Amphisbaena

Chapter One

He had so very nearly lost his life, that what remained was wonderfully precious to him. It was obvious in the anxious brightness of his eyes, how proud he was, after the great shock, of being alive. But he had been so much hurt that something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone. There was a blank of insentience.

-from Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence

The pressure of the deep coerced against his outer and inner self, an astounding force of weight and volume, and he felt there should be no return for him to the surface from the ocean’s depth and immensity. His last breath had been taken with so little effort or thought before his drop from the raft above, and as this breath searched to escape him, he would cease being threatened by demise and would encounter this with certainty, a dire end as nutrient for various forms of life on the ocean floor. The great shark he had seen when entering the water nudged at his left leg, testing him for reaction, and Bill began to ascertain the probability of his reaching the ocean floor so far below had diminished. He concluded that his body, once lively and now useless, would meet digestion long before the silt.

The ocean surface opened toward the expansive sky then, like a vast ammobium at day’s break, and swallowed the Sun. This burning round of hydrogen dimmed, drifting through the dark beneath the waves. Little time had passed before the Sun, fighting off its own perish in the water, let out a tremendous volley of light, which gave Bill a grander sense of vision. With the ocean illuminated and the water warmed with outstanding natural light, he looked below and noted that there was not one shark but hundreds, and several of them were larger than the raft he had abandoned above. The sapped air in his chest tugged upward then, abandoning his system, departing his mouth in a rapid, eager stream of burbling gas through liquid. This indicated an oxygenated hope at joining the air above, which was its natural state. This also finalized Bill’s probable demise. The pressure intensified and his head ached with severity.

The first Atlantic White Tip to approach was one of the largest. With a strong jaw replete in teeth, a body streamlined for predatory articulation, and a large head gravid with inhuman senses, the White Tip was a watery horror. The shark drew its gray body about him several times with both hurry and ease. The speed at which this creature could turn and vacate then arch and hark back was mesmerizing. Bill thought it a hopeless and strange thing to be so impressed by the approach of a devil. He watched the brute, knowing it would soon take him for pieces and eat them in a world for which man was not innately suited to live.

The White Tip circled back and sped forward at the small, foreign animal, closing on Bill. The turning of its body brought the maw near to the prey’s middle. Bill did what most lost primates would do in alien habitat, about to be devoured. He faced his attacker and tilted back, allowing their torsos to meet. There was a strength he possessed that welled in him, awaiting release, and as the shark collided against him, chest to chest, Bill permitted his knowledge to manifest action. This was a tactic he had learned from the tango, dance of passion. The long White Tip calmed at the touch and allowed Bill to become the leader. The man placed his right hand on the White Tip’s lower back, extending his left to grasp his partner’s right fin. The shark understood and settled its left fin on Bill’s right shoulder. Bill tilted his head and looked into the shark’s eyes, slowly nodding as they held one another. The first beat struck and they began to truly live.

The tango set them close to one another, gliding through the water to the wonder of other sharks. A vast conglomeration of tuna crowded near and whispers traveled fast through their ranks. The power of Bill’s form and movement was hypnotizing to them and they held this rare display of dance in a startled, ominous reverence. Bill and the great predator, now his acquiescent partner, spiraled with each step down into the depths as the beat drove them on, hearts meeting in a revelry of melodious rhythm. They reached the ocean floor and were joined by groups of starfish devotedly turning about on rocky perches. Bill was pleased to learn that starfish chirped like birds, a pleasant sound to discover in such a usually dark place. The starfish continued turning and chirping to the tango and soon were met with responsive sounds from arriving nudibranches. Prominent octopods crawled from beneath rock and moved about in wondrous rotations with scuttling Jonah crabs, creating the scene of a vast, underwater celebration.

Follow tight, Bill advised his partner. This was upsetting to the shark as the statement inferred this primate thought the advice relevant, and that the White Tip had not been following near enough to proper form. The shark lowered its head due to this, dejected, but Bill’s hand fell against the shark’s chin. With a gentle but empowering lift, Bill returned the predator’s toothy head to a proud height.

