The n-Body Problem

bumps in the road.

I have been unconscious. I can feel it. My hands and feet are prickling back to life. My eyes are stuck shut. I try to open them, but they won’t. I believe my eyes have been sewn shut. Maybe they have crusted shut? I even out my breathing. My heart is banging through my body. I will calmly take measure of this. I will find out more.

I am alive.

I can also feel movement. A light pull in my chest. A force. Gravity behind me. There is warmth on my face. I am being moved quickly. The sun above, the earth below.

I am dead.

I try to pull my lids apart. My hands are not moving. They hang beside me, they float. My legs move in fits. Did we know this? Did we know that we don’t die up here? That we feel it? That we know it? I am miles above the earth with billions of people. I need to stay calm. I need to not go mad. I breathe again. Easy, long breath. My heart begins to slow. I need to contain this. Contain myself. Take stock.

I have minimal sensation. Some of it, like breathing, might be memory, phantom breath. I have to retreat from my body. Leave my limbs. I have to change my thinking. I have to change what it means to be here. I am thought now. This relaxes me further. I am not going to die. I am not going to live. I am going to picture being here. My eyes are sealed shut. I start to think about whether this is an advantage, then I abandon the thought. I have no advantage. I have no disadvantage. When I relax, my eyes open. The light ravishes me. Sun fills my face and erases me. I feel like I am soaring. I have been distilled down to a tiny intense thrill. Soon, the whiteness separates into shapes. A circle. The moon. This light is the moon. Another circle. I feel myself bounce. I am happy. Nothing can hurt me. Nothing can stop this. I am laughing.

I am in a car. Y is driving. Dixon in the passenger seat. Ahead, a narrow hilly road. I bounce again. I turn and there is Doctor Anne’s face. She says something to Dixon. I can’t hear a thing. I can’t feel a thing. A reflection of the road flashes across me. I am behind glass. I am in a glass case in the back seat of a car hurtling down a country road. I’ll smash the glass. I push both my fists out but they don’t move. I try to kick.

My body has been wrapped. I am bound in tightly pulled linen. In a glass case. I thrash and try to roll against the glass. Doctor Anne says something again. I try to figure out if my arms are behind me or bound to my chest. I can’t find them. I am much smaller. I am in a cocoon the size of log. I stop moving. They have removed my arms and legs and encased me.

I am alive.

underemployed.

There are tubes hooked up to the base of the cabinet I inhabit. Doctor Anne controls if I am asleep or wake. Among other things. I am probably fed from down there. I void through something. Into something. I have just woken again and my lids are stuck together again. My eyes are not lubricating properly. The rest of me is run from below. My eyes, however, are being maintained by no one. I stop trying to open them. Last time they opened on their own. Had I cried? Was that it? I’m not sure if I can even manage crying right now. Where would I start?

I am moving. A regular bounce. Someone is carrying me. I must be very small now. My head bobs on my neck. I’m being carried sideways. They wouldn’t kill me now, would they? I’m pretty elaborate. You don’t make elaborate things then destroy them. No. I am a trophy. I am turned upright. Then turned upside down. My eyes fly open. Y is holding me. Turn me right way around! Turn me! I can feel gurgling beneath me. Fluids are going in the wrong direction. A pair of hands land on the case. Doctor Anne. She turns me up.

I can only hear faintly what’s going on outside. I can tell she isn’t happy. I remember those days. An orange t-shirt. Dixon’s hands. The pads on his fingers are crystal clear on the glass. They pull slightly as he takes my case. I can see people in the distance. Picnic tables. Trees. A band shell. Not Avening. Where are we? Dixon puts me down. I can see him frantically explaining something to Doctor Anne.

Y has moved up onto the band shell and is setting up some kind of display. There is a long banner. WASTECORP ANNUAL PICNIC. I sense something close. The faces of two children close to the glass. A girl points, her finger presses. Dixon knocks her hand down. She looks up, big eyes and heavy lips. What am I supposed to be?

I am lifted again and swept up onto the stage. I am sat on the display table. I watch Dixon step out centre stage. His arms rise and fall as he talks. He is very animated. A trophy? Maybe I’m an oracle. A holy relic. I can see the audience looking past Dixon to me. I lay the back of my head on the glass. My neck is sore. My neck reacts as if the rest of my body was active. The vestigial ghost of me. I wonder how far my spine goes down or if I’m sitting on a soft tube of organs. I can clench my stomach. She must have seen the scar there. Y might have told her how he saved my life in an abandoned car behind the Home Hardware. From a distance I can see how they both must take pride in me. I am something wonderful they share. I am what they did.

I hear Dixon’s voice.

“And phehold! The future of life on earth is Syndrome! It takes us all! And it takes us phiece by phiece! The nerves of the back are ground to pulph by its own great column! The feet are withered and droph off! The victim of morning-onset diaphetes! A million sclerotic nerves biting the toes off like children’s teeth crack candy! The calves give in to desphair and phointlessness, phecoming fetid lunch for maggots! While cancer of the phone casts off all ligaments and muscle as the marrow drains clean as a straw dropping milk! The shoulders fall like phad apples! The arms! The hands! Who knows what sly new infirmity snatched them off! The kiln-fired liver! The immophile heart! Dead colon and sphleen! What can this worm in time ask for? What will we want? We can only ask!”

The audience is all open mouths and silent. Children perched on shoulders. Dixon walks back to me and leans down. He unlatches the door to the case. He puts his ear to my mouth. I will tell them the truth. I go to speak but can only mumble. I have no tongue. They cut out my tongue. I cannot tell them anything. Dixon rises and covers his face. He staggers to the front of the stage. He speaks in a hushed intimate voice full of candour and gravity.

“It has sphoken to me. Do you want to know what it said?”

Heads nod.

“Do you?”

Several shout.

“Do you want to know what your future is saying to you?”

More shouts. Dixon raises a hand and the audience stops. Some of the children are brought down off shoulders and held.

“It wants to be free.”

Silence.

“It wants to be free!”

The audience erupts. It isn’t a cheer, really, more a chorus of shouts—anger and agreement and some dissent and keening. Dixon rushes back to me and violently swings my case in the air.

“It is crying for you! Phehold the tears!”

I am crying. Not for them. Though if there was more to me I might. I cry because I have just discovered that my tongue has been cut from my mouth.

The audience is now spellbound. This got them. I look upward to heaven. I don’t know what I want. I want to be Holy. I want belief from them. I am not human.

Dixon drops me back into place. I see Y reach the centre of the stage. I am sad when he speaks. I remember when he couldn’t.

“Forms are down here to my left. We do have orbit charts and placements for a placement fee. Please line up!”

The door to the case is closed and latched and I am returned to my muffled world. The smell of linen and liniment. The pumps and engines beneath and their hums and puffs. A black cloth is pulled over my case. In the darkness I can see a red dot blink, reflected in the glass.

The next several days are spent like this. I am moved from time to time, but mostly I sit in darkness listening to the little machines attached below. I learn the new smell of my feces, feces which I will never see again. It smells like pencil shavings. Pencil shavings and vinegar. Occasionally I open my mouth and howl. It’s an upsetting sound. A walrus bark. I learn that I do have muscle. Across my back to the two points at the base of my neck. And down to the edges. I use them just to feel them. I tell myself I am going for walks and I flex them. I wish they hadn’t taken my tongue. That is the worst thing. I can no longer say if I am awake or dreaming and have decided they are one and the same.

The audience. The preacher. The forms. The hood is pulled off and the event repeated. I do not cry anymore so now the doctor puts drops in my eyes before I am revealed. Each time it is less crisp, less real. I find myself sailing over their heads, wanting only to be returned to my case and my silence and my darkness.

everyone i see is dead now.

I am planning to escape. It will not be easy. I am a limbless, mute baby in a sealed vault. I can rock. I have been trying this, mostly as a comfort, but my back and stomach muscles are getting stronger. I could wait until I am hoisted up above their heads, with the door thrown open and then I could rock and tip forward and fall. Then what? Fall into someone’s arms. I cannot chose that person or what they will do. I cannot tell them what I want them to do. I can pray. I can pray that I land in the arms of a teen mom who lost her rape baby. She would hold me fast and flee. Take me away from town. To a river winding in a shallow valley. I would suck her breasts. I pray that the milk would make me grow. I would grow arms and legs. I have trouble picturing them though. A nightmare always intrudes. The arms and legs are small bones hanging lose like plastic on a dime store Halloween doll. My tongue inflates and crushes me. An immense scarred manatee attached to the roof of my mouth. No. It’s impossible. If I managed to fall out of this case the crowd would jump back and I’d land in the dirt. My little machines smashed. I would die. I cannot die.

