Read Online Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bret Easton Ellis
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by the winds and I was tired and my sisters were fighting and I was on the way back home when I saw what I thought was a bonfire from about a mile down the highway, but as I drove closer I saw that it wasn’t a bonfire but a Toyota parked at this strange, crooked angle, its hood open, flames pouring out of the engine. The front windshield was smashed open and a Mexican woman was sitting on the curb, on the side of the highway, crying. There were two or three kids, Mexican also, standing behind her, staring at the fire, gaping at the rising flames, and I was wondering why there were no other cars out to stop or help. My sisters stopped fighting and told me to stop the car so that they could watch. I had an urge to stop, but I didn’t. I slowed down, and then drove quickly away and pushed back in the tape my sisters had taken out when they first saw the flames, and turned it up, loud, and drove through every red light until I got back to our house
.
I don’t know why the fire bothered me, but it did, and I had these visions of a child, not yet dead, lying across the flames, burning. Maybe some kid, thrown through the windshield and who’d fallen onto the engine, and I asked my sisters if they thought they saw a kid burning, melting, on the engine and they said no, did you?, neato, and I checked the papers the next day to make sure there hadn’t been one. And later that same night I sat out by the pool, thinking about it until I finally fell asleep, but not before the power went out due to the wind and the pool went black
.
And I remember that at that time I started collecting all these newspaper clippings; one about some twelve-year-old kid who accidentally shot his brother in Chino; another about a guy in Indio who nailed his kid to a wall, or a door, I can’t remember, and then shot him, point-blank in the face, and one about a fire at a home for the elderly that killed twenty and one about a housewife who while driving her children home from school flew off this eighty-foot embankment near San Diego, instantly killing herself and the three kids and one about a man who calmly and purposefully ran over his ex-wife somewhere near Reno, paralyzing her below the neck. I collected a lot of clippings during that time because, I guess, there were a lot to be collected
.
I t’s a Saturday night and on some Saturday nights when there’s not a party to go to and no concerts around town and everyone’s seen all the movies, most people stay at home and invite friends over and talk on the phone. Sometimes someone will drop by and talk and have a drink and then get back into his car and drive over to somebody else’s house. On some Saturday nights there’ll be three or four people who drive from one house to another. Who drive from about ten on Saturday night until just before dawn the next morning. Trent stops by and tells me about how “a couple of hysterical J.A.P.’s” in Bel Air have seen what they called some kind of monster, talk of a werewolf. One of their friends has supposedly disappeared. There’s a search party in Bel Airtonight and they’ve found nothing except—and now Trent grins—the body of a mutilated dog. The “J.A.P.’s,” who Trent says are “really out of their heads,” went to spend the night at a friend’s house in Encino. Trent says that the J.A.P.’s probably drank too much Tab, had some kind of allergic reaction. Maybe, I say, but the story makes me uneasy. After Trent leaves I try to call Julian, but there’s no answer and I wonder where he could be and after I hang the phone up, I’m pretty sure I can hear someone screaming in the house next to us, down the canyon, and I close my window. I can also hear the dog barking out in back and KROQ is playing old Doors songs and War of the Worlds is on channel thirteen and I switch it to some religious program where this preacher is yelling “Let God use you. God wants to use you. Lie back and let him use you, use you.” “Lie back,”
.
I don’t know why the fire bothered me, but it did, and I had these visions of a child, not yet dead, lying across the flames, burning. Maybe some kid, thrown through the windshield and who’d fallen onto the engine, and I asked my sisters if they thought they saw a kid burning, melting, on the engine and they said no, did you?, neato, and I checked the papers the next day to make sure there hadn’t been one. And later that same night I sat out by the pool, thinking about it until I finally fell asleep, but not before the power went out due to the wind and the pool went black
.
And I remember that at that time I started collecting all these newspaper clippings; one about some twelve-year-old kid who accidentally shot his brother in Chino; another about a guy in Indio who nailed his kid to a wall, or a door, I can’t remember, and then shot him, point-blank in the face, and one about a fire at a home for the elderly that killed twenty and one about a housewife who while driving her children home from school flew off this eighty-foot embankment near San Diego, instantly killing herself and the three kids and one about a man who calmly and purposefully ran over his ex-wife somewhere near Reno, paralyzing her below the neck. I collected a lot of clippings during that time because, I guess, there were a lot to be collected
.
I t’s a Saturday night and on some Saturday nights when there’s not a party to go to and no concerts around town and everyone’s seen all the movies, most people stay at home and invite friends over and talk on the phone. Sometimes someone will drop by and talk and have a drink and then get back into his car and drive over to somebody else’s house. On some Saturday nights there’ll be three or four people who drive from one house to another. Who drive from about ten on Saturday night until just before dawn the next morning. Trent stops by and tells me about how “a couple of hysterical J.A.P.’s” in Bel Air have seen what they called some kind of monster, talk of a werewolf. One of their friends has supposedly disappeared. There’s a search party in Bel Airtonight and they’ve found nothing except—and now Trent grins—the body of a mutilated dog. The “J.A.P.’s,” who Trent says are “really out of their heads,” went to spend the night at a friend’s house in Encino. Trent says that the J.A.P.’s probably drank too much Tab, had some kind of allergic reaction. Maybe, I say, but the story makes me uneasy. After Trent leaves I try to call Julian, but there’s no answer and I wonder where he could be and after I hang the phone up, I’m pretty sure I can hear someone screaming in the house next to us, down the canyon, and I close my window. I can also hear the dog barking out in back and KROQ is playing old Doors songs and War of the Worlds is on channel thirteen and I switch it to some religious program where this preacher is yelling “Let God use you. God wants to use you. Lie back and let him use you, use you.” “Lie back,”
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