The Cipher

9

And the cold inevitable of the morning after.

On my back in the breathing silence, Cinderella, ha-ha, after the ball, my right hand scorched a porky pink and all of me sore with the ache of extreme muscular exertion, I had done some work last night, yes. Dancing with the sculptures. Burning people. Hurting people. Proud of yourself?

But what else—turning, groaning, to find my pisspot, seeing on the floor the charcoal skidmarks, the whole room stank of burning— what else could I have done? I had to stop them. I couldn’t let them go down the Funhole, no matter what. What else could I have done?

Well, said my brain. For starts you could have stayed upstairs. Since it won’t work without you.

Oh what a trick. And see how easily I had fallen for it, stumbled into it like a practiced buffoon. B’rer Funhole; no wonder it wanted me in charge. Please don’t stay behind, you’ll miss the fun, and after all you’re the main event! Lured to sleep and then let to wake, Doris bearing the backhand tidings meant to get me down there so the show could really start. Put up the mask, Malcolm, nail it up for everyone to see, make a big production of it, let’s get the neighbors in on this. Stir the pot, Nakota, mix it up with all your mysticism and that special selfishness that can barely recognize the existence of others, let alone their safety; stir it up good and bubbly, and don’t forget to add your goons. Try to help, Randy, what can’t be helped. And you, Doris, you get the supporting role, you get to animate the human corpse, you get to play Funhole messenger.

And in the end, the eternal Why me, but after all why ask. No answer, and maybe I wouldn’t have understood one if I got it, maybe I didn’t have the necessary smarts, maybe they’d been sizzled out of me the night before in the dreadful burning flash of what almost happened, and bad enough what had: Nakota hurt again, her stupid sidekick too (how bad?), and the neighbor, maybe more, seeing, what would he tell of what he’d watched, who would he tell? One big enormous botch, even orchestrated it could not possibly have been handled more clumsily, what next, a news crew? Live from the Funhole? Even now there was no guessing how bad things really were, or how much worse they might become. All I could do now was try to repair the damage, if possible, with what little I had. Or was.

What I did have, though, what I did understand, was responsibility. Yes, of course, it was the naughty Funhole back of everything, but who got the blame: the box? Or Pandora?

Fumbling at the door, out into the hall after a careful peek, no one there. Punishing cold. My feet were bare, I didn’t remember taking off my shoes. The mask stared down at me in pale indifference, and I felt insulted, somehow, being mocked by my own face; I reached to tear it down but my arms were too short, my need for haste too great. It was a good likeness, as they say, and with its eyes closed it achieved a sort of blank serenity: a sorry peace, but then again that was more or less me; in the end he had done a good job. Malcolm’s major work: my face. That ought to piss him off.

If I hurried, I thought, washing up in the empty flat, water sluicing down my aching arms, ignoring the ugly whiff of burn that lingered there as well, if I was quick, if it wasn’t snowing—it was—well still I should be able to get back before anyone else; it was still early, not even ten. Pandora could not correct her original error, but I bet she didn’t go around opening boxes anymore. Or leaving them loose for others to open with curious fingers more ignorant than hers.

So. It was a good lock. Expensive. Not a combination lock, I could just imagine myself trying to remember three numbers—in order—in a crisis, but a padlock, the kind they show being shot with a gun and still it doesn’t open. Nakota didn’t have a gun but she knew where to get one, and I had to be sure.

The salesperson thought I was weird, counting out quarters with my bandaged hand and my two-dollar limp, but since this was not a new experience I gave her my looniest grin.

“It’s for my cage,” I told her.

She was studiously smiling, her face pointed away from my face. “I hope it works,” she said.

Bag in hand, left hand, my right held beside my body like some useless club and it certainly was. Thinking as I slogged through the parking lot, Well, this is kind of a bitch since Vanese was both the only one I could trust and the one most likely to oppose me, but I had to try. Driving slowly, maybe the last snow of the year, clogging the streets and re-eroding the dubious skills of drivers who’d had a week of dry weather to forget. Crazy or not, at least I could always drive.

Vanese answered the door and lost whatever smile she might have conjured; still she didn’t look technically pissed. “Come in, I suppose,” she said, and that made me smile.

“Well, at least I know where I stand.”

The apartment was larger than mine, which was no feat, but there was a home look to it that my place would never have. Randy’s art was everywhere, some pretty nice pieces, there were snapshots of the two of them, of friends, there was a bunch of dried stalks and leaves in a big ceramic pot. Beat-up friendly furniture. All the amenities missing back home at the flophouse of the. damned.

She nodded back at what I guessed was the kitchen. “I was frying some sausage,” she said. “You want some?”

“Yes,” I lied, followed her to a square little box of fake red brick and a grease-brown galaxy of refrigerator magnets in the dubious shapes of fruit. She nodded me toward a cupboard. “Cups there, coffee there. Milk in the fridge if you want it.”

I didn’t. Smooth fingers on a knife, chopping peppers. She had on some bright green do-rag or headscarf or something, a Cleveland Browns T-shirt. Dumping the peppers into the pan, bright sizzling flash. “I heard all about last night,” she said. “I’m real glad I wasn’t there.” No smile, severely stirred the peppers, hands efficient with anger. “I wish Randy hadn’t been there either.”

