Cover art for We Aren’t Really Supposed To Talk To Bears by Ben Brooks

We Aren’t Really Supposed To Talk To Bears

We Aren’t Really Supposed To Talk To Bears Lyrics

The window went that kind of black which means the nighttime is opening. I said, hello nighttime, and started scratching my head. I scratch my head every day. There are a lot of scabs on my head. Sometimes my head starts bleeding and seams of blood form under my fingernails. When that happens I remember about being made from star stuff and I feel tired. When that happens other people look at me like I shouldn’t be there.

There aren’t many other people.

There are two other people.

There were more other people but they died from things like bad hearts, cancer, and suicide. Bye bye other people. I don’t believe that I will see them in heaven but sometimes I see them when I am asleep. In my book about dreams it says that you can work out if you are dreaming or not by pressing a light switch. If the light switch turns the light on then you are not dreaming. There are never any light switches in my dreams.

At six I went into my kitchen and boiled water and made instant noodles. Instant noodles are delicious. I eat them every day. They come in five flavours: beef, prawn, chicken, mushroom, and vegetable. I never eat the prawn ones because prawns have eyes. Too human. I chose mushroom. I sat on the soil in my garden and ate them. A fox came out of a bush. I held out some noodles and said hello but it ran away. Nightnight, foxy.

My garden is just soil. It is ten sleeping lions long with brown fences on either side. When my Grandma died the garden had some bushes and some grass in it but I telephoned a man and he took it all away. I like my soil garden. There is nothing to break in it. There is nothing in it which can die. When it rains my garden smells alive because the water goes into the soil and wakes it up. Good morning, soil. How are you today?

My dinner was five gold stars. I ate every last noodle. I went inside and washed up my bowl and played the no legs game. The no legs game is where I pretend I have no legs. I drag myself all through the house using only my arms. Sometimes I get carpet burns. Sometimes I moan to make it more realistic. Ahhhhhh. Watch out, I am coming, and I have no legs. Ahhhhh. I’m not really coming. There isn’t anyone to come at. I dragged myself into the toilet and put my head on the toilet seat. Several of my pubic hairs were stuck to the inside walls of my toilet, which is something I should clean. Hello pubic hairs, I miss you, come home.

My legs grew back and I sat on the toilet and urinated into it. It felt good to have my legs back. I massaged them to let them know. I said, welcome back legs, I missed you, both of you.

It wasn’t raining outside so I didn’t go for a walk. I put my duvet in the bathtub and started my new book there. The bathtub is a good place to be because it is the perfect size for a single human body. My bathtub doesn’t have taps because I telephoned a man and he took them away. I use the shower for that.

The book I am reading is called Heroes of Polar Exploration. It is a history of humans going to cold places and dying in them. At the start of the book some Vikings go on a boat and find Greenland. They have to leave Iceland because they punched and killed some people there. There was grass and other good things in Greenland so lots of people went. Then Greenland got cold and everyone died. When scientists found the skeletons they were very small because of how the food didn’t have enough star stuff in it for humans.

I ate a piece of bread with marmalade on it and sat in the garden. The sun started to come up. The sky went grey and then blue and there were ropes of cloud in it that come out of planes.

_____

Today when I woke up my window was blue. This means that it was the same day as yesterday. Time is like a very big slug that I am riding. Giddyup, slug.
I ate mushroom noodles in the garden and then used my spade to play the digging holes game. The digging holes game is where I dig holes and then fill them in. The rule is that I have to fill in each hole with soil from another hole. The challenge is to make lots of holes and also to make the holes deep. Filling in holes is very satisfying. I like it when there is soil on my hands and under my fingernails. Sometimes I put my hands straight into the soil, but that is cheating and isn’t as satisfying. I dug six holes and then the sky went black. I went inside and put on my coat and went outside, through the front door. Whenever I go outside, I say to myself, here we go again.

A woman was pushing a pram by my house. The baby in the pram was shouting or maybe crying. Calm down, baby. I ran across the road. I was scratching the front of my head so my wrist and arm was hanging in front of my face. I imagined that my wrist and arm was the prong of a Viking helmet and I was a Viking and I was in Greenland and everyone was going to die. Sorry, everyone. I imagined a scientist from the future finding my bones and looking at them and feeling sad. A man and a woman holding hands were walking towards me. I walked on the kerb and looked at my feet. My fingers started to feel damp which meant a scab had come away. I didn’t want to take my hand out of my hair in case people saw my red fingers and thought I was disgusting so I kept my hand inside my hair and tried to walk a little faster.

