Muzzle Diaries.

Cary Grant.

2012-03-07T13:29:00.001-08:00

Istick the needle in my arm and out comes a puffing stench of rot, like a putridballoon.

Inmy ears, the pop of a child’s birthday party.

Fiveyears old and swinging a club at a papier-mâché donkey. The children undulatein line behind me. All the parental eyes stroke at my arms, spinning me with anxiety.The club’s handle slips around in my sweaty palms. I search for my mother,finding her, disengaged, smoking a cigarette, perched on the fireplace brick,one leg crossed over the other at the thigh: her legs not a mother’s legs. Hereyes, the only eyes not on me. I swing and the club connects with the donkey, awet sound. A lurid spray of color erupts from the gash, and the children comescreaming, knocking me down and aside. The club doings spinning on thehardwood. The parents laugh. I pincer a rolling tube of candy, confused. I takebackwards steps, one, two, three, until I’m sitting in the skirted lap of amom, not my own. The parents all laugh, this one saying, “No, no, no, honey –your mom is over there,” pointing to the cloud of lipstick-stained smoke. Thelaughs are less and strained when I sit in a second mother’s lap, not my own.

Themouth in my arm snarls toothless, Halloween yellow and green around the edges.Gangrenous, tender with pain, a pirate’s disease. “I have scurvy, you filthylandlubber.” I have rickets and halitosis and malaria, the whole hepatitisalphabet. The mouth in my arm is a pinhole melted cigarette burn open, solderedand angry. Mucus green highlights the system of collapsing veins leading to andfrom the gape, a cancerous lightning storm. I can’t stop touching it, sendingme crashing.

I’mdrowning in green grass, waving. I’m young and alive in the Summer of Death:first Grandma K., then Grandma G., an uncle I didn’t know, then a cousin in acar crash, and then Cary Grant, who died on the same day as Tommy. In thehospital room, the televisions had breaking news about a death, and I startled.“The world mourns today the loss of,” and I thought they’d say Tommy, but theysaid Cary Grant, who I didn’t know, but who I know now, from that day forward.

Tommywith his white skin and navy blue suit and his long, slender fingers holding achain of beads, silent and still, hair combed, and me all the time screaming inmy head, shouting, “No, no, no.” They had folding chairs set up in rows andcolumns, touching side-to-side and so close front-to-back that the adults hadto walk on sideways feet, bumping into themselves and saying, “Excuse me,excuse me,” and I sat myself directly in the middle so that nobody would botherto struggle their way over to me and say, “I’m sorry,” but they did. One byone, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about, Tommy.” And he laid there, in a box, still, adead boy dressed to look like an alive boy, my mother too sad to cry. I lookedat Grandpa K. alone with the sorrow he’d carried from his own funeral a fewmonths prior, and wondered when you started to lose your sadness and he quietlyanswered me, “Never, boy,” while studying a coffee stain in the carpet. And hewas right.

GrandpaK. died the following summer.

Ilaid in the grass, drowning. I rode my bike to Tommy’s grave. I did it, atfirst, I think, for attention. I disappeared in the morning and came home late.I wanted my mom to be panicked and demand where I was, shaking my shoulders.“Tommy’s grave, Mom,” I’d say, and she’d have gasped, if she’d asked, but shedidn’t. But I enjoyed the trip, and made it the next day and the next. I laidin the grass and pretended it was water, sucking at me, pulling me in. Tommy’sskeletal arms, reaching up, pulling me in. I stared at the sun until it was acandle on my nightstand.

Burning,spoon blackening, the color or rust and regret, the stale memory of years. Myphone never rings. I suck at the juices with my mosquito proboscis, greedy. Thestructure of the room flickers in the pale, yellow light: everything taking onthe impermanent quality of dream. I penetrate the weeping fester of my arm, andthe electric wailing pops and fizzles in my skull. The chamber gushes with mypoison blood, and I push down the plunger, shoving the discharge back into myquavering body, and I fold, hitting the floor, frothing a puddle. My arm flopsdisturbingly at my side, a drowning fish.

