Cancer’s Prize

They went up the big wheel and Cancer tried very hard not to throw up but the wheel went up so high and he didn’t know it stopped at the top so he thought it was broken, and then it lurched and groaned with the weight of itself shaking swinging wasn’t it should it be like that and he and he and it got all over his nice clean lacy white shirt, ruined…

A boy goes to a seaside fun park. He meets his teacher, his scouting instructor, who, gawky and fastidious, seems more suited to this kind of park than the other one.

WIN FABULOUS PRIZES AT THIS GAME OF SKILL. The parasite rolled up its sleeves and flung, vein throbbing and distal, from the wrist, the way it had planted javelins darts projectiles of all kinds into slaves and quarry, and muscle memory is the last to go, he can’t remember the year but he remembers this, and his evil hand earns Cancer’s prize. I see it in your eyes. It was the first thing you looked at. But you should ask for a boy’s toy, or something age appropriate, shouldn’t you.

It’s too late. Your wish comes true. For my daughter, my daughter, the parasite says, smiling grandly. At the edge of the fun park, he gives it to Cancer.

The plushy is a fat fly stuffed between his arms and it is so cute and he can’t let anyone know he has it. He holds it all the way home, overbite jutting with a smile he can’t push back inside, braces strung across his teeth like carnival lights, thinking thinking thinking—

Cancer is in his bedroom now. A pink pullover hangs off his shoulder, sunburnt and smooth. Everyone has gone to sleep. The plushy is so soft and his limbs wrap around it and he’s so comfy and he doesn’t realize what he’s doing at first. This soft, yielding, but springy mass, is this what it feels like?

He rubs his butt on the fly plushy thinking about the man, who is really a kind of animal or angel or puppet, who eternity has made incomplete the way being only 1X years old has made Cancer incomplete. The spicy smell of jasmine(?) clings to his hair. He thinks about those gloves crawling over him like spiders. Without the gross weight of a body, their tingling dance across his collarbones and neck and into his hair is all the spryer.

Shouldn’t be thinking those thoughts. Shouldn’t be rubbing his seat on the plushy face, crushing the fly between his thighs and forcing it into his sweaty crack—

The sensation of the throat-scalding digested cotton candy Etc and coffee milkshake Etc or maybe something cute and fruity Etc coming up shockingly beautiful for something that was in his stomach and the man that angel the parasite is the same way, making him feel like his secret parts aren’t like that rancid porno l a g a Overexposed or yellowed and meaty and gross, or a harsh masculine discharge, or anything to do with sanitation at all, but that he is full of pearls and milkshakes, soft and lacy and trembling with the breeze. And the Sensation of wetting the bed which he hasn’t done for some time thank God thank God thank God. And The Sensation of poison ivy, and The Sensation of being stung. And The Sensation of a fever, of leaking helplessly, hotly, with the activity of very small things invisible but known from the heat of their life. And he covers his face with his hands to bury the roller coaster scream which s i g h s helplessly from him. And the Flies and mosquitoes buzz through the open window attracted to The Damp fabric stretched around him, which has taken on the quality of that man’s used handkerchief. His boyheart pounds into the bed like it could shake the whole dollhouse of this house which does not exist just his lips pressed into his pillow panting panting and crushing between his legs there is crushing and spilled ice cream on his plushy on his agony foaming between his legs and already he has ruined his present.

He wants to hold up his fingers and show someone, like blood, his devotion, aren’t you proud of me isn’t this something I should produce for you isn’t it better than my vomit all over the floor of the big wheel as the passenger car rocked and groaned and rocked and groaned and a little more came out and he just smiled and said, that’s all right, Cancer. Just get it out. Get it all out.