“So what do I want.”

“Right.”

“Well, first of all I’m sorry—” but she wasn’t buying that shit, not for a minute.

“I know,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault. And that is your fault. You’re supposed to be in control here, Nicholas.” I didn’t say anything. “You’re the one who started this, or the both of you did, whatever. But she’s crazier than a shithouse rat, crazier than you even, Randy told me what she did last night. She doesn’t give a tin shit if people get hurt. If they get killed. That guy’s arm is fucked up, you hear me?”

Again I said nothing, but a sick circle opened in my chest, a heavy feeling like the worst of blame. I wanted to know how bad he was hurt but had no courage to ask. Instead I cast down my gaze, drank coffee through dry lips.

“You think she cares about that guy? About anybody? Skit. There’s no trusting her at all.”

“I know that.” I tapped the bag. “That’s what this is for.”

She dumped the sausage and peppers on plates, ripped paper towels from a roll. “What is it, a choke chain?”

“Almost.” I showed her the padlock, saw her face break into a smile of relief that discouraged me greatly, because she was happy for nothing and her disillusionment might cost me her help. But. “It’s not what you think, Vanese. It’s for locking me in.”

“Oh great,” and she threw her fork straight at my head, missed me, put both hands to her forehead the way my mother used to do. “God damn it, Nicholas! How can you be so stupid? That thing is going to kill you, you got that? Kill your ass! And you’re going to lock yourself in with it?”

“Just listen to—”

“No, you listen! I’ve had about enough of this shit, I don’t need this shit, you hear me? You hear me?” Her voice was getting higher as it got louder, I thought she might hit me or cry, sat waiting for either. Finally she sat down, stared at her plate, pushed at the chair as if she would go hunting her fork; I gave her mine.

A sigh as she took it, and she squeezed my hand; her fingers were cold. “I’m sorry for hollering,” she said. “But all this is driving me crazy, and I don’t know about the rest of you folks but I don’t like to be crazy.” She sighed again. “Eat your sausages, they’re getting cold.”

I finally got her promise—it took till the end of the sausages, wasn’t easy, but I got it. “Today,” I said, for maybe the tenth time. “Okay?”

“Yeah, okay. Today. Now, if you want,” gathering up her plate and mine, taking them to the sink. Over the hot-water sound, “I have 16 ask you something, okay? Just one thing.”

“Go ahead,” already looking down, away, I knew what was coming.

“Why don’t you,” gesture with the ratty sponge, “just walk away? Let it go, let her fuck with it if she wants to.”

“I can’t, is all.”

She kept looking at me. “Why not?”

Well? Why don’t I? Because it doesn’t want me to. Because I don’t want to either. “I don’t know,” I lied, my face filling with simpleton heat, and she shook her head at me, slow pity, deep disgust.

“It’s for her, isn’t it? So she doesn’t go in without you. So she doesn’t,” a pause, in vast wondering scorn at my stupidity, “hurt herself.”

“Well no, not really,” snagging the lie, wondering why it was, if it was, any worse than the truth, any less believable. “I just don’t want, I mean I think it’s better if I’m there, if—” Stop jabbering, you dumbshit, shut your red face.

Vanese shook her head. “Lord,” she said, dried her hands, got her coat, and would say nothing else at all.

Once again the somber gather of supplies, a bigger load this time and Vanese’s sudden question, “Not to be nosy, but where’re you going to shit, Nicholas?”

“Down the Funhole,” I said.

The mask spooked her. Adding to its menace was, perhaps, the fact that she had not seen it as it was now, nailed up in all its chilly splendor, chalk patina and ghostly eyes closed, the better to see what you’re thinking, my dear. “Doesn’t that thing give you the creeps?” she said, and then a dry chuckle, of course it didn’t, of course I had seen worse. For that matter, so had she.

As she walked beneath it, to enter the storage room, I let my gaze drift up: Abandon Common Sense, etcetera. And in that pause I saw, I thought I saw, the features shift, the plaster bones and muscles glide into a new and frightful configuration, so unlike my own, and so familiar.

The face from the video. The smiling face of nothing.

Smiling at me.

“Vanese,” I said, soft as lost breath, “will you come and look at this?” Did you look at the mask? See it? And again the change, shift backward, into neutral if you will: my own face, white-skinned and silent, giving nothing away.

“I don’t want to look at it,” she said, from inside the storage room. “I just want to get out of here. This place is cold.”

An ether smell.

“How can you stand it?” stepping unwittingly closer, rubbing her arms as she looked around, “I mean how—”

And Randy’s other sculpture, Dead Head or whatever he called it, tiny sinuosity, did it move or not? Did it move toward her? “Vanese,” I said, “I think you better go.”

“Well. Okay. You got everything you need?”

“Yeah. Everything.”

