jamieproctor.ca

He was a hairy-knuckled, hunchbacked fucker, the old primate, the old perv.  Mould grew in between his teeth and his arms were worn and stretched from years of late-night brachiation.  But he nodded his head and let me in and gave me a drink I didn’t trust while we squatted there, talking and rambling and justifying himself six times over before I’d even got comfortable.
“It was just my job, see?” he whined through the gap in his big canines.  “It was only ever my job.  You don’t have to single me out, like, you don’t have to pick on my any.  Anansi, Iktomi, and Yahweh had me dead to rights and my kneecaps ready for an’ intimate talk with a bat, and then I says ‘hey slow down there fellas, there’s gotta be sumthing I can do to help,’ and after they ‘d done laughing and kicking my ribs a bit they said ‘sure, show us what you got.’  And I was in a rush, right, and I was in pain, right, and so’s under the circumstances I can’t hardly be blamed, right, can’t hardly be blamed at all.  You have any idea how hard it is to make a spine sober – which I wasn’t, on account of the pain.  Or how hard it is to rig up an eyeball that’ll stay seeing straight for more’n half your life – which I couldn’t, on account of the rush.  Really, you’re luck to be upright and breathing and making those funny noises you make at all, right?  Outta be thanking me.  Not too bad a job, right, for a pawful of spit, snot, and semen, I mean, HAD to use what I had to hand.  Had to use what I had to hand.”
“Hey, you’re not writing this down, are you?  It’s a nice trick, but it ain’t mine.  Never got the hang of all that kind of stuff, I’m hands-on but always moving, can’t afford to stand still and wait.  This job’s just killing time while I wait for my next big break.  It’s coming, just you wait.  Whine all you want about basic design flaws, but you guys look great on a resume, dead on.  I figure you’ll get me into planets.  Been practicing that – seen that little red one?  That’s mine.  Forgot the magnetosphere – amateur work, won’t make that mistake twice.  But just you wait now, and just you watch.  This’ll be my next big break soon.  Then I can get out of this dump and go big-time.  Cosmoseses, ewwn-eye-verses, maybe a few of those dye-menshun thingies.  I’m on my way, just wait.  And it’s, it’s, it’s all thanks to you, y’knowwhaddImean, all of you.  Y-O.  Y-o.  Y-o-o-o-o—-u.”
And he slumped over, drooling, and I looked at that warm stream of spit that spawned us all and I felt disgust brewing in my brain.  And resentment.  And anger.  All things your parents teach you how to deal with, or not.
And so I did it, smothered him like a baby on his own distended mucus and vomit.  He went out whimpering and I can’t offer a word in my defense that isn’t pride.  I didn’t ask to be as I am.
But I’m sure if you asked the poor bastards yet to be, they would’ve said ‘no thanks.’

Arrhythmic: A walk that takes place over rolling, bouncy terrain. Carry a sturdy walking stick or can and wear a safety helmet to prevent whiplash. Distinct from tall.

Bag-along: Any walk on which you are accompanied by an animal that can and will produce fecal matter (e.g., dog, cat, parakeet, infant, spouse, etc).
-Bastard’s bag-along: A bag-along, but without any provision taken to collect fecal matter for later disposal.

Blonk: A normal, everyday walk around the block that is so relaxing that you add another block and another block and another block and.

Crunch: A walk after a heated argument with a spouse or partner, characterized by three distinct parameters: the unnecessary stomping of the feet; the ferocious pounding red behind the eyes; and the increasingly loud screams from inside the very depths of your throat.
-Chop: A crunch that ends with the walker throwing themselves into a nearby deep, cold body of water, legs still juddering and striding all the way down to the icy bottom of mortality itself.

Dent: An unpleasant stretch of terrain smack in the middle of an otherwise lovely walking route. Examples include: road work; open sewers; vicious dogs barely restrained behind rickety wooden fences; playgrounds.

Epilogue: The stringing-on of a second walk along a different route after the completion of an initial, intended walk.

Granny: A walk characterized by a mindless repetition of the same looping pattern over and over again rather than adhering to any sort of sensible planning.

Hike: A close cousin of a walk, taking place almost exclusively in natural surroundings and with far more uneven terrain. Unlike walks, hiking demands specific footwear, namely boots. Common hiking hazards include bears; aggressive landowners with shotguns; and Lyme disease. A fuller examination of hiking is beyond the scope of this book, but can be found in its companion piece, Abrams and Behr’s Complete Dictionary of Hiking, 3rd Ed. (Pocket), also from Blottoham Books.

Jaunt: A saucy sort of walk taken for the purposes of extravagant display of a walker’s adornment, adored by young upstarts, macaronis, gadabouts, and vagabonds. Common points of display include wristwatches, hats, artfully adorned hairstyles, and tattoos.

Jog: A kind of obscenity, practiced by the depraved, the deviant, and the under-sexed. Can and will cause obesity, bulimia, and genital shrinkage. Not to be spoken of in polite company.

Mangle: A walking route with gorgeous scenery (often natural) paired with gruelling terrain. Many mangles are perilously close to becoming a hike.

Murgatroyd: A walker who perishes in the line of walking. Named in honor of Marian Murgatroyd, the great Scottish stroller of the 1920s.
-Murgatroyd’s march: A solemn memorial procession along the favoured walking route of a Murgatroyd, conducted with black-heeled shoes and the attachment of little bells to the coats of the participants.

Pickle: A walk with a clear destination through unclear terrain that culminates in a state of being completely and totally lost.
-Half-pickle: A pickle, but upon becoming lost the walker finds a nice local restaurant and has a good lunch as consolation.

Plod: A walk undertaken as a favour to another against the subject’s will. Characterized by sullenness, silence, and excessive stumping.

Quibble: A walk conducted purely on a whim because it’s nice out there and the walker is restless.
-Quibbleplex: A quibble undertaken with such force that the walker leaves their coat/keys/shoes at home.
-Quobble: A quibble spurred almost entirely by alcohol consumption.
-Que Quibble Quibble: A quibble in which the walker never comes back. Also known as ‘the Abrams.’

Ramble: A walk over familiar terrain conducted in such a manner as to sway erratically from one ‘standard’ walking route into another with little rhyme or reason beyond personal whimsy of the walker. Also known as a ‘meander.’

Run: Don’t say that.

Sprint: you disgust me

Stout: A walk after a big meal, on the cusp of becoming a waddle yet defying it with every heavy, ragged-breathed step.

Stroll: A meandering walk for its own sake and for the purposes of intellectual and emotional fermentation. Can be sweet (country), salty (city), or sour (industrial park).
-Slog: A stroll, but taken between the months of November and March. Popular ingredients include mud, snow, and muddy snow.

