Big Giant Floating Head

by Christopher Boucher

  Advance Praise For

  BIG GIANT FLOATING HEAD

  “One afternoon I was staring at the page when I heard a fluttering at the window. I looked up and saw a story beating its wings against the glass.”

  —Frog or Foil

  “For years I’ve been hoping someone would write about the relationship between ______ and Christopher Boucher. And now someone finally has! I just wish it could have been someone else.”

  —Television Smith

  “Solitude is the art form of the twenty-first century.”

  —Carney

  “It was a story about my mother.”

  —Bad Sandwich

  “I opened the window and tried to coax the story out, but then ██ came in and started swatting at the thing. ‘What are you doing?’ I said.”

  —Calorie Thompson

  “I really consider the short story an inferior form.”

  —Lipolou Today

  “I mean, I read as many of these things as I could. But they’re all just so depressing!”

  —The Memory of Richard

  “But before I could stop her, she hit the story with a shoe and it fell to the ground.”

  —The Daily Wheel

  “I wouldn’t stay at the Tetherly again if you paid me a million dollars.”

  —Grayson

  “Wait—I thought that story died a long time ago.”

  —Graveyard Monthly

  “ ‘Look what you did,’ I said, picking up the dead story. ‘This house is infested! I can’t take it anymore!’”

  —She Said.

  “But the story wasn’t yet dead. I could feel its heart beating, see its wings fluttering. It opened its eyes and looked me right in the face.”

  —Resin

  “And now the story was furious.”

  —New Candide

  BIG GIANT FLOATING HEAD

  Copyright © Christopher Boucher, 2018

  All rights reserved

  First Melville House Printing: June 2019

  Melville House Publishing

  46 John Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  and

  Melville House UK

  Suite 2000

  16/18 Woodford Road

  London E7 0HA

  mhpbooks.com

  @melvillehouse

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the publications in which portions of this book first appeared, in slightly different form: The 2018 Short Story Advent Calendar, Columbia Journal, Conjunctions Online, Cutthroat, draft: The Journal of Process, Electric Literature, and Keyhole Magazine.

  ISBN: 9781612197579

  Ebook ISBN 978161219758-6

  Designed by Betty Lew

  A catalog record is available for this book from the Library of Congress

  v5.4

  a

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Big Giant Floating Head

  C.B.U.

  Slippery

  Lady with Invisible Dog

  The Language Zoo

  Bodywall

  Success Story

  Call and Response

  How to Get Rid of a Christopher Boucher

  Beautiful Outlaw

  For Sale by Owner

  Trout Heart

  DivorceLand

  The Book Big Giant Floating Head

  Hotel

  Parade

  The Unloveables

  About the Author

  I first saw the Big Giant Floating Head on the same day that my wife Liz announced on Twitter that she didn’t love me any-more. You can go back on her timeline and read the tweet: @bouchergutter, I don’t love you anymore. Not sure I ever did! Then she tweeted out a picture of the letter I’d sent her three days earlier, in which I apologized and asked for forgiveness, along with the caption, Cant wait to finally DIVORCE this loser.

  I didn’t see Liz’s tweet at first because I was riding my bike through town, a twelve-foot aluminum gutter drain balanced on my shoulder. I wasn’t particularly good at gutterwork, but I hadn’t completely failed at it yet either—not like I had at marriage, and writing, and most everything else. For years before that I’d worked in fiction—as a novelist, bookseller, editor, verb salesman, you name it. But I’d hurt people—hurt myself—with my last book, a novel called Golden Delicious. That story’s too sad for me to tell, suffice it to say that someone died because of me and I subsequently gave up writing and books altogether. Something broke inside me when I did, though: A heart-sized hole formed in my chest; my imagination grew a beard and its spine began to curve. Then I began drinking, lost my driver’s license, and got kicked out of my own house. Not even the bike was mine—I was borrowing it from Bill Sunflower, a gutter guy I worked with who was letting me crash at his place while things cooled down with my wife. Liz and I had gone through this kind of thing before, but every time she took me back. When I checked my phone at the corner of Main and Lex that day, though, I saw her tweet and my stomach roiled. There was a thought in my head, a literal voice, that said, It’s over, Chris. Like, over-over.

