“It had been a lovely evening up until the main course.  She’d picked a very elegant restaurant, and the food was excellent. We’d each had a shrimp cocktail and two glasses of wine-” 
 “But Ronald, you’re not supposed to be drinking at all with the Valium you’re taking.  Alcohol interacts with it.  You could get very sick; you mustn’t take such chances; it’s very self-destructive,” clinical psychologist, Art Silverman, interrupts his patient.

Ronald waves his hand in dismissal of his therapist’s concern and settles back onto the burgundy leather sofa over which Dr. Silverman’s diplomas are displayed, “Oh it was only wine, and I had had only 30 mg that day instead of my usual 50.  Also, I had skipped my Prozac.  Now can I continue with my story?” he asks, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

Dr. Silverman nods permission.  “So she tells me she met a man the night before.  He’s a psychologist, too, and they’re madly in love so she won’t be seeing me again, ever!  When she says this I begin choking on my pate and I’m choking and coughing and the maitre de is about to perform the Heimlich maneuver when I recover.  And I’m so pissed off I tell her she better split the fucking check.  Just as the words leave my mouth, the waiter brings her two pound lobster, and she screams that I can go fuck myself, picks up her lobster, plate and all and runs out of the restaurant.  I end up being charged for the shrimp cocktails, two lobsters, a bottle of French wine, and her plate.”

“That must have been very difficult for you to deal with,” Dr. Silverman says studying Ronald.  A few nights ago he and his wife had gone to a Woody Allen festival in the city.  It had been a marathon; the movies had played from noon ‘til midnight, but by the time they had seen Stardust Memories, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and The Purple Rose of Cairo, as well as consuming two large tubs of popcorn with butter and diet cokes to make themselves feel better about all the calories and fat in the popcorn, Art and his wife, Jennifer, were ready to leave.  Studying Ronald, Dr. Silverman realizes there is a strong resemblance between Woody Allen and his patient.  Both are stereotypical whiny New York Jews, both have quite the receding hairline, glasses, faces fixed in a perpetual frown, and seem to spend half their lives in therapy.  As well, they both are completely delusional narcissists, seeing themselves as hot young studs resulting in the endless pursuit of younger women.  However, while Woody can afford such a lifestyle, Ronald can’t even pay his therapy bills.

“Difficult?” Ronald says in a mocking tone, “That’s putting it mildly. Yes, it was difficult!  That’s the last time I call the Professional Jewish hotline.  I mean I can’t believe she won’t see me anymore.  I had been hoping if things didn’t work out romantically she could at least be give me discount therapy but now she won’t even take my calls!  But don’t worry I got even with that crazy bitch.”

“Oh?” Dr. Silverman asks, internally cringing.  Please tell me he hasn’t kidnapped this woman and isn’t holding her hostage.  I really don’t want to have to call the police, again, as I had to with Mr. Harrison last week.  Dr. Silverman found the duty to warn law complicated matters of confidentiality but he liked to avoid malpractice suits whenever possible.  While patients were upset about a breach in confidentiality, it was better to do so and prevent a death and lawsuit.  Much more cost effective.

“Oh yeah, I showed her!  I called her house all that night, and the next day, but I kept getting her daughter.  I think the kid’s around Daniel’s age, eleven or so.  Anyway, I told her that her mother’s a dinner whore!”  Ronald sits up in triumph.

“Ronald,” Dr. Silverman chastises, “You’re acting out again. Wasn’t it only last session that we were discussing you calling up your ex-fiancée and telling her you wanted to come over and ‘nail her to the wall’”?

“Well yes but she-”

“And what about the two women you’ve impregnated?  What’s going on with them?”

Ronald clears his throat and fidgets with a pillow.  “Well, the florist has agreed to get an abortion, and I had to lay out $350 bucks for it.  The other one, the stewardess, well she’s Catholic and refusing to get rid of it, but I’m not convinced it’s mine.  I mean, she travels to a different city like every night.  God only knows how many men she’s fucked!  She wants me to pay child support, but I want to see a DNA test before I give her a cent.”

“Will it be difficult to make child support payments to two different women?” Dr. Silverman inquires, “You do have your son, Daniel, to consider.”  And my bill to pay!  How else am I going to put my son through his last year at Cornell?  Damn this patient, if he isn’t blowing all his money on phone hotlines or knocking women up, he’s gambling it away in casinos.  I can’t believe how many years I’ve been putting up with this.

“Daniel will be okay.  I can support everyone through my poker playing.  In fact,  as soon as I’m done here I’m leaving for Atlantic City.  Boy have I pulled one over on my dad; he thinks I’m going to a convention in Pittsburgh.  I’ve invited a young lady whom I met on the Physically Challenged Hotline to meet me down there.  She’s in a wheelchair, but not to fear she’s capable, if you know what I mean.  I sent her money to take an ambulette down there.”

“She’s in a wheelchair?”

“Why should that matter?  The way I see it, one shouldn’t discriminate when choosing partners.  I don’t care about race, religion, physical or mental disabilities, if they’re married, if I’m married.  The way I see it, you should fuck them all!  You know Dr. Silverman, I know you’re married, but I know a nice Jewish lady I can set you up with.  I met her on the Jewish Athlete’s Hotline.  She’s a tennis player!”

“Um no thank you Ronald, that will be quite all right.  I’ll see you next week.  And I’d like to discuss something more productive like your constant sexual fantasies about your mother.”

*     *    *

The following week, when Dr. Silverman opens the door to his office after spending a session trying to help a man mend his marriage, he finds the man’s wife on the waiting room couch in Ronald’s arms.  Her shirt is off and he is frantically groping at her large breasts.  The two are so involved they don’t realize they are being watched until her husband makes his presence known by calling her a whore.

She pulls away from Ronald.  “Herb!  This isn’t what it looks like!”

“Don’t you even start with that line of bullshit, again.  Screw therapy, screw trying to make this work.  You’re nothing but a dirty little slut, and I’m filing for divorce!”

Herb promptly turns and stomps out of the office with his soon to be ex-wife at his heels, simultaneously trying to explain and button up her blouse.

Ronald grins sheepishly.  “Sorry about that.”

“Ronald, I won’t tolerate this kind of behavior in my office.  I never want another incident like this,” Dr. Silverman castigates his disheveled patient.

Ronald rises to his feet and follows Dr. Silverman into the office.  He takes his place on the couch.  “Well shall we begin?”

Begin, Dr. Silverman thinks with disgust.  This schmuck just cost me three sessions, one with the husband, one with the wife, and their joint session.  If it weren’t for

Steve’s college payments, I’d kick him out right now.

Dr. Silverman clears his throat.  “So at the end of last week’s session you mentioned you were off to Atlantic City.  How did that go?”

Ronald groans.  “Not good, Dr. Silverman.”

“Tell me more,” his therapist encourages.

“Well first off the paraplegic never showed up!  She pocketed the money I gave her for the amulette and I haven’t heard from her since.  She won’t return my calls and when I try calling her, I always get her voice mail.”  Ronald lets out a sigh, “But never fear things got worse.  I’m uh I’m going to need a little more time to pay you.  I’ll get the money real soon I promise.” Ronald sounds like a tenant who can’t pay his rent pleading with his landlord not to evict him, Dr. Silverman thinks.  And he used to be such a good tenant, paying every week in cash, the full amount even when his health insurance ran out.  If this pattern kept up, he would have to seriously consider eviction.

“What happened to your money, Ronald?” the doctor asks, closing his eyes and doing his best to remain calm.  Those Cornell payments were due!

“I lost it at the poker tables.  It was so unfair; I had won a bundle; I was doing great.  Then the next thing I knew, it was gone.”  Ronald opens his hands, which are indeed empty.  “The game has to have been rigged.”

“Ronald, I have been concerned about your gambling problem for quite some time.  Gambling occasionally for fun is all well and good, but with you it’s a compulsion.  You can’t control yourself; the same way an alcoholic can’t have just one drink.  An important step for you in getting your life back on track would be to abstain from gambling.”  Dr. Silverman scrawls something on a piece of paper, which he hands to Ronald.  “This is the number for Gamblers’ Anonymous.  They can tell when and where meetings are held.  I’d like you to start going, Ronald.”

“I’ll think about it.  It’s just I don’t think I can give up Atlantic City.  It’s so exciting!” Ronald’s eyes take on a far-off look.  One can practically hear the ringing of the slot machines.

“Come on Ronald, haven’t we had enough of that place?”

“What do you mean?” Ronald asks innocently.

“Well have you forgotten when you cheated on your wife by getting engaged to another woman in Atlantic City?  And have you forgotten the present you got her for her forty-ninth birthday?  That Latino couple you found in the Village Voice and invited from the Bronx for a foursome?”

“Oh that,” Ronald shrugs, “It’s not like anything happened.  I was doing so well at the poker tables I completely forgot about Carlos and Isabella.”

“Do you still about Carolyn and how abruptly the engagement ended?”

“Oh all the time.  I mean I only left her and moved back home because my dad promised me $200,000 if I did but it’s been months now and I haven’t seen a dime!”

Dr. Silverman bites his lip so that a sigh might not escape.  He changes the subject, “So have you had any more of those fantasies involving your mother?”

“Oh sure.  Just this morning at breakfast.  Do you any idea how erotic it can be to watch someone cut a bagel?  I just wanted to reach over and untie her kimono.  I know most people wouldn’t agree but trust me ninety-year-old women can be extremely erotic.  It’s nearly impossible to control myself.  I fantasize about getting her alone.”

“How do you control yourself?”

“My father, sister, and niece always seem to be around.  They just want to stand in the way of my happiness,” Ronald pouts, like a child denied dessert.

“Tell me more,” Dr. Silverman prods.

“Well it’s like I’m cursed.  Nothing ever works out for me.  My wife divorced and bankrupted me.  She took the house, our Yorkshire Terrier, Apricot, and hardly ever lets me see my son.  Then my fiancée left me.  I have all these medical problems.  Did I tell you I’m scheduled for another endoscopy this week?  The doctor insists it isn’t necessary, but what does he know?  Even business isn’t going well.  What the hell did I do to deserve all this?” Ronald’s head slumps forward to rest on his hand, making his bald spot all the more prominent, the shine refracting from the overhead light.

“I think you should be concentrating on business, Ronald and your health.  You should get into a routine and cut down on your compulsive dating and gambling.  You need to take good care of yourself, get exercise and eat properly.” Dr. Silverman feels not unlike a parakeet as he repeats the words of wisdom he has uttered hundreds if not thousands of times before.

Ronald takes his cue.  Looks up with admiration he says, “You’re so right.  What would I do without you, Dr. Silverman?”

*     *      *

“My mother has given me AIDS!”

“Who is this?” Dr. Silverman groggily says into the receiver, having been awakened in the middle of the night by his answering service, which will only put a call through if it’s a life or death situation.  He takes the cordless phone into the other room.

“It’s me, Ronald!”

“Ronald?”

“Dr. Silverman, it’s an emergency!  My mother has given me AIDS!  I don’t know what to do!”

“Where are you?”

“At a payphone on a street corner in Brooklyn,” Ronald gasps.

Dr. Silverman goes scourging for the bottle of Manichewitz left over from Passover.  When he gets the cap off, he downs the remains.  Cherry was always his favorite flavor, but blackberry would have to do.

“Ronald, I just saw you this afternoon, whatever could have happened in the interim?” Dr. Silverman lies down on the sofa and waits for the alcohol to kick in.

“Well I met this woman on a role-playing hotline. She agreed to role-play my mother.  I thought you would approve; I thought it would be therapeutic!” Ronald sounds close to tears.  “Oh God!”

“Ronald, I want you to take some deep breaths.  Come on; you need to calm down.  Now breathe.”

“I don’t need to breathe; I can just take more Valium.”

Dr. Silverman rolls his eyes.  “Why don’t you continue telling me what’s happened.  Why do you think you have AIDS?”

“Well, this woman, she was so convincing.  I got so into it; I guess I lost my head.”  As if you ever had it, Dr. Silverman thinks.  “And as we were about to have sex, I pulled out a condom, but she said, ‘No, condoms are bad.  Trust me on this; Mother knows best.’  I tried to protest, but after all she was my mother, and I had to obey her.  Oh Dr. Silverman, this woman was just my type – blonde, full-figured and busty—and you know how my real mother didn’t breast feed me.  You’re the one who told me I am still searching for what I was deprived of as an infant.”

“Ronald, it is the middle of the night.  I want you to go home to your parents, your real parents, your biological parents.  I can fit you in for an emergency session tomorrow at five.”

Ronald sighs but acquiesces.

After they have said good-bye, Dr. Silverman finds he is unable to fall back asleep.  Back in his bedroom, the ceiling fan whirls above his head, and he watches until he feels dizzy.  Closing his eyes he tries to conjure up a herd of sheep and allows them to fly over fences in his imagination.  Still he isn’t drowsy, and he finds himself wishing for some of Ronald’s Valium.  I should’ve gone to Med. School; then I could just write myself a prescription, he thinks.  Dr. Silverman turns over with a sigh that goes undetected by his slumbering wife.  Ronald.   Ronald, Ronald, Ronald.  He couldn’t believe how many years he had been putting up with this lunatic.  Screw being P.C!  Ronald had to be one of the craziest patients he had ever seen.  Thirteen years this fall, Dr. Silverman lets out a groan.

*     *      *

The next day at five sharp Ronald comes in for his session.  When Dr. Silverman opens the door to the waiting room, he is struck by just how thin his patient is, emaciated really.  His clothes positively hang on his frame, and when he makes facial expressions his skin stretches from the effort, as if any minute his chin will jut straight through and bone will be revealed, like a rabbit in a magic trick.  In fact, Ronald is looking so bad these days, Dr. Silverman wonders how he is even attracting women to get into trouble with.  Maybe he’s paying them instead of me?

Ronald steps into the office and slumps down on the couch.  He is extremely mellow and Dr. Silverman wonders just how much Valium his patient has taken today.  “Well,” Ronald begins, “I went to a health clinic this morning.  I had to fill out some forms.  One question asked if my sexual preference was male, female, or other, so I checked other and wrote in sheep.”

Dr. Silverman clears his throat.  “Have you had any involvement with barnyard animals, Ronald?”

“It was a joke, Doc, don’t lose your hairpiece.”

