Fiction: Worst Of Our Species

By Matthew Dexter

I realized my eleven-year-old son Darwin was demented the afternoon he constructed a pyramid of twigs, gathered two thousand and twenty-five pinecones, and torched a mountain of foliage in the backyard shadows swallowing our rhododendrons. The Conestoga wagon canopy treehouse engulfed the collection of vintage Playboys the boys hid beneath the rotting rafters, howling at the waxing gibbous moon with lunatic coyote spasms. It was the one-week anniversary of my oldest son Chuck’s death during a covert mission in the Middle East. I cried tears of elation when Chuck evolved from civilian life into a Navy SEAL.

“I’ll make Darwin proud,” Chuck said. “We’ll instill the power of the U.S. Armed Forces in his soul.”

“Your country loves you,” said my husband, Dick.

Chuck constructed that treehouse along with the muscled arms of my humongous husband during the Indian summer when they both injected anabolic steroids into their buttocks and hit the gym harder than the Apache Guardian helicopter that collided with the clandestine mountain range. The US military couldn’t even tell us what country Chuck died in. Could have been the Galápagos Islands for all we know. You can never trust the United States Armed Forces. Just ask guerilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

***

Darwin’s face illuminated like the dust on a butterfly’s wings or the majesty of a jack-o'-lantern; he stripped naked and paraded around the backyard as flames climbed the branches of my favorite hydrangea and licked the roof of our garage. My first hint was the fetid aroma ambushing my hairy nostrils. I slashed a two-inch gash in my bikini line with a brand-new Gillette Venus Smooth razor—blood oozing in tonic contraction of muscles and bubbles bouncing off the rim of our Jacuzzi. Sipping gin and tonic, putrid smoke eddied its silent obscenities through the bathroom window.

Dick called the Tenafly Fire Department, and we almost lost our entire garden in a charred cathedral of foliage. Masses of ashes prayed to the breeze. I saw my grandmother’s drunken face cut through the smoke of the Conestoga wagon canvas. Her geraniums vaporized. Dick’s prize-winning tulips shriveled, blackened, and burned faster than a butterfly’s wings bursting in our bug zapper on Fourth of July. My Persian lilies were the only species unscorched, miraculously avoiding the inferno like a solitary house spared in the tornado track of a calamitous F5 twister.

My kid is the worst animal alive. If I could shove Darwin inside the protective cage of the bug zapper, the world would be a better place. It’s true. I’m not a horrible mother. Darwin’s father is a great husband. Dick’s most egregious sin is charring cheeseburgers because he’s too busy playing catch with Darwin to finesse the barbecue—baseball, football, frisbee, lacrosse—Dick’s an amazing father. But I love bacon burned to a crisp on burgers. Nothing worth whining about. Dick’s sperm isn’t evil. I’m not an alcoholic. We all guzzle too much merlot and cabernet sauvignon sometimes, especially when our only residing child is fishing with his father and the other Den Leaders on a Cub Scout overnight campout. We’re not perfect parents, but it felt like our little nuclear family was blessed.

We’re cursed. A decimated nuclear family in ruins. Mothering Darwin was a gift from God. I’m an atheist. The pinecone inferno: the fluorescent catalyst that killed all hope for parenting with a smidgeon of normalcy our family knew before I dipped my fingers into the Jacuzzi that fiery afternoon listening to Pink Floyd. Whenever I notice the bubbles bouncing over the anchor-shaped mastectomy scars on my chest, I’m tempted to turn on the hot water and dip my eyeballs into the deck-mounted Roman bathtub faucet. Dick didn’t touch me after my double mastectomy. My surgery ended the second Chuck died. Who knows whether my breast cancer or the obliteration of Dick’s eldest son metamorphosed my body into a piranha.

***

It’s illegal to own a pet gorilla, but Che Guevara never leaves our house. We trained El Che to stay away from windows.

“Good gorilla,” Darwin said.

