Read Online The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka - Free Book Online

you?’ the frog asked the farmer.
    â€œThe farmer was amazed. He said, ‘I am the owner of this farm.’
    â€œâ€˜You call your world farm ?’ the frog said.
    â€œâ€˜No, this is not a different world,’ the farmer said. ‘This is the same world.’
    â€œThe frog laughed at the farmer. He said, ‘I have swum to every corner of my world. North, south, east, west. I am telling you, this is a different world.’”
    I looked at Satvik and said nothing.
    â€œYou and I,” Satvik said, “we are still frogs in the well. Can I ask you a question?”
    â€œGo ahead.”
    â€œYou do not want to drink?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI am curious, what you said with the gun, that you’d shoot yourself if you drank…”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œYou did not drink on those days you said that?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    Satvik paused as if considering his words carefully. “Then why did you not just say that every day?”
    â€œThat is simple,” I said. “Because then I’d be dead now.”

 
    10
    When I was four, I stepped on a fire ant’s nest in the backyard and was stung nearly a dozen times. The ants crawled up my pant legs and got lodged at the elastic waistband where they could climb no higher, and so stung me again and again in a ring around my waist and on my thighs and calves. I remember my mother shouting and stripping me naked in the grass while I screamed—shaking the ants loose from my clothes, crinkly red insects lodged in my flesh.
    Inside the house she tore open cigarettes and placed the tobacco on the stings, holding them in place with Band-Aids.
    â€œTo draw the poison out,” she said. And I marveled at her skills. She always knew just what to do.
    I sat on the couch, watching the old TV until my aunt came to babysit. My mother had a dinner party to attend, and Father was meeting her there after work.
    â€œGo,” my aunt told her. “He’ll be fine.” And so my mother left. I stood in the window and watched her car pull down the driveway. She was gone.
    But minutes later, I heard keys in the door. My mother had come back, and though my aunt frowned and shooed her away, she would not leave.
    â€œYou need to go,” my aunt said. “It’s a company party.” But my mother only waved her off and sat next to me on the couch. “There’ll be others,” she said. Though there never were. “I can’t leave.”
    She held me as we watched the nature channel for the next hour while my stomach cramped, and the pain grew, and my legs purpled and swelled and wept.
    *   *   *
    Satvik and I left for the night, and I found myself in my car, hesitating at a green light. I idled in the left lane, watching the light turn yellow, then red. I turned my car around. I returned to the lab and climbed the stairs and looked at the machine. Some wounds you cannot leave. My mother had shown me that.
    I ran the experiment one final time. Hit PRINT . I put the results in two folders without looking at them.
    On the first folder, I wrote the words detector results. On the second, I wrote screen results.
    I drove home to the motel. I took off my clothes. Stood naked in front of the mirror, imagining my place in the indeterminate system.
    According to David Bohm, quantum physics requires reality to be a nonlocal phenomenon. Deep in the quantum milieu, location no longer manifests, every point merging to equivalence—a single, concordant frequency domain. Bohm’s implicate order that lives beneath everything.
    I put the folder marked detector results up to my forehead. “I will never look at this,” I said. “Not ever, unless I start drinking again.” I stared in the mirror. I stared at my own gunmetal eyes and saw that I meant it.
    I glanced down at my desk, at the other folder. The one with the screen results. My hands shook.
    I laid the