Asshole, Dr. Silverman thinks, but says, “Tell me what happened at the health clinic.” Is there any hope they’ll perform a lobotomy?

“Oh they took some blood.  The test results will be back in a week; then I will have to be tested again in three months to find out if the lady who role-played my mother gave me AIDS,” Ronald’s lids are practically closing, and his speech is as languid as a line at the DMV.

“Ronald, you need to make a stronger effort not to engage in such self-destructive behavior in the future.  Your acting out sexually is just another way of not feeling your feelings.  You need to face things and stop running away.”  He goes over to his desk and scribbles something on a piece of paper, which he gives to his patient.  “Now this is the number for SLA.  Sex and love addicts anonymous.  Have you attended a GA meeting, yet?”

“No,” Ronald admits.

“Ronald, you need to give these 12 step programs a try.  They really do work,” Dr. Silverman encourages.

“Well maybe I’ll go to a sex meeting.  Who knows, I could meet a woman there!”

*     *      *

Ronald is ebullient when he comes in for his next and what will be his last session with Dr. Art Silverman.  “Dr. Silverman,” he prattles “I have so much to tell you!  I attended three different meetings this week- GA, SLA, and AA!”

“But Ronald, you’re not an alcoholic,” Dr. Silverman’s forehead furrows in confusion matching the wrinkles of his face, the way a hat might complement a scarf.

“Well I know that!  Don’t worry there’s a method to my madness.  You see, at each of these support groups I get a sponsor, someone I can call at any hour.  So now I don’t have to run up my parents’ phone bill calling 900 numbers to talk to women!” After his great announcement, Ronald sits back awaiting praise, as if he were a fifth grader who has just presented a report card of straight As.  When Dr. Silverman does not say anything, Ronald is confused.  “Well?” he asks.

“That’s uh very nice Ronald.  I’m glad you’re finding healthier outlets for your compulsions.”

“Thank you,” Ronald beams.

“Now Ronald, there’s something we have to discuss.”  Dr. Silverman shifts in his seat, crosses then uncrosses his legs, removes his glasses from his face and wipes the lenses with a handkerchief from his trouser pocket.  His face feels flushed, and he dabs at his forehead with the same handkerchief.  Perhaps he is coming down with something.  “Ronald, you’ve been coming to see me for thirteen years now.  That’s a long time.  I’m not a young man anymore.”  Why is this so difficult? he wonders, it was so easy with my other patients.  “Ronald, I’d like…” No, that didn’t sound right, he wasn’t asking permission for Christ’s sake!  “Ronald, I’m retiring.”  There, he’d said it.  As soon as the words left his lips, he felt lighter and tanner.  The last Cornell payments had been made and he felt free as if he had already been transported from his office to a Ft. Lauderdale golf course.

“Retiring?  No!  You can’t do that!  You can’t just leave me!  Who’s going to take care of me now?”

Dr. Silverman tosses a box of Kleenex to Ronald.  “Ronald, it’s all right.  It’s going to be okay.  I’m not going to leave you hanging.  I have a wonderful referral, in fact, the next best thing to me.  My daughter is going to be taking over my practice.  She’s a wonderful doctor, and I strongly believe you will find her very helpful.”

“Your daughter?”

“That’s right,” Dr. Silverman confirms.  Let Tammy deal with this lunatic!

“Oh God!”

“Ronald, what’s wrong?”

“It’s just, how can I be a hot young stud if your daughter is old enough to be a doctor?”  He points to a framed photo of Tamar at her batmitzvah, flat-chested with braces, and frizzy hair.

“Everyone grows old, Ronald.  It’s natural it’s a part of life, you can’t stop it from happening.  Besides, growing old isn’t the hard part; it’s growing up that’s so difficult.”

“But I don’t want to grow old,” Ronald whimpers.  He plucks a tissue from the box of Kleenex like a flower and begins picking it apart as if it were indeed a plant.  “I’m not ready for this.  It’s too soon.  It can’t be over, not now when everything is so wrong.  Oh God.”

“What are you feeling Ronald?  Don’t think, just say the first thing that comes to mind.”

“Scared,” he says in such a way that Dr. Silverman is reminded of his granddaughter who a few years back wouldn’t go to sleep until the entire room had been inspected for monsters.

“What are you afraid of?” the doctor leans forward and stares so long and hard that Ronald becomes blurry; he has forgotten to blink.

“It’s so embarrassing!  I never thought, never in a million years, I never thought this could happen to me!” Ronald blows his nose loudly into one of the tissues he has not dissected.  He squeezes his eyes together so fiercely Dr. Silverman finds himself wincing.

“What is it?  You can tell me, Ronald; it’s okay, you’re safe here,” Dr. Silverman continues prodding his now sobbing patient.

“Doctor, doctor,” Ronald hiccups, “Dr. Silverman, I’m not a real man anymore!”

Dr. Silverman reaches for his notepad and scribbles Oedipal Complex.

“Tell me more, Ronald.”

“Don’t you get it?” Ronald lets out another hiccup before continuing, “I can’t have sex anymore!  It isn’t working!” Ronald shrieks, “Oh god!  Oh god help me!  I’m impotent!”

“How many times have you been unable to have intercourse?”

“Well it’s happened now and then over the years.  Mr. Happy has never been happy 100% of the time, especially when I take Prozac.  But I haven’t touched the stuff in a month and now seven times in a row I’ve been unable to perform!  How will I ever go on?!”

“Ronald, there have been wonderful advances in medicine for men with this problem.  You can go see a specialist.”

“But real men don’t have problems like this,” Ronald whines.

Dr. Silverman pictures his own medicine cabinet and the bottle of blue Viagra tablets he has just refilled at the pharmacy and he opens up his mouth to speak, to tell Ronald once and for all what he thinks of him.  So what if they took his license away?  He doesn’t need it; he’s retiring!  Psychology wasn’t like the army where your discharge was either honorable or dishonorable.  But before he can begin his tirade, there is a knock on the door.

With jaw clenched tightly, Dr. Silverman says, “That must be my daughter.”

He stands up to let in a petite young woman in her mid 30s wearing black loafers, slacks, a white blouse and a navy blue pinstripe blazer.  “Hi Daddy,” she says, “I’m not interrupting am I?”

“No, we were just wrapping up.  Ronald, I’d like you to meet my daughter-” “The dinner whore!” he exclaims.

“This is Ronald?” her jaw drops open with such exaggeration she looks like a first year drama student.

“Oh my god Tamar,” Dr. Silverman gasps, “You were?  You two?”

“Daddy, I can explain!”

“You were eating lobster and shrimp?  That’s not kosher.  Tamar, how could you?” Dr. Silverman is shocked.

“Oh daddy, I stopped keeping kosher when I went away to Brandeis,” she says with obvious exasperation, her eyes rolling upward.

“But I paid extra just so you’d have a kosher dining room!”

Ronald rises to his feet.  “You two are concerned about eating shellfish?  I never got paid for half that check.  Did you know they even charged me for the plate you ran out of the restaurant with!”  With his red face, clenched fists, and the sweat glistening on his forehead Ronald looks like a more than slightly underweight boxer confronting his opponent.

Tammy turns around to face her nemesis, her eyes narrowed into furious blue slits.  “And rest assured Ronald that you will never see that money.  Not get out of my office!”

“But-” he quivers.

“Out!  You get the hell out and never come back or I’ll call the cops.  You’re lucky I didn’t have you arrested for the way you harassed my daughter.  But rest assured if you ever come near me or my family again I will make you regret the day you were born.”

“Dr. Silverman?” Ronald seeks an ally.

Dr. Silverman shakes his head and averts his eyes, looking at something, anything but Ronald.  He inspects the hardwood floors, the roll top desk over by the window, the books in his shelf.  What would Freud advise?  Would Rogers or Jung have any words of wisdom?

Finally he looks at Ronald, panic-stricken, and then at his daughter whom he hasn’t seen this angry since she found out her husband was cheating on her while she was pregnant.  Ronald has still not moved and Tammy is crossing the room towards the phone.  Dr. Silverman clears his throat then speaks.  “It’s over Ronald.  You better go.”

Ronald shoulders raise.  “Where?” he asks, “Where?”

“It’s too cold in Russia to masturbate,” said Alex.  He was trying to comfort me.

Tolstoy in his deathbed.

See, I got drunk at this LA actor networking party, and out came a Russian and a camera.  He told me he was interviewing people on their reactions to the Lost season premiere.  I got real excited.  I love Lost (time travel is a particular interest of mine thanks to a childhood of Marty McFly), and am always eager to discuss it.  I asked him what the interview was for, and he said a Russian TV show.  The guy had on a tight T-Shirt and was working a big nose so I totally believed him.  Immediately pumped up at the idea of Russian TV stardom, I was like “Can I reveal spoilers?” and he was like “Go ahead.”  I launched into my feelings about Kate and the Smoke Monster and my theory that Sayid is really Jesus.  I enjoyed the attention from the camera.  I smiled a lot, I flipped my hair.  At one point, the Russian asked me which guy I liked better, Sawyer or Jack.  He gave me a dirty smile, as if to say “Go ahead, tell me how you really feel”.  I took a swig from my rum and coke, giggled, and said, “Well I wouldn’t kick Sawyer out of bed for eating crackers, as we Dharma folk like to say!”  At which point I flashed the camera my titties.  I hoped that a casting director somewhere near by had seen something he liked.  Hopefully JJ Abrams saw it too.

The next morning, looking back on the night’s events, wiping a drop of dried snot-like vomit out of my hair, I was worried.  In my sober post-party state, I was concerned the Russian would sell my interview to online pervs, and my nerdy blonde American charm would be whacked off to by Moscowites.  Alex assured me that this was not possible.

“Seriously, Brigit, the lube would freeze on their balls.”

“That must be why they kidnap the girls from their country and sell them elsewhere, in warm places,” said I.

“Yes.  What sexual frustration will do to an entire culture…  It’s a real shame.”

The thought of being put on a Russian sex website filled me with thoughts of evil men becoming obsessed with my beautiful breasts and kidnapping me, selling me to brothels in Calcutta and Tehran.  I pictured Gorbachev’s daughter with a head wrap dancing in front of a sheik in a gold bikini.  I shivered.  To be sold on the sex slave trade was one of my darkest fears.  I was frightened that footage of my drunken breast-baring exuberance toward Lost, if discovered, would enhance my candidacy as a kidnap victim.  Alex assured me, though, that Russians not only cannot masturbate, they do not like Lost.  “Why would they?”  He said.  “It’s tropical, and it doesn’t have any peasants.”

Now, Alex may have gotten into every law school in the land, but he didn’t know a thing about Russians.  The old Ruskies were more my area of expertise.  I had studied Chekhov in acting school and knew The Seagull like nobody’s business.  I mean, I knew Nina’s last name, and the sensory details of a 19th century train ride to Yeletz.  When I cried, “Kostya, I know what my vocation is, and now I am not afraid of life!” the other acting students were in tears.  My acting teacher practically had an orgasm.  Their claps filled the studio room, echoing off the chipping walls and fold-out metal chairs.  I had connected deeply and emotionally to the characters, and began to understand the Russian soul.  I knew that Russians fed off drama, human longing, questions of destiny/freewill, and large casts of characters.  Lost, therefore, was the perfect Russian cocktail.  To Alex, a Barack Obama type that I met in freshman year Spanish class, Russia was just the place you shouldn’t invade in winter.  How little he knew of its dangers…

The camera-wielding networking Russians kidnapped me.  While perusing Facebook, I heard a pick at my lock.

Looking around for the nearest weapon, I grabbed a nail file.  I shook in terror.  My cell phone was in my purse by the door, vibrating with the unanswered texts of several losers.  If only I had been responding to them like a lady, I thought, the phone would have been in my reach to call el policio.  I made a mental note to stop ignoring the good-looking but Republican guy I met at a friend’s wedding.  Maybe if I’d picked up his first call and gone on a date with him, he would have been in my apartment at that very moment, massaging my feet and waxing philosophical to me about how the poor should be gassed, and he’d protect me from intruders.  Mistakes, mistakes.  Sometimes I forget how much I depend upon men for their physical strength.

The turn of the lock made me shiver.  I prayed feverishly that Harrison Ford or Liam Neesen was nearby and would save me.  But before either of them had a chance, my door creaked open, and in slid a man, shutting the door behind him.  He looked just like Barack Obama.  Though still afraid, I softened, defenses down.  The man reminded me of both Obama, and my best pal Alex, who like I said was very similar to him (biracial, charming, middle-class background).  The intruder was wearing all brown, which made him even more convincing.  At first I felt hope at the sight of his face, but then it began to change.  The president was breaking into my house?  I couldn’t figure it out.  Had things really gotten that bad?  Did Alex or Obama need some money?  I’ll admit, I had smoked a bit of weed earlier in the evening.  Slowly, and somewhat seductively, the Obama imposter approached me.  He took the nail file out of my hand and said “sssh, little babushka.”  I smelled alcohol, and then all was darkness.

I awoke in the type of van all girls have nightmares about.  The sex-trafficking type.  Drunk eyes aflutter, I heard funny European voices and felt the déjà vu of “Lebowski!  We need the money!” But instead of two guys peeing on my carpet, I saw an orange-lit van surrounded by men in tight brown leggings, and I saw the big-nosed Russian, whose nose was much bigger without the fuzzy flattering night-vision of a drunk.  My worst fears were confirmed.

“It’s you!” I yelled, before swooning onto the van’s shaggy carpet floor.

“We knew if we wore the Obama mask you would trust us,” the Russian said as he picked me up by the arm and stared into my tear-streaked face.  “Hahaha,” he laughed evilly.  “Stupid actress.”  He was right.  “Stupid American.  Haha.”

“Damn it!” I yelled, jerking out of his grip and pounding my fists on the floor.  “Always trust your instincts!” I wept, hearing my Mother’s advice reverberate in my ear.  I knew this would happen.  I knew that a real live Russian with a camera at a networking party was bad news.  Never trust foreigners.  Look at Roman Polanski for Gods sakes.  “What do you want with me?” I shrieked, sobbing.  There were three men surrounding me, seated in a circle in what looked like little-kid chairs.  A camera was propped on a tripod behind us, with the Obama mask lying beside it.  I was not tied up or handcuffed, which left me free to roll around on the carpeted floor in despair.  “I’m not supposed to be a whore!” I yelled.  Though if they sold me to someone famous like a governor, I might embrace it.

