The boy had not only put all the people away in his box, but also all the animals, and all the trees, and all the buildings, and all the surface detail that made the world even at its most unbearable interesting to look at. Had the boy needed water he would have died of thirst. Had he needed food he would have starved. Had the temperature been anything but neutral he would have frozen or sweltered. But he’d put away all these concerns as well. He was self-contained, invulnerable, immortal, and free.
He had been wandering around doing nothing for longer than we have the capacity to measure when he got tired of looking at a horizon that offered nothing but a single unbroken flat line and paused in his endless wandering to take out some toys.
First he pulled a favorite squat rock, now the rock, out of the box and placed it on the ground, in order to sit on it. It was a comfortable rock, the best of a number he’d tested and approved for squatting purposes. He rested his weight on it and found it just as superlative as it had been during his previous indulgences, then pulled his box from the pocket of his jacket and regarded it the same way any boy would have regarded any familiar but important possession.
There was nothing special about the box. It was not some cosmic vault, glowing with portent, surrounded by a crackle of blinding energy. It was just a jewelry box, lined with soft blue velvet and embossed with the trademark of a well-known retail establishment that, like the ring it had once contained and the store that had once sold it, were now safely stored inside. In the world now stored away, the gift had been removed to be placed on a woman’s finger, and the box seized in delight by the toddler the boy then was. He’d loved the soft texture of that crushed velvet, and the way a line drawn on that fabric with a fingertip caught the light differently from the unmarked material around it. He had taken a deep childish pleasure in the popping noise the lid made when shut, which he’d imagined to be a lot like the snapping of some hungry monster’s jaws. Sometimes, even now, he opened the box and ignored all the panicked cacophony of billions so he could hear that snap again on shutting it… but this was not the diversion he wanted right now, not the kind of game he wanted to play.
The boy did not find it difficult to reach into a space that should have been too small to admit his entire hand, let alone his full arm up to the shoulder. Nor was it any strain to pull out a grown man who should have been far too large to pass through the opening or too heavy for the boy to lift. The boy didn’t worry about it. He just did.
The grown man the boy had selected tumbled out, rolling as if tossed onto the hard baked surface that was now the universe’s only landscape. He pulled himself to his hands and knees and wept, heaving if denied air for so long that he now found its weight hard to stomach. After long minutes, he peered up and faced the boy, cowering as was only appropriate for him to do, before a creature of such infinite power and limited empathy.
“You can get up if you want,” the boy said.
The man remained on his knees longer than he should have after that instruction but found the strength to rise, though he didn’t draw any closer to the boy than he had to. He was a stoop-shouldered, pale figure with a high forehead, crooked nose, and weak chin, wearing a blue button-down shirt that had come undone from his khaki pants; and even as he stood he didn’t look at the boy, instead facing some neutral spot between his tasseled brown loafers.
The boy asked, “What’s your name?”
The man resisted answering, but after a few seconds said, “Lyle Danton.”
“I didn’t ask you for your last name. I don’t need to know your last name. Last names are stupid.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That doesn’t help now,” the boy said. “You still wasted my time with it. I think I’m going to make it go away so you won’t bother me with it again. What’s your name now?”
“Lyle…” the man began, his voice rising at the end as if something else would tagged at the end of it. Nothing arrived. “Lyle.”
“Lyle,” the boy repeated, as if weighing it on his tongue. “No. Come to think of it, I think that’s a stupid name, too.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It sounds too much like liar.”
“No,” said the man, who winced upon realizing who he’d just corrected. “It’s Lyle. Lyle. With another L.”
“It’s a stupid name, Lyle. You can’t use it anymore. What’s your name now?”
The man whose name had been Lyle opened his mouth, then closed it again, lost for answers. “I d-don’t think I have one.”
“You’ll need one if we’re going to have a conversation. I think I’ll call you Stupid-Face. What did you do in the world, Stupid-Face?”
“I was… a lawyer,” said Stupid-Face. He blinked multiple times and then, very quickly, said, “It’s, it’s dark in there. I can hear my wife and my kids screaming. I can’t get to them, but I can hear them screaming. You… put everybody in there, didn’t you? You’re not God, you’re just a kid. How did you put the whole world…”
The boy shushed him. “I’ll get back to you, Stupid-Face.”
Back Stupid-Face went, into the box.
The boy rummaged around a little more, and pulled out a woman. She was in her late fifties and had the look some women have, or more accurately once had, if they reached a point in life where they gave up on youthful beauty and satisfied themselves with being presentable. The boy didn’t know that the official word for this had been matronly, but had observed the principle in a number of maternal aunts. This one was dressed in a gray knee-length skirt, a white silk blouse with a ridiculous bow at the collar, and a gray jacket. Her lipstick was too red for her complexion. She didn’t fall to her knees as quickly as Stupid-Face had, but instead swayed, dizzy at the sudden return of sound and light and space.
“Tell me how much you love me,” the boy said.
The woman blinked, her eyes resisting comprehension. “What?”
“I’ll save you for later,” said the boy.
Back she went into the box.
The boy sat his knee supporting his elbow and his knuckles supporting his chin, contemplating the box as he flipped it over and over in his hand. The bridge of his nose wrinkled. He reached into the box again and this time pulled out a very big man in an orange prison jumpsuit. The big man had a shaved head, a handlebar moustache, and a swastika tattoo on his neck. His arms bulged like great stones under his sleeves. Another tattoo, a snake’s head which may have been some other color once but was now faded to a dull purple, emerged from his right sleeve and sat displayed on the back of his hand, spitting a forked tongue. He didn’t fall to his knees as Stupid-Face had, but instead tumbled onto his back, butt-crawling as far away from the boy as he could before his initial panic failed him and he stopped moving, his eyes black dots floating in wide white circles.
The boy asked him, “What’s your name?”
“F-foley.”
“Say it without stuttering.”
It took several false starts. “Foley.”
“You just pissed yourself, Foley.”
The big man’s eyes widened a sliver further as he registered this terrible truth.
“It’s okay,” the boy said. “I think it’s funny. Are you evil?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“It’s a simple question, and you don’t have to lie to me. I need somebody evil for a job. Are you evil?”