Vicarious Radiation

by Anthony Neil Smith

Helen's thyroid treatment made her radioactive, a danger to her loved ones. The first thing she did back home was fill a mister with water and start towards the greenhouse in the yard.

Her husband Jimmy blocked the way, bracing himself against the kitchen door that led to their porch. He imagined a path of scorched earth across the lawn, dead dirt that wouldn't grow anything but tumors for years to come.

"Please, I want to see my plants," she said.

"You'll kill them. Is that what you want? You work all season on the plants and then want to poison them?"

She waved her hand like a Batman villainess and did a sultry, "I can poison you too, my sweet. Are the plants worth your own life?"

Helen was forty-six, and the thyroid problem came as a big surprise. She would have to take medicine for the rest of her life to make up for her extinguished gland. The doctors told her to keep away from all living things until the radiation wore off. For most patients, that wasn't a problem—the treatment exhausted them. Not Helen. She wanted to dance, climb, punch. After all, this was a woman who took up motocross on her fortieth birthday when she saw it on TV while Jimmy was boning her on the couch after they ate the cake.

She told him, "I want to water my plants."

Jimmy gave his best Man-of-the-House glare and said, "You should lie down, take a nap, take it easy.

Then she grinned. An evil and powerful grin. The type on soap opera actresses. One step forward. "I'm not kidding."

Jimmy gripped the doorframe. Any closer and he was in trouble. He'd go weak and puke and lose his hair. Must…maintain…dignity.

She took another step, this time with her mister held high like mace, her fingers squeezing the trigger just enough to make the screechy spring noise. She was a tall woman, salt-and-pepper hair cut close to her scalp, face soft but tired but determined. Jimmy was shorter than Helen, already losing his hair from the top, never as ambitious and always a little fatter.

"You don't want to kill them," Jimmy said.

"Yes. I. Do." Helen raised her voice to fight level and kept on. "I like my plants, and I like the greenhouse, and if I kill them, I will go buy more. I will mutate and wither them, and still buy more and more. I want pets. I want kittens and toy poodles and wiener dogs, lovebirds and budgies, and I'll take care of them when they fall ill, and I'll bury them when they die, and I'll buy more and more. I want to play God with them the way God is playing God with me. And why is that so bad?"

Jimmy didn't have an answer. His glorious, dying, creative, murderous wife. The move of his safe and humble life. That's why he married her—vicarious reasons.

He inched towards her and said, "Okay then, you'll have all that and more."

"What are you doing?" A step back.

"I'm going to kiss you."

She covered her lips. "Don't. That's not good for you. You'll throw up."

"So I will." He kissed the back of her fingers. They slid away. He licked her bottom lip. "You can't break me that easily. Do your worst."

She puckered. They kissed. Fusion energy.


© Anthony Neil Smith 2006

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Anthony Neil Smith is the author of Psychosomatic and The Drummer, plus bunches of short stories and a few essays, some noir, some literary, some straddling the fence. They've been published in joints like Exquisite Corpse, Bellevue Literary Review, Connecticut Review, Barcelona Review, Thug Lit, and plenty of others. He is the former editor of the late crime writing ezine Plots with Guns and an associate editor with Mississippi Review. Born and raised on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, he's now living and teaching Creative Writing in Southwest Minnesota.