Some of the towns I don’t recognize. We are moving south-eastward I think. I recognize Beeton. Beeton is mad. They press against the stage with their arms straight up. They’re in holy ecstasy. That’s when I realized I truly am a divine relic. I am a piece of cross. A Saint’s tibia. You see? You see us now, Oh Lord? I am pure. No hands to reach out and strike or steal or grope. No legs to run on, to escape justice, to stomp out with. No penis to cram into faces and mouths. No tongue to lie with. I am a singular message. I am here. That is all, Lord. I am here.

Beeton is frightening. These people were waiting for us. Fathers and mothers stepping on their children just to touch the glass of my case. Sick old women draped across the front of the stage like fish dying on a riverbank. We are in the centre of Main Street here. Not in some parking lot, or remote park tucked away. We are now a popular travelling roadshow. Stacks of flyers in shoulder bags. Traffic cops swinging their arms. I spot the mayor on the sidewalk. He has his heavy red sash on. He looks terrified. Aware and sane. There are some, frantic moms pulling their children back. The majority, however, reach for me across the stage. Four teenage girls rush the stage and throw babies over heads. The babies, likely rape babies, are wrapped in bloody blankets. One tumbles out. No arms or legs. No limbs because the limbs have been cut off. They are dead. The teen moms flee amid cheers. Dixon shakes his fists above the fray, pleading and crying to the grey sky. I notice Y on a chair at the edge of the stage. He has a bandage wrapped around his thigh. He must have tried to cut his leg off.

People want to be me.

Later that night we begin the mass launch. This time the cable is thrown down the middle of main street. I watch as the cable is pulled taut down two blocks of maple-lined street. Police hold people back on the sidewalks while connections are made and tested.

I hear the anabolic shriek of table saws and clattering glottis of chainsaws. Stations are set up in storefronts for people who wish to be dismembered before they go. The first few are the most zealous and they endure the blades with eyes cast upward in frozen joy. Freshly removed arms and legs are passed across a sea of risen hands. Genitals are flung up into trees and telephone wires. The reduced torsos rolled to the cable where they bleed out in seconds. Soon blood has caught everyone. Shirtless men and women pat themselves with sticky red palms. Faces plastered with rich dark hair. Bright ghost shapes on windows. The next wave of dismemberment is not as deliberate. This wave is changing its mind having seen the first. This wave has to be pushed to the saws, held down by many hands. Some wiggle free, made slippery by their own blood. They spring howling though the crowd. Some have one arm and a shoulder spraying mist across the crowd. Some have only deep cuts and they bounce from brick walls like animated scarecrows. Order dies. The crowd no longer looks to the stage. There are too many screaming machines. Too much blood and running corpses. Whirling blenders that make their way into the crowd. They are seeking their own completion now. Dixon turns back to me. He gestures to Y. Time to go. Throw the damn switch and let’s move on.

The cable explodes down the middle of the street and hundreds of people seize up at once. Others leap on and are crunched into balls by the voltage. Blood pools blacken and are lit with fury. Several heavy men move in, driving chainsaws through backs and necks until the current finds them and they become still, still like memorial statues. Dixon lifts me and I am placed in the truck. The crowd that is still able to move moves on us. I watch the faces of people throwing themselves onto the windows. These are not the faithful anymore. These ones have been shattered, they have awoken angry and afraid. They are yelling at me. Pounding the window. We are running away form what we started. They know it.

Y shoots those hanging off the drivers’ side. Several bullets pierce glass and slip into upholstery. Dixon uses a hammer to cave in the skulls of people in his way. The truck starts and pulls forward, but the hands of the frenzy hold us back. The tires spin and burn in place. Dixon turns to me and signals the doctor to hold my case. He throws it in reverse and the wheels bounce across bodies. When he throws it into drive, we fishtail on the guts and muscle and bone. The tires burn through the skin and grab the road. We shoot forward and plough through those ahead. I hear Dixon call out like a cowboy. We are under the heavy sopping skirts of flesh blood. Torn arms and butterflied faces. The contents of stomachs, the undersides of lost heads. Dixon reverses again, this time opening a patch of sky. There is a live cable on the ground somewhere. The rubber tires protects us but the blood could conduct it. We break through the body knots and are free. Dixon guns it and we hit a light standard. The truck turns and the standard falls, pulling people down and folding them. I see flames. The crowd has ignited and the living are like freshly lit matches, their hair bright orange and yellow. The truck is heading out from the centre of town. I can no longer see what is happening behind us.

I used to have the ability to be moved by things like this. Horrified. I wonder if my emotion might have been in my arms all along, my legs, my testicles. Gone. All I care about is getting away in time. When you can’t move on your own anymore there is no such thing as a place to stay.

The windshield wipers are stirring up a pink foam. We have to pull over. We are east of Beeton on the 8^th Line. Y is taking water in a pail from the ditch and throwing it onto the car. Dixon has walked down the road. The doctor sits beside me, her head turned. I want to look back. Is the town a fireball? Are they running up the road with their heads lit up? Y gets back in the driver’s seat and sits. Dixon returns. He reaches back and flips open the front of my case.

“Can we get him out of there easy?”

The doctor reaches in and plays with the hook-up below. She nods.

“Yes. Why?”

Dixon rubs his lips hard. They must be numb. He has no feeling in his mouth. That’s the impediment.

“We’re going to change some things. No more phosters. Too much hype. I don’t want things haphening we can’t control. Who phrought the saws? Is that on any of the phosters? How did all this shit haphen?”

Y sighs. The doctor fiddles with my bottom.

“The new rule is we keep things calm. I got an idea.”

Dixon looks into my face. A look of surprise.

“Ha! How’s it going, phal? I almost forgot that was you in there. Listen uph. I want to try something. Next time, we phring the Oracle out and we phass it around.”

Y’s head is deep in his hands, elbows on the lower scoop of the wheel. There are white strands of hair bending up from the crown. He is several ages as far I can tell.

“It’ll calm them. Give them something to be careful with. I want an orderly burn. We made no fucking money in Pheeton and we might even get phulled in.”

Y starts the truck. Y knows why Beeton failed.

“Beeton was crazy before they met us. Pond Head’ll be better. Smaller. More churches.”

Dixon slaps Y on the shoulder.

“That’s right, son. Phond Head. But not too soon. Let’s phe missed for a while. Let ’em wonder if we’re real for a while.”

We don’t turn south to Bond Head. We head up towards the 9^th. We’re looking for trees or a house. I’m surprised to see cars on the road. Not many, but some. They look normal, timeless. Some lone drivers. Male mostly. One car full of a family. I try to read faces but they blow past too quickly. Cars and trucks at farmhouses. Cattle. It’s as if nothing happened. Could be the way this part of the country lives. Nothing is supposed to happen here. You can see too far. A small fishing boat for sale. The trailer tires flat. The posted price on swollen cardboard. If terrible things were approaching they would be seen hours before they arrived.

The truck slows and we pull up a dirt driveway. We lurch along its length and stop under a willow beside a massive red brick farmhouse. We sit in silence. The house is still. Thin pale leaves drift down and attach to blood clots under the wipers. Dixon shoves Y’s shoulder. Y shoots a look then opens the door. He walks cautiously around the front of the house. Dixon rolls his window down.

“Go knock.”

Y is tense. He takes the steps, counting.

“Knock!”

Y knocks and waits. Again.

“Ophen the door! Yell for ’em.”

Y doesn’t look back. He slowly draws the screen open, then the inner door. We hear his voice but not what he is saying. Y steps back out and waves. Clear.

“Okay. Well. This is a nice place.”

Dixon isn’t getting out just yet.

“Maybe we should retire here.”

A Rottweiler, moving like a barrel down a sluice, bursts through a hole in the backyard fence. It doesn’t bark until it sees Y, then it makes a killing noise. Y stops in mid-step.

“You gotta kill that!”

“Help!”

Y runs for the truck. The door locks, clunk.

“Kill the damn dog!”

“What?”

Y reaches the car with the dog. It springs up and grabs Y by the jaw, dragging him down.

Dixon roots through the glove box and finds a road flare. He opens the driver’s window and drops it.

