The n-Body Problem

by Tony Burgess

  I check X. Still clipped in. He isn’t looking up. I reach across and touch his face. It’s warm. There is some warmth coming from the sun still. Some radiation sneaking through. Pieces of the spectrum, the vitamins in fault lines and thin spots. Reminds me that I forgot to take my vitamin D drops. Can’t miss those. Makes your autoimmune go crazy if you do. MS. Lupus. Strange allergies. My arm turned to bloody rubble once, after a mosquito bite. Took months of Benadryl, which had its own knockoff effects. The arm is still grey. X looks at me. Or it’s not the sun. It’s a fever. Maybe he’ll die up here, in the next few hours.

  “You think we’ll get any sleep tonight?”

  X looks at me, into my eyes. He nods. The effect on me is powerful and sudden. He strokes the back of my neck while I sob. It’s something I never feel. I am grieving for my species. I am grieving for everyone. It is an emotion with no real history and it shatters you when it comes. I love people. I want to be one again. But this will never ever happen. X is pushing a water bottle to my mouth. He doesn’t want me to cry all the water from my body. I drink. I can’t cry and drink at the same time. I hand the water back to X. Thank Christ that doesn’t happen very often. Some people get started and never stop. Not me. I have a cold side. Smooth and silent and cold. I try to restore it. The water rolls down the cold stones stacked in my chest.

  “Thanks. Sorry.”

  X has turned his head. He doesn’t want to hurt me again. Irony is I feel my chest shake at the thought of him protecting me.

  Car door slam. From the driveway. Dixon.

  I place my hand firmly on X and he turns. I put my finger to my lips. Like he’s gonna talk. The front door bangs closed. X and I lie perfectly still. Dixon will walk the house. He’ll see Petra dancing on the rope. Paula squirming under water. Did I leave stalk ends on the counter? Will he pick up and check the wilt of celery? Know the time when it was cut? After the hanging and the stomping? Will he figure this out? If he does he’ll know where I am. He’ll check the room upstairs. The emergency kit on the floor. Did we close the window? He’ll see the ladder.

  I listen. I test the sheets. We are butterflies pinned to matte board. Already dead. Embalmed. He’ll torture us lying here before he kills us. He wants me to suffer more than anything. He wants me to beg for my life.

  Bang. Front door. Wait. Clunk. Car door. The engine whines.

  I exhale. He has come and gone. He lost my trail. He forgot about our roof trick. X senses that I have relaxed and turns to me. I smile. It’s not bad. It doesn’t hurt. He smiles back. I want to take this now. I put my hand on his head and he pushes it against my palm. I feel we are together. If we die up here tonight, of typhus or AIDS or madness or the flu, we will die having seen each other. And then, who knows? Maybe we’ll hang up there in the same spot and feel that sun for the first time. See the earth. This is a happiness, but I’m not stupid. It’s just as dangerous as a sadness. Happiness removes suppression. It makes you want to die. I feel heat against my back.

  A pigtail of black smoke runs across the eaves. Dixon knows exactly where I am. He has set the house on fire. He’ll have used an accelerant. I push up and feel flop sweat on my chest. I pull at the roofing nails and the sheet tears. X is turning in his bag unable to free himself. My first impulse is to leave him to die. He’s going to hold me back, get us both killed. Then I remember and pull his sheet with two fists. Flames appear around one edge then another. The roof will drop soon. It will fold around us any moment. X runs to the peak, but that’s where the fire will punch through first. I throw myself flat and grab his ankle. He drops and slides uncontrollably down the steep pitch. X disappears into a high funnel of flame.

  I have nothing left to do but follow.

  There is no air in my lungs. There is no sound in my ears. I can smell my body burning. Nothing is visible but the tiny stroke egg and the anamorphic line. And heat. I am hung before the sun.

  i am not hung before the sun.

  X is putting me out with a garden hose. I can see him naked in the alley covered in his mother’s shit, trying to get away from the icy water. I feel we are amazing friends. In the shock, entire years of our adventure passes through me.

  The time we stayed with that widow in a shack by the pond. How we buried her kin for her.