Stumping: Walking with the shoulders high and the head tucked low and forward, an essential adaptation for inclement weather and moody humours.

Tall: A walk that takes place principally over vertical terrain, consistent in one direction (either up or down). Not to be confused with arrhythmic.
-Wide: A walk that takes place principally over horizontal terrain, with a fixed horizon, clear weather, a warm sun, a light breeze, no sooner in the day than eleven AM and no later than two PM. Also known colloquially as a ‘Meek special.’

Neriss brushed the pebble with her toe and watched what happened.
It bounced off her left ankle,
down through a crack in the rock,
skittered over a smooth boulder,
and then it went off and down,
down,
down,
all the way over into the air where it got smaller and smaller until it was even tinier than the broad lazy Calo syruping its way along far away, so small that she could cross it by blinking.
Thinking of that made her blink, and in that moment her pebble was lost, making her swear and sweat.
“Language,” said a voice at her elbow, and Neriss nearly lost her footing altogether, as she hurled herself about to confront the speaker.
It was a burnt-up, shrivelled-up woman who was twice her age and about one and a half times her size in all dimensions. Just looking at her made you want a drink of water.
But Neriss was here for a reason and so she bit her tongue and gave her most apologetic bow and followed the burnt-up woman back to her home, which was an overhang with three inches of headspace and four inches of kneespace to either side over a three-mile drop, with a little rug made from the outside of a goat who didn’t need it anymore to keep out the wind.
There was a small fire. The burnt woman lit it, and Neriss tended it. The burnt woman made them some tea from frighteningly spiked plants, and Neriss drank it.
“I apologize for my words,” said Neriss. “They were ill-chosen.”
“As well you should,” said the burnt woman firmly. “You need to put a heavier accent on the last syllable. It crisps it properly and gives it a bit of a snap.”
Neriss spent a moment trying to decide how to process this advice and decided it was best to just barrel through it. “Illustrious and aged Ket, apothecary of greater note than any musician, there is an ill person down at the base of the cliffs, too ill to climb. I would beg of you that you-”
“You may beg, but you won’t get it,” said Ket.
“-give a-”
“Try again tomorrow,” said Ket. “Go back down and come back up in the morning.”
So Neriss bit her tongue again – it tasted like copper and frustration – and slid back over the edge of the Sor cliffs, which were so high that birds born on them would appear seasick if they were placed on level ground.
Then she climbed down, ate a very late dinner, and passed out for two hours before beginning the trip back up.

Halfway along, she kicked a loose root a little too hard, and watched ninety tons or more of rock slip away like a loose feather. It looked like it was about to start floating at any moment, but never quite managed it.

The overhang was empty. Ket was out and about.
Neriss hunted along the heights of the cliffs, through gullies and over rubble, finding all kinds of exotic plants with too many pointy parts – usually firsthand, or firsttoe – and in the end, exhausted, she sat on a rock and found a new and amiable kind of spider, which was about the size and shape of a full-grown thistle and eager to say hello.
“Shh, shh,” said Ket.
They stood there, side by side, watching the spider get smaller and smaller – though not small enough for Neriss’s liking – and by and large they returned to Ket’s shelter, which was somehow closer than Neriss had remembered, and they had a new kind of tea, which was made from plants which had no spikes at all but instead a kind of peculiar pustule all over their leaves which looked and smelt almost exactly like human blisters.
“Revered and illuminated Ket,” said Neriss at last. “I have a humble and meaningless request: a dear member of my family is down at the base of this cliff, too sick to move, and would you kindly –”
“Kind or no, I will not go,” said Ket. “Your request is denied. Return to the bottom of the cliff and try again tomorrow.”
This time Neriss sucked both her lips into her mouth and bit them instead of her tongue. It gave her a ghastly sort of white-and-red face, but by the time she stood on solid soil again the bleeding had nearly stopped and she was ready for her evening meal of whatever she could scrape together, just in time to go back up.

Near the top of the cliff, a bird flew by. It was a yard away but might as well have been at the other end of the world; hovering on air as if it were a trick even Neriss could manage, if only she would stretch out her cramping fingers and try hard enough.

Ket wasn’t home again, or the overhang wasn’t actually Ket’s home. Or both.
Neriss found one of the higher outcroppings – a little taller than her uncle Jenn on his tip-toes – and sat down on it. From up here she could see everything, but at such a size that it all looked like nothing. Hold up your hand and boop there goes home, there goes your friends, your friend’s friends, your enemies, your neighbours, your strangers, and everyone else you’ve even heard about. All erased in a finger’s-width.
“Careful there,” said Ket. “You could harm your eyes that way.”
Neriss hopped a little, but not too badly, and they sat there for a while on the slender stone, watching the sun grow and grow until they could see everything around them, everything everywhere, and still not see a fraction of it for what it meant.
“Ket,” said Neriss, “you will not help my family.”
Ket scratched her nose and cleared it for good measure. “No,” she said, “I won’t.”
“But from here,” said Neriss, “I believe I understand why.”
“You should,” agreed Ket.
“From up here we are all so small, smaller than even the tiniest bird on the highest flight,” said Neriss. “I could squint and stare and glare and stamp my feet and try as I might I would never see my home, never see anyone. What difference does one person make against this sight, however loved, however hated, however human?”
“Well, that,” said Ket. “But mostly it’s a damned hike and a half.”
Neriss stared at her.
“What? You’ve done it. Three times now, up and down, and that’s hard enough when you’re young and flexible. Who wants to travel that? Not me.”
Neriss stared at her, but only for a moment. A long, long moment.

Six feet and six inches is a small height, a very low altitude. Relatively speaking. There are few profundities associated with it.
But it’s still a notable enough drop, nonetheless.

Neriss took her time coming down again; her pack and every pocket was filled with every kind of spiky, angry plant she could find plus a few curious spiders, and her irritation was making her clumsy.
But it felt good, to watch the ground swell near under her, and the trees unclump out of the green mass. And there, so very near, was the little lean-to, with her mother making tea.

