The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology

by Chamber Four

  Mandy said, “Can I get you something?”

  “Diet Coke?” Darla said, edging to the refrigerator, where graduation photos and school pics of cousins hung under heavy fruit-shaped magnets. All eyes direct at the camera. Grade schoolers in green grass and corduroy overalls. Tiger and devil faces in Halloween grease-paint, purposeful and wanting to be there. “I can get it,” Darla said.

  Mandy flipped through the catalog. Still looking down, she said, “We need to get a new comforter. She threw up all over the last one.”

  “That’s OK,” Darla said.

  “I buy her new clothes all the time, she’s growing so fast.”

  “I’ll bet,” Darla said.

  “My own shirts are stained at the shoulders,” Mandy said. Darla looked at her shoulders and the T-shirt front of hatching eggs and the words Mother Hen in red, ropey letters. “Not this one,” Mandy said. “I never wear this one.” She looked back down at the catalog. “Things don’t stay nice, you know. You think they will but they don’t.”

  Darla moved to the doorway with her Diet Coke perspiring coldness into her hand. “Don’t worry. Your house is really nice. This is what people want.”

  Mandy said, “Jon’s a really good guy.”

  Darla nodded and walked back to the patio.

  * * * *

  Outside, the sky was losing its harsh whiteness. Darla could hear a lawn mower a few houses over, the sounds of cars on Balboa. Shadows of the grill and lawn chairs fell over half the patio. Jon was on his next beer, which was either number three or four. Darla never counted but just knew that later on she’d be the one driving.

  “No swimsuit?” Jon swung his arm around Darla’s waist and pulled her down next to him by the pool. “At least get your feet wet.” He splashed water on her.

  Darla held up her arm and pretended to push Jon into the water. “I’ll do it,” she said, putting her other hand over the Diet Coke.

  Jon called out, “Officer. The missus is beating on me again.”

  Trevor swam over with the baby, leaned in towards Darla. “Is this true?”

  “Please.” Darla looked down at her legs. “I’m not a missus.”

  Trevor said to Jon, “I’ll have to take her away in the squad car if you two can’t make up.”

  Darla got up and said, “OK, OK.”

  Jon had once told Darla he didn’t think Trevor’s marriage would last more than five years. Now they were in year four. Mandy’s mother had died of cervical cancer not long before they met, and ever since Mandy had clung to him. At the wedding, Trevor had teared up, said he was so grateful he found her, so happy he’d stopped by that chain ribs-restaurant that night and caught her attention, so glad he’d come back the next afternoon and nervously asked her out, ecstatic when she’d said, “Sure, I guess.” At the reception afterwards, Jon told Darla much later, Trevor had tried steering him to a tall redhead because she was so hot.

  “Did you even bring your swimsuit?” Jon said.

  “No,” Darla said. “It’s OK.”

  Trevor said, “You could borrow one of Mandy’s. She wouldn’t mind.”

  “It’s OK. I can sit it out,” Darla said, sitting on a gray wooden bench that splintered near the bolts. She leaned back and looked at the chain link gate on the fence, the patches of dirt where the dogs had tried to tunnel out. The neighbors had a hummingbird feeder hanging from a tree and a panel of cardboard on the side window where the glass was out.

  Mandy came outside with a king-size bag of potato chips. She didn’t lift her flip flops all the way when she walked. She took the baby from Trevor. “How’s my girl?” she said, putting her face right up to the baby’s, touching noses, probably breathing out potato chip breath. “Anyone have a towel?”

  Trevor threw her one with sailboats on it. He said, “Darla wants to swim but didn’t bring a suit.”

  Darla waved her hand. “Oh no, I’m fine.” She felt the hot pavement with her feet, the comfort of it.

  Mandy kept her face at the baby’s. “We have extras. Don’t be shy.”

  Jon said, “Yeah, Darla, don’t be shy.”

  Mandy said to Trevor, “Hey, can you show her? I have my hands full here.”

  Trevor stretched his arms above his head. “Yo,” he said and pointed to the door.

  Darla gave Jon a look and he shrugged. She thought of quicksand—if she were being dragged under, Jon would probably just stay there and give the same shrug. Whenever she got very sad, which happened sometimes, Jon acted as if leaving her alone was the best thing. He said sadness made him feel helpless.

