Doc Raeford lifted the tail and stepped back to avoid the torrent of steaming bull shit. After the last wink of the bull’s anus, he leaned forward and pushed the electroejaculator probe into the rectum, completing the docking maneuver.“Bull’s eye.” Mike would never have imagined that he’d enjoy helping a veterinarian anally penetrate a two-thousand-pound Angus bull, but he did.Raeford shrugged. “It’s a gift.”The bull resisted the intrusion, lunging forward, shoving his chest against the gate of the squeeze chute with a jolt. His nostrils flared, flecks of foamy mucus blowing out on the exhale. The Texas sun heated the black hide, releasing its animal scent.“How’s your wife?” Mike asked.“Good. She’s meeting her sister for a spa day. They’re doing goat yoga, then getting massaged with hot rocks.”“I’ve heard of the down dog, but not—”“This isn’t a position. It’s baby goats standing on your back. Supposed to be relaxing.”Raeford flicked the switch and the bull froze, legs locked straight, the only movement a twitch of skin over his shoulders.“Have you hired a new assistant for the clinic yet?” Sweat dripped from Mike’s chin onto the front of his khaki twill prison-issue shirt. He watched Raeford out of the corner of his eye.The bull sucked breath into his massive lungs and held it for almost five seconds, before releasing it in a snort as his abdominal muscles spasmed, and he ejaculated. Mike was right there with the collection tube.“Yep. He’s starting next week.” “Oh.” Mike tasted something metallic, bitter as an unripened persimmon. “Good deal.” It had been stupid to hope for anything different.Raeford pulled the ejaculator probe out of the bull. Mike removed the loving cup from the end of the collection tube and placed it carefully on the workbench.After pipetting a drop of semen onto a glass slide and studying it under the microscope for a couple of minutes, Doc Raeford said, “Morphology eighty percent, motility seventy percent.”Mike wrote the figures on the bull’s breeding soundness evaluation form. “He’s a keeper.”“Yep. Lots of swimmers.”“So, Doc, I’m getting out in three weeks. I’m going to miss working with you.”“I can speak with the parole board. They may argue for you to stay if I tell them what a big help you are.”“Oh, hell no. No, way.”“I’m messing with you, son.”Mike received the maximum sentence for being in possession of a smidge over two ounces of marijuana, likely because he’d refused to say who’d sold it to him. He smiled wistfully.Raeford palpated the bull’s scrotum and measured its circumference. He wrote the measurement down and gave a thumbs up to Mike, who pulled the lever releasing the head gate. The bull trotted out and was herded from the area by two trustees on horseback.The next bull had a higher body condition score but his sperm were sluggish, resulting in a motility score of only twenty percent. Despite being a handsome animal, he would not be kept for breeding. After the last of the bulls had been examined, Mike tidied the work area. He wiped off the electroejaculator and packed it, and the microscope, in their cases.Raeford sorted the evaluation forms by the bulls’ ear tag numbers. “That was a good day’s work. What do we have for next week?”“We’ll have several new litters of piglets needing iron shots, ear notching, and tail docking. And a batch of male piglets ready for castration.“The whole enchilada. That’ll keep us busy. Thanks for giving me a hand today.”“Yes, sir. Always happy to help.”
***
The following Wednesday, Mike had two tables set up in the farrowing barn, each with a large dog crate on top. One crate held a litter of piglets, the other was empty.Raeford pulled lidocaine, syringes, needles, a V-ear notcher, castration knife, brown glass bottles of iron dextran, and a jug of disinfectant from a black bag.Mike brought out the first piglet, cradling it gently in his calloused hands.“I’m back to square one with the search for an assistant.”Mike blinked and something fluttered in his stomach. “Why?”“The guy never showed up, and he’s not answering his phone. Maybe he got another job and isn’t courteous enough to tell me.” Mike stood mute as Raeford injected iron, punched divots out of the ear margins for identification, and nipped off the end of the piglet’s tail. He hugged the baby piglet to his chest and whispered in its ear before placing it into the empty crate. As he picked up another little one, his mind chewed over this new development. He took a deep breath and spoke fast, before he could change his mind. “Doc, would you consider letting me interview for the job?”Raeford frowned. “I thought you were going back to UPS?”“I’d rather work with animals.”“It probably doesn’t pay as much as UPS, but the job is yours if you want it.”It didn’t feel real. Mike didn’t want to ask but had to. “It’s not a problem, me being an ex-con?”Doc Raeford put down the tail nippers. “You’ve been my assistant for a year and you’re damn good at it. You treat the animals with compassion. I don’t give a good crap about anything else. You hear me?”“Yes, sir. Thank you.”“Now, let’s get going. It’s date night for me and the wife—she’s taking me to goat yoga.”
Amelia-Rose followed first. She even had the audacity to message Francis afterwards, as if following real life acquaintances on Tumblr was normal. Hi Francis! It’s nice to see someone else who is as online as me lol. xoxo—AR Francis freaked, of course. She couldn’t picture Amelia-Rose as a fellow Columbiner, not even as one of the fangirls exclusively in it for horny reasons: the ones who posted crime scene photos of Eric’s body captioned idk hes kinda cute without his face, who posted drawings of a shirtless Dylan Klebold, passably rendered in ballpoint pen—not that Francis thought there was any respectability there, with those types of girls. Amelia-Rose’s blog was Lolita models and gifsets of the Sanrio characters and hard-jawed men who were stranded in a meadow of kawaii. Arrayed in tweed, they pinned squirming schoolgirls beneath them, besmirching their mahogany desks with statutory rape. Those posts were hashtagged with TCC.A multipurpose acronym, two types of girl. Read Francis’ way: True Crime Community. Turned on its head: Teacher Crush Community. Francis ignored Amelia-Rose’s message, but clicked the Follow Back! button. And so they were mutuals. A disclosure of degeneracy: I know you, yes, but you know me too.
