Uncle Arnie on Fire

By St John Karp

In the future no-one needs to die, but it would be great for the economy if they did. Funerals are hot pink. Clouds are nothing but unused advertising space. The government encourages state-sponsored suicide. And Uncle Arnie is rapidly approaching his two hundredth birthday. Mel and her cousins have spent the last two hundred years sucking up to their elderly uncle, but will the old man's death really be the release they expect?

 

Uncle Arnie on Fire is delicious like a nasty liqueur and bitter like dark chocolate. It swings from philosophical to scatalogical with wild abandon and shines a light on the things that matter — family, ageing, relationships, and death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: St John Karp
• Release date: Jun 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227597151

Book preview

Chapter 1

Barbara wondered how her daughter could look so angelic. Gilt as she was by the morning light, Alice shone like the carapace of a rare crepuscular beetle. She sat quietly at the table working at a drawing of a boat that Barbara would find charming when her daughter presented it to her later, proud but not demanding, full of sense and sweetness, so that Barbara would like nothing better in the world than to put it on the fridge and point it out to guests, saying, Alice drew that, and basking in their praise not for her daughter but for Barbara for having raised such a prismatic jewel. She sipped her coffee at the kitchen counter, appreciating Alice through the whorls of caffeinated steam. She could hear her husband’s footsteps on the floor upstairs. The grapefruits and bananas lay ripening in the bowl on the counter. The fridge was well stocked with eggs and thick-cut bacon waiting to pop and sizzle as they struck a hot frying pan.

From an explosion of footsteps on the stairs burst forth an odd, strangulated cry followed by a slam as Miranda tripped and fell face-first onto the floor. Barbara flinched at the sound of her other daughter. She gritted her teeth and pressed a harried hand to her forehead where she could already feel the pulse of her heart beneath the skin. She wondered sometimes if it weren’t her fault she felt this way, that maybe she was being too delicate and should set aside more time for Miranda, but then Alice had never made such a ruckus. Alice had never spat or sneezed rudely or broken wind with the truly horrific violence of an elderly bulldog. So why did Miranda have to go out of her way to be so grotesque? So vulgar? Such a thorn in her mother’s side? Barbara tried to push the thoughts away but the feelings were already replicating inside her head, the start of an awful phase that triggers the innocent grasshopper and turns it into a ravenous swarm of locusts. The familiar waves of a headache began to radiate from the back of her skull and reflect off the back of her eyeballs like the product of an agonizing double-slit experiment, her head filling with interference patterns and quantum echoes that she was helpless to control, all caused by a single stray particle, a fluke of the universal constants, a lone mistake — Miranda. The girl picked herself up and resumed running as if nothing had happened, clutching a crumpled note in her hand.

Mom! said Miranda, wiping some dangling snot from her nose. "I got an invitation to January’s birthday! Can I go? I’ll clean my room and do my homework and be super nice to strangers."

Barbara’s stomach churned at the sight of the note. She could feel the coffee burbling in her guts, fighting to get out. She swallowed it down and plucked the invitation from Miranda’s hand, holding it between two fingernails. It was soiled and sticky, with some crusty green secretion seeping slowly into the paper and making it transparent, causing the printed lettering to appear as if by magic from the other side. It was almost like a special kind of invisible ink that could only be revealed using mucus, and then when the letters were finally revealed they were cryptic ciphers, reversed and unfamiliar, glyphs that stared out at Barbara with a sinister aspect and hung wetly in a web of mold stained pink by the dye in the paper and the glitter gracing the design of unicorns along the border. And in those glyphs — in those glyphs she could hear it. The beating of her hideous heart; the school of lampreys swirling past each other in waters of the peristyle’s dark pond; the voice of the Callahan woman.

Oh sweetie, Barbara replied. She forced herself to smile because she knew that if she didn’t smile she was going to have to scream. Of course not. With a practiced fling Barbara tossed the invitation into the Insinkerator and started to jam it down into the blades with a rolling pin.

But Moooom, said Miranda. Despite the smile on Barbara’s face, every drawn out syllable of Miranda’s whine sent lasers flashing erratically behind her eyes. Why nooooot?

They’re cranks, dear, you don’t want to go to their party. And I don’t want you spending any more time with that January Callahan. Do you understand? A slight tremble in her voice seemed to suggest some barely suppressed emotion that went straight over Miranda’s head.

No! said Miranda, stamping her foot and making the wine glasses rattle in the cabinet.