“You are now ours,” the principal Russian said.  In my head I named him Vladimir.  He was the skinniest.  It was ironic.  Or maybe I don’t get what irony is, but it was funny that I called him that.

“Now.  Tell us about this Lost show, actress.”

“What?” I responded.  He leaned in toward me, threateningly fierce.

“Tell us.  Or the consequence will beyond your imagination be,” he said, like an idiot.

“Okay!” I said, unsure as to what I was agreeing to, but very scared of consequence.

As the shock of the Russian’s request grew inside me, I looked about the van and took in its contents more clearly.  In every corner of the dark van, lit by an orange glow light, were pasted pictures of Lost characters.  There was Kate, looking fly, on the red carpet.  I noted her green dress, very dignified.  A real looker, that one.  Beside her was a photo of Hurley, Sawyer, and Ben at Comic Con.  There was one of Jack on the island, leading a group of castaways into the dark of the jungle.  There was Daniel Faraday, my favorite, in a promotional shot, looking clairvoyant.  A new fear took hold of me.  If they sold me into sexual slavery, how would I ever find out what happens on the island?

The Russians, closing in around me, scooching their chairs to me, red light of the camera blinking, brought me back into a gruesome reality… these horny Russians were crazed Lost fans.  And I was the sexy American who understood their passion for mysterious ABC sagas.  God damn it.

“We love Lost,” said Vladimir.  They all murmured in agreement.  I sensed excited tears in their Russian eyes.

“There are aspects of this Lost that we simply do not understand, you know?  We are mystified.”

The Russians had given me a cup of Arbor Mist to calm me down.  I accepted because I was very thirsty.  They gave me a cigarette, and we all shot the shit for a while.  They explained what the hell I was doing in their creepster van.

“Your English is excellent,” I told him, taking a swig of the sweetness.

“I went to Columbia University, fool!”  Vladimir could be scary.  I mean, he did kidnap me.  And his teeth were sharp.  Exactly how one would think a sex-traffickers teeth were like.  But the others seemed okay.  Vladimir kept talking, “But after…back I go Moscow.  My father, the famous maker of beaver-pictures, Ivan Lagoyavich Trevelog, he was dying.  Of course, also my student Visa had run out.  I live in Moscow once again for many of the years, ordering American TV on the Netflix, missing this place of skin and knowledge.  Dexter.  Deadwood.  Sex and the City.  Phenomenal.  Your people, they know things.  Americans created Lost.  They know it, they feel it.  Just as we intuitively understand the gift Irina receives on her birthday in Three Sisters and the significance of its extravagance, you understand the significance of the eye blush this Richard wears, and the mythology behind a foot on the beach housing a Messiah-like figure.  This I do not understand!  All I can understand is Kate’s cursed beauty!”  Vladimir was animated.  He nearly jumped out of his pre-school sized chair.

His knees were the size of hubcaps and his nose almost hit me in the face.  It probably could have given me a black eye.  He continued, “Is the Man-in-Black evil?  Or is he good?  Does he represent the will of man, and Jacob the planned destiny?  We cannot decide.  And these are important questions!  Truly!”
I nodded.  The other men nodded.  They all stared at me.  What would come next?  I was hoping Vladimir would drink himself into a stupor of no-ability-to-rape-me-ness, and then I could punch the others, put on the Obama mask, and sneak out of the van.  The Obama mask would make me feel powerful.

“One night,” he went on, “after getting Petrov’s American cousin spinning in the head with absinthe,” Petrov nodded at me with a crooked smile.  He had the smile of someone who is a bit slow, “…we asked her to explain this Lost.  Her answers intrigue us.  Additionally, they give us boners.  You know… ‘wood.’  We drink, the camera comes out, we demand – speak for the tape!  Tell us what you feel!  Tell us what will happen on Lost!  We know you know, bitch!  All Americans know someone who knows someone who knows JJ Abrams! Tell us, woman! Yet she refused.  We sold her to Arab king.  A punishment.”

“Yowza,” I said.

“We begin website.  Several Russian Lost fans feel as we do, that Lost is quite sexual and American and an American female Lost fan is priceless.  An American female Lost fan could have made even Tolstoy hard.  This website thrives, and now look at us; rich enough, we travel here, we discover this Los Angeles gold mine of silly women with little to do but watch television and show their bosoms at parties like whores.  So here is ‘the deal’ as they say.  You talk of Lost.  You look pretty.  We tape you.  If you do not participate, to the Arabs you go.”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“You know how bad 9-11 was!  How could you send me to them?”  I went out on a limb.

“You shut up.”

If I was being nonsensical, it’s because I thought perhaps they’d show me some of that world-wide compassion that once existed for the USA, if only for a brief moment.  Alas, the people of New York losing their lives did not bring these Evangeline Lilly fans back to their damn senses.

“The site is called ‘Daddy Sawyer Thinks You Are Pretty. Very Pretty.’  It is for the heterosexual Lost fans of Russia.”

“Catchy.  And I figured.”

“Thank you actress.  Your breasts will look great on tape.  Well, the left one which is not so small.”

“Asshole!” I cursed.

Vladimir went to the camera.  He began directing the men in all directions of the van’s porn set.  I started to cry like a little boy losing a baseball game.

“I hate you guys!” I whined.  They put me in a little chair, and my hands were tied in front of me, my two tiny biceps pushing my breasts together.  Petrov put lipstick on me, preparing me for my close-up.  In the lighting, I couldn’t see what color it was.  I hoped it was a ‘summer’ tone and not ‘winter’ because those look awful on me.  He swiped blush across my cheeks.  I glanced rapidly around the van for a way out.  It’s not as if I wouldn’t do what they asked, because I didn’t want to be sold to an Arab.  What could be worse?  After all, all Muslims are basically fundamentalist even if Fareed Zakaria claims otherwise.  I tried desperately to think of how I felt about Lost, of something unique to say for their camera.  Nothing came to me.  John Locke was…. Really alive!  And he was like… Zeus!  No.  Juliet was a man!  No.  Damn it.  Sawyer saves everybody and dies and Jack and Kate get together again, and Sawyer ends up with Juliet in some other reality, and good wins over evil, but people have to sacrifice in order to make that happen, with many giving up their children and their lives.  No, that was too simple.  It was all about the polar bear!  Yes…I was getting somewhere…

“Chekhov would have loved Lost,” Vladimir said as he stroked an action figure of Claire, sitting in the corner waiting for me to be made up, like a true freak.

“Pssh.  Yeah right,” I said quietly as Petrov stepped back from me, nodding to the camera-Russian that they were ready to begin taping.

“What did you say, little Lost whore?” he shot back at me. I felt brave from the Arbor Mist.  Thanks, Russians.  I wish people in America just drank all day like those crazy Commys.

“I said yeah right!  Chekhov would have hated this shit!” I said.

The camera was ready.  A Russian sex-pirate entrepreneur was behind it, nodding at Vladimir that it was time.  But I had struck a nerve.

“And what do you know of Chekhov, American?”  Big-nose Vladdy looked bemused.

“I know he didn’t infuse his work with mythological reference, or endless saga-like stories of redemption!  He presented his characters with a problem, let them live in it, did not resolve it, and ended the damn thing!  This brought awareness and empathy to people who cannot escape their own pain or change course!  He wrote of the miniscule betrayals of life that like a splinter invade us slightly and leave a great hurt if not taken out!  He would have been annoyed by all the hoo-ha on that show, let me assure you!”  I was pissed now.  Looked like Vladimir was too.  My boobs were crushing together like goo, and I wanted to just get this over with, but that guy shouldn’t have questioned my Conservatory-training.

“Chekhov admired questions of the human spirit!”  Vladimir yelled.  The other Russians tried to shush him.  He got up in my face again, and the stupid Russian criminal’s nose actually did hit me this time.  It felt like a penis in my face.  “You are telling me Sawyer’s newfound emotionality does not demonstrate just that?”

“Chekhov liked the small-scale human drama.  The scope of it was in the internal world of the characters, and their places in society.  Tolstoy would have jumped right into its questions of free will, its fable of redemption through war leading perhaps to peace.  But Chekhov…no.  don’t even go there.  He would’ve been annoyed by the whole thing.  Ya’ know the whole ‘if there’s a gun onstage in the first act it has to go off in the third’ that he said?  Well, they never make the gun go off on Lost.  It would’ve given him an ulcer.”

“AAAAAH!” yelled the Russian.  A ruckus ensued.  Vladimir came toward me to strangle me.

“She shouldn’t have brought up the greatest short story writer of all time,” said one of the Russians behind me who’d been primping my hair.  “Always a mistake.”

“Greatest playwright here in the US, buddy boy,” I shot out at him.

The men pulled Vladimir away from me.  He had veins popping out the sides of his scrawny long Russian neck.

“To the Arab with you,” he said.

I thought of Pakistani food and how much I hate it.  Too much clove-like flavoring, too many peas, at least in that one Pakistani restaurant I ate at once in the East Village in NY.

“Wait!” I shouted.  They all stared at me.  “I will give you some Lost-talk like you’ve never heard before,” I said.

Vladimir lifted a thick Russian brow.  “Go ahead,” he said.  “Roll camera.”  He lay back, watching me.  The van quieted.  “Tell me.  Tell Daddy Sawyer.”

“See, I think it’s a polar bear.  I think that the whole thing is about a polar bear kept captive.  He is having fantasies about his oppressors.  But the polar bear has low self esteem, so he’s only a bit player in the fantasy.  When he comes up in the show, it’s really the polar bear entertaining himself by being like ‘oh my I know what would be fun!  Then a polar bear comes out!’ and he giggles to himself, and then a human whips him through the cage.  In the last episode…it’ll all have been a polar bear’s daydream…”

“Yes yes.  Go on.  Go on.  More.”

“If I had Sawyer alone in a room I’d show him a time-loop in my rear…”

“Yes.  Yes.  More answers, more answers.”

“Truly, I think Kate represents the lost feminity of Eve on the days following creation in the Genesis.”

I heard a quiet wet whacking in the van’s corner.  I dared not look.  The Obama mask stared at me with a look of shame.

When I had finished, I asked for more Arbor Mist and if I could go back home because I had an audition for LA Crime Sex bright and early in the AM.  As I saw how pathetic these men were (men just get more and more pathetic every day, I swear, I mean look at Elliot Spitzer and Jesse James and the nipple pictures on Huffington Post), I lost much of my fear.  I’d handled pathetic sexists before, and I would again.  But the Russians would not let me cease.  I was tired.  I was anxious about my audition.

“But I’m done!  That’s all I got!  How many mysteries are there to solve?”

“So, so many,” they chanted, eyes a-horny.

“I can’t!  I can’t go on!” I yelled, hoping they’d give me a tranquilizer to calm me down, or feel bad for me.

“The girls do not understand us here,” one of them muttered.

“But I have a life!” I yelled, toward Vladimir, hoping he’d pity me.  “I have a manager who is really and truly interested in my work in the Clearasil ad campaigns!”

“No!  YOU HAVE NOT EXPLAINED THIS SMOKE MONSTER!”

“I CAN’T!  I CAN’T!”

“ONLY AMERICANS UNDERSTAND! AND YOU ARE ONE WITH BREASTS!”

“But it’s not me!  I’m not the one to help you!  Let me give you the numbers for other girls who love Lost even more than me!  There are plenty!  They wear glasses and corduroys, but still!”

“Take off your bra and top.  This is level two.  Brothers…. Turn on the green-based overhead lighting.”

I began to cry.  As an actress I was used to taking off my shirt.  I got naked in plays, in a movie that no one will ever see, in my friends’ hot tubs after a couple Pabsts.  Often, I regretted my nudity, particularly in an Off-Off-Off Broadway play directed by a college student where I was forced to sit naked on an old man’s lap and sing “Cabaret.”  But this was different.  No one was paying me a check for $60 a week or hooking up with me no-strings-attached.  I reached behind me.  I unclipped.  Trembling, I reached down to the bottom of my shirt, ready to lift up, revealing the glorious B-C Cup breasts that had gotten me into this trouble in the first place.  Maybe Muslims had the right idea with those burkas.  They’re hard to take off when you’re drunk.  It’s for women’s own protection.   Maybe I would like the life of an Arab’s whore.  Better than that of a nude model on a Russian fetish site.

“Now.  Tell us more theories.  And bounce around.”

I did as I was told.  What other choice does a sex slave have?

This is how Alex found me.

He came in with a team of our friends, mostly actresses, law students, trust-fund intellectuals, plus a painter friend of Alex’s that I slept with once in college (I noticed him immediately, he’d gotten quite overweight) and they took the Russians down with karate.  Kids these days have a lot of extracurricular activities, so our generation of friends was just what I needed to save my ass.

Several in my American brigade pinned down the Russians and forced them to drink vodka, until they were immobile.  “It’s like winning the Cold War twice!” one of the young American men yelled.

“If that’s true, then I’m democracy,” I said to Alex, as he pulled down my shirt and untied me.  He grimaced.

“How’d you find me?” I asked my pal.

“I got into Harvard Law School yesterday.  And when I came to tell you, I saw this van outside your house.  I can’t explain it, it’s just…after receiving that letter of acceptance I just… knew things.  I figured the van outside your house might be some Russians taping you more.”

The Russians were passed out in Vodka stupors around me.  But I knew I wasn’t safe until the Lost season finale, so I hid.  I am in hiding now.  I cannot tell you where I am.  Hopefully they will answer all the mysteries of the show, or I know the Russians will come looking for me.  Luckily, I have the Obama mask.  I put it next to my pillow every night, and I read Lost summaries like it’s my vocation.  Alex says I have Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.  I think I just need an acting job.

Ah America.  Where breasts are dangerous to have as part of your body, and Lost is crazy, and Russians are menacing, and biracial law students save the world.

Dorothea Tanning

Sweet Mary

James burned.

With curiosity. With God. With the Devil. With blood fever. With Mary.

James burned.

Lately Mary had come to him every night. Bathed in golden light. Sweet Mary, dripping love, dropping down with the wings of an angel as he lay on his small hard bed, Jesus on the cross behind him bleeding, bleeding from his crown of thorns, bleeding for his sins. The sins of James.