***

The Tenafly Fire Department extinguished the flames. Darwin stood unharmed, staring morbidly at the heap of treehouse ashes…but Darwin will be burning in Hell soon. Darwin’s no longer a human being. He’s another species, one borne from the flames of the helicopter crashing into the covert mountain in a foreign country where heroes never come home alive. Darwin’s Kobe Bryant poster plummeted from his bedroom ceiling onto his sweaty head, singed from the pyramidon of pinecones. Maybe Darwin ripped it off like a Band-Aid in the chaotic midst of nightmares that caused Che Guevara to cower in fear in our fireplace.

We bombed Iran’s nuclear sites the night Chuck died. I ran like a cheetah across the front yard to meet the Casualty Assistance Calls Officers sauntering down our driveway. I knew Chuck was gone as soon as I woke up without my breasts. Dick drove me home in his Ford Focus and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital discharged me against the medical advice of my doctors. That night, Darwin logged into Dick’s Pinnacle online sportsbook account. Dick noticed a couple mornings later and somersaulted across our backyard, astonished to discover a balance of eighty-eight thousand dollars in the account.

“How the hell did this happen?” Dick asked.

We were flabbergasted but exhilarated. The euphoria felt better than freebasing the purest fish scale cocaine.

“It’s simple,” Darwin said, scooping numerous raisins from the brownish milk of his cereal bowl.

“Simple?” Dick asked.

“Evolution of natural selection,” Darwin said.

“The odds of hitting this parlay are astronomical, Darwin. It’s almost as impossible as winning the Powerball jackpot. It’s more likely you’ll get struck by lightning twice in your lifetime than hitting three of these longshot lunatic parlays in a row.”

“How in Jesus’ name did you do this, Darwin?”

Darwin was clenching the charred soup spoon that Dick feverishly cooked freebase cocaine with during our summer of debauchery in Lower Manhattan before the Twin Towers imploded to dust.

“Where did you find that spoon, Darwin?”

“It’s always been here, Mommy.”

“Impossible,” Dick said. “That spoon was pulverized in the Cantor Fitzgerald private bathroom in the corner office of the one hundred fifth floor of the North Tower.”

“One hundred fourth floor of the World Trade Center, Daddy.”

“That’s right, Darwin,” Dick said. “Gary Lutnick’s office.”

“Managing director and bond trader, Daddy.”

Dick stared at Darwin, flabbergasted but elated. Che Guevara scratched his armpits.

“How come all your grades at Horace Mann are always mediocre if you know this shit?”

“He gets perfect grades in gym class, Dick.”

“Where did you find that enormous spoon, son?”

Darwin scooped the soggy marshmallows and chocolate bats, ghosts, and spooky figures from his blackening milk. He scooped the bits of fruit and grain as if panning for gold nuggets in a creek bed beside a clandestine mine. Darwin combined all the cereals together to create a new species of breakfast food. Darwin’s favorite concoction was a fusion of Froot Loops, Count Chocula, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Lucky Charms, Frosted Flakes, Apple Jacks, Cheerios, Cap ’n Crunch, Trix, Raisin Bran, Cookie Crisp, chocolate milk, whipped cream, strawberry ice cream, and rainbow sprinkles.

“Allāhu ʾakbar,” Darwin said. “We have some planes—just stay quiet and you’ll be okay. We are returning to the airport…”

“Darwin, you’ve lost your goddamned mind.”

“…Nobody move—everything will be okay. If you try to make any sudden moves, you’ll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”

***

Dick elaborated that Darwin hit a miracle longshot parlay encompassing thirteen sports across the planet which created a “perfect quadruple-elevenfold ripple” through his Pinnacle online sportsbook account.

“Babe, the two-thousand-twenty-five-dollar balance manifested into eighty-nine thousand one hundred dollars within forty-eight hours. This is degenerate sorcery.”

“Really, Dick? Necromancy?”

“A perspicacious gift from the gods, Babe.”

“You’re an analytical man, Dick. Do you honestly think our eleven-year-old son is conjuring the spirits of his dead brother for magical purposes?”

Dick withdrew eighty thousand dollars, and we made love on the kitchen counter when Darwin was riding his dirt bike—God only knows where. Che Guevara watched in silence, camouflaged into the black bearskin rug in our living room.

“El Che’s spying on us.”

“Let him.”

