by Garrett Cook
She takes another lump and chews on it. She hasn’t quite swallowed the first one; her mouth’s still full. She chokes and sobs ashamed that she can’t resist this, ashamed of being in that cold, dark basement between exhale and choke, between the body she thinks she has and the one she does, between herself and the topheavy freakish thing that she’s ashamed of are clearer then they’ve ever been.
“You can eat now, Leah,” says Julie, feeling me feel around her soul and twist and stretch and rip at it and remind her I am there. Leah sobs and nods and shovels more into her mouth. She chokes some,. tears dripping down her face, inarticulate pain, moans stifled, questions. She is cutting again. Deep as before, now trembling, now hitting some of the wrong nerves, now pooling more blood, chewing, sobbing, cutting, bleeding, begging. The second breast is tossed again to the floor, again exposing blood and yellow rusty grime.
“How does it taste, Leah? How do you taste?”
On phantom strings I drag her to her friend, she tries to pull away but stops and thinks about how she’s mine already and there’s no resisting and there will be nothing but punishment for more time than she can imagine. She puts her hand over Leah’s mouth and pushes, shoving the fat back down her throat. She tries to cough and choke and gasp and fails. Julie reaches behind the severed bosom and grabs a heaping handful. Leah, my Leah, lost Leah, sad Leah soon to be dead Leah does something that shocks even me.
She opens her mouth and lets her old friend feed her, lets the girl she loved feed her. She shoves the bloodied yellow rot into poor Leah’s mouth, which she covers again, lets her chew and bleed and swallow and sob and cry. Leah is gasping, Leah is dizzy, Leah is bloodied, Leah is mine, Leah is panicking, Leah is peaceful, Leah is breathless, Leah is dead.
Hide and Seek
I do not understand what it’s showing me. A boy of five. A boy I do not know. He is trembling in a closet, curled up in a nest of dress shirts, clutching them tight. His eyes are closed. He is mumbling what might be a prayer. Creeping up behind him is a man in a charcoal grey suit that is practically forged of creases. His face is dusty dead caved in by time, eyes gone, there are only grubs and flies behind them. All that there is of skin clings tight as virgins and nothing at all about it looks like skin. He stands behind the boy just breathing and even though his eyes are closed the child knows what is that stands behind him.
A clump of maggots from behind the empty eyes falls down to the child’s shoulder. The little white dashes and tildes crawl from the child’s shoulder up his neck. The man in charcoal grey whispers to the boy, speaking through the squirming things.
“If you start to scream, you stay in here forever.”
The boy reaches out for the door, the door that has become a wall.
“I wasn’t the one,” man in charcoal grey, “I didn’t lock you in here, so you can’t get out. You’ll see sunlight says the when it’s time.”
Behind him there are sounds. High pitched howls like those of monkeys. Augmented bark of distant dog. Slow motion laughter, humorless wintery. A choir of baritone voices. Empty empty gone no no no empty empty gone no no no...
There is poetry in all of this. Never seen the workings of children. Fragile and trusting. But if you lock grown men in closets, they would scream and try to beat down the door This child holds his tongue and prays for sunlight, prays for out. Though this world is only scream and dark and rot, the boy stands firm. The maggot crawls up his face, to the edge of his ear and whispers right into the drum speaking into it, breathing out digested reek from the man in charcoal grey.
“There will be ways to forget this,” says the charcoal grey corpse through the maggot, “and one day, you can make it so you won’t have to sit in dark and wait for sunlight. Look back to this and the way out opens up. The world is full of bottles, scalpels, pills.”
But then, as the closet door opens into a day twenty five years gone, the light that he has begged for brings me clarity. I see now the face of the foe and closets and cadavers are the least of it.
Homonculus
Kaz is feeling fuzzy and strange. She is forgetting a great deal. She is in bed and alone and confused. Something is happening to her, an enigma wide as the stars. Something is happening and she doesn’t know where it came from.
“Come back,” says Kaz, not knowing to whom she’s speaking. The words are alien but the only right ones in the situation.
