-Sun. She wants to know when you’re coming to visit.”

Brett hangs up. His asshole brother always calls to update him on his mom. Why can’t his brother leave him alone? Why can’t his brother acknowledge that he, Brett, is not worth this game?

Two years ago Brett made a choice that betrayed the confidence of his mother and brother and alienated him from his family. Although they’re cordial to his face, Brett knows that deep down they harbor a terrible resentment for what he did.

Brett grabs his hair and pulls. This is a frustration response that he developed as a child in order to keep himself from crying. He used to get bullied for crying. His classmates would call him Chandler Cry of the Cleveland Cryvaliers. Then they would beat the shit out of him. So Brett learned to yank his hair to keep his tears inside. He would tell them, “It doesn’t really roll off the tongue, Cleveland Cryvaliers.” Did they beat his ass anyway? Yes.

But at least he wasn’t crying.

Brett takes the bridge over the river. The lights turn his city into an arena of dazzling beauty, a reverse panopticon where he’s at the center and can see nothing. He descends into the crisp salt air of the city’s beachside. The neighborhoods molt their poverty, houses growing taller and more erect, full of crisp lawns with impressive water features. Brett bites his lip at the sight of these gorgeous homes. Up ahead, the sky is washed with laser lights that bounce off the clouds in every color imaginable. Deep bass from a speaker threatens to uncork the fire hydrant on the sidewalk, and a mansion prouder and more prominent than the rest appears from behind a line of tall palm trees. The black sedan comes to a stop. This is Guru Hoobastanklover67’s house, as featured in Circle Jerkz.

Brett watches his doll get out of the sedan and flash a credential at the doorman. The doorman nods politely and ushers him inside.

* * *

The doorman doesn’t let Brett in. Brett has no credential. In fact, the doorman laughs at Brett and makes fun of his shoes.

On all sides of the house is a stone wall exactly five feet and ten inches in height, meaning it’s just barely above Brett’s line of vision. He walks the perimeter of the wall. Here he is, closer than ever to his dream party, and he isn’t allowed to enter. Eventually he comes to a smooth, flat stone. He steps on it, and it wobbles beneath his feet, and he almost falls. He has never been athletic. In gym class the children used to call him Scottie Dipshit, small forward for the Cuckchago Bulls. Brett would grab his hair and tell them, “It doesn’t really roll off the tongue, Cuckchago Bulls.” Then they would beat his ass.

Brett steadies himself against the wall and peers over the edge.

The party is a pleasure trove, a hedonistic paradise where men in polychromatic ski goggles snort cocaine off the bare-naked asses of tall girls with giraffe limbs, who themselves snort cocaine off the asses of catering boys, who themselves snort cocaine out of a wand that looks like a bubble blower—forming a sort of Human Centipede, but sexy and with cocaine, and, farther along, a confetti cannon rains shreds of dollar bills over partygoers, not just ones and fives but twenties, fifties even, and, farther still, round men cannonball into the infinity pool, where not one but three,count them, three tigers all in different colored panties swim, and there is a DJ set on the roof where the bass sings to the sky, where everyone is twerking hard and fast enough to bring the entire house down, sing Jericho, fist-bump those walls to smithereens.

Amid everyone on the roof, Brett’s beloved sex doll stands and stares at him, pointing with one ominous finger.

Brett is so surprised that he lets go of the wall and falls. His ankle makes a sound like the girl from Hereditary, and he knows immediately that he has made a major oopsie.

“That’s not good,” Brett says. He tests his leg by trying to straighten it out. His foot jiggles up and down like a bobblehead. Brett begins to crawl toward his car.

Adrenaline lasts only for a finite amount of time. As Brett reaches his car, he feels a wave of pain, slow at first and then acute, a stabbing in his ankle that signifies that something has indeed malfunctioned. He considers the emergency room. Taking his wallet out, he sees that it’s full of cobwebs. He reconsiders the emergency room.

Brett hoists himself up against the car, grabs the handle, pulls the door open, and falls back against the asphalt, moaning and grabbing his leg. He drags himself into his car. As he slides into the seat, his foot hitches on the bottom of the car and makes a noise like romaine lettuce. Brett pulls out a chunk of his hair.

The doorman looks toward the car and sees Brett fumbling to straighten himself out. “Hey,” the doorman shouts, hustling over, “I told you not to be here!”

Brett drives like Princess Diana’s chauffeur back to his house, where he swallows five ibuprofen and ten aspirin and passes out fully clothed on his bed.

