King Me: Short Story

By Michael Christie

Michael Christie delicately and convincingly explores the fragile world of mental illness through Saul, a hospital patient who stops taking his medication, reordering his perspective on the world. “King Me” is part of Christie’s critically acclaimed short-story collection, The Beggar’s Garden.

The Beggar’s Garden follows a diverse group of characters, from a bank manager to a drug addict to a retired Samaritan, a web designer, and a car thief, as they drift through each other’s lives in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Michael Christie’s darkly funny debut collection won the Vancouver Book Award; it was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Nov 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781443421805

Michael Christie

MICHAEL CHRISTIE received his MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. Prior to this, he worked in a homeless shelter on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and provided outreach to the severely mentally ill. A former professional skateboarder, he is a senior writer for Color Magazine, an award-winning publication that celebrates skateboarding culture. Michael Christie lives in Thunder Bay, and is working on his next book, a novel.

Book preview

King Me

Michael Christie

Contents

Cover

Title Page

King Me

Copyright

About the Publisher

King Me

A he ate his lunch, Saul watched the stout Assassin feed Georgina—a stunted, moaning woman to whom God had accidentally issued a mollusk instead of a brain—guiding a plastic spoon of wobbling pudding into her mouth, with a little flick over her lower lip to catch what didn’t make it in. The Assassin was a short, rotund Latino, and his presence rang Saul with alarm as he pulped the crusts of his tuna melt.

Saul had recognized the Assassin because he was a self-taught detective, which meant he knew what to look for. He’d seen men like this night after night on the news: inflamed guerrillas and private militiamen, nationless killers and hooded butchers, all either shooting into the air or wailing mournfully, draped across the body of a fallen brother. Saul shifted a table closer and his suspicions were strengthened by a deep scar that tunnelled the length of the Assassin’s left cheek, the shape of a minnow, clean enough to be the work of a scalpel. A box-cutter duel in the steaming slums of Nicaragua, Saul suspected. Or perhaps he’d been a child soldier, his soul now turned mercenary and septic with hatred. All seemed equally possible.

He saw the man unlace Georgina’s bib and lift it from her limp neck. Had he come for her? But Georgina couldn’t even speak—not entirely true, she knew two words: one that sounded like bah, which meant bad, hungry, bathroom and angry, and the other roob, which was used for every other linguistic purpose. Saul’s thoughts were interrupted when suddenly she gurgled and whacked her plastic bowl from the table with a sharp pink elbow, slopping ivory pudding on the right tire of her wheelchair while she brayed with delight. The Assassin went scrambling for a mop, desperate not to publicize his incompetence on his first day.

Saul decided to launch an investigation. In the smoking room, he found Drew, who was relishing his 1:15 after-lunch smoke. At Riverview, all aspects of existence were subject to a schedule, an iron framework of meds, meals, sleep, bathing and activities over which the staff attempted to stretch the battered material of their ruined beings like the fabric of a tent. Staff controlled the smokes because patients like Drew would torch an entire carton in a day if given the chance. Not that he ever had.

Who’s the new staff? And what does he want with Georgina? Saul said.

You mean the Latino guy wire tap water wings? Drew said, blurting the words as a prefabricated unit. Drew’s mind had been shredded by wagonloads of methamphetamines and radio waves sent especially to him by his great-uncle’s ham radio. At some point he’d correlated the entire inventory of his brain into a useless fizzling web. Saul didn’t care to fraternize with Drew— one got tired panning everything he said for nuggets of sense—but he often divined things that others couldn’t. Yes, the Latino guy.

Drew shrugged and exhaled a globe of smoke. Not sure footed the bill Cosby kids are all right now. Then he scoured his face vigorously with his palm as if it were a blackboard and he couldn’t stand what was written there.

He’s new, said Kim later at the craft table, unfurling a battalion of paper angels she’d spent the last five minutes