There were two girls in the shop. They were buying cider. I waited in an aisle next to the teabags until they left. I gently traced the circular hole in my head. I imagined that my finger was a figure skater and the hole was an ice rink. All of the judges give me tens. I am a winner. I have won.

When the two girls left I started carrying packets of instant noodles to the counter. I had to go back and forth because I couldn’t take my hand out of my hair. I felt heavy like there were dumbbells in my chest. What are you doing in there dumbbells? Get out. I also got a small blue top milk and a carton of orange juice. The man in the shop said hello to me and smiled. Sometimes, when he feels happy, the man in the shop tells me about the weather outside. Once he gave me an out of date frozen pizza for free. I was too scared to eat it so I just threw it around in my garden and then I think cats ate it.

He typed in my items slowly. I felt calm but my hand was still in my hair. It was more difficult than normal to get my money out of my pocket and then to put my change back into my pocket but I did it because I couldn’t not do it. I said thank you to the man in the shop and then walked quickly away from him.

I had beef noodles for dinner. I ate them in the bath.

I have been feeling very dizzy.

My arms are as heavy as houses.

_____

I slept for a long time last night which I know because when I woke up it was morning. I had a dream where I made friends with a lizard called Postman Tang. We went to Taiwan and got rich from selling hugs.

My calendar says that I am having lunch with Larissa in two days. I like having lunch with Larissa. We talk about our lives and about things that have happened and about school and about current affairs. I don’t know any current affairs, so Larissa tells me some. She knows which kinds of current affairs I like to hear about (natural disasters, oil spills, Africa). We always eat at the same restaurant. It is Chinese. They serve delicious noodles and there is free green tea.

Once I tried to kiss Larissa. It was when our bodies were smaller. I moved my face very close to her face and she said, what are you doing. I said, I am doing a joke, Larissa. Then I put my face into my bowl of noodles and cried. I was scared to take my face out of the bowl. I thought I wouldn’t know how to respond to Larissa’s face. I kept my face inside the bowl until she left the restaurant. Later on the phone I said, I think I have narcolepsy.

My calendar also says that it is bonfire night tomorrow. I like bonfire night because it is like everyone letting everyone else know that they exist. By firing bright rockets into the sky. Hello everyone, I’m over here. I think I will buy a rocket. I think I will buy a red rocket.
Today I played the I have a dog game. The I have a dog game is where I pretend that I have a dog. I called the dog Fitzherbert. Me and Fitzherbert played in the garden. We threw soil at each other and laughed. I said to him, I feel like I have known you all my life. I put a bowl of water on my kitchen floor and cooked Fitzherbert noodles. He wasn’t very hungry. All the more for me, Fitzherbert.

I have been getting very tired lately.

This month has lasted twenty seven months.

I have been sleeping for sixteen hours at a time.

_____

Today I woke up in the middle of the day. I ate vegetable noodles in the garden and waved at the sun. Hello up there, sun. Remember me to the sea. A bird came close. It was kissing the ground. My loud neighbours turned on music and it went away. Bye bye, kissing bird.

I made a bed in the bath and read about more people who died in the arctic. Then I went on the internet to research narwhals. I have become very interested in narwhals since I saw a picture of one in my book. Narwhals are cucumber shaped whales with tusks. They are like unicorns without arms and legs and also they are real. People used to kill narwhals and then eat their tusks to make them stronger and more magic. I’ll stick to instant noodles, thanks. I think I would like to live in the ocean. I think I would like to be a narwhal because then no one could come close to me in case they got impaled on my horn. I would say, WARNING! HORN!, to them and they would disappear.

I printed off some pictures and put them on my bedroom walls.

The pictures made me sad. The narwhals looked lost. I took them all down and put them in the oven.

After that I went to the shop to get my red firework. There were already others happening in the sky. Every time I saw one it sounded like a hello. Hello, I said. Hello person underneath the green firework. The man in the shop helped me pick a rocket. I said I didn’t want anything too showy. I said something small and red would be perfect. The man in the shop said he wanted to see the fireworks. He said hearing the sound but not seeing the colour was upsetting. It was good talking to him. Some people came in though, so I took my rocket and ran home.

In the garden, I dug out a little cave in the soil and planted it. I did a countdown. Blue sparks happened overhead. Hello, I said. Hello person underneath the blue firework.

Mine went up.

It looked like a little red octopus in the grey.
Hello, I said.

Hello, I shouted.

And I know that the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound so I shouted, this is where I was, and started jumping up and down and throwing handfuls of soil around because it felt good today even though I didn’t know why.

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Genius Annotation

Short story by novelist Ben Brooks originally published on Thought Catalog.

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Release Date
January 22, 2013
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