Then they were above her, and stopped. The silence in the trees’ canopy like the silence between one beautifully discrete moment and the next. Between two people, when one has just admitted to something awful, and everything is about to change, or already has.
She could see them, perched there, on limbs, in the crooks of larger trees, looking down at her. None of them moved, their eyes on her, their mouths set in something between alarm and anticipation.
Their chests, hairless, concave, muscled. Their hands broad and long-fingered. Their feet, curled over the tree limbs, enormous, the only parts of them apart from their heads on which she could see hair. Their penises seemed very small, but maybe that was just the distance up into the trees. Or maybe they were that way from exertion. That was true, wasn’t it? She tried to remember the way the young boys looked when she swam in the cold creek with them, when she was a girl.
They were clean-shaven. Or perhaps just beardless. The hair on their heads cropped short, like crew cuts, like boys.
But they were unquestionably men.
She saw their wide, thin-lipped mouths begin to move, and a sound like a high-tenor wind through the trees came from them. They were singing something.
She dared not move or make a sound. She would never forgive herself if she spooked them, if they startled and swung away from her, to some other lost place, never to return.
Going Down
Pearl and Frank had just knocked off their third scotches, Pearl punching at the little call button, when the plane began to go down.
Oh, fuck it all, said Pearl, I cannot go through this sober.
You’ve always given up too easily, said Frank.
The plane, its right wing sheared at the base, spun down through the storm like a one-leaf clover, violently weightless, a falling rumba aflame.
An unstrapped baby flew by, astonished.
There goes your silly dream, muttered Pearl.
A rocketing service cart took out Frank’s left arm, but he managed to snatch two little bottles with his right.
You’ll have to unscrew the tops, dear, he roared to Pearl. I am, as usual, indisposed.
I’m not disinclined, averred Pearl, pouring them over their watery ice.
And out their little oval window they could see, snicking by every two seconds or so, the silvery surface of the Earth where they had celebrated the long and bitter pursuit of their love.
Wild, Wild Pigs
The hunters hung the boar by the heels, sliced it gut to sternum, let fall the beautiful entrails onto the ground. They removed skin, hooves, packed the head in ice, carried it and the meat back to camp. Every evening, the pigs gathered in stealth at the edges of firelight, watching the revelers drinking, roasting, slathering jowls with barbequed wild pig grease. They weren’t feeling so wild, anymore. They began to believe the hunters would never go away, not until they had killed, gutted, skinned, eaten every wild pig in the world.
They went to the holy sow for advice, roused her from the mud hole from which, as long as any of them could remember, only her old gray snout had protruded. The holy sow stumped around awhile, blinking gouts of mud from her eyes. She sent them into the forest to gather the roots of a certain strange plant. When they brought them to her, she grunted twice and wolfed down every last tuber.
A moment later, standing very still, a look of dull anticipation in her smallish red eyes, the holy sow disappeared, poof, she vanished.
The pigs ran screaming and squealing into the woods, certain that they were all quite doomed.
That night, however, the holy sow appeared to the hunters in their dreams. One by one the hunters rose and sleepwalked down various animal trails into the woods. They walked into bottomless swamp mud holes and sank. They happened upon and were devoured by packs of wild, rangy, slobbering dogs. They walked into the river and floated on their backs downstream, out of sight.
The pigs rejoiced, got drunk on fermented berries, fell asleep. But that night, they dreamed of their brethren turned and blackened on spits, the meat smoked tender and tangy and sweet, and woke up the next morning murderous, blind, ravenous with unspeakable lust for their own kind.
Ordinary Monsters
The worst part of it is the stiffness. I can hardly turn my head at all, my neck’s like a birch stump. And the arms, just filled with lead, or concrete, concrete that’s about halfway dry, you know what I mean.
Of course, like a lot of the dead, I’m walking around with this embarrassingly insistent boner. Gets out of my trousers all the time, since they’ve gotten a little ragged, and with the stiff arms and hands, yeah, hard to maneuver it back in.
Good thing we don’t have much sense of humor, I’d be getting ragged all the time. There’s a sense of humor, but it’s bogged into the stiffness, too. I’d be ragging the other guys, if I could. Worse, we’ve all these boners, but none of us really wants to jump the bones. All we crave is flesh, yeah. I remember being so much in love, I wanted to devour my lover. I remember how that was just an idea.
When we were all in that farmhouse, seeking the flesh, shuffling around, guys knocking each other and the women with their rods, I couldn’t help but think — I used to be a professor, when I was alive — this is so much like a faculty party: everybody looking, on the make, nobody with the goods to carry it off, can’t find a drink to save your life.
Oh, ha, that’s a good one. I’d like to laugh about that.
Because there we were, you know, shuffling around, these blank expressions on our faces — the faces are quite stiff, as well — like people who can’t even figure out their own ideas, can’t even find a seat to sit down in and get out of the way.
And there’s one of us, a woman, somehow lost her clothes. The only naked creature in the room. I think she used to be a stay-home mom, what they used to call a housewife. And I’m wondering, what was she doing naked, when she died? Taking a shower? About to get into bed with her husband, make a little suburban whoopee before the kids woke up from their naps? Running around in the yard, out of her mind, tearing her hair, when a lightning bolt or an early aneurism knocked her down?
It could’ve been anything. We were all just normal people, before we changed. Pretty much locked into our lives.
Carl’s Outside
I WAS OUT ON THE FRONT PORCH WHEN THE PHONE began to ring. An orange sunset was bleeding into the sky across the street, and I didn’t want to leave it. But Lanny was busy with supper so I went inside and answered the phone.
A Mr. Secrist from Carl’s school introduced himself.
“Is anything wrong?” I said.
“Well, we’ve been a little worried about Carl,” Mr. Secrist said. “He hasn’t been himself.” He paused. I didn’t say anything. “He’s been getting into fights, falling asleep in class. Nothing we haven’t been able to handle, you know, but it’s not like Carl.”
There was an awkward pause. Then Mr. Secrist went on.
“Anyway, this morning Carl fought—argued—with his teacher, Miss Fortenberry, and I just thought I’d call and let you know she had to send him to the principal’s office.”