“Come back here, you bastard!”
She is the size of the Earth and the sky, if she yawned and stretched she would occupy all of time. And she can feel it. She is not expanding. The flesh she had is stretched out and there will only be so much of it but she feels as if she will only find out about it when she runs out. She doesn’t know who she’s calling out to or what he has done to her but she would kill whoever it was. I offer some reassurance. I feel tender toward her. The Closetsong is polluting me. It’s poisonous like that. I will cease to be me if I cannot be rid of it. I offer some reassurance. She looks up into the face of the roommate she had shunned so often. Leah places a hand on her forehead, strokes her hair.
“Don’t worry,” she says with a smile, “we’re here.”
“We?” says Kaz, quivering from the thing swimming inside her and pushing against her stomach to make its way out and the pain of it punching her in the womb simply because it can. It pushes on her simply because it can.
And there is Julie. The girl who went has suddenly come back. Strawberry blonde glimmer, yellow sundress, mary janes and delight. Everybody had loved Julie a little bit. Lucky Kaz, here was Julie again, reaching out and squeezing her hand. There is no reason for her to be here but there is no reason for her to be gone so Kaz is filled with joy at her two dead midwives.
“Thank you for coming,” says Kaz, “I’ve missed you.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” says Julie, “congratulations. Who’s the lucky guy?”
Kaz lets out a piercing shriek. The statement is perhaps accurate. She doesn’t know who it is, what it is. There are no words. It pounds against her as she screams. It is screaming too. It is screaming “why?,” it is screaming “help me” and “out,” most of all, it is screaming “out.” Soon. Julie puts her hand on the bump, massages it as it moves. Antonia appears in the corner of the room, gold and beatific. She smiles as Julie has smiled. Kaz has seen this girl and has not seen her. She brings her comfort though and joy delight, like Julie, delight. It almost quiets the pain. Almost.
“It’s coming soon,” says Julie.
“Are you doing okay?” asks Leah, “Let me know if you need anything. I’m going to be a doctor someday.”
A tear appears on Leah’s cheek.
“It will be so nice. With an office with my name over the door. Mom and dad will be so proud. You don’t need to worry, Kaz, I can help you.”
“Something’s wrong, Leah,” Kaz mumbles, “something’s not right here.”
“All expectant mothers think that. Don’t you worry, I’m going to be a doctor.”
“Leah, you’re not a doctor. And something’s wrong with you...”
There are two great big red circles pooling up on Leah’s sweatshirt, dripping out the chest. Leah does not acknowledge them at all, nor does anyone else in the room. Something is terribly wrong. Her body begins to twitch and expand. She feels herself being stretched into a great tundra of flesh. She feels she must be the bigger than the room and the house even. The room elongates from study to a hallway, time and space stretching out as Kaz’s body does. Leah and Julie have hold of her legs and they are pulling them, with a strength that just doesn’t seem right for their size. Nothing about this is right.
Doctorpuppet appears beside her. He is ruffling her hair as Leah and Julie extend her legs far beyond their capabilities, long, skinny, feeling almost infinite. She is feeling almost infinite and this thing is shaking inside her and Doctorpuppet is ruffling her hair.
“Shh, shh, it’s okay. Don’t worry. I’ve got something to tell you, Kaz…”
Kaz lets out a scream loud enough for an entire species wiped from the Earth by tides or comets or volcanic ash. Kaz lets out a scream that should explode her lungs, destroy her ribs from impact and send bony shrapnel all the way down this corridor that the study is becoming for no good reason, or at least in Kaz’s mind for no good reason. Doctorpuppet waits until the shrieking stops.
“Kaz, I’ve betrayed you. I’m not a very good doctor.”
“I am!” says Leah gleefully, stretching Kaz out as far as she has needed to be stretched at last. A bunch like the martialed meals of her entire life trying to make their way out, squirming out towards her towards her towards her…
Kaz realizes and shrieks. She knows at last. She sees the face of the father and the culprit. Knows the thing the Closetsong wanted her to get rid of, feels the prophetic thunders of its coming out her body, a body that surely cannot stand this, a body that must have been stretched and used and abused to its very limits that must surely be spent forever. She stops shrieking when she thinks this might be the end. The hand of Doctorpuppet on her forehead does no good.