***
In the hallways they passed each other like strangers. Francis saw Amelia-Rose exclusively through her peripheral vision. Amelia-Rose took on a diffused quality—pinks and yellows, like the kind of sunset Francis saw in the Sunoco parking-lot where she sometimes sat, cross-legged in a fug of cigarette smoke, on the automatic tire pump.What if I talked to her? Francis thought, but she couldn’t withstand the visual: Amelia-Rose, almost six feet tall with her childishly large hairbows; Francis, in a men’s leather trench coat that dragged across the linoleum floors.Despite this, Amelia-Rose liked her reblog of the boys mugging for the camera, liked her selfie in which she wore Eric’s mirror-lensed sunglasses, liked her 1000 word essay, a painfully comprehensive breakdown of a single line from Eric’s journal. What do you think about when you look at the sky at night, when there's no clouds out and you can see all the stars? Francis reblogged a text post: According to autopsy records, Eric’s heart weighed ten grams less than Dylan’s. Alone in her room, she cried. It was Eric she loved best, after all—his verbosity, his skinny limbs in a constant tap dance of agitation. The visibility of his desperation to be loved, like cracks of light shining through the roof of a condemned building. She shut her eyes and held her hands out, trying to feel the weight of a dead boy’s heart. Above her reblog, she added: when i read this, i cried for real.A message appeared in her inbox. Here if you ever want to talk about anything.She imagined telling her, all the trite things Amelia-Rose would say to try to convince her not to. And what advice could that girl offer? A teenage girl in love with her drama teacher. A girl who had answered, unabashed, the anonymous ask Francis had sent her—answered that her wildest fantasy was to be walking home from school in the pouring rain and see the familiar car on the street. To watch as it slowed, as the passenger window rolled down. To see deliberation play across his face, to watch the break in resolve in real time. To be offered a ride.
***
Do I dare disturb the universe? asked a poem Francis studied in AP English. Do I dare? Do I dare? came into her mind often. That intruding, shameful question. Time to turn back and descend the stair.
***
At night she would play through Eric’s Doom WADs. Bricks. KILLER. Hockey.wad. She liked to clear the level of all the demon hordes and then linger there, floating through that labyrinth he had created over twenty years ago. When she tried to sleep she would see the Doom HUD on the back of her eyelids. 50 ammo, 100% health, 0% armor. She dreamt a military-base maze, an endless turning of corners. Eyes shut, the eyeball flicking back and forth underneath the thin skin of her eyelid, searching for someone that was not there.
***
She did theater tech for the spring musical, Little Shop of Horrors. Amelia-Rose was Audrey. Francis watched from high above in the control booth as she sang her solo, a falsetto belt. I’m his December Bride. He’s Father, he knows best. It was a pity, Francis thought, that Amelia-Rose was so talented and still deemed unworthy of love. Francis trained the spotlight down on her, aim steady as Amelia-Rose danced across the stage. Afterwards when she went to smoke she found Amelia-Rose crouched behind the theater, her mascara in wet trails down her cheeks. Francis didn’t know what to say. As she lit up she watched Amelia-Rose out of the corner of her eye. Francis finished her cigarette in silence, crushing the butt under her combat boot.“Do you want to go to the mall?” Amelia-Rose asked suddenly.Francis had never been to the mall. She didn’t have a car and she wouldn’t have wanted to go even if she could get there. Still, she found herself nodding. Found herself saying, “Yeah, okay.”
***
At Southpoint Mall they threaded in and out of stores, compelled to buy nothing, touch nothing, barely speaking. They ended up on a bench behind the mall beside an abandoned fountain.“I guess we should go home,” Amelia-Rose said eventually.Francis nodded. She stared at the fountain. Inside were statues of children, cast in brass. They were disquieting, malformed, their mouths stretched into grimaces meant to be smiles, their teeth individually rendered. They were placed on raised platforms, and underneath them jets of water were supposed to spout up to give the illusion that they were being blasted into the sky, except someone had turned the jets off a long time ago. The fountain was infested with geese; they splashed in the water and leaked white shit through the children’s hair. What if I walked in? Francis thought. What if I did anything at all? The sun came down a parking-lot orange. A tree branch balanced in the open hands of one of the children. It was brittle and five feet tall. The end branched like a forked tongue thrust into the sky. “Do you ever feel scared to do literally anything?” Francis asked Amelia-Rose.“Sometimes it’s good to be scared,” Amelia-Rose said. After a pause, she continued, “It’s like—I made a move on him today. He was helping me do my makeup, blacking out my eye, and his hands were on my face—I grabbed them and held them against my lips. For a second he stayed there, and I thought maybe…” She looked down, fiddling with her bracelets. “He was nice about it—he said he would ignore it this one time.”Francis walked over to the fountain. When she grabbed the stick, it was almost too much sensation: dirt worming beneath her fingernails; the geese’s honks; the slippage of leaves underfoot; the smell of still water. She turned back to Amelia-Rose. She levelled the stick and looked down its barrel, composing the image just so. A face in the crosshairs. “I could kill him for you,” Francis said.Amelia-Rose laughed as if it were a joke. “You wouldn’t dare.”Francis thought: Watch me. Amelia-Rose grabbed the forked end and pulled. The stick cracked like a wishbone between them, the sound dry and startling. Around them the geese screamed, rose into the air, and fled.