* * *

The first fifteen minutes of morning sunshine provide an important opportunity for self-care. In these first fifteen minutes, Brett Hymel Jr. (no relation) gets out of bed and counts his blessings, which are: He is alive, and—ow, fuck, his ankle, ow. He can hardly stand, and the skin has swollen into a lump in the general shape of Arkansas. More concerningly, it appears to have formed some type of strange black scab over it. The scab throbs and has a heat to it and feels painful to the touch. He grabs the bottle of aspirin from the counter and sees that it’s empty, and also that it wasn’t even aspirin at all. It was Lexapro. He groans and stands up. His foot can support a minuscule amount of weight, so he limps to the bathroom to take more pain medication. His phone isn’t in his pocket. This means it fell out of his jeans. His phone is always falling out of his jeans: He wears jeans with these itty-bitty pockets. Brett also notices that his beloved sex doll isn’t in bed. For the first time in two years, Brett has slept alone.

In the kitchen, Brett finds the doll seated with a steaming mug of coffee. “I’ll deal with you in a second,” Brett says. He sees his phone on the floor. He limps over and picks it up.

Brett’s brother has called him twice. He deletes his call history.

Brett dials urgent care and asks if they take some form of IOU. The receptionist laughs at him. He calls his therapist and asks if he would refill his Lexapro for free on account of a major oopsie he made last night. His therapist laughs at him.

Brett hangs up the phone and tugs experimentally at his hair. There’s a strange buzzing noise in his ear that he can’t shake. He feels two moist, glittering glass eyeballs on his back. He senses something like derision in the air.

“What are you looking at?” Brett demands, whirling around.

The doll is looking at nothing.

Brett limps up to his beloved sex doll, swearing. “How can you walk?” he says. “How can you move around? And more importantly, why are you going to the Guru’s house party in the middle of the night? Have I earned a credential that you’ve stolen from me, or do you have your own? Can you get me in? Is it as much fun as it looks like?” Brett grabs his sex doll by the shoulders, and the buzzing grows loud and angry.

“You’re living the life I want to live,” Brett says.

From inside the sex doll, a lump slides like some kind of slick, scurrying tumor through the silicone trachea. The sex doll’s jaw distends and elongates, and the flesh grows soft and distorted around the mouth. Brett watches in horror as the doll’s eyes narrow and the skin scrunches up, as the doll forms a grimace, a scowl, and finally a mischievous leer. Then, from its lips, a wasp emerges. Brett flinches and covers his face. The wasp flies past him and out of the room.

* * *

Guru,

Things are in the shitter, basically, and I need some wisdom on the manly heart.

I received an early inheritance from my father, and I used this inheritance to relocate and to make a large pleasure purchase in the name of enlightenment. I have followed your teachings to a T. I have done everything right. I have made self-care the epicenter of my life, and despite this, there’s something needling me. I sometimes remember small details about myself and grow so ashamed that I’d like to peel off my skin.

Tangential question: How do you remove a large number of wasps from a damp, lubricated collection of holes when they seem very intent on not leaving? I have tried wasp killer, but there are so many wasps. I am afraid of “caring” for myself, lest a wasp get on my penis.

When you send my credential in the mail, please send it protected. I fear a certain “person” (buzz buzz) has been stealing my letters.

’Til death do us mort,
Brett

Brett licks half the envelope flap before realizing that it’s a peel-off adhesive strip.

* * *

Brett is woken up that night by the sound of his clothes sliding from their hangers. He peeks out from the covers and sees his sex doll emerge wearing a stylish outfit. The doll doesn’t even spare a glance in Brett’s direction. A trail of wasps floats angrily behind.

“You son of a bitch,” Brett hisses. He drags his ankle all the way to the kitchen window, where he watches the doll get into a sleek black sedan.

“Soon,” Brett says to himself. “Soon that’ll be me.”

* * *

The flesh around his ankle is a hideous mess of scars and pulp. The wound hums with a tingly, burning sensation, and when he presses it too hard, he begins to feel lightheaded. Brett sighs, rubs the bridge of his nose, and makes a phone call.

“Yello,” his brother says when he picks up. His brother sounds so cheerful, speaking into the phone with his friendly lips, his firm jawbone, whiskers of his stupid little mustache tickling the phone while he talks.

“Give me some money,” Brett says.

“Money’s all gone,” Brett’s brother says in a voice brimming with optimism. “The cancer treatment has sucked it all up. You won’t believe how much cancer costs. I’m getting a second mortgage soon.” His brother says this like he’s just been selected to receive the Purple Heart.

“There’s got to be some money somewhere.”

“If there is, make sure to let me know.” Brett’s brother laughs. Stupid little laugh. “Do you want to talk to Mom?”

“No.”