Alice was still sitting quietly at the table, selecting a pencil from her box of ninety-nine colors and beginning to trace the aquamarine edging of a mermaid’s scales. "I don’t want to go to the party, said Alice. I understand."

That’s because you’re a good girl, said her mother.

I wanna go! screeched Miranda, You never let me do anything!

Mom lets me do things, Alice said helpfully.

That’s because you’re stupid and boring and never want to do anything. I wanna go to the party! I wanna go to the party!

No, said Barbara firmly, and that’s the end of the discussion.

Miranda started to shriek and run around the kitchen. Barbara sighed heavily. Her fingers found the handle of the coffee pot and she tipped it to her cup, thinking at first to top up her drink, but then feeling the weight of it in her hand, the thick smooth curve of the glass at the base, tempered with all the technical wizardry of the Twitchy Bean Coffee Company, expertise that had been handed down through generations of glass-blowers going back to the ancient Roman artisans who formed the first glass jugs in the furnaces of the emperor’s glassworks. The object she held in her hand was the culmination of countless centuries of accumulated wisdom and skill. She felt that she stood on the shoulders of every generation that had come before her, giving her a towering view out across the land and over the horizon and off, out, away into the infinite. There was only one thing holding her back. Barbara required perfection. Was that so much to ask?

She waited until her little berserker made another pass around the kitchen before bringing the pot down onto her head. The glass pot shattered, and Miranda fell to the floor amidst a wreckage of glass shards and scalding coffee. Barbara looked down at her without any expression on her face and wondered how she ought to feel. Miranda was almost attractive in this light, now that she was quiet. Barbara almost began to regret aborting her. But as the waves of pain slowly ebbed out of her skull, she knew she’d made the right decision. Her day was still ruined, of course — this was the sort of thing that could really set a negative sort of tone, and Barbara made a mental note to raise the issue with her therapist next session — but at least now it was quiet. The sunlight still sauntered gaily into the kitchen. The fruit still lay ripening in the bowl. Alice still labored proudly at her picture of a boat. Alice glanced up briefly, but as soon as she saw her mother casting her gaze around the kitchen, Alice buried her head once more into her drawing and pretended nothing had happened. That’s a good girl, Barbara thought, and that thought brought her back to Miranda, splayed on the floor like a chalk outline made real. She bent over and picked up a large shard of glass from the floor and let a drop of coffee fall from it. She was going to have to get a new coffee pot. Damn. Even in death Miranda was still making trouble.

By the time Barbara’s husband came downstairs for some breakfast she was already halfway through cramming Miranda’s body into the Insinkerator after the cursed birthday invitation.

Are you crying? Frank asked her.

She realized Frank was right, she was crying. She wondered why. She can’t have loved the coffee pot that much, could she? Damn kids are like onions, Barbara muttered, struggling with a shoulder joint. She was really starting to bug me. Not washing her hands. Tearing around the kitchen like a Screaming Mimi. Kept wanting to be friends with that awful Callahan girl.

Eeesh, said Frank. He lifted one of Miranda’s arms, pondering for a moment the way the hand had frozen into a strange little claw. He used it to scratch a persistent itch on his back. Don’t tell me they still have that creepy kid. There ought to be a law against that.

I blame the parents, said Barbara.

I blame the politicians.

Their conversation was interrupted by someone ringing the doorbell. Barbara handed her husband a dangling limb and said, Here, I’ll get it. You finish this. Frank seemed about to voice some sentiment, but he and Barbara had had this conversation before and she was not about to let herself get dragged back over it. "Don’t start all that again, she said before he could say anything. Anyone who still thinks life begins at birth has never had kids of their own."

She left Frank to finish up in the kitchen while she answered the front door. He called after her, Well be careful, we’ve only got one left. He added a little louder, You’re not as fertile as you used to be. And then, putting his foot down this time because damn it, a man had his limits: I’m not changing diapers again!

Barbara brushed droplets of coffee and particles of child onto her apron, anxious that no-one should catch her in the middle of an intimate moment. Like cleaning and fucking, abortions were something you knew everyone did but preferred not to be caught in the middle of. She could scarcely imagine what she would do if someone walked in on her disposing of Miranda. Of course the girl’s sudden absence would be noticed and would need a little diplomatic smoothing to avoid any unpleasant questions. Barbara supposed she owed the school an extra nice cake for the bake sale. She guiltily wondered whether she ought to claim a refund from them on the remainder of Miranda’s school fees this year. Probably better to leave it, in the end. Tell them Miranda had gone to stay with an aunt in Europe and then never mention her again. She pressed her lips together until they were a thin white gash across her face. That fictitious European aunt was starting to get quite the collection of unlovable little misfits.

