II. 
My dentist tells me that my tooth with the root canal can no longer stay. The clinical term for my diagnosis is pulp necrosis. It’s a type of abscess. I go home and read the technical definition of necrosis on a webpage: : … a diagnostic category indicating the death of cells and tissues in the pulp chamber of a tooth with or without bacterial invasion. It is often the end result of many cases of dental trauma, caries and irreversible pulpitis. …. The dentist says that the death was caused by a fracture in my roots. Splitted into multiple parts and can no longer bear the weight and pressure above the surface. I didn’t even feel the split. No sensation left to feel that demolition. 
>>Part of me dies and I don’t even know it. 

III. 
An extraction: The sense of foreign lived within me for years. Barely had problems. Beneath the alien material, I didn’t feel the death in my roots; a necrotic state of being. I know my tooth has been long dead but I’m hesitant to let go. I ask my oral surgeon if it needs to go immediately. The oral surgeon confirms for me because, “We want to keep you healthy.” So they evict the necrosis out of my mouth. I feel no pain, no sensation. Is numbness a blessing? When the tooth leaves my body, the left cheek feels distinctly flat. Then, a certain kind of despair rises in my chest. If I couldn’t feel its death, then how come I feel the trauma of its departure? Why am I mourning for this loss? It seems strange to feel sad about something that was already destroyed into a complete lack of sensation many years ago. What’s the difference between a lack of sensation and lack of existence? Perhaps I wanted a proper burial. Maybe I’m not mourning its death. Maybe I’m mourning its annihilation; a separation of the necrotic mass from the site of trauma, history, heritage, and its birthplace. The tooth that was once able to have sensations. The tooth that was once able to detect danger. The tooth that was once destroyed by foreign entities and human hands. The tooth that survived many cases of trauma even in its vegetative state of being. The tooth that had to embrace numbness as a way of survival. Gone. Where?
>>Part of me leaves and I don’t even know it. 

IV. 
A genealogy: 임창실 was the name of my grandmother. It is roughly translated as “Abundance of fruits in the woods.” It’s a beautiful name with an imagery that, at the same time, implies the expected performance of her gender embodied in her female body. Maria was another. She was baptized in Pyongyang, North Korea, where she was born. It’s also the name of the woman who birthed Jesus Christ. For non-believers of Christianity: a woman of the legendary child-bearing. It was a biblical, Catholic name that most people in her social life used to call her until her death. Her third name was “林” and it was pronounced in the colonizer’s tongue as [Hayashi]. It contained only one meaning: a Japanese pronunciation of her Korean surname, “Lim.” A mark. Meaning reduced down to a label, a number. Under the Japanese rule where her youth was buried, she was Hayashi and Hayashi only.
>>The woman with three names. 

V. 
An inheritance: I imagine my grandmother still living. She is sitting on the stack of blankets laid across her living room floor. The faint light from the daytime TV is reflected upon the translucent skin of her face. Her expression is empty. Is she really there? I tread softly on the linoleum floor as I approach her. I breathe quietly. As I reach her living room, I sit on the threshold to look upon her in silence. Minutes pass. I finally gather the courage to call her but I hesitate. Which one? If I wasn’t her grandchild, by which name would I call her? Is calling one’s name inherently predicated by the caller’s identity, rather than the subject’s? Thwarted by this contradiction, I stay sitting on that threshold. The vision of her swirls past and leaves me. After she passed away, my father gave me a small gold crucifix. He said it belonged to my grandmother and I so often reminded him of his beloved mother-in-law. He named me Fabiola at my baptism. From Maria to Fabiola. I keep the crucifix in a chocolate tin. Once in a blue moon, I open the tin and look upon the crucifix with the brown rust all over. I can’t erase the vision of my grandmother as the holy mother shedding tears for the son of god on her lap; the lifeless body she’s holding in her arms. There’s something swelling up beneath me but I don’t know what it is. Perhaps an abscess. But I’m numb. I put the statue back inside and close the chocolate tin.
>>I go on living my life the way I did. 

VI. 
A narrative: [a record with static plays inside your head in a dubbed English under a murmur of a Korean woman speaking in distance.] … your grandmother was only twenty-five when she escaped from North Korea with a priest. North Korea prohibited Catholicism among many other things. She didn’t have any luggage with her and all she had was her own body. She crossed the cold river in the Korean winter and the priest fell ill as soon as they reached the South. … The war came the following year. She never saw her family again. She worked as a nurse at the Seoul University Hospital, and her fiance from the North came to find her during the war. He became a military officer. She ran and hid from her ex-fiance, now a North Korean soldier. … When your grandmother went into a coma with low blood sugar in her last days, he came back to find her in her dreams. He called for her, “Hayashi…. Hayashi…. Come home.” The dream was the first thing she told me about when she woke from her coma. … I don’t think she’s ever loved him. But I knew my mother’s time was up. She didn’t have much time left here. … and she … [the sound subsides.] 

七. 
林の死の日, “Hayashi’s Day of Death” [a dream; a TV show; a historical-fiction-soap-opera; a fuzzy, pastel-toned scene on a TV screen appears in front of your eyes]

>>“林! 林! 
>>どこにいますか? 
>>私と来て! 家に帰りましょう!” … 

>>[Closed Caption] Hayashi! Hayashi! 
>>Where are you? 
>>Come with me! Let’s go home! … 

VIII. 
A classified information [an epic of a prince with no home; a ghost story]: 

The Foreign Service of the United States of America 
United States Political Advisor for Japan 

No. 670 Tokyo,
Oct 12,1948 
RESTRICTED 

Subject: Nationality and Property of Prince Ri Gin, Ranking Member of Former Korean Royal Family.

The Honorable 
The Secretary of State. 
Washington. 

Sir: 

>>I have the honor to invite the Department’s attention to various questions concerning the nationality and property of Prince Ri Gin (whose Korean name is Lee Eun). 

>>At his request Prince Ri called on an officer of this Mission and stated that he is in doubt as to the status of his nationality and as to the probable disposition of his property in both Japan and Korea. In regard to his nationality he explained that although he was born in Korea of Korean parents, he has lived in Japan for many years, had married a Japanese, and was entered in the family register of the Japanese imperial family. He said that he wishes to donate his property in Korea outright to the Korean government but that he hopes to retain his property in Japan as a source of livelihood. Prince Ri added that he has no intention of returning to Korea or of allowing his name to be used in Korea for political purposes, in spite of what he felt was the desire of some elements in Korea that he return as king. In regard to his personal plans, Prince Ri stated that, if his financial condition should permit, he would like to go to the United States for an extended visit or for permanent residence; he hopes that his son, who is now sixteen years old, will be able to receive his higher education in the United States. 

IX. 
An immigration: Before I crossed the border, my father begged me to see him. I’d been ignoring his messages and calls for months, but I finally gave in. I told him to meet at a cafe and sent him the address. He struggled to find the place and arrived thirty minutes late. He walked towards my table with a look of despair. We exchanged a few words that I don’t remember anymore, then I told him I was leaving the country. And I told him I’m going to the United States to make money and I wouldn’t be coming back to Korea. Hearing this, he said something. But I don’t remember. It’s as if I blacked out. When I awoke from the haze, I told him to stop calling me or looking for me. After my parents’ divorce, poverty, and their abuse, I wanted to cut ties. A total uprooting. He started weeping. I watched him with the strange feeling of dissociation. None of this felt real to me. It felt as if I was watching television. A soap opera. My mind floated up like a balloon and watched the two of us from the ceiling. A few days later, I got on a flight. Looking out the window, I imagined my homeland exploding behind me, and then buried into a mound of oblivion. I closed my eyes. There was something swelling up inside me but I couldn’t tell what it was. Perhaps an abscess. But I was numb. With my eyes closed, I kept replaying the image of the explosion in my mind. 
>>Part of me dies and I don’t even feel it. 

X. 
A permanent resident: 

Department of Homeland Security 
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services I-797, Notice of Action 

Receipt number: XXXXXXXX 
Case Type: I 485 Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status
Receipt Date: October 29, 2015 
Applicant: Jang, Hanee 
Notice Date: February 16, 2016 

Hanee Jang 
Louisville, KY XXXXX 

Notice type: Approval Notice 
Section: Adjustment as direct beneficiary of immigrant petition 

>>>>>>WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

This is to notify you that your application for permanent residence has been approved. It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to permanent resident status in the United States. 

Notice: Although this application/petition has been approved, USCIS and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reserves the right to verify the information submitted in this application, petition, and/or supporting documentation to ensure conformity with applicable laws, rules, regulations, and other authorities. Methods used for verifying information may include, but are not limited to, the review of the public information and records, contact by correspondence, the internet, or telephone, and site inspections of businesses and residence. Information obtained during the course of verification will be used to determine whether revocation, rescission, and/or removal proceedings are appropriate. Applicants, petitioners, and representatives of record will be provided an opportunity to address derogatory information before any formal proceeding is initiated.

 National Benefits Center 
USCIS, DHS 
P.O. BOX # XXXXX 
LEE’S SUMMIT, MO. XXXXX 
Customer Service Telephone: (XXX)XXX-XXXX 

XI. 
An assimilation: 
Emails 

[threads continue]

XII. 
A commencement: [an assimilation, continued] 

The loud sound from the speakers in the auditorium announces, 
>>“Students, please come up to the stage when your name is announced.” 
>>“….Nina Yang, Master of Science.” 

XIV. 
A clinical definition of amnesia on a webpage: … is a deficit in memory. The memory can be either wholly or partially lost due to the extent of damage that was caused. Individuals with amnesia can learn new information, particularly if the information is non-declarative knowledge. Some people who suffer  from amnesia show abnormal amounts of memory loss, confusion, and difficulty recalling other people or places. People who recover often do not remember having amnesia. 

XVI. 
A disillusionment of an immigrant: [a hymn] 

I once walked in the woods. I do not recall when or where. 
I only remember the sound, the colors, the peace, the horror. 
I found a tree with long open arms. 
There were so many fruits in the tree.
They were so beautiful. 
So lavish, so lustrous. 
The fruits, however, fell, 
one, 
two, 
and three. 

The tree shed its fruits, 
the crying mother of god, 
only to stand and watch. 
The fruits. They were burning. 
Burning from what? 
There was no fire 
but the fruits turned black tar, 
decaying from the inside. 
I cried, too. 
I sat on the grass. 
And her leaves caressed my cheeks, 
we held each other 
for a long time 
and mourn the fruits on the ground. 

I could hear the laughter in the wind, 
other trees and their arms madly swung about, 
laughing and then crying, 
mirroring our tears. 
Or was it we mirroring them? 
I suddenly smiled, not knowing why. 
In pieces my grandmother screamed inside me, 
“Fabiola! They set fire in the woods! やめてください! … 안녕.” 
The forest was loud 
and empty 
at the same time. 
And I woke up. 

What is it in my mouth that is gone?
I do not recall. 
The dream lingers on 
when I close my eyes. 

Why did she call me Fabiola? She’s never done that before. 
Fabiola. The nurse in red cloth. 
the patron saint of divorced people, 
victims of abuse, 
the unfaithfuls. 

I don’t know what I don’t remember. 
I don’t feel anything. I am whole. 
Just call me Nina. 
Nina. 
Nina. 
Nina. 
… 
Nina who? 

