A memory. Before I was chicken tenders coming right up. I have a mental illness so you should probably read this. One night my wife and I had trouble agreeing on a movie to watch. Monica wanted to see Hannah and Her Sisters, but I was insisting on Faces of Death for the 50th time. In our family, we compromise, so we watched Cannibal Holocaust. When the film (I don’t watch movies—I watch films) was finished, Monica got up and went to the bathroom. After 10 minutes, she hadn’t come back down, so I went upstairs to check on her. No responses to the knock. No responses to my voice, a gentle to a stern whisper, finally a shout, then a swift spur claw to the doorknob and door swings open I see my wife shooting up heroin. Her eyes are lolling in the back of her head and she’s blissed out, unconscious but clearly not dead. I thought, hmm, maybe I should call an ambulance much? But nah, I was just like, hey, my wife was just trying to have a good time, you know? Then so I like took her in to the hospital or whatever and was like, yo, resuscitate my girl fam. They were all bugging like yoooo, Quibbits got insurance? Nah? Aight, peace. We good. Y’all got her sewn up for nothing but I gotta mothafuckin’ copay? Suck my hack, cock. Fuckin’ motherfuckin’ cockers, all y’all hospital mothafuckers I hate y’all I hope you get a disease in that fuckin’ germ den yo. I hope you get brain cancer and kill yourself.
They say I been in here for six weeks but I’m just like nah, shit. It ain’t about that. It ain’t about how much time you have in sobriety, it’s about your state of mind and your perception, yo. What if I been in here four years and I’m sneaking in some Vicodin? You gonna shoot me, you? I’ll fuck you up, ese. Fuck y’all. I know they say, like, submitting to a higher power is like an essential part of recovery, but it’s like, yo, I’m good. I got my girl here, my seltzer water, my nest, my considerable political and business connections. We outcha. Like, I will get your girl. Don’t even worry about it, mang.
•••
“Mrs. Quibbits?”
“Yes?”
“You can come up to the office now.”
“Thank you.”
Monica said down in the doctor’s office and considered the bulging file on her husband sitting on the desk. “Rooster hasn’t completed any of the mandatory requirements of the program so far. He’s still in a psychotic delusional state.”
“Oh dear… oh my…”
“He’s not been particularly responsive to treatment, so I’m afraid we’re going to have to shitcan him and send an order out for Cisco.”
“Excuse me?”
“To pick up for chicken. I mean, you know, he’s not much use to you now, right? Bit of a nuisance, really. We’re just trying to help the hungry.”
Monica was out of that chair like a bullet and all up in the doctor’s face. She spur-clawed his jugular and he started spraying all over the office. She finally understood what drove her husband to kill those nurses in Bermuda. It wasn’t out of rage; it was love. She gripped his head with her claws and banged it into his desk for good measure, and started thinking about the rest of her life, a life she would share with Rooster, no matter his condition.
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