by Amelia Gray
“Hullo there,” the man said. “Please, come in.”
Swale stooped as she entered the cavern. Behind her, the townspeople gathered, each silently convinced that they were experiencing a hallucinatory side effect of the sleeping drug.
The man sat at the table and gestured for her to join him. The lantern played shadows on their faces. The air felt cold and pure, like inside the case at a flower shop. The man lit his pipe and leaned back.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Swale said. She took in the room. “How do you survive?”
The man shrugged. “I was minding my own when this big girl rolled up and swallowed me whole. Fortunately she took a few provisions with her as well. It’s not so bad, really.”
A sound like the rustling of wet paper drew Swale’s attention toward the townspeople. The snake’s skin had begun to regenerate, stitching together and closing the gap. She saw one of the engineers reach out tentatively and draw back.
“I ought to go,” Swale said.
“You might stay for dinner.” The farmer dug into a box at his feet and pulled out a tin of trout, placing it between them like a jewel. He pulled on the hair at the back of his neck as he watched for her response. He seemed kind, really, and she hadn’t eaten in some days. The sound of the townspeople ceased as the scales sealed up around them.
“All right, then,” Swale said.
The snake began its slow progress out of town. The monumental shifting motion, a silent quaking of the earth, set the dogs to howling. The bank walls trembled and the schoolhouse awning crashed to the earth. On the outskirts, the orchard men woke from their drugged sleep to find the snake had taken out a series of apple trees before it found the road. Its tail lashed against the church, crushing the façade and leaving a trail of glowing scales like fireflies in the young night. It was only then, after the hazard was gone, that the people of the town saw the deep divide it had carved between them.
The Heart
I think it’s a whale’s heart. I saw one in science class on a video, and I asked Miss Prichard if there was any kind of animal bigger than a whale and she said there was nothing bigger than a blue whale, so I figure that’s what it is, a blue whale’s heart, here in the living room, as wide as a car. One of the kids at school says You would be cool if you weren’t so stupid, and I think like Yeah, this heart is the same way. We came downstairs one morning and there it was, and Dad said whatever kind of heart it was, we needed to get rid of it.
These days when I get home from school, I get into the drawer in the kitchen, where our three knives wait in a shoebox lid. The knife he chose for me has a thin blade and I’ve got a good technique on it now. I take up one of the buckets and head for the living room.
My brother pretty much only gets a knife so he can feel like he’s helping. Me and Dad would get to work—Dad and I—and then Applebee would cry, even when Dad told him that boys in kindergarten do not cry. So we gave him a butter knife and told him to go for it. It calmed him down, and though he isn’t making much headway and doesn’t really need a bucket at all, he is happy and so we are happy, the three of us, working on the heart. Dad tells stories about hunting and describes different techniques of cleaning animals, which he says he used to do more of, like maybe every month.
Slicing into it gets worse every afternoon. In the first few days it was really bleeding and smelled like the trash behind the grocery store, which is to say not good, but then it dried up and the smell went away or maybe we got used to it. Then it got rubbery, and it was like cutting into a milk jug, and even Dad was having trouble and he had the big hunting knife that he once used on bucks. Sometimes he would be going at it and he would say Damn it, and then we would all kind of stop and he would say Sorry. He says it’s there because of Mom and I figure when we get it cut down enough she’ll be inside or at least we’ll get some clue about how to find her.
Dad rinses out Applebee’s lunch box and we take up our work without too much talk. He passes us our knives handle-side out, for safety, though it’s worth mentioning again that there is no way my brother can hurt anything or even himself. He would do more damage with a spoon, but he seems happy, so whatever. It’s good to work without having to talk about school. Nobody really cares what Applebee made in Crafternoon and he seems to be okay with that.
I have figured out a technique against the heart where I glide the knife in sideways like I’m cutting a fish open. I do this a few times and then there’s a dipped bit where Dad can come in and peel off the chunk that’s too high for me to reach.
We slice and drop. Once a bucket is full, we take it to the can behind the house and try to not make a big production about it if there’s a neighbor looking.