Part of me dies and I don’t even feel it.

The post Necrosisamnesia appeared first on The New Absurdist.

I was thankful Mom was off. She’d recently had to take a second job because she  couldn’t afford her house payment on the money she was making as a data analyst with only a  high school diploma. I set my bags down in the room and popped half the edible before heading  to the kitchen. Normally, we’d have had more people over for Thanksgiving. We had Dad’s  family over last year, and my uncle Alejandro, on Dad’s side, invited us over this year. But I’d  always felt guilty over the fact I don’t speak enough Spanish to converse with Dad’s family  fluently, unlike my cousins, who were full Mexican as opposed to my half, and who had grown  up speaking both languages. Today, it was just Mom, Dad, and my brother. There were my  grandma Virginia and my aunt Tami in their urns on the kitchen island in the front room, where  Mom worked at her day job, but they were only here in spirit. 

We’ve got a picture of Tami on the kitchen island. She and Mom both have a good tussle  of brown hair and the same smile. But Mom’s had her hair dyed blonde as long as I’ve known  her. She usually wears a cardigan and some comfy-looking utility pants. That’s what she was  wearing when I walked into the kitchen.  

“Is the food ready?” I asked, the edible working its way through my system. 

“Only if you give me a hug first,” Mom said, and we hugged.  

Thanksgiving dinner was the usual: a whole turkey, baked macaroni and cheese, rolls,  stuffing (with onions), green beans, and mash potatoes with gravy. It was all her cooking because  she had always been the one who cooked. I can’t remember the last time I helped. I was good at  getting food in and out of the oven and even better at getting food in and out of the container.  Whenever I was home, I would focus on washing the dishes. I had a knack for slotting them in  the right place in the dishwasher. My brother and Dad were good at putting them in the sink, and  Dad had gotten better at washing the dishes when he was mad at my brother for not washing  them; it was progress. I downed a tall boy of Hell Yes Ma’am beer that Mom got for me (it’s my  favorite beer because it tastes great and gets me fucked up the fastest) and went about putting  some food on my plate.  

Sitting around the table, eating together, it was hard to believe that my parents had  divorced ten years ago. They’d been back together for four years by now. Nice things happen,  sometimes. My brother and I are iterations of our parents. Matthew has Mom’s hair—thick and  wavy. I have Dad’s face—round. Growing up, people said Dad and I looked like twins. I’m not  sure if that meant I looked older or that he looked younger. Mom has always said she felt I look  like her—that is to say, white. She is one of the few white people to have said so.  

I ate while Mom talked. Dad ate while Mom talked. She was talking about how happy  she was to have us here as a family, how not everyone got to do that. When I finished, I felt full,  but I didn’t feel high, so I went back to my room to get the other half of the edible. It had only  been thirty minutes, not enough to feel the full effects. I should have realized that.  

The first time I smoked weed was when my friend had me huff on a bong. He had come  back from spending time with family in Oklahoma, where he earned his nuke med degree while  working at a Wal-Mart. He said all the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek Indians hung out at the  Wal-Mart, and they were tall, taller than he was. Anyway, he told me to huff through the bong  like I was eating ass. Never mind the fact that I’d never eaten ass up to that point in my life. Then  I remembered I was huffing it after he did, and I thought, “oh, wait.”  

I don’t use a bong because it’s too big to hide. Instead, I use my pipe—it’s a green  Gandalf pipe, except you can smoke weed in it. When I rip, it hurts my lungs and makes my eyes  feel like they’re on fire. But it’s worth it for just to feel like I’m sitting on a cloud when I sit on  the couch. I didn’t bring the pipe, though, because I didn’t want Mom to suspect anything. She  says she has a hound’s sense of smell. Instead, I dropped by this place called iHemp just before I  got home. It was on Stratford Road, just down the way from the Enterprise where I’d picked up  the Hyundai Elantra. At that Enterprise, I’d met a cute girl who, it turned out, was dating a  classmate of mine from back when. Like mine, his name was Nicholas, only he went by  Harrison. I remember the last time I saw him was in this cluster of auto shops beside a tree  barrier that separates Dad’s neighborhood from the rest of the city. I was riding bikes with a  neighbor once, back before my parents divorced, and that neighbor went crashing through the trees on his bike, making sounds like he was on a motorcycle. He rode in front of one of the auto  shops, and this lady, who looked a lot like Kathy Bates from Misery, came out holding a tiny  black revolver. I stood on my own bike, my fat thighs straddling the bar because the skinny little seat hurt my ass, and jumped when she looked at me. She went back inside like nothing  happened.  

Anyway, the iHemp was closing early because of the holiday. It turns out the store had  been open a few years, yet I had never bothered to come in. That’s mostly because weed isn’t  fully legal here in North Carolina, and I know that whatever I get here will be dogshit compared  to the edibles I had in Denver the previous spring. I bought four Delta 9 indica gummies for  eleven dollars, but the clerk packed five on accident, and I didn’t bother to correct her. She told  me to make sure I only take half the edible, so I could get a feel for how it made me feel. I said I fully intended on doing that, as that’s what I did in Denver, and that was a great fucking time. 

“No one wants to green out,” she said.  

Greening out is essentially an overdose on weed that, most of the time, people don’t die  from.  

“Oh, yeah, I know that’s like,” I told her, but what I didn’t tell her is that the last time I greened out, which was the first time, I had five shots of cannabis-infused cashew milk in one  hour. My heart pounded like a jackhammer, and it got hard to breathe. A friend who was there  with me walked me around my apartment neighborhood until we found a stoner friend of ours  who put me in his car and took us to the BestWay down the street. I hid in the backseat. The lights stretched as he drove down the hill. He put on some Chopin as he went inside the  convenience store for some whole black peppercorns. When we got back, he told me eat the  peppercorns and make a pizza for myself. He also had me throw out the beer I’d been drinking. I  eventually mellowed out after telling them “thank you for being here with me” ten times each.  

For me, a green out starts with a pounding heartbeat, followed by a sense of panic, which  is exactly what I felt when Mom told me she was going to die.  

“I think about Tami, and I know I’m going to die like that,” she said.  

To which I responded “wait, what?” Because Tami died of an overdose on some pain pills  and maybe a little cocaine. She’d died three years before this Thanksgiving, but in October,  which was her birth month. Mom had texted to wish her a happy birthday, but Tami never  responded. That was odd, considering she loved to talk. Mom later went and found Tami alone in  her bed, her finger pointing up to the ceiling.  

“What do you mean you’re going to die like that? Like an overdose?” I asked Mom. 

“Oh, no,” Mom said. “But I just realized that one day I’ll die.”  

Mom looked at me like what she was saying wasn’t any big deal. I felt my heart start to  beat faster, and I had to take a deep breath. The white fluorescents showed the lines on her  forehead and, all the sudden, I had second thoughts about finishing my second Hell Yes Ma’am. I  couldn’t figure out how to tell her this was the worse thing she could say to her lightweight  almost-thirty-year-old-son who was tripping his balls off, so instead I just nodded like it was an  every day thing she was telling me.  

“I’m going to take a nap. When I get up, do you want to take a walk?” I asked her this  because walking was what we did whenever I was home. I like walking with my mom. 

“Ok,” Mom said. “But it’s cold out.”  

I went to my room. For the most part, I just lay in my bed, trying to get some sleep. I  would occasionally go out to get some water, not trying to talk to anybody as I’d never been this  cross-faded in front of my family before. My heart was pounding too fast for me to count. I tried  to calm myself down, so I put on some YouTube. But I couldn’t stand anything in my algorithm  as it all had to do with the development of different nuclear bombs, so I put on a peaceful music  stream. I slowed my breathing, trying to listen to the music, and drank water. The worst type of  trip is where you lose your appetite, and that’s exactly what happened to me. I kept breathing and  checking my heartbeat, holding my hand to my chest. The guy kept thumping and thumping, and  I kept tossing and turning, trying to find the position where I wouldn’t feel my blood pulsing in  my ears. I hate hearing it beat like that.  

The last time I went to the doctor, the nurse told me my blood pressure was high. I told  her it was because I had white gown syndrome, which is when your blood pressure is elevated  when you visit the doctor. It’s a real thing, I swear. She told me I needed to eat healthier, and I  was reminded of all the times people called me fat when I was younger. I’ve spent a lot of time in front of mirrors, assessing the fat around my middle, torturing myself in trying to figure out  whether it’s growing or shrinking. When I jump rope in the gym, I watch each part of myself— cheeks, pecs, biceps, and stomach—move up and down with the rhythm of the exercise. I tell  myself I’ve come far, but I still check it afterward. I can never decide if I find it endearing or  hideous. Indulging myself in my vice is my way of forgetting about that, of not feeling guilt  about eating, if only for a few hours.  

My aunt Tami would take me to the Bagel Station on Stratford Road when I was younger,  all those carbs likely having something to do with my fatness. She loved to show me off at Pig  Pickins’, where she waitressed when I was a kid. Dad thinks the restaurant business is where she  got the things that killed her. In her later years, she worked for these jerks at a place on  Cloverdale. Mom said the manager treated Tami like shit. I remember going in there to say hello,  and her manager eyed us. Well, I eyed the fucker right back, and he went back into his hidey hole.  

When Mom came to see Tami, it was in this far-flung corner of Forsyth, bordering Yadkin  County. Tami had been living with her husband, this guy named Harold who really didn’t have  his wits about him. Mom said there were all these women in the house, unrelated to anyone who  lived there, and they were wearing big cowboy boots. In my daydreams, I call them the Coyote  Ugly Reject Crew. They all looked at my mother with disgust or scorn, the way she tells it.  Harold’s son led Mom to Tami’s room, and that’s where she found Tami, lying on the bed and  pointing up to the ceiling. No one had checked on her for a full day before they realized she was  dead. If I could trade Tami for anyone in that house, I would, if only just to talk to her again. The  thing is, Tami asked me to lunch the month she died. “My treat,” she’d said. I neglected to  answer her.  

Anyway, I got up because I knew I was greening out since I was thinking about death. I  went outside to where Mom was playing with our dogs and feeding the chickens. We have two  dogs, and God knows how many chickens. Our German Shepherd hates them. He’s always  barking at them and trying to kill them. The people on my parents’ neighborhood Facebook page are always complaining about the chickens, saying that residents are only allowed three chickens  per household per the HOA rules. I always want to complain about the renters who live next to  my parents. Over the past four years, three of them have died from drug overdoses or heart  attacks. And they’re all white guys with some Yadkin county accent. Instead of talking to me or  Dad, they just spit. Dad had some Yadkin county people over to get an estimate on building a  workshed. Once they left, they never returned his calls. If there’s a good Yadkin county person  out there, I haven’t met them.  

Anyway, I was trying to pet my German Shepherd because his fur was so damn soft, but  he was busy trying to tell the chickens who was sheriff around these parts, and he kept running  around. My pit bull was eating some leftover turkey, and a chicken was trying to get it from her. 

“They’re cannibals,” Mom said. “We have cannibal chickens.”  

I scratched my head, “we sure do.”  

I thought for a moment that maybe I should tell Mom what I was going through, but I  figured she’d panic worse than I was and take me to the ER. She had to take my brother there  once, when he screamed at a video game so much he burst a blood vessel in his eye. 