  I changed course and pedaled home—it was only a few blocks away. Liz was working from home at the time, and she was sitting at the kitchen table and saw me approaching. She stood up and grabbed her phone, threw open the window, and started shouting at me. You can see it all on her timeline: me standing in the driveway next to my own pickup truck (which I wasn’t allowed to drive at the time), the bike and the drain at my feet, shouting awful things at Liz. And look how beautiful she is—her fireplace eyes, her hair a parade—even as she shouts back at me, “You’re drunk!”

  “No I ain’t!” I say, though I clearly am.

  Then you can hear the wrinkle of paper: Liz’s holding my letter. “You were drunk when you wrote this, too!”

  “No, sir!” I say.

  “Oh, really?” Liz holds the letter in front of the phone. “I’m not a man of worlds,” she says. “What’s a man of worlds?”

  “Words, I meant!” I say.

  “I know I’ve mistake,” she continues. “You’ve mistaked?”

  Then you can hear me say, “Liz.”

  “Do you mistake often, Chris?”

  “Liz,” I say again, my voice as thin as paper. “What is that?”

  Then Liz says “Holy—,” and the phone turns off.

  “—shit,” is what Liz said next, when she saw what I was pointing at. “Is that a—”

  “It’s an eye,” I said. It was: a giant eye, staring at me through the trees behind the Camerlenghis’ house. “There’s another one next to it,” I said. I crossed the street. “It’s a face!” I shouted. From that angle I could see the whole thing: blue eyes, brown hair, chin stubble—a big giant floating head, staring right at me with a smile on his face like he was listening to a joke.

  Liz came outside. “Jesus Christ, Chris,” she said.

  Then Glen Camerlenghi swung open his porch door. “Leo won’t stop barking,” he said. He looked up and saw the face. “What the hey is that?”

  I crossed back to our side of the street.

  “It’s moving—Chris, it’s moving!” Liz said. “It’s following you!”

  It was. I took a few strides down the sidewalk and the Big Giant Floating Head moved with me. “Crap,” I said.

  “It’s some sort of fancy drone,” said Glen. “Right?”

  I ran back across the street and picked up my bike.

  “Chris?” said Liz.

  “I’m calling the police,” said Glen.

  I hoisted the drain over my shoulder and mounted the bike.

  “Where are you going?” Liz shouted at me.

  I started pedaling a
nd the Big Giant Floating Head followed. I sped up and the head sped up too. I took a sharp turn on Gore and the face stayed with me—hopping trees, lifting over buildings, dropping lower in clearings. There was no outrunning it. Two or three people shouted at me along the way—“Hey!” one said; “Look up!” said another—and at the light on Argyle an old man in a blue van kept beeping at me. I stopped at the crosswalk and gave him the finger, and he rolled down his window. “There’s a big giant head above you, guy!”

  “No shit!” I said. Then I saw a gap in the crossing traffic and pedaled away from him.

  Two blocks from Bill’s house, though, I heard a police siren and I saw blue flashing lights behind me. I looked back: it was Cass Donner, who used to stop me all the time when I was driving and had once arrested me for public drunkenness. Cass was OK—not as bad as some of the other cops in town. I stopped pedaling and she got out of the cruiser and stared up at the face. “What do you know about this, Boucher?” she said.

  I shook my head. “Picked it up at my house, followed me here.”

  “It’s following you?”

  “Seems to stay just that far behind me,” I said.

  The face smiled down at Cass.

  Cass took a photo of the face with her phone. “Just stay there, OK?” she said, and she ducked into her cruiser, where I heard her say something into her walkie.

  I put down the gutter and checked my phone. There was a text from Liz: Where r u is that thing still followng u?

