New content every morning!

THE GORKO’S WHOOPS SELECTION FOR 15-21 JULY

THUMB PICKER

I suck my thumb because it’s bleeding.

It’s bleeding because I pick the skin around my thumbs until I hurt myself.

I pick the skin around my thumbs when I get anxious. Nervous.

I’m anxious because I think she’s dead, but I’m too scared to check.

I’m scared to check because someone might follow me. Someone might find her.

Someone might find her in my parents’ basement, god bless them. Traveling around the country in an RV while my brother and I stop by to water the plants, get the mail.

I told my brother not to worry about it this week. I’d cover his days for him.

He’s got enough on his mind, worrying about his missing wife. Suspected of having caused her to go missing. The police found her Kia and purse and phone in the parking lot of a Love’s truck stop. No sign of struggle.

No sign of struggle because of course not. They have it all on camera. It was simple mechanical trouble. An alternator. I know because I’m the one that broke it.

I’m the one that broke it because I like her. I’ve always liked her. Married to my older brother Vince for a decade now, mother of my two nephews, auburn-haired, tall, with a long nose, no tits, but those feet, her long, pale, gorgeous feet. Her name is…was…is Winter. I thought she liked me too.

I thought she liked me because she flirted with me. A subtle touch here and there when she thanked me for Christmas gifts, or for doing something like taking the boys to the pistol range, or out for pizza. Crossing her legs, bouncing her foot, her lavender toenails. You don’t know how many times I excused myself to their restroom, sniffed her shampoo bottles and lotions, sweet and spicy, while I released my tensions.

I released my tensions right there under her roof. Her and my older brother’s roof. Maybe I was wrong about her flirting. I can’t see why, though. If she likes him, she should like me. Unless.

Unless…she felt sorry for me.

Felt sorry for me because my last girlfriend, my fiancé, left me for confounding reasons.

She left me for the confounding reason of she didn’t like the attention I paid to her bony, awkward feet. She didn’t like it when I asked her to get them dirty for me. When I told her I liked watching her take off her socks more than her underwear.

Oh, and she called me out on having a thing for my sister-in-law.

Called me out because she noticed far fewer pics of her versus Winter on my Instagram.

Pictures of Winter in flip-flops, sandals, or barefoot, but never in tennis shoes or proper heels.

Vince and Winter thought she’d left me for another guy.

Thought that because I’d told them so.

So.

The day of, I’d made sure Vince would be preoccupied with some sort of something or other, and also that his phone battery would be stone cold dead. The boys, at school. I snuck a GPS tracker onto Winter’s Kia, and once I saw she’d stopped in the Love’s parking lot, something she wouldn’t normally do, I called her and asked her if she’d heard from Vince.

‘I keep getting his voicemail.’

It was fate.

It was fate because it could have gone any other number of ways, like Vince calling her from a landline. Or some good Samaritan helping when the car broke down. Or her having the boys with her because they were out sick that day. But none of that happened.

She said, ‘While I’ve got you on the phone…’

I arrived. I told her, ‘Yep, it’s the alternator.’

Told her I could replace it. Just needed to grab another at the parts store.

Told her there was an errand she could help with at my folks’ place – adding more salt to the softener in the basement.

Once we were down there, hey, look at that! My mom must’ve found one of her old Polaroid cameras, dug it out of a box. I picked it up. Pointed at her and clicked – it worked.

It worked because it was my camera, and I liked how my ex’s feet looked as the chemicals developed into an image.

An image of her feet.

So, joking around, I asked Winter to pose for funny, sexy pictures to give to Vince. Who doesn’t like a Polaroid? Pouty lips. Pointy toes.

I mean…

I don’t know. I still think she liked me, but was afraid.

Not of me, but what it would do to Vince. The kids.

Cornered her. Told her, ‘They’d never have to know.’

She ran for the stairs. Got halfway. I tackled her. We both tumbled and there was a crack.

A crack because her neck snapped in two.

She was alive when I left her. Paralyzed, but alive. Gurgling, her eyes frantic. And I apologized.

I apologized because my fantasy life had just met its sad, brutal ending. Because of what this would mean to our family. I apologized because watching her lie there, frozen, still warm and breathing, I couldn’t help myself. She was all mine.

I massaged her feet.

I licked her soles.

I took more pictures.

I wrapped my lips around her elongated second toe.

But when it was over, those same frantic eyes, full of tears.

I was so ashamed I dashed out of there in a hurry. Mom’s plants were dying. I’d planned all this and forgotten to water them.

I left her alive.

I’m no fool, though.

I had borrowed some of my brother’s clothes – by ‘borrowed’ I mean ‘stole’ – a while ago, wore them to the truck stop.

We look a lot alike, Vince and me.

When I said he was ‘older,’ I meant by five minutes.

We’re twins.

Identical.

Our looks, our height and weight.

Our DNA.

They always suspect the husband. Never the brother-in-law.

Especially when they think so much alike the younger brother knows exactly how the older one would act if he killed his wife and hid her body, made it look like she’d gone missing.

They don’t believe he’s innocent. Convinced he’s putting on a solid act. But they haven’t found her body yet, either. Right under their noses.

Soon enough, they’ll find the Polaroids of her in his office.

So I suck my bleeding thumb and hope he understands.

Hope he understands.

Odds are he’s in his cell right now sucking his own bloody thumb, too.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Anthony Neil Smith is a novelist (Slow Bear, The Drummer, Yellow Medicine, many more), short story writer (HAD, Bull, Cowboy Jamboree, Maudlin House, Gorko Gazette, Reckon Review, The Hooghly Review, many more), and professor (Southwest Minnesota State University). One of his pieces was chosen for Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023. He was previously an associate editor with Mississippi Review Web, and is now editor of Revolution John. He likes Mexican food, cheap wine, Italian exploitation flicks, and French noir.