  * * * *

  The bedroom was smaller than Darla remembered from house-sitting. There were more stuffed animals, more VHS tapes of wrestling. The bed was covered in pillows.

  Trevor looked around in the adjoining bathroom, which had a fake marble countertop and a whole series of toothbrushes in a line beneath the mirror. “Jon told me about the morning-after thing,” he said.

  “He told you?”

  “You know, we’ve been friends for a long time.” He came back into the room empty-handed and pulled a heaping clothes basket from the corner of the room. “Don’t worry, they’re clean.” He threw white shirts and towels onto the bed. “I think you made the right choice.”

  Darla sat down on the bed, pulled a pillow into her lap and fingered the lace at the edges. “I’m sure of it,” she said.

  “Though I think you wouldn’t have gotten pregnant anyway,” he said, looking over at her. “It broke one time? Come on.”

  Darla looked at the photos on the wall, generic shots of little boys giving tulips to little girls. “Maybe,” she said.

  He leaned into the clothes basket, digging through the bottom layer. “It all changes with a kid.”

  “I know that,” she said, but she didn’t really. She’d heard about it from friends—her Mormon friend in Nebraska already trying for a second, and she and Darla were exactly the same age, same birthday. Darla knew the basic pattern of sleepless nights, of loving something more than anything else. It always sounded impossible to her.

  “Do you like being married?” she said.

  Trevor pulled a black swimsuit from the basket. “Here’s the fucker,” he said. It was a one-piece with gold rings on the shoulder straps. “This was Darla’s from a few years ago. Might be too big for you.” He threw it into her lap.

  She stood up and draped it against her body, looking into the mirror. “Here,” he said, stepping forward. His fingers pinned the suit lightly to her waist. “Let’s see.”

  She could smell the beer on his breath and the sweat and chlorine. “Do you?” she said.

  He looked down at her, leaned closer to her face, really looked at it, it seemed to her, though it was probably just the beer. “Not always,” he said. His hand was on her waist, his other hand slid tentatively down her side. For a moment it felt good to be touched by someone else. She wanted to close her eyes and follow it.

  “I think it would be too hard,” she said, opening her eyes. She put her hands up and gently took his arms off her, placed them at his sides. “I don’t know how you do it,” she said. “Especially so young. I don’t know how anyone does it.” He stood watching her. She thumbed towards the backyard and said, “They’re probably wondering about us.”

  He said, “Right. I’ll let you get changed,” and headed for the door.

  But she pulled him back by his arm and steered him to sit on the bed. She took off her shirt and unhooked her bra, letting it hang in her hands for a moment, knowing his gaze was on her. She slipped off her skirt and panties and stood there before him naked and let him look at her. Then slowly she took the suit from the bed and stepped into it one leg after the other and pulled it up around her breasts and then to her shoulders, where the little gold rings met her collarbone. It didn’t fit her, but she didn’t care anymore. She looked into his face and said, “Let’s go.”

  Everything is Breakable With a Big Enough Stone

  by Taryn Bowe


  from Boston Review

  When Lyla was ten, she had 32 teeth. She washed her hair with a special coconut oil and slept in a closet. Each night, waiting for sleep, she touched one wall with the crown of her head and the opposite wall with the flats of her heels and pretended she was holding the two walls apart. Her sisters giggled in their room. They dangled pants and panties from their windows, hooting in high wheezy voices when boys stopped on the street below. Lyla’s mother ran outside, shooing callers off with hairbrushes, plungers, bread knives. Her sisters dropped their panties onto the tops of trees. Girl fights followed; her mother, shrieking; her sisters, violent with their fists. In her closet, Lyla pressed her fingertips against her eyelids until she saw blue, then tapped every tooth with the tip of her tongue.

  Before he went to work each night, her father knelt by her door and pressed play on a tape he’d made of his laughter. He laughed at a joke she’d told him about convertibles, and then at another she’d told him about fruit. If she could be any fruit, she’d be a lychee because she was so sweet, and if she could be a car, she’d be a bright red convertible because this was the kind that everybody wanted. Her father laughed like a man you could trust with your life. His breath grabbed in his throat and hissed, but when air found his lungs, low rolling hollers bellowed out of his mouth and out of the tape deck’s circular speakers.

  When the tape was over, Lyla opened the closet door and pressed rewind. If she could go back to any age, she would go back to being ten.