Atcrooked hours of the night, I heard her. She crept along the baseboards and shebreathed the dust, the shed skin of her dead son. She twisted herself into hiscowboy sheets and howled into his pillow. She was a part of the night like thecrickets and whispering cars outside my window. I held my breath and wishedmyself dead. To be shadow and moonlight, a haunted puddle on the carpet for herto scrape her nails through, to want back.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Fran challenged me with "It's not easy being green." and I challenged jamelah with "It's so fucking beautiful."

I got pulled over on my way to work.

2012-03-02T11:24:00.001-08:00

I got pulled over on my way to work.

I have a job. I work at a computer.

I get paid. I have a direct deposit. I have a bank card thatserves as a credit card with overdraft protection.

I bought a car. I don’t have enough money – either in myaccount or in my overdraft protection – to buy the car, but the bank told me Icould borrow the money from them, and pay them back later. But they’d only lendme the money if I promised to keep my job and my direct deposit with theirbank, so that they could take the money out of my account immediately on thefirst day of each month. “You don’t even have to write us a check,” the womantold me, smiling.

I was driving to work on a Tuesday morning, and I got pulledover by a policeman.

I was listening to the radio. Or, I had my radio scanningthrough channels. I was hearing each station for five seconds at a time – a bombin Afghanistan, a jazz song, weather, baseball, either another bomb or the samebomb again.

And then I got pulled over.

The policeman had a car, too. He pulled me over by turningon multicolored spinning lights and pushing a button, I suppose, that made hiscar emit a loud, bizarre whirring sound.

I pulled my car off the road, into the empty parking lot ofa carpeting store that had gone out of business.

The policeman wore a strange navy blue suit. His shirt hadbuttons and badges and patches, everywhere. His pants were creased and tightand shimmered. He wore a bizarre hat like I’d never seen before – flat andoctagonal on top, and brimmed.

He asked to see my license.

I have a license.

I live in America.

I bought a car with money I borrowed from the bank, but I’mnot allowed to drive the car without permission from America.

The policeman asks me to prove that I have been grantedpermission to drive my car to my job.

My license is a small plastic card, the same size and shapeas my bank card, but with a little tiny picture of me in the corner, smiling. Iwent to a building on a Saturday, owned by America, and they took my picture.The man said, “Smile.”

If a policeman asks you to see your card, you have to giveit to him, even if you’re not driving a car.

The policeman asks to see my card, and I hand it to him.

While he looks at it, he asks, “Where are you going?” When apoliceman asks you where you’re going, you have to tell him, even if you’re notgoing somewhere bad.

Where I’m going, is to my job.

I have a job where I work on a computer. I have real mailand email, and the phone rings. My company has customers and vendors, but Ionly ever see my coworkers. We gather together and then go away, back home –like the building is breathing us. Somebody buys cake when it’s one of ourbirthdays.

To the policeman, I say, “I’m going to work.”

Still looking at my license, he asks, “Where is work?”

I study his face, studying my card, studying the littlepicture of my face on the card. I reach my arms through the window, pushing myfingers wiggling into the belly of his navy blue suit.

Past Church.

2012-02-28T13:46:00.001-08:00

Sundayafternoon, past church, she stood at the sink, doing dishes. Warm water likepiss splashed against her floral wallpaper print dress top, from which she hadyet to change.

Shehoped he wouldn’t think of her, that he wasn’t in the mood for her. But thiswas never the case. He kept finding reasons to pass through the kitchen, andshe wondered if it was intentional – if he was tormenting her. She held herbreath each time, a feeling like electricity in her spine.

She brieflyconsidered injuring herself. She pulled a knife out of the soapy water,wrapping her fingers around the blade. She gripped the handle tight in herother hand, telling herself to do it. “One quick jerk,” she thought, “andyou’ll spend the day in the emergency room.” She liked the emergency room. Sheliked the waiting room – the free coffee in Styrofoam cups, the glossy, smilingwomen holding up tomato plants, careless on the cover of a magazine, somethingquiet and sensible on the television hanging from its metal arm stretched out ofa corner of the ceiling. She imagined sitting there for hours, until nightfall.Every time they called her name, she’d just smile and say, “Oh, no – I’m okay.Let this one over here go before me,” clenching a bloody rag in her fist,pointing. No way would he accompany her for that. He might make her take thechildren along, but that would be okay. “Do it,” she told herself, lookingwhere the blade pushed into her, threatening to break the skin.