  The time we hunted deer on the escarpment and saw a lynx. And a hognose snake. Yes! And we met other hunters at the top. They were drinking and we started drinking and shooting our rifles at fungus on a birch tree.

  The time we rushed to the water’s edge. The time we saw the egret. The massive shell of a roadside turtle. Its head was the size of a hockey helmet.

  We had trouble one winter living in an abandoned blind. It was a bad idea. You can’t tell how cold it’s going to get. How high the snow will drift. And the wind. Remember those nights. We slept with our fingers in our ears.

  I can feel where I am but I can’t be there. I have no heart and no mind. No body. I am tiny scales on the hunched back of a great golden carp. Each scale like a tiny screen that pulls at me with story. Light pulls me into the fish’s side. I am in the care of curled carp. Minnows. Waterborne lint. I am its telescopic mouth. Barbels. Bluegills.

  Blue. Blue water. Blue sky.

  in the unlikely event that i am writing please read this.

  We are in a shed. Probably still on the property. I am wrapped in a mulch bag from a lawn tractor.

  “Why are we hiding?”

  That was X. I try to talk but my throat is closed around a cancer in my thyroid. This is why I am sick.

  “I don’t fucking get it,” X says, turns to me. He has a cloth and he stuffs it in my mouth. Cold water fills the spaces between my teeth.

  “Suck on that. We leave here soon.”

  I obey. I feel a sharp line across my upper stomach. Duodenitits. Esophagitis. Not fatal things on their own but they are never on their own.

  X is watching me and I close my eyes. I lay my hands on my belly. It feels distended, wobbly. There are many reasons why this could be happening. Daylight penetrates my eyelids.

  “Here. See if you need anything,” he says.

  I look down at a small greasy box X has placed at my side. I expect to see machine parts and am surprised by pill bottles of various size. Lean to my side. The belly pulls down and out.

  I pull one. Effexor. Another. Xanax. Others. Mostly SSRIs and benzo. This shit speeds up the receptor ganglia in stems. This shit is shit. This is why doctors don’t see us anymore. I pull the cloth from my mouth.

  “Where’d this come from?”

  X doesn’t answer. He stands by the shed door.

  “X! Hey! Where’d this shit come from?”

  X turns.

  “That’s not my name.”

  I sit and my middle doesn’t fold in, it falls.

  “What is this?”

  X crouches beside me. He has a silver spike, snapped off the bottom of a sprinkler. “Do you think it’s crazy out there?”

  I rattle the box. He’s been taking these. The short-term effect is always diminished symptoms. Long term, it’s all syndrome.

  “Why am I looking in a box of shit?”

  “I broke into a few houses. Took whatever I could remember my mom taking. She said it kept her alive.”

  That means some people died. You can’t just stop taking this stuff. Not anymore. I did. I had to taper down to grains. Over months. I still have syndrome, but I know I bought some time ditching these. Now I take oils. Moderates the immune system responses. That’s the best. Evening primrose. Flax seed. Fish oil. And Vitamin D. Fuck with brain chemistry and you die soon.

  “Throw this out. This is bad fuel. Here.”

  I drag my bag off my shoulder and dump the oils and D.

  “I’ll share these.”

  X looks sceptical.

  “But my Mom—”

  “Your Mom dissolved in her own shit.”

  X gives me a look. His hand around that spike. I return the look. I’m not trying to be an asshol
e. He loosens. Thinks. That’s right. You listen.

  “If you’re gonna steal, steal things we can use. Memorize these labels. This stuff we’re gonna need.”

  He lowers his head and examines the cod liver oil.

  “How bad do you think it is out there?” X nods to the light. The SSRIs and benzos have given him swagger.

  “I don’t know, man. Probably bad. Put down the spike.”

  X holds it firm and raises a cocky eyebrow—you sure about that?

  “Please.”

  I reach over and hold the back of his hand. The spike falls.

  “Okay,” he says. “Why are we hiding? What are we doing?”

  Fuck. Those damn pills sure jack up the moti-vation.

  “How old are you?”

  “I think I’m around thirteen.”

  I nod. A little older than I first thought. But it’s feasible. Especially now that he’s accelerated his gangster puberty.