Stay wonderful, Bill said then. The shark smiled, feeling foolish for having doubted the land-dwelling visitor. On the ocean floor, Bill shifted his weight to his left foot and performed his forward rock step. A haze of uprising silt masked their feet and fins from clear view. The shark gasped at the keen motion of Bill’s rock step and gained a potent respect for the human’s mastery of the Argentinian dance of lovers. Bill drew his weight back to his left and stepped forward with the right to complete a gliding, aquatic half turn. He had ascended into a realm of dance not reached by his kind, and he had done so by descending into a dark realm of the Earth just as unimaginable. Bill had assumed the focus and streamlined motions of a shark, the mystique and depth of the great oceanic trenches, and held within him the very rhythm of the tide.

You’re really good, the shark said. Of course Bill was good. He had left the place of his kind, the land, and ventured into the natural pond, releasing his air to the faint past. What creature did so without a grander sense of purpose? Only man would give up his necessities for a more august prize. This was his power over the world, over the birds and sharks above and below. Bill had come not to feel passion but to become passion, and show all he encountered the true nature of his wicked moves. Bill released the White Tip at a rhythmic prompt that only he fathomed and the great shark fell into tonic, the only spiritual state a shark could attain, and one that overwhelmed the creature in pleasurable shock. The White Tip drifted from him into the fog of upraised silt that had risen during their tango.

Without a partner the dance ceased. All of the ocean crowded near and admired his form, breathing his presence. This was the moment Bill had expected and called. He turned and looked for the power he knew to be near. There was no greater judge of a man than a being superior to man. After a short scan of the ocean floor, he saw this superordinate being. Bill smiled and waved. Poseidon the Earthshaker returned this greeting standing on an outcropping of rock in the distance. Two seals were circling the Hellenic god with an artful syncopation, each seeming to follow the route of the other with watery perfection.

Bill waited for what he knew Poseidon would rummage up for him. This Grecian god surely understood the nature of dance, that the artistry of motion could shake the Earth nearly so much as a titan. Soon Bill saw Poseidon’s gift, a mermaid, edging toward him from behind the outcropping. She seemed pretty.

Thanks, man, Bill said. Poseidon offered a thumbs up and leaned back to watch the presentation. The mermaid would be Bill’s dance partner for all time and there could be no greater dancer with which to tango in the underwater theater than a woman who was half fish. She drew near and Bill reeled back, horrified. From across the murky floor came not the pretty mermaid he had at first surmised, but the ghastliest woman any man had ever chanced to see. She did not have the lower half of a fish, as he had come to believe was proper in a mermaid of worth, but rather, the lower half of a serpent. Her upper half was grotesque and malformed, and her hair coiled in sporadic drifts. This turbulent hair was comprised, as her lower half, of snake material. Each strand adrift, menacing, the gorgon’s grotesque head was topped with a horrid bouquet of serpents.

Oh, come on, Bill said, agitated with the Earthshaker, She’s a gorgon. Totally fugly. Let’s not go that route. Poseidon only smiled as Medusa, the cursed nymph, a monstrosity for which the Greek god maintained a friends-with-benefits relationship, arched toward Bill. Her body undulated through the water, trailing the snakes from her head over her back and shoulders. A motion near Bill’s groin alarmed him and he looked down, batting at what he saw. Sea serpents. Dozens of them. They coiled and swiveled between and around his legs as if looking for the spot to bite first. Medusa stopped near and eyed Bill up and down, gauging him with a sexual appreciation. He averted looking into her eyes because he had seen the movies and knew what would happen.

I came down here to dance. This is bullshit, he muttered, watching the snakes dart about his body, closer to him with each circling. Some of them had risen to neck level and now eyed this portion of his body with zest. They were forming opinions about his dancing and this bothered Bill. Nervous, he caught a glance at Medusa’s eyes, which was quite an error. This brief contact was all the gorgon needed for her curse to overcome him. Bill felt his limbs stiffen in the onset of paralysis. His skin hardened and cracked. His thoughts dulled. As his body petrified, becoming the heavy stone that would certainly keep him weighted to the ocean’s floor until the end of time, he used his last movement to signal Poseidon. The god watched with intrigue as Bill Sherman slowly lifted his hand and offered its middle finger. He was but a rude statue then. There was a motionless moment in which Bill could see the sharks descend. One of them shot forward and struck him at the Earthshaker’s command, shattering Bill into a stony drift of imprecise, awkward debris. All the man had wanted was to tango.