“Do you want to know how she’s doing?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“Friggin’ terrible, man! They can’t pump fluids into her fast enough. She looks like the mummy from the movie The Mummy. Before he has skin. It’s really freaky, man.”

This isn’t what Brett wants to hear.

“Listen, why don’t you fly out to see her? I’ll buy your plane ticket. The doctors have been talking to me, man. They say her bones are like 90 percent slop now. We’re talking single-digit days.” Brett’s brother says this like he’s receiving the key to the city.

They want to ensnare him. They want to get him alone so that he can hear from their lips how he’s betrayed them. His brother, for all his faux optimism, pours the details of his Capri-Sun mother into Brett’s head simply because he cannot bear the burden of suffering alone.

A delivery truck pulls up outside. A man in tight shorts and polychromatic ski goggles gets out. “I have to go,” Brett says, and hangs up.

“I’ve got something for you to sign for,” the deliveryman says. “It must have gotten mixed up somewhere down the line.”

Brett nods. “It’s okay,” he says. “I knew it was a misunderstanding.” Inside, he’s doing somersaults. He reaches for the package.

The deliveryman yanks it away.

“Guru says you’ve got to pay first,” he says.

“Just give me my package.”

The deliveryman is obstinate, unmoving. Brett sighs and pulls out his wallet. The inside is full of cobwebs, but there’s a single card slotted into a lonely pouch. This is linked to the account that contains the rest of his inheritance. Brett has kept this money untouched for two years out of a firm superstition that using it will completely and irrevocably sever the connection between him and the rest of his family.

“I don’t have all day,” the deliveryman says. “I’ve got two hundred of these to pass out.”

Brett presses the card into the man’s hand. “Take it.”

“Thank you kindly,” the deliveryman says. “The guru sends his regards. Welcome to the Chosen Elect.”

“Thank you,” Brett murmurs. “I worked hard to get here.”

The deliveryman winks and walks back to his truck, picking at a wedgie.

* * *

Brett is fully dressed for the party and seated at the kitchen table two hours before it starts. He wears a gingham shirt, tastefully ripped jeans, his newest sneakers, which were a pain to put on. The scab has formed an interlapping pattern of jagged black and purple crust. It weeps pus and blood. The skin around the ankle is the same color and scent as iodine.

“Four ibuprofen should be good,” Brett says. He takes six. Then he sits, nervous and giddy, at the kitchen table.

His beloved sex doll walks into the room dressed cheaply. The doll’s skin is coming apart at the seams, unable to bear the weight of the wasps inside it, and now it looks like some kind of abandoned balloon, deflating before Brett’s very eyes.

“Wow,” Brett says, “you look like shit.”

Brett hasn’t been able to mort, on account of the wasps. His packing-peanut penis is heavy with the weight of his blue balls, and although he’s incredibly horny, Brett would never consider an alternative act that would violate the sacred love that exists between a man and his sex doll. This is another thing to ask the Guru. How to take pleasure in a love that’s full of wasps.

Brett gets a call from his brother. He sends it immediately to voicemail.

* * *

The doorman doesn’t even recognize him. He merely checks his credential and then waves him through the door. Isn’t it always this way, that Brett remembers everything so vividly and clearly, and the people who wrong him have some sort of bizarre lapse in memory?

Walking into the mansion feels like crossing the threshold into the next life, a shock of sensation mainlined via the pounding of the bass drum, the booming shock of the confetti cannon, the conga line of the ass-cocaine human centipede, the deep-end splashing of ten, count them, ten tigers in panties, and the trembling of the roof as two hundred dirty sneakers threaten to bring the house to its knees. It’s a feeling that could never be adequately conveyed through Circle Jerkz.

Brett grabs a shot from the bar, a fistful of pills from a catering boy walking by, then heads to the dance floor. There are three dance floors, two in the house and one on the roof, but the set of each DJ complements the others in ways hitherto unknown to the human ear, making it one wall of sound. These DJs are piloted by a master DJ, who sees beyond the scope of binaural listening to the majesty of a greater soundscape that transcends life itself.

Brett trips over his swollen ankle and busts his nose against the multicolored lights of a dance floor.

Everybody stops and covers their own nose. One person gasps, another stifles a shriek. “What happened?” a man without ears shouts, and a catering boy flaps his arms and says, “I don’t know, he ate a handful of the deworming medicine for the tigers and then just kind of fell over.”

They drag Brett off to the side and slap him in the face. His nose is a faucet leaking blood. His gingham shirt has turned an unsalvageable hue. Brett’s eyes snap open, and he staggers to his feet. “I’m fine,” he says.

“You’re not fine,” they say, “go to the hospital.”