  “Okay. I have to make a decision, X.”

  “My name is Y.”

  “Y.”

  I sit up farther. My belly prevents my knees from rising.

  “I have to decide whether I bring you along or whether I put you down.”

  Y is crushed by this. Glassy eyes start to fill.

  “Not put you down. Not really. Listen. This is my work. I’m working. And if I haul you along with me you have to understand the job and you have to let me be your boss. I mean your total boss.”

  Y thinks. He picks up the spike and taps it on the tip of his sneakers. He speaks without looking up.

  “What’s the job.”

  “Kill a guy.”

  He loves that.

  “Who?”

  “A guy, I said.”

  Y nods, like he thinks this sounds doable. He’s all bluff. I could knock his lights out so easy.

  “When?”

  “When? I don’t know when.”

  Y bites his lip. Reasonable, he thinks. That’s reasonable.

  “The guy who burned the house out from under us,” I say.

  Y’s eyes widen, darken. There’s real ugly in a child on SSRIs and benzos.

  “Let’s kill that fuckin’ guy, then.”

  to learn what’s going on.

  Things get moving pretty early in this town. Streets get swept. The message box gets changed out in front of the Evangelical Church to “He is Risen.” I recognize Russel with the letters. I wave. He looks. The sky is covered again. Low cloud. Probably best. I’m in a low-intensity mood. High school kids are out. Golden Apple is open for breakfast. Y is walking just back a bit, studying the signs of things. He catches up.

  “It’s not really bad out here.”

  He’s relieved. That’s better, tough guy.

  “Nope. I guess it ain’t.”

  People live here. That’s what I see. Husband and wife rolling wheelbarrows into place outside the Home Hardware. You can’t tell what you’re looking at. I’m pretty sure these people are talking about suicide. Just not to me.

  “Let’s eat some food.”

  Golden Apple is all pine booths and blond wainscoting. Heavy lacquer. Three old guys in overalls and tractor caps stop talking when we walk past. I almost say hello.

  Y orders himself breakfast. Three eggs. Sausage. Bacon. Home fries. Rye toast. Large orange juice. I remember that. The pills give you a new appetite. For a while. I order coffee and a single scrambled egg. Line up the oils. My side is sore where I hit the ground. My belly has swollen a bit more in the last fifteen minutes or so. Y has frown lines. He’s ageing. Something’s up there.

  “You get hurt at all?”

  Kid’s light. Probably hit the ground like a snowflake. He dismisses the question. My eggs come first. The waitress has a pine look to her. Knotty and yellow. Cigarettes. Why not?

  “We need a base.”

  Thought he’d like that.

  “Fuckin’ right we do.”

  I knock some ketchup on the plate.

  “Don’t swear all the time. I don’t.”

  I give and I can take away. He accepts.

  “There any other B and Bs in town?” I ask.

  “Nope. Only one.”

  “And now that’s up in smoke.”

  “I forgot to check,” Y says. “Could you see the ladies in there?”

  Y leans back as his plate lands.

  “That is one horrific thing to see,” I say.

  “What?”

  “When they get scrambled up in a fire like that. They get mixed into everything. Everything moves. You gotta look closely to see it. Give you nightmares.”

  He’s eating fast. I push the oils closer to him. I’m worried about withdrawal.

  “How long was I out?” I ask.

  “Two days.”

  That’s not bad. He’ll feel it but it won’t kill him. I gotta figure out why my stomach is getting larger.

  “Did fire trucks come?”

  “Nope. I think the guy next door was hosing down his roof in case it spread.”

  One of the old guys is staring at us. He’s wondering what the fuck. I glance at Y. He’s downing the oils now.

  “People know you’re not my son.”

  Y is having trouble with the omega. He’ll get used to it.

  “I’m your uncle.”

  Y accepts, swallowing. “This about the Seller in town?”

  “What about the Seller in town?”

  “I don’t know much. Mom took me to the car a couple days after he showed.”

  “Yeah. It’s about the Seller.”

  “Okay. Well. His name is Art something.”

  “No, it ain’t, but whatever.”

