by Salvatore DIFALCO

This morn­ing my eyes sit at the bot­tom of my face and my parched mouth gapes where my fore­head should be. I slept in my best suit of clothes and now it is sev­er­al shades of blue for some rea­son. I glance at my re­flec­tion in the kitchen win­dow and I see a lot of green. I open the win­dow and let the cool air ca­ress my hot, cu­bist face. It is not green out­side. It is dun and brown and dirty. So what is this green? My cat bumps my leg and purrs. I look down and she is al­so green this morn­ing, with emer­ald eyes. Why is she green? I try to reach her head but my hand feels in­flat­ed. I look at it. Madon­na mia. The green tinge con­cerns me as much as the swelling. The cat bumps me again. “Not now, amore. Not now. Pa­pa is dying.”

Am I dy­ing? Every­one is dy­ing. Not every­one is dy­ing this morn­ing. I try to stand up but this caus­es my stom­ach con­tents to rise. I sit down again and take deep breaths. Should I hate my cousin Bruno for in­tro­duc­ing me to and then del­ug­ing me with his ter­ri­ble wine? He said he made it with his fa­ther, my Un­cle Sil­vio, who knows from wine, but I sus­pect he crushed the grapes with his own foetid feet and fer­ment­ed them in dirty bar­rels with­out his fa­ther’s su­per­vi­sion. I will nev­er drink wine again. And I will hunt Bruno down when I am able and in­flict a prop­er beat­ing on him. A red bird of some va­ri­ety lights on the win­dowsill. A drop of red in a bar­ren land­scape al­ways pleas­es the eye. But on this oc­ca­sion, the red sends me rush­ing to the jakes to emp­ty my­self of all my in­testi­nal dev­ils past, present, and to come.

When I emerge the green cat awaits and I stag­ger to the clay jar where I keep her vit­tles and grab some with my swollen hand. I drop the food on the floor and she growls as she wolfs it down. “Good girl,” I say. I have yet to name her. Maybe I will call her Green, the green cat. It makes per­fect sense. She has been hang­ing around my abode for sev­er­al weeks and I have been feed­ing her lamb jerky, which she seems to like. Per­haps I should en­deav­or to di­ver­si­fy her di­et, but I know noth­ing of cats. I as­sume she dis­patch­es the oc­ca­sion­al ro­dent or lizard creep­ing about the house.

I drink a jug of wa­ter scarce­ly draw­ing a breath, but this dri­ves me back to the jakes for more purg­ing. Bruno will die, mark my words. That will con­sti­tute a par­ri­cide, or more prop­er­ly speak­ing a pa­tru­eli­cide, the killing of a pa­ter­nal cousin. Fun­ny there is a word for that. Our fa­thers were broth­ers. Both dead from heart ail­ments. Bruno will not die of a heart ail­ment. He will die of poi­son­ing or stab­bing. Will I re­al­ly kill my cousin? “Green,” I say, “should I kill my cousin, Bruno?” The cat looks at me with her slit­ted, mur­der­ous emer­ald eyes, seem­ing to sug­gest that death is on­ly and ever the solution.

Filed under Fiction on September 25th, 2026

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