***

With the human forearm’s relation to the wrist, each of these keeping deep gristle, but mere neighbors by centimeters and coexisting in an excellent mode of pivot and pinion, thrusts of the hands could be made and with much velocity. The locomotive portion of the human brain, controlling a bioelectrical superhighway through the body, could lift arms however unfit, and these signals could ripple the abdomen like a ribbed sea, even while legs, the neck, and the tongue wriggled into their own levered movements. The brain created deep, intricate motions in even the smallest portions of a human body. This body could be entirely retracted, ready to spring out wild, leaping into the air, flipping, twisting, whatever the orders given by the gray brain above. So it was, with a keen harmony of small, appendant gestures, that Mary Christine St. Ellsworth let her shoulders fall back and her knees rise, bringing her body into a position dedicated not only to falling, but to doing so in an infantile, total yield of her body to the laws of common physics.

Bill Sherman woke from one awful predicament into another. He lifted his head forward, confused from having fallen asleep in his chair during the lecture, and followed the sound of the scream to its creator. The calendarium’s vaulted ceiling sent this sound unevenly across the walls and caused the scream to seem of higher pitch and depth than it was. He watched as Mary’s slim, aged back fell onto the table in fit. He blinked through this several times and then stood.

Mary Christine St. Ellsworth, in her newly haywire mind, thought up a marvelous trick of kicking out her pantyhose-covered, rheumatic legs when she hit the table. She did this into the gut of Walter Osbourne, who did not anticipate the incoming assail. Thus surprise was born in him. He discovered then that the floor of the Latin Hall Calendarium was warm, and he found, pain from his stomach aside, the subtle glide of this warmth against his shoulder and face almost welcoming. Walter remained on the floor beside the table where Mary battered herself screaming. Her lecture was assuredly over.

There are men so severe as to look away from an escaped breast the instant they learn of it. These men close their eyes tight during orgasm, disdain usual restroom activity, and are to be found with thin matching socks, enunciated clothing, and in a manner of life sealed away from outer disturbance by a strong use of the grumble. Richard Dutch had expended just under one thousand breaths isolating and stigmatizing his grumble, and when he gave this to the air the sound was so honed and deep, so ultimate and resigned, it could be mistaken, as it had been in the past, for an admission of loathing. Ms. St. Ellsworth’s breasts had been unsheathed from their guard and, having slid from her blouse-top to the base of her gizzard, now wobbled and undulated with her unpredictable flails of the waist and legs. The Dutch gave his grumble and the loosed breasts continued jerking about in her seizure. This was as if a game wherein each breast tried to reach her chin before the other but were thwarted back by the sonic heaves that issued from her mouth.

Christ, someone cover those things up, The Dutch said, his eyes aside and mouth downturned. The emission of neither his grumble nor comment were heard, however, over the shrill, mind-lancing squeals Ms. St. Ellsworth had concocted in her spasms. Conjoining this awful, vowelish sound were the agitating yips of Merveilleux, her three-legged, poisonous corgi, now snapping its clean, tooth-brushed teeth at Mr. Osbourne’s hair, for which he had little. This tiny tri-ped was of such viciousness and temerity that one might discern her newest intent was to take Mr. Osbourne for her kill. Walter made a kind of whine on the floor as he leaned his balding head away from the dog and weakly batted his wrist at her. Merveilleux gave a shaky and wild assurance that her clout-nail teeth would keep this wrist au courant with their various uses.

Hold her down! John Beasly said. He was the progenitor of the calendarist conference. His presence had been in support of Mary’s lecture, which was to outline the future of their small group.

No, sit her up! Janet Hogue said. She was the representative of Holt and Finch Publishing, Guides and Articles Division, and was the editor of several calendarists present.

Put her tits in her shirt, said Tipsy Osbourne, cold and pessimistic wife to Walter, yet bold and foul-mouthed devourer of vanguard sex with a nervous John Beasly. She stood near her lover, watching Mary’s collapse with agitation.

