Foam Rifle Didn’t Know She Wasn’t There
Dry as his
eyes were, the princeling pomegranate, lank and tall like a single stalk of
wheat, yet could focus, bullseye in, on the year gone by.
“A year,”
he thought, “A whole year gone by since that day. I remember it distinctly. To be so old that one can play with years
like discrete building blocks…” he trailed away before he began speaking
commonplaces, which he feared, of course, being a spider plug’s son.
“You’re not
that old. You’re a young man yet.” Dynah
reminded him. To be reminded, however,
is to have something you already know thrust before your consciousness. Did Rectomike already know that he was still
(relatively speaking) young? Did he only
realize it, distinctions being made between these two aspects of knowing? Certainly he felt old as he examined the
illuminated outline of the woman’s corpse.
“Shot with
a foam rifle,” judged one of the police.
“Really.” Rectomike rose to his full height again. “Really.” He slapped the word on the table like a wet
cut of meat. He wanted to say it again
and again, to make a wet, slapping noise with that word until it became evident
to a police type person even that he already knew it was a foam rifle, that everybody
knew it was a foam rifle already.
“What they don’t
know,” Anthony confided to a fellow doodah, “Is if a foam rifle is made
of foam, or if it shoots foam, in some form or another.”
“Anthony,”
I said, deadly as a cobra’s fart, “Don’t come into one of my stories ever
again.”
.