He camebehind her, touching the naked skin between her elbow and the sleeve of herdress. She startled. Later that evening, after he was done with her, she replayedthis moment and wondered how close she had come to pivoting on her heels andplowing the blade into his ear. She would breathe out and tell herself, “Notthat close.” He caught her off-guard, honestly, and her reaction had been tostartle, dropping the knife clattering with a mild splash into the sink. Shehadn’t even nicked herself. She was embarrassed by her lack of survivalinstincts.

Touchingher, he sang in a whisper, “Honey?”

“What?”she wanted to say. “What is it that you want from me?” Make him say it. Let himhear his own words, and see if there’s any tinge of repulsion in his ownexpression. But she didn’t say it. She didn’t make him say anything. She onlyturned to him. And when he walked off towards their bedroom, she followed.

* * *

He clampedhis Sunday shaven chin onto her shoulder while he penetrated her, withoutrhythm or pace. He pressed his fingertips into her breasts until her nippleshardened, in spite of herself. He would push his squirming fingertips into thesoft places between her ribs, nauseating her with pain. He sucked at her breasttoothlessly, loosing rivulets of saliva from the corners of his mouth, whichwould stream down her sides to pool in her armpit, until she felt his tenuouserection sprout between her legs, creeping its way into her, despite her body’sseeming refusal to give against his pressings. Once fully engaged, he would layhis body flat against hers, pumping noisily, then grinding to an almost haltbefore suddenly and without provocation accelerating again, while the Sundayafternoon sun fell through the slatted blinds and drew geometric shapes againsthis hideous body.

Hermind wandered, and she thought of words like “proboscis.” She did not think ofwords like “fuck.”

As heshifted atop of her, she tried to remember how this Sunday afternoon ritual originated.How long had it been going on? Had it at least started in a good place, or atleast a somewhat mutual one? She tried to remember the sex at the beginning oftheir relationship, but nothing was coming to her. It was getting increasinglydifficult to remember a time before him, before this.

Beyondthe door, she listened to their children play. A crash was followed by anargument, but she couldn’t make out the words. The baby began to cry. Shewaited for him to finish with her.

* * *

He wascheating on her, of course. She couldn’t have cared any less. It repulsed herto think of, but the repulsion she felt was akin, she curiously realized, to thecursory disgust of picturing her parents having sex when she was young. Hischeating was a fact of life, she supposed, and the less she knew about it, theless she was made to think of it, the better.

Shewould watch him at the dinner table, ignoring the children, picking chickenskin from between his teeth, and she would laugh. The boyish underpants that hemade her buy for him – white, with the yellow and blue stripes on the band –all had holes in them, and an indiscernible grey stain that ran the valley ofthe crotch, and she would gag picturing this man seducing some misguided womaninto her bed. Or, oh God, into their bed.

Herdumpy husband was a predator, sexually, she realized. He whimpered about hisjob and he was too dumb to assemble the children’s Christmas presents, but hehad a sexual appetite that drove him beyond what he seemed otherwise capable.It was a phenomenon she had witnessed throughout her life, from her father toher husband, and he was strangely successful at selling himself with seeminglynothing to offer.

Shejust held her breath every time he came home late, or from a poorly explainedand sudden exit, immediately following a hushed phone conversation, silentlybegging that he wouldn’t bring it up, make it a situation that she had toresolve.

Butthen one day, he did.

* * *

“Laura,”he said, after she had finished getting the kids to bed. He shifted in hisseat, crossing one leg over the other, repositioning the glasses on the bridgeof his nose. “I need to talk to you about something, and I’m going to need youto be an adult about this.”

Herhead swam at the first salvo of confrontation. She allowed herself the respiteof wondering what would happen if she just calmly ignored him and went aboutsetting the house on fire.

