Infirmities

by David Galef

“Why are your fingers all bandaged?”

“My hands tried to commit suicide this morning.”

“Where did you get that limp?”

“I caught it from an old man with a cane.”

“How is it that you can’t taste a thing?”

“No one’s given me anything to eat.”

“When did you start running a fever?”

“Yesterday I was walking it, and someone told me to hurry.”

“What caused that S-shaped scar on your leg?”

“I was trying to remember something and didn’t have a pen.”

“Who punched you in the mouth?”

“I did. I was trying to prove a point.”

David Galef is an irresponsible hack who’s published short fiction in the collections Laugh Track and My Date with Neanderthal Woman (Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize), long fiction in the novels Flesh, Turning Japanese, and How to Cope with Suburban Stress (Kirkus Best Books), and a lot in between. His latest is Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook, from Columbia University Press. Day job: professor of English and creative writing program director at Montclair State University. He’s also the editor in chief at Vestal Review.