It was definitely moving. I saw it moving, and heard as if some sneering sound track a giggling mutter from the hall, no one was out there, no one with throat enough to laugh, anyway, and anyway I don’t get that joke. “Vanese,” louder, “I think you should go right now. Just make sure you take the—”

The sculpture skull’s mouth opened, little steel grin, and the rest of the half-melted metal leaped, emphatic thrust toward her, and grabbing the end of her coat, yanking her off balance and she shrieked, tiny little squeaky sound like a small and bad surprise, dead mouse in your shoe, dead bug in your cup. I grabbed her right arm with my right hand and dragged her, hard, away from the sculpture, it was burning a hole in her coat, a slender smoke like solder and the ether smell belched hard out of the Funhole and I shoved her against the door, yelling, “Get out of here!” And stood panting, listening to her breathless, listening to her snap the padlock on.

For long minutes I tried to talk to her, through the door, tried to ask if she was all right, but all I heard were murmurs, low-voiced mutters, and I yelled in scared frustration, “Vanese, speak up!” and heard in perfect mockery my own voice saying, “Vanese, speak up!” And the giggle, again, and I realized Vanese was long gone, she had left right after the lock was safely on. I took my place, then, arms folded, back against the door like a kid guarding a clubhouse.

“You don’t take any chances at all, do you,” I said. “You fuck. Do you.”

The skull’s mouth opened, perhaps the mask’s mouth was flexing, too, but the voice came from the dark.

love you

I had known Nakota would be past furious, but as usual I underestimated her.

No screaming, no, she wouldn’t waste her strength, but fighting, so it took Randy and Malcolm, with Dave a helpless observer giving me the blow-by-blow, to drag her away. Vanese came back with a tired report: “Dave’s upstairs sitting on her.”

“Good.”

“Malcolm wants to put the video on.”

“Tell Malcolm—no, tell Randy to break his fucking neck if he so much as touches that video, or even the TV, okay, Vanese?” Stupid absentee general giving orders through the door. I thought of Nakota, rigid with fury upstairs, frustrated hate like a laser frying a hole in the floor —no thank you, there’re enough holes in here already, ha-ha—and made little speeches in my head, little noble declarations of my sterling intentions. When it was really selfishness. Diluted, yes, with worry for her, that was true, but that was selfish too: hurting her hurt me. What had she said? “Nicholas lost it.” Yeah. And would lose it again, no doubt. But now it didn’t matter. Now I was safe. From Nakota, from her geeks, the Dingbats, everybody.

Head against the door, ah, a lovely quiet moment, alone with my empty head. A yawn so deep it reminded me of when I’d actually slept, last, a real sleep possible here on the lip of nightmares? Well. No doubt. Anything’s possible, isn’t it, when—

“Nicholas!”

Randy’s voice. Tight.

“What?” sitting up, eyes open, heart starting up hard. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s Shrike, man, you don’t know what she’s doing, Vanese can’t hold on to her—”

“Vanese shit, where the hell’s Malcolm? Or Dave?”

“Malcolm left, Dave, I don’t know where Dave is. I can’t take her with me, I gotta go to work.” Tighter still. “She wants to get a chain saw, she says she’s going to shoot the lock off the door, she—”

“She can’t, it’s—”

And unmistakable, Nakota’s witchy shriek from the stairwell, Randy gone and my scared yelling notwithstanding, that was the last I heard of any of them. I put my head in my hands.

A smell like roses, drenched and bewitching.

“It’s not funny,” I said.

My hand was itching, had been in all my talk with Randy, a horrible bubbly itch and I rubbed it viciously against the floor and felt a lump, something I absolutely did not want to see but I looked anyway: the smell, the rose made flesh. And blood. All over my arm.

“I said it’s not funny, “and I smashed my hand as hard as I could, like swinging a bat, against the door. It hurt so bad it was all I could think of for a long, long time, and that was good.

Not light in the room, but less dark. Scratching, like a mouse, close by my ear and I opened my eyes, my hand like a migraine still. Somebody saying my name.

“What.” Oh my throat was dry. Left-handed I scrabbled for the bicycle bottle of water, drank a little, a lot. “What is it? Who’s there?”

“It’s me. Vanese.” If that was really Vanese, then things were very bad. “How you doing?”

“Fine.” I considered my hand. One of the fingers was definitely broken, or fractured, whatever. It was swollen like a cartoon hand, the hole in the center a cheerful carnival red. “I’m fine. Where’s Nakota?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about you? Are you okay?”

Silence.

“Vanese, answer me.”

The skull was mocking my words, moving its mouth in unison. “Vanese,” I said again, and threw the water bottle at the skull. “Stop it, you shit! Vanese, please answer me.”

“Nicholas?” A deep pause. “I don’t think I want to come back here anymore.”

“What happened? What—”

“She wrecked my car, Nicholas. Drove it right through my mother’s garage.” A slow sigh. “My mother got hysterical, Nicholas. She’s just…” Nothing. The skull winked at me. Something fluttered in the back of the room. “Randy said, I got to go to work. Take her somewhere. Anywhere. So I took her to my mother’s, and she tried to steal my car. I got in it, and she, she just ran right into the garage, I thought she was going to drive right out the other side. She’s crazy, Nicholas, I mean the girl is insane, something’s broken in her head now.” Another pause. “She hit her head. So did I.”

“Is—are you all right?”