The heart is cold and dry on the outside but grows warmer the more we cut into it. It seeps a little onto the carpet, not blood but something else, thicker. As it heats up, it starts to really stink like a pile of dead centipedes after rain. Dad and I tie bandannas around our faces and I try to help Applebee put his on, too, but he’s a baby about it, which is totally expected, and then he steps in the stuff on the carpet and tries to walk into the kitchen and Dad tells him to not track a mess and then he cries for a while and Dad and I just stand there, staring at the heart in front of us, with these bandannas on like we’re wild hunters, like we’re waiting for a massive buck to walk into the living room and allow us to climb on from the couch and then carry us on his back over the horizon line and I say that I miss my mom and Dad says Sure.
I take Applebee upstairs and help him wash his feet in the tub. There aren’t any clean towels, so I dry him off with my shirtsleeve and then he gets his jams on and I tuck him in and turn off the light and he cries a little more and I sit with him for a while in the dark. My hands smell like a dead whale basically. As he’s going to sleep I’m sitting there and feeling tired out from the work, and I feel stupid for wanting to go to sleep without watching any TV, but the heart is kind of blocking it. Applebee sleeps finally and I sneak out of his room and head halfway down the stairs to tell Dad that I’m going to bed, but he’s down there working on the thing still and kind of singing to himself and I figure I’ll leave him alone.
A Contest
The gods decided that, once a year, they would have a weeklong contest and allow the one person who felt the most grief over the loss of a loved one to have that loved one return. They made a contest of it for their own curiosity and amusement and to boost morale in the beyond. It was a hit on the planet: Piles of flowers obscured the names on every cemetery grave and highway shrines glowed elaborate with electric light. A wealthy man held a parade for his mother, which spanned eight city blocks and included great rolling floats representing her spinach casserole and childhood home. On a flat expanse of farmland, a woman used sweaters and slacks to spell out ALAN in the event the gods passed overhead in a helicopter, as they sometimes did. Three girls scrubbed the grime from the corners of their friend’s locker and decorated it with streamers. Somebody’s grandfather placed a single rose on the pillow beside him and wept until he died, thoroughly missing the point. A child’s preserved room was filled with candy until the windows broke, spilling wrapped butterscotch and strawberry suckers into the street. Weeks later, on the third floor of an apartment building, a woman opened her door and saw that her little black cat had found his way home.
Go for It and Raise Hell
The sun beats the shit out of a dirty road called Raton Pass where the closest thing to a pair of matching earrings is a guy named Carl who punches you in the head with his fist. There’s a car on this dirty road and the car is as dirty as the road itself. It could vanish into the road because it is badass camouflage, but this car refuses to vanish. The driver of the car has taken it off-road and is spinning the shit out of its wheels, flipping endless bitches in this ugly desert.
This is the literal goddamn opposite of two middle-aged people going on their first date in a coffee shop. If this dirty car spinning its shit is on one side of the world, the
opposite side of the world is a coffee shop where a fifty-three-year-old woman named Dolly describes the clay pots and saucers she is fixing in her greenhouse. Carl is not aware that there exist fifteen different kinds of peppers and three different kinds of lettuce. If he has in fact seen a basil plant, he called it a fagweed for the benefit of no one but himself, doused it in kerosene, and lit it on fire. He watched it burn and felt deeply satisfied.
Carl is the operator of this filthy camouflaged vehicle flipping endless J-turns just off this dirty shit Raton Pass stretch of road. The car is a Chevy Camaro IROC-Z from the year 1986. Carl puts nineteen dollars and eighty-six cents of premium in the tank and orders the cashier to keep the remainder of a twenty. It is the only kindness Carl affords. He leaves exact change for his breakfast in town. Waitresses don’t dare say to his face the shit they say behind his back. These waitresses have heard of basil, but they are wary.
Say one word against Carl’s Chevy Camaro IROC-Z and Carl will kill you. If you are scared that there is nothing you can be sure of in this world, you can be sure of that.