As was his habit, he lay down for an afternoon nap, although next door they were building a church. The sounds of drills, hammers, and other tools kept waking him up. He fumbled his way to the kitchen, drank two glasses of absinthe in quick little swigs, plopped back in the armchair, and stared at the ceiling. Up there, the light was moving back and forth, forming streaks and patches, devouring itself. They were puttering around next door, and he remembered that the foreman had once said to the workers that not all of them would live long enough to see the completion of the church. He was a slim and sinewy man; he smoked while he talked; he lit up a few cigarettes. He watched him from the balcony, then eventually he reached for a cigarette, too. The workers should remember, the foreman explained, that there are sanctuaries and churches whose construction lasted five hundred years. Think of the many churches in the world that are up and running, but they’ll never be finished. They’re not yet finished, but services are already taking place in them. The workers should remember that a church might never be truly finished. And when it is finished, does everyone get there in the end? No. Not everyone gets to the church they plan to go to. Because along the way they get lost, find another church, take a different path, get sick, die.The workers then began to ask questions.“Then why bother building it?”“I don’t know,” the foreman said. “They’re paying us, aren’t they?”They are. That’s true. If they weren’t paying, they would quit for sure. But because they’re paying them, they’re working. Then one of the workers asked a strange question:“Could a prayer be ever finished?!”“Perhaps if it’s genuinely heard,” the foreman replied, but he already regretted saying it.The man thought that once services were being held, he’d go over there to pray too, perhaps get down on his knees, and ask the Lord not to let the bird land on his windowsill anymore. Is that what he really wanted though? The window was open, and if he were to close the window panes, he’d suffocate. The heat was unbearable. At least with the window open, there was a small draft. He got up from the armchair, and looked back to see what kind of imprint his body left behind. He turned the radio on, and the scratchy sounds, emitted with each turn of the button, also sounded like a prayer. He listened to the news. Another catastrophic mine accident somewhere. The hot spell was here to stay. A protest was underway. The man turned the radio off. He drank another glass of absinthe, opened a can of beer, and watched the slowly disappearing brownish foam; by then, the bird was already standing on the windowsill. Truth be told, it usually dirtied it up and, once again, it pooped right there.The men below were puttering around.The bird was the town’s parrot, it flew from window to window, no one knew who its owner was, whose cage it escaped from. Someone might have let him go, shoo, fly away, we don’t want you anymore, bird. He thought it might have stayed around this area because of the construction of the church; maybe it was fascinated by the sounds of drills, chisels, hammers. The temperature was so high that the dripping sweat boiled on the temples. The city was suffocating, windows everywhere were wide open, as if they were human mouths. Large, hungry mouths, breathing in the heat and exhaling human vapor, the scent of dust falling from the leaves of indoor plants, the stale smell of furniture. The curtains, like souls ready to escape their imprisonment, swayed back and forth. The parrot was an exceptionally intelligent being.Its small colorful head tilted left and right, it listened, it eavesdropped. It picked up and learned the intimate whispers and shouts that circulated in each home, then it moved on. In the next home it repeated what it heard earlier. Sometimes the parrot told the man, stay with me.“Stay with me.”“Go away.”“You’re not enough.”“You’re too much.”The parrot whispered, be nice, be nice.“Let’s dance, darling.”The bird acted out how the church was being built. It imitated the drilling, the chiseling, the loud hammering, as though it were an echo. After a while it flew away, the man wiped off the yellow poop from the windowsill, and emptied another glass of absinthe down his gullet. He sat down, stared upward, and gave names to the cracks on the ceiling. He spotted a spider. He might have even dozed off. That’s when the doorbell rang. It was the foreman from the construction site, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. His face looked tormented. They had exchanged a few words before, back when the construction started. He was now holding a bag in his hand, said hello, and asked to come in for a moment. He had something to say. The man nodded, of course, and stepped aside. The foreman accepted the glass of absinthe and lit up another cigarette. “This is how we pray,” he said “during work.” “We never get to the end of our work, but we pray regardless.”The bag was still in his hand.“I see,” the man nodded. “Did the parrot used to visit you, too?”“I never chased it away. Sometimes I might have even waited for it,” the man nodded.“Do you know what one of my workers said? He said that the bird is the voice of history.”“That might be a bit of an exaggeration,” the man said, and he poured another glass. They clinked their small, but thick glasses.“While we were working on our construction site,” the foreman said, “the bird kept repeating a woman’s name. In your voice. We couldn’t work because of it.”“You couldn’t work because of a name?”The foreman didn’t answer.“It was so ridiculous. The youngsters, the younger workers, they kept laughing,” he said as he wiped his forehead. “Don’t be angry with me, but it couldn’t go on any longer.”“I see,” the man nodded. “Don’t be angry with me, you all.”“Here you go,” the foreman said, and he slowly lowered the bag on the table. He chugged another glass of absinthe and left. He didn’t say goodbye. His steps echoed in the stairway, although during such heat waves stairway noises usually sound muffled. Blood seeped through the brown pastry bag. They must have caught it by hand, and then wrung its neck. The man placed the carcass on the windowsill, right where it pooped a few hours ago, and then, as had been his habit for some time, he began to talk to it.