280 Marston Flats
Apt. Shopping List

Mon.
Greg
-Milk
-Eggs
-Potatoes

Sam
-Eggplant
-Arugula
-Feta
-Kale

Cass
-milk
-bread
-toilet paper
-‘Smackles’

Tues.
Greg
-Tomato sauce
-Mozzarella
-Flour

Sam
-Bell pepper
-Spinach
-Yogurt

Cass
-milk
-deodorant
-2x ‘Smackles’

C: You haven’t finished your last yet. -G

Weds.
Greg
-Bread crumbs
-Chicken breasts
-Pepper

Sam
-Unleavened bread
-Filtered water
-Light butter

Cass
-milk
-toothbrush
-2x ‘Smackles’

C: Seriously? –G

there’s a prize for 5x box tops ok. i’ll eat it later.
-C

Thurs.
Greg
-Spaghetti
-Olive oil
-Garlic cloves

Sam
-Carrots
-Raw milk

Cass
-milk
-toothpaste
-3x ‘Smackles’

S: I think that’s illegal. You want to get TB?
C: If I find where you’ve hidden these I’m throwing them out. Stench is unbearable. –G

it comes tomorrow.
-C

Fri.
Greg
-Oatmeal
-Half-and-half cream
-Honey

Sam
-Toilet paper x 2 3 4 5

Cass
-x2 milk
-x6 ‘Smackles’

C: I had to sign for your stupid prize this morning. The delivery man ran away before I could return it. I’m not buying another speck of that stupid cereal for you. –G

ftaghn.
-C

Sat.
Greg
-Bacon
-Bread
-Butter
-Flamethrower
-Machete

Sam
-Apple x1

Cass
-6 ‘Smackles’
-6 ‘elkcamS’
-6 ‘CklesSma’

C: I’m going to assume the predatory fungus sprouting through the kitchen floorboards is your fault. This is the last straw; I’m telling the landlord. –G

land rots
lords rot
you rot
Smackles endure
Smackles ERODE
Smackles erase
-C

Sun.
Greg
-Bagels
-Cream cheese
-40 oz. whiskey
-Whetstone

Sam
-Bag chips (sour cream & onion) x6
-Box donuts (choc. dip) x3
-Chicken + wedges + fried sticks valu-combo
-Large 4-cheese pizza w/extra cheese
-Onion dip x5
-Tub ice cream (butterscotch) x2
-Choc. sauce x2
-Raspberry crate x2
-2L cola x4
-Choc. bar (any)

CasSmacklesSmacklesSmackleSmackleSmackle
-Sma
-ckle
-Smackles
-666666
-CTACTTTAATCCA

S: I’m not sure I can get all that in one trip; remember, I’m on a bike, not a car.
C: I’ve called the national guard and I’ve got the attic sealed off. Come and get me. –G
PS: I’ve burnt out the stairwell.

Mon.
Greg
*

Sam
-Wreath (floral) x2
-Card (‘sorry for your loss’) x12
-500 ml mouthwash (strong) x3
-4L bleach x3

Cass Mushroom monster Smackles Cass
*

Im not really sure what happened this week but uhhh wtf guys.
-Sam

PS: Can’t find landlord. 3 wreaths???

It was her phone.
Sam had tried everything else first. It had been a part of the background noise of the crowded bar, then a hum in the voice of the alligator pretending to be her aunt, then just another speck of the fuzzy static filling her ears on waking. But now she was opening her eyes and it was still there and now it had become Doctor K telling her to come up over to Vertebrates, there was a problem that needed her attention. Again.
There was a shower first, with water that smelled of freshly-scrubbed salt. It stung her skin and cleared her eyes but left her head fogged and thickened. Then she took a mug and filled it with whatever liquid dregs were still in her personal fridge and wandered there the long way, up the staircase, because it was better to be five minutes late when it also meant five minutes more awake.
The staircase was nicer, anyways. It had the windows.
Blackness fading into blueness as she went up and up and up the winding corkscrew, watching the pale sheen and shimmer in the water from the nutrients and hormones and bacterial cocktails the station was disgorging into the long-wandering currents of Thalassa.
Sam didn’t like the name. Regurgitating earth genes, earth organisms, wriggling, thriving, multiplying earth life into the planet’s waters was one thing, but shoving earth mythology on top of it seemed wrong somehow. She’d never mentioned this to anyone and knew she never would and she thought about it every third day or so.

Doctor K was waiting for her there in the lab, looking cross. Doctor K always looked cross; it seemed to be part of her face. Sam knew she shouldn’t think things like that and she knew she was too tired to not do it. She was too tired for a lot of things, including listening to precise words. So instead she nodded and bobbed her head and let her hooded eyes stand in for concern instead of confusion and let the information drip in through the back of her skull.
The new fish were reacting badly to the delta-stage planktons; their skin was wearing in places and flaking away into raw flash. It was unprecedented, but unsurprising.
So she nodded a little more, for good measure, and went to her station, and pressed a button and tried, really tried, not to vomit.

She’d long ago decided it was the eyes that disturbed her so much when she worked on vertebrates. It was unsettling, the way they didn’t follow you around the room. A black glassy sphere turned flat as a penny in her grandmother’s collection.
An eye – a proper, socketed eye, an eye in a solid bony skull – should follow you. Instead, it seemed like all her projects followed her with their mouths. Their little jaws hinging and unhinging, gasping for water that wasn’t there, that they didn’t need as they rested in the gene cradle.
Sam tried not to look at it, looked at her notes instead. Abrasion, that was the thing. Abrasion. Chemical, mechanical, but always abrasion. Thalassa’s waters were unkind; the fish were being wire-scrubbed just swimming.
Thicken the dermis. Harden it. Harden it. There, maybe.
She’d done this four times already, each for a different reason, and she knew there’d be a fifth.
File, save, pull over the wastebasket and heave until nothing came out at all.

Sometimes, in her more tired hours, she’d imagine a coworker, helpful and kind and with a nice cup of coffee (not tea; she hated tea) would stop by late at night when she was tired and alone and nobody cared about her as usual and they would ask her, Sammy, why DO you work on fish when you hate them so much? Why dedicate your life to something you dislike? And she, smiling despite the deep exhaustion, would explain the words she’d rehearsed a thousand, thousand times, about how DNA was DNA and ninety-per-cent-plus of any species was ninety-per-cent-plus of another species, and the tools didn’t change too much, and prior subaquatic living experience counted for a lot in these postings. She’d worked on corals, she’d tell them, admiring the suppleness of their fingers and the softness of their smile, and plankton. Small things, with well-defined borders and elegant shells. Clean things.
And then she’d remember the things that weren’t clean or small or elegant and she’d come crashing back in to the world as it was, with the little paralyzed fish lying flat on its side in front of her, its genome unzipping into her computer, and all her lunch trying not to rush back into her mouth.
Doctor K was standing there at her side. Sam could almost feel her there, resisting the urge to tap her foot. Trying to remember how to look concerned while not accidentally asking something like ‘are you through.’
“Yes,” said Sam. Her voice felt tight and tiny.
“Pardon?”
“It’s all done.”

