Fiction By Eli Hopkins

Let me start by saying that your resume reads marvelously. The passion in your prose strikes me to the heart. For example, when you say that your career-objective is to “find a home within a family of a healthy and productive atmosphere”, I can scarcely find the words to describe the feelings. How you must have suffered. I can only imagine the years of torment and abuse you must have undergone to cause you to seek such sanctuary, and to render poetry to that effect.
I can’t help but notice there is little here addressing the details of your past experience, and there seem to be several gaps in your employment history, could you explain that?

I’m sure that javelins of tragedy have struck you repeatedly, even as you lie helpless, rendering you incapable of gainful employment.

Let’s talk about your references. I can’t help but notice that you have my name here. Clever boy, using your father’s name to get ahead. Weak-spirited perhaps, but clever. What else could be expected, of course, of a poor urchin such as yourself? It’s a marvel you have existed as well as you have, given no advantages whatsoever, and very little food. Even now you have a hungry, mystified look about you, as if you would climb across this very desk and take me by the throat for a mere crust of bread.
I just so happen to have a crust of bread here. Ah yes, there is the look I know so well.
While you’re enjoying that bread, why don’t you tell me about your strengths? Why do you deserve to become a member of this family? Aside from blood relation and whatnot. It says here that you claim to possess an indomitable worth ethic and are willing to go the extra mile. That is pretty language, to be sure, though I have to question its authenticity. Don’t forget, I’ve watched the evil you’ve done to the lawn for years, not to mention the chaos you’ve made of the woodshed. Don’t you remember me explaining to you how to properly stack the wood? And don’t tell me about being too cold to stack wood. Anyone would be cold if they weren’t allowed a jacket, there’s nothing special about that.
And don’t even get me started on that roofing project you never got around to finishing, it’s a miracle we haven’t all drowned in our beds.
If I were to offer you a position I would need utter confidence in your ability to carry out any tasks I lay before you, and I’ve got to tell you, that’s not what I’ve been seeing these last ten years. What I’ve seen is a spineless weakling who cries for its mother. What kind of impression does that make? Crying for a mother who isn’t even there? Like I said, you’ve had these ten years to get yourself in order—ten years—and I just haven’t seen the effort I was hoping for. I would advise you to start impressing me if you don’t wish to find yourself on the streets.

I wish you would stop staring at my pistol, that’s not why I keep it on my desk.

What’s the matter? What am I meant to understand from those violent gestures? Was the bread too dry? Do you need perhaps some water to wash it down? I suppose that’s my fault. It seems that I’ve been spoiling you. Well that’s all over now, for your own sake. You won’t be getting an ounce of water from me. And don’t try getting it someplace else either, because I’ll know, and I’m going to let everyone know ahead of time not to give you any.
Let’s move on. It says here that you’ve completed your education through the third grade. Well, we both know what a liar you are, don’t we? How about a little proof? Here, solve this long-division problem; we’ll see how smart you are with no mother to help you. Speaking of your mother, I think it’s time you stopped mentioning her all together. Pining for the past like that, it only spreads weakness through the body and mind like a pestilence. I myself haven’t thought of your mother for several minutes, and look at me. That’s strength for you, Son. That’s the kind of strength you’re going to need to make it through the waking nightmare that is life.
Seriously, don’t stare at my pistol.

Well if we aren’t going to discuss this like adults—like gentlemen—then I don’t even know why I let you in the house.

You’d think that a little appreciation would be in order. After all, I’m the one who lets you sleep in the yard year round. That’s every kid’s dream! When I was your age I was dying of boredom at school and at the many functions that were organized specifically to showcase my various talents. You have no idea how lucky you are not to even have any talents! And you indulge yourself! That’s no way to live, even for a small child. You must keep from yourself that which you desire. As soon as you find yourself desiring something, you must immediately set about destroying it in your heart, that way you will never lose. Are you even listening?
I see the way you’re looking at me. Do you think I’m enjoying this steak? Do you think that I enjoy eating a steak while you gnaw on your bread? Of course not! I loathe this steak, which happens to be from the finest Kobe stock to be found in the world! And I couldn’t help but notice that you aren’t enjoying your bread especially either, which makes us the same after all! Don’t you see?

