Beginners
by Mika Seifert
In this coming-of-age tale with a dark twist, two brothers engage in a deathly game.
FICTION
M
Y BROTHER LEMMY taught me how
to die. I was then eight, and he eleven.
We would go behind the barn, which is
near Walter Raleigh Elementary, near a
little stream that goes past some pastures with cows on
it, and some shrubbery shielding us from view, and after
I was done getting trampled by the cows, Lemmy would
drown himself in the stream. Being the older brother,
Lem always let me go first, except for the very first time,
when he showed me that the whole thing was real andnot some sicko practical joke. After I’d seen, I always
went first, and never was Lem not there when I woke
up again. He never left me unattended in my dying, and
always was he there when I opened my eyes, looking
down at me with brotherly worry and feeling for bark
in my chest.
Lem came up with the game when he was nine,
but he only showed me later when he had the rules pat
down and knew what he was doing all the time. Still, he
said, it pained him to see me dead there on the ground, PHOTO: JORDAN WHITT/UNSPLASH28 W LT SUMMER 2019