The walk back downstairs was longer and slower. Her workday didn’t start for another three hours, and she needed the sleep. But her feet dragged as she went back down into the dark levels, and the bed felt too warm and too stifling and the floor was cold and so she sat in her chair and read her notes without reading them and let her mind drift instead while her eyes boiled in her skull. She looked out the window, at the calm clouds of invisible life, and she tried not to think about fish.

It was the end of the week and the end of the day and every single thing that had been in Sam’s gene cradle had a backbone. Her mouth tasted like acid and her coffee tasted like ash and all the base pairs were starting to look the same to her and all her subjects WERE the same, the same problem. Too thin, too thin, too frail, too ephemeral. Delicate flesh and wafer-thin scales rotting on the fin, bruising under life.
They shouldn’t be here, she thought. They shouldn’t be here. Why come hundreds of lightyears and put things somewhere they shouldn’t be. Let the planet sit here on its own for a billion years or so until it figures itself out. Let it make its own namers to make its own myths and name its own oceans. Let it make its own life, if it wants to.
Doctor K was telling her that she needed to try harder.
So Sam breathed deeply but a little too quickly, and she thought of corals, and shells, and calm, clean surfaces, and she looked a VERY long ways back through the genome of the little fish, and she retrieved a few things and improvised others, and when she was done they released a trial batch. Tiny armored plates glinted in the station’s lights as they swam away into Thalassa’s long twilight.
Harder worked.

It worked so well, they did it four more times next week.

Three the next.

Seven after.

Sam felt calmer after the eighth, the ninth, maybe. There was something about ringing the bulbous little eye in bone, about covering the softness with smooth plates. It made it farther, safer. Extra layers between her and it, farther away. Bulkheads. Bulky heads.
Some of the newer ones were so thickly armored it was getting awkward for them to move. Not a problem of the plating, she told Doctor K, but the gross morphology. Muscles had to be moved, bones reworked, planes of symmetry jiggled.
They looked like bullets, thought Sam. Or maybe torpedoes. Their sides were so encased she could barely see their muscles tense. It had been hours since she’d thrown up.

It was the end of the fifth week and there were spots in front of her eyes and shaking and finally she put down her computer and went to the bathroom and realized she felt fine. She felt so fine she couldn’t blink, eyes locked tight.
That night she stayed up late, doing anything but sleeping. Staring, coughing, shivering, making coffee and throwing it out again.
Finally she went for a walk. Late shift, an inch from early shift, when the last of the night owls had gone to bed and the early birds still dozed. The halls were quiet and in that quiet all the softly mechanical noises that kept the station full of air and warmth and humans were loud and hard on the ears.
The lab was dark, calm, and cool; thirty metres below the surface and feeling like it. Sam’s hands shook as she turned on her computer; maybe she should’ve put on more clothing. Maybe she should’ve taken off yesterday’s clothing. Maybe she should, maybe she shouldn’t.
Maybe she shouldn’t do this.
The gene cradle was empty, but its memory was full. Sam scrolled through, looking at familiar patterns, proteins, pictures, plans. It was amazing how far they’d come in just a few weeks. The seas were awash in infant neoplacoderms, growing fat fast and furious on the enriched waves pulsing out of the station’s guts. They would be obsolete soon; they were a holding pattern, a temporary measure. When the waters were made tepid and tolerable, they would be repurposed, reprocessed. Their armor would fall away and their bodies would wriggle and gasp in calm cool waters that rocked them gently in its grasp.
She’d seen enough here, not that there was much to see. The computer was just a little local terminal; its powers began and ended at formatting: a typewriter for organisms.
But Doctor K’s computer was far more than that, and its password was far less than it should’ve been, and it had the authorization Sam needed and more to pump the planktonic tanks full of a transgenic blend that had been sitting quietly, very quietly, at the very back of her head for what seemed like her entire life but had surely only been just now.

Sam sat in her chair – in Doctor K’s chair – and leaned back until the springs complained in strident voices, and she thought about clean things, about smooth angles of shell and bone and horn and eyes that were so small against a skull that they were pinpricks, barely there at all. About well-measured borders and the kindnesses of surety, and certainty, and the discreet masking of the indiscreet and grotesque underneath the coolness of calm steel.
She thought about the picture books when she was very small, with their pictures of octopi, and eel, and shark, and sardines that had made her cringe. And the one her sister had liked, with the dinosaurs and mammoths and apes that weren’t quite apes any more. At its very beginning, there had been squids with spiral shells and scorpions that swam and just after that there had been a fish. A fish with bony eyes and a bony skull; a body like a bullet with a mouth made of blades, all flat and blank like a mask.
The door was ringing. Security would be coming in. She wondered if she would go quietly.
She wondered how big they would be when they grew up.

I leap, I crawl, I flow and am alive.

Strange strange day out there it’s trickling bleeding upstairs from the CLOUDS there must’ve been mistmistakes made when they launched the the.
It’s alrightgood enough we can live love enough withoutoutit. This isn’t the worst thing to come
Down
Out of the sky hahahahaha not even in the past WEEK
But I’m hungry and it’s still not niceatall weather(there?) to be hunting in. going to have to anyways though third stomach is cramping bloated roiling soon it’ll overheateateateat me if I don’t give it mince raw to take pieces up from and turn into MORE.
Maybe clockwestwards. Haven’t hunted clockwestwards in longwhileswhaleswails.

I leap, I crawl, I flow and am there.

Not so bad out here now all the old crumbles overhang and sag and cover up us U.S. from the cruel big wide sky let us hide well enoughagain. And the crannies give manies places for food to hide hide hide run away to.
There it is
it’s goodfood, goodfood, goodgoodgood. It shrieks shrieks shreds when I open it up from the outside against my clawsFINGERSclawsclawsclawsFINGERS but inside are the little red ones I love the little red ones they are soft and melt on the inside of my mouthes for months for mangled like M&Ms back a long time ago before the world went all soft and sticky at the edgars edges and the sky stopped MAKING things and we put things in it.
it’s good food but I am not full at all I could use more.
maybe that place, the place, the plaice, that buildbolding with the red roof that is where food goes it hides in there thinks I can’t see it and it’s right but I can’t smell it either I can hear it though I have good ears ease of ears easily can pick it out from the NOISE.

I leap, I crawl, I flow and am immense.

There is food here alright it’s good stuff it’s old and gnarled past best-by date it’s a mess but I can’t complain it can’t complain, it has it coming this is all its faultfoucault anyways IT made this messyme in the first way way way way way way way back and it stops making noises at me when it’s inside me now it’s me making noises gut groans grains drains away into more me, more me, always more ME for MASS.
There is another noise that isn’t food I checked it’s something trap-dancing under broken rabble squeaking shimmying barking baying is it a thing? It’s not food it’s not food, it has none of the red inside, or the yellow, or the green or pink or blue.
It’s woman I think or maybe man. Notfood. Just what oncewas, for me, for me, for me. before all the food was everywhere, in the air, no care, ahahahahaha
Ha.
Ah.