And he would pray to God. His God. That she would go away. That she would come and stay. That she would lower herself onto him again. And she always did. Flowing crow black hair. Raving raven eyes. Skin white clouds. Breasts secreting the milky blood of Christ.

And he would be so stiff. A stiff staff greeting her as she floated down, a sister of mercy, sweet Mary, floating all over him. And he would pray to God, his God, to deliver him from evil, to help him resist temptation. But his God would be gone, and he could not resist. Did not want to resist sweet Mary.

And she would whisper, “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned,” as she spread herself open with her fingers and hovered over him, hovered over his rigid rock of ages knob of James at the blossom of Mary so opening and he would want her so much, so bad, so hard, and he would be enveloped by the sheer drunken sin of it all.

And she would put her breast in his mouth, the sweet breast of Mary, and he would drink the milky blood of Christ as she would slide down, down, down the veiny palpitating pounding pumping pillar of his sin, the shaft of his Satan.

And he would whisper, “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.” And he would think to himself, O Jesus, kill me, O Jesus, save me, O Jesus help me.

And she would sing like a cherub, a holy hellspawn, the music of her virgin voice filling him as he was filling her.

She blanketed him like in holy snow.

And the hot love of God would shoot out of him into her, into the valley of death, the Shadow lurking, smirking in the corner, as he would scream, “O Lord, why have you forsaken me?”

And then James would wake up, bolt soaking from his nightmaredream wet with sweat and sticky salty unholy water boiling on his belly. And he would feel God watching him, and he would feel the shame aimed at his heart, and he would pray to forgiven. By God. His God.

And afterwards, to calm himself, he would say, It’s only a dream.

And now, here she was. Here was Mary. Sweet Mary. In the flech. In his booth. Inches from him. So close James could smell her flower blooming, perfuming through him, pinning him, chokeholding his soul.

And James had to punch himself hard in the thigh to bring himself back. God is laughing at me, James thought. This is his sick joke, and I am the butt. You have a sacred duty, he told himself, you are nothing, you are a servant, you are a vessel of the Lord our God. A vessel of God. You are nothing but your sacred duty, James told himself.

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned,” came from the darkness like a chariot of light, singing sweet and low, swinging him around her little finger. “What is your sin my child?” James felt strange calling her his child. She was thirty-five, maybe forty, although James was very bad at those things. Judging how old a woman might be. Maybe she was only thirty. That was certainly possible, he thought. She was old enough to be his mother. Mother Mary. Mother of God. Holy Mother of God.

But he was twenty-one, he was sure of that. The Whiz Kid Priest. That’s what all the papers said. And the magazines. Memorized the Bible by the age of ten. Already groomed to be a bishop, a cardinal maybe even. Audience with the Pope on his eighteenth birthday. Quoting verse and scripture, a greatest hits of the Good Book on the radio and the television with the square jawed easy charm of Jack Kennedy back in Camelot, a poster boy for the New Church, a throwback to a happier time when it didn’t matter if you had sex with Marilyn Monroe in the White House, as long as you didn’t do it on the Front Lawn.

And James loved the ritual of it, the pageantry of it, the ceremony, the hidden symbols and the rock hard unthinking certainty, the blind obedience of it all, from before he could even remember, making everyone around him so happy, his father, on his deathbed, pleading with him, James, the only son, the last hope, to be a priest, his mother so proud, beaming, telling everyone about her boy the Whiz Kid Priest. The pride of the neighborhood.

And it had come so easy, all so simple. Until now. Until her. Until Mary. Sweet Mary.

“Father, I have impure thoughts,” confessed Mary with a breathtaking piety. Impure thoughts. Just the words set his mind racing, skin ivory, hair ink black, a black Mass, parting her heart of darkness to let him in.

James punched himself in the thigh hard to bring himself back. And he wanted to run, to hide. And he prayed to God, his God, to give him the strength to resist, to pass this test, this plague of locust, He was inflicting on pious Father James, the Whiz Kid Priest.

“What are your thoughts,” James asked, trying hard to keep the quiver out of his voice, not really wanting to know the answer, desperately wanting to know the answer. “Well, Father… I’m too embarrassed to talk about it…” said Mary. “I’m your priest, Mary, I’m hear to listen and forgive, as a vessel of Christ out Lord and savior. We all have impure thoughts.” James said it, and he believed it.

“Do you have impure thoughts Father?” asked Mary, and just the way she said it shivered him cold and ignited a fire in the furnace of his purgatory, sending a white-hot shot of juice jumping through his balls jumping under the hardening under his robe.

O God please make it stop. Please God, make it all stop now. I have done everything for You, I have given You my

Hans Bellmer

life, please just do this one thing for me. Please, God, make it stop.

“Well, yes I do, of course I do. I’m not just a priest, I’m a…”

But the word “man” stuck hard in his throat like a wafer with no wine chaser.

“…that is to say, I confess my thoughts and sins and I pray to God to forgive me, and He does.” James said in his best Father James voice.

But James had never confessed these thoughts. These sins of Mary. As if by not confessing them they weren’t really real. Didn’t really count. And maybe that’s why God is punishing me, James thought, that’s why God is testing me, for my mendacity, for believing I can hide anything from his omnipotence.
Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

“Father, I have wicked, sinful thoughts, and… I touch myself Father, I can’t help it… I… give myself pleasure… I can’t stop, Father, and I don’t know what to do…” James was breathing hot and hard now, heavy, trying to control everything, slow it all down, cool it all off. No more visions. No more breasts of Mary. No more bloody milk. No more Cardinal red lips. No more of her Amazing Grace. Save me for I am lost. Find me, miserable wretch that I am. Lord I am blind. Please, let me see. Help me cast out Satan. Make me roar, “Jezebelle, be gone!”

But James could not. James would not.

“What are your thoughts?” he asked, professional and priestly. But he already knew. Knew the thoughts of Mary. The way she looked at him when she passed in line after Sunday service. The way she always managed to corner him somewhere, when she knew no one was around, and stand a little too close, until she was almost brushing up against him, so close that he couldn’t even follow the thread of the meaningless conversation they were having about nothing at all. So close that he had no choice but to breathe in the ripe rubiness of Mary.

“Well… I want to do things, Father. Terrible things. O God, I want to do terrible things…” O God, deliver me from evil. Is this evil? It must be. It is. Sin. The sins of the flesh. Her flesh. The flesh of Mary. “Sometimes I think it will be the death of me. Sometimes I don’t care if I burn in a flame hotter than any human fire for ever and ever.” World without end, Amen, James finished the thought for her.

Maybe I shouldn’t be a priest. Maybe I’m too weak. Maybe I’m just doing it so everyone will like me. So I won’t let my dead father down. So mom will be happy with James, the youngest, the last hope, the Whiz Kid Priest. Maybe I’m just cut from different cloth, James thought.

“Sometime I think God would understand. God understands love, doesn’t he Father?” Does He? Do You? I don’t know, James thought. I thought I knew. God is love. Isn’t He? Aren’t You? I thought I knew. I was so sure I did. Everything seemed so clear and simple. A sin of the flesh is a sin of the flesh is a sin of the flesh. I am not a sinner. Father James is not a sinner. Father James is a vessel of God. Devout. A son of the son of God, pure in His celestial mansion on earth.

I don’t know anything, James thought. Except that I want Mary. James wants Mary. More than he has ever wanted anything. More than he wants God. Is that true? Could that be true? Or is this Lucifer worming his way into James’ Holy Soul? Making him want Mary’s sweetness. To eat of her flesh. To drink of her milky blood. To partake in the communion of Mary. To be inside all of that Mary. Where was God now? His God. Hiding? Waiting? Testing to see if I am pure? Am I pure?

James punched himself hard in the thigh again to bring himself back. But her smell was everywhere and his dream flashed celestial before his eyes, the wings of the wet archangel Mary, the parting of her red sea, sucking the milky blood of Jesus from her breasts, the stiffness so rigid and dizzy under his robe.

“I’m touching myself right now, Father,” confessed Mary, “I’m touching myself between my legs, and I’m very… it feels very… and I don’t know what to do, Father, tell me, what should I do? Am I going to hell? I can’t help myself… help me, please help me Father.”

And God was everywhere. And God was nowhere. And James felt God in his balls, sweaty and jumpy, tight as a rosery bead cockring. It must be Satan, this infernal damp dark underworld where black meets red. And James wanted to die and go to Heaven, never having been tested. Please God, I’m ready. Take me now. Before this Mary takes me.

But God did not take James.

And then suddenly he was aware that she had left her side of the booth, and he could faintly hear her walking around to his side. She was coming. Mary was coming. To him. With all her sweetness. Or was it Mary? No, it was a flesh demon sent to suck out his soul. Run James, run, his brain screamed, that little piece of rational brain that was left. But he couldn’t run. Didn’t want to run. Wouldn’t run.

The door to his booth slowly opened as the worm turned. And then there she was. There was Mary. Floating in on the wings of a prayer.

Please God deliver me now from evil, deliver me through the desert like Moses to the promised land. But where was the promised land? It was here in his confessional booth. It was her, so pure and so sweet and so very Mary. Please, God show me what to do. Tell me, for I am nothing. I am your vessel. Help me now or forever hold your peace.

But God did not come. God did not help. God did not tell James what to do. Betrayed thrice, thought Father James. By the Father, by the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

And James was alone with her. With this confusion of tongues, this massive tower of Babel so huge and confused under the shroud of his black robe. And James was filled with her crimsoning bouquet. Her ivory so flesh, her pitch so thick, the bright burn of the eyes so sweet Mary, the pleading of her thighs, her breasts so full of God’s milk. Take, eat, this is my body and is meant for you.

“If you want me to go, tell me right now, Father. Tell me to go now and I’ll never come back.” Mary blazed into him like God’s klieg light.

Yes, go! Be gone, whore of Babylon, temptress, Circe siren, she-devil, be gone. James heard the words in his head, but they did not come out of his mouth.

 ————————————-

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And Mary did lean down to him, bathed in a golden halo of honeydew perfume. And he heard a heavenly choir soaring and a devil’s organ grinding. And she did lean down to him, her breasts so full of God, closer, her lips florid rouge, touching his lips, the first time a woman’s lips had ever touched his lips.

I’m the Holy Virgin, James thought. And she is Mary. I’m the Unholy Virgin, James thought. And she is Mary. Sweet Mary. And her breath is so deep so red so wet. And her tongue is so full of life and fruit so forbidden touching his lips so light and his Holy Balls jumped under his robe and he was so full and taut and fierce.

O God, I’m burning up. I’m already burning in hell, James thought, and I will burn in a flame hotter than any human fire for all eternity. For ever and ever world without end, Amen.

And I don’t care.

And Mary slipped her tongue, the hot tight serpent tongue of Eve, deeper into him. And a hurricane crucified his brain. And a twister spun through the third eye of the snake in his robe. O God, it’s so hard, James thought. The virgin priest is so hard, James thought.

And Mary took his face in her hands and her tongue slowly slid into his mouth and he moaned from his soul. And his hands reached out as if they weren’t his hands at all and grabbed her hips and she gasped under his grasp, and she sucked on his lips and those hips of Mary were liquid sex in his hands, undulating, swelling, swivelling into him.

And James could smell her sex now. Smell the sex of Mary. So fertile and earthly and heaven sent. And it made him want to give her everything he had. The keys to the kingdom.

And Mary slipped her breasts out of her blouse and she fed them to him and he dove in, burying himself in the milk of the flesh of the breast of Mary. And he sucked on them, the fierce nipples so bursting in his hungry mouth. First one, then the other, the rhythm raw and rocksteady. And there was no God and there was no Devil. There was only Mary.

And Mary threw her head back in ecstatic rapture and her tongue peeked out of her mouth, her eyes half shut in

Man Ray

delight, the delicious quivering in her belly twitching her clit, beating the drums fanning the fire.

“Forgive me Father for I have sinned,” she whispered. And she took him in her hand scalding her flesh so hard and she disappeared into the black cauldron under his robe. And she kissed the tip of his stiffness and he jumped and panted – “O God O God O God” – springing from his lips as she ran her tongue all the way down him and cupped him in her hand and massaged gently on his world and swallowed him whole, slowly inch by inch into her Mary mouth and she moaned soulful and vibrated and he quaked, intoxicated into her Mary mouth, his hands on her hair and he pushed into her and she pulled sucking licking sliding up and down with her mouth organ on his skinflute.

And she came up for air, her lips swollen and turkey cock red, cheeks blazing cherries, eyes black fire, and she moved in and kissed him, let him sip his salty sex on her lips, parted and sticky with the taste of Father James.

And then he was sitting on the floor and she was hovering over him, floating in the confessional like an angel of life, a devil of death. And she spread herself with her fingers. And she grabbed his gaze and would not let go. And James was staring into the face of heaven though the gates of hell.

And James had never wanted anything so much as he wanted to be all the way inside her. Inside Mary. Sweet Mary. And she lowered herself onto the end of the head of James, opening slowly, blooming all over him. And she sucked on the very tip of him with her Mary for the longest time, relishing the anticipation, feeling the feeding frenzy until he could no longer stand it.

And then he thrust uncontrollable and unconscious into this Mary. As if this was his sacred mission in life. As if this was his true calling. To be inside Mary. And she pushed herself down onto him and slid her velvet tremor down Father James, jamming, swallowing him whole, body and soul all the way with everything she had, squeezing him to the root, to the core, to the bone, to the moan, her foundation shaking, rocking his steeple, shattering her madness, rattling his stained glass windows, banging on the pearly gates, knock knock knocking on heaven’s door.

And Mary pulled back up, so tight and swelling and wet and delirious until he was almost out of her. And James found himself going up with her. Levitating, trying to stay inside her. O God, don’t go. Don’t. Where are you going? James thought, feeling the fever feeding the fervor. Lovecrazy, heartcrazy, fuckcrazy. This was bigger than him. More powerful. This wanting of Mary. Stronger than anything. Stronger even than God. His God.

And she pushed him down onto the cold floor of the confessional, his back against the wall, eye to eye, two windows into two souls, and everything stopped. And she panted at him. And he panted at her. And there was a new perfume filling the booth. The sweet scent of the sex of James and Mary.