“Shove this down its throat!”

Dixon rolls the window back up and waits. We hear the intense hiss of the flare igniting and then the dog cry out. Dixon waits, then rolls down the window.

“You there?”

The dog appears around the front of the truck. It doesn’t appear to be wounded but it ain’t a killer no more either. Not for now. It slinks back through the torn fence.

Dixon opens the door.

“Okay. Okay. Good job. I’m sorry. We got a doctor.”

The farmhouse smells of cows. The floors curve and the walls bow. Discoloured shapes on the ceiling form a map of the world. If you stare long enough you can see places you want to go. The doctor takes Y upstairs. He’s going to be okay. Some punctures on his scalp. A burn up his arm from the flare.

Dixon sets me up on the table as he goes through a pail he found inside the front door.

“This is the house of Phauline Hartenpherger. Lived alone. Oh. Wait. No. One kid at least. Goes to, went to, Byng Elementary school. This interest you at all?”

I say nothing. I pretend not to notice. I am still a prisoner.

Dixon opens, reads, and drops papers to the floor.

“Child support. Good for you, Pheter Hartenpherger. I got married, you know.”

Dixon is sharing. He’s proud.

“Yes, sir. After Indonesia. Her name was Phie. Like a phizza. We lived in Meaford. I had a daughter, too. Her name was Lo.”

Dixon is reading a phone bill. I wonder if you can see changes in a phone bill. Patterns. Times. Frequency of calls to the same number. Did the Hartenbergers make plans, then leave? Did they flee to the city? Did they hang themselves? Maybe they’re out back. Cold black bones on the clothesline.

“You wanna know what haphened to them? Got caught in the first raphe wave. Died.”

Dixon drops the phone bill. He straightens the pages and returns them to the envelope.

“I dropphed ’em in a well.”

Dixon reads signs on the wall. Happy Home. Live. Love. Laugh.

“You know what I love to do? Hmmm? I love a pheaceful launch. I like to sphend time with them phefore they go. Get a little carried away, sure, phut…”

Dixon thinks he’s different now. He wants to have a different past. If I was to mention that he has worn dead children he would think me vulgar. You don’t know anything, he’d say. Dixon wants to believe that he held out as long as he could. That if he’s a hero he’s only doing what anyone would do. And if he’s evil, it’s only the role he is forced to play. I expect him to cry. The doctor comes in and goes to the sink.

“Hi.”

Dixon is being ridiculous in this setting. The doctor turns, surprised.

“There’s beds upstairs. Lots of food in the cellar. Preserves. Tins. Some household medicines. Some antibiotics.”

“What’s Y doin’?”

“He’s checking the barn. We can kill a cow. How long are we here?”

Dixon pushes the remaining letters to the floor. He opens the fridge and gas erupts from rotting food. He gags and closes the door.

“I dunno. WasteCorph is gonna be looking for me to check in. They’re gonna have lots to say aphout Pheeton.”

The doctor has been washing her hands for ten minutes.

“Beeton was fine.”

She swipes a cloth from the oven door and pats dry her hands.

“I have no problem with Beeton.”

Dixon slumps a bit. She has cheated him. The doctor stares at me for a long minute. She takes in a sharp breath and looks at Dixon.

“I would like to have sex. Can you?”

Dixon laughs with his loose face.

“Nophe.”

The doctor is disgusted.

“Oh, that’s right. You only fuck parts of people.”

Dixon stretches his neck as if that will change how he appears to her.

“Go fuck the phoy. He can. I think.”

The doctor drops the cloth into a silver trash can.

“I will. Thank you.”

bounty.

The dog proves to be a nuisance. It circles the house in the tall grass waiting for us to come out. It grabbed Y again and he managed to gouge out an eye before it rolled off him. Dixon doesn’t seem overly worried. I think it’s a game he likes. He likes to send Y out. The doctor spends a lot of time upstairs alone. She showers several times a day. They eat beets and jam and beans. For a while the doctor tried to breast feed me but no milk came. I eat bean juice. There is lots of time to think here. The days are slow. If a car goes by on the road it’s a major event. We hide and shout and sit in the dark. Dixon is thinking more than anyone. He sits and stares at things. Or he finds things in the house to read. He reads grocery lists. Recipes. He hunts for journals and diaries but finds none. He sits with a receipt in his hand and thinks. He rubs and curls the receipt until it’s a ball in the palm of his hand, then he drops it. I know what he’s doing. He wants to show the relic that he cares about these people’s lives. I know he doesn’t. I know he would do obscene things to them after they were destroyed. He has been looking at me differently. This slow world is revolving us. Y comes in with the dog. It is draped across his shoulders. Headless.

“Would we eat dog?”

Dixon pushes back his chair and rises.

“Phut it on the phicnic table. We’ll clean it there.”

Y stands for a moment.

“Don’t I get a hurray or something?”

Dixon seems drunk.

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.”

Y holds the base of the tail at his shoulder and wags it.

“I slew the beast!”

Y looks to me. I am not that type of person anymore. You don’t look me in the eyes. Methusela Syndrome. That’s what you got. Accelerated aging.

“Okay. I’ll get some knives.”

I can only see the tops of their heads gathered around the picnic table. They are skinning it. Gutting it. Seems to me I’ve seen cows in fields around here. Surely we could snatch one at night. Y holds the dog’s head up. Gore slaps his forehead. They’re doing this because it keeps them in touch with the mission. The doctor has taken to roaming the house topless. It arouses me but I have no penis. Some veins throb in my anus. That’s my limit. She is washing her hands at the sink. Her back is broad and white. It’s a cooling sight. They are hammering Rottweiler hide to a sheet of plywood. They want to dry it in the sun. The sun is a joke. Nothing dries in the sun. Maybe the wind. The cold, wet wind. The doctor pulls the window pane to the side. She tries to close it in a single swipe but it jams and she gives up.

“I’m not eating a fucking dog.”

The doctor dries her hands, points at me then leaves, climbing the stairs to her room.

Dixon and Y spend the afternoon outside butchering the dog and digging a fire pit. Y finds an iron pole to skewer it. I can see they are laughing. They toss guts and skin and legs and head into a barrel, then sticks. They pour gasoline in. It flares out in a massive ghost ball then dies out. They give up.

The doctor runs down the stairs and out the door. Something’s up. I wish they wouldn’t close my case. I wish they’d let me in. I can see Dixon’s serious face as he listens to the doctor. Y is bent down, probably turning the dog.

Dixon comes in first and goes up the stairs. The doctor follows him. Y tries to come in but Dixon sends him back.

“You stay outside.”

Y takes a step back but stays. Listening.

There is a small piece of glass missing now at the top of my case. In the right conditions I can make out what people say.

In time Dixon comes down. He walks in heavy steps. He is perspiring. He speaks close to the doctor and I can’t hear. She listens, then bends back to spot Y.

“Well, Dixon. It’s okay. We do our work.”

Dixon nods severely. He raps the wall once and comes over to me. He pulls the black bag over my case. I am a thin black wisp of hair. I am black crayon on a black sky. My knees buckle and I go down.

I sleep because I haven’t slept. I sleep in a closed-off dreamless airless box.

A band of light wakes me. Someone has cut an almond-shaped hole in the bag. Someone cuts another hole. These are eyeholes. They want me to see. I feel a rush of hopefulness. They are including my care. I am to be given light. Not to keep me alive. But to bring me comfort. The thought makes me dizzy. I feel my knees again. I look out one of the eye holes. The doctor’s shoulder. I can see her and she cannot see me. A vein in my anus fills and rolls on its side. The light makes a perfect cone over my eye. We are going upstairs. We are going upstairs. The topless doctor is taking me to her room. The case is tipped against the wall while she opens the door. I see the top of her breast rise under her turning arm. It’s an achingly soft surface. The breast drops from view as the door opens. She points me forward to a curtained window. Drops me on the sill and turns me. There is a wide unmade bed. The doctor removes her skirt. She rolls her pantyhose down, then drops them from her toes. She walks toward me. Her large black-grey bush is inches from my nose. I can see the lips of her vagina. The slow separation of tissues relaxing. She is hanging her hose on the rail above me. She can’t see me while I cling to the details of her hole. My lower half is bunched. Veins an open confusion. I can feel my cock springing to life on a wall. On the ground. She turns and walks to the bed, bending over to pick up her clothes. Light touches her asshole for a second then she stands again. My bottom shatters. I am filling something with something. A spasm. I feel warmth. I must be shitting. I push at it hard. I want to feel it come out. I want to feel my body express itself. I want it out.