I leap,
I crawl,
I soar
And
Am
Me

I brought bought the manwomanwomanwoman(man?)[wo] back with me so it could tell me stores of stories of times gone by bye. It is reading the names of my foods that are good they are long long ago nameses like xylosoandso and tetraflourhydra and carbonated and decarbonated and orgone and non-orgonic and they are wonderful, ful of wonder I wonder when the world gave such smalltime names to such things as me that have none when little foods are given so many it’s not fair, it’s far from fair from afar or close either WAY.
The man-wo tells me that I do not need the foods that the skybleeeeeeeding down on us is rain, rain, come again, now full of food we’ve filled the whole planet with food there’s no escapading it escaping from it all and now I can stand out under the red glaring SUN and SUN and drink my fooSUN through my skSUN SUN SUN.
The an-wom is full of lies they want my food good goof, they want to trick me and crack me they won’t.
They won’t they won’t they can’t they didn’t didn’t done done
They are not goodfood they had none in them nothing at all they were hungry for mine I KNEW it.

I, I, I, i

I tried to walk in the rain today
It was a nice place today
It tasted like good food today
Maybe the sun won’t be so bad today
My stomachs are growing outward today
It’s all jagged inside today

Tetra penta deoxy ribonucleic all-natural all-artificial fermented vat-grown free-range CHILD SAFE

I wonder how much bigger I will get before there is no more food.

Do I remember?
Yes, I think I remember him. A long time ago, longer now than ever.
He wore a shiny spacesuit and a dusty leather jacket. His chin was square and his head was hard. His eyes were blue and his words were blunt. He was strictly no-nonsense and saw it everywhere. He came to us in a long, smooth steely shaft.
He called himself the rocket man, and that was all we knew.

The rocket man said he was here to bring us free-thinking, and the virtues of independent thought, as long as we were independent in his way and came to the same conclusions he did.
A couple of us weren’t sure of his arguments. He dismissed them as fascists.

The rocket man said he was here to bring us knowledge. Big machines and nano machines and a thousand ways of describing a parabolic arc that ended in a manly, thorough thud.
One or two of us queried him on the purposes of this, as the stars were very far away and our troubles were very near to heart. He dismissed them as simple-minded.

The rocket man said he was here to bring us enlightenment. He spoke long hours into our flickering wayfires about personal responsibility and self-government and the self-respect that came from the self-regard of self-ownership.
Several of us disagreed with this, preferring our current system, where any lonely may come to ask of a hubbery companionship. He dismissed them as communists.

The rocket man said he was here to bring us sexual revolution. He lectured us on the small-mindedness of taboos and the perils of falling prey to our superstitious and irrational culture, and the unmanliness of masturbation and thinking indecent thoughts about the same sex.
Some of us disputed this, saying that it was alright to not covet one’s own parents and that it was normal for some to brood with fellow-brooders. He dismissed them as unscientific.

The rocket man said he was here to bring us weapons. A million glorious kinds of kinetics, always kinetics, for the rocket man swore allegiance to two-fisted hard-headed sweat-of-the-brow rationality and the effeminate excess of light or plasma-based weaponry had earned his scorn many times over, or so he declared.
A number of us opined that hunting with the dazzle-caster and a sharp stick was still among our most successful methods of garnering small protein. He dismissed them as socialists.

The rocket man said he was here to bring us into the brotherhood of man, or the fatherhood, really – by the hand. The universe was vast and uncaring and it was dog-eat-dog out there, but we were very nearly hominid in shape, or at least nigh-tetrapods, and for this we were blessed with the most perfect of all shapes or close enough. Our opposable digits, our upright posture, and our two-footed gait had blessed us with perfection in form, and we had a galaxy of our (near) equals out there waiting to benevolently guide us in this glorious path.
Quite a lot of us staunchly spoke against this, pointing out our reliance on the potency and might of post-brooding brooders, and the usefulness and ferocious speed of the sixlimbed-life of the elderly. He dismissed them as populists.

The rocket man said he was here to bring us leadership. Our people were complacent, humble, and somewhat fair, and in our acephalous communities he saw future danger – if not conquest, then obsolescence. Stick with me, he said, thrusting out his chin, and I will raise you up, body and mind, and I will take you to the stars, the cold clean stars that are hard and bright and math and pure and no place for feeble women or watery-eyed weaklings.

Yes, I remember the rocket man. Your grandbrooder buried him two fields over, out back, under the big rock.

It’s a terrible thing to watch a body eat itself, particularly when the whole job’s in on it, not just the mouth. The liver overrunning the kidneys; the small intestine trading jobs with the large; the brain beating an angry poem into the lining of the skull as the blood vessels swell and sputter like indignant old men.
Regina was breathing her last. It was just that, thanks to the complicated series of tubes jammed through her larynx, her last had been in process for over six months already.
“Tell me,” she asked her relative (lord knows she couldn’t keep track of them all by now, four generations deep as they were), “what kind of day is it out there right now?”
Her relative looked out the window. “Sunny,” they said, after a while. “Very blue. A good day for throwing Frisbees, swimming in ponds, catching frogs, and admiring birds. The plants love it.”
Regina rested her gaze on the only plant representative available, a tiny long-ago-potted specimen that, regardless of former species allegiance, by now resembled some sort of diminutive dwarf strangling vine. “Selfish little bastards, hogging it all to themselves,” she muttered.
“Grandma?”
“Oh, nothing. But I tell you what, there’s nothing worse than to sit indoors on a day like this without so much as a fresh leaf to brighten the space.”
“We could take you outside.”
“Not since they installed that last tube. It goes, I go.”
“We could take it outside.”
“It’s connected to this machine which is connected to this pump which is connected to this valve which is connected to this generator which is connected to this wall.”
“Oh dear.”
“It happened last week, dear, don’t worry about it too much. I don’t think you were on shift then.”
Regina’s relative looked apologetic. “Still…”
“Oh, don’t be that way. Look, if you want to make it up for me, I’ve got one thing I want. One wish. I want you to get me a tree.”
Regina’s relative paced the doorway’s width three times, squinted and tilted their head, moved their lips a lot, and made a sort of aimless buzzing sound deep in their throat. “Well, maybe a sapling’d do it…”
“No deal,” said Regina firmly. “I want a tree, not a potted planter. Now hop to it and let me have some rest.”