And she nailed him with the cross of her starry night, took his crown of thorns, and gave him shelter from the storm as she pounded down him, pounding down against the thrust of him into her, beads of sweat pooling into drops and raining down his face and chest and back, soaking his robe.

And she rocked up and she rocked down, rocked out and rocked in, inhuman, insane, out of her mind, into her body, his heart exploding as he climbed into her, as she climbed up him, as they climbed the stairway to heaven.

And the animal in her eyes sprang at him, leapt into him, and he was possessed by the passion of her possession. And James grabbed her hips hard now and pressed up against her hard as she slid deep and fast and hard sliding wet and hard gripping and grabbing and slamming, filling the confessional with their sex fury frenzy fuck yes, “O God!” she cried, and “O sweet Jesus!” he cried, and “O Mary!” he cried, and “O Father!” she cried, and “O Christ” they cried, transported, transcendental, the ethereal house of the Father and the blessed Mary, the white throne of God’s bliss, angels and devils dancing on the head of their sex, on the tip of their sin, skin drenched as Mary soaked him with her wet divinity, the holy of holies, until he could hold back no more, and she sucked it all out of him, the manna shooting from him into her, from the soles of his toes through his balls through his heart and she flowed with him opening with him into the river of light and together they entered each other, entered the tender garden of the kindom of God in the palace of paradise.

And then they collapsed into each other. And then she wept and he wept. Drenching each other in joy and sin. Crying in great gulps of love.

And James held her tight in his arms. And Mary held him tight in her arms. And they held onto each other in that confessional like they were the last people on Earth. The last people in heaven. The last people in hell.

And then James thanked God. His God. For giving the gift of Mary.

 David Henry Sterry is the author of his memoir and New York Times Bestseller, Chicken; co-editor of  Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex and co-author of The Glorious World Cup: A Fanatic’s Guide. Chicken is currently being developed into a series on Showtime. Sterry is also the host of his monthly reading series, Sex Literati in New York City.

Interview by Carlos Detres

Lynsey Griswold has quickly become a favorite around The Whiskey Dregs editing room (which is really any place where I can fit a laptop). Her short stories “The Old Goat Man”, “Triple Vision” have become literary favorites and ”Expiration Dates” will be featured in our upcoming chapbook.

Her work has always punched me in the gut. Lynsey weaves surrealism, absurdism, and humor into her writing that merits recognition as clever and entertaining stories. Her quick wit, craftsmanship, and ability to relate subjects such as isolation with ridiculous skill has made me a fan.

Our readers may know only of her fictional exploits but it’s Lynsey’s obscenely funny and casually educational column for McSweeney’s, “The Conflicted Existence of a Female Porn Writer” as well as her contributions to faux porn rag, Whack! Magazine that have generated approbation for her work.

Lynsey sympathized with our cause and accepted our invitation to read at BLACK INK. She and I sat together, at different times, in different rooms, and different computers (thanks to the miracle of the internet) and had a discussion via email. Here are the results.

1. How did you begin to write about sex?

I’ve been writing for adult magazines for about two and a half years now. I never planned it; I had just moved back to New York after a two year stint in several other places, and I needed work. A friend knew someone who ran a porn rag and was looking for a writer, and I figured, “Why not?” I was broke. I started doing DVD reviews freelance. Since then a few other jobs have come up at other magazines. I’ve started work on a sex-related book, also rather randomly, and have been researching human sexuality for that book. One day I woke up and realized that I was a sex writer!

2. Were you the little girl who would build orgies of barbie doll bodies like they were Lincoln Logs?

I wouldn’t say Lincoln Logs, exactly. The idea of orgies hadn’t occurred to me yet. But my Barbies definitely got it on–in pairs. I called it “mating” because that was the term I’d been taught.

3. How did you come to be involved with McSweeney’s?

Working in the porn industry has been a difficult experience for me because although I believe that women should be free to do whatever they want with their bodies, and although I love sex and porn and feel that our society puts too harsh a taboo on these things… The situation being what it is, there is a lot of really upsetting adult material out there. It’s tough to be a feminist and be exposed to it. I’d been wanting to write about the issues I was having with it, and McSweeney’s was having a column contest. They were kind enough to like what I submitted to them, and the rest is history.

4. Your sex column has been pretty successful. What is a highlight from your infamy?

Right now, I’m not at liberty to talk much about it because nothing is concrete yet, but there’s been some interest from several places in expanding the column into different mediums.

5. You’re also a contributor for Whack! Magazine. Could you discuss your role and the theme of this hedonist publication?

Whack! Magazine started out as kind of a a ruse–a marketing ploy for another project. But our “provocative periodical for the cultured degenerate” has taken on a life of its own in the past few months. Who could resist a raucous yet intelligent mix of porn reviews, interviews, commentary, and satire? I’m the editor in chief, and as the only woman on the staff, I’m working to make the magazine more friendly to women and fans of less mainstream porn by doing product reviews of sex toys from a female perspective, interviews with porn performers that discuss more than just sex and porn, and reviewing films from alt and queer producers.

6. Any other upcoming projects you can share?

Lots of ‘em. But I’m a secretive type.

7. What’s a secret you’d be willing to reveal?

Haha, you sneaky bastard! How about this: some say I come across as a hip young sex writer, but my favorite thing to do on a Friday night is stay in, watch Planet Earth on DVD, and play Scrabble. I’m a closet dork.

BLACK INK takes place on Saturday, April 10
Doors open at 7:30pm
Readings at 8:00pm
@
ANGELS AND KINGS
500 East 11th Street
New York, NY 10009
212.254.4090

The old portable X-ray unit was balking and whining it’s way to the service elevator.

It stopped dead two feet in front of the sliding cage door. Its huge lead cell battery was spasmodically powering the large electric motor that drove the two-foot diameter hard rubber rear wheels.

“ahh…sonnafabitch!”

That really hurt. Red had just slammed his right ankle into the immobile portable. It was like kicking a parked car.

“Fucker… you are going down to the sub-basement whether you like it or not!”

It was like the old unit knew she was going to the Elephant Burial Ground of decrepit medical equipment deep in the bowels of Bellevue Hospital. This was one of the three elevators that actually went all of the way down to B7… the seventh sub-basement.

“I’ll bring you down in pieces if I have to!” The X-ray tech cursed as he jiggled the key. It leaped to life and surged ahead four feet… and died again… but just far enough inside to be able to close the gate and push the ‘B7′ button. All of the buttons on the elevator were gleaming shiny metal from many years of jabbing fingers wearing away the Bakelite caps… all except B7, that button looked complete and brand new, in a grimy sort of way.

All of the way down, down, down… the cage slowly quivered and shuddered. The rays of light that slipped through the grating got dimmer, dimmer and dimmer.

“Why me?” The tech kept saying out loud. “Why me?”

“Why did Doctor Gray single me out to bring this piece of shit to the lower basement? I thought he liked me!”

He had told him to wheel or drag this beast all of the way to the back area where the old iron lungs were lined up like a small armada of lonely one-manned submarines. They’d been there since the early 50′s. Some people, it was said, spent most of their adult lives inside those things after contracting Polio.

Thank you Dr. Jonas Salk, thank you.

Hmmmmmm.

Doc Gray had been getting pretty big these days too. Like, scary big. The techs in Main Radiology were all talking about how much muscle he’d been putting on. It was like he must be living under barbells now. A homeless drunk with TB had given him some lip when asked to put his mask back on in the chest x-ray area.

“Fuck you! When’s lunccccckkkk…”

Doc Gray grabbed him by the throat and lifted him clean off of the floor like a bag of garbage.

“Pleeeeeeease!”

The drunk gurgled and weakly nodded okay.

“Ah shit!”

The old portable would go no further. It had traveled a mere ten feet from the elevator’s entrance upon arrival at B7. Luckily the coiled on board three pronged grounded cable that recharged the tired old thing was just within the reach of and an old three post outlet that looked as if it were installed by Thomas Edison himself.

“Okaaaaaay…. this will take a while, might as well look around.”

“Boy, the Ghost Hunters would have a ball down here!”

“Give us a sign of your presence.” Red uttered earnestly, in his most Ghost Hunter Investigator like manner.

The unexpected disembodied echo hit his nerve endings like a dentist’s pick inside a cavity.

He shivered involuntarily.

Red was actually glad that the spirits were not cooperating. He may have had to change his underwear.

Sniff.

There was a faint musty-organic smell that hung in the still dank air. It didn’t seem right down here with all of this ancient apparatus.

Dead mice and rats… they had laid out strychnine a few months ago, that’s gotta be it.

What was this stuff worth anyway? Why didn’t they just sell it for scrap? How long has it been here?

Can you Ebay an old iron lung?

……. and what else did Doctor Gray say? How did he get so big?

“Dry aged meat! There’s nothing like it. Melts in your mouth. Pure protein, can’t build muscle without protein!”

He must be eating whole cows by now, horns and all.

The tech ambled gingerly over to the first iron lung. That musty odor was particularly strong over here.

To Red, it looked like the H. L. Hunley, the confederate submarine that drowned her crew, three separate times.

Rivets were plainly seen on its sides. Like the tin man from Oz, not ground aerodynamically flush to the skin like the fuselage of some kind of World War II airplane. It was a mish-mash of several things.

A lifetime spent inside one of these monsters. How horrible was that!

Phew! It stunk over here!

He realized that these were probably the first generation of iron lungs. Prototypes. Perhaps dating from the mid to late 40’s. The occupants were entirely inside. No large side view windows. No exposed heads poking out of the front end. There were rungs on the side to allow access to the top where the sole window and latches were located. Hermetically sealed to maintain negative air pressure.

A people-pressure cooker.

Red tried very hard to shake that imagery from his mind.

The inverted, angled mirrors were still in place and the porthole window directly below it had a thin film of dust.

Wiping the grime with the sleeve of his lab coat… issued clothing, it wasn’t his, so who cared…he shined the ARC AAA Flashlight that was on his key ring inside the tempered window glass…

A sepia colored face stared back, mouth agape!

Startled, he tumbled backwards and almost landed on the concrete floor… he was caught like a football by two large beefy arms.

“Doctor Gray!”

“Hey Red, are you okay? You look upset.”

“I…. I thought I saw somebody inside that thing!”

“Awwww… hey, it’s dark and spooky down here, let’s have a look.”

The two of them climbed back up the iron lung and Dr. Gray borrowed the key chain light.

Twisting the head on the small LED he shone its blue-white beam through the window, quickly drew back, and gave a soft low whistle.

“Holy shit man, I think you’re right!”

“See! See! I told you!”

“Go take a look at that other one over there will ya … here, catch”

He flipped the key chain over to the tech.

Red scrambled up over the other iron lung… feeling more confident that big Ol’ Doctor Gray was right there with him.

“I don’t see nothin’!”

“Open the latches… there on the side. Don’t worry, I’m here with you. I’ve got your back.”

He shot Red a wink.

Red formed a tremulous grin and turned back to the machine.

He flipped the two latches up and lifted the top hatch open.

He furtively reached his left hand inside desperately hoping not to find anything… bony. Precariously perched on one knee with the right arm extended holding up the lid. It smelled like an old suit that a very old man had lived in for a long time… but worse.

“Nope, nobody in here.”

A voice very close to his left ear hissed.

“This one is yours.”

And so… with that… Doctor Gray shoved a bewildered Red inside and slammed the lid shut, securing both latches.

The muffled yells, shrieks, wails and thumping emanating from the cylindrical- metallic coffin had echoed off the grim gray walls for a good forty minutes.

After a while, they softened and eventually stopped all together.

Doctor Gray stuck around for an extra fifteen minutes. He cleaned his fingernails with a tongue depressor and glanced at his watch, just to be sure.

He indifferently stopped and walked over to the now silent iron lung. First, putting his hand on the cold gray metal to get a sense of any possible vibrations, then his ear.

He remained so for two minutes. He looked like his right ear was frozen to the device.

“Good… very good.”

Wiping his hands and smiling he headed back to the elevator. Repeating over and over very quietly. Almost a fevered chanting.

“Protein, can’t build good muscle without protein.”

As he pulled the gate closed he flexed his biceps and gave it a loving squeeze with his free hand.

“Very good.”

He pressed the “G” button, stood back and looked upwards towards the lights and sounds that were oh so faintly filtering downward from the surface above.

The counter weight, strobing through the lights above was now hurtling along its black greased track towards him. The cables tightened. His weight seemed to increase at the soles of his feet, the knees buckled slightly but the strong thick lower limbs recovered swiftly.

It was like he was ascending from Hell.

He smiled.

Yes, it was all good, it was all good indeed.

, then it may be of benefit to know whether they share the same sentiment. Brotherhood implies devotion and devotion is quite often tested. If one of the two friends happens to share a different sentiment, a proper testing will surely prove the matter. Sometimes this proof will prove painful, and sometimes blood will indeed be a matter of the bond, or lack thereof.

After inducing general anesthesia with endotracheal tube intubation, you will be prepped and draped in the usual sterile manner, most likely with the placement of sclera shells.

If you and the assumed brothers happen upon a group of men vastly outnumbering your trio, and these men pass regrettable remarks upon you, a proper test of brotherhood and devotion may have arrived. If one of your brothers chooses to respond with words equally regrettable, it is your duty as family to appropriately deal with any resulting circumstances regardless of how dire they may be. If dire circumstances do not immediately result, you may find that you have misidentified the situation as a proper test of brotherhood and devotion.

Your left lateral canthus and lower eye lid will be infiltrated with local anesthetic. This is to ensure that the lateral canthotomy and inferior cantholysis do not rouse you from the aforementioned general anesthesia. A transconjunctival incision will be made below the inferior tarsal border with cutting cautery. Dissection will be carried down to the infraorbital rim, where traction sutures will eventually be placed. Then, with that same cutting cautery, the periorbita and periosteum will be incised at the level of the rim. This may expose multiple floating fragments that are characteristic of a comminuted fracture, likely the result of a fracture involving the orbital rim.

If one of the two assumed brothers happens to expediently disappear shortly after you part ways with the discourteous men, you may think nothing of it. They, however, may think differently and choose to launch what many call a “surprise attack.”

The periobita will be meticulously elevated off the orbital floor using orbital retractors and Freer elevators. Cottonoids may also be used to support the elevation. There may be a large fracture involving the orbital floor. If this is the case, the orbital contents will be elevated out of this orbital fracture, and care will be taken to ensure that no additional injury to the infraorbital neurovascular bundle is made during such a dissection.