“Honey,”he began, “I love you, and our marriage, and our family. I vowed my life to youforever, and I will continue to honor that promise, as I have honored all of mypromises to you.” She imagined him rehearsing this speech all day – at work, inthe car, sitting on the toilet. She looked where his crossed-over pant leg hadcrept up, revealing a toad’s patch of gelatinous white skin, above the tightblack spot, mottled in leg hair. Something like a laugh erupted in her guts,and she had to bite her lips shut to keep it in. Then a wave of nausea crushedit entirely. He was a truly revolting man.

Hepaused and looked up at the ceiling, presumably looking for some sort of answerthere. His throat skin quivered as he swallowed a couple of times. “I wouldlike to open our relationship.”

Hebrought his gaze down to hers like somebody leveling a shotgun. She was sure hewould continue, but he didn’t. Her voice felt like a dry thing dead in herthroat. “Open our relationship?” she asked, playing dumb. “You mean withcommunication?”

Helaughed a man’s laugh, an echo from a time when wives were silly things. Sheremembered it from her father. “No, no,” he said, “I mean sexually.”

Now itwas her time to pose dramatically towards the ceiling. “Ah,” she said, withunderstanding.

* * *

Nothingchanged.

Fordays following the one-sided conversation, his demeanor altered sickeningly. Hebecame attentive and fumbled his way through attempts at spending time with thechildren, them looking up at him with a confused disdain. He performed a coupleof household chores, loudly and with poor results. He, she noticed, wassuddenly home from work much earlier, inadvertently informing on himself ofinfidelities that had been occurring in addition to the ones of which she wasalready aware.

Theirsex on Sunday afternoon felt particularly laborious, as he seemed to make somesort of effort at gentility that she did not request or desire, but rather onlyserved to further disgust her, as well as prolonging the duration of the act.The sun outside was warm, and she kept catching glimpses of his skin sticking tohers, and then slowly peeling away as he shifted. She wondered if she might notsuffocate and die in this air.

Andshortly after, even these slight changes dissipated, and everything returned toas it was, with the slight exception that he moved in and out of the house witha more relaxed air. His phone calls became a little less hushed and cryptic.Gone were the flimsy excuses of being called into work, or attending a suddenchurch meeting. She hated to admit, but she found herself actually enjoying thechanges, if only as a decrease in atmospheric pressure: a lessening in the strainof forcing herself to ignore.

Butwhen he came home late at night, she tried desperately to not meet his gaze. Toact still like nothing was happening. But she couldn’t. He would be droppinghis keys on the dresser, trying to act nonchalant, and she would feel his eyesdart to hers, and she would look. And in that moment, however brief, somethingwould shatter inside of her, and all she felt was despair.

* * *

Shefound him in a bar. It was the easiest thing in the world.

She’dleft the kids with her mother, saying she’d be back in three hours. Four hours,tops.

Herhusband had told her that he was going out. He didn’t say where, or with whom. Hedidn’t have to, because it didn’t matter.

Shedrove to a bar on the edge of town. Alone in a bar, she hadn’t been sitting forten minutes before a man sat down beside her.

He hadmonstrous hands and a spectacular amount of hair on his arms, the cuffs of hisblack-and-grey checked shirt rolled back to the elbow. She kept looking at hishands: the way they wrapped around his glass, the way they gripped the brassbar, making everything seem so breakable. Her husband’s fingers were so softand delicate, like a corpse. His hair was just a little too long, a little tooscraggily to be kempt, but he had it shaped with some sort of gel or grease. Hehad sharp creases at the corners of his eyes, and he’d almost have beenattractive if his laugh wasn’t so predatory. And he laughed persistently.

It wasstrange and easy, achieving this. She just agreed with everything he said. Shedidn’t have to try. She nodded as he spoke and laughed when he told a joke. Shedidn’t want this to take all night, so she started touching his arm. Theyhadn’t spent an hour together when he asked if she didn’t maybe want to gosomewhere.

Shesaid that she did.

Hiseyes caught fire and he seemed genuinely surprised, like he’d asked thisquestion a hundred times and this was the first anybody had ever said yes.Grinning teeth, he said, “Well, where would you like to go?” He lowered hisvoice into a hush that surprised her, as though he were embarrassed somebodymight hear. She wondered if he was married.

“Idon’t care,” she said, intentionally adding, “I’ll go anywhere you want to takeme.”

Drivingalong in his truck, she wondered if she was about to be murdered.