  I didn’t reply. There was another one from Bill. Waitin on that drain, he wrote.

  Got held up, I replied. Be there in a few.

  Then Cass appeared behind me. “I want you to just hang tight for a few minutes, OK?”

  I got off my bike.

  Cass looked down at the drain. “Gutter drain?”

  “Yuh-huh,” I said.

  “For your place?”

  I shook my head. “Working with Bill Sunflower.”

  “Holy moly—that guy,” she said.

  Then a fire truck pulled up in front of me and two guys hopped down from the cab. One was Al McLeod, who was in the class behind me at Coolidge High; the other guy I didn’t know.

  “Like I told you,” said Cass to the second guy.

  McLeod put his hand over his eyes, as if blocking out the sun. “Just hanging there like that?”

  “Following our friend Christopher here,” said Cass.

  McLeod found his phone and took a picture of the face.

  “Let’s get up there,” said the other guy, and McLeod nodded. They got back in the truck, moved it thirty or so yards down the road, and parked under the face. Then McLeod raised a ladder off the back of the truck and the other guy climbed it. When he reached the top of the ladder he was about twenty feet below the Big Giant Floating Head. “Whoa,” he said.

  “What is it?” shouted McLeod.

  “It’s breathing!” shouted the guy.

  Al looked back at Cass and me.

  The firefighter scrambled down the ladder. “Fucking thing is breathing,” he said.

  Cass and McLeod met him on the ground and they huddled and talked about what to do.

  What the fuck C, texted Bill.

  I sat down on the curb. Cops here, I typed. Waiting for them to let me go.

  By this point, some neighbors were gathering on the sidewalk. Then another cop car pulled up and a cop I didn’t know got out and ran over to Cass.

  WHAT, Bill texted. Wht did u do?

  Nothing, explain it when I get there.

  Finally, Cass walked over to me and I stood up to talk to her. “Well,” she said. “We’re going to get the word out and see what we can find out. In the meantime, we’ll just keep an eye on it.”

  I nodded.

  “You think it’ll keep following you?”

  “Guess we’ll see,” I said.

  Cass signaled to the cops and the firefighters and they all got into their vehicles. Then I picked up the bike, threw my leg over the bar, and started pedaling. Sure enough, the face moved right alongside me, smiling all the while, a procession of vehicles with flashing lights trailing behind it. We took a left on Dale and a right on Outlaw; Bill’s house was a block down on the right. Bill was drinking a beer on the porch—“meditating,” as he called it—but he stood up when he saw the whole procession: me, the face, the cruisers and fire truck parking at the curb. I dropped the gutter in the grass and walked up the steps. “What the fuck,” he said, looking at the face.

  “I told you,” I said.

  “What is that—some sort of balloon?”

  I shrugged. “It’s been following me all through town.”

  Bill seemed to be trying to form a question, but before he could, a white van with the News 23 insignia pulled up behind the fire truck. Bill went inside; I followed, and found him standing near the fridge. “I don’t like cops,” he said, “and I don’t like cameras.”

  “What do you expect, there’s a fucking face in the sky,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Face or no face,” he said.

  When I went back outside, a reporter was interviewing the neighbors. Eventually he approached me. “Is it true that you found the face?” he asked, holding a microphone out to me.

  “More like it found me,” I said.

  “Were you frightened?”

  “At first, yeah—I saw these two eyes staring at me through the trees.” I looked back at the face. “But he seems pretty friendly.”

  Soon it got dark, and the neighbors started going inside. Then I did, too. Bill was sitting on the couch, looking through the curtains, the lights of the fire truck shining off his bald head. I sat down and said, “You should see what Liz posted about me.”

  “I saw it,” he said. “That’s rough, bud.”

  “Think she means it?”

  “Who knows,” Bill said.

  I sipped my beer and moved the curtain aside. The face hung there, smiling like a dumbass.