Barbara straightened her apron one last time, adjusted her face, and pulled open the front door.

Oh no.

The interference patterns were back in a flash, no single particle now but a hideous cloud of conflicting waveforms that collided and smashed and split apart, reinforcing and canceling in ways too complex to calculate, a storm that engulfed her brain in the chaos of a thousand jagged edges. It was Her. The Callahan Woman. Mel. Barbara pasted on a smile, but not fast enough. She knew Mel had seen her distaste. She knew Mel knew what she was thinking, and she knew Mel knew she knew. How did she do all this to her? She hadn’t even said anything yet. It was in the eyes, it had to be, hazel and bright, sparkling with some quality Barbara couldn’t understand and sometimes feared, masquerading as joy, but Barbara was joyful, right? She was plenty fucking joyful. If Mel looked joyful then it couldn’t be real joy, it had to be something else, something ersatz and nasty.

Mel was leaning casually against the door jamb. Barbara’s eyes flickered over Mel’s jaw as it moved lazily up and down. Was she chewing gum? Why would a grown woman chew gum? She had next to her a suspiciously large carpet bag as if she were about to do some kind of Mary Poppins bit and start pulling out hatstands and full-length mirrors. She wore a funeral-pink suit and tie over a black shirt. The clothes put Barbara off momentarily. It was always possible Mel really was on her way to a funeral. But then maybe she wasn’t, maybe she’d only worn that outfit for the novelty of it, or no, to vex Barbara. That was more likely. This was a deliberate attempt to get at her. Barbara inspected Mel’s winsome, squirrel-cheeked smirk but couldn’t read the truth in it.

Top o’ the morning to ye! Mel said, and waited. It looked like Barbara was stuck, as if a gear had got jammed in her head and the words just wouldn’t come out. Let your warrior of the night lay down her arms and embrace the radiance of a new day, said Mel, but this also failed to solicit a reply. May the rosy fingers of the dawn molest you gently awake. May the sun’s winged chariot dance lightly across your sky. Silence. Good morning, Mel added pointedly.

Oh! Barbara said, flustered. Yes. Good morning.

I hadn’t heard anything from Miranda and Alice, so I thought I’d come by and see if your kids are coming to January’s party. She adores your kids, and you know it just wouldn’t be the same without them. Are they here? she asked, attempting to peer past Barbara and into the house. I’d love to say hello.

Barbara placed a hand on her hip to stall for time and her mouth opened involuntarily, stuck halfway between saying Oh what a wonderful idea! and Fuck you all the way to Hades.

# # #

The clouds were playing sitcoms today, liberally interspersed with ads for hairspray, tacky jewelry, and suicide. High-powered projectors beamed these teevy broadcasts onto whichever clouds happened to be going overhead, providing the entire city with free entertainment on what would otherwise be wasted space. Mel was only vaguely aware of them today, paying them no attention, although she dimly seemed to recall that tomorrow they were showing cooking shows, and the day after that was the weekly sportsball tournament. If there was enough cloud cover on game days, the whole city would stop to lie back on rooftops and in parks with a beer in one hand and the other pressed lightly to their ears to tune into the audio. As far as Mel was concerned it only made people louder instead of quieter. She was not looking forward to the streets being full of aggressive drunken cheers, so she supposed she should enjoy sitcom day while she could. The neon trees on the corners of the streets and the rotating shop window displays flashed in the corners of Mel’s vision but she kept her eyes trained closely on the sidewalk, lost in thought.

Mel wasn’t in the habit of counting other people’s children, but over the years she couldn’t help noticing how Barbara always seemed to have one less kid than the time before. She wasn’t sure how many Barbara had had to start with — the years, and the kids, had a habit of blurring together after a while — but she was positive it used to be more than two, and she hadn’t seen either of them through the front door so she was beginning to worry.