So Regina’s relative hopped over to another of Regina’s relatives who phoned up another of Regina’s relatives who sent an email to yet another of Regina’s relatives who knew one of Regina’s relatives who knew a guy who wasn’t related to Regina at all but who seemed to recall seeing something like what they were talking about in the bottom of the back of an old, old, old, old mail-order catalogue from the early 1980s, buried under a heap of advertisements for long-dead home computer systems.
They sent the cheque in anyways, because inflation had rendered the sum nominal by now and they figured it was worth a shot. And indeed, two to three mailing weeks later, Regina’s relative opened their door to find a box the size of a car wedged onto their porch.
“Sign here please” said a very faraway and irritated voice.
“Where?”
A clipboard was launched over the box’s top, with pinpoint accuracy.
“Ow.”
“On the dotted line, the dashed line, the solid line marked with an X, the solid line NOT marked with an X, the three perforated portions, and the supplementary signature section, boxes Q through Z-B.”
“Right. Isn’t this a bit much?”
“Oh god no. You have no idea how much paperwork it takes to get a tree built around here.”

The first step of the matter was to get the tree to Regina’s hospital. This presented difficulties until one of Regina’s relatives mentioned that they knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a girl who knew someone who had a trucker buddy who was awfully free with company property, at which point all transportational difficulties were solved with eighteen wheels and a few thousand horsepower.
The second step was to unload it, piece by piece. Each portion of the tree had to be lifted up three stories, and the hospital refused the use of their cargo elevator.
“The insurance doesn’t cover trees,” the director pointed out. “Even if you don’t so much as chip the paint – which I very much doubt you’ll manage, I mean, is that a conifer?”
“White pine,” said Regina’s relative.
“A nightmare of scraping,” the director murmured. “The needles alone could peel a wall to the bare bone, the sap, the sap, the awful, awful sap…” She shuddered and shook herself vigorously. “Anyways! Even if there’s no damage whatsoever from the rough rough bark ANYWAYS I’d be in trouble for permitting that sort of risk to take place on the premises.”
“What if we winch it up?”
“Oh that’d be fine, go nuts. I think one of the old dialysis machines we’ve got in the basement can be repurposed to do that, if you ask one of the technicians.”
It could and did, because nothing gets something done faster than a bored techie, and soon, ring by ring, a disassembled heap of tree was growing on the floor of Regina’s bedroom as she dozed the afternoon away.
“I can’t let you do this if there’s going to be any hammering,” the head nurse told them. “This is a palliative ward. People need their sleep.”
“Don’t worry,” reassured Regina’s relative. “The manual says this thing assembles without so much as a screwdriver. It’s all dowels.”
“Dowels?”
“Yes.”
The head nurse opened his mouth and shut it again and repeated that a few times, then settled for a friendly pat on the shoulder. “I’m sure it’ll all be fine in the end,” he managed through a three-tooth smile. Then he departed, slumping.

The basic principles of tree assembly were simple.
Each ring was attached to the next largest ring with three dowels every four inches.
The outmost ring was attached to a slab of bark with four completely different dowels every five inches.
Pasted between each layer was 4 fluid oz. of sap mixed from four separate plastic pouches, none of which were labelled.
All needles were labelled A through Z and 1 through 1,000, in reverse alphabetical order, and each had its own corresponding dowel, all of which looked to be of equivalent size and none of which were.
The roots were in a separate bag hidden somewhere in the bottom of the box which had to be retrieved from the hospital’s recycling dumpster. Each root was composed of eighteen or more interlocking and wholly unique dowels, like a jigsaw puzzle.
You see? Simple.
“This is not at all simple,” said Regina’s relative, buried somewhere in needle clumps Q010, R592, and S008.
“Simple or not, it’s got to be done,” said another of Regina’s relatives, who was trying to sort the (unlabelled) dowel packages into the comfortable illusion of control provided by orderly rows and columns. “And I don’t want to hear one more thing about it.”
“Um…. One thing.”
Another of Regina’s relatives dropped the package she was holding, which bounced off six others and sent them spraying across the floor with a noise like a cat pissing on a tin roof. “Yes?” they said.
“What do we do about the ceiling?”

The next problem was the ceiling.
“We could cut a hole through it?”
“No,” said the director.
“We could separate it into portions, and just sort of stack them up floor by floor, each above the other but separated by the floorboards, if we just moved some of the beds around.”
“No,” said the head nurse.
“We could cut a SMALL hole through it…”
“No,” said the director.
“What if we planted it outside the window and just moved her over to look at it through that?”
“No,” said Regina’s relative.
“What if we used a drill instea-”
“NO,” said the director.
“What if,” said Regina’s relative, “we just assembled it sideways?”
They all looked at each other, carefully assessing reactions, cataloguing acceptance, measuring sanity.
“Fine,” said the director. “But run it through the south door. East is the children’s ward, and they’ll try and climb it.”

Regina’s eyes opened. It was a bigger accomplishment than it looked on paper.
“Surprised, grandma?” asked Regina’s relative.
She looked up. Not terribly far up; six inches past her nose it was nothing but needles.
“We had to stick the roots out the window,” said another of Regina’s relatives. “But it seems to be doing all right.”
Regina turned her head, with some difficulty. “Wow,” she said. “How big’s that thing?”
“One hundred and forty-two feet,” said another of Regina’s relatives promptly. “We ordered size L; XL said ‘limited stock’ and since the ad was thirty-four years old we figured that-”
“Wow,” repeated Regina. “That’s some tree all right. That’s really nice, you know that? Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” said Regina’s relatives.
Her lips pursed. “Still… did it have to be a pine? I really WOULD have liked to see a fresh leaf in here; it’d really brighten the space.”

And Regina laughed, laughed, laughed, laughed at their expressions, a long, full cackle that sent four miles of plastic tubes buzzing with glee.
“Oh man,” she choked out, “you’re REALLY easy to get! Oh my! It’s lovely, thanks, I’ve never been happi” and then she died, but very cheerfully.

They brought the tree to the funeral.
It seemed right.