She is gone. I stop holding my breath. I smell gas. I haven’t shit. I have farted. A wonderful changing and calming fart.

there is no upside.

I sit in this box for hours. Maybe longer. I hear a car door close outside and a man’s voice. People down below. Must be WasteCorp. They want an account of Beeton. Probably needed to bring in a clean-up crew. I’ve been on them. Different company, different war. The doctor came in once and took something she’d stashed inside her pillow. I see you, Doctor. I know you’re in trouble. SSRIs in the pillowcase. I decide that because I am non-human, a deity of some kind, that I should be able to close my eyes and see great things, visit exotic places. Even if this isn’t true, shouldn’t the mind provide? Can’t I just go completely mad and leave this? Go so far inward that I’m a new thing? I close my eyes and wait. I try to picture simple things. A shoe. A bottle. A tree. I can only manage fleeting lines and shadows.

The door opens. The doctor enters. She is fully clothed. Her bosses are here. She comes over to me and turns the box. I see the yard clearly through my hole. There are two black vans parked up the driveway. So that’s WasteCorp, I guess. Guys dressed like milkmen from another century. Smart blue capos and white piping on the legs. Not tough guys, that’s for sure. Dixon and Y are up by one of the old maples. A bald man in a black suit is showing Dix something on a wide unfolded sheet. Plans have been drawn up. Things are being done differently. Beeton shook them up, bad. The milkmen unroll a wide mesh mat. It reaches all the way to Dix and the tree. Size of a football field. Milkmen attach cables at each corner. No more coaxing folks to toe the line. No more people running off or letting go too soon. They’re going to sit them down for the show, then just burn ’em all where they sit. Y and Dixon are walking the perimeter. I can tell by the way Dixon walks, with a repressed swagger, that he doesn’t like something. He doesn’t like seeing his bosses. Doesn’t like them being here. Don’t fuckin’ tell me how to do my job. Dixon and Y have walked up into the house. The milkmen straighten out any creases in the mat, like old women showing off patchwork at the fall fair.

The doctor turns me around. I see her naked thigh through the hole. I feel my anus drop then pull in. She drags the black bag up. Her tits are fat against the glass. She opens the door. Her breasts smell like change room. I look up and she looks down. I am brought out to the bed. She lies me near the bottom then drops her legs on either side of me. I watch as she pushes against her vagina with three fingers. She pumps it then slides her fingers back and forth quickly. With her other hand she tugs her nipple, lifting her large breast then letting it fall. It is a mesmerizing and mechanical sequence of actions. No hurry. I am to watch this. She wanted an audience. She wants me to stare at her pussy. Her heavy tits. She slides a finger in deeply. A clear fluid runs down her wrist. She makes a sound. She draws her knees up slowly and reaches under. Now she has a finger in her asshole and three in her pussy. She works the two holes at different speeds. The vagina is occasionally pulled and the finger in her anus drops out and turns briefly on her sphincter. She looks up from time to time to see if I’m watching. No smile, nothing, just a check. I feel a buzzing near my bottom. Peripheral neuropathy. My anus feels as if hard beads are vibrating in it. She points a wet finger at me and curls it. She wants me there. I rock slowly, moving on my corners.

Her pussy meets my face and I feel her hands on the back of my head. I cannot breathe. She holds my head tight against her. I feel my lung climbing into my throat. My lung is my tongue. I panic and shake my face. Her thighs start to close, then she shoves me back hard. I breathe quickly. I can smell her pussy. Rainwater and salt. Below that, the heavy sugar of her asshole. She pulls me in again. This time I suck. I take her entire vagina into my mouth and suck. I can breathe through one nostril. She pulls me in tighter to seal it. I lose consciousness for a brief second. When I come up, I’m gasping. I hear my buttonhole whistle and she shakes. The doctor reaches down on my body and lifts my back end. She lays me on her belly so my face hangs down over her lips. I flick. The sensation of her tongue on my anus makes me jump. She twirls around slipping the tip in and out. I feel that if this is to proceed much longer I may die. I don’t have the body to withstand this. Maybe that’s what she wants. She wants to kill me with her tongue up my ass. Before I reach whatever it is that could happen, she pushes me down. My tongue stump slips from her pussy to her anus and I try to breath normally as I do to her what she did to me.

There is someone else in the room. I feel the bed dip. I try to raise my head to see but can’t. The bedsprings twang under the weight of three. I feel the doctor’s finger in my ass. Deeper. Bigger. It’s not a finger. Its a cock. Someone is sitting on her face and sliding his cock into my flat, featureless body. I hear her slurping and suck his ass and balls. Her pussy rises under my chin. I am supposed to suck, too. I draw her clit in while she flips fingers inside. The cock is now fully in me and has begun to pump. The tissue in my hole is banging and open. The doctor starts to come first. She clamps my cheeks with her thighs and starts to buck. The cock in me reaches deeper and faster. I feel the fat tip punching through me into the mattress. A series of sensations run up and down my entire body, like hoops across a levitated showgirl. The hoops multiply and crash, meeting in my back then plunging dramatically into my anus. I can’t tell who is moving now. No one maybe. The air is glittery and colour is thick. Her legs fall. The cock dives forward once then slips back and out. I turn my head so my ear shell is on her pudenda. I see a tee shirt on a chair. Brown not orange.

as you were.

I am back in my box and under my hood. I am faced out to see this evening’s show. The vans are gone. We’re on our own. Dixon will like this. After we finished on the bed no one spoke a word. The doctor said nothing as she dressed. Y shot me a look before he left. A wet filthy grin. He’s a dirty old man now. The doctor placed me here. I see her now below, leading families to spots on the mat. Y is lying in the grass under a tree. Dixon is greeting on the driveway. I remember when we first heard about the dead not dying. We were told they were predators, killers, cannibals. Now we are making the dead. The window is closed and so is my case so I won’t hear what’s being said. I have a great view though. The mat now nearly full. The line of trees back to the road. And beyond that a wide hill specked with cattle.

The mat is lit with no warning. This is the new way. They are not brought to it by an evangelist. There is no ecstatic moment, no praise, no Oracle. The mat contains a powerful jolt. It lights up like an overly full bug zapper. People shake and pop and sizzle. It lasts no more that a minute. In the darkness I see clothes and bodies glowing, then they fade. The scene remains like this for some time. Black fog rising. Silence. Headlights on the road. WasteCorp is leaving. Dixon is a janitor now.

The door opens behind me. I sense two people on either side of me. Doctor and Y. They look out.

“He’s not happy.”

“They told him to go inside. To watch.”

“What do you think he’s going to do? “

They step back from the window. The doctor turns on a night table lamp. She removes her clothes, draping them over a chair. I close my eyes. I’m not ready to do that again. The ceiling light goes out. I open my eyes. The doctor gets into her side of the bed and leans on her elbow. She draws a paper out and starts to read. Y is turned away in the dark. The front door bangs. Dixon. I try to see into the dark yard but he has turned the porch light off. I hear his chainsaw start up. I decide to watch the doctor’s reflection as she reads. Her black hair is bunched up by the pillow and looks bouffant. There is a tail of grey across her shoulder. She turns the page. The chainsaw screams in the oil slicks just beneath her reflection. I lean my head back to rest against the case. I fall asleep.

I am woken by the sound of bed wheezing. They are fucking. I lean up to the eyehole just to confirm then drop back.

I am woken by yelling downstairs. I check the eyehole but they are still in bed. The doctor is reading again. Dixon is breaking the place downstairs and bellowing like a moose. The doctor’s light goes out.

I have been moved while I slept. I am at the top of the stairs looking down. The stairs are worn and shiny. People are in the kitchen but I can’t hear what they say. The voices sound calm. I guess they are getting ready to leave. I wonder about being left behind. There’s a grandfather clock on the wall at the base of the stairs. Stopped at 4:35. I must look a bit like his son. Framed pictures on the walls going down. I can’t see them at this angle. Not hard to guess what they look like. The mom. The kid on a pony. The dog.

The doctor backs in from the kitchen. I strain, listening.

“No. I think this is good news. Give me a second.”

She turns and briskly makes the climb, sidestepping around me.

I want her to be careful coming back. I don’t want her to accidentally knock me down the stairs.

