The Feast
Flash Fiction Story
by Ryan Borchers
Mortadella and yams. Pineapple soda. Artichokes missing hearts.
Rabbit stuffed with potato chips. He’s poisoned one of the dishes at this
feast. I’ll find it and then see what happens. Maybe I’ll vomit when I make it
back to my apartment and I’ll need to stay in the bathroom for a few hours.
“Do you like the food, big brother?” he says. “Are you having a
good time?”
“Of course,” I say. He has my left wrist handcuffed to the picnic
table’s steel frame. I’m not too uncomfortable, so long as I let my elbow rest
on my thigh.
“It’ll be fun.” That’s what he said an hour ago, rattling the
handcuffs in my face like I was a cat and he was showing me his keys. “I’ll
have a better time if you let me.”
I sip that Indian beer he and I like, the one that’s crisp when
cold, sour when warm. With chopsticks, I snag a piece of sushi with avocado
that looks a little too green.
“I had a hunch you’d be a whiz with those chopsticks, what with
how many times Mom and Dad dragged us to Chinese restaurants,” he says with a
Cheshire grin. He has one foot on the seat so his knee is up under his chin, in
what I refer to as his grasshopper pose. Who knows where he learned it?
Certainly not from our mother, who always sat so straight and erect.
“Promise me,” she said to me when he was eight years old. She had
me seated at the dinner table, after I’d screamed at him for taking a steak
knife to the heads of my plastic army men. She spoke with her hands folded, as
if in prayer. “You will always indulge him. You will be patient with him. You will
love him the best you can for all the days of your life. Promise me.”
He hopes he’s got me fooled, but the feast becomes less fun for
him the longer I go without being afraid. I can tell because he keeps
scratching his forehead. The only time he feels regret is when he isn’t having
fun.
A host of ants skitter across my bare foot, a wandering tribe
thinking it’s found the promised land among the crumbs. I fix him with my
steeliest glare and grab an apple slice covered in chocolate sauce. He’s
sweating now.
“You don’t have to keep eating, you know,” he says.
I pop the apple slice in my mouth and chew it up without blinking.
“I don’t mind,” I say. “It’s not like I have anything to fear.”
The sweat is running into his eyes.
“You must do your best to accommodate him,” my mother said. “Even
when he is at his worst.” I wondered what she was picturing when she said “his
worst.” What if he tried to kill me? I would have been wise to ask her.
“Remember that time I bought you a sandwich and you wouldn’t eat
it because it had mayonnaise on it?” he says.
I grab a square of white clam pizza and squish it in my fist. His
face is as pale as the pizza cheese now.
“Promise me, even after I’m gone,” my mother said, tears
glistening in her eyes. “Please, please promise me.”
The ants crawling in paradise below probably won’t be happy if
they find the wrong crumbs.
“Do you forgive me?” he says, tearing up.
“Always.” I take another bite. Chew and swallow.
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