  * * * *

  Lyla grew three inches. Everything changed. She moved out of the closet, into the hall. Her sisters tripped over her legs when they stumbled out of the bathroom. When Lyla sucked on the corner of her pillow, she prayed no one would see her and scold her for gross habits she should have outgrown. Her tape deck was stolen. Her father sleepwalked into walls. Lyla danced on air and, in the morning, found herself on the kitchen floor or coiled into a pretzel in her mother’s garden. Some mornings, she woke up with a prize in her hand. A sweaty piece of candy. Or a seed, which she recognized from home-school as the kind that grew guava plants with sun and soil and water. One morning she woke up on Coconut Coast, without knowing how she’d gotten to the other side of Kauai.

  * * * *

  On her eleventh birthday, her father bought her a convertible. The car had platinum rims and silver spokes. Red-colored paint appeared to melt off its fenders. Diamonds studded the black leather steering wheel, catching the glimmer of the sun’s rays on the clear blue ocean. Some days, though, Lyla refused to touch them, wore white gloves, took long naps, walked to Fat Man’s Cave and hid in the damp cool craters instead of climbing the hill to the marijuana fields, where her father parked the car beneath a tree split in thirds by lightning. Most days, Lyla pretended she didn’t hear her father calling, and he sent a driver to pick her up. The driver, Kirby, was as skinny and shy as she was. “Yes, Ma’am,” and “Certainly, Miss,” he said, blowing smoke out of the corners of his mouth. His smoke caught in the wind, and Lyla snapped a neck muscle turning her head to watch it disappear. Kirby let her play her music on his tape deck, Prince’s Purple Rain, and he drove by volcanoes without joking about fire or asphyxiation or burns. He didn’t look up her skirt when the wind pinned its hem against her chest. Maybe he only loved boys, or no one at all. She fell asleep in the warm back seat.

  * * * *

  In Kauai if you were pretty and special and tall enough to reach the gas and brake, you could get your license early if your father bought you a car. You could drive only dirt roads, and only at night, and you couldn’t tell your sisters who, according to law, had to wait until fifteen for a license, fourteen for a practice permit. Off roads and in fields, she’d mastered swerving, speeding, maneuvering in reverse. On the day her father told her she got her license, she touched her nose to the salt-stained passenger door and licked the aluminum handle to forget the sickening taste of red. Red of a fist clutching the shift, the red flush of his cheeks. Red had a hot taste that hurt. It made bile rise in the back of her throat, and she squeezed her eyelids shut and then opened them so she could stare into her father’s pores. Why her?

  She chewed marijuana leaves as she waited for him to come back from where he stood spitting over the edge of the cliffs, watching his saliva vanish into the surf. When he returned, Lyla spat leaves into the grass, and the sun bled into the sky, purple-orange-pink, and they lay on the hood, again. The car had subwoofers and bass that thudded right through the core of you, swallowing all sounds.

  * * * *

  When she was twelve, her father took her to Honolulu on the car ferry. They stayed in a hotel made of crystal chandeliers. Everything was breakable with a big enough stone: walls, mirrors, glass elevator. Lyla won a dancing crown making ribbons come to life like snakes. She kept hula hoops in motion. She threw balls in the air and caught them in the arches of her feet, above the swell of her belly, between her chin and chest. She ate healthy food and drank lots of bottled water. She did not smoke pot or PCP. She pinched her nose when her father lowered the convertible roof and, with closed eyes, called out movie star names, Malana, Sophia, Ivy.

  “Break a leg,” he whispered backstage, sweet charcoal breath in her ear before she danced and disappeared behind the rising smoke and music.

  She danced to save swimmers from sharks. She leapt into the air to be discovered and saved. She didn’t think about her mothers or sisters and imagined everything that ever mattered depended on the perfect execution of a single split or pivot. One night, she pounded her bare feet into the sand until parts of her she didn’t know could sweat were leaking small waterfalls from her body.

  “Slow down,” her father said. “Everything comes early to you. What do you have left to wait for and accomplish?”

  Except that month, her period was late. She missed it ferociously, even though it was such a pain and mess. She missed the way it had protected her for seven days and nights. It had come early, when she was ten, and her sisters had braided her hair in cornrows, and her mother had given her napkins to pack in the dirt when she was done.

