A City of Jeremys
by Sagar Nair
There was a Jeremy who stole carrots from the elementary school veggie patch, and waved them around like magic wands, and poked people in the neck. There was a Jeremy who never drank water, because it made him feel like he was drowning. There was a Jeremy born with green fingernails. His coworkers trapped him in the elevator and peeled off his fingernails and served them on a cheese platter to impress the investors. There was a Jeremy who got hit by a bus. There was a Jeremy who had apples instead of eyes, and everyone spat globs on him. His brother poured apple juice on him and his laptop. When he went to the repair shop, the technician pretended to gag. “Did you know apples are disgusting?” he said. “Just letting you know.” He made him wear a trash bag over his head while he fixed the laptop. At the grocery store, shoppers slapped him with their baskets and tried to gouge out his apples, even the cashier joined in. “You look like you got beaten up,” his dad said later. He got fired from his job at the local diner for avoiding eye contact with the customers. He developed a stutter, and his dad called him lazy. “Nobody cares about your eyes.” Rotten apples showed up on his doorstep, in his mailbox, smashed onto his car windshield, stuffed into his locker at the community pool. On the patio, he slipped on an apple skin and shattered his kneecap. The culprit turned out to be another Jeremy with lemons instead of ears. After knee replacement surgery, he went to visit an apple tree orchard and no one ever saw him again. “It’s nobody’s fault,” everyone agreed. “Don’t know why he won’t come back.” There was a Jeremy who got swallowed by a whale. There was a Jeremy who sliced mangos and rubbed them on his skin, squished them into his ears. There was a Jeremy whose wife overdosed on opioids, and for breakfast he ate clothes from her wardrobe, then vomited into the fireplace. There was a Jeremy who, in one night, gambled away his salary on blackjack. There was a Jeremy who got tetanus from shooting up with needles from the landfill. There was a Jeremy with a pumpkin stem sprouting from his head, so he kept his hair long and wore hoodies, chopped the stem whenever it poked through. There was a Jeremy who waited until retirement to travel, and an hour before landing the engine blew up. There was a Jeremy who got struck by lightning. There was a Jeremy whose funeral was televised, and a Ukrainian men’s choir sang while he was lowered into the coffin and the priest sprinkled spinach leaves over his body. There was a Jeremy whose family skipped his funeral and went to the local diner for bottomless brunch. There was a Jeremy with dementia who forgot his name was Jeremy. There was a Jeremy who died from a cell phone jammed in his intestines. There was a Jeremy who died from lung cancer. From pneumonia. Hepatitis B. A stroke. A snake bite. A brain tumor. Complications during abdominal surgery. A cyst the size of a baby’s head. A rotten liver. A seizure. A slip in the shower. Mushrooms growing in the chambers of his heart.
Sagar Nair is from Sydney, Australia. His work is published or forthcoming in 100 Word Story, The Shore Poetry, The Suburban Review, and elsewhere.
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