Theydidn’t speak. At stoplights, she studied his face. He looked vaguely familiar.To get into it, to get through it, she pretended that he was a friend of herhusband’s, or perhaps a coworker. Somebody who would shake his hand on Mondayand ask him how his weekend was.

He tookher to a motel she drove by a dozen times a week – taking the kids to school,taking the kids grocery shopping. In two days, she thought, her husband woulddrive her and the kids by this place on their way to church. She swallowed withdifficulty.

He wasviolent with her, abrupt. It had been many years since she had enjoyed sex, andshe wondered if, on some level, she mightn’t like this, but she didn’t. Herhusband repulsed her, but he was at least a familiar discomfort, a part of life,like how her wrists throbbed at the end of each day. This was an intrusion, andshe couldn’t stop it now that it had begun. She felt herself suffocatingbeneath this stranger’s bulk, and she was afraid. He was so much bigger than herhusband, and he shrugged her off forcefully when she touched him. He kept hiseyes closed as he moved in her.

Sheclosed her eyes. The bed rocked beneath her like a boat cut adrift. The tears felland streamed down her face, forming small puddles in her ears. She waited forhim to finish.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Amanda challenged me with "She said, 'Opening my marriage saved my life.'" and I challenged Kirsten Doyle with "Shiver."

The Soft.

2012-02-22T11:30:00.002-08:00

I dreamof dark and quiet places, calm horizons. I breathe air thick and clean aswater. I rub lazily at my muscles with numb fingertips, and there’s a moment ofhappiness before I realize I must be dreaming, again. The dome of the skyignites suddenly in strange lightning – lines too straight and arcs too perfectto be anything but ammunition: .31 caliber bullets and earth-shaking mortarrounds. And I know I’m back in hell.

I wakeshivering in my own sweat gone cold. I wake to the dog squealing.

BeforeI hear him, I feel him: my brother, watching me from the doorway. I flex myneck, pulling my skull from the sour pillows, and he’s there silhouetted in thehallway light. I punch at the nightstand lamp, bringing it to life. Some partof me expects my brother to disappear in the sudden light, a crude apparition.He doesn’t. He’s unflinching with his sawdust eyes, unapologetic for theintrusion. He doesn’t speak, but stares. Running a shattered line between hiswild eyes – over the valley of his forehead, disappearing into the rustedforest of his hair – is the wicked brand from where I cleaved him, the pastyskin on either side being tugged together and held with heavy black sutures.The wound stands between us constantly – physically, and as a memory. The circumstancewherein I am confronted with viewing the injury on a daily basis while he can’tsee it at all has shaped our communication in a peculiar way, and he doesn’tneed to speak to make his point.

“Okay,damn it,” I tell him. “I’ll fix him in the morning.”

I crashback down into my mattress, feeling nothing like sleep. I turn out the light,but my brother remains where he stands. I listen to my breaths and the gearsinside my bedroom clock. A collection of minutes pass, and I hear the littlecables behind the face pulling the hands around to mark off another hour. Witha tug of wheels and pulleys, my brother squeaks along the track, back into hisbedroom.

* * *

Ihaven’t eaten in days, but I think it’s important that I keep trying.

Isizzle-fry eggs and bacon. All of my pans are warped. I set them down on theburner empty, holding them there until the heat reaches a level where the airabove them vibrates and boils, leaving a virtual vacuum. It’s interesting howthings never stop getting hotter, if you let them. I will sometimes put my fistin this empty space. The skin, for certain, burns. But for a moment, there’s astillness, and the sensation is cooling. I’ll feel indestructible, or at leastbeyond destruction. I drop the eggs in the pan and the clear, gelatinous mucosaimmediately solidifies and turns white, like ice melting in reverse. After amoment, I drop the bacon in besides, and the fat liquefies, leaving leanprotein to pop and dance on the black surface. I kill the heat source, and themeat and egg continue to cook together, cooling towards something human. This,I imagine, is something like how God made the oceans.

