Q: IF SOMEONE WERE STANDING NEAR OR AT OR IN THE SON’S BODY, OTHER OUTSIDE FORCES NOTWITHSTANDING, HOW MANY TOTAL MONTHS OR HOURS WOULD THAT PERSON AGE?
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Q: HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE NEW FLESH TO WRINKLE?
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Q: I FEEL VERY OLD AND TIRED.
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3. One year earlier the son had discovered a small panel in the floor under his bed — a panel that, when opened, revealed a narrow passage down which the son could reach his hand. The son reached and reached and felt something down there nudge his knuckles. When the son removed his hand he found a short brass penny nail had been stuck into the loose skin between his thumb and pointer finger. The son took the nail out and looked at it and touched it to his tongue. The son swallowed the penny nail.
Q: IS THE SON STUPID?
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Q: HOW ELSE COULD THE NAIL HAVE BEEN USED?
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Q: HOW MUCH DID THE SON BLEED?
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4. In the son’s sleep, the son was sleeping. In the sleeping sleep, the son had a dream. In the dream the son knew as given that the son would never die.
Q: HOW MANY OTHER SONS WERE IN THIS DREAM? SONS THE SON COULD NOT SEE. SONS HIDING IN THE SLEEP WALLS. WHO ELSE’S SONS?
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Q: IS THAT TRUE? WOULD HE NOT EVER DIE?
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Q: WHY COULD NOT THE SON JUST SLEEP AND SLEEP?
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UNGIFT
The son’s cell phone rang nonstop blitzed no pausing. On vibrate, the phone would shake so hard it shook the bed, the air. The vibration continued even when the son turned the phone off.
The son did not want to look at the phone’s face to see who was calling in this way.
The son did not want to look. His eyes above, below, and beside him.
The son took the phone into the bathroom and hid the phone inside the drawer.
From the bedroom he could hear the porcelain of the sink above the drawer cracking under strain. He could hear the mirror patter. He could hear the soap dish dance. Something warped the bevel of the walls.
The son sat as long as he could manage on the corner of his bed, trying not to think. The bed was pushing up beneath him.
The son did not want not to touch the phone but the house would not be quiet. He went and got the phone where the bathroom was now raining dust. There were hundreds of him even in that mirror.
He went and lay down on the mattress with the phone against his chest.
The son felt sick again.
The son tried to call the mother’s name but he heard his voice stay hung inside him, gushing in his gush.
MASSIVE FABRIC
The mother stood on the back lawn. The grass grew to her waist. She had her wet arms up over her head. Something flat above her — something there — she could almost touch it — could almost pull it down. A kind of skin or greasy fabric. Gash. A veil. She kept reaching. Her arm muscles began to stretch weird. Each time she brought her hands back down from reaching she felt her elbows bobbed a little further out. Bowed. Redistracted. Her pupils spacing outward, going lazy. She was so big now. She couldn’t keep her hands from making knots. She couldn’t keep her knees between her legs. The thing — perhaps an awning — was flattening the house.
Like the mother’s body, the house all seemed to sag. The roof slid sloppy. The doors expanding. In countless windows the glass reflected the grass and gravel back onto the yard. A dead horse appeared in some parts of the reflection, its horseflesh buzzered and warped to gleaming waves from nonexistent heat. The mother’s mother crouched down on the horse’s back, holding the egg against her chest. The egg glowed, singeing the night. The mother shouted at the mother’s image, seething — all those years and years buried between — the mother’s mother having made the mother and then left her in the air of every day, such silence — the new flesh they had made, in passing on.
From the mother’s throat, instead of voice now, up through her chest there came a key — another key that opened nothing—smooth teeth—each further word a key and key again, their metal raining from her mouth in exclamation to click against the ground — and in turn to turn to further birds there, bursting, one and another, a white excrement, alive — each bird flying right after the other straight up and head-on into the thickening awning of the sky.
The mother shouted at the awning, keys erupting, uncounted birds in muscled shriek. She needed to pull the awning down, she knew, and knew she knew she would not. The stink of skin coursed new all through the air just beneath the edge of air where the long sky grew, growing hair, a body, trust.
Among the birds, the mother screamed another name. Her nostrils made little rooms for sluicing, her throat skin rawing into blood. Her skin pocked with insects that poured out from her brain, born from other, tiny eggs. There were gnats and ants and bees and beetles. There were flies of every color. These too flew to become something — of the awning, and the ground. The mother could not count herself, the shake inside her. More insects settled on the air — insects both from her and in the world compiling. They made it hard to blink, or want. Each little tic of need and knowing begged so much thought. The mother — she could not — hardly — inhale — she could not — see. She pulled her outermost clothes up over around her head, a mask. She breathed into the scummy cloth. The mother reached for names she’d heard there, those women and those men. The mother reached.
INITIATE
The son heard the hall door open and saw someone standing in the hall. This time the son did not hide or close his eyes, though he could not see through them quite clearly. The room was fuzzed. The son’s arms were flexed as if for lifting. The figure in the hall stood unmoving for a long while. The son and the figure saw each other. The air around them seemed so empty it had no space. The son began to cough. The son could not move his head or hands and so instead hacked with his head back on the mattress, blooming germ-rind up above him. The son felt something metal in his mouth. The son coughed and coughed and spat a key. The key fell into the divot of his neck above the cell phone. The son’s chest began to twitch. The key was sinking. The son saw the figure had come forward slightly. He saw the figure had a gown — or not a gown but some large curtain — or not a curtain but a cape — or not a cape but something muddy, something thin and flat and woven. The son felt the ants burrowed inside him skitter through his lungs dry like a hive.
The window light swung through quick cycles as the son watched the form emerge. The light and dark of sun and absence swam back and forth accelerated. The lip of light moved up the wall in shafts like blinkers, exposing the crudded sections where the son had hung the crud of his achievements. Among the light the form moved closer. It came in inches. It made no sound. The son could still not see. Even as the wash of light moved across the form, the son could not make out anything about it. The form’s features were blurred or runny. The son blinked and blinked his eyes.
Sometimes between sets of blinking the son saw in the form’s place an upright furry rabbit — a very young girl — an older man in a ratty yellow shirt, so hunched he could not stand. The son saw older versions of himself — much older, already balding, multi-tattooed from head to foot, carrying a book. Each of these ideas, though, remained replaced by the progressing form each time the son would blink. The son could not keep his eyes apart from one another. The son could not feel his feet.