  * * * *

  Lyla floated above her life where no one could touch her. She became the ozone, which was thin, invisible, and full of holes too. She watched herself grow bigger. She threw up. Her father snuck out for bread and nuts and never came back, and she spent her first night alone, then a second. A man, starved like a skeleton, tried to steal her purse and keys. She pulled out a knife; her strength and hunger, electrifying. After chasing him, she was ravenous and stole coconuts from trees. She cracked them open. She drank their milk. One day, she crawled to a wind farm and pushed out a baby, as still and blue and breath-stealing as anything she’d ever seen.

  * * * *

  Now, she tells strangers stories, babbling like an infant who has just discovered speech.

  She had seventeen children and two of them died.

  Or she didn’t bother with babies because the man who loved her couldn’t share her.

  Once, she tells a surfer, she won a hula title in Honolulu. Another time, she tells a sunbather, she drove a convertible to the edge of a cliff. Because is a lie really a lie if it ought to have been true?

  One day her father broke laws and speed limits to race her to the hospital and save her baby and get her help. But he never abandoned her beneath the great white turbines, where the wind was ground to pieces, where birds fell from the sky.

  The Abjection

  by Michael Mejia

  from AGNI

  We are not sleeping well. Our eyes are open. Perhaps the bed is too hard, says the one. The bed is not too hard, says the other. Night is over. The bed is unmoved. It is not the first time. The bed is new. It must be paid off within the year. We must avoid unnecessary charges. We must make regular payments. A small portion of our modest salaries. A reasonable sum for comfort. For sleep. Because our credit is not good. We are afraid to ask. We just pay. What else can we do? We pay and we pay. We pay. It cannot be the be
d. But we are not sleeping well. We sleep without touching. The bed is wide. We have room to turn. We would not even know. We do not turn. We lie awake. We hear ourselves. We do not ask, “Are you awake?” Not anymore. We are awake. Perhaps the bed is too hard, says the one. The bed is not too hard, says the other. We dismantle the frame. We reassemble the frame. We tighten the frame. We use tools. Splendidly they fit our hands. Our hands are the perfect size. Still we are not sleeping well. Perhaps it is not the frame, says the one. We turn the mattress over. We make the foot the head. We turn the mattress over. Perhaps it is not the mattress, says the other. We move the bed to the window. We move it away from the window. We point it toward the door. But we have heard that this is unlucky. We angle the bed in the corner. The three other corners. We cannot open the door. We cannot reach the closet. Our clothes hang in the dark. We imagine them. They have no shape. They are shapeless. They were not made for us. No memory of us. Nothing of our bodies. We are naked. We move the bed. There is another bedroom. There is a bathroom. There is another bedroom. There is a kitchen. We are naked. There is a laundry room. There is a breakfast nook. There is a dining room. There is a living room. There is a bathroom. There is a den. There is a hall. The bed does not fit. Not in all of these rooms. It does not fit the breakfast nook. It passes down the hall. The bed enters where it can. We do not force it. The one will not sleep in the kitchen. The other proposes a deck. A sleeping porch. First we must pay off the bed. Our sleep has not improved. We lie on our sides. Our joints are sore. We lie on our backs. Our backs our sore. We lie on our stomachs. Our spines prick our organs. We lie close together. We lie horizontally. We lie obliquely. We do not sleep. We lie in opposite directions. We transverse the bed. Feet in our faces. A blister on the one. A callous on the other. A soft instep. A twitch and a curl of toes. Our friends do not call. Because we are irritable. We are rude. We curse. We are gratuitous. “Fuck … fuck … fuck,” we say. “Fuck … fuck … fuck.” We do not invite them for dinner. We are tired. We are too tired to make dinner. Our stomachs are empty. We are consumed by the bed. We do not meet our friends. They have drinks after work. After dinner. Before dinner. They are always drinking, says the one. They are drunks, says the other. We are not invited. Not anymore. We would not go anyway. We will not get in the car. We watch it from the window. We will refuse. We will show them. They should call AA. We are defiant. They will end up in jail. They will kill someone. They will end up mutilated and dead. We will watch it from the window. We have no friends, says the one. Not anymore, says the other. We are grumbling. We say it again. We are grumbling. The telephone does not ring. The house is quiet. The television is off. The radio is off. The lights are off. The