I walked out my door and into a man. Good thing I was planning on walking; if I’d had my car keys out, he’d have speared himself on them. Not that he was moving very quickly, or at all. He was just one of those people who seemed to be hurrying in place.
“Hey hi there nicetameetcha howzitgoing heyyoulivehere nicehousehowaboutthathuh heyyyyy…” he gargled out and then paused for breath.
“Uh-” I managed.
“SO! Want to buy a World War Two-era battleship?”
“I want to get some milk from down the street,” I said.
“Right, right, right. Good stuff milk full of calcaratilagenoucerouscarcharadoncherrycumulu-cumulo… Calcium! Right, calcium. Good for strong bones! But buddy c’mere and check this out what I’ve got is so good you won’t WANT bones you’ll have steel and iron old ironsides ahahahahahahhaha ANYWAYS it’s only five dollars.”
“Five what?”
“Five dollars.”
My head was hurting at this point. “Five…million?”
“No!”
“Five thousand?”
“NO! Five. Five hundred pennies, a hundred nickles, fifty dimes, twenty quarters, FIVE DOLLARS. NOW YOURS! For four dollars.”
Now my eyes hurt too. Mostly from squinting. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Wrong? Wrong?! Nothing’s wrong with it! It’s a part of history, it’s a piece of the action, and it’s YOURS, YOURS, YOURS for three dollars fifty cents. Two dollars fifty cents.”
My ears hurt, the sun was starting to sting my shoulders, and the man’s shoulders were vibrating in a sickly way that offended me. So I shoved half my milk change in his fist, mumbled “thank you,” and left as quickly as I could.
I didn’t really need more than a litre that day anyways.

When I came back, I had a battleship moored in my driveway.
It was about two hundred and sixty metres long, according to careful use of about thirty measuring tapes. It probably displaced something like forty thousand tons. It was equipped with four 16-inch rotating turrets that could fire multi-thousand-pound shells. And it was the rustiest thing I’d ever seen in my life; caked red and brown and grey and mouldering faster than last fall’s leaves. It sighed when I walked by it and groaned when I walked on it. The smell was somewhere between an oil slick and a lake of blood, and everything I ate tasted like dead metal the moment it went in my mouth. My dog ran away from home, the neighbour’s dog ran away from home, the whole block’s dogs ran away from home. I expected complaints, but heard none, although that could’ve been because the battleship’s hull looming over my house was ruining my cell reception.
There was no name on its hull, only rust. So I called it Earl.

I was locking up Earl for the night that Thursday when I practically ran into another man, who looked absolutely nothing like the first one I’d practically run into. The pace was the same though. He was vibrating.
“Hey hi there nicetameetcha WANT A TANK?!” he gasped into my face. His jowls were really alarming things, somewhere between barbels and basset hound lips. They quivered at rest, and I was filled with fear that he would dart his head forward and swallow me whole.
“Yes sure whatever you say bye!” I said, and then I was off and away, scampering like a rat down the street and cutting corners until I felt myself comfortably out of sight, mind, and sanity. I had a brief lunch of junk food and waste liquid to fortify myself, then returned to find a genuine Mark I tank parked over half my lawn and most of my front stoop, not even remotely as fresh and shiny as it had been the day it had been abandoned in a flooded bomb crater in the Somme. Mud dripped from its gullet, bird-nests filled its interior, there was a raccoon inside the right six-pounder and a macerated stray cat in its treads.
I crawled over it to reach the door, went inside, and drank for four days.

The next day I woke up brushed my teeth walked outside checked my mail and found that my mailbox was full of aged, decrepit firearms and expired grenades. Also, my mailbox was now made of concrete, some twenty feet across, fitted with firing slits, and was a pillbox. A small note in a neurotic hand attached to its front with scotch tape charged me forty cents for the privilege, all for labour costs.
I left fifty and went to bed again in the hope that the world would make more sense the next time I woke up, or at least be less flecked with rotted steel and grime.

It didn’t. The first thing I saw was a set of yellowed, half-ground teeth. The second thing I saw was that their owner was sitting on my chest, whimpering and begging and pleading in an endless stream that was probably more at everyone than it was anyone.
“C’mon pal,” he muttered through a moustache that had slid into a goatee, “don’t leave me hanging. Just give me a chance. I’ve got a lot of stock to clear out and the boss’s coming back soon and I need to show him proof it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault. You get it, right, that it’s not my fault c’mon give me a hand don’t do this to me. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s nobody’s fault. Just help me, give me a few minutes, I just gotta get rid of this stuff-”
I stuck my head under the pillow and hummed for three hours until I passed out from lack of oxygen. When I took it off again he was gone, but there was an entire set of extremely used gothic plate next to my bed, complete with the large, rust-eaten dirk that had been jammed through its eyeslits.

The next day I went outdoors, the sky had changed. Someone had parked an aircraft carrier of unknown make (it was covered in sixty years of corals and sponges) next to my house, then dumped aircraft on it until they ran out of deck and had to use my roof. A derelict Boeing B-52 Superfortress had slid off at a funny angle and squashed my backyard flat. Helicopters lay splayed across the street like flies in midwinter, rotors at random and mostly disconnected.
I went to work and hoped it’d all be over when I came home, spent my shift searching the internet for answers and not even finding questions, and when I drove back I found that my backdoor was blocked by a heap of long-expired “Fat Man” atomic bombs, my front door was somewhere inside a thicket of discarded and broken pikes, guisarmes, glaives, halberds, and fauchards, and my windows were blocked from the inside by a complex array of disassembled ballistas, catapults, and trebuchets.
I slept in the street. At some point I woke up to water dripping and someone had parked a small siege tower on top of me; rain was running down its guts and onto my nose. I crawled out from underneath it and hurried over to Earl, who was still the only one of my acquisitions to have a name.
Earl was many things inside, but, against all odds, one of those things was ‘dry.’ It would’ve sunk in seconds if there’d been a body of water large enough to hold it within twelve hundred miles, but the bridge’s roof was intact. Mostly. I poked at bits and pieces of who-knew-what and pulled dead levers. There was a moth-eaten hat under the desk, which I did not put on.
At some point it was dawn, but with the rain, who could tell? I sat in my ship and watched the water rise up, bubbling and babbling and eating up all the broken airplanes and burnt-out Humvees and shell-shredded Jeeps and who-knew-whats. There were skeletons down there – warhorses? Some of them could be elephants. They smiled at me from under the rippling downpour. It was strange to see biological decay, next to all that rust.
There was a gurgle. One of the phones on the bridge was trying to say something. I picked it up and shook it.
“Thanks you’re a pal you’re a pal and a half take it now the stuff’s still good as new, go on it’s yours, you’re like a part of the family you’re a good customer. Listen, I’ve got to go, right? I’ve got to go right now. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do be a sport see ya.”
Click.
Deeper under the deck, something else went click. The waters had risen and the engines were moaning their way to unlife. We were off the street and floating on our own wreckage.
I looked through the bridge window as Earl started to move, wondering where we were headed, but all I could see was haze.