As a result of such an unanticipated assault, you and your remaining brother will be forced to prove unequivocal devotion to one another. In hindsight, you’ll likely find it unfortunate that your third assumed brother had unceremoniously departed and was unable to stand with you in such an unquestionably uncivilized but unavoidable state of affairs. You may think of many unpleasant words beginning with “un” that you may choose to apply to your absentee acquaintance and the way you choose to interact with him henceforth.

Attention will be directed to the superior lateral orbital rim, the skin infiltrated with local anesthetic. A 15 blade will be used to incise the skin with a sub-brow incision. Dissection will be carried down to the periosteum. The periostium will be incised with cutting cautery. If a frontozygomatic fracture exists, it will be isolated with the placement of traction sutures.

With the number of assailants being more than you and your remaining brother, you may find it difficult to maintain a proper defense. At some point, you may find yourself pinned against a parked automobile by two of these men: one holding you firm against the automobile, while the other ensures your arms are restrained behind your back. A third may then choose to deliver several powerful blows to your face with his fist. You may assume that your best defense is a strong offense by means of those limbs that remain unrestrained. Nevertheless, you will find this to be a futile plan regardless of how many times your foot strikes your assailant in the face as he advances repeatedly with said fist. The analgesic effects of phenylcyclohexylpiperidine will prevent any physical pain from registering within your assailant, while its hallucinatory effects will cause him to interpret your blows in such a manner that only further stimulates the rage psychosis typically accompanying phenylcyclohexylpiperidine absorption.

Kocher clamps will be used to elevate any zygomatic and maxillary fractures into appropriate alignment. A Synthes plate, most likely titanium and of very precise dimensions, will be used to bridge the fronotzygomatic fracture. Several screws, again most likely titanium, will be used to anchor the Synthes plate in place.

Your assailants, being fond of surprises, will indeed be very surprised if your proven brother had a “secret weapon” in his possession for such unexpected, yet entirely possible, situations. If your brother were to use his secret weapon against your assailants to properly defend both of you from their assault, you will find that you must thereafter keep the use of the secret weapon a secret indeed. For a proper test of brotherhood and devotion may come not only in the form of uncivilized circumstances, but also in the form of maintaining confidentiality.

Attention will then be directed to the infraorbital rim where a fracture is also likely to exist. Again, a titanium Synthes plate will be placed to bridge the fracture of the inferior orbital rim, though it will be necessary to form it in an appropriate contour after being cut to precise dimensions. As before, a hand-held manual drill will be used to place several titanium screws in order to anchor the Synthes plate. If any free-floating bone fragments remain, they will be anchored to either of the Synthes plates using stainless steel wire with knots buried in the surrounding tissue.

If you walk down a street with a person you choose to consider to be a friend, and you consider that friend to be a brother, it would be very wise to know whether they share such sentiment. Brotherhood implies a blood relationship, and though no blood relationship may exist, blood may indeed be a matter of the bond…or lack thereof.

The previous owner, and old man whose son told us had kept mostly to himself, had died a few years before. His family had refurbished, repainted, and re-everything-elsed it, and we had jumped on the chance to buy it. The house itself was beautiful, and it was close enough to the city that I could make the commute in 45 minutes or less. But it was still far enough out that we could have our own piece of the earth and quiet nights. Sure, it was a little close to the highway, but after having lived in a shoebox-sized studio for five years on the second story of a building on Main Street, the sound of cars driving by would be comparatively peaceful. Besides, the highway was only a forty-something foot strip of macadam between the house and the West River, which reflected glorious sunsets every evening into our living room, where the light bounced across the brand new hardwood floors and lit up Monica’s eyes. It was perfect.

Three bedrooms would give us plenty of space for guests and maybe even a family. A giant living room with big new windows looked out over the river and joined onto a kitchen big enough for Monica to stretch her cooking muscles. Two bathrooms, one upstairs and one down, and even a small study where I could set up a home office. The basement was a little bizarre, with its dirt floor and noisy old furnace, meat hooks hanging from the beams (we’d been told the original builder was a butcher) and a musty, unfamiliar odor. It might have just been the old dirt, that smell, but neither of us were used to old houses. Monica didn’t like it one bit, so we resolved to use the basement mainly for storage until we had the means to put a new floor down and buy a new furnace.

There was a large back yard set into the hill behind the house, where Monica could set up pa garden for tomatoes and strawberries and whatever else she wanted. We discovered after a few days that if we positioned ourselves just above the house on the hill, we could put the roof between us and the highway, and see only the roof and the river beyond. The small plot of woods behind the house was dense enough to be shady in the summer, but small enough that Monica wouldn’t have nightmares about strange forest beasts attacking her in her garden while I was at work. She was a city girl, born and bred in the urban landscape, not used to bugs or animals, and I wanted her to feel safe from the unknown terrors of Nature.

We moved in hardly a week after we’d bought the place in late April, excited after our years scrimping and saving. We started ordering furniture like mad – a giant L shaped couch with a chaise, a rocking chair, a giant roll-top desk, bookshelves, end tables, coffee tables, a bigger bed, a giant stereo system and entertainment center. We bought pots and pans, new cutlery, china, and crystal. We shopped for art and plants, candle votives, wreaths, holiday decorations. We were swimming in delight. My perfect vision of our new life was of me coming home from a day at the office, amidst the hustle of the big city and the hectic scramble of business dealings, the sunset lighting up the windows of my new home, and finding Monica in the garden with a big floppy straw hat and her work gloves, maybe a round belly, and a basket full of tomatoes for our supper. It seemed as if it would all come true, and soon.

* * *

Things began to settle down after the first two weeks – we had most of the furniture set up and a large part of the decorating finished. We’d settled in for a quiet night of TV when I noticed Monica doing that “I’m trying to be subtle but I’m really freaked out by something” motion: stiff neck, head cocked to one side but twitching occasionally, nostrils flared. Usually this is in response to something I’ve done, so I ignored it for a while, but at every commercial break I noticed her doing it again, so finally I asked what was wrong.

She looked at me, aghast that I didn’t already know. “Can’t you smell that?” Her nostrils flared up again, her eyes wide. I’d been smelling the same air as her all night, but I hadn’t noticed anything, so I just shook my head. She rolled here eyes at me. “It’s like the same smell from in the basement, but… worse. Stronger. I can smell it from here.”

I took a deep breath, sampling the air for anything abnormal. The smell was there, faintly, but stronger than usual underneath the soft cinnamon scent of Monica’s candle burning in the kitchen. “Hm. Yeah, I do smell it. Well, it’s been kind of damp weather lately, I’m sure that’s bringing the smell out.”

Monica chewed on her lip, crossing her arms. “Will you go check it out?” she asked eventually. “Just to be sure there’s not something wrong down there?”

I glanced at the TV. The commercial break was nearing an end. “What could be wrong?” I asked. “It’s just a smell.”

”Oh come on, Ed, just to be sure. I mean, it could be flooding or maybe the furnace is acting up. If there’s a problem down there…”

“Fine,” I said, throwing another glance at the TV and mentally giving myself the next 30 second commercial slot to get to the basement and back.

Monica had been right, the smell was worse than usual. On a typical day you couldn’t smell anything unless you were actually in the basement, but now, the closer I got to the top of the stairs, the stronger I could smell it. It was an unclean smell, like an animal on a hot day, mixed with something more unpleasant, nauseating, almost… sinister. Maybe it’s just hindsight that makes the smell scary, but even then I felt a little flip in my stomach as it grew stronger. Something unsettling in that stink.

Pressed for time as I was, I nonetheless hesitated at the door to the basement stairs. If there were something wrong with the furnace, that would be a lot of money spent on fixing it, and if it were flooding… I hated to even think about the possibility. Living across from the river, I imagined that flooding was a very serious possibility, and I made a mental note to start researching flood insurance.

The smell hit me when I opened the door like a damp rag, reeking of something unnamable. It came at me so strong that I reeled backward, gagging. There was a sound in the depths of the basement, quiet and hardly noticeable, sensed more than heard, a rustling like someone passing by me, then silence. I struggled forward against the stench and flicked on the light to the basement, straining my eyes down the stairs to see…

Nothing. Just the bare dirt floor, dry as ever. I descended a few steps, hesitantly at first, then faster as more of the basement came into sight. Nothing on the floor, not even a puddle or a damp spot. Certainly nothing moving; the noise I heard must have been the musty basement air moving as the draft of fresher air hit it. And now, as I sniffed, there was hardly even a smell. Just that same old musty basement odor with a little bit of nasty mixed in. It must have just been collecting down there, like in a room where the gas has been left on, and now it had aired out. We’d kept the door shut almost since the day we moved in and I supposed we’d just have to leave it open at night while we slept from now on, and get a decent floor put down in there.

I bounded back upstairs just in time for the commercial break to end, and told Monica my findings. She just nodded and didn’t even look away from the screen.

* * *

A few weeks later I came home early from work to find Monica in the garden. She’d been working at it steadily, turning up the dirt in patches and planting a little at a time. First carrots, then cabbage and onions, then some string beans and squash. Being so close to the river, she told me, the soil was exceptionally rich. Dark and soft and full of moisture, as if it had been fertilized for years. Monica was bound to have a full harvest this fall, and she could hardly be more excited. She’d always wanted a garden in lieu of the pets we could never keep because of my allergies. She needed something to care for, something to divert her maternal instincts for the time being. We’d started trying for a baby almost the moment we bought the house, but had had no luck yet.

I loved coming home and seeing her out there – no floppy hat, but sometimes a bandana or baseball cap. She’d be all dirty and sweaty and beaming with pride in her work. So satisfied and confident. The woman I’d married years ago, sweated away the hot city nights with in our cramped apartment, dreaming of one day when we’d have space and grass and a garden. Here she was, on her knees in the middle of our success, and I thought then that I hadn’t loved her this much since the moment we said our vowels. But the wait had been worth it. She was beautiful. The late afternoon sun was reflecting orange light off the river and making her dark brown curls look red. Her small frame was posed in an attitude of deep thought; she was on her knees facing away from me, with her trowel in her left hand, examining something in her hand.

She didn’t move beyond cocking her head from one side to the other as I walked up the hill toward her, and she started violently when I tapped her on the shoulder. She turned her face up at me, a puzzled expression revealed in the late afternoon light. “Look what I found,” she said thoughtfully, stretching her hand up to me and dropping something hard into it.

It was small, hard and smooth, not as heavy as a rock, but harder than wood, covered with dirt. It was small enough to fit in my hand easily, rounded but with a split down the center, with one side flat and the other rounding off irregularly in a protrusion of a slightly different, harder material. “What is it?” I asked. “A root or something? Like a tuber?”

She shook her head, looking as confused as I felt. “I don’t know. I dug it up trying to plant pumpkins. It wasn’t too far down, but it doesn’t look like any plant I know of. Look at that stuff on the top,” she pointed to the pock-marked, harder material above the split section. “It looks like… well, like bone. I think it’s a part of an animal!”

I stopped turning it in my hand, looking more closely. “But what part? I mean, what bone looks like this?” I pointed at the split section, knocking my fingernails against it gently.

She shook her head. “No idea. Let’s take it inside.”

I didn’t really want to bring a random animal part in the house, but my curiosity was piqued, so we brought it in and did an extensive internet search on animal bones. It took us some time, since we ended up at a lot of university websites with unintelligible biology jargon, but we eventually identified it as part of a hoof belonging to a cloven-hoofed animal of medium stature. Probably a sheep or a goat. Monica was a little unsettled by it at first, but we both realized that the basic structure of the house was over a hundred years old, and the people who’d lived here back then were sure to have some animals. Hell, a butcher had built the place. Finding bones made sense, even if it was a little creepy.

Having gotten past my initial hesitation, I convinced her that we should keep it on the mantel in the living room as a reminder of our house’s past. We washed it a few times and when it dried out, it was actually kind of beautiful.

* * *

The next weekend Monica and I made our first outing to the local bar, “The Almanac.” We hadn’t had a chance yet to meet many of our neighbors and didn’t know what to expect, so we were a little nervous that we’d find ourselves surrounded by rednecks. But most of the people there were friendly while they weren’t exactly rednecks, they were certainly the salt of the earth. It was refreshing to meet people who could give Monica gardening hints, and provide home improvement advice for me; in the city we’d have been met with confused looks and suggestions of who was the best person to hire. And they knew how to be hospitable, and how to drink.

We ended up being there much longer than expected, listening to stories about the area and how it had been changing over recent years. There were still farms around, they said, but not like there used to be. Most of the old farmers had passed away or been shut down by the bigger operations. Most of the area was now suburbanites and gentlemen farmers who liked dealing with crops or animals, but who made there real money elsewhere. We were a little to drunk to feel guilty about our gentleman-farmerly ways at that point, and when we finally got home late we passed out sprawled across our new bed.

I woke up sometime in the night to feel Monica smacking me in the back. Groggy and still inebriated, I grunted a few times and swatted her hand away, but she was persistent. Eventually the fog in my head cleared enough to hear her. She was whispering urgently, almost hissing: “Ed, Ed, wake up! There is someone in the house! There is someone in the house, wake up! Oh Jesus!”

My heart stopped. Those are words I hadn’t wanted to hear. I sat up slowly and put finger to my lips to quiet her. But I heard nothing. Monica was sitting up straight, the covers pulled up high, her eyes so wide they reflected the moonlight off the river. “I don’t hear anything,” I mouthed.

She shook her head. “I heard something downstairs. Someone walking. I swear I heard it. Go check!”

I started to argue with her, my head spinning a little with fumes form the booze, but just then there was a creak from the staircase, and a loud thud. I sobered up. Monica seemed to get smaller beneath the blanket, her eyes opening wider as she nodded frantically at me. The thudding continued, certainly but unsteadily making its way up the stairs. It sounded like at least two people in heavy boots. As I slipped out of bed and moved toward the sound, I vaguely wondered why burglars wouldn’t take pains to stay quieter as they approached the bedroom in a sleeping house. They were being ridiculously loud. Then I realized that maybe they didn’t intend to sneak through the house and rob us. Maybe they meant to hurt us, even kill us.