“No,” Brett says, “I’ve come this far.” Then he limps away. The partygoers are dumbfounded, but only for a moment. By morning they’ll have forgotten all about Brett.

“Where’s the Guru?” Brett demands, turning from one stranger to the next. Seeing a man covered in blood, they run away. His ankle throbs. It feels like something is moving around under his skin. He pulls his cell phone out of his itty-bitty pocket. His brother is calling. Brett sends him to voicemail.

Eventually Brett comes to a long line, which stretches through a spiral staircase up to a landing with ivy-coated banisters and a skylight that throws perfect moonlight down onto the hardwood floor. Such an idyllic place seems to be the only spot the Guru could hide. And there are at least a hundred people in line, all standing around for a chance to meet him.

Brett gets in line behind someone he recognizes as the deliveryman.

“They made me wear panties and swim in the pool,” the deliveryman is saying to himself. “They made me wear panties and swim in the pool.”

“Hello,” Brett says.

“Holy shit, you look terrible.”

“I’m fine.” This is a lie. Brett feels as if he might pass out at any moment. But he is also full of adrenaline.

“Are you auditioning?” the deliveryman asks.

“Auditioning?”

“For a meeting with the Guru.”

Brett is flabbergasted. “Why can’t I just see him?”

“What the hell? You think he’ll see just any old Joe? What you have to do is tell his attendant how much of a loser you are. The Guru is obsessed with helping sad sacks of shit. I’m rehearsing my sob story for him right now.” The deliveryman counts down in his head and starts again with a new inflection. “They put me in panties, they made me swim in the pool.”

Above the spiral staircase, the Guru’s attendant stands with a clipboard twice the height of her head and listens to each man in line with the same impassive expression. After a few seconds she dismantles the hopefuls with a short retort, sometimes a single word. She is thronged by bodyguards, muscled men who pull away the more contentious ones that argue, cry, or swear at her. Most men, however, expect to be rejected, and they leave without a sound.

Brett looks at his feet and realizes his shoes are missing. They must have fallen off when he tripped. His injury has swollen too large for his sock to fit around. His adrenaline is escaping from him like leaking air, and his skin feels like it’s full of thumbtacks. He shifts slightly, and the pain that shoots up his leg turns his hamstring numb.

Every so often dancers get up on the skylight and twerk. Their shadows pass over everyone. There’s a bodyguard with a long stick who pokes the skylight and tells the dancers to get down, but as soon as they get off, more take their place.

The attendant beckons the deliveryman forward. He shuts his eyes and recites. “I was abused as a child. They made me wear panties and swim in the pool.”

“Are you making that up because of the tigers?” the attendant asks.

“Uhm,” the deliveryman says. “No?” He scratches his head and tries again. “My father has double cancer.”

The attendant shakes her head.

“My whole family got struck by lightning on the beach, got resuscitated, and then got hit by a van in the parking lot.”

The attendant crosses something off her clipboard. “No,” she says.

“Ah shit,” the deliveryman cries, throwing up his hands. “I should’ve known better.” He turns to Brett. “Two things you have to do. First, don’t mention cancer. They hate that. It’s too cliché. Second, make sure it ends with a death. Big stories always end with big death. Something painful and spectacular.” The deliveryman claps him on the shoulder and walks away.

The attendant looks at Brett’s bloody shirt and raises an eyebrow.

“I was hoping I could just talk to the Guru directly,” Brett says. “It’s kind of a sensitive topic.”

“Guru Hoobastanklover67 isn’t here right now.”

“He’s not?”

“Of course not. He wouldn’t be caught dead at one of these. If you become one of our special losers, we’ll invite you to a follow-up meeting on his helicopter yacht.”

“Okay,” Brett murmurs, grabbing his hair. His clothes are soaked in blood, and his leg has begun to spasm. He runs his fingers through his long, greasy hair and stares at his socks. He’s too ashamed to look the attendant in the eye.

“My mother has bone cancer—”

The attendant moves to cross something off her clipboard.

“No, wait, wait. That’s not the thing. This is the thing: My mother has bone cancer, yes. She’s had it for a little over two years. My father was a perfect match for a marrow transplant, which would have extended her lifespan far beyond estimates. My father was almost neurotic with how responsible he was. Everyone called him a saint. But a few weeks after the discovery, he announced that he wouldn’t go through with the transplant. He gave my mother money and offered my brother and me each an early inheritance. Goddamn it, what’s happening?” Brett pulls up the cuff of his jeans. It slides over the scabs crisscrossing his ankle and he gasps. The skin is purple at the center and ocher around the edges. The flesh is throbbing, not metaphorically but actually rising and falling, like there’s a tiny heartbeat contained inside his leg. His wound pulses and radiates a sick heat.