  Bill finished his beer and went to bed. I stayed up for another few minutes, watching the face, and then I turned off the lights and fell asleep on the couch. I slept for maybe an hour, during which I dreamt of a supermarket. Only, I could see the building from above—see the tops of peoples’ heads, the roofs of cars in the parking lot, a bird perched on a ledge near a steam vent.

  When I woke up again, the street was dark. I didn’t see the cops, or the news, or the face. As I was watching, though, I saw a flicker in the sky and the face reappeared, just where it had been.

  I lay back down. When I opened my eyes, Bill was standing over me and holding my boots. “What time is it?” I said.

  “Five,” he said.

  I sat up and took my boots.

  “Face still there?”

  Bill nodded. “But don’t worry, I know what to do.”

  I looked through the curtain. The face smiled at me.

  “Let’s move,” said Bill.

  Bill grabbed a rolled-up wool blanket from the ottoman and walked out into the dark morning. He shoved the blanket behind the seat, started up the engine and took a left on Highland. Then he looked in the rearview and said, “That fucker following us?”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “Good,” said Bill. “Keep an eye out for cops.” Right on Hawthorne. “Still following?”

  “Yuh-huh.” The Big Giant Floating Head hung high in the back window—I watched it drift over trees and buildings, its face still mildly amused, as if it were saying, Where to next, buddy?

  Bill drove another mile and then pulled over next to Corso Field, which was empty except for two joggers running laps. With the face about a hundred yards away and floating toward us, Bill kicked open his door, reached behind the seat and pulled out a shotgun. “Bill,” I said.

  “Shh,” he said. He leaned the shotgun against the top of the cab and waited for the face to get closer. “Keep smiling, mofo,” he said.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said.

  Bill fired. The jogge
rs stopped and turned to us, but the face didn’t seem to notice. Bill fired the gun again. Then the face frowned and started falling. “Let’s get it,” he said. He drove the truck out onto the field. By the time we got there, the joggers were standing over the deflated face. “Get out of there!” Bill boomed at them, and they backed up.

  “Is that a kite?” said one of the joggers.

  “Yeah, it’s a kite,” said Bill.

  “No it isn’t,” said the other. “That thing was on the news last night.”

  Bill and I leaned over the face. It was bleeding in the forehead. “Christ,” Bill said. “It’s a real fucking face.” It was: real hair and skin; two giant eyes; nostrils the size of manholes. It folded over itself like a parachute. Suddenly I felt sick to my stomach; I stumbled over to the treeline and puked.

  “Bowcher!” Bill shouted, and I could tell from his tone that he was disgusted with me. “Let’s get this thing out of here.”

  I ran back across the field and we started rolling up the face. It was heavy and still warm. We hoisted it onto the back of the truck. The joggers shouted something, but we jumped into the truck, coughed the engine on, and drove across the field and back onto the road.

  “What the fuck,” I said. I wished we’d brought some beer.

  “Hey, I stopped asking questions a long time ago,” said Bill.

  “You can’t bring it back to your place,” I said. “Cops’ll know.”

  Bill took a right on Highland.

  “Bill,” I said.

  “It’s taken care of, OK?”

  I shut up and sat back in my seat. We crossed the West Brix line, turned off of Main and onto Haskell, and then drove a long way out, until I wasn’t even sure which town we were in. Then we passed some barbed-wire fence and Bill turned into the parking lot of a storage facility. He parked outside one of the garage bays and opened the door. “Let’s do this quick,” he said. He pulled up the garage door and gestured for me to help him lift the face. I took hold of one of the ears; the face was cold now, and starting to stiffen. Bill didn’t say anything as we hauled the carcass into the dark, damp storage unit. We put the face down on the cement while Bill cleared a space, and I straightened up and looked around. I saw some old furniture, a bunch of half-crushed cardboard boxes, at least thirty black plastic bags. I didn’t ask what all this was. Bill’d taken his share of hits over the years: he’d been married, had a son who died of cancer. He didn’t talk about these things.