I find a pocket universe in my apartment building. A whole ass other universe two floors below me! On the 23rd floor to be exact. You’d never know it was a pocket universe by looking at it. From the outside, it just looks like another normal door to another normal apartment. The pocket universe feels like it’s made for me. Like its dark energy and matter and various particles all exploded from the nethermost parts of my soul during its creation or my creation, or maybe they happened simultaneously and that’s how love works. The first night that I’m in my pocket universe, I sleep. That’s it. I sleep the best sleep I’ve had in years. No alarms. No construction outside my window. No neighbors fucking so loudly that I get a little jealous but also a little horny. Just the purest form of rest known to man. I wake up to a fresh cup of coffee just the way I like it on the nightstand with a little note that says: Good morning. I love you. At sunset, I walk through the field of black velvet petunias and watch how the rays of light bounce off the petals and bounce upward to illuminate the coming stars and my heart bounces around in my chest and wow wow wow, look at how beautiful everything is!I tell my pocket universe everything: how stupid my boss is, why I chose to wear whatever I chose to wear that particular day, how my diet is/isn’t going, my working theory that anyone who drives a KIA is a bad driver and anyone who drives a BMW is an asshole—everything! My pocket universe listens and laughs and through signs and wonders lets me know if I'm right or if I’m being judgmental. It’s not long until I pack up most of my shit and move into my pocket universe, only going back to my home universe when I need to water my plants or get a haircut or see how the San Diego Padres are doing this season or something. I work remotely, and my pocket universe has great WiFi, so I’m still able to make money even though I don’t have to pay for rent or gas or groceries anymore. My pocket universe provides everything for me free of charge. Nights are spent by the ocean, drinking coffee stouts with the dolphins. Mornings are spent having friendly debates on various topics with the redwood trees and the skyscrapers while scarfing down the best fucking breakfast burritos I’ve ever had. In the fleeting moments, I stare at the sun because here it doesn’t blind you. Here, it illuminates the version of you that you’ve always wanted to be. The version of you you’d always hoped was somewhere inside of you. It shines its light on that part of you like a miracle, and you start to believe.
***
I notice it in the sky first, like slender cracks in glass slowly crawling from one end of the horizon to the other. My pocket universe tries to convince me that everything is fine. That it’s not a big deal, nothing to worry about. The water is next. Once clear and pure, it muddles and is soon overrun with leeches. The sun dims from brilliant gold to a metallic gray. Still, my pocket universe tells me it’s okay. That it will pass soon enough, that it’s just grateful I’m here. I tell it I’m just as grateful. That I love it too. That I love it more than words can express. That no story or song or poem or picture or suicide pact or anything could ever express. That’s when the crimson in my veins turns black. My skin pales as the dark lines stretch along every inch of my body. I lose sight in one eye, and my lungs only take half their normal amount of air. Every breath feels suffocating. “I’m killing you by staying here,” I say. “Maybe I don’t belong here. Maybe I was wrong. What did I do? Why is this happening?”The mountains explode. Fire mushrooms up and rolls out like tidal waves across the canvas of sky, setting my pocket universe itself on fire. Stars crash down around me. My pocket universe whispers in my ear, “I’m so sorry,” and I black out. I’m lying on the floor of the hallway, covered head to toe in ash and soot. The door to my pocket universe expands and retracts as though taking its last breaths. I reach for the doorknob, try to force myself back in. I’m thrown into the air like a fucking rag doll, past the other doors in the hallway that lead to regular apartments and not pocket universes, and into the elevator. The doors slam shut, and I’m sent back to my floor.
***
Every morning and night, I walk past the door that leads to my pocket universe. The cracks in the wood heal in a matter of days, weeks, months until it’s as good as new. I heal, too. But I know I can never go back to my pocket universe. That if I do, it’ll kill us both. For whatever reason. It doesn’t matter, I guess. It just is. Instead, I lie in bed at night and dream of my pocket universe. Of its beauty and its brilliance and its whole ass existence being a miracle. And in my dreams, in my mind, I find a new pocket universe for me and my pocket universe to be together. One that hopefully won’t kill us both.
Jitterbug Johnny made it to the back of a dozen trucks and sports utility vehicles in the form of a sticker: “Jitterbug Johnny 1965-2023 – ‘Drive faster than an eagle takes flight!’” Jitterbug said the phrase any chance he could: before and after taking a shot, getting out of cold above-ground pools, even while receiving the toothiest blow job.However, it was a phrase that bothered some folks, sticking in their ear like a stubborn wad of wax. Did eagles take to flight faster than most other birds, they would wonder, shouldn’t this pithy encouragement have more to do with eagles soaring unparalleled heights rather than the immediacy with which they took off?These were understandable questions to ask of a man who also drove a beat-up sedan that couldn’t reach 30 miles per hour without shuddering and shaking across the land it traversed. And shit cars aside, Jitterbug usually preferred to stumble home most nights, the pounding tread of his unsteady boots his only company at 2:30 AM.After his death, choking on a chicken wing alone in his studio apartment with no curtains and a crunchy carpet that would scare even the bravest set of bare feet, the truly unspectacular mystery of Jitterbug Johnny’s motto that, without realizing it, garnered years of mental estate by those who knew him, rose to the surface, ready to be evaluated.Bored by their regular brews, Jitterbug’s bar buddies, a comingling from two different, dimly-lit establishments, met in an agreed upon abandoned parking lot to speculate over who “Jitterbug Johnny” really was and why he proselytized about driving faster than an eagle takes flight.First, the bar buddies decided to bust down Jitterbug’s front door, a place, they all discovered, they had never been invited back to.Their first batch of clues was the adornments: a Mexican flag on one wall, just to the side of the bulby TV, and, on the other, just above the couch, hung a life-sized poster of Howie Mandel wearing a burgundy suit—official 2007 promo for the show Deal or No Deal.The buddies stopped in their tracks, thankful for the safe, cleanish confines of their work boots traversing across the