I thought better and said “do we have any whole black peppercorns?”  

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Why?”  

“The beer I drank is messing with me a bit.”  

“Oh,” she said. “What does it do? Help you not get drunk?”  

“Yeah.”  

“Ok, help me get the dogs in.”  

We got the dogs in after they chased the chickens back into their coop. Mom was talking  about how she’d have to go to work on Black Friday, but that we could still do some shopping  together. I had things I wanted to get, but I wasn’t thinking about those things, then. We went inside and, as Mom turned the corner to her room, I asked, “Can I get those peppercorns?” 

“Oh yeah, just look in the lazy Susan in the kitchen.”  

I went for it. I passed Dad, who was sitting on the couch watching TV, on my way there. I  eyed him in a way to see if he was watching me. Dad’s default look is to glare so that you see the  whites of his eyes, so it looks like he’s angry. I’ve been told I have the same look. I spun the  Susan until I found the peppercorns and took them to my room. I ate a handful, and my mouth  went dry in an instant. I drank some water, put the peaceful music stream back on, and tried to  take a nap. That’s when my brother Matthew came into the room.  

“You left your food on the table,” he said.  

“Oh, yeah?”  

“Clean it up.”  

“I will.”  

Matthew looks a little bit like Fernando Valenzuela, only lighter, enough to make him  pass. We’re different in that he doesn’t care about his whiteness or his Mexicanness. I think that’s  a good thing. Growing up, all the Mexicans I went to school with said I wasn’t Mexican. Even  my cousins in L.A. tell me I’m white. It’s usually white people who identify me as Mexican, my  overdosed neighbor who’d rather spit than talk to me, for example. My first girlfriend, who was  white, called me a short half-Mexican the first time we met, and I cried myself to sleep over that.  

We still got naked together, though, so I guess bygones are bygones. I remember how she  used to caress my stomach and tell me my body was perfect, and how I have never once had that  thought about myself. She eventually left me for this El Salvadoran guy whom we went to  college with. I guess she had the market cornered on chubby Latinos.  

There was a woman, a hardworking, intelligent woman, whom I got close to recently. I’d  flirt with her every chance I could get, and she’d flirt with me when she could get away with it.  Well, we both got way too drunk one time, and we were all over each other at a party. What I  remember is that she kissed me three times on my big cheek. Instead of kissing her back, though,  I asked her, leaning into her shoulder, “Am I Mexican? Tell me I’m Mexican,” and she said,  “you’re Mexican,” and then she went inside the house.  

Mom had said she was happy to celebrate Thanksgiving as a family, but I only ate one  plate before hiding in my room. We have a tendency in my family not to talk things unless  \they’re big issues that make us cry. Death, for instance. I hadn’t thought about Tami in years  before Mom mentioned her at the dinner table that day. I still remember her voice and her laugh;  I’ve caught myself laughing sometimes in the same way that she did. The last time I saw her was  at this house. She had come in from the basement on errands with Mom. She had grown older in  the years since I’d seen her last. She’d dyed her hair black, the way it was when I was younger.  Tami walked with a hunch and a shuffle on account of a car accident she was in as a teenager.  The windshield broke and some of it injured her uterus and hip, rendering her infertile. The only thing I remember about our interaction was my asking her if I was her favorite nephew. Only, I flipped it, saying “I’m your favorite nephew, aren’t I?” She pursed her lips and nodded, giving me a slight smile. I’ve wrestled with myself for years with my inability to answer her text. How  maybe if I had, we would have been able to do something.  

I thought about that as I lay in my bed. It didn’t occur to me, in that moment, that Tami  died in the same position. I now wonder what she got in using those pills. If she felt like laying in  her bed was like lying on a bed of clouds. I wonder if she felt the same strained heartbeat as I  did, if maybe she realized it had all come to a head, and if she realized she was dying as she did  so. Usually when I do things like this, I come to some realization about myself, vowing to be  better about something. By the time I wake up the next morning, though, I forget about it. This  was the one time I didn’t.  

My heart rate was finally lowering. I made sure the gummy capsule was locked up tight. I  remembered how Mom made a cheesecake and went for the kitchen. My body was on autopilot,  just searching for whatever could distract me from the slow drumbeat in my chest. When I  entered the dining room, though, my whole family was there. It was like they were waiting for  me.  

“Can we sing happy birthday, now?” Mom asked.  

“OK,” was all I could say.  

My family sang the song while I just kind of stared at the candles burning on the cake.  Mom loves to say “cha, cha, cha” between the verses of the song. I don’t remember what I  wished for as I blew out the candles. I thought about how Mom had texted “happy birthday”  down to the minute I was born, how we used to have so many more people over when I was  younger, and how that stopped happening as much. There was a Thanksgiving when all Mom’s relatives came over, and Dad got upset because they would eat and eat, but never help clean up.  Of all the people who helped clean, only my maternal grandmother Virginia did it, and she  wasn’t guilty of anything. Dad paid her back when he let her stay at his house as she was dying.  My parents had been divorced for six years by that point. I remember when Mom told Dad she  was divorcing him: it was because he wouldn’t take her seriously enough; it was because he  would never help the way he needed to; and it was because he wasn’t being a father. He told me  “I love you, mi’jo” as we sat in his truck while he drank a beer with the engine running. My  grandmother said he was her favorite son-in-law. He was only one who didn’t hit and wasn’t a  deadbeat. He had his issues, sure, but he worked past them in the way he could.  

Mom told me that as my grandmother was dying, she saw faces in the ceiling in the spare  bedroom at my father’s house, and would point out and name them for my mom: her brothers,  her mother, her father. Mom has told me she’s seen ghosts as well. I haven’t seen any myself yet.  

Mom cut the cake, handing out a slice to each of us. I bit into mine, and it was the best  damn thing I could have asked for. I continued to eat until I was full.  

The post Family History appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Snow fell quiet in dropped cotton kisses. 

I wear my jacket in class every day. Mr. See’s classroom has one window that looks out on the parking lot below, and he keeps it open at all times, even over the weekend. Though I bet the janitors close it. Maybe he asked them not to. They would listen because everybody loves Mr. See. We shiver in the winter and learned quickly to take our jackets out of our lockers where we had stuffed them to wait out the day. Sometimes it’s kinda nice; fresh air dispersing the spritzes and sprays we swim around in. But it’s also super annoying. 

Snow sheeted the parking lot below the window, each and every car disappearing beneath a layer of icing. But Mr. See says that nature and love are the food of life, so we should embrace them when we have the chance, that we should always keep the window open. It just seems cold to me. 

Last week, Juliet came up to me and asked if I like cars. The skylight above our lockers was completely covered with snow, crystals shimmering over glass. How much pressure can those windows take? Would the frost break through and avalanche me alive? Would she dig through the snow to find me? You like cars too? She had asked. No, not really, but–Maybe I can.

She fixes them up and sells them, which is pretty cool. Maybe I can like cars, I told her. She laughed at that. I can like cars for that, I think. Silver bells. Sometimes my face turns pink. I hope it didn’t then. 

Mr. See said he wanted to tell us all a love story. We groaned–hadn’t Marquez done enough to us for one day? But it wasn’t Marquez’s story. It was Mr. See’s. A story about a different snowy day–before our class ever lost that blue dog’s eyes–and he was driving home early from school. The teachers, he said, they all leave school after we do. I guess we keep trying to hit them with our beat-up, hand-me-down cars on our way out of the parking lot, where we speed home or do doughnuts. He says we try to kill them–not on purpose, I don’t think, but either way, he waits until the coast is clear of all us scary teens. I don’t think I’ve almost hit someone before. I’d probably remember that. On this snowy day, though, he told us, he had to pick his kids up early for a doctor’s appointment, so he left halfway through the day during the group B lunch. My lunch is group A, which means I have to eat a turkey sandwich, curly fries, all washed down with a foil-clad juice packet at 10:30 in the morning, right before running a mile in gym class. It’s all sweat and turkey for the rest of the day, and that’s never seemed all that good to me. No wonder the hallways are rank and rotten. 

No wonder Mr. See lets in the snow. 

The juniors and seniors get to leave school for lunch if they want to, which is okay, but you’ve still got to have a car if you want to go anywhere other than Walmart. If you’re seventeen and have a car, you can get French fries from a McDonald’s down the street instead of the curly ones from the cafeteria down the stairs. I think the fries in the cafeteria are a lot better because they’re actually hot and they’re not soggy from a steaming journey in the passenger’s seat or held fast between some jock’s thighs. But an hour of freedom is worth floppy fries and getting older. I guess. 

That day with the “Eyes of a Blue Dog,” when Mr. See also told us his story, the window was open wide, and the snowflakes fell in marshmallow chunks. All we were thinking about was a snow day, about how much we had earned one. Would Juliet win in a snowball fight? I think she would. Flakes swirled downward. We thought about snow while Mr. See talked about the story, “Eyes of a Blue Dog.” Love and love and love, he said as the flakes layered over the windowsill. Gabriel Garcia Marquez said it, love, and love, I guess. In those trippy, dreamy words. 

I watched the snow swirling.  

In the art classroom, where I took drawing last year, they make a pot of coffee every day. You wander through the hallway, and it’s the normal nasty B.O., Axe body spray, and sticky, choking hormones at every twisting turn, but then you pass by the art room. And bam. Just coffee. Roasty and warm, and you can hear the sizzle and drip from the machine if you get there at the right time. And sometimes my 7:30 Red Bull isn’t good enough to make it to 9:00, let alone 10:00 or 11:00. And my mom told me that I can’t have two or else my heart will explode. That she worries, and I should eat an apple instead, some peanut butter, she says. But I don’t know about that. I usually pop into the writing room, make my way around, grab some coffee, and say hi to my old teachers from before. I think the teachers might be bored because they always wave and chatter when they see me. They ask about my weekend, about movies, and friends. It was boring, I tell them. Last weekend was too.

I wonder what Juliet watched this weekend–maybe YouTube or Batman–did she and her friends go to Joe’s for a burger and fries too? Maybe they hung out in the parking lot to eat in the curative weekend air. Maybe it was boring like mine. 

What does it look like? The two of them asked my class—Mr. Marquez and Mr. See asked us, talking about blue dogs and breaths of falling snow. What does it look like? Love? When it’s walking down the street, or wandering the fluorescent aisles in the grocery store, how about in the school hallway chaos, sweating at the 24-hour gym, driving around town for something interesting to do, in our dreams? 

Yesterday, when Juliet came up to me, she asked where I got the coffee. Hell, yeah. I can talk coffee. That’s what I told her. No problem. It was a white, winter day, and she was wearing a jacket like a skinned Muppet all purple and fuzzy. We stood just outside the front doors of the school, and everyone else swam around us while we talked. I like it when she talks about cars and the snowflakes stick like glitter to her lashes. All cars and snow and cars. What does it look like? They asked. 

I raised my hand because what the hell were they talking about? 

Love, Marquez said, whispering messages in dreams that leak. 

Mr. See nodded, love. 

I don’t know about that. 