Is it a disorder? Bill asked. He was a struggling calendarist and stay-at-home dad, though for children that were not his own, and in a home that did not belong to him. He was prone to falling asleep during lectures he cared for and had lately been overcome by a falloff of his creative skill as a maker of calendars.

Watch it— she’s kickin’! Todd Lansington advised. Todd was a successful calendarist and kit-car enthusiast, a lover of women, and a jocular dope.

This is fucked, exclaimed Ryan Culver, a twenty-two-year-old high school graduate and breast fanatic, at that moment in a mode both horrified and aroused. He was the most recent owner of the Latin Hall Calendarium gift shop. His pressing of the gift shop into the online world had generated revenue uncharacteristic for someone of his age and education.

GAAAAAANAAAAANAAAAA, came from Mary Christine St. Ellsworth, the late-life owner of the Latin Hall Calendarium (but not its gift shop), curator of the attached Museum of Calendaric Artifacts, and the author of the publicly shrugged-at True Measure in Gregorian Time, a somewhat officious, non-fiction novel describing the invention of the western calendar. Her life and ownership of the calendarium would terminate from a blood clot in her brain, one so small it would not have affected most people of even below average health. This would take place in nine seconds.

A quiet room accepting the tired voice of an older woman through four small speakers in the ceiling corners had erupted into a confounding mess of shouts and questions, the fling of arms, the grasp of hands, the bounce of breasts, the cease of a heart. The room returned slowly from this ruckus, to the quiet it had initially kept, and all were silent. Bill Sherman first uttered the thing, and to the dozens of others in the calendarium, the statement was both apt and powerful.

Mary’s dead. This was delivered in a tryst with disbelief.

Walter Osbourne, having risen to his feet by using the same table Mary lay on as a brace, stood at her hose-covered feet and stared down in a daze. His wife, Tipsy, had fit the two escaped articles back into the deceased woman’s blouse and was slowly rubbing her palms on her pants as if to cleanse the hands from their contact with dead breasts.

She... she was just talking, Walter mumbled, shocked.Does anyone have a phone? Todd Lansington asked, examining his own. People began fumbling in their pockets for these devices, taking more time than one might suspect was normal. They stood there staring around the body but not at it, patting their chest pockets, flexing their eyes and making noises of ‘hmm’ and ‘oh’ and other small sounds of looking about for something. There was a yapping from the floor then, which quickly became a muffled series of growls, as if the mouth of the dog had closed around cloth. This muffled sound was followed by a slight, pained gasp from Walter, who shook his leg to dislodge Merveilleux before nudging his heel back hard. The growling transformed into a yelp and ceased.

Isn’t Nina supposed to be here like, any minute? Ryan asked.

She will, John Beasly replied, She’s bringing the gift bags because I forgot them.

It’s not your fault, Ryan responded, trying to affect care. John scoffed.

Of course it’s not my fault. Why the fuck would this be my fault? We’re not even talking about Mary, we’re talking about her daughter. Fault doesn’t apply.

Well, I know, Ryan appealed. He had only thought to say something deep, like in a dramatic movie, and simply had not thought it out before uttering his statement. The room began to elevate into a clearer consciousness, in that all felt certain enough about the events that had taken place to begin stating things at one another.

My phone is dead.

Mine, too.

Just awful.

She was just talking...

I don’t have my phone.

Poor Nina, her mother died.

"I can’t believe it... just... she’s just gone."

I can. It’s always like that.

Jesus, I’ve never known someone that died.

Wait until a funeral for someone you’ve slept with.

Does anyone have a working phone?

Was it a seizure, you think did it?

Can someone shut that damn dog up?

Her calendars were amazing.

Oh, they always were.

Always will be.

"Does anyone have a phone with reception?"

