NEW STORY: "Dashing Through the Snow," by John Patrick Tormey
It's the extreme weather that makes you want to kill people. We figure one extreme is as good as another. Plus, wouldn't you rather read about snow today?
When it's too hot or too cold, your body starts dumping rage and paranoia in your blood, stirring you up like a paint mixer, hoping you'll kill all the other motherfuckers in your biological niche and steal all their resources.
Your blood makes you do it. If the weather is too hot or too cold for pigs, the sow will eat the shoats. It's automatic. Humans don't mean to kill each other while fighting for survival. We're just too smart and too powerful. We "box out" when we go for rebounds, and people take elbows to the brain.
The ones who are closest to you are the ones who get hit the hardest. The weather gets ugly, life gets rocky, and you start looking for threats, trying to figure out who is responsible for your problems, thinking that somebody over in the next room is why your life has turned to shit.
But lives just turn to shit.
Mostly, there's no good reason.
Anyway, "Dashing Through the Snow" is a bitter, hilarious look at growing up in a world that can explode into violence at any minute. You know how if you get punched enough in the face the blood drains into your teeth and outlines all your choppers in bright red strings?
That's what reading this story is like. It's a lot of punches, one after the other, until you are barely standing up. You'll be smiling by the end. You'll be wobbling back and forth, smiling for no good reason, and everyone will be wondering what the fuck is the matter with you and when you are finally gonna snap.
Posted by miracle on Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:23:54 -0400 -- permanent link
