—MY HOW THE LAST FEW MONTHS HAVE CHANGED

                                   It Starts Like This

Or it starts before, she can no longer tell.  What does she even know anymore?

The dog no longer recognizes her.  It barks and snarls, fur on end like a traumatized porcupine.  When she says, “Hey now,” and reaches down for a pet, it nips feverishly and moonwalks away, butt scooting on the Linoleum.

Even the furniture does not regard her as it once did.  Trying to sit, the chair’s legs collapse.  A clock that once told perfect time now bubbles against a wall like liquid rubber.  The mirror is a rectangle leaking purple sand and the television only plays one channel, stuck on a stock photo of an old poster with Uncle Sam sneering, pointing, and exclaiming I WANT YOU.

Why her?  What does she have that he wants?  What does she want?

The problem is she doesn’t know what she wants.  She supposes she wants everything and nothing, which, she realizes, makes no sense.  She can’t think.  There’s a fast-talking auctioneer rattling off prices in her head.  When she smashes palms against her ears, a car alarm goes off instead.

She’s done something.  That’s it.  But what has she done exactly?  Perhaps her husband will tell her when he comes home after fucking that fake redhead with the overgrown cuspid.

She tries to remember what day it is, what month, what year.  The weather is so dull it gives no clues.  She knows she’s a wife, but what else?  Is she religious?  A hypochondriac?  And that scaredy-cat dog, is it even hers?

She checks her pulse expertly, nurse-like, and wonders if she might hold a position in the medical profession.  The veins in her inner wrist throb like an orgy of green worms performing fellatio.  It repulses her.  Everything seems to suddenly.

Her feet are cold, wet.  The floor—where did all that water come from?  Preposterous.  More stupidity.  Someone is pulling pranks, trying to destroy her last shred of self-confidence.

  

She traces the source of the water into the bathroom and feels relieved to learn it’s just that the tub has overflowed.  Turning off the faucet, she notices an oversized doll bobbing in the water.  She wonders how it got there.  She pulls the doll/baby/infant to her chest and nuzzles the ice-cold thing against her breasts.  The skin is stiff, but not like plastic.  “Shhh,” she says, “we’ll figure this out together.”