“She’s fine,” without bitterness, but without concern. For Nakota, or for me. “I’m fine too. The doctor gave me a couple shots, for pain, you * know,” which went a long way toward explaining that draggy Demerol voice, that emotionless drone. “But I have to get back to my mother’s. At least,” a slow funereal chuckle, “she left the car.”

“Vanese?”

Nothing.

“Vanese, are you still there? Vanese!” The skull rotated, a deliberate motion weirdly reminiscent of an old-time stripper. “Vanese!”

Very very quietly, through the crack of the door: “You better watch it, Nicholas.”

Nothing else.

I waited. I waited a long time, long enough for the skull and its steel armature to come humping across the floor to me, lie at my feet like some “hideous pet, in a grotesque excess of playfulness it even tried to nibble at my feet. I kicked it, hard, sent it rolling and it rolled right back and bit me, not hard but enough to make a point. I left it alone then, closing my eyes when it rolled onto its back, its whatever, to peer up at me. When I pissed I made sure the pot was close enough to splash it, but that was only an opportunity for it to mock me further, basking in the stream, a golden shower for a steel skull, it even sickened me and I thought I had gotten just about sick-proof. Apparently there were levels of unwitting perversion I had never even considered.

Nakota. Where was she. Wrecked cars and cracked heads and it was just the beginning because she was determined, oh my yes, she was the most determined person I had ever seen and

I had very likely been worse than an asshole to think I could keep her out if she wanted in; what I had accomplished, in fact, was at best a delaying motion, at worst a challenge. And of course she had Malcolm. And her goons.

What was the saying? There were new goons born every minute, no silver spoons but hunger, instead, fed by boredom and nurtured by spite? Of course there were. And who held the map for Goon Mecca, who knew the way?

Who had the video.

I was sure of it. What I was most afraid of was what I most suspected: they were showing it. To other people. Recruiting. Nakota needed an army to get in? Very well, she would raise one up. She could do it, too.

But what else to do?

And from outside, the croon, small and faraway, “Poor Nicholas,” the talking head, sweet like poison, the giggle beneath like an acid bubble floating, floating, ready to burst. I had a lot of time to call myself names. I used it all, more when I remembered that Vanese had the padlock key, then: who cares? I thought, watching the skull turn lazy circles around the Funhole like a race car desultorily lapping a track. Who really gives a shit. They’ll get in or they won’t, and nothing I do now is going to matter.

Because they’re out there, and I’m in here.

The next voice I heard was Malcolm’s.

“Hey, Nick,” he said. “How d’you like the mask?”

I didn’t answer. Hot, I felt very hot. I wondered if it were some effect of the Funhole’s, or if I had a fever, or what. The whole room smelled very pleasant, as if someone had just given it a thorough cleaning. I shifted, wincing, against the door; even to think of moving my hand caused me pain. I turned my head to consider it, saw more flesh chewed away, and in the perfect center of the wound a gruesome little caricature of Malcolm, a clay Malcolm, gesturing and talking as the real one talked and gestured beyond the door.

“This is giving me a headache,” I said.

“You’re gonna have more than a headache pretty soon,” Malcolm said. The clay Malcolm, or skin, or whatever he was, giggled in my hand. “Nakota’s really mad at you.”

“That would be a novelty. Why don’t you go away, Malcolm, and leave me alone? You did your mask, that’s all you really wanted, isn’t it?” . “All I wanted at first,” he corrected, and the head wrinkled its forehead, pursed its lips like some scab professor. “But there’s much much more to all of this, right, Nick? Much more.”

“You’re right,” I said. “And I’m keeping it all for myself.”

Danger, inflammatory remark. He sure was easy to piss off, Malcolm, and since it was sort of fun and there was no longer any reason not to, I kept it up. “Yep,” I said, snot-nosed cheerful, “a whole world of weirdness, Malcolm, you dumb motherfucker, and you’ll never see any of it. There’s enough going on in here to make fifty thousand masks, but none for you.” I drank a little water. It tasted the way toilet water probably tastes, only not as cold.

“Wait till she gets here,” he said, and the little Malcolm’s face twisted up in a pink spiral, unrolled like fast forward to be Phantom of the Opera. Big deal.

“Don’t threaten me with Nakota,” I said. “I’m already scared of her,” and abruptly weary of the game I clapped my hands together, ignoring the truly amazing pain this caused, gratified to see the little Malcolm squash flat and disappear, dwindling back into my flesh like scar tissue eroded by time.

The real Malcolm: no answer, no shitty retort, and for one cold moment I wondered if his silence had anything to do with my applause. Then: “Let’s just forget about her, okay? You give me the key, Nick, and we can talk about it. Okay?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ll tell you about the mask,” he said, as if this was the rarest of treats. “It’s—”

“No.”

“I bet you don’t even have it, do you?” pissed off again; too bad; did he really imagine that two seconds’ worth of transparent man-to-man bullshit would mean anything to me? “You probably gave it to that stupid bastard Randy, you—”

“I didn’t give it to anybody.”

’Then where is it?”

“I threw it down the Funhole.”

A deep and complicated pause.

Then: “You’re a liar, Nicholas.”