When Juliet asked me where I got the coffee, I took her to the art room. This is Juliet, Juliet, these are the old teachers. I see them every day. My weekend was boring, I told them as we walked by. We–me and Juliet together–went over to the coffee pot, which was still dripping and hissing. The cups next to the pot aren’t really big enough, so I showed her how I usually grab one from the cupboard the teachers restock from.

I don’t need to ask, which is cool. 

She hadn’t met my counselor before. I wonder who hers is and if she likes them. I walked her back to the office while we waited for the drip to finish up. I can ask my counselor for stuff that I need, and he might say yes. That’s how I got my new glasses, but I don’t wear those at school. Just for homework and stuff, if I remember. 

This is Juliet, everyone. 

As the snow fell, Mr. See told us about that day. That other snowy day. He was sitting at a red light during B lunch. It’s when most of the juniors and seniors fly free. Big flakes slushed to icy puddles on the asphalt as he waited for green. Then love hit. 

Today, Juliet and I got coffee again, and I showed her where they keep the half-and-half and the sugar, too. They sometimes stash some secret snacks over there. Before class, we talked about coffee and cars, and curly fries. I wonder if I should sit next to her tomorrow. Or if that would be weird. Maybe I should ask Mr. See. 

Mr. See said that when he got hit that day in the snow while he waited for the light to turn green, the first thought he had was about his kids. He’s got two, I think. No. He’s got two, I know. He talks about them in every class at least one time. He said he saw their faces in his mind and heard their voices talking about soccer and cereal. When everything else went black. But he was okay. Only after he opened his eyes, after he was okay, he felt frustration. Felt annoyed, he said. Of car repairs, insurance companies, of being late to the doctor, and having to reschedule. Felt furious, he said. Of the faces of his sons, of his kids waiting, and worried, and wondering where he was. Of the awakened thought. Only a moment between him and his boys. Between never picking them up again. He should’ve waited, he said, just another hour, or should’ve asked his wife to grab them from school instead. But he was too excited to see them, he told us. To hear about soccer and cereal. 

I wonder if my dad would be excited to take me to the doctor. We might talk about coffee. Would he leave work early? In the snow. Talk about curly fries at school. I could ask Mr. See. Maybe the art teachers. What do they think? But it’s kind of boring. 

The insurance card was in Mr. See’s hand, hazards on, and he was closing the door behind him, but he told us, when he squinted through the falling snow, there was no movement in the other car. There was no damage, aside from his own headlight, he noticed after scoping out the scene, waving other drivers past. Lunchtime juniors and seniors. 

The snow makes everything quiet. It’s like a giant blanket smothering everything beneath it. And Mr. See’s head was hurting because he must have hit it in the clash. The flakes fell silent, and even all the cars going by seemed to hush past. No one stopped. They all drove by until there was no one left at that light but Mr. See. And the guy who hit him. 

There was no movement from the car. 

His frustration was rising–his kids would be waiting and worried–he marched over to the driver’s side door. Every window was completely fogged over, the driver invisible. What the hell was this joker doing? Mr. See swears like that sometimes, even in class. He knocked. No answer. 

A whole minute of knocking went by, then shivering, then knocking again. He had his phone open. 9-1-1, ready to go because something was wrong. Maybe he was hurt. Or maybe something else. But it was just a little bump. Just his own headlight. What was going on inside? And the snow was cold and quiet. 

It was enough. 

Mr. See yanked the door open, jumping back to a haul-ass position just in case.

I probably would’ve hit the deck no questions if it was me. Or ran away as fast as I could. Would my dad answer the phone if I called him then? I think he would. 

But Mr. See didn’t need to hit the deck. Or call his dad. 

It was just a kid. 

Probably a senior, sporting a letterman jacket, like the ones all the football players sport daily: red and blue, a design unwearable and embarrassing after high school except by burnt-out bummers or at some kind of reunion. I probably won’t go to those. Will Juliet? 

The angle was almost impossible to make out the letterman’s features. The guy’s left hand still had a death grip on the wheel. His body twisted, extended as far into the passenger side as he could go, clearly holding something below the passenger dash, eyes barely peeping above the wheel. 

Mr. See told us how his heart ran all around like a thumping, metal bassline. He was in the military, I think, so his imagination went off roaming. All of the things someone could be reaching for raced like Hell’s grocery list through his head. What did he have to be ready for? What did he have to do? 

Mr. See tried to visualize the details of his sons’ faces until, with wet, blue eyes, the letterman looked up at him. Tears streaming down his face, his chin quivered like frostbite. He desperately whimpered sorrys, hiccupped pleas of don’t call the cops, don’t call my mom, and what do I do nows. Mr. See went blank. 

The letterman choked how sorry, so, so sorry he was, sir, through macho tears. He couldn’t see the lines on the road because the windshield was all fogged up. Mr. See glanced around at the falling snow and the gray and silent sky, still eyeing the kid’s right hand, which hadn’t moved at all. And he nodded.

What he would give to be back in his own car, he said, driving to the doctor, his kids in the back fighting and playing, screeching, and laughing. He’s going to tell his kids this whole story when they’re older, I bet. Even the part where he nearly peed his pants and booked it when the letterman in the car suddenly straightened from the passenger’s side and aimed the contents of his right hand directly at Mr. See’s face. 

Everything stopped swirling. 

The kid blinked. 

Mr. See’s face must have looked wild, drained, and distorted. 

Then in a tiny mouse voice, the letterman whispered sorry he needed to keep them warm and sorry sorry. The heater was out on the driver’s side. He desperately needed to get back before the end of lunch because the fries he had brought for his girlfriend were getting cold, and she had broken her leg, and she was all alone, and she needed–the letterman’s eyes lagoon blue and overflowing, she loves fries, he choked. Lukewarm and soggy, he had to do his best. Had to make it back to her. He didn’t want her to slip on ice, so he went himself. Didn’t want her to fall and hurt herself, the letterman said, with eyes like a dog, and looked at the sloppy bag of fries in his outstretched hand, which were definitely worse than the ones in the cafeteria. But you pay a price for that taste of freedom. Even if it’s second-hand. I guess I’ll find out when I’m older. He had been holding the fries under the passenger’s side heater as he drove, so they wouldn’t get cold because she really needed a pick-me-up and and sorry sorry sorry. 

His blue eyes welled. 

Mr. See’s pulse steadied–it had been like a marching band going, thumping around his chest, he told us–but his breath calmed, and he nodded at the letterman before returning to his car, one headlight just a little messed up. The light turned green and he drove to pick up his kids. Snowflakes curled.  

That’s love, Mr see said after telling us a story about a gray and snowy day. What is? What is love, we asked? But he just smiled and told us to take out Pablo Neruda. The bell for lunch would ring in twenty-one minutes, and I bet I wasn’t the only one who could smell the fries–waiting for us, warm, crispy spirals in the cafeteria below. Juliet had asked what I was having for lunch. We could sit together, she said as the snow eddied, and I could almost taste those fries, rich and substantial. What was I doing for lunch? Fries. I think, and then I shrugged a little, like the guys in the movies do. How can you tell when something is significant? What was I doing for lunch? Sitting with you. I couldn’t say that, though. But she nodded at me anyway. So maybe we’ll sit together. Maybe she likes fries too. Outside, was a different world now, snow spiraled. Nothing looked like it had when the bus dropped me off in the morning. Now quilted in clear white, and a horizon of fries was twenty-one minutes away. Maybe. 

Mr. See sat on the windowsill, a winter breath from the open window twisting around him, and he held up Neruda. Love, he said. 

I opened my book. 

I don’t know about that.

The post Coffee Love and Curly Fries appeared first on The New Absurdist.

He went down the road and, somewhere, was apprehended by demons. The demons  shoved the boy along, all the way into the city, straight to Satan, who was cucumber-eyed and  reclining in a mud bath in his colossal Palace of Fire. The boy was thrown forward. Satan’s cucumber slices slid away with dramatic slowness to reveal two caprine eyes flaming with  vexation. He spoke: “Who in the hell are you?” 

A fine question. “Jerry,” said Jerry. 

“Just Jerry?” 

“Jerry Lugubrious,” said Jerry Lugubrious. 

“Are you here with the living or with the dead, Jerry Lugubrious?” 

Another fine question. Jerry answered. Satan sat up in his mud bath. This was an odd  situation. Satan asked Jerry more questions, and Jerry tried to supply helpful answers. Jerry told Satan that the last thing he remembered doing before being transported to Hell  was trying to heave a rather unwieldy bag of garbage into the dumpster behind the apartment  building where he lived. Satan said “ah” and explained that a lot of portals to Hell are hidden  inside dumpsters; Jerry must have fallen into one by mistake. The two had a good laugh. Satan  really was very nice and understanding about the whole thing. He ordered one demon to make Jerry some tea, and another demon to draw Jerry a mud bath in the neighboring tub. The boy and the Prince of Darkness drank tea and mud-bathed and talked about life for a very long time. 

Jerry Lugubrious was a sandy-white doll of a boy who had only recently begun to be  called a “man” with any seriousness or regularity. He looked a bit like an illustration on one of  those old Boys’ Life covers. The creased eyes. The coiffed hair, so blond it’s yellow, impossibly  fitted to his scalp. Teeth so white they almost hurt to look at. Satan had liked him right away, but  he especially liked him after Jerry unabashedly related his life’s dream of becoming a big-shot  advertising executive with lots of money and a firm with his name in big shiny letters on the  building’s facade. 

“Normally, I don’t take so mercifully to interlopers,” said Satan, “but you, kid, I like the  cut of your jib. Dammit, I could use someone like you around here. Someone with your attitude.  What’s the word? Ambition. Someone with your ambition. Let’s say something wild here. Let’s  say I offered you a job. What do you think you might say to that, Jerry?”

Jerry didn’t know the words “interloper” or “jib,” but he knew better than to refuse work  from a big shot like Satan. Bills to pay. Student loans, rent. Jerry had a glove with one finger  missing, and his shoe was blown out at the side. Plus, working for Satan would look quite  impressive on his resume, thus increasing his chances of one day becoming a big shot himself.  He could see the way out of his middle-register existence lighting up before him like a runway in  the night. 

Satan interviewed him right there in the mud bath. Jerry told Satan everything he believed Satan wanted to hear. 

Satan: “Are you a hateful person?” 

Jerry: “And how!” 

Satan: “What’s your attitude toward your fellow man?” 

Jerry: “I can’t stand that guy!” 

Satan: “Tell me about a time you used evil to solve a problem.” 

Jerry: “Once, I took advantage of my roommate’s peanut allergy so he’d stop stealing my lunch.” Jerry was hired on the spot. He and Satan laughed and smoked cigars in the mud. He still works for the big man today. 

It’s 2019 on Earth. Thursday. Nanette Hubble keeps saying “sweet flippin’ flapjacks,” a  catchphrase in a new cartoon, into a studio microphone until the casting director tells her thank  you, we’ve heard enough. Nanette, a seasoned reject, does not stand there all dumb and  incredulous like they do in movies about struggling actors. Nor does she shout or cry at her  rejectors. Nor does she give the other voice artists the finger and storm off to the bathroom to berate herself in a mirror before smashing it with her bare fist. Nanette is a professional and is  guided by propriety, not impulse. As she coolly but readily makes her exit, she very politely  thanks the people at the table for their time and produces upon herself a smile so huge it almost  looks like it hurts. 