crackling carpet, their feet inside burdened enough, sore, weary, from working their hauls, their men, and their minds throughout the day.With fewer answers and more questions, the breeze drifting over the felled front door, the bar buddies scratched their beards and polished their bald heads shiny, forgetting why they felt so compelled to come, until the leering face of Howie Mandel sparked a discussion, a speculating as to why Johnny, a live alone bachelor, would have a poster of a sharp-dressed man and not a woman with honeyed hair and cleavage like an overstuffed couch?What, ultimately, they didn’t say (“Johnny was a queer!”), out of reverence for the dead, screamed louder than what they did (“Deal or No Deal? Solid network TV!”)Then the baked-in smell of spicy chicken soup, advancing from the hallway, comforted their searching minds and, together, without further debate, they realized Howie Mandel, at heart, was a stand-up comedian, an uncovered masculine aspect to the poster and the dead man who had tacked it up with three rusty nails and one bobby pin (“Certainly a souvenir from one wild nooner,” the bar buddies nudged each another with a grin.)But the Mexican flag they still cut their eyes at, wanting Jitterbug to be a full-blooded American. That is until one of the buddies, either the one a full inch shorter than the rest or the one who was always “pickin’ his seat,” chimed in, “I remember Jitterbug sayin’ his dad was half Mexican? Or…Maybe…It was his grandfather?”Ah yes, the bar buddies nodded. They too had a half-Mexican father and/or grandpa.The buddies split up, combing through the rest of the apartment, hoping to turn over the right “shell” and gain more clarity, more understanding so they could get back to their respective bars and nod with added certainty whenever someone spoke Jitterbug’s name.Drawers opened, cabinets closed, and fingers of the buddies gripped, tousled, and upturned what they could find only to come up short of filling in the deep gaps of just who all these men had considered a friend.Was Jitterbug the broken comb wedged under the one recliner, not the one with the blood stain but the one that smelled like box? Was he the TV, stuck on the weather channel for a different state? And where was the car manuals or bird ephemera for all that talk of driving eagles and flying cars. What was the saying again, the buddies shrugged, the permeating soup smell now a given, no longer a comfort.Tired, the buddies scratched themselves a final time, resting their other available hand on their hip until that posture felt too feminine and they all quickly shoved their hands in their pockets and left.Back at the bar, a new one, but as divey as the ones they had known, floors sticky, the beer cheap and shitty, the buddies sighed collectively.“Remember the time Johnny chipped his tooth?”Yes, they remembered, their smiles flat and foamy. Jitterbug had gotten blackout drunk and smashed his face into the pinball table just because no one had ever thought to give it a try.“Remember the time Johnny shit his pants?”Yes, that too they remembered until a bar buddy said, “Which time?”They all laughed over their beers, promising they’d learn from Jitterbug’s mistake, stopping at three, rushing to the toilet if they felt any “hot chocolate” coming on.Then a lull settled and the bar buddies noticed the football game blaring from the many screens and the two women playing pool who, yes, did have smaller breasts than they would normally hope for but it would be rude not to chat them up after the next round brought out the courage.It was this kind of casual moment of nothing, before that chicken wing refused to budge, when Jitterbug Johnny would’ve appeared, telling them all to drive faster than an eagle takes flight. The bar buddies acknowledged his absence with back slaps and mug raises. They didn’t have more any information about their dead, beloved friend. And they still didn’t understand his confounding catchphrase, but one thing was clear: you can argue with your boss for sticking you with the night shift, you can argue with your girlfriend on how best to shut that newborn up, but you can’t argue with the dead.“Hear, hear!” The bar buddies cried, clinking their glasses, letting the beer spill over the rim as it pooled on the bar top. “To Jitterbug Johnny!”
The woman who wrote Beowulf considered it juvenilia. She composed it during the years she roamed close to the old hall, hearing the revelry, watching the fighting and fucking from the slippery dark outside. Over the long seasons she recognised, in her observations of the hall, a will that sprung from its inhabitants; a mode of life that ran in tight, obsolete cycles. Drink spilled, offence taken, necks opened, blood added to mud, children made, killed. These dances played out, accumulated nothing. Over time, she moved away from the hall and disavowed the tales she wrote about it. In their place, she composed stories that were not about human things. Wine and swords melted into the grey candlelight of the old world. She took what the land told her and made its rough clay into her letters. The humans and their fires were things she had stepped upon to light the way; this new language was in the stones, in the correspondence between root and soil, between a bird’s foot and the branch on which it balanced. The years turned. She roamed further into the land’s interior. Caves contained dialogues of water and stone. Animals in mating bred glyphs and signs. Trees bent horselike to meet her, brushing flowers into her neck as she went. There was no longer a distinction between herself and where she placed her body. Blood from a wound was shared with whatever thorn had cut it. As water ran over her hand it carried some unseen fraction downstream. These were inscriptions the world would not preserve; a language inscrutable by the evening of the day on which it was composed. She would scratch on bark or carve into rock, then find it gone. The idea of lines on a scroll became laughable to her, pulp, dirt. The description of a blade, a creature, a warrior, a mother––this was child’s work. She found within this new expression a tapering line, a promise that vanished like ice. Foot became tree became fur became blood became water. Eventually, she was no longer visible. The hall raged on out of sight, a red pinprick, prevailing.
***
It's a mistake for one to assume that writing is the end of anything. Anyone can knock stones together, that’s writing. Anyone can stick a sword through an eye, that’s writing. As words get older, they become solid. Eventually they’re just something to trip over, look back on, and curse at. The world does not have need of anything so final. A place is found in its accumulation and then its dispersal. What else is there to say, other than I am something that briefly came true. Aeons pass. A body sits at a table. It is hard to make out what it’s doing through the haze––perhaps the old perpetual scratching of lines. Some monster shambles to the door, knocks, enters.
