Read Online As I Die Lying by Scott Nicholson - Free Book Online
Authors: Scott Nicholson
Tags: Humor, Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal, Mystery, Crime Fiction, supernatural, dark fantasy, Contemporary Fiction, serial killer, Literary Fiction, Novel, Autobiography, Child Abuse, Spiritual, possession, evil, metafiction, parody, haunted computer, multiple personalities, richard coldiron, surrealism
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the
apartment, usually inspired by the television shows that I refused
to watch.
Perhaps this was a normal life. Perhaps we
could have gone on this way for years, until I went away to college
and studied literature and learned how to write a best-selling
novel by offering witty autobiographical insights. Then I could
have bought my parents a cottage on the Massachusetts seashore, one
with an extra guest room to serve as a liquor cabinet. They could
sip their golden years away in dark rooms until their tired blood
gave out and the sun rose one morning over the Atlantic to shine in
on their waxen corpses.
Then I could come up and carry the boxes of
everything they were into the light. I could air out their photo
albums and the yellowing wedding lace and the aviator mask
collection. I could dig through the stained love letters and the
cat postcards and the wrinkled brown bag of buffalo nickels. Then I
would reach the bottom and find that it all added up to nothing. I
would gather the scraps of their lives and dump them in the gray
rubbish can at the corner of the driveway, put up a "For Sale" sign
on their memories, and continue on up the stairs to my own attic
and its dusty boxes.
But such an easy decay would have been
anticlimactic, right? It would have violated our unwritten
contract, our symbiotic relationship, our mutual understanding that
we are both creating this adventure with every word and each
sentence and every acceptance of a lie. We're equally complicit,
and equally guilty.
I'm not very good at keeping secrets, and
you're not very good at minding your own business. Because this is
as close as you'll ever get to being inside my head, and you want
more. And I need you because otherwise I will never know I was
me.
We're in this together, all of us. All the
way.
You probably won’t believe what happened
next, but I may as well tell you anyway, since we’ve come this
far.
Plus it involves sex and violence.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I killed the son of a bitch.
Father was on the fiery edge of a binge,
scorching the night like a garlic dragon. His boots were itching to
dance. He was Fred Astaire on angel dust, Jekyll's Hyde
masquerading as Gene Kelly, a Saturday-night-feverish John Travolta
channeling Hitler’s goose-stepping storm troopers.
Mother caught the brunt of his wrath on her
bony shoulders, so incapacitated herself that she couldn't lift a
flaccid arm in her own defense. His blows rained down on her, a
blistering storm, a torrent of fists and feet. I listened from my
bedroom, tingling from the electric tension of his thunder.
His slaps rang though the air like a whip
flogging a dented piece of sheet metal. Mother moaned and
whimpered, too dehydrated to cry. I ran into the living room and
saw her on the floor, leaning against the couch, a thick trickle of
pink saliva running from one corner of her mouth, her dark hair
greasy with sweat like the mane of a horse that had been ridden too
hard.
Father stood over her, his fists quivering.
They were clenched so tightly he could have squeezed blood from a
concrete block. He brought his boot down and Mother collapsed like
a wet shoebox. He began stamping tattoos on her mealy flesh, urging
fresh vintages from the juice of her veins. He danced as if the
devil himself were calling the tune.
I went to the kitchen and drew out the rusty
blade that fit my palm like a lover's slender hand. It was the same
knife that had dealt with Angel Baby. I was fourteen now, not a kid
anymore. I was as strong as a weed, as wiry as an oak, as
unforgiving as the January wind.
I moved through the wreckage of the living
room. With each step, I left Richard Allen Coldiron behind. The
closer I got to the man who had given me life, the farther I was
from son he had made. By the time I'd crossed the living room, the
new thing wearing my flesh had completely sloughed off the
inhibitions of Richard Coldiron, packed that weakness away in
hidden closets, booked me a room in the Bone
apartment, usually inspired by the television shows that I refused
to watch.
Perhaps this was a normal life. Perhaps we
could have gone on this way for years, until I went away to college
and studied literature and learned how to write a best-selling
novel by offering witty autobiographical insights. Then I could
have bought my parents a cottage on the Massachusetts seashore, one
with an extra guest room to serve as a liquor cabinet. They could
sip their golden years away in dark rooms until their tired blood
gave out and the sun rose one morning over the Atlantic to shine in
on their waxen corpses.
Then I could come up and carry the boxes of
everything they were into the light. I could air out their photo
albums and the yellowing wedding lace and the aviator mask
collection. I could dig through the stained love letters and the
cat postcards and the wrinkled brown bag of buffalo nickels. Then I
would reach the bottom and find that it all added up to nothing. I
would gather the scraps of their lives and dump them in the gray
rubbish can at the corner of the driveway, put up a "For Sale" sign
on their memories, and continue on up the stairs to my own attic
and its dusty boxes.
But such an easy decay would have been
anticlimactic, right? It would have violated our unwritten
contract, our symbiotic relationship, our mutual understanding that
we are both creating this adventure with every word and each
sentence and every acceptance of a lie. We're equally complicit,
and equally guilty.
I'm not very good at keeping secrets, and
you're not very good at minding your own business. Because this is
as close as you'll ever get to being inside my head, and you want
more. And I need you because otherwise I will never know I was
me.
We're in this together, all of us. All the
way.
You probably won’t believe what happened
next, but I may as well tell you anyway, since we’ve come this
far.
Plus it involves sex and violence.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I killed the son of a bitch.
Father was on the fiery edge of a binge,
scorching the night like a garlic dragon. His boots were itching to
dance. He was Fred Astaire on angel dust, Jekyll's Hyde
masquerading as Gene Kelly, a Saturday-night-feverish John Travolta
channeling Hitler’s goose-stepping storm troopers.
Mother caught the brunt of his wrath on her
bony shoulders, so incapacitated herself that she couldn't lift a
flaccid arm in her own defense. His blows rained down on her, a
blistering storm, a torrent of fists and feet. I listened from my
bedroom, tingling from the electric tension of his thunder.
His slaps rang though the air like a whip
flogging a dented piece of sheet metal. Mother moaned and
whimpered, too dehydrated to cry. I ran into the living room and
saw her on the floor, leaning against the couch, a thick trickle of
pink saliva running from one corner of her mouth, her dark hair
greasy with sweat like the mane of a horse that had been ridden too
hard.
Father stood over her, his fists quivering.
They were clenched so tightly he could have squeezed blood from a
concrete block. He brought his boot down and Mother collapsed like
a wet shoebox. He began stamping tattoos on her mealy flesh, urging
fresh vintages from the juice of her veins. He danced as if the
devil himself were calling the tune.
I went to the kitchen and drew out the rusty
blade that fit my palm like a lover's slender hand. It was the same
knife that had dealt with Angel Baby. I was fourteen now, not a kid
anymore. I was as strong as a weed, as wiry as an oak, as
unforgiving as the January wind.
I moved through the wreckage of the living
room. With each step, I left Richard Allen Coldiron behind. The
closer I got to the man who had given me life, the farther I was
from son he had made. By the time I'd crossed the living room, the
new thing wearing my flesh had completely sloughed off the
inhibitions of Richard Coldiron, packed that weakness away in
hidden closets, booked me a room in the Bone
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