—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.”
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