Y swings around the corner, one hand hooks the door frame. He’s up, two steps at a time. I am lifted, quickly, like last luggage in the hall and descend sideways under Y’s arm.

In the kitchen I face the stove. The oven window has been smashed. The range hood is crumpled and pulled down like a prom dress.

“How are we supposed to carry that big mat thing?”

“They left us a trailer. I did it all last night.”

I bet you did, Dix.

“Where is she?”

“I’ll go get her.”

Y hands my case to Dixon. I see him stare blankly. He’s not going to take it.

“Phut him outside.”

I am here again. I am on a stage again. Dixon is there again swinging his arms like a bat man. The crowd is there again, their stupid faces deformed by fat bones. Saliva and pustules and missing teeth and fingers and arms. This is a late crowd. I am the One. I am the Oracle. I am a dead Disney princess.

I see something. Something no one else can see.

In the sky far behind the crowd and the buildings, slowly descending funnel of night and fire. The great ring is falling at seven hundred kilometres an hour, a thousand degrees Centigrade. The great pink death is about to fall on us. I hear the boom, then seconds later the glass bangs and a crack appears. Dixon stumbles back. The crowd drops to the ground. Y runs around in front of me, his balance is thrown. I can’t see the doctor. She may be gone. The rumbling earth beneath my case. This is the death we need. This is a good death.

Dixon runs to the display, to me. I am his most important possession. We’ve come a long way, Dix. Let’s go out with a bang. Just before the hood comes down I see Dixon’s eyes catch fire. His teeth fly from his gums. A far away whip has been cracked and its hot tip flips the brain from the preacher’s skull.

A blast punches my case and I leave the ground. Hot air has filled the hood and sent me into the air. I don’t know how high I am. If I’m ahead or above or inside. The case flies end over end like a manic hourglass in an epileptic’s fist. A panel has shattered and the glass snips my face. I want to go up. I want to go. The air is like a beast. It roars and strikes and twists. It stops. Silence. Wind.

Light is leeching up from the base of me. Cold fresh air is filling the sac. I am floating.

I land in water and it rushes in to drown me. I am tired of dying. I am tired of sleeping. Soon I will be tired of breathing.

it just so happens that I am pulled from the stream by a senile old woman who thinks I am a baby, probably Moses, and takes me back to her house on a hill so she can raise me to deliver her people from bondage.

I only make it halfway through the alley and have to lean against the brick. There is a sharp pain in my stomach. And it’s distended now to the point where it handicaps me. I push a hand in. Very soft. Like it’s full of water. I can feel a corner of the liver is hardened. Cirrhosis? Maybe. Too much anxiety about meds. Too much looking at the sky. This could be big. All my pushing has made me need to shit. I drop my pants and slide my back down the wall. It comes out as water. Like a tap I turn on under my nuts. I bounce over as it moves around my feet. There’s more. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s irritable bowel. I watch the dark leafy fluid run down the alley. If there’s blood then I am fucked. Crohn’s disease would explain the pain. Longitudinal ulcer in the large intestine. Inflamed, even morbid, splenetic plicture. Could explain the hard liver. Spleen might be going up too. What a mess. I study my shit for blood. So far nothing. What would be the outcome? Without steroids I might bleed to death. God, I regret dumping all those benzos now. Sometimes they can be magic. Feel good and everything falls back in line. I need a full spectrum light too. I finally stop shitting. I close my eyes and try to recall the scent of cedar, but all I’m getting is the bland filth rolling down this alley. I pull up my pants. The fabric fuses to my ass and wicks the muck up. Did he say there was a stream? Gotta be. Gotta move.

Apple purée is amazing. I could live on that. Not liquid rice. That is dreadful stuff. Makes me squirt. Tildy has gone to the city today. She explained that it could be dangerous for babies so she has left me in the care of her dog. Candy is a miniature dachshund. She bites. I am only slightly larger than her but our shapes are remarkably similar. On Candy’s birthday, Tildy painted my white wrap black and tan and she darkened my nose. She laid me down beside the dog and clapped. Candy tore the shell of my ear before Tildy could get me back up. Today I am in a high chair far enough away from Candy’s barracuda moods. The tray before me is a flowerbox of straws and baby food.

I have a nice view of the wide valley through the bay window. It is white from the cooled pyroclastic flow. Tildy’s house is high enough up the rim that it was spared. The sky is still black. Been like that for weeks. Tildy has an oil furnace and she keeps the house warm. She tells me that it is like January out there. It’s July. The baby food and formula is giving me astonishing nutrients. I’m pretty sure we will die soon. The oil will run out. The food. Some hungry man will eat us. For now, though, this is the most at peace I have ever been in my life. In the morning Tildy gives me tummy time on her bed and I roil from side to side. Her comforter is thick and deep and smells like tea. In the afternoon she sits in the corner and reads from the Bible by candlelight. There is no sun and the only ambient light comes up from the white shell of cold ash in the valley. It gives off a surprising shine.

Tildy thought for while that I was the baby Moses. She said she ran down the hill that awful day, toward the fire. She says she wanted it. The rapture. She didn’t want to be left behind. And when she ran through the stream she saw the torn black hood. My face inside. Eyes closed and body swaddled. She claims there were bulrushes but I’m pretty certain she made that up. In time she forgot this thread, me being the baby Moses. The day-to-day work of looking after a baby was enough for her tired old mind. There seems to be little Syndrome in her. Her dementia is light and honest. The elderly don’t manage neurotransmitters. They believe it is correct to die one day. There is a sadness to Tildy too. She must have had children and grandchildren. A husband. They are probably gone now. Delivered to the sun or burnt by those who fell from the sun. She hums.

Candy is sitting on the settee. Her head is on a pillow and her eyes rock warily from side to side. Occasionally she growls at me. I like her company as long as I am safe. The little machines broke away from my bottom. I must have a stomach after all. You lied about that Dixon. I also have not had a return of Syndrome. And I sleep. In a bassinet beside my Tildy. I constipate easily and I upchuck two or three times a day. Candy gives out a short bark. She springs up on her tiny legs. Someone is here. I see Tildy in her yellow parka dragging heavy cloth bags. She found some things in the city. Candy barks and whines at the door. I try to tell her to stop but only manage sounding like her, only weaker.

The door opens and I feel the cold curl into the room. Snow or dust or ash drifts inside.

Tildy heaves the bags up on the table and slides her fur-lined hood back. She puffs her red cheeks then smiles. She pulls a sac of dog treats out and drops them for Candy while making dove sounds.

“Well, Moses.”

She still calls me that though it’s not meaningful anymore.

“I didn’t get to the city, little man, but I did manage to find a warehouse outside of Mansfield. Not a store proper. Some kind of warehouse and I borrowed some things!”

Tildy lines up the jars of baby food. A tall can of dry formula. Some bags of frozen milk. A stack of three or four TV dinners. She’ll make a fire in the woodstove and heat those. I smile and clap my imaginary hands.

“There’s nobody out there, Mosey. Not a soul. Seems like end of days more than ever. Oh, well. Never mind. We got each other and a warehouse down the road.”

Tildy laughs at her wickedness. I watch her scooping dry formula into a bottle and fill it with water. She repeats this several times then sets all but one just outside the door to freeze. The dead are frozen now. I wonder if they still move. Those seizures and tiny fits cracking the ice in their bones. Maybe shattering them over time. Shards of lung and crystallized eyes. Tildy shakes the bottle I am to drink. She won’t give it to me yet though. She wants to warm it. She sits on it.

The Bible. I listen, mostly to her voice. Her quiet amens. I don’t care what the words mean as much as I love Tildy’s calm, happy voice. She stops from time to time, closing the book on her speckled fingers and she looks out to the dead world as if it were a field of bright yellow wheat. As if her children were running through the grass up the hill. Or angels. She drifts off. We have all the time we need, Tildy and I.

I am genuinely grateful to be here. I have been a violent man. I have brought many people to sudden death. Now I am bundled and free of limbs and speech and pain. I squeeze a small turd through my buttonhole. I watch Tildy sleep. Candy. The black sky and the silver earth. These days can end or not end. I am home.

Tildy wakes when the room temperature falls. It is cold in here. I can see cloud puff from my mouth.

“That’s bitter in here, Mosey. I’ll check the furnace.”