Carl has lived a hard and terrifying life. He draws great pleasure from fucking a waitress named Dolly in Raton, where the closest thing to a motel room is a janitor’s closet with a door that locks. People who say that the desert is God’s land and it should be protected are not referring to the city of Raton. The best thing to do out there is to spin your tires and curse every injustice in your own language as you grip the wheel of a Chevy Camaro IROC-Z crafted during or after the year 1986.
This car is spinning its shit into the hot earth, chewing up cactus spike, scattering wild creature. Carl is not wondering what happens if the cops come down and see the demolished twelve littered in the backseat. He does not think, Who can I trust to share my secret thoughts? Carl’s thinking that if this was the opening scene of a movie he would call it GO FOR IT AND RAISE HELL.
Carl is coated in the filth of the world. Carl does not believe that the meek shall inherit. He knows that you never know what is enough until you find out what is more than enough.
If you asked Carl what the point of it all was he would spit into a cold cup of coffee and say Handjobs. After he left, Dolly would pocket his exact change and shake her head, but she wouldn’t say a thing because she knows that if there is any man in this world who can impregnate a woman by raising his voice, it is Carl.
There is a Carl on the other side of the world. This other Carl might put on a black button-down shirt, with sleeves, and go out with a woman who talked about what it was like to grow fifteen different kinds of peppers. He might observe this woman while she applied lip balm and wonder in his lizard brain if she had the kind of meaty ass you get when you stand all day every day. His name might also be Carl, but he would drive a pre-owned Honda and feel like a pussy all the time.
Carl imagines the first minutes of GO FOR IT AND RAISE HELL. Dolly’s there, except she has these stacked fake titties, and she’s wearing this silver bikini that shows off her Grade-A Prime. In the movie she’s sitting in the passenger seat of the Chevy Camaro IROC-Z as Carl flips these righteous bitches. She is speaking but it’s too loud to hear her and too dirty to see her dirty mouth.
Dolly knows that the way to a man’s heart is through his vice. She knows how to make it count. Slowly she is speaking, and speaking slowly she is saying GO FOR IT AND RAISE HELL.
Dolly and Carl on the other side of the world would get married. Dolly would wear a wedding gown that held her body like a fat man sliding down a mountain, and Carl would duct-tape tin cans to his Civic. But here in Raton, they’re doing just fine. Here, the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom, and that road is paved with handjobs.
The Lives of Ghosts
Marcy noticed the pimple when she came home from the hospice center. She dropped her bags, her mother’s bags, and the plastic tub containing her mother’s jewelry and saw it right away, examining herself in the hall mirror. It had risen overnight. It stretched her cheek’s skin with a soreness that assured Marcy it would surface and disfigure just in time for June’s wedding that weekend. She produced a tube of benzoyl peroxide and dabbed it on before going to bed.
It was even worse in the morning, warm to the touch. Marcy frowned, her bleary eyes struggling to adjust to the morning light.
Over the sound of the faucet, she heard her mother’s voice: DON’T TOUCH IT.
She froze. “Mom?”
The woman’s voice came again from the spot on her skin. YOU’RE JUST GOING TO MAKE IT WORSE.
Prodding the pimple, she felt her mother’s presence. “Mom,” she said. “Listen. I’m so sorry. I meant to get to you sooner. There was a flight delay, and you know how those are, and when I asked the attendant—”
QUIT FUSSING, her mother said. YOU’LL BE LATE FOR WORK
She dropped her hand.
* * *
One of her coworkers had left a condolence gift of a small potted plant in a mug by her keyboard. Marcy took it with her into the bathroom. She craned her neck in the mirror.
WHAT DID I SAY.
She jumped back. “Jesus Christ.”
JESUS WON’T HELP YOU NOW.
“Of all the places you could end up, really.”
The pimple was silent. She jabbed at it with a wad of paper towels.
WATCH IT, MISSY.
“This is a big week, you know, I have stuff to do. June picked me as her maid of honor after all. You remember June. There are going to be pictures.”