Flying home, south on I-79, she smokes a cigarette against the lamentory slowness of a  lesser-known Miles Davis number, one wrist on the wheel, in a blur of evening snow.

The apartment is small, cold, dark. But quiet. Officially, it’s smoke-free, but not as far as  our Nanette is concerned. She lies in the recliner in a blue haze of Bionic Woman reruns that  dance silently on the old Electrohome. The swish and sigh of cars in the wet street put her to sleep,  and the old dreams replay. 

Dreams of exchanging her ratty green bagger’s apron for a shiny studio lanyard. Dreams  of being known not as “Nanette, the girl who struck out looking in the final at-bat in the series deciding game,” or as “Nanette, the girl who pissed herself that one time in pre-algebra in the  middle of an exam,” but rather as “Nanette, voice of this beloved cartoon character, bringer of  joy who is, herself, joyful, and who is just as pleasant in real life as you would think, and  surprisingly pretty, too, and has a great sense of humor, and loves all her fans, takes time out of  her busy schedule to sign autographs, donates her excess wealth to dog shelters and cancer  research,” and so on like that. 

The old nightmare, too: Nanette fakes her death and attends her own funeral in disguise,  only to find that she is the sole person in attendance. 

She jumps awake at sudden pain. A two-centimeter burn appears on her left forearm.  Nanette deposits her cigarette into a half-eaten bowl of microwave noodles on the TV tray.

Just out of view: polaroids depicting Nanette and her disappeared boyfriend in a cork board jumble that summarizes their life together. Nanette and Jerry sharing a big sandwich.  Nanette and Jerry kissing on a glittery New Year’s Eve or Day. Nanette in a birthday hat  pretending to take a slice out of Jerry’s ass with a cake knife while Jerry parodies a look of terror.  They met at school, he the mindlessly practical version of her, she the helplessly fanciful version  of him. They liked each other a lot, but “love” was not a word uttered freely between them. It  was more like an intense interest. Jerry was interesting in the way the unusually long icicle outside  Nanette’s window right now is interesting; was it about him, or the icicle? 

The anniversary is, what, Tuesday? Of Jerry’s mysterious disappearance. Nanette has spent the year since feeling lost and blaming herself. She thought they had a good thing. She was helping Jerry with money while he plodded towards his degree. And she did voices, impressions,  which Jerry found infinitely amusing. Bart Simpson under the influence of various Schedule 1 drugs. Walter Matthau and George Bush Sr. picking out the very ripest tomatoes at a supermarket for their homemade salsa. Jerry had a great laugh, one that made you laugh, too, even if nothing was really all that funny. It seemed so good, so permanent at the time. She misses him always. 

But now here he comes emerging torturedly from the building’s dumpster out back, the young man covered in soot and clutching his devil-horned boater like some childhood nightmare’s addled notion of Dick Van Dyke. Once out, he crouches a moment in the  snowy darkness, coughing, colder than hell. He does not at once realize where he is. When he does, he runs to the building’s entrance and buzzes every number he thinks he remembers possibly being his. 

The dramatic reunion of Nanette Hubble and Jerry Lugubrious is like the emotional  soldier’s homecoming in movies and Super Bowl commercials.

“I thought you were gone forever,” she says, “I thought you were dead,” crying into his chest. She squeezes him hard so that he stays. 

“I should call my mom. She probably thinks the same thing.” 

“You can call her tomorrow.” 

“All right.” 

“Everything can wait till tomorrow.” 

“All right.” 

“You smell like farts.” 

“It’s the dirt. High sulfur content. Sort of interesting, actually. I’ll tell you about it later. I  should probably shower.” 

“No,” she says, squeezing him harder. “I don’t care how you smell.” 

“You’re not mad?” 

“No. I’m so happy.” 

“I’m so sorry, Nan. I didn’t mean to leave without saying anything. I didn’t mean to leave  at all.” 

“I’m not mad, Jerry. Not right now.” 

The moon is impossibly bright. The falling snow’s shadows on the bedroom walls create  the illusion of gradual ascent. Jerry playfully sticks the devil-horned boater on Nanette’s head.  She laughs. Neither can look away from the other. They have sex. Nanette keeps pinching Jerry’s  cheek and calling him “my little Jer-Bear” and telling him how she missed him so, so much. 

As he enjoys his first cigarette in almost a year, Jerry does his level best to explain just  what’s been going on all this time. There’s no straightforward or convincing way to put it. Jerry  was in Hell, and now he works for the Devil. Nanette thinks at first that it’s just a metaphor, the way soldiers in Vietnam said war was “hell,” or how a miserable office drudge might use the  word “hell” as a synonym for “dull, unending work” or “a state of ennui.” But the more Jerry talks, the crazier he sounds. 

“It was a bunch of lousy grunt work at first.” He keeps drawing on his cigarette, creating suspense. “Dusting, landscaping. I delivered a whole lot of mail. After a while, Satan said I could  start selling real estate over the phone, like they do in that movie. He gave me a desk in the same  building where he lives. Can you believe that? My desk was by the door because, you know what  he said? He said, if I couldn’t hack it, see that door, that’s where my ass would go, right out that  door. He’s funny like that. A little scary, too, but. Anyway, he said I really cut the old mustard.  Said I was the best closer he’s had in centuries. That’s where I got the hat. There was a  competition. The hat was first prize. Second prize was a set of steak knives.” 

“Sorry,” says Nanette, laughing, “I could’ve sworn you said Satan got you into this whole  mess.” She sits up a little, doffing the boater. 

“Yeah, you know. The Devil. Evil guy with the horns and the goatee. The Bible makes  him out like he’s some monster trying to destroy the world, but actually he’s trying to save it.  We’ve been lied to our whole lives, so we don’t realize that evil is actually good, and good is  actually evil.” 

“Um.” 

“You’ll have to meet him sometime. He explains the whole thing a lot better than I do.  He’s sort of like a father or mentor to me. He’s so smart, Nan. I don’t know his IQ, but it’s gotta  be in like the hundreds or thousands or maybe even higher. He’s taught me all kinds of stuff about all sorts of things. We play badminton every Saturday. I’m not very good. He always beats  me.” 

Nanette feels cold and a bit sick. “Jerry.”

“Hey, but guess who just got a big promotion? That’s right. That’s why I’m here, Nan. I  get to do the Devil’s work right here on Earth now. Isn’t that great? We can finally be together  again.” 

“Jerry.” 

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, what about school? What about finishing my degree?” 

“That’s not what I’m thinking.” 

“Well, there’ll be no more worrying about any of that stuff anymore, Nan. That all goes  out the window. This job is everything I’ve ever wanted and more. I really feel like I’ve found  my purpose in life. You know?” 

Nanette scratches her nose. “Something stinks,” she says. “I think maybe you should see  about that shower.” 

Nanette is up late the next morning, Saturday, thinking that it’s Friday, a workday. She  checks her phone, relieved. “I could’ve sworn.” 

Jerry is still asleep. He’s on his side, drooling a bit, one leg overtop a crumpled mass of  bedding. He breathes so subtly that, if it weren’t for the very slight nose whistle, you’d almost think he was dead. 

Nanette is frying eggs at her dingy kitchenette, wearing a bathrobe with little cartoon  sheep on it, when here comes her landlady’s unmistakable shave-and-a-haircut knock at the door.  Nanette scuttles over in her slippers to answer. “Mrs. Lieberman,” says Nanette. 

“Nanette,” says Mrs. Lieberman, “dearie,” always infantilizing in a way that makes it  hard to tell whether she’s being malicious. “I hate to disturb on you on a Saturday morning, but I  just thought I’d just drop by to—”

“I know, Mrs. Lieberman. I have the money. I just lost track of the date. I’m very sorry.  It’s been one of those weeks. I’ll send it over just as soon as I’m done with—” “Oh, honey, not at all. In fact, I came to tell you that you can just go ahead and forget about this month’s rent.” 

“Forget? As in…?” 

“You’re an exemplary tenant, Nanette. I don’t believe you’ve ever given me any trouble  of any kind. Look, I know this past year has been awfully unkind to you. I just thought, that poor  girl, someone ought to do something nice for her.” 

Nanette almost laughs. “Geez, Mrs. Lieberman. I don’t know what to—” 

“Nothing at all. You just enjoy your weekend, sweetie, and hail Satan. Bye-bye now.”  Nanette makes a slightly twisted expression in the doorway as she watches Mrs. Lieberman limp  down the stairs with her silver-plated cane. The muffled scrape of a passing snowplow swells and  then recedes against the walls of the stairwell. Nanette actually has to pinch herself. Then,  remembering the skillet, she runs back to the kitchenette to find that the eggs are, by some  divinity, perfectly cooked. 

“These eggs are perfectly cooked,” Jerry remarks at breakfast through a mouthful of  eggs. Nanette bites into a piece of toast, smiles at him weakly. The situation with Jerry feels  somewhat like a tightrope act with Nanette teetering way up on the wire. Dealing with him will  require a balanced approach, she’s decided; his babbling will be neither dismissed nor indulged.  It’s the classical approach of both psychotherapists and exorcists. 

“Hey, um. Look. I know last night was a lot,” says Jerry, spitting a bit of egg at his  girlfriend.

“Nooo,” Nanette says pleasantly, wiping her cheek. “It was just so much at once, I think.  Like, you know. I wasn’t expecting any of that. Like…” 

“Yeah, no, right.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Unexpected.” 

“Exactly.” 

“I guess you didn’t have too much of a reason to believe all that stuff about Hell. I  probably sounded like a crazy person.” 

“And Bingo was his name-o,” is what the inner, meaner Nanette might have said. But,  “You sounded like someone who’d just been through something very stressful,” is what she  actually says. 

“Stressful but rewarding,” Jerry says pointedly, looking serious. “Please don’t be  confused about that, Nan. This has been the single greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.” He  hesitates before taking his next bite. “Better make that second-greatest.” He winks a disarming  wink. Nan tries to laugh convincingly. 

A silence. Jerry is apparently a lot hungrier than his girlfriend. “Anyway,” he says, eating,  “I wish I had some kind of proof for you. Wouldn’t you know it, I lost my phone just as soon as I went through that portal to Hell, so here I am without any pictures.” Jerry’s face brightens with  epiphany. “Hey, there we go. I’ll just show you the portal to Hell. That portal’s how I got in with  Satan in the first place. Boy, was he mad, even after I told him it was an accident. Man takes his  security very seriously, understandably. It all worked out for me, of course, so.” “Portal to…?” 

Jerry wipes his mouth with a bare forearm and squeaks his chair back. “It’s right out  back. Right in the dumpster behind the building.”

“I don’t recall a portal to Hell being in the lease agreement.” 

“That’s what I thought, too. Must’ve been a boilerplate thing. Apparently, a lot of them  have one. A portal to Hell, I mean. A lot of dumpsters lead straight to Hell. Come on, I’ll show  you.” 

“Maybe later, Jerry.” Jerry nods and dabs his mouth with a napkin. Nanette touches her food absently with her fork. She lets her perfectly cooked eggs go cold. 