Tildy returns after almost an hour. The house is now becoming dangerous. She doesn’t look at me or say anything as she pulls on her parka. She stomps a boot to keep Candy from the door and she leaves.

Candy walks in a military march toward me then stops and takes her post. She knows as much as I do. She is visibly shivering.

We sit like this, staring each other down for about a half hour, when the door opens. Nine or ten frozen logs fall in with a shroud of dry white particles. I only see Tildy’s arm as she pulls the door closed again. Candy barks and runs to the settee. The cold floor hurts her paws.

Tildy does this three more times until the entire front room is dominated by logs. I can see as she bends down to the stove and lights paper that this has cost her. She still hums but I’m pretty sure this is for me and Candy. It works. Candy understands that warmth is coming. I look up at where the pipe enters the ceiling. Black mould and stains and metal discoloured by decades of tightening and releasing. I wonder when was the last time the inside of this chimney was cleaned.

I have to stop imagining death at the end of every action. That’s Syndrome. I have to stay here. Like Tildy. In the moment. I wonder if I can hum? I try. Of course I can! I hum a tuneless sequence of notes. Tildy drops a log. She closes the stove door as she watches me. I hum louder. What song? What song can I hum for Tildy? I hum “Freebird.” It just comes to me. Tidly’s droopy white skin is drawn up into a smile. Her eyes are blue!

She listens on the couch and twirls Candy’s ears in her fingers. The room is warming. Loud delicious snaps form the stove.

“I know that song, Mosey!”

Tidly hums along with me, matching some notes, on her own with others. She thinks it’s a different song than “Freebird.” Maybe a song she learned in church as a girl. We sit like this humming, laughing at each other, through the evening. I switch the songs from time to time. “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” Each time Tildy listens intently at the start, then slaps her thigh, declaring she knows it. She accompanies me with the same melody each time. Eventually, we grow sleepy. Losing ourselves in the solemn fire.

“I’m sleeping on the couch tonight, Mosey. Keep an eye on the fire. Them rooms back there are froze.”

My eyes droop as she pushes logs in on the embers. Droop and drop.

cicada.

I keep thinking spring is coming. I look for signs of thaw. The white mass outside to shrink. I keep thinking it must be late March. It’s not. It’s mid-August.

Tildy has worked hard to keep us alive. Stacking more wood against the house. Bringing it in when the supply inside gets thin. She has lost weight and hums less. At night she holds the Bible open but doesn’t read. She just watches the fire until she falls asleep. I worry for her, not only because she keeps us alive, but because I don’t want her to die. I am her baby. I love her.

Candy disappears one day. I try to calm Tildy by humming “Smoke on the Water.” Eventually she finds the dog frozen in her bedroom. She lays the body to thaw in front of the stove.

Tildy takes Candy in her arms and wanders out into the frigid black August afternoon. I have a renewed fear that she will not return. The fire would go out and I would freeze to death in hours. My Tildy. My Tildy. Don’t leave me.

I want that bottle now. My grape-sized stomach empties in a snap. There is some rice liquid at the bottom of a jar on my tray. I push my lips toward it but can’t reach. The pains are sharp. Not like hunger. More stabbing. I rock back and forth with no clear plan. Either I draw it to me or I fall.

The door opens.

“Somebody’s comin’, Mosey! Somebody’s comin’!”

Tildy lifts me from the high chair and settles on the couch.

“They seen me for sure. Young people. They’ll come.”

Tildy closes her eyes and mouths a prayer. I need to eat.

A rap at the door.

“Look at that, Mosey. Company.”

She lays me on the couch and stands, revealing a baby bottle. I pull the nipple into my mouth and pump.

Tidly opens the door.

“Why, hello!”

I hear a young girl’s voice.

“Hi. We’re freezing. Can we come in?”

The door opens farther. I can tell that ’cause the bottle frosts up. Shoes stomp on the floor. The door is shut.

“Come in! Come in! Oh, you poor loves! You look near dead.”

Three young men sit on the floor near the stove. One turns.

“This is great. Thank you. Mind if I put another log on?”

They haven’t spotted me yet. I am forced to imagine what this looks like. A full-grown man’s head on a larval body sucking formula from a baby bottle. I want to scream at myself. I am grotesque. I forgot about all that.

The young man pulls open the stove door, burning his gloves and drives a log in. The other two are staring at me. Eyes as long as test tubes. They look to the girl standing behind me. I can’t see her. I hear her though.

“Oh! I’m sorry. What’s… who’s that?”

She is being calm. I hear the struggle. The boys have moved back and are looking anxiously to Tildy. Hurry up. Tell us what we’re looking at.

“Oh. That’s Mosey.”

The boys slowly return their gaze to me. I am too much for them and they move even farther back.

“Do you kids want some food?”

They congregate around the kitchen table. Tildy leaves me on the couch. It’s warm here and I have my bottle. I can’t see them.

“You folks been stuck out there for long?”

I hear sighs and low whistles.

“Well, you’re here now and what’s mine is yours.”

Silence follows this. I imagine they don’t know what to say.

“Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, you’re good kids.”

They eat. I’m not sure what. Something form the warehouse bags.

“I was afraid when I saw you. There’s bad people out in the cold and dark. But I guess you know that.”

“Oh, we do, ma’am.”

More eating sounds. Someone farts and excuses themselves. More eating. I’m beginning to think these kids are a little too polite. A little too wonderful. I bet they want this place and they don’t want to share it.

“I’m afraid the back rooms are dangerous cold. We sleep in here. All huddled like penguins.”

I hear dishes moving. Wonder what they’ll do with those. Tildy doesn’t use dishes.

“You’re very kind.”

“We have money.”

I can picture Tildy’s hands up. Refusing.

“Let’s go sit in front of the fire and listen to your story.”

They arrange themselves on the floor in spots far from me. I look in their eyes for Syndrome. Hard to tell. But if they had full-blown Syndrome, they’d be restless. Manic. They’d talk quickly, abandoning subjects, undermining themselves. If they have Syndrome, it’s incipient.

“Well. It’s what we have, isn’t it? We’re not going anywhere so we might as well talk about where we come from.”

Tildy is interested in them. She wants to talk about the Bible but she’ll wait till the end. She wants to get these kids to Heaven and she knows that time is not on their side. The girl looks to the boys and they nod. She will speak for them.

“Well, we come from Angus.”

“I know Angus. That’s a army town.”

The guys nod.

“We grew up there. That’s Greg, my brother, and that’s Jeff and Paul, his friends. My name is Holly.”

“I’m Tildy. Bless you.”

Holly smiles. The guys are a little embarrassed.

“We don’t remember pre-orbit. So we kinda grew up with it. But our parents and grown-ups have always been freaked out. Ever since I was a kid. We all grew up that way. It was kind of normal. I was in Grade 11 before it got bad. Nothing special. I worked at DQ. Hung around the mall a lot. I wanted to work in a dentist office. That is. Before. I don’t think I’ve seen a dentist for years. There’s probably none. I don’t know what these guys like. Bikes and scooters. Boards. It’s not much of a story up until things got bad.”

One of the boys speaks with his eyes cast down, fiddling with his sock.

“Tell her about the Seller.”

Tildy hisses.

“Seller? Wicked. Wicked. Wicked. Wicked. Wicked.”

They all nod. Holly glances at me.

“Yeah, so, I mean, a Seller came into our school and we had never seen one so we all went to hear him. I thought it was kinda hokey. He was like a rodeo clown or something. I thought it was just, like, a joke. Our parents didn’t though. They’d get pissed if we said anything about him. So, anyway, we all went to the airfield to hear him and he went on and on and he had, like, show people with him, like circus people.”

That’s why they’re afraid of me. They think they know exactly what I am.

“I didn’t pay much attention and figured it was funny. That night we all come back to the field in our pyjamas and sit around these big fires. The churches were singing songs and I thought it was, like, we all needed to have a break, so that’s what we were doing. I thought, Good. That’s great. Let’s do it. Let’s lighten up.”

I don’t want to look at them I can feel eyes coming to me and leaving quickly, then returning.

“So really, what happens is the clowny guy comes out and says a bunch of stuff then…”

Holly goes quiet. I glance up. They are all looking down except Paul, who is glowering at me.

Tildy lays the silence aside.

“I know, child. I know what happens.”

I close my eyes. I can’t speak. I have no tongue.

“But tell me, Holly, how did you get out?”

Holly takes a deep breath, holds it and exhales.