Nakota’s voice, and it gave me a chill, not because she was angry, not because she sounded crazy, or violent, or even particularly upset. Because she was happy. Why was she happy?

“You’re right,” I said. “I am a liar. I didn’t throw the key down the Funhole, I stuck it up my ass. I stuck it up Randy’s ass, Malcolm, how’s that? What do you care anyway? You’re not getting in and that’s the end of it. When it’s safe, safer, I’ll—”

“You’re no judge,” Nakota said, calm and reasonable, what horrible shit was she up to, there where I couldn’t see. “In fact you’re not even worthy of what’s happening to you. Saints and idiots, angels and children.”

“Are you fucked up, or what?”

Malcolm, exasperated: “It’s a quote, you dumbshit.”

“What it means,” Nakota said, and as she talked a stink blossomed, a smell like corrosion and waste, like the biggest garbage pile in the world decomposing all at once, “what it means now is that I should be in there, not you. Because I know what’s going on. You stopped me from copying the video, Nicholas, but now I see that would never have worked, because it doesn’t need to work. It doesn’t matter.”

I put my hand over my nose and mouth. It didn’t help.

She kept going. “I know what all this means. I know about the gateways and the paths, I know that the Funhole’s just an avenue to change. To transcursion.”

I pulled my shirt off and wrapped it around my face like a bank robber’s makeshift mask. She kept talking, on and on about transcursion, giving me first the dictionary definition—a passage beyond limits; extraordinary deviation— and then her own, infinitely more twisted interpretation: a change effected so deep, so fundamental, that when you emerged on the other end (if there was an other end, she wasn’t sure and seemed content not to know; for now it was the trip that mattered) you would be yourself a process, an agent of the change, a branch office, say, of the Church of the Transcursion. And as her explanation continued, twisting and turning in upon itself and ranging into the wildest gibberish, not black holes but dark spots, not Funhole, in the end, but Fungod, the smell kept escalating, ranker and hotter and curling down my throat like a clotted rag and finally I screamed, “Shut up, just shut up! I’m suffocating in here!”

She stopped. The smell didn’t go away but it didn’t get any worse, either. No one said anything for a few minutes, then Malcolm: “The mask can talk, Nick.”

Nakota, distant irritation: “His name is Nicholas, you asshole.”

“I know it can talk, Malcolm. I can talk, too. Even you can talk, so it can’t be that big of a deal, right?”

“It tells us things,” Malcolm said, and Nakota’s laugh, a dark humor: “Oh shut up. Nicholas doesn’t want to know about those things, he might be scared. But he’ll find out. He won’t be able to avoid it.”

Oh God, I thought. What things.

“Do you know what transcursion really means?” she said, laughing, she couldn’t seem to stop laughing, and the mask joined in. My voice. My laugh. Dwindling to satisfied whispers, back and forth, and the movement of others outside, who was there? The burned guy? Was he there? Back for more? What others had she found for her stupid crusade, her blind sacrificial march the blood from which would somehow end up on my hands?

And I didn’t want to know. And I wanted to open the door, find out, run away, was it my want at all or a reflection of Nakota’s, was it some echo of self-preservation or a tricksy bit of Funhole business, this is all too much for me, I thought, this is all just too fucking much for me and I crawled over to the Funhole, my hand one greasy trail of pain and the smell gone overwhelming, I didn’t care. No way out but down, right? No way out but farther in.

My right hand in as far as it could go, thrust in, jammed in, you want sexual metaphor, watch me, I’ll fist-fuck the blackest hole of all. I was shivering, but the heat of my head was so intense it hurt, I felt sick like flu and sick from the smell and outside the voices getting louder, either it was a riot or my hearing was screwed up. Who cares. I’m in here, and I

love you

and my hand was squeezed, squeezed like caught in machinery, and I screamed, oh did I scream, my broken fractured finger bent and twisted and my other lesser bones twirled and blended in my flesh, and I thought as I screamed. This is what the bugs must have felt, as the sensation of swirling became that of suction, a deep and complex pressure, was it taking back what it had given or extracting from me what was mine, blood or slime, there was no getting away now, no, I would have to rip my arm off. Maybe it would do the favor for me, huh? Maybe it—

and the pain rose as I did, agony’s levitation, drawn completely upright in an arrow line with tears running not down but up my face, dripping into my hair “—don’t—” more; higher oh help me

and still more to a point that, oh God, I had never imagined there could be so much pain in all the world, certainly not contained in the stupid simple vessel of my body, my body, and as I wondered why I was still alive my conscious eyes closed, taken by tunnel vision to a vanishing point, but though I couldn’t see I could still feel, oh my yes, oh my God, wouldn’t this ever stop? It didn’t. But I did.

For a while at least.

Piss smell, and a pain in the small of my back. My thighs hurt, the creases at my crotch, an itchy pain that was so puny compared to what I had been feeling before I fainted, or passed out, whatever, it was barely worth noticing. I could see again. I could hear, too, although there wasn’t much to listen to, no more yelling from the other side of the door.

No more voice from the Funhole.