The weekend is a haze of quiet tension and little peculiarities. Nanette looks at Reddit  and WebMD while her boyfriend spends the weekend watching the eighth and ninth seasons of  Swamp People on Netflix. Strangers keep coming to the door with gifts like alcohol and frozen  organ meat. The strangers all make ominous pronouncements like “hail Satan” and “blessed are  the destroyers of false hope” and “welcome to the Order of Darkness and Despair” before  departing abruptly. The freezer gets so full of organ meat that Nanette has to start throwing out old bags of vacuum-sealed birthday cake and three-bean chili to make room.

Monday, Jerry ties his tie in the mirror and says he’s going to work. He is dressed to kill,  absolutely mercilessly. He even has a briefcase. He kisses Nanette and is out the door before she  can start in on any kind of interrogation. In the doorway, she tells him he’d better not go  disappearing on her again, the young woman sounding just a little mad. 

Jerry’s job is to search the town for lost souls. He takes buses. Browses grocery aisles.  Sits in various kinds of waiting rooms. Just waiting, however long it takes, for someone to make  their unhappiness evident. Sometimes it’s a sigh. Sometimes a pronounced gesture of frustration.  Sometimes—and this is the jackpot right here—a little sniffle and tear in the eye. You’d be  surprised how many of these occur publicly; you just have to pay attention.

Then, Jerry will look up from his phone or reading material and carefully approach the  unhappy person in a direct but non-threatening way to ask quietly what the matter is. The  unhappy person will say it’s nothing, perhaps deny even knowing what Jerry’s talking about.  Jerry will affect an empathetic expression and press. “No, really. I think I might be able to help.”  He will be sure to make it his business right away, to cast himself vaguely as a potential aid to  the unhappy person before they can tell him to fuck off. 

This always gets desperate people’s attention. A hand on the shoulder sometimes  enhances the effect. Just on the shoulder, very gently, not around the whole neck or anything like  that. He will use what he learned in advertising school to appeal to the primary sadnesses almost  all unhappy people share. Loneliness. Hopelessness. Powerlessness. Regret. For maybe the first time, the unhappy person will feel understood. Being understood, they will confess they are  desperate. Up against a wall. At the end of their rope. And being desperate, they will be willing  to try just about anything, no matter how crazy or unconventional, if it advertises even the  slimmest chance of a solution. And Jerry will be quite happy to inform them that he happens to  have just the thing they’ve been looking for. All they have to do is surrender their soul. 

Neither Satan nor Jerry actually cares what the unhappy person’s problem is. I owe the bank money I don’t have. I have a rare bone disease that causes incredible pain. The girls in Alpha Beta Epsilon don’t want to have sex with me. Whatever. As long as you sign on the dotted, flaming line. 

Do not underestimate the soft sell. I know this is probably a lot to take in, Mrs. Murray.  Tell you what. Why don’t you think it over. Sleep on it. No need to rush into a big decision like  this. I’m not some huckster. I want to help. Take all the time you need to decide. In fact, here’s  my number. Line’s always open. Just text or call. Questions, anything. Anytime. No pressure  whatsoever.

Jerry is a natural. On his first day, he deftly convinces eight townspeople to sell their  souls to the Devil, positively obliterating the previous rookie record of five (set by the man who  legendarily went on to swindle Robert Johnson out of his soul at the Dockery crossroads). In the  early evening, as our triumphant Jerry rides the bus home in his slackened necktie, he gets a call  from Satan who personally congratulates him, tells him he’s proud, and hints at the possibility of  a very nice year-end bonus if he keeps up the good work. Jerry is so pleased with himself he  almost becomes emotional. 

It’s dark. Nanette takes a smoke break in the parking lot of the grocery store near closing.  Gusts push loose snow across the pavement in little scarves. She keeps her arms folded in the  cold. 

An unsaved number lights up her phone. She answers: “Yeah?” 

“Nanette Hubble?” 

“Yes?” 

It’s the casting director from the other day. “Congratulations, kid. You got the part.” He  sounds to be holding an executive-size cigar between his teeth. 

“Part,” Nanette repeats. “Um, what part would that be?” 

“The Bonnie Blunderbuss part. ‘Sweet flippin’ flapjacks,’ and all that.” He continues  before Nanette can react: “Anyway, kid, we think you were just dynamite. You’ll forgive us if we  had to underreact at the audition; see, we make it a point to stay neutral in front of the other  voice actors during the audition process. Keeps things professional. At least, that’s the idea.  Apologies if we were in any way discouraging.”

“Wow,” goes Nanette. “I thought I was being turned down. It felt just like all the other  rejections.” She laughs the slightly crazed laugh of those who must countenance the too-good-to be-true. 

The casting director laughs a little too. “Rejections? You kidding? Look, Nan. Can I call  you Nan? Look. Frankly—and normally I don’t go around admitting this stuff—we were all  blown the fuck away. I mean, the comic timing, the understated zaniness, with just the right  amount of Ali MacGraw demureness and naturality: Dynamite, Dynamite, Dynamite, with a  capital motherfucking D, sweetheart. I said to our producer Jim, I said, Jim, here’s your show.  This girl is the whole show.” And he goes on like this while Nanette keeps smiling into her own  shaking hand. 

“I guess I was just trying to make it my own,” Nanette explains. “It’s funny; being  someone else is the only time I feel like myself.” 

“Uh-huh,” goes the casting director, not interested. “Anyway, just wanted to call and let  you know and say congrats and all that. We’ll be in touch. All right? All right. Hail Satan, kid.” Nanette does a little dance and gives her place of employment the vengeful one-fingered  gesture of long-awaited emancipation. 

Fertility. Freedom from drink. Just a little more time with a dying wife. The resurrection  of a childhood border collie. A normal-looking nose. Money. Reconnection with an estranged  daughter. Authorship of the great masterpiece of contemporary opera. 

These were the eight Faustian bargains brokered by Jerry Lugubrious in his first business  day on Earth, which he later tells Nanette all about as they share their apartment’s recliner in the  glow of the CBS Evening News. Nanette has already shared her good news, but the goodness has now somehow worn off. “I feel kind of sick,” she says. Jerry ignores her. For both their sakes,  she pretends to feel all right, and keeps pretending for years and years and years. A general fact about actors is that, when they’re acting, they’re not, and when they’re not,  they are. 

Jerry and Nanette Lugubrious attend Jerry’s retirement banquet in Hell in the year 2120.  They have a newborn, Jerry Jr., whom Nanette totes around in a nylon Ergobaby papoose; no  sitter was available. Physically, the new parents are as young as they were a hundred years ago,  though Nanette’s face has settled noticeably into the creases of maternal exhaustion and a  century of vague discontent. Most people assume she’s one of those women who looks older than  she really is. 

The dress code is business casual. The venue is TGI Fridays, the one on Anguish Avenue,  a favorite haunt of Satan’s salariat where, intriguingly, Satan himself is known to occasionally  stop by and unwind. 

This whole thing was Satan’s idea; he’s rented the whole place out for the night. Some of  Hell’s highest-profile damned are present. J.P. Morgan and Napoleon I are solemnly engaged in a  game of billiards. John Wilkes Booth is hunched intently over a pinball machine, a game at  which he is said to be superb. Richard Nixon is having a go at “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”  on the karaoke machine. Everybody is smoking cigarettes or cigars under their own little  stratosphere of smoke, which Nanette worries may be bad for Junior, despite his supposed  immortality; she’d given up the habit during pregnancy just to be on the safe side.

Satan really is the goateed, tomato-red satyr most people imagine him to be. The  pitchfork is a myth; he has scoliosis and makes it a point not to lug things around without good reason. He did not impress Nanette as particularly evil when they were introduced, just phony.  He possesses a kind of salt-of-the-earth, Sam-from-Cheers quality and leads Hell with homespun  charisma, not an iron fist. Nanette of course remembers the old rule about bullshit: the biggest  pile attracts the most flies. 

It is also a misconception that Hell is the place of ubiquitous torment described in  sermons, or the Kafkaesque bureaucracy wryly depicted in satirical cartoons; each soul is tortured from 8 to 5 on business days and allowed respite after hours and on weekends, just like on Earth. The concept of “unending” torture is purely pre-industrial, made a thing of the past by the emergence of the Torturers’ Union, with whom you most assuredly do not want to trifle. The  torturers and the damned souls they torture actually get along rather well and often go out for  drinks after a long day in the dungeons and pits. They’re here forever, so they might as well be  friends. After all, the demons are just doing their jobs. 

Junior is asleep in his papoose. He seems to have an easier time sleeping in raucous  environments than perfectly silent ones, a fact which Nanette contemplates in her chair at the  head of the dozen or so tables that have been conjoined to make one long dining platform. 

Satan and Jerry Sr. are mingling with the evening’s ass-kissers, while Nanette is left  anonymous and alone. Jerry has not yet seen fit to introduce her to anybody here. Instead, he goes around relating old war stories from his hundred years in sales, remembering them as a  former boxer remembers his knockout-prime. Occasionally, he’ll glance over at Nanette, and  she’ll hear a snatch of his old joke about why salesmen’s wives always seem to be much more  attractive-looking than the salesmen. Satan keeps laughing and giving Jerry a hard, sportive slap  on the back.

Already tired, Nanette sends for a bottle of TGI Fridays’ finest Heineken Silver.

“…just to have you…back again…just to touch you…once again.” So plaintively ends Nixon’s rendition of Bread’s “Everything I Own.” A small group applauds. Nanette scowls and makes a low, inconspicuous farting sound with her tongue. 

“Wish me luck,” Jerry, suddenly nervous, whispers to his wife. He does not notice the  little copse of spent Heinekens that’s materialized before her. He takes a deep breath as he  discreetly reviews the notes Nanette prepared for him one last time. 

Satan gives Jerry an inquiring thumbs-up, and Jerry shoots one back in the affirmative.  “Folks, if I could have your attention for just a moment please,” goes Satan. His voice is huge.  The TGI Fridays goes reverently silent, except for the woody scrape of a few chairs twisting to  face the front. “I’d like to thank you all for coming tonight on behalf of both myself and the man of the hour, who I believe now would like to say a few words. Jerry?” 

Jerry smiles flatly. Clears his throat. Tugs nervously at a cuff link. “Just be yourself,”  Nanette said to him all week, the most hypocritical advice there is. Rarely in life does anyone get  what they want by being themselves. There is a reason dull jobs are applied for with suspicious  enthusiasm, a reason 60% of pictures uploaded to dating sites are altered. Some unsaid rule is always inhibiting you, interfering. At a point, you hardly remember what “yourself” even means. 

All this occurs to him in a fuzzy and indirect way as he stands there at the head, frozen, a bit waxy-looking and pale, like a Jerry sculpture that approximates but does not replicate the real  Jerry. Somebody coughs. Jack the Ripper gives one of the Enron people a look like, what’s with  this guy? There’s something odd—unsettling, even—about a silent salesman, especially Jerry  Lugubrious, that famously slick masseur of the English language. Everyone’s beginning to get a  little creeped out.

Finally, here it goes: “They say when you retire, you leave the job, but the job doesn’t leave you.” But it’s not Jerry. “That’s what he was supposed to say. He’s been practicing all week  what to say. But I guess there’s no practicing for stage fright.” This is Nanette saying this. To  everyone. “Just take a deep breath, honey. Try picturing everybody naked.” She’s swaying  slightly in her seat like a reed in a low wind. Little Jerry Jr. is stirring at her chest. He yawns with  his tiny triangular mouth. 