bed has returned to the bedroom. We watch it from the doorway. We watch it through the window. As if we were burglars. Desperate criminals. Hungry. Malignant. Misanthropic. Without money. Without friends. Coveting our possessions. Murderous. As if we don’t give a fuck. We hide from the neighbors. We are not in the mood. We don’t belong in the garden. Something rustles the hydrangea. The grass is too long. The birdbath is dry. Something is biting us. Something smells. We retreat inside. As if we have failed. The bed has not moved. The bed in the moonlight. Our work suffers. We are thinking about the bed. We talk of nothing else. The one is in the break-room. The other is in the toilet stall. We are in the elevator. No one says anything. Silently the numbers rise. We are thinking about the bed. They don’t want to hear it. Not anymore. They are hearing flute music. Flute music is all they want to hear. They want to hear no one talking. They are not watching us thinking. Thinking about the bed. We are in someone’s cubicle. We say we are not sleeping well. We say the bed is not quite hard. But it is not quite soft. We want to say that the bed is in between. But that does not mean enough. In between what? someone may ask. We say nothing. We do not say In between nothing. We say nothing. No one has asked. We cannot answer. What did we expect? We stare at someone. Someone is pretending to check email. We examine someone’s desk. There are spreadsheets. There are proposals. There are estimates. There are receipts. There are vouchers. There are invoices. There are reimbursements. Something has happened. There is evidence. Something is changing. Something has changed. We were not involved. We were not informed. Were we? The conversation is over. It is time to work. We have been warned. We slump in our ergonomic chairs. We try to seem productive. What have we missed? We were thinking about the bed. We grumble. Someone is watching. Someone is a snitch. Someone must be watched. Carefully. We try napping in the car. We have been skipping lunch. Our space is reserved. RESERVED FOR EMPLOYEE. Our name is missing. The parking structure shudders. Tires squeal. There will be a collapse. A terrifying catastrophe. A disaster. A conflagration. A holocaust. Something arduous. Something wearisome. We count the bodies. A Cadillac. A Honda. A Mercedes. A Nissan. A VW. A Saturn. The bed is cool and hard and aerodynamic. Thirty miles to the gallon. Some kind of hybrid. Something more than a bed. It rotates in our showroom. We have lost the keys. At noon it is bright. This is not helping. This changes nothing. We have been skipping lunch. This makes us dizzy. This makes us grumble. Our work suffers. We have been warned. The one in person. The other in writing. We examine the bed like a body. We could have returned it. We had thirty days. It has no lumps. It does not sag. It has no cysts. No tumors. No blemishes. No valleys. It has no canyons. No moraines. No ridges. No rifts. The bed has no topography. The bed has no landscape. The surface is clean. As if we have never been there. Not yet. Like a tomb. If we could open it. Slip ourselves in. We have heard stories. We know they are lies. A sarcophagus. Behind glass. Protected by alarms. The bed like an artifact. Protected by a curse. We watch it from the doorway. The bed like an altar. An unearthed foundation. A plinth supporting history. The bed supports us. The bed is firm. Firm enough. It is firm enough for that. The bed is solid. The bed is strong. It undermines us. Makes us ashamed. We cannot stand up straight. We are weak. We are enervated. We have grown pale. We should hang in the closet. Creased and faded. Stained. Pilled. Snagged. Shapeless. We should slip from the hanger. Pooled. It is like no other bed. None that we have known. We sensed its singularity. We had our shoes off. We thought it said Sleep. We know we were wrong. We can admit this. We know we misheard. We know. We know it. There was flute music. We had our shoes off. Children bouncing beside us. On another bed. We tried that one. It was too soft. Our socks had stripes. We did not know they had holes. The children did somersaults. Barrel Rolls and Seat Drops. Corkscrews. Cat Twists. Our eyes were closed. We thought the bed whispered. We thought we heard Sleep. It did not whisper Sleep. The bed whispers nothing. The bed is mute. The bed does not creak. The bed absorbs. The bed muffles. The bed stifles. The bed chokes. The bed silences. The bed emanates silence. The bed is zero. It inspires contemplation. White. Still. Silent. Flat. Patient. Moon. Star. Void. These are not the qualities we were seeking. Not quite. The bed feels distant. We are still making payments. Now they are late. Night is over. Our eyes are open. We are not sleeping well. We will attempt an analogy. The bed feels like stone, says the one. Like wood, says the other. We will not say steel. The bed seems