“Well, I guess, well…”

Tildy leaves for a minute, comes back with a tray of biscuits.

“You got away. That’s the important thing. You got here. I’m sorry for it all.”

She sets the tray on the floor. Greg looks at me, then Tildy.

“We saw some awful things happen. Things—”

“Shush now. It’s ok. I don’t think there’s need for those things ever again.”

The kids silently lift biscuits to their lips.

“Amen.”

Tildy takes the tray when they’re done. She gets Holly to help with blankets and pillows. Soon they are curled up in front of the fire.

Tildy reads from Ecclesiastes until she’s sure they’re sleeping then she goes down on her knees before me so her face is inches from mine. Her cool hands cradle my head.

“It’s been a lovely night, Mosey. Our best night. These kids are good kids.”

Tildy kisses my nose and lays her powder-soft cheek on my forehead. I fall asleep to her hum.

In the morning the kids are gathered by the door. They are talking in whispers. I crane around looking for Tildy. She must be in the kitchen. I notice Holly is crying. I listen hard.

“She must have got up in the night.”

“Do you think she knew?”

“That she’d freeze in her own bed? Yes, I’m pretty sure.”

“That’s what she wanted, Holly. C’mon. That’s what she wanted to do.”

accidents are predatory.

They spend the morning cleaning the house while I weep for Tildy. She waited until I was with someone. She waited until she could find good people to raise me. Oh, Tildy.

Paul walks past me, then takes a step back. He stands over me. I am not Moses. He knows that very well.

“What do we do with this?”

Greg comes to his side and looks down.

“I know what I’d like to do.”

Holly moves in between them and me.

“It was Tildy’s. She left it for us.”

“What if we don’t want it?”

“Okay. For now, it’s mine. I’ll look after it until we figure out what to do.”

The boys all look down at me.

“Okay?”

Their eyes are full of the night everyone they ever knew died.

“Just don’t leave it alone with us.”

“Until you’re ready.”

Holly pushes the boys back. She looks at me and screws up her face.

“Fuck.”

She lifts the empty bottle.

“Seriously. What the fuck are you?”

She sighs through her nose and thinks.

“We live here now.”

I nod and try to show a kind face. I honestly don’t know what my face looks like any more. Can I even look kind?

Holly rises and returns to the kitchen.

Paul walks by and brings the fire back to life with thin logs. He sits and stares into the fire. He looks over his shoulder then directly at me. His voice is low and nasty.

“I’m gonna pretend you’re not here for now. And if that changes, if I have to think about you, then I will drop you in this stove. I promise.”

I nod. I want that. Pretend I’m not here. He stands and kicks dirty punk wood in my face.

“I think you’re an actual fucking maggot.”

He spits on my body.

“Paul!”

Paul steps back with his hands up.

“Okay. Okay. Sorry. I get it.”

Holly wipes the bits from my face and rubs with spit. I can tell the way she touches me that deep down she agrees with her brothers.

They move in another room. They are in Tildy’s room. I hear a bang. Another. They are moving Tildy’s furniture. No. They’re moving Tildy.

Don’t touch her! Leave her! Cold air and ash swoop into the room. No! I want to go with her! I want to die with her! Put me outside with Tildy! I clench my sides and spring. I shoot myself from the cushion and hit the floor. Air pops out of my lung or lungs and I struggle to return it.

I hear a scream. I snap my head around to see Holly’s boot coming at me. She kicks my throat and screams again. I try to call out but only manage a bark. The boys move in and wind up to kick. One raises a heavy log. I recoil and move on the muscled points at my shoulders. I am soon under the couch. I use the floor and the couch bottom against my muscles and move quickly to the back. A hand appears then reaches in. I thrust my head forward and bite down hard on the hand. I taste blood. My mouth fills with it. They are screaming. They are cursing and crying. I will cut you. I will bite you. I roll back and find a groove in the wood floor at the wall. I drop into it and tighten my muscles. A poker is thrust in and it pokes my chest hard.

“Did you get it? Did you get it?”

I lay still. A face peers cautiously under the couch. I watch through half-closed eyes.

“I think so.”

Holly is crying.

I wiggle along the groove and draw myself to the wall behind the stove. Too hot. Too hot.

“Well, let’s make sure. Pull the couch back. I want this thing in the fuckin’ fire.”

I roll quickly under the stove. My hair crackles and singes. I come out into the middle of the room. Holly and the boys are busy stabbing the couch with the poker. I move by, drawing my back end up under and pushing forward. I reach the kitchen and spot the door under the sink. It’s open. I wiggle through and push the bottles of ancient cleaning liquids aside. They’ll see me here. I manage to cram myself into a space between the wall and a box. I stop and listen.

“It’s gone!”

“Gone!”

The shrieking begins again.

“Look for it! Find it!”

Things are crashing around in the room. Furniture overturned. Cushions tossed into corners.

“It’s not in here!”

“Fuck! Fuck!”

“What do we do?”

“Keep looking!”

“Check the bedroom! Check the kitchen!”

“Hurry! I’m not stayin’ in here with that thing!”

They ransack rooms. I push myself hard into the corner, trying to compact my bundled body. I put my face into a spider web. A nest. A thin light cuts in through a crack and I see hundreds of red dots fan across the shroud of silk. I blow into it and the web’s upper canopy drifts across my face. The baby spiders trek on my skin. It feels as if my skin is hallucinating. I blow and snort frantically. They have heard me. I am found. Something stabs into my side and I squawk. I spring from the cupboard. I am going to be wild. I am going to scare them to death. I shoot, shrieking into a boy’s ankle and bite so completely that my teeth stop deep in bone. Then I twist like a corkscrew. He yells but I am louder. A foot kicks my side and I use the bounce against the wall to fly up. I catch a hand in my teeth and fall with fingers in my throat. A shadow rises but I am too fast. I throw myself upright and spring. I smash a throat and shake my face like a buzz saw. A hand grabs my middle and I attack the wrist. I’m on the ground. I am a poisonous pig. I am a devil stomach.

They have run. Crying comes from the other room. The floor is a violent painting. My lung is sore. The kids are piling furniture in the doorway. Blocking my way. I hear sobbing. Gurgling. One of them is dying. I regurgitate fingers onto the tile. I can’t go back under the cupboard. No point now. The cold is starting to hurt my underside. I need to go up. I flip over so I can see. The door behind me. The stove and fridge. No way up. I don’t know if I could climb anything anyway. The frozen tile bites my back. I tear my bindings from ice blood as I turn. The screaming has subsided. Melodramatic teen death. Soon they’ll be making a better plan. They’ll kill me fast. Nowhere to go but down. I pull against the tack of ice and reach the cupboard again. I go the other direction this time. There’s a pile of fetid rags. I mount it to see if it’s warmer on top. Snap! A mousetrap bites my side and flies off, hitting a pipe with a high ping. It stings but there’s a burning sensation building around me that feels worse. I smell bleach. I’ve been crawling through bleach. The burn turns into a point against my side. He must have put a hole in me when he stabbed. The bleach is dissolving fat under my skin. I roll quickly on the rags hoping to pull some bleach away. The pain is intensifying. I am moving involuntarily. I turn under the rags, trying to escape. The rags tighten as I twist, constricting my breathing but I can’t stop. My body is trying to flee itself.

Goodbye.

Hello. I’m having a dream. I can see a wide band of red. On it, active lines twitching and bouncing. When two lines touch they are joined. Then they become three and so on. Soon all of the lines are part of discrete tangles evenly spaced along the band. I am aware that the band is trying to impress something on me. That the agitation has resulted in this perfect spacing. I see it all as only inevitable because of the way the band has presented itself. If it wanted to make me feel something, it needed to begin somewhere else. Maybe closer to one cluster as it forms. Or stay in the space between. I don’t know. I feel disappointed with the band. It has tried too hard to say something. It believed it was magic. I don’t know the solution and the band dims. The lines fall to the bottom. This reveals that the dream knew what it was going to say before it said it. And that it used what was nearby to do so. And it ended saying nothing, turning its back and then never having been dreamt.