My heart stopped when this thought occurred to me, and I forced myself to keep moving toward my dresser. I opened the top drawer and withdrew my handgun from beneath the socks. I heard Monica draw a quick breath behind me, but I was focused on the noise outside. The slow, faltering clatter of feet on the stairs. The growing certainty that those footsteps were aimed toward my wife with ill intentions. I tried to block out the mental images that sprang up of Monica, bloodied and broken… I cocked the gun.

Monica had argued against me buying it, but ownership of our new house had sparked a protective instinct in me. I was glad now that I had the cool metal in my hand, the surprising weight of the weapon reassuring in the dark night. I glided silently across the bedroom floor to stand behind the door, every sense piqued. The intruders were near the top of the staircase now, their loud, clumsy footsteps obviously intent on reaching the landing just outside my door. I tensed, waiting for the perfect moment to spring, one hand resting lightly on the doorknob, the gun heavy in the other, every muscle tensed and every hair on end. I could hear Monica trying to breathe quietly but trembling on the bed behind me.

The footsteps reached the landing and stopped. Letting my mind go blank for a split second, I exploded through the door, yelling something out of a police drama. I don’t know what I said exactly, but I found myself on the landing, gun straight out in front of me in both hands and aimed at where I expected the chest of the intruder to be. It took a few seconds for the adrenaline to clear enough for me to notice that there was no chest in front of the gun. No person in front of the gun at all. My over-stimulated brain stopped working for a moment, confused.

I lowered the gun and looked down. It was a goat. A big, stupid-looking, black and white goat with small horns and big floppy ears. It looked at me for a moment, uninterestedly chewing on something. I stared back at it, stunned. The adrenaline was still buzzing in my ears, but my embarrassment at having gotten so worked up over the animal buzzed louder. I shook my head at it. The goat made a small bleating noise and shook its head, too, then clopped away from me and into the spare bedroom we’d been using for still-packed boxes. I gaped after it. A goat. No way.

I scratched my head, the alcohol swimming back into focus as my brain tried to wrap itself around what had just happened. My brain, detached, informed me that the four hooves on the stairs explained why I’d thought it was two loud, evil-intentioned men. I found myself nodding in assent. But wait. Hold on. How in God’s name had that thing gotten in? I tried to remember if I had locked the door – hell, if I had even closed the door – when we’d come home. I had been drunk, but definitely not drunk enough to have forgotten something as simple as that. I didn’t have a clear memory of it, but there was a possibility I’d left it unlocked. Maybe it just hadn’t been closed the whole way and the goat had head-butted its way in. I’d heard goats did the head-butting thing.

Just then I heard a clatter from the spare room, as the goat sounded like it ran into something large and wooden. I realized I’d better get it out before it started head-butting our possessions; never mind how it got in. I tiptoed over to the door and peeked into the room. No sign of the animal, but the room itself was eerie in the moonlight, stacks of boxes piled higher than my head and vaguely shaped furniture covered in sheets. No sign of the goat. I felt a cold shudder pass through my body as I realized I was apprehensive about facing the goat. Its mysterious presence in the house made it seem almost as formidable an enemy as the human intruder I’d expected. And anyway, I knew nothing about goats or their habits. The thing could rush at me, horns lowered, and gouge me to death, or somehow get into the master bedroom and do the same thing to Monica. I heard a soft sound from the corner, maybe its furry side rubbing up against a box. The sound sent chills through me.

I crept into the room, senses running high as the leftover adrenaline from earlier kicked into action. I set the gun down on a box nearby as quietly as possible and stood perfectly still. From across the room I could hear an almost steady succession of noises from the animal, the clatter of its hooves on the wood floor as it moved about, a constant chewing noise as it chomped on something (probably our dish towels, the bastard!), a subdued snuffling. I came around an old wardrobe we’d been pondering selling and saw its tail disappear behind a stack of boxes just ahead. I tiptoed forward, ready to spring, and crouched down to prepare myself. When I peered around the boxes I found myself face to face with the beast – it had turned around and, rather than sneaking up behind it, I was now starting into its strange eyes, both of us frozen in surprise. I’d never looked at a goat’s eyes before; they were yellow and vacant, with large, square pupils that contracted into rectangles as it stepped toward me, snuffling at my shorts around a large chunk of something in its mouth. As it got closer I remembered my intention and hunkered down to lunge at it, coming almost even with its mouth, and suddenly stifled a yelp as I leaped backward.

It was chewing on a piece of flesh! It wasn’t meat, exactly – it didn’t look like muscle, but it was certainly part of an animal. It was blloody and dripping, bits of hair falling in clotted chunks as the goat gnawed it lazily. The animal’s jaw was covered in blood, its bizarre rectangular eyes focusing on me as I found myself backing slowly away, horrified.

I turned the corner away from the goat and ran for the door, which I slammed shut behind me. I stood still, re-evaluating the situation at hand. How was I going to grab the goat without getting myself all bloody? For that matter, how was I going to get it down the stairs? I hadn’t even thought about it before, but the thing was pretty large, its head above my waist by a good six inches, and it would probably flail and bleat and kick and head-butt if I tried to pick it up. And, even if it didn’t put up a fight, the simple mechanics of getting a hundred-pound, hoofed animal down a flight of slippery wooden stairs in my socks was daunting. I had to rethink my strategy.

And, shit, I mean, a carnivorous goat? I’d always heard that goats would eat anything, but I had thought their diet was restricted to bizarre household objects and plants, and anyway, where had it gotten a bloody piece of hairy meat? Had it run down a neighbor’s dog? Grabbed a bite of roadkill from the highway? Wherever it had come from, I wasn’t sure I wanted to mess with this bloodthirsty animal just now, particularly after the nonchalant way it had stared at me, unflinching, gnawing on some other furry animal’s hide!

Several moments of unproductive thought later, I shook my head and turned toward the bedroom. I’d have to get Monica to help; there was no way around it. I’d just have to hope she didn’t freak out about the blood.

I tip-toed in and approached Monica tenderly. “Babe,” I said softly, shaking her, “wake up, I need your help.”

She bolted up, eyes wide. She hadn’t fallen back asleep, it seemed. “What happened?” she whispered frantically. “Are you ok? Where’s the gun?”

I realized she was shaking, her eyes huge and her hands gripping the sheets white-knuckled. I put a hand on her shoulder. “Everything’s fine,” I smiled. “There wasn’t anybody out there. …Kind of.”

“Kind of? What do you mean kind of?” She dropped the sheet to her lap.

“Well, there was something there, but it wasn’t an intruder.” I felt ludicrous saying this. “It was… It was a goat.”

Her shoulders, which had been up at her ears in anxiety, dropped, and her frightened look was replaced by one of annoyance. “A what?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know how it got in here, honey, but there’s a goat in our spare room. You heard him clopping up the stairs. Not a burglar.”

She just looked at me for a while, probably trying to determine if I was lying. I just shrugged again. Finally she looked away. “Stupid farm country. I should’ve known this would happen eventually. Move to the country, get broken into by a barnyard animal. Ridiculous.” She shook her head and laid back down.

I touched her shoulder again. “No, honey, don’t go back to sleep. He’s still in there and we’ve got to figure out how to get him down the stairs.”

She rolled over to look at me with contempt. “I don’t know how to do that,” she said.

“I know, but neither do I. He’s pretty big. This is going to take two of us.”

She made a disgusted noise and threw back the covers. “Oh, for Christ sake. Fine, show me the goddamn goat.”

We headed across the landing together, with me silently praying that the animal had put down the bloody flesh.

I stopped at the doorway and looked back at her, motioning to keep quiet. “My plan is to stay quiet so he doesn’t take off running,” I whispered. “Then we’ll have to grab him, maybe by the horns, and pull him to the stairs. And we’ll just go from there. I’ll go around this pile of boxes to the right, you go left. We’ll come at him both ways.”

She nodded wearily.

We slipped into the room and separated. I got that same apprehensive feeling I’d had the first time. The hair prickled on the back of my neck and my forearms as I moved slowly around the room, listening for any sounds from the animal, but all I heard were Monica’s feet shuffling around the stacked boxes from the other side. I heard no clopping, no snuffling, no chewing. He must be holding still, waiting for us somewhere in the dark. Suddenly I caught a flash of movement from the corner of my eye and jumped around a corner to find myself facing Monica again. I whirled back around, thinking maybe I had overlooked him, but I knew that if neither of us had seen him in our circuits of the room, he must not be there. He was too big to miss. Maybe he had left while I was getting Monica, although I hadn’t heard his hoofs clattering down the hallway to the spare bedroom.

“He must have gone somewhere I else,” I said, shrugging. Monica’s face was pale, her eyes wide. She must have shared my unexplainable unease. Even if the intruder was an animal, I supposed, it was still unsettling to know it had gotten into your house while you were asleep. Especially if the intruder was a carnivorous, blood-covered quadruped.

“Let’s check the other rooms,” I instructed, trying to ignore the flipping of my stomach. “You take our bedroom, although I doubt he could have gotten in there without us noticing. I’ll take the other spare room. Shout if you find him, and close the door till I get there.” She nodded slowly, the ridiculousness of the situation weighing on her, and we went to check our respective rooms. I shut the door to the store room firmly to be sure the goat wouldn’t re-enter.

I went to the other bedroom, which we’d fitted up with a bed and dressers for guests. Tiptoeing in, fully expecting to find the bastard chewing on our 300-count sheets, I scanned the dark room for signs of the beast. It was difficult to see in the shadows, but I didn’t sense any movement except my own breathing and pounding heart. I felt my hair begin to stand up again, though, and my stomach somersault in the now-familiar apprehension of the animal’s presence. I switched on the light and squinted, and simultaneously felt the goat brush by my leg on its way out the door. I spun around and leaned into the darkened hallway, my eyes scrambling to adjust, but saw nothing except moonlight streaming in from the window on the landing and the open bedroom door. Had it just been an air-pressure change, or my own hyped-up senses fooling me? I looked back into the spare room. Nothing. My blood was rushing in my ears, but still I was sure I’d have heard the clopping of its hooves on the hardwood floors if it had been there.

Shakily, I closed the door and made my way to the master bedroom, where I found Monica looking confused, as well. “It’s not in here,” she said from the edge of the bed where she sat. “It’s weird, though. I’m like… terrified right now. I feel like I just got in line for a rollercoaster or something. I’m kind of freaked out.”

I sat down beside her and put an arm around her. “Me too,” I admitted. “It’s weird to think that an animal could just wander in. I guess we’ll have to be more careful from now on.” She leaned on me and I felt her heartbeat racing, her chest heaving, like my own. I patted her on the shoulder. “Well, it’s got to be here somewhere and we’ve got to get it out before it breaks something, or eats something. I hear goats will eat anything-” I got a snapshot vision of that piece of flesh dripping blood and clotted fur onto the floorboards. I shook my head again to get the vision out, my breath catching as I did so. I set my shoulders and stood up, helping Monica to her feet. “It must have gone downstairs.”

We searched every room in the house, twice. Even the basement, which had started to reek of whatever-it-was again, musty and unexplainable and disgusting. We turned on all the lights and looked in every corner, went back upstairs to double check, and shone a flashlight around the attic. But the animal was nowhere to be found. My heart was in my throat the entire time, the memory of the bloodied chunk of meat and those unsettling yellow eyes on mine keeping my adrenaline pumping. Even more unsettling than the animal’s conspicuous absence was the fact that both our front door and the side door were closed and locked. The doorknobs themselves were locked and the deadbolts drawn. Even if the goat had had opposable thumbs, he couldn’t have gotten into the house. Unless we had been so drunk that we had let a blood-smeared quadruped into our house when we walked in – which we had definitely not been – there was no way to explain its presence.

Maybe I had still been asleep when I’d seen it – maybe I had had a waking dream. But I couldn’t forget the distinct feeling I’d had of its presence, the hairs on my neck prickling, the flips of my stomach. I knew the difference between dreams and reality. That thing had been real. I couldn’t explain it. But I told Monica it must have been a dream, that I must have thought I saw something that wasn’t there. I’m not sure she believed me, but the alternative explanations for what had happened were so bizarre that we both allowed ourselves to believe it, at least enough to go back to sleep.

* * *

The next few weeks passed quickly. I was busy at work and had been spending long hours at the office. Monica, upset by the goat incident, had been spending a lot of time out of the house as well, running errands and gardening during the day. Her unease in the house was compounded by the smell from the basement, which seemed to be getting worse every day. It was midsummer, and the days were hot and humid, so smells were magnified. Especially so close to the river where the ground was damp and the air more humid than elsewhere, it made sense, but understanding why it smelled so bad didn’t make being in the house any more pleasant. We called a local flooring company about pouring cement down there, but we had a month-long wait until they could come out to the house.

One day I came home late from work to find Monica sitting on the porch with a stricken look on her face. She was dirty as if she’d been in the garden, her gloves beside her on the floorboards as she wrung her hands. She looked like she had been crying. I settled beside her on the porch without saying a word, and she clung to me, shaking, then burst into tears.

“Monica, Monica, hey, what happened?” I stroked her hair as she heaved giant sobs into my shoulder.

“The…. the goat -” she gasped. I felt a chill go through me. Not this again. “It – it got back in… into the house! It’s in there! I – I saw it!” A giant sob wracked her shoulders. “And… I tried to get it out. I tr-tried to get in, b-b-but it locked the door! It l-locked the damn dd-oor and…” Another sob. “I’ve b-been out here f-for hours! And… and I’m scared!”

“Woah, woah, woah,” I patted her back and held her to me. “What do you mean, you saw it? Where did you see it? How did it lock you out?”

She sobbed a few more times. I knew she was probably getting tears and snot all over my work shirt. “I heard a n-noise, like… like a noise a goat would make, you know?” She seemed to be collecting herself. “A-and I was in the garden. And I looked at the house and I saw it. A-at the window in the spare bedroom, just looking right back at me!” She sniffled and sat up, wiping at her face with the back of her hands. She squared with me and continued, the sobbing subsiding. “So I ran to the door and it was locked. And my keys are inside! So I’ve just been sitting here and waiting. And I haven’t seen it again, or heard anything from inside. But… but I saw it up there. I know it’s in there, probably eating things, and breaking things, and… and I don’t know why, but it’s just like last time, I’m scared of it. How did it get in there?”