Chapter Two

She could not remove it from her thoughts, and for the third time that day, Sandy opened the envelope, extracting the small slip of yellow paper: Someone is in love with you. Now mail this on to someone you love romantically, but who doesn’t know. Who had sent this? Certainly not David; since the divorce, he had all but refused to acknowledge knowing her. She thought about the men she worked with, crossing them out of her mind one by one. After a moment of concluding she was being gullible, Sandy rose from her chair and dropped the slip of paper, with a laugh, in the garbage. She did not have time for dull games, or childish men, for that matter. Even if the note was genuine, it presupposed she held a love for someone, or was looking to be loved, herself. This was untrue, most days.

-from The Chain Letter, Rita Gordan

The house on Bessinger was neither old nor new, the same being true for Bessinger itself, the circumferent neighborhood, and most of the residents and homes that created the place. In a middle-aged zone of materials, a faux cosmos of track-housing and sequential mailboxes, Bill Sherman spent his days. He wrote out his calendars and snapped images with his camera, allowed himself to be part of a household, and until recently, emailed his publisher each Monday. The publishing company, Holt and Finch, was middle-aged, and Bill’s computer was middle-aged, and it was during a morning months ago, after watching a middle-aged bird being torn into by a rare-to-charge, middle-aged tabby on the lawn, that Bill had begun to question the nature of publishing. Where magnanimous, gray rules and tactics once promised him a means to some future demographic, to publication, he now saw only birds and tabbys. Where he knew camaraderie and networking through the Calendarium, he now saw Mary Christine, its chair and creator shivering in her guts and having dropped on a cheap, collapsible table, dying shocked, painfully, suddenly, out of reason and without dignity. The calendarium, his residence, his occupation, and even his dismal mood... none of these things were old or new.

The house on Bessinger was not his own but where he lived, and though Bill had enough mental draft to acknowledge he had not, nor would he ever, be very pleased with his life inside the house, he lacked the cognitive artistry to actively realize he was also miserable outside of it. Tulips seemed to wilt before his feet as he fetched mail that was frivolous and impertinent. His creative works, which once left his hands with a tart and spicy quality needing so little coercion, now but trickled from him, mimicking the low pressure dribble of water from the kitchen sink. The dreary weather was not only above his town but had snuck within him and now characterized even his appearance.

There was a quiet, near ghostly shriek in his subconscious with each moment of his life spent turning a doorknob, showering, preening, and then straightening a damp towel. Headings with numbers appeared beside his head, transparent and meaningful, alluding to all the worthwhile things he had thought of and even wanted, but a fantasy of numerals that did not describe his actual life. Children: 1. Countries Visited: 8. Languages Spoken: 3. Figures in Annual Income: 6. Total Past Sexual Partners: 0. These were sums of what he would have preferred over what he had.

Bill had a brother with three children and the brother had a home with four rooms. The brother was successful in most areas of life save two: Marriage, which he had failed, this of his particular achievements having been judicially dissolved several years back, and fathering, which he was good at, and a thing he felt in his heart, but a function he was unable to perform as often as he wanted owing to being successful in a busy occupation. The two men and three children, of which only one was female, maintained the household and followed daily regiments of general domestication. Uncle Bill attempted to impart on the children bits of his wisdom and thought, and the children made a stronger attempt to not hear it.

The uncle watched over the three children through the days. Each morning, he left the home’s garage in which he had taken residence with a desk and bed, and entered the tottering, minute-by-minute world of babysitting. He listened to their sudden changes in music. He played with their progressive toys. He ate what they ate and he yawned when they yawned. At times, Bill compared the children’s traits to their father and mother, picking pieces of each child and charting it as being of one family side or the other. Christian’s ears belonged to his father. Nick’s feet belonged to his mother. Jessica’s eyes were somehow much like Bill’s own eyes. He set their toys and habits near his own childhood happenings and articles, comparing to discern which of the two generations had the world best. His conclusion fell to either side and changed by day.

Each flu infection was felt, each swear word heard, each meal given, and each meal taken. Years had passed in this manner. The days were connected to more days, head to tail, an ouroboros. This was indicative of the way the children were connected to minutes, each twisting into another, changing them, not always for the better. These durations, one by one, found them a bit less childish, a touch older, yet nowhere near enough of these minutes in their lives had accrued to begin filling a lively calendar.