While gatheringmy plate and utensils, I see that my fish has gone belly-up in its bowl, again.From the body trails a steady spiral of burnt red, like smoke from anextinguished candle, and I cough a laugh at a thought that she might have beenshot, or is, perhaps, experiencing a first menstrual cycle. I twist the cuff ofmy shirtsleeve back to my elbow, and reach into the fetid water. I set the fishon my plate, once again moved beyond hunger.

Herbattery has gone dead, I see, and the blood trail in the water is actually a leakingof battery acid. Watch batteries are, by design, waterproof, but the casingsare weak and water, in nearly all circumstances, ultimately finds a way through,and then your fish goes poof. From the drawer beneath my sink, I have a grosscase of these batteries, though. I fetch one, along with a scalpel, some simpleplastic wrap, and my grocery store-brand magnifying eyeglasses. I carefullydissect the old plastic wrap, lightly prying it off the golden scales with thepoint of my blade. I likewise use the scalpel to pop the old, dead battery outof its housing. It seems crude, but I’ve found the best cleaning solvent inthese situations is spit, and I lick my thumb and wipe away at the spare dropsof acid. I seem to have gotten lucky with timing, and the fish seems nicelyuntarnished from the leakage. When I pop the fresh battery into place, thediminutive motor immediately begins clicking, oscillating the braces back andforth, moving the fish’s spine and tail in a mimic of swimming. I place herflat on my palm, and she tickles me while she flops. I carry her back over to herbowl, but I’m concerned to put her back into the fouled water. I have too muchto do today to spend time cleaning out the bowl properly. So I fill a jelly jarwith water from the faucet, and drop the fish lightly inside. She swims in atight, comic circle.

When Iretrieve my breakfast from the pan, it’s inedible, but perfect, the greasecongealed just slightly.

* * *

The dogis not where I expect, but I refuse to go looking for him. I step over theguiderails and tripwires, duck under the guylines and pulleys, and whistle aloud note, calling, “Mercury! Come here, boy!”

I makemy way over to the toby tree, and wait. After a moment, a ratchet sound comesfrom somewhere inside the leaves, and a sparrow comes screeching on a tether,circling the tree twice in an upward arch and then disappearing with a rustleinto green leaves of another tree ten feet away, the waxed cable runningbetween the trees swaying out against its slack.

I losemy eyesight in the sun, studying a particular cloud as it slowly seeps acrossthe sky like a creeping stain, passing overhead, then disappearing over thepitch of the roof. Momentarily, I catch the outline of my brother standing inhis window, but he’s gone just as quickly. This time, it might have been atrick of light, or maybe not. This is his usual time to be up and movingaround.

There’sa scampering above my head, and I don’t startle as a grey squirrel comesclattering down the tree trunk, alternating speeds between suspicion andadrenaline, before finally alighting in the patch of ground beside me with anunsatisfying thud. I’m bothered to see that his hide has somehow becomecompromised, and he’s fallen loose from his mount. Squirrels move quick, so Ihave to act fast: leaping to me feet, and bringing a boot down on the cable,just as it begins its retraction back into the branches. The cord stalls for aminute, before snapping loose, nearly taking off a piece of my ear as itrecoils violently past me, settling disappeared into the branches. The squirrelrests in a mound against the side of my foot, reminiscent to scraping peanutbutter off a knife against the jar rim. The bones poke out in an assortment ofunrelated directions, no longer resembling the skeleton of a squirrel. The hidepulls apart easily in my fingers, and I say, “Damn,” as I realize nothing issalvageable. I kick at it, sending it off into the nearby shrubbery.

I’mbecoming animalistic in my comprehension of time, telling it by hand width’s ofspace between the sun and the horizon, and the length of the shadows. I hold mybreath suddenly, and tune myself to the symphony of whirs coming through mybasement window. I can’t pinpoint exactly what sound I’m expecting until itdoesn’t happen. What happens instead is an unhealthy hollow pop, followed bythe pained and squealing whines of the dog, Mercury. I look up to his window,but my brother hasn’t appeared, yet. I choose to get along while I can, avoidingconfrontation. I’m on my belly, scurrying through the open slat basement window.

* * *

I was atinkerer as a boy, always. I never grew out of it. I was the proverbial childwho would take apart the television and the toaster and all of the clocks andmy father’s watches and the radio and the telephone and the stove. My fatherbroke my collarbone once when he woke to find that I had taken apart thetransmission of his 1958 Fairlane, even though it was working at least as goodafter my dissection as it had been before.