Maddy appearing and screaming out epiphets like “Whore!” and “Jezebel!” and monsters makes the thing inside her only squirm worse and make its journey hard as it can make it. Her womb comes tunneled through, her sex expands like her legs, widens out, a great red, pink funnel. She feels something round and her beating against her entrance.
“You look so beautiful,” says Leah, “fat and gross for certain. All fat. But there’s something about you now, you know, a glow. Do you feel the glow? Do you feel all warm inside? I never got to be a mother.”
Leah begins to sob, so loud, so hard, so out of control she starts to sound less like a person and more like an animal in pain.
“I never got to be a mother but at least I get to be a doctor. It’s not fair though. I should have had everything. They told me I could have it all and I worked so hard!”
“Whore! Jezebel!” shouts Maddy, “You fat, disgusting monster!”
“So fat,” hisses Leah, “so disgusting. Such a fucking whore!”
“Stop it!” shouts Doctorpuppet, “she doesn’t need this right now, you selfish cunts.”
“SEL-FISH CUNT!” screams Maddy.
“I’m being torn up,” says Kaz, “I’m going to die now.”
Leah gives Kaz the finger.
“Fuck you! Fuck your drama! You’re always like this!”
Leah’s mood swings back as she looks between Kaz’s vastly expanded legs. There is something red and spherical emerging. Leah and Julie approach, suddenly a spring in their steps. Kaz shrieks and shrieks and shrieks. The two girls grab hold of the sides of the great emerging ball that rips Kaz more.
“I’m sorry, Kaz, I’m such a bad doctor,” says Doctorpuppet, “this is my fault. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Whore!”
The two pull on the corners of the great red ball, expanding the red, pink shining hole that Kaz had used so badly for so long and revealing the nature of the object. It is a head, the head of the thing that squirmed and hated and writhed in her. It is hard to tell that it is at first because the thing lacks eyes and where its nose should be is just a skull like indentation. The head is red and slick with blood and amniotic fluids. Its mouth already toothy only opens halfway, half sealed shut by a glob of flesh. It is bigger than a grown man’s head. The infant coming out of her is far far larger than her and bigger than any grown man she has ever seen.
Julie and Leah pull on its broad but slumped down shoulders. It has no neck. It is hard to tell how it could swallow anything. Its arms are long and spindly, ending in hands that have not fingers but five scalpels, long gangly, apelike arms ending in fatal blades. She shrieks and shrieks some more as she sees the thing emerge, emaciated, sunken chest next, then sloping pelvis.
Between its legs is a member larger than any she has ever seen, clearly over a foot long and at the end of it not the head she’s used to. At the end of that long, ropy shaft is a round, cherubic face, the face of a sleeping infant. It sleeps between the gangly subhuman legs of the mutation, legs like a kangaroo. Leah and Julie do not lie it down anywhere, choosing instead to prop it up.
It stumbles like a foal on those legs, with the slopes and lopsides of its malformed body. But it stands successfully. Kaz sees the thing doesn’t take long to successfully render itself upright. At her feet is a great puddle of blood and placenta and things she did not even know could have been in her. She has been rendered vast and forced to exalt and suffer in her vastness.
“Kill it!” the ripped up, giant Kaz screams to her roommate and her former roommate, both dead, “You can’t let that thing live.”
“You say that now,” says Doctorpuppet, “and it’s only natural. Mothers always feel this way about their children. It’s always stressful to experience separation from one’s infant. You need to look at the big picture.”
“Kill it! It’s a monster! It’s killed me!”
“Glowing. That’s it. You’re glowing.”
“I’m going to die,” she mumbles.
All are startled, living and dead when the head at the end of the infant’s member opens its mouth.