Lying lover-close, almost atop it and my arm still sunk to the elbow, unwilling to test the theory of independent motion, luxuriating in the absence of excruciation: a man of simple pleasures, that’s me. Eventually I would have to move, of course, if only to scratch that god-awful itch between my legs. I must have pissed myself in my pain, and now, best guess, I had diaper rash. I had to laugh at that, a little hoarse chuckle that ended with the beginnings of a retch, then a full-fledged heave and without thinking I sat up, assumed the position, head between knees as I coughed and choked in my dry nausea, nothing coming up.

When it was over I stayed slumped, arms balanced on my trembling knees, until I realized I had moved, my arm was free, and more amazingly free of pain.

Well, I thought. Do you really want to see this?

No.

Look quick and get it over with.

No.

I was afraid to wiggle my fingers, I was afraid I didn’t have them anymore. I was afraid of what the hole, my hole, looked like now, after such intense communion, afraid, at last, not to look; nothing’s worse than not knowing, right?

Right?

And that giggle, from outside, echoing in my ear like a tickling tongue.

I looked.

And retched again, helpless rushing nausea of disgust, my mouth loose and dripping with saliva, and I looked again and couldn’t stop, retching and I couldn’t stop.

No palm at all, now. Nothing but hole, the fingers jutting impossible like the scared tines of a starfish, my wrist protruding beneath like some useless .object left behind in an inappropriate spot. Shaking, all of me shaking, I turned my hand over; the back looked normal, as normal as it ever got. I turned it back again. Hole. Hand. Hole. Hand.

There would be no covering this with a bandage, no. No more hiding possible. The best I could ever hope for would be amputation, self-inflicted naturally, I’ll cut the fucker off, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll throw it down the Funhole, or maybe I’ll tie a string to it and go fishing, talk about your catch of the day and I realized I was talking out loud, muttering, smiling, and a calm tiny part of me said Well, that’s it, you’re finally crazy. Congratulations. You’ve been ridden to the point where all you are is motion. Perpetually. And I stared at my hand, my hole hand, ha-ha, and flexed my fingers to watch them move, amazing, they look just like puppet fingers but where are the strings, hmm? Just where exactly are the strings to—

Boom, the door. Not a knock but a whack, the door itself shuddered and I opened my mouth and heard my voice, curiously distant, ominously dry: “Don’t do that.”

And at once the voice of the mask: “Do that,” pretending to echo, malicious and cool. Voices, not so much answering as talking amongst themselves. Chiefest of course Nakota’s, but somewhere in there, Randy.

So many questions, so little time. I put one hand to my mouth, rubbed it, tried to think what to ask first. “Who’s there?” No doppelganger chorus; I can be grateful for the smallest of mercies; just watch me.

“All of us.”

My hurting forehead against the wood of the door. Ask it succinctly, please: “How many is all?”

“You want me to count?”

Randy’s tentative voice: “There’s a few people out here, Nicholas.” A pause. “Are you okay? You need anything?”

A hand transplant, for starters. Better yet a head transplant, if you can spare one, matter of fact just slide the mask under the door. We talk alike, we walk alike, sometimes we even— Randy was still talking, something about the mask and Malcolm was arguing and suddenly the sound of his voice, his stupid pompous voice, irritated the shit out of me and I said’, “Shut up, Malcolm, or I’ll come out there and I’ll hurt you.”

Silence.

Were they stupid enough to be scared of me? Of me? No one seemed to notice that there was still a big fat lock on the door, or if they did maybe thought I could surmount a detail like that, after all I had melted a camcorder once upon a time, who knew what I had up my sleeve? Besides of course my rapidly deteriorating hand. Another idea came to me: did they think it was me making the mask talk? With my new, improved Funhole superpowers? God damn, was everybody even crazier than me? Leave your love offerings at the door, folks, and don’t forget, tomorrow is Virgin Day.

Laughing, soundless into my hand, my left hand, thank you, and I realized I had to sit down because I felt very weak, very much like falling onto my head. “Randy?”

“Yeah?”

“Is Vanese out there?”

“No.” Dully, “I haven’t, she hasn’t been here in a long time, man.”

“How long?”

Nakota: “You’ve been in there for a long time, Nicholas.”

And how much of that spent unconscious?

How much spent with my hand stuck down the Funhole, conduit for real, absorbing, oh God. She was still talking but I had stopped listening, I sat with my back against the door shaking my head, shaking my head until something she said caught my attention and I asked her to say it again.

“I said, we broke the lock off yesterday morning.” A deep frustration just out of reach, bubbling like lava under the flat planes of her voice. “I wanted to try—”

“What she wanted,” Randy, dry, “was to chain-saw down the door.”

Malcolm, sullenly but with a certain oblique pride: “But the head said no.”

“What head?”

Randy said tiredly, “He means the mask.”

The mask said no. “Randy,” I said, and heard the mask speaking in tandem, a purposely ghostly sound but I ignored it. “Randy, get Vanese. Get her to come here, I don’t care what you have to do. Please,” less entreaty than order, I didn’t mean it that way, I’m sorry, please. “Please,” I said, and the mask said crisply, “And everybody else, get the fuck out of here.”

