Soulless Bug by Eric Richer
from TIGHTROPE: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series
Need to calm down.
Should never have looked at her Facebook.
She’s found someone.
Whether she’s cycling, working out, jogging or baking, some hipster asshole is in every photo now, grinning like a retard behind her.
It didn’t take long.
I should have expected it, but damn it hasn’t even been six months!
Calm down.
Think about yourself a little.
Get out the rope.
Come on.
What? Did she manage to make you feel guilty about that? You’re not doing anything wrong, you know, it’s just your thing. You did it before her, and you’ll do it after, that’s all.
Okay, where did I put it? Don’t act like you don’t know. You know perfectly well where it is.
In the wardrobe. In one of the shoe boxes.
I wake the dog when I enter the bedroom. The bastard sleeps in my bed as soon as I look away.
- Go back to sleep, lazybones, I just came to get something.
Kneeling in front of the cupboard, I inspect each box in search of my precious, as Gollum would say.
The dog finally gets up and even wants to play. I let him know he’s leaving me alone with a nudge of my heel. Then I found what I was looking for under my old walking shoes: The rope, and the blue silk scarf she had given me.
My father’s revolver is right below. The other thing she didn’t want to be here.
Since she hated guns, I made her believe I’d thrown it into the river. She found it romantic at the time, that I’d part with a family heirloom like that, out of love. We had sex right afterward, and from that evening on she no longer wanted to strangle me, neither by hand, nor with the scarf, and even less with the rope. She said it was more than a perverse inclination, that it was dangerous and unhealthy, and that it would end badly one day.
I take the rope and the scarf and return to the living room, where I’ve fixed my pull-up bar. I loop the rope over it, tie my expert sailor’s knots, adjust the scarf around my neck to avoid marks when a kind of earwig pops out from under my TV stand. The bug darts toward the kitchen, and has the misfortune of passing between my feet. In a pure reflex gesture I squash it on the spot. No. I set it free, cause I’m convinced that every living being has a soul, even this mindless insect.
I used to let them run around the apartment before cause I know they feed on dust mites, but she couldn’t stand the sight of them. She would have nervous breakdowns when she saw one, we argued a lot about that. So I agreed to kill them, but not without saying a little prayer for each one first, like Have a good trip, bug, no regrets, this life isn’t so peachy after all, so good luck for the next one. She used to laugh at me when I did that.
Come on, focus, don’t think about her anymore, she’s not worth it.
I reposition myself under the bar, start bending my knees like a gunslinger, then let myself hang.
My muscles have lost the habit of the ritual.
It’s gonna take time.
It’s gonna take time but I don’t care cause I have plenty to spare, and too bad if it leaves marks...
That fucking dog. Now he slips between my legs and drops the gun at my feet like a ball.
I choose to ignore him because if I talk to him I’m screwed. I close my eyes to avoid his gaze and try to stop thinking, when a noise disturbs me.
Crack, crack, crack.
At first I think about the rope, then realize it’s coming from the ground so I open my eyes and see the dog nibbling at the gun grip in front of me.
Have fun, lazybones, I don’t mind, cause it’s my moment now anyway, here it goes, do what you...
The shot goes off just as I was about to come.
The dog must have coked the hammer while chewing on the revolver.
I hear him squealing in the bedroom. The sound scared the hell out of him.
Took me away too.
Fuck.
So close.
I stand up, then see my brains dripping from the ceiling like in a bad gore movie.
So I turn around and contemplate my half-naked body hanging from the end of the rope, with a hole in my cheek like another nostril and a gaping cavity at the top of my skull.
Worst part of all this is that I’m still here the next day, floating in the room like a cloud of dust particles, stupidly suspended in the air.
In the kitchen the mutt is begging for his food. Nevermind, I’m looking for a trail. I’m looking for the bug, even though it’s pretty pointless now cause I’m sure I saw it leave yesterday, passing through the ceiling to more kinder worlds, while I remain stuck here, questioning the existence of my very own soul.
Eric Richer was born in France in 1971. He grew up with 7 dogs, read a lot,
studied cinema, worked in movie theaters as a projectionist and went to Japan. There he made a documentary (Kamo River), came back, returned in the darkness of the projection booths and started writing. His first two novels, La Rouille (The Rust, 2018) and Tiger (2021) were published by L’Ogre Editions. He is currently working hard on the next ones.
This is THE BOMB.
Very disturbing, well written story.