The Egg Said Nothing by Caris O'Malley Page A

knocked on the door.

    No response.

    I knocked again. And again and again. I started to pound out a continuous beat, knowing my persistence would pay off.

    And, eventually, it did.

    A frail, weathered-looking woman answered the door. “Who is it?”

    “It’s me,” I said.

    “Who are you?” she asked.

    “Manny, Mom. It’s Manny. Let me in.”

    She squinted at me. “Manny? Manny who?”

    “Your son. Open up.” I put a hand on the door and eased it open.

    “My son? Okay.” She looked confused, but let me into the apartment. Leaving the door ajar, she walked back to the living room and sat down in her recliner. She picked up a glass and took a drink of something. Her television blared loudly. I closed the door.

    So far as I could tell, my mother never left the living room. All this space was wasted, really, but her monthly fixed income was more than enough to pay for both her apartment and mine. It sounds bad, an incapacitated woman unknowingly paying her adult son’s rent. But she wasn’t a very good mother. And she didn’t do anything to earn the money; it came from her ex-husband’s pension. Though I had never wanted to, I had to stay near her. There was no one else. She and I may have had problems, but I still felt an obligation to her. And if I was tethered by that sense of responsibility, she could pay my fucking rent, thank you very much.

    I wandered down the hall, headed for the empty room farthest from the blaring television. The noise was too much. The old women spent all of her time with the TV on, just sitting and staring at it. Watching her waste what was left of her brain was something I no longer cared to witness.

    All I wanted to do was sleep. I made it to the room and heard murmuring from the other side of the door.

    I turned the doorknob with great care, gaining access to the room silently. I peeked my head in to see a figure dressed as me, sitting on a bed, watching television.

    He reached out and picked up a telephone from the bedside table. My mom’s old rotary dial that she refused to update. Not that it mattered, I guess. She never used it.

    “You should eat it,” the figure said, shoulders quaking with stifled laughter. Hearing me taunt myself made me feel ill.

    I advanced toward him, my anger swelling like a fever blister. I grabbed the receiver out of his hand and, raising it above my head, brought it down on his face with all the power I could muster. The bridge of his nose cracked and collapsed under the force; a torrent of blood gushed from his nostrils. I wrapped the telephone cord around his neck and pulled it tight, rendering his gurgled cries inaudible.

    We sat there together, in our mother’s guest room, until he went limp in my arms. I closed my eyes as his body fell to the floor. When I opened them, he was gone. All that remained of the whole encounter was the blood on my hands and a rusty old shovel leaning against the wall.

~Chapter 14~

    In which the narrator taunts a fragile man over the phone and gets royally fucked up by some guy with a shovel.

    The phone stared at me as a heaviness settled into my chest. Was I really going to do this? How could I justify harassing myself when I had just executed someone for doing the same? Not knowing if I would be able to change anything, or had changed anything already, I picked up the receiver and dialed my own number.

    It rang.

    “Hey, I’m out right now. Leave a message.”

    Beep.

    “Salt, pepper and chives,” I said. “Add a little cream to make it nice and fluffy and eat the goddamn thing. You must destroy it. All of you—the ones taped up on the floor, the ones lounging about in the Laundromat—you all need to go. That egg will bring you nothing but unhappiness.

    “I’ll lay it all out for you. You’re going to go out, and your life is going to change. You’re going to fall in love. Ashley is her name. She’s going to love you unquestioningly. You’re going to bring her home. With her,