Shuffling sounds. People were moving. It was impossible to tell how many were out there by the sounds they made, and I couldn’t count, I couldn’t try, I didn’t even know if I wanted to know anymore. Randy was promising something through the door but I didn’t want to hear it, all I wanted in this world was to hear Vanese’s voice, her comforting scolding older sister’s voice explaining all to me, loaning the incredible belief, and if I was very very lucky she might say everything will be all right, Nicholas, you hear? Everything will be all right.

Silence finally in the hall, and I cried: big sloppy sobs, my chest shook, I was cold all over except the heat of my face and the heat of my tears, oh Jesus God I just want out of this but it’s top late, isn’t it? It’s much too late, wiggling my puppet’s fingers, staring at the little Funhole in my hand and wondering what might come out of it, one fine day, one fine exhausted moment when—

“Nicholas.”

Nakota.

“Nicholas, let me in.”

“Go away,” I said, still crying. “Please, Nakota, please just go away.”

“I can help you,” she said, and she was probably right, if the help I wanted was to be trampled in her rush. “I’m the only one who knows.”

Crying now so I could hardly talk, “Go away, Nakota, please.”

And the booming sound again, radiant extreme frustration, rattling the knob and yelling you son of a bitch bastard cocksucking son of a bitch and “I’ll never let you in,” helpless on my knees, screaming at the door, “that’s what all this is about, that’s why—”

And her silence; and finally, her absence.

Vanese. Please, God, Vanese.

I must have slept, and deeply, because when I opened my eyes I felt suddenly not better but far more human, far more focused in simple sensations: ouch, my crotch hurts; I’m thirsty, I’m hungry, all of me is sore.

It was a relief, the plain tending to of bodily needs, not particularly dexterous but able: get the pants off, examination of the purpling rash, uh-huh. I had never seen diaper rash before in my life but it sure looked ugly. I poured a little water on it before I realized I was squandering, drank the water instead, the whole bottle. Then a paradoxical piss, and boy did it feel good, a plain piss, imagine. Eating, bare ass propped against the door, slowly because each bite was hard to swallow, Z-rations, mmm-mmm. Animal joys, can’t beat ’em.

And another, keener joy: “Nicholas?” so close to the door she might have been speaking into my ear, my happy ear: “Vanese!”

“Yeah.” She sounded exhausted. “What the hell’s going on here, anyway?”

“I thought,” struggling to swallow my food, “I thought you could tell me.”

Silence. “Well, the lock’s off the door.” Then as

I turned, swiveled against the door as if this would bring me closer to her, her anxious angry older sister’s voice, “What’s happening to you, Nicholas, they’re saying all kinds of shit, they’re—”

“I’ll tell you,” I said. “Then you tell me.”

It was definitely a story, my version worse than halting but I got across to her, I think, the skeleton of it—feelings anyway, that much I knew from the sounds she made. Her version was, to me, far more interesting than my Man vs. Funhole routine, scarier too, but then I had a unique perspective, you might say an inside view.

She was gone for most of it, she said, but what she heard from Randy, on the way over, was nothing good. It started with Nakota’s rabble of recruited idiots, Malcolm included, watching the video—

“I knew it.” I sighed, no sense bemoaning the obvious, forget it, go on. “Where were you, anyway?”

“Where I was was at my mother’s. Trying to get somebody to come fix her garage. Your girlfriend broke it.”

“I know. You told me.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You had a lot on your mind.”

Pumped up, then, all of them, giddy with whatever black shit they had swallowed, one toilet bowl to a customer please, following Nakota and lesser-light Malcolm. Trying to rip off the lock, the door, finally Randy arriving to scream at them—the one sight I was genuinely sorry I missed—and throw the words “manager” and “police” around.

“Did it work?”

“Not really. Not enough. The neighbors, I mean even here, people expect a little peace, right? They’re getting restless.”

“I bet.” I felt like crying again, reached without thinking to rub the pain in my forehead, it hurts when I think too hard, and caught a sideways peek at my hand, my permanent badge of abnormality, of being kissed too hard by the dark; love you. Right.

“Anyway.” Vanese, immensely tired of her story but determined to tell it. “They settled down a little, went back into your place—”

“My place? My flat?’

“Uh-huh.” Yahoo Nation. Drinking out of my cups. They stayed there, still watching the video, listening to the gospel according to Nakota, getting cranked for another charge which ended when they finally got the lock off, despite Randy’s dwindling objections, even he wasn’t big enough to beat the shit out of a mob. Me¹ listening and mournful, thinking, For once might would really have made right, but no,

force majeure empty and weaponless before Nakota’s geeks.

“Then what?”

“Then,” very dry, “the door wouldn’t open.”

Slowly, glancing at the knob: “Nakota said— but there’s no lock on this side. I mean, it doesn’t lock.”

“You mean it didn’t lock before.”

Oh boy. What now? As usual I had no clue, that ol’ debbil psychic energy maybe, maybe something more complex, certainly over my sloping head. Nyah nyah Nicholas, now you can’t get out even if you want to. Which roused in me a feeling of such delicate terror it was like walking across snapping ice, each step an incremental journey, farther from safety and the shore.

