Read Online Mud Vein by Tarryn Fisher - Free Book Online

on his skin. The strange way his eyes burned. That was my peek down the rabbit hole. The other Isaac, like the other mother in Coraline . He’s at thirty- three pieces. He’s pretty good.
    “Maybe that’s why you’re here,” he says, without looking up. “Because you were honest.”
    I wait awhile before I say-”What do you mean?”
    Fifty
    “I saw the hype around your book. I remember walking into the hospital and seeing people reading it in waiting rooms. I even saw someone reading it at the grocery store once. Pushing her cart and reading like she couldn’t put it down. I was proud of you.”
    I don’t know how I feel about him being proud of me. He barely knows me. It feels condescending, but then it doesn’t. Isaac isn’t really a condescending guy. He’s equal parts humble and slightly awkward about receiving praise. I saw it in the hospital. As soon as anyone started saying good things about him, his eyes would get shifty and he’d look for an escape route. He was all clickety-clack, don’t look back.
    Sixty two pieces.
    “So how did that get me here?”
    “Thirty minutes,” he says.
    “What?”
    “It’s been thirty minutes. Time for a shot.”
    He stands up and opens the cabinet where we keep the liquor. We keep finding hidden bottles. The rum was in a Ziploc bag in the sack of rice.
    “Whiskey or rum?”
    “Rum,” I say. “I’m sick of whiskey.”
    He grabs two clean coffee mugs and pours our shots. I drink mine before he’s even had time to pick up his mug. I smack my lips together as it rolls down my throat. At least it’s not the cheap stuff.
    “Well?” I demand. “How did it get me here?”
    “I don’t know,” he finally says. He finds the piece he’s looking for and joins it to the ear of his deer. “But I’d be stupid to think this wasn’t a fan. It’s that or there is one other option.”
    His voice drops off and I know what he’s thinking.
    “I don’t think it was him,” I rush. I pour myself a voluntary shot.
    I don’t have much of an alcohol tolerance and I haven’t eaten anything today. My head does a little flipsy doosey as the alcohol runs down my throat. I watch his fingers slide, clip into place, slide, search, slide…
    100 pieces.
    I pick up my first piece, the one with the bulldog.
    “You know,” Isaac says. “My bike never did grow wings.”
    The rum has curbed my vinegar and loosened the muscles in my face. I fold my features into a version of shock mock and Isaac cracks up.
    “No, I don’t suppose it did. Birds are the only things that grow wings. We’re just left to muck through the mire like a bunch of emotional cave men.”
    “Not if you have someone to carry you.”
    No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. I read a book about that once. A bunch of drivel about two people who kept coming back to each other. The lead male says that to the girl he keeps letting get away. I had to put the book down. No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. It’s a concept smart authors feed to their readers. It’s slow poison; you make them believe it’s real, and it keeps them coming back for more. Love is cocaine. And I know this because I had a brief and exciting relationship with blow. It kept my knife-to-skin addiction at bay for a little while. And then I woke up one day and decided I was pathetic—sucking powder up my nose to deal with my mommy issues. I’d rather bleed her out than suck her in. So I went back to cutting. Anyway … love and coke. The consequences for both are expensive: you get a mighty fine high, then you come barreling down, regretting every hour you spent reveling in something so dangerous. But you go back for more. You always go back for more. Unless you’re me. Then you lock yourself away and write stories about it. Boo-hoo. Boo fucking hoo.
    “Humans weren’t made to carry someone else’s weight. We can barely lift our own.” Even as I say it, I don’t entirely believe it.