Fred Zackel

Deluxe

“You wanna get a pizza?”

“Can we have mushrooms on it? And maybe pepperoni?”

“Sure. Why not? We’re special.”

“Parents can be such shits.”

“My parents told me they picked through a hundred thousand embryos to select me.”

“So you are special.”

“The only reason I’m here is I don’t have any negative genes.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“Picked on. Not quite unconditional love from Mummy and Daddy, is it? And you?”

“I was a savior sibling. I was bred for a blood type for my older brother. He died when I was being born.”

“Boy, were your parents screwed.”

“They always say they never felt that way.”

Fred Zackel teaches literature and humanities at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. His 1978 novel Cocaine & Blue Eyes was recently reprinted by Point Blank Press.