In 1983, when I was 32, I invited my Sorbonne classmate Renée Hartevelt to dinner at my apartment at 10 Rue Erlanger, under the pretext of translating poetry for a school assignment. I planned to kill and eat her, having selected her for her health and beauty, characteristics I felt I lacked.I have had a lifelong suspicion that people find me mentally and physically repulsive. However, many of those who meet me find me to possess obvious intelligence and a sense of humor. They also find me handsome, although of austere appearance. I am often regarded as “very self-analytic."I considered myself weak, ugly, and small (I’m 4 ft 9) and wanted to absorb Hartevelt’s energy. She was 25 years old and 5 ft 10. After Hartevelt arrived, she began reading poetry at a desk with her back to me when I shot her in the neck with a rifle. My colleague Brod has compared me to Heinrich von Kleist, noting that both of us have the ability to describe a situation realistically with precise details. He thinks I am one of the most entertaining people he has met. I enjoy sharing my humor with my friends, but also help them in difficult situations with good advice. According to Brod, I am a passionate reciter, able to phrase my speech as though it were music. I fainted after the shock of shooting Renée but awoke with the realization that I had to carry out my plan. I could not bite into her skin because my teeth were not sharp enough, so I left the apartment and purchased a butcher knife. Brod feels that two of my most distinguishing traits are "absolute truthfulness" and "precise conscientiousness." I explore inconspicuous details in depth and with such precision and love that unforeseen things surface that seem strange but absolutely true.I consumed various parts of Hartevelt's body, eating most of her breasts, face, buttocks, feet, thighs, and neck, either raw or cooked. I swallowed her clitoris whole, due to her being on her period at the time, and me not liking the smell of menstrual blood, while saving other parts in my refrigerator. I understand the pathos of things. I possess an empathy towards things, a sensitivity to ephemera, an awareness of impermanence, of the transience of things, both a transient gentle sadness at their passing, as well as a longer, deeper, gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.I also took photographs of Hartevelt's body at each eating stage. Once the remains of her body that I did not consume started decomposing, I attempted to dump the remains of Hartevelt's corpse in a lake in the Bois de Boulogne park, carrying her dismembered body parts in two suitcases, but I was caught in the act and arrested by French police. In my debut novel, I coined the term Saudade, an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for something that one loves despite it not necessarily being real. My wealthy father provided a lawyer for my defense. After being held for two years awaiting trial, I was found legally insane and unfit to stand trial by the French judge, who ordered me held indefinitely in a mental institution. After a visit by the author Inuhiko Yomota, my account of the murder and its aftermath was published in Japan under the title In the Fog. In my second novel, I coined the term Weltschmerz (literally "world-pain"), a literary concept describing the feeling experienced by an individual who believes that reality can never satisfy the expectations of the mind.My subsequent publicity and macabre celebrity likely contributed to the French authorities' decision to deport me to Japan, where I was immediately committed to Matsuzawa Hospital in Tokyo. In my third novel, I coined the end-of-history illusion, a psychological illusion in which individuals of all ages believe that they have experienced significant personal growth and changes in tastes up to the present moment, but will not substantially grow or mature in the future.My examining psychologists all declared me sane and found sexual perversion was my sole motivation for murder. As the charges against me in France had been dropped, the French court documents were sealed and were not released to Japanese authorities; consequently, I could not legally be detained in Japan. I checked myself out of the hospital on the 12th of August, 1986, and subsequently remained free. On July 2nd, 1982, I attached 43 balloons to my lawn chair, filled them with helium, put on a parachute, and strapped myself into the chair in the backyard of my home at 1633 West 7th Street in San Pedro, California. I took my pellet gun, a CB radio, sandwiches, beer, and a camera.While being lifted in the air by the balloons, I considered inventing the wind phone, an unconnected telephone booth where visitors can hold one-way conversations with deceased loved ones, but decided against it.