Jerry Sr. laughs uneasily with a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Ixnay, darling,” he says  from the corner of his mouth. They have the kind of tolerant intolerance for each other that  longtime couples sometimes do, that kind of buried resentment. 

Nanette shoos him. “What does that mean, ‘the job doesn’t leave you?’ I hung up my gloves years ago, and I did voices for a living; if my job hasn’t left me, I’m goddamn psychotic.” “I do believe you’re preaching to Satan’s choir, dear,” goes Jerry, still doing his awkward  laugh. “This is my wife Nan, everybody,” he explains, grinning painfully. No one is sure whether  to laugh with him. 

“Oui,” says Napoleon I, trying to be helpful, “Bonnie Blunderbuss. ‘Sweet flippin’  flapjacks.’ It was a very funny character of the television cartoons.” 

“Damn right,” John Wilkes Booth agrees. Some of the other damned souls mumble their  agreement as they suddenly detect and recognize her voice’s dormant cartoon aspect. Nanette grabs one of her bottles, disappointed to find it empty. “How funny you all  remember me when I myself have forgotten.” Some in the audience are eyeing Satan to see  whether he might intervene, but he gives no sign. “And who are you, Jerry? When you really get  down to it, are you leaving your job behind, or is the Devil now just part of who you are? Who we are?”

Jerry clears his throat. “People, clearly my wife has gotten herself pretty happy by this  point in the evening.” He points a thumb at the bottles, makes a face. “I’m afraid in these  conditions she tends to get a little philosophical, as you are now witnessing.” 

“You wanna know what I think?” Nanette belches softly into her fist. “I think we’re just bad people. You have a genius for badness, Jerry, and I have a genius for pretending you don’t. In  the end, we got everything we didn’t deserve, and nothing we did.” 

Jerry has broken a rather noticeable sweat. “All right, Ophelia. You made your speech.  Now listen, everyone here’s itching to raise a toast. Would you let the birds dip their beaks, for  Christ’s sakes?” 

Junior begins to shriek and cry at his mother’s bosom. Nanette bounces him in his  papoose and tells him it’s okay. She cries a little, too. “Our boy has evil parents,” she whimpers,  looking away. It’s a terrible sight. “He’ll never have the goodness he deserves.” 

Jerry sits, rubs his face in his hands. Everybody looks down at their tables, thoroughly  bummed out. Junior keeps crying that horrible infant’s cry while Nanette tries to talk him out of  it. The pinball machine chooses an unfortunate interval to snarl out its little rock-n-roll flourish,  which makes Junior cry even louder. Nobody wants to be here, but nobody wants to be the first  jackass to get up and leave, either. 

Now Satan approaches Nanette and her baby, slowly, his expression shadowy and  malevolent. He stands huge at her side with all the guests watching. “It can be changed,” he  pronounces. “Your son can be granted a good, moral life. A mortal, honest life.” 

Nanette wipes her nose with her wrist. “With all due respect, I don’t believe you’d know  an honest life if it walked up and gave you its card.”

“You’re A-number one right about that, Mrs. L.,” Satan concedes, laughing. “Couldn’t  have said it better myself. Luckily, I have people, experts, who take care of that business for me.  Your boy would be in good hands.” 

Jerry sighs. “Now wait just a minute—” 

“Very, very good hands,” Satan iterates, ignoring the husband. He puts his own hand on  Nanette’s shoulder. Just on the shoulder, very gently, not around the whole neck or anything like  that. He makes little cooing noises at her baby who is instantly soothed. “It can be done, if that’s  what you really want.” 

“That’s all I want anymore,” Nanette says softly. 

Satan nods, strokes his goatee. “There is a cost, as you well know. The parents must  never leave this place. There goes your immortality, and there go your souls, effective  immediately upon agreement. Your own death and damnation. That’s the offer: simple and fair.” 

Jerry stands. “All right, enough. Get your slimy sales talk off of my wife. She has no say  in what happens to my soul.” 

“Your soul?” Satan has to laugh. “You gave that up years ago, my abject servant, when  you fell in with me. I’ve met bellhops less obsequious than you, Jerry. That’s your philosophy,  isn’t it? Leave no ass unkissed.” 

“‘Abject,’ ‘obsequious…’ La-di-da-di-da. You always make with the big words when you  want to confuse me. Well here’s something I’m not confused about. It’s her decision, her soul.  One soul, one favor. That’s how it works.” 

“Half a loaf is better than none, and two loaves are better than one. That’s economics.  Don’t you know that?” 

Jerry shakes his head. Finally, people are beginning to gather their things and leave. A  small tear forms at the corner of Jerry’s eye. “I thought you were a friend.”

“I thought you were a businessman. Now if you don’t mind, I’m about to close.” Jerry picks up someone’s bottle. “Here’s mud in your eye, you old serpent.” He drinks  what’s left in the bottle, which isn’t much, before making for the double-door exit. “She just  likes wasting salesmen’s time, you know,” he warns, stepping backwards through the doors.  “Take my word for it. I’m a century deep into that whole game.” 

Satan looks at Nanette. Junior has already drifted back into a light, fidgety sleep. “This is  obviously all very overwhelming, Mrs. L.,” says Satan. “Tell you what. Why don’t you just take  some time to think this whole thing over. Sleep on it. There’s no need to rush into a big decision  like this. Take all the time you need to decide. You know how to reach me. When you decide it’s  right, I’ll have my people draw up the contract for you to sign. We’ll see that your boy has  nothing to do with us for the rest of his life.” 

The soil in Hell smells like shit. Something to do with the sulfur content. Jerry still isn’t used to it, even after coming and going all these years. 

In Hell, everything is on fire. The ground is on fire. The sky is on fire. The TGI Fridays  sign is on fire. Jerry wanders out through the parking lot and into the middle of Anguish Avenue.  A car swerves screechingly to the left to avoid him. The driver curses. Jerry looks back through  the restaurant window to regard his wife with utter contempt, his innocent child with savage  indifference. He knows Nanette has already made her decision. He goes down the road and  wanders for a long time. Somewhere, in an unfamiliar place, a horrible fear comes on; Jerry  doesn’t know whether he’s dead or just lost.

The post That Old Serpent appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Math was one of the more dangerous subjects to teach, with its absolutes and hard facts. Almost every time she went over the homework answers, at least one student would begin to hyperventilate. And she couldn’t tell that student that their answer was entirely correct, because then the students with the actual answer would begin to grow anxious themselves. The method she used with Jon M. this morning was the best way she could figure for keeping everyone’s head a normal size and maintaining correct arithmetic. It worked most of the time. 

That was this morning during math, and now that they were on to history, Ms. Adam’s job became a lot easier. There were no wrong answers in history class. 

“Now,” Ms. Adam said. “Who was president during the Civil War?” 

Four of the six little hands shot up. Ms. Adam pretended to consider who to pick for a moment before pointing to Sammy. 

“Babe Lincoln,” Sammy said.

“Very good,” Ms. Adam said. “Abraham Lincoln was the president during the Civil War. Write that down, children.” 

Most of the children began to scribble illegibly into their notebooks, and Ms. Adam turned around to write the name on the board. When she turned back to the children, a hand was trembling in the air. 

“I thought. . .” Priscella began, and already her breathing was erratic. The crown of her little forehead had begun to swell, spreading her blonde bangs apart. “I thought. . . I thought Martin Roother was the president during the Civil War.” 

“Oh he was!” Ms. Adam said quickly. A few more children’s breathing picked up pace. “He. . . He was president during the second Civil War. So both you and Sammy are correct.” That quieted them down. Priscella’s head returned to its normal size, which was already a little bulbous to begin with. To maintain the peace, Ms. Adam shifted to a more open-ended question. Nothing ever went wrong with open-ended questions. 

“Who is your favorite president?” 

All six hands went up. Ali stood a little in his seat to make his hand higher than the rest. Jon B. tried a different method, flailing his arm from side to side in the air as if he were waving goodbye from the window of a departing train. A handful of them were saying “O, o, o” like monkeys. 

“Alright, how about we do this: everyone write down your favorite president and explain your answer. Then we will share as a class.” 

The children got busy with their work. Their noses were only a few inches from their papers as they wrote. Big or small, old or young, everyone liked to give their opinions on things, and Ms. Adam knew that the students were never more engaged with their work than when they were writing about themselves. 

Ms. Adam did a lap around the room while they wrote, peering over their shoulders as she walked by. Most of their handwriting was indecipherable to anyone except themselves, but she wasn’t allowed to give any pointers on how to improve it. Michael’s was so bad that he wrote with equal parts pictures and words, inserting little stick figures and hieroglyphs in place of words he couldn’t guess at how to spell. Right now, as she passed him, he was drawing a picture of some four-legged creature in the middle of a sentence. 

Please, please don’t let him think a dog was ever president, she prayed quietly to herself, for she knew that if he did, she wouldn’t be able to correct him. 

When all the students had put down their pencils, Ms. Adam returned to the front of the room and announced that Priscella would go first, though everyone would get their turn. Priscella held her notebook in front of her studiously. “My favorite president is Martin Roother because he was president during the second Civil War and died for our sins.” “Very good, Priscella!” Ms. Adam said. “Now, Jon B., can you tell us who your—” “I thought Jesus died for our sins?” It was Michael, not looking worried, just confused. Before she had a chance to answer, Ali chimed in: “No, Jesus was spared by Allah.” Sammy: “Who’s Allah?” 

Ali: “God.” 

Michael: “I thought Jesus was God?” 

Ms. Adam: “Alright children, I think we need to—” 

Jon M.: “No, Jesus is the son of God.” 

Priscella: “But Martin Roother—”

“Alright, quiet time,” Ms. Adam said, a little louder than she intended. The volume startled the children out of their discussion and struck their faces with a sudden fear. They weren’t used to getting yelled at, much less by their teacher. Teachers were supposed to be like nannies—infinitely kind and patient. 

Seeing her mistake, Ms. Adam immediately said, “Everything’s okay. Everyone take a deep breath in—” The children inhaled. “And a deep breath out.” Exhaled. She took a second to survey the class. The two Jons and Sammy looked worried, unaccustomed to this kind of drastic difference in facts presented to them. Ali, Michael, and Priscella were even worse, each of their breaths beating in and out of their mouths at different tempos. With each breath, the crown of their heads inflated a little, looking like light bulbs. Light bulbs in a classroom were never good. 

“Okay, we are going to keep breathing like this for a little bit. In. . . out. In. . . out. Put everything we were just talking about aside for a moment and focus on—” “But Allah spared Jesus, right?” Ali asked, oblivious to the breathing exercise. The only thing wider than his eyes was his forehead. “Why would God let Jesus die?” “Jesus is God!” Michael screamed. The exertion doubled the size of his head in an instant. With that second outburst, all of the other kids’ heads began expanding too. Six heads inflating like balloons, the kinds with rubber bands strangling the middle of them, so only the tops got bigger and bigger and bigger. Sammy was crying, Jon M. kept saying “Son of God,” and Ali and Michael were shouting back and forth at each other, somehow ignorant of the metamorphosis they were undergoing. Ms. Adam watched in horror, her tiny words drowned in the chaos, and felt like her own head was about to explode, which of course would have been ridiculous. Seeing no other option, she bolted to the wall and pulled the great big lever marked “EMERGENCIES ONLY”.

