Dead Humans by Andrew Borgstrom
“He said he was going to do terrible things to my children and make me watch”
Fiction by Andrew Borgstram
an excerpt...
He said he was going to do terrible things to my children and make me watch. Actually, he said, “Make me watches.” Turns out, he didn’t do anything to my children. Turns out, he bought us all watches. He wasn’t my father but my father tries telling us the watches were a gift from him, passed down from his father. Our new watches from a former enemy have become our family relic. What my father would eventually pass on to us was his disease.
The doctor said his body was going to do terrible things to his body and make us watch. Actually, he said we could pay someone else to watch if we preferred. I remember how to tell time when I look at my watch. I remember how my father used the same deodorant all those years but never had the same haircut. I remember how he still had his first deodorant lid, how each time he bought a new container of deodorant, he would throw away the new lid and replace it with the old, with the original lid.
They teach you the importance of consistency in marketing. How your customers feel about change and how likely they are to change if you change. We had a new son that my former enemy never knew and never promised to do terrible things to while he made my family watches. Our new son found a plastic watch in a cereal box. My father invented cereal.
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ANDREW BORGSTROM is the author of Meat Is All (Mud Luscious, 2011) and Explanations (The Cupboard, 2010). His recent work appears in The Chattahoochee Review, Black Warrior Review, and &NOW Awards: Best Innovative Writing.
He lives in the desert.
[Author Photo, courtesy the author; Story image, courtesy StorkCustom]