I wasalways bright, bordering on gifted, but terrible at school, because history andmath and English weren’t things that could be pulled apart and replaced –though I was, of course, moderately successful at my science courses, and shop.Likewise, I was dramatically below par at fostering relationships with mypeers, or teachers, or parents, because I didn’t understand people and had verylittle interest in learning. My brother was about the only person I spent anysignificant time with, and even that was rather grudgingly on his part, sincehe suffered similar issues with making friends, albeit for completely differentreasons.

I hadinterpersonal relationships rather thrust upon me when I got drafted into thearmy and sent to Vietnam. It was “in country,” as they say, that I also becamemore interested in people, in general, and their inner-workings.

Myspectacular mechanical aptitude, accompanied by my significantly lessimpressive scores in all other tests, made me a perfect fit to be a combat zonetechnician: fixing the machinery as it faltered, carrying a gun, but mostlytrying to not get shot, and, most stressed, not get in anybody’s way. I wasrelatively successful on all of these accounts, and, frankly, wasn’t mindingthe war too much, at first.

It wason an otherwise uneventful afternoon when a strange zipping sound came out ofthe jungle and cut James Weston, a blonde-headed 18-year old private fromCookeville, Tennessee, in half. He had been standing beside me, finishing asandwich, jawing while I pulled jungle mud out of a jeep carburetor. I pivotedon my heels when the strange sound came through the trees – not startled atall, just interested. When I turned back, James was gone. A moment later, apowerful concussion pitched me forward, off my feet, landing face-to-grey facewith the now-bisected body of Private Weston. A firefight erupted around us. Asinstructed, I kept my head down, stayed out of the way.

Istudied Weston’s body, and something strange occurred to me. Here in thepooling purple of guts, were the little bit-sized portions of sandwich – insome places, the bologna still glued by mayonnaise to the white bread. Out ofhabit, I gripped the tubes that connected to and from the spillage, andfollowed them with my fingers up into the cavities from which they came. And Isuddenly saw people for what they are – machines. Soft, fragile machines – anetwork of tubes and wires. Food goes in this hole, comes out this hole,stopping here momentarily. It was also so simple. I was disgusted. Disgusted byGod, by the Sun, by dirt and by oceans – I grabbed at my own guts through myskin, vomiting violently, adding to the human mess, while the bullets zinged byand the men shouted at each other in languages that neither side couldunderstand, and death bloomed everywhere so easily.

Thefight lasted just minutes. When we bivouacked the area, we had unintentionallypinned a small troupe of Viet Cong in a hideaway shelter, keeping them therefor days without even knowing it, until they got desperate. Within minutes,they were all dead, save for about a half-dozen that we held as POWs. Ivolunteered for guard duty that first night, and when the camp had goneperfectly silent, I picked one out, him squirming in my fists, like when you’reusing frogs as fishing bait. I gagged him first, so much so that he probablywould have suffocated anyway, and then I pulled him apart, piece by piece. Idid so without malice, except, perhaps, for the lingering bitter disgust. I didso without intentional cruelty. I pulled the boy apart with nothing more than acrisp curiosity.

In themorning, I was discovered. I had not, of course, been able to put the boy backtogether again – though I had a strange notion that if I had just had a littlemore time…

Theboys covered for me, that first time. They attributed the act to vengeance, mehaving been with James when he died. And vengeance was a reason they could allunderstand too easily.

When Idid it the second time, I was sent back home. My discharge was technicallyhonorable, though it didn’t necessarily feel that way.

* * *

Out ofthe army, I returned home to the tumble down farmhouse I shared with my violentbrother. I knew it couldn’t last – that I couldn’t last. I had no appetite,with too real an image of my stomach processing everything into shit. I feltnow like nothing more than a vile mechanism, ravenously putting food into thetop hole and then pushing it back out of the bottom hole, flushing my own filthaway into the ocean – more hidden pipes and toxicity. My piss and my sexualityspurted out of the same length of flesh tube, and I became disgusted by carnal desires.I had no prospective girlfriends, of course – wouldn’t want one if I could getone – and refusing to alleviate myself, I began waking up crusted and glued tomy bedsheets when my dreams betrayed me.

