Free Sheep and Wolves by Jeremy C. Shipp Page A

Jordon’s funeral, but doesn’t seem to matter. I remember anyway.
    Then I take the wet wad of card out of my mouth. “You do want me to eat these, right?”
    “Obviously,” the man says, looking smaller all of a sudden.
    It goes on like this. He commands me and I obey. I eat letters and gifts and even my teddy bear. Aunt Laura would have tried to talk me out of it if she wasn’t so dead.
    I dissect my room, devouring all the vital organs. I feel sick to my stomach, the way I felt at the birthday party right after I laughed. I laughed because I knew Jordon couldn’t die. I laughed because I already imagined us laughing about it over a couple steaming bowls of chili.
    “I need to shit,” I say.
    “Not yet,” the little man says. “You’ve got to eat me first.”
    “I don’t want to.”
    He waves the gun. “It’s either you or me.”
    I hold him by the arm and lift him in front of my face. After all this, I guess I expect him to be happy. Instead, he looks as afraid as I feel.
    His mustache falls off. Without it, he sort of looks like me.
    I can’t say that I’m surprised, but I pretend that I am, for my own benefit.
    I lift him higher and he says, “Damn it!”
    “What?” I say.
    “I dislocated my shoulder. Never mind. Hurry up and do it.”
    So I do.
    As his brittle bones snap and crunch in my mouth and his sweet blood oozes down my throat, I feel like a monster. Not so monstrous that I don’t recognize the human in me.
    Just monstrous enough.
    As for the gun, I forgot all about it, and it pops in my mouth, blowing out not one of my teeth.
    Still, it’s my turn to die. And not the kind that keeps you guessing.
    The kind you can’t take back.
    It’s cheaper than therapy.

Camp
     
    My muscles tighten. My teeth clench. My irritable bowel is seriously pissed off.
    I’m no good at sitting.
    “Hold it together,” my dad tells me. Not physically here, of course, but why would that stop him? Hold it together—that’s easy for him to say. He’s made of steel bars and rivets and bolts. Me, I’m held together with Elmer’s glue and pushpins and chewing gum.
    Memories vibrate. They fall and crack open.
    A few years ago I shit my pants on this very same two and a half hour bus ride. With liquid crap trickling down my legs, I stumbled toward the bus driver. In tears. In shame.
    I begged him to take me home, but he said, “Sit down!”
    I told him that I was sick, and he laughed at me and said, “No kidding,” but I won’t shit my pants this time. Even if I do, I’ll handle it. I’m bigger and stronger and smarter than I used to be. My dad made sure of that.
    Another memory falls off the shelf and smashes on the floor. My first memory.
    In this one, I watch my neighbor’s pet rabbit kick frantically inside a blender until its legs are too mangled to even tremble anymore.
    “This game sucks,” Nigel says, beside me, tapping at his phone/camera/mp3 player/game console/everything else.
    “Can I play for a while?” I say.
    “It doesn’t suck that much.”
    I’ve never seen or spoken with Nigel outside of Camp and the bus ride to and from, but I still consider him one of my best friends. Mainly because I don’t have all that many.
    Nigel’s a troublemaker and sort of a jerk, and that’s why I like him.
    “You know, they’re going to confiscate that,” I say.
    “Not unless I keep it in my ass,” he says. “They won’t check my ass. Not without probable cause anyway.”
    “That’s sick. Would you really do that?”
    “You’d have to help me.”
    “You’re sick.”
    “No kidding.”
    *
    Once again I’m stuck in the top bunk, despite the fact that I called bottom the moment Nigel and I entered the cabin. I remind him that last year I fell off the top bunk during a night terror and suffered a mild concussion. I also remind him that he promised me on the life of Katherine the Great, his pet C hihuahua , that this year I could have the bottom.
    “She died two months ago,” he says.