Read Thy Neighbor for Free Online Page B

voice in my head. Focus. The desired goal is to get him to stop.
    â€œGreat. Thanks for that detail,” I said. “Why are you doing it in here? Did we not discuss this?”
    I pointed upstairs.
    He sighed impatiently.
    â€œThe light’s better.”
    â€œThe light’s better? Jesus, God!”
    I was losing my tenuous cool and starting to sound uncannily like my father berating my teenage self.
    â€œWhat does
that
have to do with anything?” I raged.
    â€œThe pictures, moron. I gotta be able to see the tits. Plus there’s instructions.”
    Something in me went slack and fell. This was my mother’s kitchen, full of clean memories and pleasant smells. A hallowed place. I wasn’t going to run and put my head under a pillow while Dave repainted it.
    But what to do? Rubber gloves and possibly a dust mask were under the sink. Hugely inadequate, but it was a start, and it was all I had.
    I mean, who foresees this kind of invasion? In the kitchen.
    Who allows it?
    I was just working up the gumption to make a move when Dave said:
    â€œExcretasex.”
    He looked up at me, nodding conclusively, as if this newly minted term of art would make the purpose of this shitshow abundantly clear.
    I froze anew, stunned. Staring, but seeing nothing.
    Dave mistook this torpor for rapt attention, and added, “Don’t you know? It’s right here in the mag. I thought you’d read this.”
    He paused to catch his breath, then pecked with his nose at the annotated centerfold in front of him.
    â€œâ€˜The male’s ultimate release.’ It’s all about prostate stimulation or some shit.” He giggled. “No pun, dude. Anyway, blowing both valves at once, fire hydrant style. Siamese connection. Fuckin’ rocks.”
    And sure enough—I hadn’t noticed this before, coming, as I had, upon this truly sadistic scene from behind—he was wanking like a sport fisherman. Our parlay hadn’t even put him off his stroke. It seemed only to have encouraged him. He was breathing harder and faster, rocking on his knees and grunting.
    He had turned his now grimacing face half away from me again and was eyeballing the magazine sidelong at close range, snorting feverishly as if it were a scratch ’n’ sniff.
    That’s when I snapped, and some mortally, maternally offended part of me reared and took over. I dove for the cabinet under the sink and flung it open. Still on my belly, hunkering well clear of Dave’s weapon, I yanked on the rubber gloves and the dust mask and army-crawled to the stove. Thus armed, I stood in a fury and lunged for the nearest cupboard, which contained, ironically enough, an assortment of the unused coffee mugs as well as a pewter pepper grinder and salt cellar, a china gravy boat, and—
bingo!
—a ceramic mortar and pestle, shaped to look like a concave bowling ball and pin.
    Instrument in hand, I turned to face the nightmare on the floor. I stomped my foot on Dave’s coccyx and ground his slick face into the magazine until its glossy leaves tore and crunched. Then, in one swift motion, I extracted the hose from Dave’s rectum and replaced it with the fat end of the pestle, shoving in the makeshift butt plug all the way to its whimsically indented neck. I threw the hose end into the bucket, grabbed Dave by the hair, heaved him to his feet, and frog-marched him to the backyard, where I tossed him, still naked and frontally engorged, into the hawthorn bushes.
    I locked him out then and there. Later that night, I gathered all his things—including his clothes, his wallet, and his asthma inhalers—and burned them in a wheelbarrow out back, well after I knew he had gone. Or, I should say, well after he’d ceased trying to wheedle his way back into the house, pawing with one bloodied palm on the sliding glass patio door and cupping his scratched and shrunken tackle with the other.
    That was when I resolved to