There is another dream behind it. Much more aggressive, much more certain. It knows that it can fool me into thinking I’m awake in the middle of its story. We’ll see. It takes place in a parallel time. There are no orbits or peels or Syndrome. The sky is blue and the clouds are white and we grew up under them and now we live. I still have no arms or legs or sex organs. But I am slightly different than I was. I can move well. I have company. Many others. Thousands, just like me. We are burrowing and feasting on a dead person’s leg. We are a maggot horde. It is wonderful to feel part of this mass. My face is a black cowl with snips. My body moves in pulses, forward and back, and this is mirrored thousands of times around me. The leg enters my mouth as strands and excites my body so much that my tail twirls, propelling me. I occasionally cross half-eaten maggots. There is some cannibalism here, but I believe it’s caused by ecstatic eating. I accidentally bite into someone. It tastes too sweet. I buckle under to suck more leg. It is becoming liquid under us. It is becoming hot. There is no way we can’t win. I pump my face in and feel pus fill my body. This triggers a reaction I don’t expect. I tumble off the seething limb and land on the ground. It is colder down here and I soon stop moving. I feel my skin pulling up and my guts falling in. I try to move but I am stiff. All of my excitement is drawn in close to my head. I feel like the mass of maggots is now inside me, an infinite number of infinitely small faces. It is a sensation of profound happiness. I am being built.

The building sensation slows to quick random clicks. It stops. I feel air around me, under my skin. I am a distance from my own skin now. I contract a muscle around my eyes and it starts a choir on my back. The singing is deafening and joyful. The singing drives my old skin into the dirt and carries me into a sky made of a million dazzling suns. It is a dream but I am happy for it. Grateful. It was very finely crafted. When I awake I will be more than I was when I fell asleep.

The rags are keeping me from freezing. They have lessened the corrosion. Some of my lower body has sloughed off into my wrap and smells of putrefaction. I hope the bleach can stem advancing infection. I may well be lying in my last place on earth. I have fought very hard not to die. Did I fight too hard? No. It was my point not to die. It was never my point to live. I am a perfect result of the path I took. I hear movement in the kitchen. The barricade is being disturbed. I lay still and listen.

“I don’t see it.”

“Oh, it’s in there.”

“There’s knives in a block by the sink. Just run in and pull a couple out. When you see it just carve the fucking maggot.”

I hear things being moved. Carefully. Something heavy topples and bounces twice. A crack. The floor cracks under weight. A foot in the kitchen. Another crack. Someone is walking.

They think I’m an animal or a demon. They don’t know I can hear them and understand them. I am not going to just offer my soft body to their knives. No. I am buried in caustic rags in a dark confined space. No one is going to take a chance on this. I hear the knife sing a high note as it leaves the block. His feet are so close. I could dive to them from here. Cram his heel in my mouth and dislodge it with a single flex of jaw. He would fall backwards. No heel. The knife would fall. I’d fly across him like a crow and yank his face clear off with a cinching tear. The rest would of them would faint of fright. They would give up. Wander off. Freeze to death on the hard ash.

I stay. Who can say what would happen? Cupboards are opened. He yells and jumps back every time. The door to the rags is opened. A knife is plunged into my cheek. He pulls the knife but it’s imbedded in bone and I come out with it, hanging in the air, twisting and howling. He drops me and bounds back up the barricade.

“I got it! I got it!”

I turn against the blade and ease it from my face. I see two heads peering over the pile. I killed the other two.

“It’s still alive! Go back in! Finish it off!”

“No! No!”

A heavy black log sails in over the barricade and shatters beside me.

“What are you doing?”

I fire a dead mouse from my ass. When did it crawl up there?

“Burn the fucking thing!”

The coals are spread across the floor and are melting tile. Another log. There are flames on the wall and in the box I hid behind.

I have to go down. These two will die. They will end up combined and moving like Paula and Petra in the ashes of this house. I will escape down.

I return to the rags and press my cheek. I will do this until the flames are close. I have to slow the bleeding. I see a dark triangle in the back corner of the adjacent cupboard. I launch myself at it and slip through. There is a wide plastic pipe. I try to move along it like an inchworm but the surface is too smooth and I slip off. Hit the concrete floor very hard and have to lie still. They are burning the house down to kill me. I manage to fill my lung again and roll over. I hear the floor above me crackling and the air in the kitchen start to hammer. This house will go up fast and all the children will die. Fire goes up. I go down. The house will come down eventually. I try to move. My skin has dissolved into linen. The hole in my side is like a deep canker. I have had a long knife in my face today. My one lung is scorched with ammonia. The children will die in my funeral pyre. I look for the place I want to die.

Discs of fire slip in and out under the door at the top of the stairs. Its blue-tip fingers have lifted all the tile. I would like to picture the kids not escaping but they might, after all. I feel the expectation that I should release them. That I should give life back while mine goes. But really, what can I practically do? I let you live. I can’t even say it. I have no tongue and even if I could, the roar of the fire would drown my voice. And even if it didn’t, even if it was heard, say, in the sky above the house, spoken by birds and repeated by rabbits, there is nothing in the words to shrink the flame or dim the heat. Even if there were birds and rabbits to speak them. So I am safe to say that they should live, that that is my last wish because I know that they will not. The fire is bounding down the stairs like a Slinky. Part of the house leans and opens an edge. They will burn in here or freeze out there. I hope that they are safe.

I feel solved now. There are two sumps in the floor. One has a pump the other not. The sump was designed hundreds of years ago and dedicated as a tomb. I roll. I approach the sump at an angle so my bottom enters first. Skin is gone in places and seared tough in others. I decide not to feel pain for a sec. My bottom hits crumpled chicken wire that compresses under my weight. I slide in. I am a nematode in a grub’s back. What I am doing is repeated in nature. I fill the sump. The floor is level with my chin. It is warmer in here, close as I can be to the hot centre of the earth. I feel colossal. I think that in the moments before you die, your body assumes things. I fit perfectly in this hole.

all good things.

Stone in water. Corner in water. Joists in water. Kids in water. Sub-basement in water. Water in water. Stone in ash. Corner in ash. Joists in ash. Kids in ash. Sub-basement in ash. Ash in ash.

Plastics bent. Stone in plastic. Corner in plastic water. Kids in ash. Sub-basement in plastic. Plastic in plastic. Joists. Water. Water. Stone. Plastic. Kids. Ash. Window is Q. Stairs are ash. Window.

I can’t say this story right now.

Brick is over. Water is over. Window is Q. Ash is ash. Kids are ash. Sub-basement is ash. Water is ash. Plastic is black. Ash is black. Sub-basement is black. Window is black. Black in water. Water in black water. Brick is over. Brick is over. Water is plastic. Water is black plastic. Puddle in plastic. Water in ash. Ash is over. Puddle in brick. Kids in puddle. Sub-basement in puddle. Window is Q. Ash is Q. Q is over.

Some minutes in.

The man is a maggot with no arms or legs or genitals wrapped in a sopping foul rag. He has risen on flood waters from a sump in a burned-out basement. A single lung is emptied of water and filled with air for ballast. The man is a bandaged toe. He is conveyed on slow-moving ash. It is enough to call trees by name. Birch. Ash. Maple. Poplar. Cedar. White Pine. Blue Spruce.

More minutes in.

Jackson Pine. An entire cloud. Sand in ash. If the water recedes it will leave a wide gasket of brackish gel. The bandaged toe is turned by a rock. There is a thing called a bunny. Not here. Not now. But there is. The water isn’t revealing its vertical face. Its pirate hat. But there it is. Half in and half out. An entire cloud.

Not minutes. Not right now.

The culverts clear the water from the land and the graded roads breach like whales. The trucks are all in pots of ash and the silos are upright. The deer are a carcass and the coyote are alone. There are things that people made by hand and what they are. Pollen is picked from bark and sound is watching this spread. There is no rhythm to things. Not right now.

I am lying on a flat stone. The ash flow moves around it. I have lost all sensation. My nerve endings have been cut by bleach. I have to share my lung with my septic heart. My brain. Oh, well.

The sky is mighty blue. So blue it looks like sky. The sun is fire. Burning gas. I feel this on my flat rock. The ultra violet light. The radiation reaching my sides by bouncing off the flat rock. I have to turn my face from the direct rays. I am a bean from a can. I am sniffing the sun as it lands. This is a real sky. I turn on the rock to pull my robes off. I am a bean from a can. Is this the real sky? I turn to the east. A dark cloud. I smell rainwater.

It is the thing we haven’t seen in ten long years. It is the thing we were told might never return. Our bodies in the sky prevented it. The red takes up the orange and they curve. A yellow path lined with green. Blue. Indigo. Violet. We have left the sky. Returned its flags. Apologized.

Rainbow.