It was a hard, grinding, ruthlessly uncompassionate sort of Monday. Long, too – the kind where minutes take hours and hours take days and the afternoon becomes something unspeakable. By the time she got home, Joan wanted three things in basically this order:
-a drink
-another drink and some food
-bed and also one more drink
and after some amount of effort, she succeeded at all of them. Plus a few extra drinks.
She lay back in her bed and listened to the snow fuss itself into drifts outside her window, felt the gentle hum of Dan failing to snore at her elbow, sank just a little deeper into her bedding and let herself slip away into staring wide-eyed at the ceiling for four hours while every single muscle in her body wound itself tighter than a can of tuna.
It was not the best time she’d ever had.

The next day was twice as long as the first. She lurched from place to place, missed half her breakfast aimed at her mouth, and spoke half in English and half in her own private language and mostly in sentence fragments, some of which were inside her head and the rest which weren’t. She drove to work backwards both ways and sped through the stop signs; she turned on her computer with her face and typed with her wrists; she brought a jar of pickles for lunch and ate the butter in the fridge by mistake.
“I’m awfully sorry,” she told her co-workers and boss and everyone. “I seem to have lost four hours of sleep.”
Unfortunately, all that came out was “Mmsneeery. Isheedeehuurrr. Beep.” Which was not the most informative thing in the world and made everyone a bit jumpier than usual – if possible – and prone to hitting the coffee pot.
Joan stared at the ceiling again that night, her and every other person she’d come in contact with that day. And so it spread.

By Thursday it was obvious there was a real problem. Half the town was on edge and dozing on the move; sliding through traffic lights and mumbling to themselves. Workers did no work. Junkies missed veins. Firemen put out fires by slumping over on top of them, stifling the blaze with their numbed mass. It was not much fun for anybody, particularly Joan, who went to work at the wrong building that day four times running until she gave up and spent six hours changing oil and testing emissions instead of filing budgets.
“This would never have happened if I hadn’t lost four hours,” she told Dan that night. Or something like that.
“Mmm-hmm,” he yawned at her. “Good night, honey.”

Friday, the brink of the weekend, and a national emergency was declared. The entire province was paralyzed and it was in danger of seeping past its borders – the snowploughs wouldn’t run; the policemen wouldn’t patrol; the legislature wouldn’t convene; the cashiers wouldn’t ask you to tap, chip, or swipe. All anyone could do was wander around in a daze and accidentally do the wrong jobs until someone told them to stop, or at least mumbled “uitt ooin thaathing. Goowai.”
“We believe this event began with a single, small shortfall of restfulness,” announced the prime minister. “A handful of lost hours, at least. Either that or we’re all the targets of some kind of super-villainous plot, but let’s be realistic here.”
And then the prime minister blinked.
“Hey, where’s parliament?”
The woman behind the till dragged herself upright with force of will and fingers of iron. There was a customer to be served, even if they’d just spent the last twenty minutes giving some kind of bleary-eyed speech to the kid’s menu.
“C’n takyerordurrrr,” she managed.
The prime minister thought about this, gave up, ordered something, left without paying, and drove into a lamp-post. Like everyone else.
Joan tried stronger coffee. Then she tried eating coffee. Neither helped.

On Saturday morning, a man yawned in Cairo. By evening his exhaustion was in Paris, Melbourne, Nome, Cape Town, Beijing, and a million other places whose inhabitants were too tired to remember their names. Chaos reigned in the streets, in the cities, in the fields and in the forests. Spontaneous mass nappings broke out; governments were sleepily overthrown as they dozed in office; entire industries ground to a halt as the machinery of the globe was turned down so its operators could futilely attempt to get some shut-eye.
Joan stayed up until 5 AM watching reruns of a remake of a prequel series to a show she’d never liked. It did not help.

Sometime Sunday, the global sleep-shortage crossed the species barrier in several places. Nobody was awake enough to make specific notes about where or what or who, but by the evening everything from aardvarks to microbes and on to zebras was nodding off. Flowers waited in agony as bees aimlessly bumped against their stems; falcons zoned out while diving and pancaked into the dirt; giant pandas wandered off to look for coffee mid-mating attempt. In the worst of it, the gut flora of three point eight billion humans forgot the difference between the stomach and the small intestine, with extremely unpleasant results.
Joan counted sheep, cows, pigs, cats, dogs, and the strange flashing lights and humming noises she could smell whenever she shut her eyes. She kept losing track and starting over at eleventeen.

Monday came again, but there was nobody to remember its name. The sun rose on a sleepless, aimless, exhausted world with no memory, no energy, and no point.
Joan would’ve resented it, if she’d had the fortitude. Instead she had her breakfast of coffee and used tea bags, walked into the wall eight times, wandered down the street, and for the first time in seven days remembered she’d forgotten her keys on her bedside table and went back for them.
The bedroom was dark, quiet, and peaceful, with only Dan’s breathing to mar the thick warmth of the air. Joan groped her way to the right side of the bed after four tries, found her keys on the eleventh try, and had nearly found the door again when she realized something important and actually managed to not forget it.
She shook her husband awake.
“Mmmm?”
“Dan,” said Joan, with great effort.
“Yeah, honey?”
“Hwwr you. Sleeping.”
He blinked in that self-satisfied sleepy way of someone who’s had a really long rest. “Well, I don’t quite know, sugar. I’ve been really lazy this week – called in sick for all of it, actually. Nobody’s called, so I’m sure it’s alright.”
Joan tried to line up her thoughts, failed, and commited herself to blurting the first question that popped into her mouth, which was “Wheeennyouget seepy?”
Dan’s brow half-furrowed, muscles too relaxed to manage more. “Hmmm. Well corn syrup, I think it was last Monday. I was a little tired in the afternoon, so I took a nap, and then-”
Dan was a fairly large man and Joan was a fairly small woman, so her hands didn’t quite fit around his neck, but she was powered by pure tension and muscles that hadn’t unclenched in a week and he was soft and limp. She hoisted him clear above her head before either of them knew it.
“TOOK it?!” she screamed. “You TOOK it. YOU took it! TOOK IT! I NEVER LOST IT AT ALL YOU BASTARD BASTARD BASTARD BASTARD BASTARD BASTARD BASTARD.”
“Woah there aspartame,” said Dan, “let’s just calm –” but by then he was in mid-air and the window muffled his mouth something fierce as he ploughed through it.

The window was open and the cold wind poured in, tinkling the broken glass on the floor. The sun was bright and harsh and there was the smell of something burning down the block.
But the sleep that Joan seized on that half-made bed was the very best in all the world at that moment, and she was so grateful for it that she almost didn’t mind having to rebuild global society afterwards.
Besides, it only took a few months. She had loads of energy after all that.