He found a room filled almost full with one white cube, around which he could wriggle, pressed at both sides, breathing in.
He found a voice behind a wall — the voice of his voice, older, slowing — some time gone.
And another stairwell, and another, each one wet and rattled in its own way. Some of the conjunctions between stairwells would have huge holes in their floors — wide-open mouths down into further house or houses. Some landings would have four or fifteen stairwells leading from them, lending the son a choice of which to take, but for each the string would keep him clinging, rawing at his palm.
The rooms went on each way around him there forever, not a music.
The son walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked.
HOME
Inside the house the father crawled on. His eyes were pouring liquid. Laughing. The hot air ached his eyes. He’d moved into the box until he recognized it, found sections of its breadth where he had been — where he had called home — when he had slept and ate and lived. He found himself again inside the house’s vents, the streetlights and homelights there somehow connected, and the airspace, and the drift.
The father loved the smell baking the house now, like money being burned, like melting Christmas trees and wire, like. . like. .
Like days.
At the vent’s first bend, the tunnel opened into a small pocket ridged with bubbles. There was a language in the metal, the pocket’s domed walls cut with tiny engraved pictures of a house. The father could not keep his eyes held clean enough to see into the windows. Behind him he could no longer see the bedroom’s light. There was another kind of light inside the vent now, writhing. The light in liquid at his face. He felt hair growing out around him, from each one of his finite, numbered pores.
I am the oldest man who’s ever lived, the father heard himself say, blank of thinking. I will still be here in this air here when everybody else is burned and gunked and gone.
The words became a new long vein inside his nose.
TUNNEL IN A TUNNEL IN A TUNNEL (IN AN EYE)
Along the vent again the tunnel opened further ahead into two. Soon the two made four, and four made eight, and so on. Each tunnel looked the same. At each the father chose by which one seemed to need him. Laughing harder. Gasping. Blue balloons. His scalp skin crisping hard around his head.
At sudden nodules in the network, the father found holes where he could see back into the house — the living room, the upstairs hallway — the walls there had been painted over black — in some rooms orange or yellow — screaming neon — though here the vents went so thin he could not fit through them, not even partly, just his arms. Some rooms had been filled with dirt or smoke or foaming. Some rooms were full of skin — other families, people, bodies — smushed. One hole into one very far room was the exact same size as his eye — through the hole he could see another small eye seeing. His eye. Light.
The tunnels unfurled on. The ceilings raised or floors grew lower. He could hunch, then he could stand. Soon the walls were so high and far apart he could not feel them at all. The floor beneath him made of sand. In his testicles a transient tingling, like someone crawling through an opening in him, through his guts and up his body, spreading out and up and on among his blood. There was more of him than ever.
WHAT
At another upstairs pucker the father looked out and saw the mother walking up and down the street. She had her head down looking for something. When she got to one end of the street she turned around. She walked back and forth and back and forth in slow procession, holding her left arm straight up over her head. In her hand, a wide gray steel umbrella. She was talking to herself. She had her hair done up expensive. She’d done her face. The father banged his fist against the window to try to tell her she looked the best she’d ever looked but the mother could not hear him or would not turn.
HELP YOURSELF
The girl’s house’s kitchen was enormous. There were cabinets lined from end to end. Many of the cabinets had been padlocked. From inside some there came a scraping. Pictures of the girl were hung all over — tacked up in tiny frames all up and down the walls and the ceiling and the floor. In some the girl looked very old — much older than the son remembered. In some the girl was an old woman, or a man? In some the girl had so much hair you could not see her in the picture.
The son’s arms were rubbed with rugburn though he did not remember any rug. He couldn’t remember ever leaving off the hallway. He couldn’t think of when he’d closed his eyes.
The house contained no clocks.
On a massive gleaming stove there were several pots and pans and spoons and basins of shifting size. The things smelled awful or they smelled good. Many pots had lids puffed up with overflowing. The kitchen counter was long and marble and very cold. The son touched it with his face.
On the tile over the stove in black marker or grease there was a note: I AM WASHING. I AM TIRED. I WILL FIND YOU WHEN I CAN. LOOK DOWN.
The son looked down. The son could not see anything about the floor. His legs were wobbling a little. He couldn’t think of when he’d last eaten. Maybe several days. His stomach felt lined with ugly light. He turned to look at all the cabinets. He had no idea which one he should open.
In the first cabinet, the son found a long rack of enormous knives — beautiful, sharply made blades that showed his face back to his face. The knives were so huge — as tall as he was, with a book’s width to the blade — he knew he couldn’t take one, though he tried. The metal slithered hot against his body as he stuffed it down his shirt. It burned and fizzled at his chest flesh, becoming soldered. It hurt to rip it free. The aching son replaced the knife inside its holder and watched it look back at him and gleam.
Another cabinet was the size of a warehouse and was stocked with books from end to end. All the books were copies of the same book, rotting, stuffed so full there wasn’t room to move.
In another cabinet there was a replica of the son’s neighborhood complete with every window, every door. Unlike the others, the son could not pry the doors or windows on his own house open, nor could he see in through the glass. A tiny black gazebo sat in their house’s backyard beside the pool. A gazebo? Even smaller bugs were clustered to it, working at the roof. Some smoke rose from its gaps. The son touched the gazebo’s tip, felt an incision. He sucked his thumb and closed his eyes. When he looked again, there were people, many of them, small and teeming, crowded in like ants. They moved on small magnetic tracks set in the ground around his house and the gazebo, wanting in. They had eyes that opened and real hair. Some were shouting, so soft, a shiver purr. They would not see the son above. In other houses the people moved from room to room, at their own mirrors, eating air. From certain windows came a song. The son felt dizzy, dangled upside down. He chose one of the many people and broke the bind off and brought its body closer to his face. The little head was staring, saying something. The son squeezed the tiny body tight inside his palm. Tighter. Tighter. A little bubble. Rumbling. Pop.
That small sound echoed in the son’s ears: pop
pop
pop
pop
pop
POP!
The son looked up. Standing beside him there was a little man — scaly, pale, flat features — the man seemed very pleased. He had long arms and a longer mustache and he was dressed in a deep gray bellhop jumper with high-heeled boots, a black neck scarf, and, draped over his shoulders, a snakeskin jacket. He had the biggest teeth the son had ever seen. The teeth all looked like keys. The son was afraid at first that the man would bite. Instead the man got out a little chalkboard.