OH, IT’S GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN.
Another woman came in and entered one of the stalls. Marcy applied lipstick while she waited for the woman to finish, but it quickly became clear that the woman was going to wait Marcy out, and so she took the potted plant and decamped to the breakroom.
“This comes at an exceptionally bad time,” Marcy said.
TELL ME ABOUT IT. I WAS ABOUT TO PAVE THE GARDEN.
She dumped the plant out in the breakroom trash and filled the mug with coffee. “Couldn’t you possess something at my place? That slow cooker you gave me would be fun to haunt.” She bought a candy bar from the machine. “I’ve got some red shoes you could make dance whenever I wear them. We could do a road show.”
I DON’T APPRECIATE YOUR ATTITUDE.
“I’m trying to talk some sense into the situation.”
YOU KNOW, THAT CHOCOLATE’S JUST GOING TO MAKE YOU BREAK OUT.
“I can’t take a meeting looking like this.”
AND FORGET ABOUT YOUR FIGURE.
A man looked up from a nearby cubicle. Marcy ducked behind the wall. “I’m going to spray someone with pus in the middle of a sentence,” she said, keeping her voice down and holding her hand over her mouth for good measure.
I’LL TRY TO CONTAIN MYSELF.
“I highly doubt that,” Marcy said, though in truth her mother did seem subcutaneous in the way that could ache for weeks without coming to a head.
Tucking half of the candy bar in her desk for later, she organized her tasks for the morning. She would have an early lunch with June, who would know what to do.
* * *
“Everything is ruined,” June said. They liked to meet at a sit-down Mexican place between their two office parks. The pimple counseled Marcy to order an iced tea and a salad, which she stabbed at obstinately. June was eating a tomato sandwich that she had brought from home. “I’m making a huge mistake.”
“You’re having completely normal thoughts. You’re an intelligent woman and right now you’re simply considering all the angles.”
She crumpled the wax paper from her sandwich and stuffed it in her purse. “I appreciate that. I just think it’s too late.”
“You know you love Dave. You both deserve happiness.”
“He’s a good man,” she said. “I’m probably cursing myself. Hey, get a load of that monster on your face.”
Marcy hovered her hand over the pimple as if to shield it. “That’s my mom.”
JOYOUS NUPTIALS, said the pimple.<
br />
“Thanks a million,” said June.
The waiter refilled their water glasses and silently regarded the sandwich June had left on the tablecloth.
“She’s been here all day,” Marcy said, after he left.
“Check this out,” June said, leaning back in her chair. She lifted up her shirt a few inches to reveal a swollen spot on her belly. “It’s Eric,” she said. Her old boyfriend had been killed by a dog on a morning walk some years ago. “He’s telling me I shouldn’t do it.” She rubbed her stomach tenderly. “He won’t shut up. He talks all night sometimes. I don’t know why I don’t get him cut out of there.”
BECAUSE YOU RESPECT THE DEAD, Mom said. June shrugged.
The waiter returned. “May I take your crust?” he asked.
“Fuck off,” June said.
YOUR FRIEND IS RIGHT, Mom said later, in the car. SHE SHOULDN’T MARRY THAT MAN.
“She’s a little hung up on Eric, is all. She gets that way. I once had to tell some strangers in a movie theater that her husband died in a war.”
The pimple vibrated slightly and grew a small whitehead. ENERGY DOESN’T DIE, it said. TOO BAD FOR ALL OF YOU, RIGHT.
“Calm down,” she said, starting the car and cranking the air-conditioning.
COME ON, YOU’LL BE LATE FOR WORK.
She focused on her breathing. “I miss you,” she said. “I really do.”
I KNOW, BABY.
The redness eased slightly.
“I miss you so very much,” she said.
HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME.
* * *
June was a happy, if pale, bride, wincing at the effort of walking on her father’s arm. She wore a satin shift which had the unfortunate effect of playing up the swelling and giving her a sickly pregnant look. People whispered to one another as she passed them in the aisle.