Did I mention that I have just been beaten? Not recently, just now. I couldn’t have mentioned it at the time, for understandable reasons. But all that is over now, I hope. I have been promised. You can’t rely on promises, especially from blood-drunk children whose sole occupation is the destruction of anything they don’t understand. And they don’t understand anything. I can tell from their poor elocution and many grammatical errors. Maybe that is my fault. They are my children and I am their father, and neither have I taken the pains to educate them myself, nor have I subjected them to the education of others.

I’ve never trusted people who refer to themselves as teachers.

I was once a teacher. I say once, but I mean still. Yesterday, today, and perhaps tomorrow, if I’m still alive. I can’t make any promises, I never do what I say I’m going to do, which is why I never say I’m going to do anything. At least I’m not a liar, among other things I’m not. That isn’t true. I am a man and I will answer to no one, not even myself. Though I’ve never asked anything of myself, have I? At least once, I suppose, but I’ve forgotten it so it must not have been important. I forget everything, and I lose everything; but that is of no consequence. Once a thing is lost to me I forget it forever, maybe even before it’s lost, which could very well be at the root of my troubles.
What was I saying? Oh yes, my children. They aren’t really my children, I am their teacher, and I even have a title: Professor. Professor of what I couldn’t say, I never profess anything, unless I do, which I don’t. I don’t care what I said.
This is either brilliance or the plagiarism of a dream. I don’t know what those words mean. I know nothing of dreams, only that they die. Please don’t ask me to explain, I am incapable of explanation, or at least unwilling.
I might as well admit that I was never beaten, not strictly. I was thrown a birthday party, so it must be my birthday. I couldn’t say, because my students are idiots who teach me nothing. I guess that is at least partially my fault. I don’t care for teaching, or for learning. I don’t have the time. I’m too busy keeping detailed catalogs of other peoples’ possessions and comparing them to my own. Well, not my own, because I have nothing. I compare things I have seen, or imagined. I think that’s what I do, I’m not sure. People tell me that’s what I do, but I don’t believe anything anyone says to me. Neither do my students, so I must do a good job afterall.
Actually there was a beating, but it wasn’t my beating. That’s where I got confused.

There was something called a piñata, I have no idea what that means. I have a condition characterized by the intense and involuntary suffering that comes from sympathy for inanimate objects. It was horrible what they did.

People keep asking me why I’m crying. If I tell them the truth they will think I am insane, and I will risk being tenured, and thereby being cursed to this place forever, or at least until I die. Whichever comes first. I have no mind for logic or practicality, so I must work in the humanities, but that is my own personal woe and I won’t inflict it upon you, though I have already done so. I never apologize, and for that I am truly sorry. Or at least I say I am, which is the same thing as far as I’m concerned, though I am never concerned, except when troubled, and I’m always troubled. That much should be obvious by now, though I’ve taken great pains to hide it.
What am I saying? There I go again, asking questions. There is no sense in asking questions when I never believe the answers, but sometimes I can’t help myself. And by sometimes I mean always. What an exhausting thing it is to be me. Or at least I assume so, having never been anyone else. That’s what I’ve been trying to say since the beginning, even before I ever said anything. When people say “oh, that’s So-and-So through and through”, they’re talking about me. Not that my name is So-and-So, as far as I’m aware.
I’m virtually never aware. When I walk I stare straight down at the ground so people can’t tell what I’m thinking, or to hide the fact that I’m not thinking anything, which seems more likely. You wouldn’t know it to look at me. The efficacy of my expression has been won from years of practice in front of the mirror; I look, looking back, comparing the results. I keep notes in my head that become immediately expunged to the void of the past. But against all odds, my face remembers. We are quite a team.
I’ve just been told this isn’t my birthday party.

Perhaps it isn’t even my birthday at all. I won’t know until one year from today when nobody tells me happy–birthday.

I guess I’m fairly logical afterall, though certainly not practical. If I were practical I would go about things in a very different manner than which I do, though I couldn’t tell you exactly how, considering that I’m not. How does one go about ascertaining whether or not one is practical? I suppose one is told so by one’s parents. My parents never told me anything, that I remember. Forget what I’ve said, I already have.
I’ve just been asked to leave this place. I don’t know where I will go. I’m either not allowed to go home or not allowed to leave home, I can’t remember which. In either case an infraction of the rules seems inevitable. That’s logic for you.
My head swims, though I do not. How could this be so?
I’d like to go on talking, but I can’t, because talking interests me, or used to. Once my interests have been fetishized by the public I find them significantly less palatable, both my interests and the public.
My palate is abnormally sensitive.
I can’t do anything or go anywhere.