Too late. The first head exploded just as the sleeping gas began to drift lazily out of the vents above. It was Priscella. The last words she ever said with both halves of her mouth were “Martin Roother died—” and then she popped. Her head exploded in much the same way a bubble of paint explodes—covering everything around it with its contents the second it goes. Bits of brain and skull and plenty of blood flew through the air. A particularly large fragment of bone lodged into Michael’s lightbulb, and he popped without hesitation. Then Ali, who had been looking directly at Michael, popped of his own accord, the sheer shock of what he saw being too much. One by one the students’ heads exploded, a Rube Goldberg machine of trauma, blood, and brain matter, until only Sammy remained, blood splattering her on all sides, her forehead swelled to its limit but somehow not releasing. 

The sleeping gas was in the air now. Ms. Adam could detect it under the sharp smell of iron that now stained the room. It smelled of strawberries. She lowered herself to her seat as the gas started working on her senses, keeping her eyes on Sammy as she did so. Please, please let it work, she thought. Please let Sammy fall asleep. Ms. Adam’s eyelids were closing, not voluntarily, but like the curtains of a theater rushing to end a scene. She folded her arms in front of her and let her head fall onto them. Just before she lost consciousness, she heard one last pop!

Where she went wrong was not picking a side, the administration said. Most of the students were protestants, so what Ms. Adam’s should have done was agree that Jesus was only the son of God and deny Michael and Ali’s claims. The catholic and the muslim might have exploded, but offering the other children some certainty would have bought enough time for the gas to take effect.

It was too late now, of course. Six heads in one day—the worst incident to ever occur in the history of Bob Lee Elementary School. The parents were beside themselves. “There goes my little girl’s chances at college!” Priscella’s mother said indignantly. Naturally, they saw the whole incident as the result of Ms. Adam’s incompetence. She needed to be fired immediately. Unfortunately for them, teachers were not easy to come by in their state, and the best the school department could do was move Ms. Adam to a less important position. 

Remedial Class 1D, located in the second underground level of the elementary school, was where they assigned her—a damp, dreary place sandwiched between two supply closets. The floors were made of cement, not worthy of the linoleum that coated the upper levels, and her desk was only marginally bigger than the childrens’. It was where they sent the lost causes, the children without any potential and the teachers not sensitive enough to work with the gifted kids. 

Ms. Adam looked at her roster as she waited for the children to arrive. Twenty-five students. She’d never had a class so large before. 

The children came shuffling in, taking their seats assigned to them by Ms. Adam’s predecessor. They made all sorts of gurgling noises and groans to one another, and Ms. Adam couldn’t tell whether they were actually communicating or just attempting to. 

A handful of them had noses, maybe three or four, but most of the children were missing everything from the lower jaw up. Just flapping tongues and windpipes. She could tell which ones had recently popped by how unaccustomed they were to moving, pinballing around the room as they tried to locate their seat. On the other hand, some children had apparently become more than accustomed to their new bodies, effortlessly walking into the classroom and filing into place. One even put an apple on her desk.

“Good morning, everyone,” Ms. Adam said. “My name is Ms. Adam, and I’ll be your teacher from now on.” She started to write her name on the board before she realized the issue with that and stopped. 

“Uh Graaaaahhhh Uh Raaaah,” said the children in perfect unison. The few with both halves of their mouths still intact said, “Good morning, Ms. Adam.” She took attendance and each student gave a grunt or groan at their name. 

“Alright, excellent. Everyone’s here. We’re going to start the day with math. Let’s have a warm up first. Everyone please take out your notebook and write down the solution to 9 x 8 for me.” 

She walked around the room as they worked. A few of them missed their notebooks as they attempted to write down their answers, but to her astonishment, all of the children wrote down legible answers despite their lack of eyes and brains. Ms. Adam returned to the front of the room and glanced at her roster. 

“Ummm, Sean, would you mind telling me what solution you got for 9 x 8?” A little boy towards the back raised his notebook to his exposed tongue and said, “Rah Uh.” 

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” 

“Rah uh.” 

“Here, let me just take a look at what you wrote down.” Ms. Adam went over to Sean and looked at his answer. “81. Yes, that’s sometimes the solution—” 

Sean’s tongue stared blankly up at her. No hyperventilating, no head expanding. She glanced around at the other children, and they were the same as Sean—all attentive and waiting for her to continue. Sean’s jaw tilted a little, and she could just barely imagine the eyebrows he used to have furrowed together. 

“No. No, 81 is not correct. But you were close! 81 is the solution to 9 x 9. So subtract 9 and you get the answer to 9 x 8. 

Sean scribbled some calculations onto his paper and showed her the result. “72, excellent! Now using that same method, can someone else tell me what 9 x 7 would be?” 

THE END 

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Lora Lee broke up with the ocean. The news talked about it for as long as they talk about any celebrity drama, so about one afternoon. They mentioned that Lora Lee moved to Amsterdam, and she’s a poet and you know what they say about poets (this is the part where the reader is supposed to nod wisely and try to remember any prejudices about poets). Misspelled her hometown’s name three times in three different articles. 

What the news didn’t say is that Lora Lee wears perfectly ironed shirts and cuts the crusts off her toast. That she hasn’t written for over a month but she sings to the flower pots on her window in the evening. When singing she positions herself so that the flowers and her and the view out of the window fit into a perfect perspective, silhouettes in gold, portrait of an artist in the city of art. Lora Lee has long fingers and smiles with only the corners of her lips. 

Lora has dated lakes, a small, warm-water sea. She wrote poems in the curls of their beaches and they whispered pleasantries in waves, cradled her in mirrored sunsets. They phased in and out of love in soft watercolor touches. It was different, with the ocean. 

They met on a ferry. Lora has a plan for what she’ll do if she finds out the world will end in ten minutes but never had a spare tire, so adventure, so raincoat and rubber boots but no umbrella, face to the rain. The rain is also the ocean (many things are). The ocean ran down Lora’s face with the professional intimacy of a make-up artist, asked her the traveler’s questions: where are you going? Where are you from? Lora’s voice flowed with stories. Somewhere between an evening in Paris two years ago and the pigeon she met in the park this morning Lora invited the ocean to her friend’s gallery opening – Sunsets In Porcelain is perfectly exquisite, I do hope the critics do it justice. They wandered the streets, Lora in her raincoat and the ocean in her sunlit rain, glimpses in puddles and storefront screens. Lora Lee showed her cafes and antique shops, strung in and out of conversations, made every street lamp into a stage and passerby into protagonist. The ocean held most of everything and Lora Lee held the ocean and everything fit. 

They broke up in a year. Lora Lee was sitting on the waves, not quite walking on water but letting it hold her with its being. Lora read her poems from memory. In them the ocean was a field, a desert, lovely beast with stomach full of sun. In her poems the ocean was a woman with a gentle smile and never spoke of anything but love. 

I don’t think I ever felt like this before. 

Like what? 

Small. There is so much of me that never fits in your poems. 

Quaint. Surely nothing important? 

The ocean ran her heavy waves along the bones of ships, bloated corpses centerpieces in the ballet school of scavengers. Took stock of trash islands, strange squirming life, jagged edges and soft, lush rot blooming in her shallows.

I don’t really know. I don’t think you could love any of it. 

Lora lies in bed in her beautiful apartment and runs months through her fingers. Waterside walks, quiet evenings, breakfasts in bed. Carefully curated secrets. Her face smiling back at her from the water. Love story with no beats missed. Roll credits, roll credits, never mind what happens next. 

Lora Lee volunteers at the lost and found, tries to let things be simply things. The young person looking for their phone and the phone the lost and found received a few hours ago do not match in tak, she recommends another lost and found, doesn’t know how the story ends. The lipstick-kiss sealed letter sits and sits and is mostly dust. Every once in a while a person with ink stains on their fingers or lovestruck look walks in, keys and keys and ticket, the letter sits. No address. No narrative. 

On her way to the lost and found Lora greets the bushes, the storefronts, the sidewalk puddle. It’s usually there, shaped by the pavement, sky-colored and oil-painted. No words, small wave, small wave back. 

There’s a name on the outside of the letter and Lora checks the phonebook, not quite sure what she’s looking for. Finds addresses. Anette on Tidorestraat, on Makassarstraat, on Boniplein. Anette by the park and Anette with a full view of the docks, ships and ships and life. Maybe the letter was to go by ship, by train, France to Denmark or the other way around or something else entirely. Maybe the Anette in question is registered as Levi or Antoine or any other ghost. Maybe this story has no ending at all: Lora Lee, dear Lora Lee, is it so against your being to leave anything unfinished? 

The Anette on Tidorestraat cannot speak for long, fatigue lining her face, children noises. Her apartment smells of cats and pasta and looks like it was intended to be something else. She is not looking for letters and she has enough of love. It began to rain between Makassarstraat – sorry, she moved out a few months ago, moved in with her partner, I think, – and Boniplein. It fits, Lora tells herself, the third act rain, of course there would be rain and music and running for the last door, warm orange to contrast the storm, violin music swirling in anxious notes. Rule of threes and third acts. 

A woman answers on the second knock. Smiles with only her lips, interrupts Lora a few sentences in. People are speaking in the living room in hushed voices and her eyes are brimmed with red and she sounds as tired as she looks. 

I’m sorry. I am not expecting any letters. There must have been a misunderstanding. Have a good day. 

The door shuts and Lora stands in the rain and doesn’t notice how the letter is soaked through, the trace of someone’s lips mixing with the ink mixing with the water, one recipient short of a kiss. 

She walks back to the lost and found, keeps her head down, hides from the rain in her jacket. People hurry past and there’s a child stomping through every puddle with all the joy a human heart can hold and she doesn’t take note, doesn’t make it into a poem. The rain feels nothing but wet and cold. 

The lost and found is closed for the day and Lora sits on the steps and nothing, nothing. The world goes on and she has no plot. 

Hi, says the puddle, rippling with rain, a thousand faces per second. Tough day? Lora opens her mouth, closes it. Nods. Lets the silence stretch beyond comfort. 

There’s an absence sitting beside her in the shape of an ocean and there’s an absence in the shape of her, too, and she can’t think of anything to say that would cover it. 

Yeah, she says, three breaths and a few selves later. Something like it. 

The puddle gurgles in sympathy and it’s a little bit the ocean – many things are – but not enough to remember any lasting hurt, any long-lived wisdom. All it has to give is a little understanding, and Lora gives some back. 

It rains and rains and she and the puddle talk about nothing – rubber-booted kids, the underbellies of umbrellas, the world cast in the shadow of leaves floating on your surface, poems, published and not, hometowns with names so forgettable they get misspelled thrice and so you feel inclined to pick a name that really rolls off the tongue. 

When the rain tires out of itself Lora goes home, the letter doesn’t. Maybe once it dries some bird takes the fallapart paper and shapes it into something like home, maybe its never-recipient lives so much she hardly missed out on any love, who am I to know? 

Lora Lee’s learning how to live and she’d rather not fit herself into any more stories. Enough to say she carries an umbrella with her from time to time.

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