I thought you were doing the car wrecks thing. Roger said in the kitchen. At the table, seated with the children, Bill sighed. His brother’s insight into his workings was only tertiary, and carried little sway over Bill, but Roger’s mention of the new calendar was upsetting. The new calendar had become problematic and Bill did not prefer to estimate how much time he had thrown away by working on it, or else how much time he had spent wanting to work but being unable. The children at the table were being quiet and somber, and into this scene Bill gave a second sigh, exaggerated loudly and with traces of a moan, to attempt drawing a rise out of them. Only Nick noticed, glancing up at his uncle with annoyance.

Are you still doing the car wrecks? Roger asked, having received no answer to his previous statement.

That’s on the backburner, Bill answered, Hey, did you know the first auto crash pre-dates the invention of the automobile by three years?

Wouldn’t that be impossible?

It’d have to be. But I once ate toast without any bread, so there you have it.

Seriously, what happened with the car wreck calendar?

I don’t know, Bill admitted. The notion that Bill did not know what had happened to the car wreck calendar was exactly what had happened to the car wreck calendar. He had lost his knowledge of the project. For a time, he had managed to work with this new calendar on a sort of creative autopilot, but even that had malfunctioned. Bill had somehow removed himself from his work and was now having trouble finding his way back in. Such was the way of good art projects that needed closeness but did not receive this for a long enough span of time. Bill was troubled most so because he was not confident he wanted back into his creativity. He imagined a bald, officious man in his publisher’s headquarters, peeking at the new calendar over Janet Hogue’s shoulder and laughing his head off at Bill’s work. Car accidents by month... what stupidity.

Can’t find any more accident pictures? Roger inquired.

I don’t know, Bill repeated. He thought of Todd Lansington, another calendarist he knew and one that was successfully living off of royalties. Lansington lived in a two story, warmly furnished cabin in Virginia, and was likely right then grunting in approval of himself, noodling out more money-fetching calendars on themes of ‘babies in grown-up outfits’ and ‘funny statements next to cute, infant animals’.

Well, you knew last month. Talked my ear off about it. New work, new blood, you said. Roger was a kind and busy man, a good brother, and the only obvious sibling trait he had kept from his childhood was that of shrugging off his little brother’s troubles, often to Bill’s benefit. Roger managed his own audio/video franchise store, was divorced just over three years, and had an unlikely obsession with dishes always seeming dirty, no matter how clean they were.

It’s not the car wreck part that’s gotten away from me, it’s the calendar part, Bill said after a moment.

What do you mean?

I don’t know. This was the third time the confession had been uttered. Mary Christine, Bill’s only reliable backer, flashed him then from the coffin.

Is it because of that conference, the lady you knew that passed away?

No, Bill said, frustrated. The demise of Mary was troublesome for all the reasons one might be troubled by an acquaintance’s death, and while she had given Bill a chance, introduced him to Holt and Finch, her passing was not what had caused Bill to abandon his calendar. That outcome had been built over months. To relieve his being foiled by Roger’s questions, Bill imagined himself leaping from his chair, landing on the kitchen table, kicking aside the plates of the raucously quiet children. Roger would look at his brother, take in the power and emotion. The judges would wait with calm and, after pausing to receive his nod from a nearby coach, Bill would perform his wondrous backflip from the table and onto the floor. When he landed, he would be complemented with six points from the Canadian judge for his clean rotation, five by the British judge for the arms-up finish and steady dismount, and eleven by the American judge for enacting his angry will on others.

You’re just in a rut, man. You’ll kick it, Roger said.

Sure, Bill acquiesced.

The morning, despite a brief talk of ruts and careers, soon spiraled into the general. Roger vacated for work and, by noon, Bill had grown tired of listening to Jessica whine about Christian, and was near to giving up his attempts at drawing the notice of Nick away from the young man’s private television. Saturdays were often easier on Bill, as his brother’s weekends were the prime events in the children’s lives. The three children would sit in a theater watching action and eating buttered popcorn, or venture to the Science Center to look at kiosks that outlined carbon dating. They would be with their father and Bill would have some time for his work, or in recent months, sulking. Instead of these activities, however, Bill and the children were forced to spend that Saturday with one another, as Roger had been asked to fulfill a task at work that, when mentioned in the house two days prior, even uncle Bill did not grasp.