She leaned against me, done crying, but still drawing in giant breaths. I rubbed my hand along her arm. “I’m sure there’s some explanation, babe,” I said, knowing in my head that I couldn’t think of a single one. “Don’t worry, I have my keys, and we’ll go in and look around.”

She looked up at me, tears welling back up in her eyes. “B-but what if… what if it’s like last time and we can’t find it? I’m just… I don’t know what to think… I don’t think I can take that again.”

I nodded. “I don’t know what will happen, but I bet we’ll find him in there somewhere. A big goat like that can’t disappear twice, right?”

She nodded, but the look in her eyes must have mirrored my own. We were both nervous. We took a few deep breaths, then I unlocked the door and we entered quietly, locking the door behind us to block the animal’s escape route. We separated like we had before, our hearts both beating fast and our senses running on high. I have to admit, I was on edge. The animal’s presence was so unexplained and unsettling. I’m the kind of person who likes knowing how and why things happen, especially in my own house, and yet this goat thing was totally beyond me. It was possible that I had been half-asleep when I thought I saw it the first time, and that maybe my story had upset Monica so badly that she’d locked herself out and imagined she had seen it, too. But something rang false with that explanation, and that same something made the idea of it seeing it again unsettling.

We searched the entire house, and to neither of our surprise, we found nothing. No traces of an animal having been there, and certainly no goat. Nothing was out of place or chewed up or broken. In fact, nothing even hinted that a large hoofed animal might have passed through. Monica and I finally reconvened in the kitchen, where I cracked open two beers to help us calm our nerves.

She looked at me earnestly from across the kitchen table while I took a long gulp. “Ed, I don’t like this,” she said. “Something’s not right here.”

I stopped myself from nodding. “Well, let’s face it,” I replied. “We’ve both had a bad scare. What happened that night was bizarre, and we’ve both been on edge because of the basement smelling. Our eyes and our brains must be playing tricks on us. There’s no reason to be so upset. I’m sure things like this happen all the time.”

She shook her head. “I know what I saw, Ed. There was a goat upstairs.”

I sipped my beer. “Well, I thought I knew what I saw, too. But it just can’t be what actually happened. It’s impossible for an animal that size to be prowling our house without us finding it, or at least some evidence of it, Monica.”

She crossed her arms and stared at me.

“Well,” I pushed on, “think of it this way. We’ve just made a giant transition in our life together, you know? We’re both a little scared of being out in the country for the first time. And I mean, if you put it all together, the night I thought I saw it, we’d just come back from the bar, where the locals were telling us about all the farms in the area. I mean, it’s perfectly logical that our nerves were more on edge than we realized and we just kind of freaked out together. And I know you were upset by it… maybe we’re just feeding off each other’s fears. Maybe we need to just calm down a little.”

She was shaking her head between sips of beer. I stumbled on: “Who knows, maybe this smell from the basement is some sort of gas that’s interfering with our brains somehow. Radon, or whatever it’s called. We’ll get it checked out. I bet that once this flooring gets put in and we’re more settled, this will all go away, and we’ll laugh at ourselves for it.” Even as I heard myself talking, I didn’t quite believe it.

Monica was quiet for a minute, thoughtfully peeling the label off her beer bottle. “Ok,” she finally said, leveling a piercing look at me. “Here’s a question: What did the goat you saw look like?”

The image of the beast, grizzly scrap dangling from its maw, its face and body streaked in blood, popped into my head so clearly I almost choked on my mouthful. But I pretended to have to think about it for Monica’s benefit. “Wow, it’s getting kind of fuzzy now, like a dream or something…” I sipped my beer and peeked at Monica. She did not look convinced. “Well,” I said, wiping my mouth, “I guess it was pretty big, at least up to my waist. And it had horns… not big curly ones or anything, but pretty serious horns. And floppy ears. And it was black and white, not spotted, but blotchy, almost like a cow. You know, just a normal goat.”

Monica waited while I avoided her eye, her stance assuring me that she was about to say something I found unpleasant. When I was finally looking her in the eye, she said slowly and distinctly: “That’s exactly what I saw. It was the same goat.”

I shrugged, “Well that makes sense, I mean if we’re both unsettled by all this, of course you’d imagine seeing what I saw, right?”

She picked up her beer. “But Ed, you never told me what you saw. We didn’t talk about what it looked like.” She threw back her head and took a few big swallows.

I wanted to argue, but I knew she was right. I’d never described the animal to her. She’d never asked. We stood in silence for a few minutes, nursing our beers. I didn’t know what to say, and she knew that she’d made her point.

Finally I put my empty bottle down. “Hey, why don’t we go to the Almanac and have dinner and a few drinks? Just get out of here and relax, and see some of our new bar buddies. I bet it’ll get our minds off the goat, and that’s exactly what we need.”

She looked as if she wanted to argue, but there really was no point. We weren’t going to get anywhere by debating who saw what. So she agreed and headed upstairs to take a shower while I tried to figure out what could be happening with the mystery goat. By the time she was ready to go 45 minutes later, I had still not come up with an answer.

* * *

We were greeted heartily by the crowd of regulars we’d met the last time we’d been at the Almanac. We had a nice meal – I got a steak that beat anything I’d had in the city, and Monica had a salad the size of her torso – and a few drinks, and slowly felt ourselves unwinding. It was a load off to be away from the house, the smell, the creepy feeling the goat had left, and it was amazing to realize just how anxious we had been as the anxiety slipped away into the evening. Midway through our meal, I saw Justin, the son of our house’s previous owner, walk in. We’d met with him a few times over the course of the buying process; he’d helped the realtor do the walk-through of the house and had negotiated a lot of the terms with us. I made a mental note to talk to him about the smell in the basement when we finished eating, to see if he’d heard anything about it or had any hints. I thought of asking if he’d heard of anyone nearby missing a goat, but thought better of it. If I had been imagining it, everyone up at the bar would either think I was crazy or drunk.

When we’d finished and paid for our meal, Monica went to the bathroom and I headed up to the bar. I clapped my hand on Justin’s back and said hi. He looked excited to see me, maybe a little sloshed. I hadn’t been watching him, but he must have been sucking his lagers down pretty fast while we’d been eating.

“Hey, Ed!” he grabbed my hand and shook it energetically with both of his calloused hands. “Good to see you! How’s Dad’s old place treating you two? Is Monica here?”

“Yeah, she’s in the bathroom. The house is great – beautiful as ever.”

“Fantastic,” he said, slapping me heartily on the back. “Hey, let me get you a beer! What are you drinking tonight? And your lady, let me get her one, too.”

After the appropriate hemming and hawing over who should pay for whose drinks, Monica returned from the bathroom and we settled down next to Justin for a few rounds. He told us more about his job and family; he owned a local plumbing company, which was doing quite well, and was married with a second child on the way. He seemed like a really decent sort of person, a “gentleman farmer,” I guess. He seemed happy.

I finally decided it was time to bring up my gripes, and to see if I could press him for more information on the smell, and maybe the history of the house. If there was anything weird behind the problems we’d been having, I thought he might be drunk enough to reveal it without thinking I was out of my mind. “Hey, Justin,” I asked as the bartender set another round before us. “I have to ask you something. Your dad ever mention a nasty smell coming up from the basement of that old place? We love the house, but there’s something foul down there that just makes it reek when the weather’s warm.”

He paused, looking into his cup for a little while. Maybe a little longer than he should have. But he was pretty far gone. “Well, Ed,” he looked up at me. His eyes were wide. He looked like a cornered animal. “That’s a… that’s a real old foundation you’ve got under that house, you know. You knew that when you moved in. Lots of weird old smells in a dirt floor basement like that, in any house. Especially—“he burped quietly “—especially near the river like that.”

“Oh, yeah, we know. It’s just pretty foul sometimes. We’re going to get a floor put in down there, but in the meantime it’d be great if we had some advice on how to keep the smell down. Any tips?”

“Sure, sure,” he smiled broadly, relief evident on his face as if he’d dodged a very touchy subject. “Well, you know, that old place is bound to have its issues, you know. There could be a plumbing problem, of course, but honestly I don’t think much of the piping runs down there. It’s mostly outside into the septic…” He took a swig. “It might be more just the age of the place and the dank air, down there, you know. And yeah, the guy who built it was a butcher and all. All those creepy meat-hooks in the basement. There are bound to be some unpleasant things hanging around after all that, even if it’s just a bit of a stink…”

His eyes opened a bit wider as he said it and he turned back to his beer, very much in the manner of someone who had said too much. “I’d be happy to send some guys over there to look at the plumbing if you want,” he mumbled into his beer, then back at me with a wide, open smile. “Free of charge!”

“Oh, Justin, you don’t have to do that,” Monica joined in. “We just thought it’d be worth asking about. If your dad had every mentioned the smell or what he did to keep it down, you know. We’ll figure it out.” She laid a hand on my leg. When I looked at her, she gave me a piercing stare. She was suspicious of him, I could tell. Something about his behavior was more erratic than the beers he was downing could explain. I nodded.

“It sure is an old place,” I turned to back to Justin. “I love being somewhere with so much history. You don’t get much of that in the city where everything’s built over so fast.”

He nodded enthusiastically, to change the subject. “Sure does have history,” he said. “Hell, my dad used to tell me all kinds of stories about that place. Never sure I believed them, though. He was a… Well, he was a different kind of man. I never spent a whole lot of time in there, what with all the animals.”

I felt Monica’s grip on my leg tighten. “Animals?” I said as lightly as I could, my heartbeat picking up. “He had a lot of pets, huh?”

“Sure did,” Justin replied, shaking his head a little. “He was like Noah over there. I always had real bad allergies as a kid, so we never had pets even though Dad was a big animal lover. So when we were all grown up and he bought that place, he just went kind of crazy with pets. He had every kind of animal you can imagine at one time or another. Hell, I think he had a fox or something once. No idea where he got it.”

“A fox! What a thing to have for a pet!” I laughed, feeling Monica’s hand squeeze on my leg again. We were on to something here. “Did he keep it in the house?”

“Well, yes and no,” he answered. “Most of the critters he had over there came and went as they liked. He had a big fence around the place so they didn’t run off, but the door to the house itself was usually open so the animals could come and go as they pleased. He was like Dr. Doolittle over there.” He drank the rest of his beer in several gulps and laughed, shaking his head.

“What a hoot,” I smiled at him, flagging down the bartender for more beer. “I’m glad you rehabbed the place before we moved in! I love animals and all, but not in the house!”

He laughed as his next beer was set before him. “I hear you! I mean, if I didn’t have allergies I’d be fine with having a dog or a cat inside, you know? But I could never have lived like that, with all kinds of animals crawling everywhere.” His face fell a bit, as his memories seemed to take on a more somber note. “Yeah, it was a real zoo. And I hate to say it – I mean I don’t want to be disrespectful to his memory – but by the time Dad passed on, he’d gotten a little strange with the animals. Had them everywhere, only one room of the house to himself and that was his bedroom. People round here…” he looked up and down the bar, then dropped his voice so the other patrons wouldn’t hear him. “They used to call him the ‘Old Goat Man.’”

I clamped my jaw shut to avoid looking too excited. “Really? ‘Goat Man,’ huh?” I goaded him on.

Justin nodded. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “He had so many of them. We tried to convince him to get rid of some of them, but he loved them like they were his own children. Like most people would love a cat or a dog. After a while, well, the damn goats nearly took the place over… Dad wasn’t really all there at that point.”

I saw Monica straighten up on the other side of me, her eyes wide. Justin took a long drink, looking forlorn. Trying to salvage the conversation, I smiled again and held my glass up in a toast. “Hey, man,” I said, “at least he did things his own way. Not many people can say that, right?”

Justin looked up at me blearily and clinked his glass to mine, a smile spreading over his face. “You know, Ed, you’re right. He did things his way. Here’s to The Old Goat Man.”

“Cheers!” Monica and I shared a meaningful glance over our mugs as we toasted the Old Goat Man.

* * *

Monica and I drove home in silence, our thoughts obviously following the same trail as we wound our way back to the house over the country roads. None of the information we were mulling over had explained or helped our situation, and yet there it was, ringing in our ears. “The Old Goat Man. He had so many of them.” My brain was screaming at me that somewhere in Justin’s drunken intimations was an explanation. Maybe one of the goats had stayed in the woods nearby and come to visit its old home, that something logical had to come of this. But logic seemed to fail me every time I thought I’d explained it. My intuition was pushing away all my trains of thought, trying to force something else through: an explanation that wasn’t even an explanation. Just a weird idea. Just nonsense. But it wouldn’t go away.

When we pulled up to the house, Monica turned to me. “Ed,” she said seriously, “let’s pretend, for now, that that conversation with Justin didn’t happen. I just want to sleep and not think about it.” Her eyes were a mirror of my thoughts: confused and serious and tired.

I agreed. We went inside and, while Monica got ready for bed, I made myself a little snack of chips and salsa in the kitchen. “The damn goats nearly took the place over…” The words echoed in my head, and I shook it, refusing to let my thoughts continue down the path they were on. Instead I moseyed over to the basement door to let some of the reeking air from the basement out overnight. The door swung open, squeaking just a little. The smell hit me harder than I’d ever experienced it, sending me reeling away, gagging. My hyperactive brain tried to label it – decay, or droppings, or … death. I shook my head again and forced the thoughts away once again, heading back to the kitchen.

No longer hungry with that smell following me into the room, I stared at my salsa, feeling nauseous. The house was almost silent, except for Monica’s small noises from upstairs, but there was a murmur from the basement. I almost sensed it rather than actually hearing it – quiet movement, as if many feet were moving around on the dirt floor, shuffling. I couldn’t be sure if I was really hearing anything or just letting my imagination run away with – No. No, that wasn’t my imagination. That was a sound. Maybe the fetid air escaping upward. Or maybe…

Bullshit. I was making myself crazy over the drunken ramblings of a plumber whose dad had gone crazy and goat-happy. Mere coincidence, and I damn well knew it, even though my stomach was flopping around like a fish out of water with apprehension. I’d have to show my stomach who was boss and go down there, take a look around. Show it, and my growing fear, that there was nothing out of the ordinary going on here. Teach the hair on my neck to lie back down.

I took a deep breath and walked to the open doorway, holding my breath against the stench from below. I flicked the light switch on the wall. Nothing happened. The old bulb hanging from the ceiling down there must have blown out. