With the news that YouTube (i.e. Google) will no longer be supporting the dread-scourge of the open internet – Internet Explorer 6, this calls for celebration, and of course, dark fiction. Inspired by some clever Denver-ites that will be holding a wake in it’s dishonor.
…
“No, son, you cast long – there you’ve got it!” I said. ”That’s a good boy, we’ll have fish for supper no doubt!” I pat his head. What a wonderful morning, so long ago – me and my boy, IE6, out fishing over the mighty Platte. Breath in that air, let it pass over your pallet and taste the salt of the catch. But, no… not any more. Today, my wife catches me just standing there, watching the rain, cold cup of coffee in my right hand, IE6’s old favorite fishing lure in the left. I’m a little more gray, and I’m a little more lonely. She places a shawl over my shoulders.
“Stare all you want,” she says, “but warm fast or you’ll catch your death at this window.” She smiles, grips my index finger with her hand, then returns to her day. Time moves slower after the ebb and flow of a tragedy.
“Dad?” he once asked me. “Am I a good internet browser?”
“Of course you are my boy,” I replied. “Now just keep your eyes out on your line.” Ah, his smile is so wide.
I didn’t know what he would become. Neither of us did. In therapy, they tell us it’s called a diagnostic bereavement-denial syndrome. To me that’s just a bunch of fancy talk, the horrid wars of my yesteryears couldn’t dissolve the nightmare I’d birthed to this world, and into the next – God forgive me and angels be at peace.
It was like any normal Sunday morning. I was mowing the yard – fresh sunshine on my face and a hearty plate of pancakes mucking around in my stomach juices. As I turned to the house, I could see into IE6’s bedroom. We’d always respected his privacy, but what I caught that day was the beginning, I can see it clearly now. IE6 was holding a long page of code, a pet project of his – he always did so well with it, such a natural talent. He raised it over his head, then started slowly moving over the code with an object in his other hand – what I know now to be a coat hanger he heated up in the fireplace. He threw his head back while doing this, cackling into the ceiling and spouting loud curse words from dead languages while his eyes went black. I stopped the lawnmower, said a small prayer, then threw up in my neighbors bushes.
As the years passed it got worse – the ways he acted and how he treated his code. I’d pound my palm on the dinner table and order him to his room while my wife silently picked up all of the overturned glasses. I’d strip the code from his pale hands and tape it back together the only way I knew I could – my sheet full of stars. I’d find my wife sobbing on the bathroom floor gripping her sharpest Kanetsune for the last time. I planned a fishing trip.
IE6 was nine or ten, still a young one but far more capable for harm then this world would ever know. He fought the idea, but hadn’t been to school for months so he reluctantly agreed if not for the boredom, and I made peace with what I’d say to him. I feel so old now, my bones, so… dry. Our boat drifts out onto the water. My line is cast.
“IE6, my son. We need to talk,” I began.
He leans over, spits into the lake, and looks at his lace-less shoes. He mutters, “What, you idiot, what? Just leave me alone.”
Nervously, I continued. “You know I love you son, and I always will. Your mother and I are concerned about your behavior. You won’t go to school, you won’t move in with your uncle, you won’t leave people’s code alone. Those tattoos don’t help, and your hair – IE6, just tell me my boy, why are you so angry?”
My eyes well up on that last one. My heart hurts. My son. I taste tears through my mustache.
“Just leave it alone Dad. I like to shift things, I like to cut things, I am my own beast. You’ll never understand, and you’ll never be free.” As he says this, his eyes shift hues from red, to mauve, to jet black.
The deed must come now. It’ll be here soon. “So just leave – me – alone!” he screams. On this, I move forward and shove him from the tiny boat. His arms flail as he splashes into the brown water, near black with this overcast sky. “Dad!” he screams, arms reaching for invisible nothings. My eyes are mulled fresh with salty tears, as I lean over the boat, and slowly push his shoulders down into the water. Screams, muffled.
“I love you!” I scream into the bubbling froth my hands have disappeared into. “This is for the best, I love you, I’ll always-”
The bubbles stop. He doesn’t float, just sinks – a testament to the black underbelly he’d grown – his disdain and self encouraged apathy toward the world, and his code.
…
The days are less grim now. Mowing the yard on a Sunday morning, I’ll pass his old room – only storage.
I keep mowing, and reflect on the spot in my neighbors bushes that never grows back.