“Go on,” the attendant says.

Brett shuts his eyes and continues. “My father never attempted an explanation. My brother refused the money and told my father he would kill him if he ever saw him again. I’d never seen my brother angry before. My father sold the house and moved to a new city. He now lives a very different life. I see him sometimes, on Circle Jerkz.”

A dark shadow falls over the skylight. Some manic twerker is giving it their all.

“I took the inheritance money,” Brett says. “I’ve thought for a long time about why my father refused the marrow transplant. It’s easy to say that he’s rotten, but I don’t think that’s it.”

The twerker moves harder and faster on the roof.

“I think that he’s somebody whose fear has always been greater than his love.”

“Not a bad sob story,” the attendant says, tapping her pencil against the clipboard. “Does it end with death?”

“Dear God,” Brett whispers. “I hope not.”

Brett looks up at the skylight, as if redemption will be hidden there in the folds of ass and flesh. “Hey,” he says, “Those are my shoes.” Then, Brett falls through the skylight and hits the landing.

No, sorry, it’s his sex doll falling.

And it falls arms akimbo, and its skin explodes, and the air grows thick with millions of wasps.

* * *

Now imagine this: You’re on your midnight walk, headed past that house, checking on it, right after you’ve called the fire marshal for the umpteenth time. You see five hundred people running from the house, pursued by a cloud of wasps that stretches long into the sky, a dark sheet that fills the air with buzzing. In the pool, ten tigers bellow and cry as they are consumed by thick brown clouds of insects.

A special loser emerges, covered in blood. He has wasps all around him, but for one reason or another, they refuse to sting.

* * *

Brett drives like he has Albert Camus in the passenger seat. Something is pushing itself upward through his skin. Vomit coats his tastefully ripped jeans.

Brett mashes crumbling curbs and blows four-way stops, sending bashful cars skittering for cover in lawns and parking lots. He drives with his left leg because he can no longer feel his right. He wishes he had brought his ibuprofen. He would take ten, twenty, the whole bottle, tranquilize himself and worry about the repercussions later. His entire life has consisted of this.

Somebody stands in the middle of the road. Brett slams on his brakes, and the car screeches to a halt. Brett opens the door, tries to get out, and falls. His leg twists beneath him and he grunts. His phone tumbles out of his itty-bitty pocket. His brother is calling him. He’s been calling him in fifteen-minute increments for hours.

“Hello,” Brett wheezes, his eyes trained on the figure walking over to him.

“Hey, man! About time. Just wanted to let you know, it’s happening. Tunnel of light, don’t take me, not my time, so on and so forth.” Brett’s brother says this as casually as if he were scrapbooking. “I bought you a ticket to head home, but you’ve got to get to the airport, like, now. Mom wants to say au revoirto you. That’s French. It means ‘goodbye.’”

“Adios,” Brett says into the phone.

His brother’s voice cracks. “Please,” he says. “Please get on that flight.”

The figure bends over and ends the call. It’s a silicone finger, rubbery to the touch, but the knuckle hairs are culled from Brett’s own skin, flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. Brett’s beloved sex doll holds Brett’s chin between its thumb and forefinger and lifts Brett’s face with a gentleness so soft that it takes Brett’s breath away.

His doll is perfect. The skin isn’t stretched or distended. There’s nothing living inside it. The doll is identical to him, down to the asymmetrical fuzz of the upper lip and the strands of long, greasy hair, down to the moles, the mouth, the honey-mustard eyes, glass replicas with their watery texture, brimming with emotion and intelligence, and Brett in that moment thinks about how lucky he is to share his life with someone who knows him better than he knows himself.

Brett’s ankle tears open. The scabs rupture with a noise like masking tape, and Brett is hit with an enormous spray of pus. He feels his skin peel back as a tiny head emerges, then a pair of wings, and then a long, sleek stinger, a vicious dagger whose only purpose is injury. The wasp is covered in blood, which drips from the tip of its wing onto Brett’s bare ankle, into the cavity of his open wound. It crawls down his leg, tickling him, and then takes flight, heading toward the trees, and Brett begins to laugh, and his hair comes out in fistfuls.

There’s no big death here. Only a little mort.

---

Brett Hymel Jr. writes stories for bugs: sick, dirty, nasty. Louisiana by birth, Florida ’til death, frequent migraines by the grace of God. His work has been featured or is forthcoming in several places, including Subtropics, Black Warrior Review, Prime Number Magazine, and Puerto del Sol. Threats/diatribes can be sent via www.bretthymeljr.com.