meat+drink Read online

  i tell edmund everything that i can think of. i think perhaps it will do something to keep him sane, or stop him from going any madder. or perhaps i think that it will stop me from doing the same.

  either way i do not think it is working.

  * * *

  last night i went out dressed in a skirt and a blouse that i bought with some of the money i hid from bill. they were short and tight and if my meat was flesh i would have been cold. i put on lipstick but could not manage the eye-liner, not even with edmund helping me, lining up my hand against my face, so he rubbed it off. but still he told me that i looked good, or that he thought i did. it is the most that he has spoken in a long time and i was happy to hear him though i was not sure that he was right.

  but i knew that i looked fine when i got to the bar and the bouncer let me in even though i didn’t have any id and even though i am only seventeen. i mean my flesh was only seventeen. i do not know what my meat is anymore.

  it was very loud inside, the meat can hear things that the flesh cannot and for a moment it was so loud and there was so much flesh seething around me, flesh covering drink, that i wanted to run out screaming.

  i did not do that. instead i went to the counter and i ordered a beer. of course i did not drink any of it.

  the first man who came to talk to me was young and when i looked at him the drink ran bright into his face and he could not look back at me and he stumbled over his words. i was rude to him and soon he left.

  the second man was older and pockmarked and drunk and he he put his hand on my meat almost as soon as he saw me. meat cannot become angry as flesh can but after that at least i did not so much mind doing what i was going to do. he bought me two whiskeys and did not notice that i didn’t drink either. i thought his smile was ugly and mean and not really a smile at all. i asked if he would like to come home with me.

  his car was dented and he did not open my door. when i told him where i lived he sucked his teeth and said something about the ghetto and told him he would take me back to his house, but i insisted. he did not like that but i put my meat onto his flesh and he groaned and panted and after a while he turned the car on and began to drive. on the way over he said stupid things that i did not pay any attention to.

  he did not like the look of my house but i touched him again and after a while he let me drag him outside. when the door opened and he saw some of what was inside he became frightened, and he tried to run but i did not let him.

  edmund drank first. for once there was enough for everyone.

  almost.

  About the Author

  Author of the critically-acclaimed Low Town series, Daniel Polansky was born in Baltimore in 1984. He was living in Brooklyn when he wrote this, but by the time you read it he might be somewhere else. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2016 by Daniel Polansky

  Art copyright © 2016 by Jeffrey Alan Love