That was the first time Dick touched me since my double mastectomy. Darwin turned eight thousand dollars into another ninety-eight thousand while we slept. Dick withdrew most of the money, and we wondered what terroristic force possessed the soul of our youngest son when our eldest smashed into the covert mountain. Could it last forever?

***

The pinecone fire and the flames in Darwin’s eyes was worth it.

***

“Don’t you love me, Mommy?”

“Of course we do!” Dick said, scanning the Porsche brochure he picked up at the dealership yesterday.

“We love you,” I said, “no matter what. We’ve always loved you, Darwin. Same as Charles and Che Guevara. Life is different now. Our nuclear family is evolving. You’re a new species since your brother’s extinction.”

Dick dilly-dallied outside to meet the Costco delivery driver. The truck was loaded with televisions, furniture, appliances, gadgets, condoms, cold cuts, and alcohol. Dick whimpered as he shook the delivery driver’s hand. Tears drizzled onto the sidewalk. Dick bounced back and forth wildly as if trapped aboard a raft within the whitewater rapids of a raging river.

“Dad’s showing a ton of energy, huh?”

“Yeah,” Darwin said. “Just drop the 50-megaton hydrogen bomb or the B-41 thermonuclear bomb.”

“What do you mean, Darwin?”

“Screw it,” Darwin said. “Hit those terrorists with the 30,000-pound GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker buster bomb.”

“Hell are you saying, Darwin?”

“What are ya afraid, Mommy?”

“What the hell’s wrong with you, Darwin?”

“Parlay all the bombs in the nuclear arsenal together, Mom.”

“Darwin—”

“It’s coming, Mommy. I can feel it in my bones.”

***

Dick didn’t even need to pop Cialis anymore. First time in decades he could attain an erection naturally—and rapidly—all he needed to do was look at his sportsbook balances, bank accounts, or clench his eyeballs shut. Dick soared to Heaven. His smile lingered while he slept. I worried the humongous smirk would cause nerve damage to his face or damage his jaw muscles. Dick became drop-dead gorgeous. The gambling winnings were working her aphrodisiacal magic.

I’d never seen my husband happier—ecstatic to the point of manic lunacy—every night his sports gambling coffers got replenished. The sportsbooks cancelled accounts because Darwin was winning colossal amounts. Dick opened new accounts by the dozen. Numerous refused to let him withdraw winnings, but it didn’t matter. Within a month, Dick amassed millions of dollars and spread them like bombs throughout our bank accounts.

We tried to catch Darwin gambling, but he only placed bets when we slept. Darwin didn’t gamble ’til Dick passed out after guzzling thirteen Coronas and seven Jose Cuervo shots. Every morning, we were six figures richer—and the abominable hangovers were worth it. Dick quit his job at the brokerage firm. Merrill Lynch couldn’t compete with the perspicacious inertia of our degenerate eleven-year-old son’s sports gambling prowess.

***

Darwin sprinted across our backyard to supervise dozens of landscapers planting a bounty of exorbitant trees, shrubs, herbs, bushes, and flowers. An exhausted landscape architect stood shrouded in shadows like Ali Khamenei—the Supreme Leader of Iran—cloaked in clerical attire, donning a dark purple wreath of Persian lily bulbs on his head like a turban. He preached, ready to orbit the moon.

Chuck’s eyeballs glimmered in the collaged dust of a butterfly’s wings. I ran outside to save my eldest son, but the pattern of dust dissolved into kaleidoscopic shrapnel of fertilizer seeds. I sprinted faster ’til I bounced into the bug zapper, scooping air from my lungs like raisins, bats, and spooky fragments in Darwin’s fusion of cereal. Che Guevara stared bewilderedly from our kitchen window as our neighborhood exploded into newborn stars.

My sons are no longer part of the human species.

Matthew Dexter is an American author living in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. His fiction has been published in hundreds of literary journals and dozens of anthologies. Matthew is the author of the novel The Ritalin Orgy and the story collection, Slumber Party Suicide Pact. His second story collection and debut essay collection Burger King Ball Pit is forthcoming in the fall of 2025. Matthew is the Lil Wayne of literature. He writes abhorrent freelance pieces for exorbitant amounts of pesos to pay the bills while drinking cervezas in paradise with tourists.