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Dave Eggers' The Wild Things is available for preorder, in regular hardcover and
limited-edition fur-covered.
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BRUTUS AND I.BY RICK STOECKEL- - - - After the assassination goes down successfully, everyone stands around, awkward, waiting for Brutus to say something. I look over Caesar's body, and I mention that we can get a few more stabs in below his rib cage. Brutus scoffs, tosses his dagger to the floor, and walks off as if he's better than me or something. I see Brutus and some of the other guys eating a meal near the Coliseum Food Court. I sit down at a table beside them and mention that I'm still having trouble getting Caesar's bloodstains out of my robe. Everyone hushes me and gives me the sign to whisper. I whisper to them how funny and girlish I thought Trebonius looked when he thrust his dagger. After a few more minutes of me reminiscing about the stabbing, the guys get up suddenly and walk away. The next morning, I see that Brutus is down by the river, his head bent into his hands, in deep thought. I walk close, and I put my head in my hands. When he notices me he asks what I'm doing. I let him know that I'm here if he wants to talk. If anyone can understand how he feels, I tell him, it is I. After all, I say, I stabbed your best friend Caesar over and over again just like you did. Brutus tells me to leave him alone. I ask him what his problem with me is. He says he felt it was very disrespectful when I was shouting at Caesar "What's up now, punk?" each time I stabbed him. I just got really into it. Excuse me; I didn't know there was a correct way to assassinate a leader. He didn't tell me, but, knowing Brutus, I imagine he took issue with that victory dance I performed over Caesar's corpse as well. Just sat down to eat a gyro when Cassius passes by and nods in acknowledgment. I grab my gyro and move toward him. Strike up a conversation. Ask him who's next. He asks what I'm talking about, and I tell him I'm just wondering whom we're going to stab next. Whoever it is, I tell him, I'm in. Unless it's me, of course. He goes into a speech about why they killed Caesar, and how it had to be done because Caesar was endangering the liberty and freedom of Rome. I nod, pretending to understand. Brutus and the other guys arrive at my house early one morning to have a talk. They tell me to stop speaking about the assassination. To put it behind me. To act as if it never happened. Brutus doesn't say anything to me during the meeting. "Et tu, Brutus?" I ask him. He slaps me across the face. I fall down, and from the ground I threaten that I'm going to take the stab taxi all the way to Brutus Town. He fails to get my meaning, so I tell him plainly that I plan to stab him as soon as I feel able. I start hanging out with a guy named Raphael. He makes fun of people's haircuts and can spit really far. He is awesome. Much cooler than the Caesar assassins. He talks all the time about how he would suplex Brutus if he ever met him. I have to laugh because I can totally picture Raph suplexing Brutus and the look on Brutus's dumb face as he's inverted into the air. I try to start some assassinations by claiming that the town baker, Franco Flateo, thinks he is a fancy fellow and that we need to take him off his high horse with an assassination. I get one other guy besides me and Raphael to agree to be a part of it, but I said I wouldn't do it if we couldn't find at least six people. It didn't happen. I even went as far as to ask Brutus and the other guys if they wanted in. No response. Their loss. I think it could have a been a good one, even better than the Caesar assassination, because, according to Raph, we were not going to use weapons but, rather, lots of clotheslines and submission holds to draw it out. - - - - OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES: - - - - Brutus and I By Rick StoeckelFollowing My Creative Writing Teacher's Advice to Write "Like My Parents Are Dead" By Ellie Kemper Postcards From "The Edge" By Pasha Malla From the Grad Schoolyard: The Diarrhea Song By Jake Swearingen, Edward Fairchild, and Sam King Celebrity Biographies Written by a Guy Who Cannot Distinguish Fiction From Reality By Ben Joseph |
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