Mel shivered. There was something about Barbara that gave Mel the willies. The way she was flat, Mel supposed. Not shallow, which implied a kind of phony superficiality that Barbara also definitely had, but flat, a person with no worlds inside her, a woman who contained no multitudes. If you flung open the door to her cage, she would stare at it, not even knowing what it was. She didn’t have the imagination to comprehend anything greater than herself. For Mel that was the whole point of having children. If you couldn’t imagine anything greater than yourself then what could you possibly want for your children? That they should be less than you? That the next generation should be a regression because, what, Barbara was the pinnacle of human evolution? But January would keep on being friends with Barbara’s kids, so Mel supposed that as long as she had to put up with this objectionable personage, she may as well give her the occasional stir and watch her simmer.

She couldn’t quite believe January had another birthday coming up so soon. It wasn’t just the years of Barbara’s kids that blurred together, it was the years of her own kid. She was getting so old now. Mel caught that thought as it came past. She wasn’t getting big. She was getting old. And if her daughter was old, how much older did that make Mel? Did she feel old? She only looked about forty, but unlike Barbara Mel did have worlds inside her. She did contain multitudes. And one of them was the kind of old person who looked back on the last twenty years and couldn’t for the life of her remember what she’d done. That scared her. Time shouldn’t just disappear. Time shouldn’t just evaporate. Maybe it didn’t — maybe it just seemed to telescope away into the distance, like reflections of reflections in the mirror, creating a corridor that always ends around a corner you can never reach.

Mel skipped down the sidewalk, hopping lightly from one cracked paving stone to another. The summer heat had recently started to turn, giving the air a pleasant coolness. It had finally cooled down enough so that Mel could wear the occasional blazer or, like today, a full suit that she fancied gave her a nice air of Marlene Dietrich. Not that she went appreciated in her time, of course. Her cousin Phil only grunted at her and rearranged himself, hoping she wouldn’t notice that he was unexpectedly aroused by her masculine energy. Her cousin Andrew smiled quietly to himself and bowed his head so no-one would see. And her sister? Who knew? She hovered above everything, too good to join in the fray like everyone else, just hanging back at an icy distance like Pluto, easy to dismiss at first because it’s not even a planet, but then it’s more than enough planet when it comes crashing into you in an epic interplanetary collision. Would she get January another book of eighteenth-century German cautionary tales for children? In German? Mel wouldn’t put it past her.

She would be seeing them tonight for their weekly dinner at Uncle Arnie’s. Maybe she could drop a few hints. She knew no-one would pay any attention. They were all going to be far too busy watching each other, waiting for someone to slip up, seizing on every opportunity to put each other down until either someone got disinherited or the old man finally croaked. Mel stopped herself, put the thought of Uncle Arnie’s death out of her mind. She just let it exist at the outskirts of her brain and let it brush up against her conscious thoughts with the knowing presence of a summer breeze.

There was, however, one more errand Mel had to take care of before dinner. She was not wearing a funeral suit for nothing. She held up her hand and pressed her thumb against her palm. Her implant projected her contact list in phosphor green, and she scrolled until she found the Hope of Bethlehem Baptist Church. She held her hand up to her ear in time to hear the pastor say, Will you please stop calling me, Mrs. Callahan.

Mel started to choke up. "I… I’m a woman in mourning, father."

How many times have I told you, I’m a pastor.

Pastor, primate, high elder of the sacred tabernacle, you’ll always be like a father to me. I just wanted to check what time the funeral will be this afternoon.

We’re not having a funeral this afternoon, he said with some relief.

Oooh, you got one on this morning then?

Mel could hear a silent but not entirely internal struggle happening on the other end of the phone as if it were playing out in front of her between two gladiators wearing brightly colored spandex. The tip of Mel’s tongue came to rest gently on the slight gap between her front teeth. She could almost taste it. There was a funeral on, and the pastor could not deny it. She had always had a mild distaste for the church, but was ready to concede that enough decent people were associated with it that she couldn’t tar them all with the same brush. This pastor on the other hand — what was his name? Father Fussyface or Vicar Hankypants or something, she could never remember — this pastor had it coming. He pleaded, "Mrs. Callahan, you can’t just come to other people’s funerals and disturb families who are legitimately grieving."

Mel plied him with her very best scandalized tone. I can’t believe that you, a man of God, could be so cruel. The deceased was such a big part of my life. I was so close to her —

Him.

Him. I was so close to him for over seventy years.

He was seventeen.

"We could stand here and talk philosophy all day, but I think you should leave the mathematics to the mathematicians, don’t you? They don’t come to you and tell you how to stop people wanking into dirty socks. Although if you’re looking for tips, try making your Jesus