by Blake Butler
The copy father and the copy mother, in the deep parts, floated up and down and up.
PART FOUR
INTERVIEWER: Do you think there will be a Poltergeist III?
HEATHER O’ROURKE: There should be because the beast is not dead.
REMOVAL
Men came for the father in the morning. They arrived in inky shockgear—stained black jumpsuits with enormous kneepads for kneeling and fattened multicolor frays around their shoulders to make aiming at their heads much more confusing and long bright orange gloves that hid their skin while domed metal visors hid their eyes. There were seven men, but just one language. They also moved as one and ate one meal a day and slept in the same bed and knew the same woman with whom they’d made the same child. They worked for the same firm as the father. They were the future.
The father stood there in the kitchen. The father would not blink. He watched the walls that brought the room together, tracing the outlines with his eyes. He was waiting to see something. He was waiting for something to see. He’d wedged himself into a portion of the room where he felt he could see and monitor every inch. Still, when the father turned his head just slightly one way or another, he felt something loom on the perimeter. He could not keep a straight face. Either he was laughing or he had his mouth scrunched to try to keep the laughter in. His stomach muscles burned. He hadn’t eaten. Someone was knocking on the door.
The father continued to watch the room. The father did not want to leave the room and break his concentration. He knew things about the house. He had long words written on his arms in marker, maybe. His lips and neck were wet with running ink. In the photographs it would appear the father had just written his name over and over and then begun to sweat them off, but actually he’d been licking. He did not know about the licking. His tongue was filthy. His blood was unwell.
The father did not flinch as the door became kicked open. He did not struggle as the men swarmed in around. They restrained his legs and arms in plastic ticker. They striped tape around his ears and lips and mouth and hair. He was allowed to continue seeing. The father’s eyes stayed focused on the room from every angle as they logrolled him out the door. Through the vehicle’s back window, the father saw something draped across the house.
DEEP FOCUS
Upstairs the mother stood in the shower with her clothes on. Wet had collected in the room up to her knees and she was singing. Through the bathroom window, on her tiptoes, the mother saw the men corral the father into the car. The mother sang louder, closed her eyes. With soap the mother lathered a bearded mask around her head. In the sheen of many bubbles there were ballrooms, there were halls.
BODY
The mother came into the son’s room with her hair up in a towel. The towel was made of other hair. The mother did not know where the hair had come from. She’d found many other things made of hair: afghans, hats, rugs, carpet, confetti, wigs, transistors—homes for bugs. The towel was soft and warming and seemed to suck the mother’s skull.
The son was in the bed asleep, several blankets piled on top. So many blankets. The mother wondered how he could breathe through all that cotton—or all that silk or polyester or maybe hair, whatever. In the middle of the son’s floor the carpet was all stained and rusty, gunked and bright with oxidation. The mother walked across the stain and felt her brain take light in photocopied. She stopped.
She moved toward the bed. The mother stopped and moved toward the bed again. The mother stopped and moved toward the bed. She looked and found she was further from the bed than when she’d started. She could see how far the bed was and reached to touch it. The bed was right in front of her. She kneeled into the bed and felt her back bend. She had on so much blush and rouge and lipstick the son might not recognize her if he could see. She wanted him to see a little. She pulled the covers back off of the son’s head. The son’s eyes were open, glassed. He did not answer the mother’s question but he was breathing fine, okay. Deep sleep. Deep sun. The son’s breath smelled of old flowers. The mother covered up the son.
OH
In her own room again the mother touched herself with her best fingers, rubbing skin to skin against her gut, the house inside her egg-shaped belly—night above her—a silence made of towns. Each time she came she blacked out and when she came back she began again in mimicked moan.
PLEASE RESPOND
1. The son was in the house.
Q: HOW MANY CURTAINS DID THE HOUSE HAVE?
A:
Q: DID THE HOUSE WANT THE SON IN IT?
A:
Q: WAS THE SON IN THE HOUSE?
A:
2. The son slept for several months—though in this state, via several internal forces i.e. wanting i.e. loss—time refracted through the son’s body and therefore within the house it passed as only seven hours.
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?
A:
Q: HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE NEW FLESH TO WRINKLE?
A:
Q: I FEEL VERY OLD AND TIRED.
A:
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?
A:
Q: HOW ELSE COULD THE NAIL HAVE BEEN USED?
A:
Q: HOW MUCH DID THE SON BLEED?
A:
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?
A:
Q: IS THAT TRUE? WOULD HE NOT EVER DIE?
A:
Q: WHY COULD NOT THE SON JUST SLEEP AND SLEEP?
