Read The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko for Free Online Page A

we all have a story here. But I quickly learned that Nabokov was right when he said the world needs happy endings, no matter how unethical.
    As a cripple confined to a wheelchair, and consequently severely limited as to my means of releasing anger, I typically resort to prankery as my primary method for expressing difficult emotions. So, one gray day, the kind that leaves even a whole person questioning the meaning of life, I found myself caught amid the dreary mood I was already in, next to an interview between an Irish journalist named Nigel—whose accent I found like sandpaper to my Hui * —and Ridick. Though I did not understand a word of the English they spit back and forth, I found myself wanting to tear both of their heads clear off their necks. Logistically, this was an impossibility, once again, given the limitations of my physical body. So instead I took one of the ketchup packets I had stolen from the pantry earlier that day, opened it up with my teeth, and squirted the contents into my mouth. Then I whisked the mixture up with my tongue (one of my few perfectly functioning organs) until it had a nice homogeneous consistency, which could easily be mistaken for blood. Then I started convulsing like I was possessed by Caligula’s ghost.
    As I expected, the good doctor leaped over to me while the carnivorous cameras panned over to the spectacle. In an effort of heroic proportions, Ridick pulled me out of my chair, laid me flat on the ground, and leaned in to protect my thrashing head. And as soon as his furled brow got close enough, his eyes poring over me, searching for a clue as to why my body had just turned into a Mexican jumping bean, I coughed the pseudoblood into his face. The cameras got in nice and close and caught everything like sick little robots. Ridick, who I expected would run for the hills, continued to hold my thrashing head as the cocktail of ketchup and spit dripped off his chin and into my agape mouth.
    Then the cameras disappeared, and all the thrashing turned into a vibratory hum in the background, and it was only his eyes and mine. It occurred to me that his priority was protecting my spastic head, and not the repulsive fluids that were spreading over his face. At that moment, I remember hearing Frank Sinatra singing “As Time Goes By,” which he once sang during TV hour. Perhaps all my thrashing jostled that particular memory loose. Eventually, the ambient sounds of the room fell away until nothing was left but the song and Ridick’s own Sinatra-brand blue eyes. As if it weren’t even my choice, my convulsions slowed and eventually stopped altogether, until my head fell to one side and I started to sob. Two parts shame and one part self-pity, it was the only time I felt loved by anyone besides Natalya.
    At some point, Ridick must have smelled the ketchup, because his vise grip on my head softened, and he wiped the spit and tomato from his face. He could have left me on the floor crying like an idiot. He could have left me in a cave of shame. He could have called a nurse to have me subjected to a battery of psychological evaluations. Instead, he continued to hold me, which made me blubber mercilessly.
    The cameras caught everything. It is entirely possible, Reader, that you have already witnessed the scene I just described. You would be sitting on a couch with your loved one(s) in front of a TV in the comfort of your pasteurized living rooms. The scene would end and the program would cut to commercial, and the awkward silence would prompt you to turn to each other to say words about me. I often muse about what those words might be.
    At some point, I must have fallen asleep, right there on the cold floor, because I woke up the next morning in my bed. After wiping away my dried tear crust, I found a white ball with red stitching next to my bed, signed with indecipherable squiggles. It was resting on a note written in very poor Russian, which intended to say:
    Dear