Read Online Pile of Bones by Bailey Cunningham - Free Book Online Page B

return?”
    You know.
    He swallowed. “Okay. I accept.”
    The salamander paused, one claw still on his chest.
You are certain?
    “Yes. Do it.”
    The claw sliced him open. He screamed. The salamander reached both paws into his chest, tugging on the sides of the incision. It grew, until it was large enough to accommodate the lizard’s head. Andrew gasped as it pushed its way inside him.
    Everything must go.
    He woke up sweating. He couldn’t catch his breath. There was a dull pain in his chest, which he tried not to think about. Surely it was indigestion. Nothing a little ginger ale couldn’t fix. There wasn’t actually a lizard setting up shop in his chest cavity. He swallowed around the dry lump in his throat. Coffee first, with a ginger ale chaser. That seemed like the healthiest option. He got out of bed and made his way to the living room.
    Their drive back from the park had been curiously silent. Carl dozed in the backseat, and Shelby kept her eyes on the road. The white noise of the wipers put everyone in a trance. He remembered watching fat drops of rain strike the window, Albert Street a blur of trees in shadow. Then there was the silence of the house, a short fall into the empty bed. Sleep as heavy as hemlock, until the salamander dream.
    He argued with the coffeemaker. Once the green light was on, and he was sure it wouldn’t explode, he allowed himself to look at the pile of marking. Professor Laclos had asked his students to write about the problem of obscurity in Old English literature. Most of the short essays began with a
Webster’s
definition of
obscurity
, followed by spliced Wikipedia articles pertaining to various topics. One student had written on
Hamlet
, firmly believing that Shakespeare was alive and well in the ninth century. He moved that essay to the bottom.
    There comes a time—usually during the second semester of a master’s degree—when all graduate students ask themselves the same question:
Why am I doing this?
It wasa more neurotic version of the poet Rilke’s question:
Must I write?
If you answered in the affirmative, it meant that you were a writer. But Rilke never asked:
Must I write a thesis?
The desire to be an academic was poorly understood. Andrew didn’t fully know why he’d chosen to pursue graduate studies. Complicating things just seemed to be what he was good at.
    Carl and Shelby had more obvious connections to academia. Carl was one of those kids who’d started watching the History Channel when he was six years old, entranced by animated reenactments of siege warfare. Shelby’s mother was head of the Cree Languages Department, and she’d practically grown up in the translucent corridors of First Peoples University. Andrew had no such pedigree. For as long as he could remember, his father had managed a used furniture store. His mother lived in various places, none of them nearby. She was an avid reader, as evidenced by the funny, well-written postcards that she sent him. The rest of his family held reasonable jobs, which granted them things that he still regarded as magical: dental benefits, deductible prescriptions, vacation time. They smiled kindly when he described whatever paper he was working on, like you do when someone tells you they want to become a graphic designer.
    He sat down at his kitchen table, separating the essays into piles of ten. They remained sinister, and so he divided them again into piles of five.
Mark five, and you can do something fun, like watch a commercial or go to the bathroom.
    When he was first applying to graduate school, he’d asked for reference letters from a number of surprised college professors. They were surprised because he’d barely spoken in class, and most of his essays, while competently written, had been late and off-topic. When he’d asked his favorite professor what the hardest part of her job was, she’d replied, without hesitation: “Marking. It’s like yard work. It never gets easier, and you always have to do