She thumbs the tumor where it rubbed on the boning of her bra. Her work shirt is half undone, her chest exposed to the mirror. The hooks unclasp, and it’s there in full view: pill-sized, pill-hard and intradermal. She squeezes, this is no pimple - the skin that hides it turns a deeper pink and that’s the end of it. An intruder to the bathroom fails to enter, the door ruts the lock. She buttons her blouse and smooths out her hair to return to her work. The tumor snugged in its place over her breastbone, against the bra, beneath the blouse.At home, the blouse is torn open for inspection. The woman lives alone, where no-one will stop her picking and probing. Her thumb angles it left, right. The node is anchored and completely numb. How long has it been growing there? It’s been a long winter. When dressing and undressing in the dark, certain sacrifices are made. It’s entirely possible for a woman to miss the point, no matter what she thinks she’s agreed to lose when signing the contract. Every job has its roadblocks. This was little more than the latest in a string of unanticipated set-backs.The tumor is clothed in soft skin, reddened from inspection. It slides downward when her thumb slips sideways, aghast and curious, she slides the pill further down and finds no resistance, no pain in the slightest. The effort translates it a few centimeters lower. The woman’s skin is split open. She opens a thin, oval window through yellow fat to the wet, pink muscle underneath. A clean wound, she braces for burning that she expects but doesn’t feel. For minutes, she is thrown back on her ass in shock before the mirror. Her features are catlike. She crawls forward again to inspect her opening. The tumor lies waiting, the skin above shows no sign of releasing it and when she tries to push it back up where it came from, it refuses. A dilemma presents itself. Reason dictates an open wound should endeavour to remain small - though reason has not encountered a wound as willing as this. Why didn’t it hurt? She thinks she might have gotten lucky. Logic dictates that harm creates pain. She will have to keep pushing to feel some. Then - and only then - will her condition make sense.As she tests, the pill slides further until it rests at the beginning of her stomach, a trail skating behind it like the fly of a dress. There is still no pain, but there’s something like it. Slowly now, the body peels tenderly, the split inches as the cells divide. Electricity from their parting comes in small dispersals, easy warmth. The sensation deepens with the cut, she realizes when the tumor passes over the naval that she is out of splittable skin. How unfair. Feline face flushed, mouth agape, torso yawning with muscle sparkling under the drooping cuts. Pill-like tumor pressed and ready over the mound of her cunt.She forces it down, measuring her limits. Her skin gives way. Pleasure courses thicker and hotter than blood though unready veins. The passage is savoured. Movement of the tumor over the slick flesh of her vagina arches and blossoms to unimaginable heights at every millimetre. It shoots through her legs and cools the palms of her feet. She feels holes torn where none have appeared. But alas! Her openings meet at last and somehow the tumor becomes lost inside her. It is gone. What remains is the woman, legs spread to reveal the opening wide enough to dissect her body to the breasts. Underneath the wrapping, the muscle is healthy and vibrant. It trembles involuntarily when inspected. Breath clouds her face in the glass, but she is not currently interested in breath.. Gently, she pulls the sides of the wound wider, it gives way easily. Pain refuses to find her, friction between skin and muscle is like slipping an old burn through velvet. Fingers find their way under. She is confronted with the image of herself, a woman she knows well, naked, panting and dipping her hands beneath her skin as though she were hungrily caressing a lover under their clothes. Whole hand under, whole hand up. The rift splits more where her arm has gone, it passes the breastbone to her neck. Wrapped in ecstasy, she has torn the skin all the way to her face in want of further release. Her fingertips run over her teeth and she recoils, at last, in face of what she has done. Is continuing to do. Terror grips wide eyes for a moment and the shock has sent her limbs moving spasmodically. She catches her loosened skin on the carpet. It pulls to the side, replacing fear with ecstatic friction once again and her thoughts of repercussion are replaced by greed. Her hand runs under the opposing arm and removes it like a glove. Just as simply, the other is removed, then she works on loosening her leg. She slips out of herself like stockings. Leveraging her hands over her top row of teeth, she reaches up, pulling her face off like a hood. She drops the whole thing on the floor, a deflated heap of blood and flesh.Free from her binding, the body feels lighter, less agitated. The pleasure has died down to an insignificant hum. But has not yet made a full exit, as the open air against her muscle brings a slight tingling sensation. Blood billows out around her feet like a shadow where she walks on her plush cream carpet, the fibres putting welcome shocks through her naked soles. Facing her in the mirror is a glistening wide-eyed creature of meat. Hairless, lipless, quivering red ape of tendons and sinew. Although it moves at her command, strangely, there is no compulsion to covet or mourn for it. Nor are there thoughts of returning to the chrysalis. She kneels in a widening pool of blood, raw palms smearing the mirror where her teeth grind the glass.
You're gonna come in here into my place and tell me to change my socks you're gonna tell me that? Get out of here with that horseshit. This is my place and these are my socks and I'm not changing them just because you don't like that I've worn them these same ones for 45 years.I'm not here to do what anybody says to do I've earned it you see the fucking pictures on the walls of this place? There's pictures of me with like several different celebrities ok? They came to my place here and they gave me money to give them drinks and that money didn't get spent on new socks I'll tell you that much right now and those celebrities didn't say like hey your socks you should change them it's been too many years. They didn't say shit. So yeah I've fucking earned it.And you think you're some hot shot because you put those socks on fresh this morning? Like you're walking on air or water inside those shoes? And you think you're the first chump to suggest I change these socks? You think you're special? You must think you're something real special walking into my place telling me that horseshit. I get a guy in here at least once a week telling me some horseshit about changing my socks. They say Jim you gotta change those socks. Well Jim Parcheesi ain't changing his socks for nobody you hear me? You hear me talking right now?You hear that? You're not even a celebrity you see those pictures those photos? That's me and you can't see it because my feet aren't in any of the pictures but my socks these socks are on my feet right then when we took the pictures me and the celebrities. God rest most of their souls. These socks have been in the presence of greatness. Several different times.These socks do the fucking trick ok. For 45 god damn years. I wore these socks in the war. I wore these socks when I married the love of my life my beautiful Maria Parcheesi. At my kids' events when they were kids I wore these socks. I wore these socks when the great sports moments of this city happened and people were here at Jim Parcheesi's drinking drinks and getting rowdy because of the sports. And I wore these socks at my dear Maria Parcheesi's funeral God rest her soul that treasure of a woman. So you don't get to come in here and tell me about no socks.So sue me ok? These socks were also not cheap mind you. Back in the day these were expensive fucking socks tough guy. So you think you're better than me? Nah you aint special. I used to have a best friend who I aint gonna name because I don't name names ok but he and I we were good buddies best of buddies he was at my wedding my best man when I wed the love of my life my beautiful Maria Parcheesi.Well one day my buddy my buddy he goes Jim what's the deal with those socks people are talking they know they're the same socks as for years. Well I looked at him and I said this coming from you from you of all people and this was right there right where you're sitting he was there and I was here right behind the bar right where I'm standing now and he goes Jim people are talking and you know what I said I wiped my hands and put down my towel because I was you know wiping a glass or whatever and so I put down my towel and you know what I said I looked him dead in the eye and I said out. That was 15 years ago and we ain't talked since. This guy he and I were practically brothers he was with me when I bought the damn socks! You believe that?So if you think you're gonna come in here and tell me to change my god damn socks Mr. nobody from out there on the street if you think that then you've got another thing coming my friend. I'm going to live for another 45 years and I ain't changing them then or ever and then when the lord God above decides it is my time I will be laid to rest beside my dear Maria and I will be wearing these socks in my casket and you can bet your ass that when I step into the eternal light and ascend to the celestial halls of heaven I will be standing naked before the original breath of creation itself except I will be wearing these god damn socks.