Pancakes are for breakfast, not lunch, Christian said, waving off Bill’s preparation.

Pancakes were invented by the Mongols, who only ate one meal a day. That was their lunch. It goes by logic then, that pancakes were invented for lunch.

How come you don’t have a job like dad? Christian asked then, nudging his accent of ‘you’, ‘job’ and ‘dad’ in a rotten, bendy way that only a young, teasing child could get away with. At nine years old, Christian had begun asking an allotment of questions that carried more depth than in previous years. The trouble with this was that Christian had also developed a mean streak and had a preternatural understanding of taunts and rudeness. Seated beside him for lunch was his sister, Jessica. Only she was eating the pancakes. Christian rose and waited for Bill to respond to his snipe. He was at a mouthy age, though a somewhat fun one. The boy was intrigued with insect habits, his privates, and showing people up.

For the same reason you don’t have a job, Bill answered, returning the sponge-mop to the utility closet near the kitchen.

Nuh-uh. Because you’re not a kid, Christian replied.

No, I mean that, like you, I have nothing going on in my life. I’m barren to purpose.

Nyeh, Christian said, walking off to his room. This was the standard sound he uttered when annoyed with his uncle. His agitation was easy to capture and was one of the only means Bill had discovered beyond bribery to induce the young boy into entertaining himself.

How about you, mein piglet? Bill asked when Christian was gone. Jessica glanced up and stared at Bill, food in her mouth, not chewing, not moving. She was deeply confused, somewhat paralyzed by his attention. Her view of him over the four years of her life had not changed since the start. He was large, alien, and tended to talk at her in befuddling ways through all times of day.

"You like pancakes for lunch, right?" Bill asked. He received only the continuation of her moronic stare. This was the deepest, purest state of confusion, and she wore this aspect more than any other. Bill was bothered being stared at in this way, with a blank nothing behind the shininess of her eyes, which were his own young eyes. Jessica was nearing the age of attending kindergarten, did not chew her food enough, and her favorite pastime was ever-so-slowly pointing at people for no reason when they were not looking.

Do you want more? Bill asked. Jessica puzzled over this a moment, then lifted her hands and looked at them, examining the pinkness and shape, though for what reason, only she knew. The little girl leaned her head to the side then, seeming taken aback with whatever her hands had told her.

Vexed. Well, there you have it, Bill said with a clap, giving up. He turned for the sink, intent on seeing an end to what had been started there. Bill had learned that the best tactic to use with little Jessica, when she was puzzled, was to leave her be. Explaining things only set her into a near catatonic stare. Slow, she regained her sense of place and lowered her hands, eyes lifting again to gaze at her uncle, mouth thoughtlessly open, the balled pancake mash sitting on her tongue like a drowned mouse. Some time passed before she returned to eating.

The game involved uncle Bill using his eyes as weapons, lowering the lids to sinister slits and peering hard at the back of Nick’s head. The duration he could do this, at several inches away, translated directly into strategic goals. After twenty seconds of this fantasy game, Bill would win a headband. After forty, a garbage disposal device. If he lasted a full minute of staring without a response from the young man, crouching behind the chair and peering at Nick’s head, Bill would be awarded a black, fully-staffed, private jet. Nick’s game, however, was on the television, and involved stealing cars and running over pedestrians that held an admiration for seemingly random profanity. Nick acknowledged this game by vanishing within its zones and fashion. While his body sat in a chair near the middle of his room, in a reclined position, his mind had been taken out and drawn ever more perversely into the virtual, carjacking euphoria beyond him, beyond the screen, beyond even life. Nick did not acknowledge Bill’s staring game, however, due to his knowing nothing about it. Bill won the garbage disposal device but grew bored of staring into the back of Nick’s fifteen-year-old head and gave up shortly before he would have won the private jet.

I’m behind you, the Creeper said. The young man did not respond but for several quick taps of colorful buttons on his game controller, and the smooth glide of a rubbery thumbstick.

Your brother and sister ate. You need to come eat, Bill the Creeper stated. A thin, Australian man onscreen then drew a shotgun from some invisible perch near