Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki's listening to Gary Jules' "Mad World."
When I worked in the prison, it reminded me of the military
and the military reminded me of being an EMT and when
I was on the ambulance there were all these cities that were
buzzing by—Orlando and Los Angeles and Detroit and
San Francisco—and they all looked the same, the exact
goddamn same with those median strips flashing like
urban Morse Code, and the stroke patient punched me,
and in boot camp it was the same, the suicides so quick
and subtle, like blinking, and the prison was the same,
with the inmates stabbing themselves in hopes of getting
put on an ambulance to escape to the hospital, which was
better than the prison, with nurses in nursing uniforms and
football games on waiting room TVs and I remember all
the barbed wire of the prisons and all the barbed wire on
our bases, how I had to pick dead rabbits out of them, how
that was my job for weeks, a punishment for existing, and
I remember one day when the rain was light and I sat there
in uniform with a war going on and I was nowhere near it
and I opened my mouth and caught the rain and I loved it.
I once got to play the title character in a horror film
and I remember a scene where I was dragging this girl
through a swamp and the director would yell ‘cut’ and
I’d bend over to try to help her up and she’d say ‘no’
and lift herself up and we’d walk back to ‘square one,’
the starting point where we’d wait to see if the director
wanted us to do it again and he did, so she’d lie down
on the ground and I’d wrap my hand around her fake
hair and she’d grab my wrists so that I wasn’t actually
pulling her by her hair, but she was hanging onto me,
and the ground was wet from a recent rain and it was
February in North Carolina, at night, cold, and all she
wore was underwear and I’d drag her again and when
we got to the point where he yelled ‘cut,’ I’d try and
help her up, but again, she’d say ‘no,’ angry that I’d
even try and we’d walk back to square one and do it
again, and I wondered why she’d always say ‘no,’ but
later, when I saw the film, and she’d go on to win best
actress and I’d go on to win nothing, I realized that she
needed to hate me in the film and she needed to hate me
the whole time, not turn it off and on like a light switch
and when I thought I was dragging her through swamp,
it was really her that was dragging me, that I wasn’t an
actor at that level, that she was so entirely immersed
that she only saw me as monster, and even later, when
we were back in the hotel, she wouldn’t even look at
me, and I went to bed and I felt bad, almost like I was
guilty of something. And maybe I was. Maybe it was
all of patriarchy in those moments. Maybe I was just
an amateur. Maybe I didn’t understand Method. May-
be she didn’t want to be in a horror film, but wanted
to be doing something that would earn her an Oscar.
I don’t know. I’d lie in bed and realize that the next
day I was going to kill her. And I didn’t want to kill
her. I wanted to be the good guy in the film. Later,
on the final day of filming, I talked to the actor who
played the good guy. He was kind of famous. Was
on a TV show I didn’t watch very often. I said some-
thing about how it sucks to be the villain; his eyes lit
up, almost in anger. He said he had the boring role.
All he did was look good and say clichés. He said
that if I was going to be a killer in a movie, I had
layers upon layers I needed to explore. He said if
he had my role, he would have went to the nearby
prisons, would have tried to meet the Death Row
guys. I felt stupid. He looked like a supermodel.
His cheeks were all empty. His forehead was an
entire career. I had to kill him at the end. When
I did it, I sort of enjoyed it. It was my best scene
in the film. He looked like nobody had said ‘no’
to him in his entire life. I got it right on the first
take. The director yelled ‘cut.’ We disappeared
from each other’s lives. We were brilliant. We
were young. We didn’t go on to do great things.
We just disappeared. Maybe that’s what we all
did so well. We were incredible at disappearing.
I’m afraid of my mother, I’m afraid to lose her
but there is nothing you can control
in this life. She told me one time
about how much she loves sneaking
off to the softball field in our home-
town. Back then, there was only 3
channels on television. Back then,
there was so little to do. The soft-
ball games would be packed. All
these residents from all over town
would come, line the fence. It was
glorious. You felt as if you were
at a Presidential inauguration. All
this air just puzzling with buzzing
and fizzing and guzzling with sheer
hope and rage and skill and lust.
I felt like the world would explode
at those times. But my mother
would go when it was empty,
when the games were over, and
it was just quiet and mosquitoes
and stars, and she’d go with her
best friend and they’d smoke and
eat oranges and she said nothing
felt better in the world to her than
nicotine and oranges, that they
went together like Heaven and
God. And she told me that and
it stuck with me. And she’s quiet
now and tells me she has trouble
thinking and I get quiet too, afraid
I will lose her. And I will. Because
the world is beautiful and cruel . . .