My dead friend isn’t supposed to be on the whale watching tour. It’s a pale summer morning, the harbor glazed with fog. I’m standing on the boat’s upper deck directing tourists aboard, gesturing to empty seats, passing out pamphlets. And there she is, lined up behind a family of five. She’s wearing a navy windbreaker, jean shorts, and muddy white sneakers. Why are you here? I ask. You’re scared of the ocean. Only the Pacific, she says. The Atlantic is fine. I say, Okay, but don’t freak out the children. We jet off, gliding over the glass panes of the sea surface. It’s an hour journey to the watch spot, the boat picking up speed once we reach deeper waters. Roughly fifty passengers sit sardined on narrow benches, stuffing their arms into jackets as the cold cuts into the air. My friend follows me to the mic station. The concessions guy walks by and glares at her, since the area is roped off from pedestrians. I tell him she’s a wealthy socialite, so it’s fine.My voice vibrates through the shitty speakers: As you can see in your pamphlets, there are many types of whales. Blue Whales, Orcas, Sperm Whales…Forget about those. We’re here for the Humpbacks. A little girl, whose wispy hair is whipping in all directions, asks something. Her voice is drowned out by the engine, so I tell her to speak up.How long are Humpbacks!? They can be 48-62 feet, slightly larger than a school bus. My friend cups her hand to my ear. Are you on birth control? I mute the mic. Not everyone’s birth control kills them, I say. I know yours gave you a pulmonary embolism, but something like that simply wouldn’t happen to me. You were on some weird high-hormone brand anyway. So don’t worry. Now the little girl’s father is seasick. He puts his head in his hands, moaning and rocking. This kind of thing happens often. Through the intercom, I command him to stare at the horizon. Something about it resets your balance. But there is no horizon. Due to the fog, the gray blue sky melds to the ocean. Guess he’s out of luck. You weren’t my favorite, my friend says. But you were the fun one.You mean the slutty one, I say. I remember our first fight. In college I helped her make a Tinder, taught her how to scam men for money. But she got upset, called it amoral. She actually wanted to go on dates, to be touched. I called her unrealistic. That was a nice fight, she says. By the end, we saw each other’s perspectives, and I got a boyfriend. The dad is trying not to throw up, his forehead all sweaty. A stranger gives him a swig of Pepto Bismol. His daughter keeps poking him and shouting, Look at that! Look, Dad, look! She points to nothing. He stands up. Don’t go to the bathroom, I holler. It will only feel worse in there, and we need it available for the others. He sits down. I turn to my friend and say, I suppose you’re here to blame me for your terrible taste in men. That was the algorithm’s fault, she replies. You don’t have to make everything about yourself. I do make everything about myself. I wish my friend hadn’t died. It’s never fun to discuss at parties. I shelled out all this money for a therapist. For a whole six weeks, I stopped having sex. Then for a whole six months, I had too much sex. Her death makes me hate the ocean, which she always lied about being afraid of. The fog thins, tinting the water blue, deep blue, endless blue. I continue my spiel: Before a whale surfaces, there are clues. Look for circles of bubbles. If you smell something rotten, it’s their bad breath. The little girl gets a kick out of that. Her dad finally throws up in a paper bag, and the couple beside him flees. You know, I was in love with you, I tell my friend. There you go, making everything about yourself again. Isn’t that why you came, for a confession? No, I came for the whales. The boat slows, then stills, the engine clicking off. Bubbles form. We watch, wait. A Humpback breaches in the distance, a sliver of gray slicing through the waves. People rush to the railing to take zoomed-in pixelated photos for Facebook. Water spouts from the blowhole. Its tail tips up before submerging. The onlookers ooo and ahh. You should stop taking birth control, she says. Not any good. Do you want me to get pregnant? Kind of weird. Maybe if you got pregnant, you’d finally get over me. Now here she is, making everything about herself. When I take my pill, I think of her. When I meet someone with anxious-avoidant attachment, I think of her. When I imagine kissing a woman, I think of her. If she would have kissed me back. If she would have said I was doing it for attention. But isn’t it human to want attention? She’ll never understand that.The boat idles. The little girl is jumping up and down, struggling to see around the adults, and her dad has thrown away his bag of vomit. The sun spurts through the clouds. I point out more whales. To the right! To the left! Go, get your fill, your eighty bucks worth. The crowd clusters from one side of the deck to the other. You know, you weren’t in love with me, she says. Grief makes you uncomfortable, and pretending you loved me makes it easier to process. This is really homophobic of you.No, it’s homophobic of you. You’re fetishizing a dead woman. So what am I supposed to do? Just get over it?Yes! Just get over it! People die all the time. Go get knocked up by some man and move on with your life. You’ve been bumming me out. I announce that it’s time to get going. The engine starts, and everyone sits. I hand the dad another bag to barf in. I let the little girl keep her pamphlet, even though I’m supposed to re-collect them for other tours. I tell my friend she’s right. When I step off this boat, I’ll quit birth control, find a nice man to knock me up, and stop having gay fantasies about my dead friend. I saw the whales today, after all, and that’s what’s important.