natural. We agree on this. We argue. We argue the qualities of wood and of stone. Durable, says the one. Flexible, says the other. Grain. Seam. Fibrous. Foliated. We apply these to the surface of the bed. This comes to nothing. The bed is resistant. It unsettles wood. It muddles stone. The bed ramifies. We argue. It is not the first time. We know nothing. We don’t know. We are furious. We lie still. Time passes. The world grows more uncertain. Something happens. The one reconsiders wood. The other reappraises stone. We sense these changes. They warm us like fever. The bed embraces the changes. The changes in us. The bed does not change. The bed does not embrace us. It is not a bed that embraces. No caress or consolation. The bed has no tenderness. Its embrace is conceptual. But the bed is not a concept. The bed is real. It is hard on our backs. On our joints. It crushes our genitals. The bed seems less and less like wood or stone. A bit more like steel. An object forged to do violence
to our bodies. The bed is not natural. We can admit this. The bed is a scourge. The bed is wrathful. We feel compelled. As by a spring. As by a catapult. We are propelled into the air. Our feet are driven to the floor. The floor is cold and hard. Our feet are bare and tender. It is a cruel bed. We can admit this. We are behind on our payments. Our work suffers. We have been warned. One of us is fired. The other begins to smoke. Smoke marijuana. Smoke opium. It is not the first time. The other drinks beaujolais. Syrah and malbec. Has an affair. Why try and hide it? There is significant evidence. We have an argument. It is not the first. There was some intercourse. Intercourse at a motel. One of us slept. The one at the motel. The other was awake. The one is well-rested. The one slept for hours. There was also some intercourse. But that’s not the point. The one is well-rested. The one feels good. The other resents the sleeping. More than the intercourse. The other wants to punish the one. Wants the one to feel worse. Worse than the other. Wants the one to sleep poorly. Wants the one to lie on the bed. Lie awake. Wants the one to lie with anyone but the other. To lie on the bed. Wants to punish anyone. Wants to witness the one suffering. Wants to fall asleep to cries for mercy. The punishment is conceptual. The other will lie on a couch. The one on another. No one lies on the bed. We lie in separate rooms. Still we are not sleeping well. We lie awake. We contemplate separation. We would move out of the house. Neither would take the bed. Not the one. Not the other. One or the other would take the late payments. The bed would remain in its room. Alone. Independent. Enduring. The bed invincible. The bed victorious. The bed will not separate. Never. The bed will remain whole. The bed will remain. Immovable. Immutable. Ineluctable. The bed is unity. We see this from the doorway. It counsels reunification. We kneel before the bed. We stand before the bed. We reconcile on the bed. But we do not sleep. We are not sleeping well. The bed is unmoved. The bed is redoubtable. The bed is impenetrable. The bed is impregnable. The bed is a fortress. The bed is a bastion. The bed is virginal. As if we have never laid upon it. As if the bed is a concept that we conceived together. As if our imagination had begotten a bed. A bed that is greater than us. Celibate. More severe. More unforgiving. More rigorous than us. A bed that chastises us for our flaws. Our sins and our foibles. We are exposed by the bed. We are humiliated. We are refused. We are rejected by the bed. We are driven out. We beg to return. We watch it from the doorway. We long to be restored. We abase ourselves. We lie on the floor. We lie like animals. Like vertebrates. We lie like invertebrates. We lie like crash victims. Victims of an attack. Sufferers of disease. We lie like the living and like the dead. These attitudes are conceptual. Our suffering exceeds us. We are seeking a form. One that does not yet exist. Our representations are avant garde. The bed is bounded by traditions. It refuses to recognize. Its ways are esoteric. The bed is inscrutable. Its intentions are ambiguous. We lie in its shadow. The bed is not reassuring. We doubt it will protect us. The shadow is conceptual. We feel it in the dark. As if the bed would collapse on us. Like a failed civilization. We feel it teeming with plots and assassinations. We submit ourselves. What else can we do? We crawl underneath it. Our hair is there. Things lost and forgotten. Signs of a past we cannot recognize. A body ornament. A utensil. A shard of pottery. A garment made of wool. A page of text and numerals. A calendar. A figurine. A weapon. It is close. The bed. It rests on us. It compresses us. It is dark underneath. And inappropriate. And unsanitary. And there is something else. Something vaguely familiar. Something that is not me. Something moist that is panting. That is weeping.