The End of the Whole Mess: And Other Stories Read Online Free
Author: Stephen King, Matthew Broderick, Tim Curry, Eve Beglarian
near what the palmists call the Bracelets of Fortune. He'd been stung, but I saw well enough what he'd set out to show me: what looked like at least four hundred bees had investigated him. Only two had stung. He took a pair of tweezers out of his jeans watch-pocket, and went over to my desk. He moved the pile of manuscript beside the Wang Micro I was using in those days and trained my Tensor lamp on the place where the pages had been -fiddling with it until it formed a tiny hard spotlight on the cherrywood.
file://C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\DOUGIE\Stephen King\Stephen King - ... 7/22/2006
The End of the Whole Mess
Page 7 of 13
'Writin anything good, Bow-Wow?' he asked casually, and I felt the hair stiffen on the back of my neck. When was the last time he'd called me Bow-Wow? When he was four? Six? Shit, man, I don't know. He was working carefully on his left hand with the tweezers. I saw him extract a tiny something that looked like a nostril hair and place it in my ashtray.
'Piece on art forgery for Vanity Fair,' I said. 'Bobby, what in hell are you up to this time?'
'You want to pull the other one for me?' he asked, offering me the tweezers, his right hand, and an apologetic smile. 'I keep thinking if I'm so goddam smart I ought to be ambidextrous, but my left hand has still got an IQ of about six.'
Same old Bobby.
I sat down beside him, took the tweezers, and pulled the bee stinger out of the red swelling near what in his case should have been the Bracelets of Doom, and while I did it he told me about the differences between bees and wasps, the difference between the water in La Plata and the water in New York, and how, goddam! everything was going to be an right with his water and a little help from me. And oh shit, I ended up running at the football while my laughing, wildly intelligent brother held it, one last time.
'Bees don't sting unless they have to, because it kills them,' Bobby said matter-of-factly. 'You remember that time in North Conway, when you said we kept killing each other because of original sin?'
'Yes. Hold still.'
'Well, if there is such a thing, if there's a God who could simultaneously love us enough to serve us His own Son on a cross and send us all on a rocket-sled to hell just because one stupid bitch bit a bad apple, then the curse was just this: He made us like wasps instead of bees. Shit, Howie, what are you doing?'
'Hold still,' I said, 'and I'll get it out. If you want to make a lot of big gestures, I'll wait.'
'Okay,' he said, and after that he held relatively still while I extracted the stinger. 'Bees are nature's kamikaze pilots, Bow-Wow. Look in that glass box, you'll see the two who stung me lying dead at the bottom. Their stingers are barbed, like fishhooks. They slide in easy. When they Pull out, they disembowel themselves.'
'Gross,' I said, dropping the second stinger in the ashtray. I couldn't see the barbs, but I didn't have a microscope.
'It makes them particular, though,' he said.
'I bet.'
'Wasps, on the other hand, have smooth stingers. They can shoot you up as many times as they like. They use up the poison by the third or fourth shot, but they can go right on making holes if they like ... and usually they do. Especially wall-wasps. The kind I've got over there. You gotta sedate em. Stuff called Noxon. It must give em a hell of a hangover, because they wake up madder than ever.'
He looked at me somberly, and for the first time I saw the dark brown wheels of weariness under his eyes and realized my kid brother was more tired than I had ever seen him.
'That's why people go on fighting, Bow-Wow. On and on and on. We got smooth stingers. Now watch this.'
He got up, went over to his tote-bag, rummaged in it, and came up with an eye-dropper. He opened the mayonnaise jar, put the dropper in, and drew up a tiny bubble of his distilled Texas water.
When he took it over to the glass box with the wasps' nest inside, I saw the top on this one was
file://C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\DOUGIE\Stephen King\Stephen King - ... 7/22/2006
The End of the Whole Mess
Page 7 of 13
'Writin anything good, Bow-Wow?' he asked casually, and I felt the hair stiffen on the back of my neck. When was the last time he'd called me Bow-Wow? When he was four? Six? Shit, man, I don't know. He was working carefully on his left hand with the tweezers. I saw him extract a tiny something that looked like a nostril hair and place it in my ashtray.
'Piece on art forgery for Vanity Fair,' I said. 'Bobby, what in hell are you up to this time?'
'You want to pull the other one for me?' he asked, offering me the tweezers, his right hand, and an apologetic smile. 'I keep thinking if I'm so goddam smart I ought to be ambidextrous, but my left hand has still got an IQ of about six.'
Same old Bobby.
I sat down beside him, took the tweezers, and pulled the bee stinger out of the red swelling near what in his case should have been the Bracelets of Doom, and while I did it he told me about the differences between bees and wasps, the difference between the water in La Plata and the water in New York, and how, goddam! everything was going to be an right with his water and a little help from me. And oh shit, I ended up running at the football while my laughing, wildly intelligent brother held it, one last time.
'Bees don't sting unless they have to, because it kills them,' Bobby said matter-of-factly. 'You remember that time in North Conway, when you said we kept killing each other because of original sin?'
'Yes. Hold still.'
'Well, if there is such a thing, if there's a God who could simultaneously love us enough to serve us His own Son on a cross and send us all on a rocket-sled to hell just because one stupid bitch bit a bad apple, then the curse was just this: He made us like wasps instead of bees. Shit, Howie, what are you doing?'
'Hold still,' I said, 'and I'll get it out. If you want to make a lot of big gestures, I'll wait.'
'Okay,' he said, and after that he held relatively still while I extracted the stinger. 'Bees are nature's kamikaze pilots, Bow-Wow. Look in that glass box, you'll see the two who stung me lying dead at the bottom. Their stingers are barbed, like fishhooks. They slide in easy. When they Pull out, they disembowel themselves.'
'Gross,' I said, dropping the second stinger in the ashtray. I couldn't see the barbs, but I didn't have a microscope.
'It makes them particular, though,' he said.
'I bet.'
'Wasps, on the other hand, have smooth stingers. They can shoot you up as many times as they like. They use up the poison by the third or fourth shot, but they can go right on making holes if they like ... and usually they do. Especially wall-wasps. The kind I've got over there. You gotta sedate em. Stuff called Noxon. It must give em a hell of a hangover, because they wake up madder than ever.'
He looked at me somberly, and for the first time I saw the dark brown wheels of weariness under his eyes and realized my kid brother was more tired than I had ever seen him.
'That's why people go on fighting, Bow-Wow. On and on and on. We got smooth stingers. Now watch this.'
He got up, went over to his tote-bag, rummaged in it, and came up with an eye-dropper. He opened the mayonnaise jar, put the dropper in, and drew up a tiny bubble of his distilled Texas water.
When he took it over to the glass box with the wasps' nest inside, I saw the top on this one was
Readers choose
Karen Swart
Melissa Eskue Ousley
D Sean
Jesse Taylor Croft
Max Hennessy
Rosemary Clair
David Samuels
Gary Ghislain
Steve Cavanagh