And allthe while, I was itching with my new, strange curiosity. The new understandingof life as just another dead jumble of dumb mechanics revolted me on aspiritual level, but greatly interested me on a technical level, and I foundmyself constantly pinching at my own skin, wanting to get to the workingsbeneath.

Isatisfied myself moderately when I took a blade to my brother’s skull,mid-fight over the impromptu embalming I had performed on his dog, Mercury. Ihad been up all night, pulling the dog apart and reassembling him, when he camedown the stairs in the morning to find us there in the middle of the livingroom floor, and he lost it. He kicked me violently in the soft place betweenthe ribcage and the hip, and I couldn’t breathe. He knelt on top of me,gripping my hair and smashing my skull off the floor with that terriblevibrating concussive pain. He meant, I believe, to kill me. Or if he didn’tmean to, we were at least stumbling together down that path. I defended myself,but my actions were not motivated by any sense of self-preservation or fear,but rather revulsion. I hated the feeling of the heat that his body wasgenerating, seeping from him, through our clothing, and into me. I hated hisgrey-yellow teeth snapping around, shards of his skull left naked and exposedlike a pair of pants with the fly down. The tendrils of his spit pulled andstretched, and I felt my stomach flip in nausea. Still pinned to the floor, Isent my fingers flickering around blindly until they found the hatchet I hadbeen using to help in my dissection of Mercury. I managed to get it in my fist,and I buried it into my brother’s face, between his eyes, freezing hisexpression into a mask of anger and violence, forever. As the life gushed fromhim, so, I found, did my revulsion, and I set to work on a new project.

* * *

Down inthe basement, I’m lost in the highways and rollercoaster tracks and forests andrivers and crochet patchwork of gears and cables and wires and tracks andsprockets and workings of all my creations – playing god, intelligent designand choreography of a million moving parts. So much of this, I don’t rememberdoing. I won’t remember what a certain lever does, and later my pet snake willsuddenly slither across my living room floor, pulled by a fishing line noose,and scare the shit out of me right in the middle of my afternoon game shows.

Insideof one of the gear casings on Mercury’s track, I find a mouse skeleton gunkingup the works – a present of some cat or bird or bat that’s found its way inhere, and I should probably keep an eye out for. I study it in the pale yellowbasement light, first studying it for usable parts, but then getting lost injust the structure of the thing, marvelous.

Lost inthought and admiration, my mind goes somewhere calm. A voice finds me, sayinghow something has to give. I know this. I haven’t eaten in days, maybe weeks.The headaches are persistent, and growing.

Theskeleton removed, the gears begin chugging with a clockwork precision. Ibelieve I can even hear him out there, rustling around in the grass, but it mightjust be my imagination.

* * *

Mercuryawakes me again that same night, once again squealing like a livid hog. Ibelieve I smell gear smoke.

As Iknow he will, I hear my brother come marching down the hall. While he’s still acouple of feet from my door, a hollow sound catches me off guard, my stomach sinking.He enters my room, his hands posed out in front of him, dumb and useless. “Damnit,” I say, throwing the covers from me. “I’ll take care of it.” As my brothergesticulates, I shove by him, his large and beefy body feeling disturbinglyhollow beneath my palms, and something churns in my guts, threatening to pushup through my neck tubes in reverse. I exit the room, as my brother descendsupon my bed.

I’malready a couple of steps down the stairs when I notice it there, the hatchet.Its sharpened edge is stuck comically into the raw floorboards, the handlewavering where it stands. The head of the hatchet is rusted dull, but the blade’sedge glistens shiny as new, catching the moonlight through the hallway windowand flickering it into my eyes. I hold my breath and listen to the clicking ofthe house around me. In the dark, something scurries up the stairs, brushing myleg as it passes, startling the breath from me, causing me to bite my tongueand swallow.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Bran macFeabhail challenged me with "He's absolutely barking, I don't what to do about it except let him be. Maybe one day he'll wake up and be the happy boy I once knew." and I challenged Kelly Garriott Waite with "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"