A:
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.
O
Over time the figure proceeded and the son began to learn the figure’s face. He could see the face and sensed a squirm a scrunch a need for recognition. Someone certain. Someone nearby. Someone the son had learned to love, though in a distant, ingrained method. The son had seen this person every day. He knew the smell. He knew the inches of the fabric of the thing the figure carried forward and wore all draped around it. The fabric was made of meat and blood and things undone and hair and years and wanting and a special blend of polyester. The son knew the figure’s name inside him. The son felt something welling through his skin.
The cell phone was ringing so hard through the son now that he could feel the impending conversation. He could hear what the person on the other end would be saying and he could hear his voice reply. He’d heard those words a billion times too. He heard them every time he slept. He said them in dreams of people he did not know yet. He said them in very tiny rooms. He spoke them out into the bedroom also. The bedroom’s walls had absorbed so much. The son wanted to touch the bedroom walls again. The son wanted to stand up. The son’s skin was getting ugly. A bubble flooded on his neck. He popped the bubble with his finger. Another rose. He popped and popped. He could feel the hemming of his lines, becoming sizes. He could feel his last haircut aching in the tendrils of the hair he sometimes—like the father—devoured in his sleep. In his sleep the son had eaten more than anyone could ever. There was so much in the son. The son could kill a forest if he shaved. The son could cripple nations. The son could sew designer jeans out of his runoff.
Everything.
The son could hear the prior homeowners’s pets, which were endlessly buried in the backyard and underneath the house and sometimes even under the gravel of the driveway or in the carpet underneath the son’s bed.
The son’s skin was coming off.
The figure stood closer. The fabric the figure had unfolded stunk and filled the room. More beef. A little cream. Graham crackers. The son loved graham crackers—he liked the crack between teeth—he’d eaten enough to build a mall—the figure knew this. The figure had a mouth, the son could see that, he could see inside the mouth. The son could see the room flooding with liquid. The son could see the apartment the figure rented in the figure’s chest.
The son could not laugh either, but he did too.
The room was getting warmer—sweating. The son’s posters slipped off the walls. The ink slid from off the posters and the paint from off the place where they had hung. The paint coagulated into pigments. The son felt a blister open on his top lip. He had a suntan. He had a sunburn. Months of sunburns. Years in years. Sun damage. Damage. He grew thicker.
The figure was off the width of a fist now, give or take a hair. The son had made many fists but wanted to make more. Once the son had seen an ocean slip out of the crack slit in the windshield of a car, a car cracked as the son watched and made the car skid with his eyes. The son’s hair contained the cells of everyone he’d ever been.
Actually, the son could laugh a little, though it came out through his back and sunk into the bed. The son was sneezing colors. The son had lanterns in his eyes—lanterns once used to light other houses. The son felt someone sewing his perimeter into the clothgrain of the bed. He blinked and found himself inside a mattress on top of which someone was sitting—someone asleep or still or reading or too tired to stand up—someone maybe thinking of the son—maybe the son himself. The son saw days he’d spent already layered across the room in film. The son watched his head in photo portraits his mother had made him hang up on his room’s walls wilt in time-lapse backward, his skin becoming puckered, regressing into cells. The son was inside the mother then and could see the mother’s moving arms. The mother digging, bug-swarmed. The son could read the things the mother had not meant to think about the
son—the thoughts pummeled through and through her—her imagination’s doubt. The son saw the mother through the mother. Saw the mother lying on a bed. Saw the mother coursed with wrinkles, her coarse white hair. The mother in a very tiny room.
The son could not fully sit up. He felt his blood gush inside a spiral. He fell straight down through long darkness. His neck was getting tired.
The son.
The son felt older. He grew a mustache, faint at first and then a handlebar, one that, if he could move his hands, he would have twisted at the ends into a creation that would have made him memorable in pictures. The son’s voice inside him changed—though he could not use it, he could hear several other sounds projected—other people.
Other people in the son.
The son grew capable of babies—capable of son. A billion sperm.
The son shed skin at a rate that made his body lift off the mattress inch by inch. The room was filling up. His fingernails were curling. His eyes changed color twice—once to gold like change he’d hidden—once to the shade of blue the summer sky had been the day the father and the mother had made the son on the very bed the son sprawled on now.
The son’s back began to crimp. The son felt his hands go loose a little.
Above the bed the ceiling was bowing down. It bowed to touch the center of the moment where the son and the figure would collide. The walls as well had swum with hump, puckered funny, pulling out. Hair, skin, liquid, money. The carpet sat slathered in frustration, stapled to the ground.