“Mother, you need not panic. You have sought unconditional love your whole life and have been met with only treason and abuse. That shall be no more. I will love you, mother, I will fight for you.”
She stands up, suddenly finding her body knitting itself together again. She approaches her child, hugs him, then kisses the face on the lips.
Marionette
“I don’t want to do this,” she says, sitting on a stool in the basement facing the wall. Antonia is being uncooperative, so I have brought her someplace bad. History’s the scourge, these moments the lash. When I say that I am god within these walls, it is because no gods could touch them save for me. I have scraped those papery hearts for signs of some communion with something old and big and gentle and sensible and in them I have found only imagined footsteps down the hallway and a choir of silences where there really should be voices. And in these walls, in the cold impenetrable timetomb, the voice, the one voice is me. There are worse places I can take her and she knows it. So she’ll comply. When you cross this threshold, there is nobody else to talk to.
“I can’t do this,” she says to the wall, “it’s not right.”
Her objections are strong, as they should be. I treasure her for a reason. I am not sentimental but I am very sentimental toward Antonia. It must be done. She is the one that he will let in. He hasn’t seen her yet, I do not think. But he felt her basement, he feels her down there and he is reaching, always reaching for her hand, even though he knows nothing of her hand or the woman that it belongs to. There is something there he wants to feel again. I smell that need. I will be generous, compliant. I am a just loving god though I might not seem like a just and loving god. I won’t be judged. Gods won’t be judged.
“You’ve been good to me,” she says to the eternal corner, “you saved me from them. You were kind and in your way, you were loving. I want to do right by you and I wish that I was what you want me to be.”
The Closetsong is getting to me. The Closetsong has reached me. I want to tell her she’s perfect. Why should I tell her she’s perfect? She’s mine, she’s part of me. I do not need to tell her that she’s perfect. I do not need to tell that she pleases me. She displeases me. This displeases me. I need them and I need to have them. They have crossed my threshold, they are rightful mine. She is rightful mine and my things can’t be insubordinate. I cannot let this be. I want to tell her she’s perfect. It could hurt her to tell her she’s perfect and I can’t hurt her but I can only hurt her.
“I want you to know that I appreciate all of this and I know you’re doing what you think is right. I don’t know what you are and I don’t know if you know but I know you have to do this,” she says to the eternal corner even as she starts to sob. I seldom stopped to object to tears before but I object to tears.
I wish to lift her from the eternal corner, pull arms from the ether and wrap them around her. The Closetsong makes me think like this. Makes me stop and feel. It is native to another place and so it makes me look outside me and what is outside me but the insides of those inside me? I want to console her but I cannot because I need those who crossed the threshold. But it’s alright because when I have them it will leave me be. What can it do then but leave me be? I am thinking in circles. I must stay sharp. I must let her cry.
“But they hurt me,” she says, “they hurt me so bad. And how do I know these others won’t? You’re God maybe. You know what’s best. I’ll help you. I’m sorry. I love you and I want to help you.”
This is so. This is right. This is the thing I treasure. This is the finest of them.
I waft her in, a thing of essence, perfume. I waft her through the air in his room. She is on the wind now, riding into his nose as he sleeps, into his brain, flickering into dream. He can feel her hurt, what was done. He knows she was done wrong, even though he knows not what she is. He knows her as a scent in a field in a dream. He knows her as roses and meat and hot and joyous. If he were awake, he would know she was what he felt in the basement. So I shake him awake.
His eyes and his nose and his thumping heart open. He breathes deep and wants to cry. This thing was not, this thing like him, this thing he likes, it just wasn’t. But I pull away the veil between “there” and “gone” and when it’s pulled away there shimmers into sight dear dirty blonde Antonia. Antonia is wearing nothing as she did when she served other masters. Her high, conical breasts, her clean shaved sex, her leanness, the inward curve of her hip, her permissive smile are all there to know and absorb. The there is incontrovertible.
“I’ve felt you before,” he says, “I didn’t think you were there.”
“I’ve been there,” she says, “I watch you. I like you. I watched you with her. I wasn’t jealous.”