My hands trembled; I pressed them against my sides. “So now what?”

“You tell me,” she said, and now there was sadness beneath the scold. “Randy said you wanted me here, and at first I thought, The key, he wants out. But you don’t need the key anymore.” A pause. “What do you need, Nicholas?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you want?”

To come out, I might have said, but I felt bone-strong that this was no longer truly possible, even if I left the room forever, even if I could, I would never come out all the way. But. But.

I’m scared.

“I can’t let her get in here, Vanese. It’s bad enough with just me.”

“Bad enough is right,” a warm bitterness, I had the sensation of her face pressed close against the edge of the door. “Nicholas, I can’t believe this shit, this is just stupid, you know what I’m saying?”

I didn’t answer. There wasn’t one, as far as I knew, or if there was, it was beyond me to give. Neither of us spoke. At last I said, “Vanese?”

“What?”

“I’m scared.” Bubbles of spit on my cracking lips, bubbles of snot in my nostrils, and blubbering, groaning like a drunk, bare-assed and stupid on the floor, weeping so long at last I thought she had gone, tried to call her but could not seem to work my voice, no new manifestation, just simple soreness, simple dry pain. Standing, my aching knees giving friendly little knuckle-crack sounds, I went for more water, shuffling back, my dick banging softly as I sat.

Then her voice, still angry, wet now perhaps with her own tears; would she waste tears on me? “You bet you’re scared. I’m scared too. Listen to me now: can you open that door?”

* “I—” I coughed, cleared my throat. “I don’t know.”

“Well, try.”

Nervous, I pulled on my pants again, wincing

at their odor, the chafing pain, standing tense, poised on the balls of my feet for some great struggle. I put my hand to the door and pulled, hard.

Nothing. I waited. It seemed like a long time; it probably was.

“Try again.”

Her voice, and again I turned the knob, this time unthinkingly right-handed; it gave with a blow, almost toppling me. “Bad move,” said the mask, a petulant sound as the cold hall air slipped over me and I gazed up, my first look outside, and saw instead of my own the video face, and its eyes opened very wide and it showed fat impossible teeth: “Boo!” and I cried out, fell back, Vanese stepping quick and scared inside.

Silence, for a moment, and then “It smells in here,” she said. Staring at me.

“I know,” embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I must be pretty ripe by now.”

Still staring, shaking her head, slow back and forth of those same earrings. “I didn’t mean that. It just smells—weird. Like blood or something.” And then, slow sad carpet of words as she came forward, “Oh, Nicholas, look at you,” with all the deep regret I did not merit, a loss magnified, dignified, by the caliber of her pity. She held out her arms to me, and as I moved to enter them, the magic circle of her touch where all would not, could never be, cured but for a moment I might feel as if it was, the skull bounded up like a manic ball and struck her, hard, in the back, I felt the impact in the soles of my feet, saw it in her sudden stagger, and up it came again and weak, still I threw myself with all my strength before it, into its rising way. Direct hit, my cheekbone not cracking but almost, as if it had somehow pulled its punch in the instant before landing, and now in vicious rebound it scuttled snapping after her as she fled for the door, and me after it, clumsy barefoot kicks, almost connecting but instead losing my balance and falling serendipitous and flat atop it.

Vanese in the hall, the door safely slammed and it bit my nipple, punishing petulance, before pushing free of my weight, then rolled in sullen circles a moment or two, growing revolutions till it reached the darker corners of the room, I couldn’t see it but I knew it was there.

“Nicholas?” Breathless, as if she had just run a mile instead of a few yards. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said slowly, rubbing my chest. “Vanese,” more slowly still, “don’t come here anymore. I know I asked you to, but don’t. Even if someone tells you I asked you to again. Because I won’t. Okay?”

Silence.

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Things are just going to get worse.”

“Yeah.” Sure, and sad in the certainty. “Will you just promise one thing?”

“I’ll try.”

“If it gets too bad, will you get out?”

Quiet metallic rattle in the darkness behind me, a sound like knives in a drawer. “No,” I said. “You know I can’t.”

“Can’t what?” Cruelly abrupt, Nakota’s voice, and then Vanese in a tone I had never heard: “Can’t not save your worthless ass,” and a whack, something hit hard against the door and Nakota’s snarl, Vanese’s high-pitched curses and a sound at my feet, looking down in anxious impatience, now what, to see the skull spinning in happy little circles. A brief impotent kick, of course I missed in the echo of Nakota’s damaged howl, and Randy’s voice saying, “What the hell is going on here?” and then a bunch of voices, and I sat down and shut my eyes.

When I opened them the skull was lying placidly close, staring up at me with its stupid sockets, one of which closed in an impossible wink and without thinking a second I reached blind behind me, came up with a glass bottle of something and, right-handed, smashed it down with all my painful weakness, all my tired rage, and incredibly the skull splintered, chunks of steel and splits of glass, orange juice in my face and I cried out, pawing and blinking, and when I looked again the pieces of the skull were scuttling to the darkness, joining as they went.

I sat in the darkness and thought about Vanese, arms held to embrace the sorry mess of me, the look in her eyes as open wide. I never saw her again.