I am eating the Fatman. It is our marriage ceremony. But when I am done, I shall find myself married to nobody.
Jack, I must have eaten your signature without noticing it. Oops! I eat one of the carrots, but keep the other.
The day I finished dinner, spring came. It was an uncommonly hot day for March. I was single and exceedingly fat. The igloo had become a luminous dome. The animals sealed in every block stood out as clear as cameos. Cadbury was on his back, his muzzle pointing up. The ants were dotted elegantly through their block. Some of the birds were in attitudes of flight, some were hunched into the shape of endives. I could see where the sun stood over me: it blazed through the fat. The blaze climbed the dome, and the dome heated up, and when the shadow of the birds fell directly over me, I felt a hot drop hit my ankle.
It started to rain hot fat. I turned onto my stomach and let the molten drops hit my back, my thighs, my ass. Soon I lay in a warm bath of clear oil, on a bed of grass and pebbles. The level was rising, but as the oil poured down, fissures were forming at the base of the walls and between blocks, through which it was running away. The igloo grew brighter and more transparent, a thin, blazing shell, and then it wobbled and collapsed in on me. All the trapped oil ran off into the grass.
I sat up. All around me animals were struggling up, alive! The birds staggered around, spreading out their gunky wings. The sun seemed to shine on us with the specific intention of licking us clean. We moved our limbs in wonder like cripples faith-healed. I lay back in the slick and smiled. There were roses everywhere. There went Musculus. Cadbury was prancing. The first birds tried their wings. I was shining like a gold medal.
SHELLEY JACKSON
Shelley Jackson is the author of the short story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy, the hypertext novel Patchwork Girl, several children’s books, and “Skin,” a story published in tattoos on the skin of more than two thousand volunteers. She lives Brooklyn, New York.
Books by Shelley Jackson
The Melancholy of Anatomy
Mimi’s Dada Catifesto
Half Life
Sophia, the Alchemist’s Dog
The Old Woman and the Wave
The Melancholy of Anatomy: Stories Page 15