  “He was at the soccer field a lot. That’s all I know. People seemed to know he was a Seller and some liked it.”

  “Yeah. That’s where he started. By now he’s established a place. He’s holding meetings.”

  Teenage mom with a rape baby sits in the booth behind us. You can bet she’s onside with the Seller by now. You can tell cause she likes her baby. Talks to it. She wouldn’t do that if she thought they had long to live.

  “Time to go,” I say. We grab our shit and head out.

  It’s raining again. I prefer that. Hide the damn sky so I can think.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  I’m torn about my decision to cut the kid off. There is an upside to having him focused like this. Who knows what he’ll be like? I decide to ditch him if he reverts too much.

  “This is a job, right?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I said.”

  “Who hired you?”

  Is there harm in answering that?

  “School board.”

  Y laughs. He can laugh at that. It’s pretty funny. Bunch of administrative educators hiring a hit man. Truth is, they are legally obliged to get a Hunter if they think a Seller has been in contact with anyone on school property.

  “This Seller’s a sick one. He’ll start hitting people who don’t climb on.”

  “Hitting?”

  “Torture relatives. Drug people. Kill some. School board’s probably bought already.”

  Another teenage mom with a rape baby. Man, you can see what this place was like a year ago. She’s happy, too. Dixon.

  “He’s done thousands at a time. All singing the same song. He doesn’t really like to hurt them when they live.”

  I salute the young mom. Who the fuck knows why.

  “Anyway. He’s not somebody you wanna die around.”

  We’re coming to the end of Main Street. Man, these towns are small. Hard to hide.

  “Look, I got a feeling he’s closed on a lot of people. We gotta be careful. Can’t buy much. Can’t talk too much. Can’t stay anywhere anyone knows. Is there a park?”

  “Down the alley between Ole Pizza and the chocolate store.”

  “Ok. Let’s go live in the trees.”

  I pull out a pad.

  “Here’s what you need to steal. Meet me in the park.”

  I wri
te: Razor. Soap. Shampoo. Large tub of vaseline.

  “Don’t buy it. Steal it.”

  Probably be better if I had one of those rape-baby moms. Bet they shoplift all day.

  the trees by the stream in the park behind the chocolate store.

  I only make it halfway through the alley and have to lean against the brick. There is a sharp pain in my stomach. And it’s distended now to the point where it handicaps me. I push a hand in. Very soft. Like it’s full of water. I can feel a corner of the liver is hardened. Cirrhosis? Maybe. Too much anxiety about meds. Too much looking at the sky. This could be big. All my pushing has made me need to shit. I drop my pants and slide my back down the wall. It comes out as water. Like a tap I turn on under my nuts. I bounce over as it moves around my feet. There’s more. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s irritable bowel. I watch the dark leafy fluid run down the alley. If there’s blood then I am fucked. Crohn’s disease would explain the pain. Longitudinal ulcer in the large intestine. Inflamed, even morbid, splenetic plicture. Could explain the hard liver. Spleen might be going up too. What a mess. I study my shit for blood. So far nothing. What would be the outcome? Without steroids I might bleed to death. God, I regret dumping all those benzos now. Sometimes they can be magic. Feel good and everything falls back in line. I need a full spectrum light too. I finally stop shitting. I close my eyes and try to recall the scent of cedar, but all I’m getting is the bland filth rolling down this alley. I pull up my pants. The fabric fuses to my ass and wicks the muck up. Did he say there was a stream? Gotta be. Gotta move.

  I launch off the wall and fall down. My palms in shit. No blood. I crawl to the dry wall. A loud fart that opens my body from asshole to mouth. I wonder if there were any opioids in that box. Fuck. That’d be great. Shut the digestive system down like it had a switch. Hard as hell to live clean. Not so sure it’s the best idea anymore. It feels like something is hanging off me. I can feel gravity on my belly. I stand. My belly is bigger. This is in my abdominal cavity. This isn’t Crohn’s or IBS. This could be far worse. Definitely cancer. And lots. I’m cascading here. I think I know what it is. I’m afraid to say. Sometimes accepting contains it and sometimes it just blows the shit right up.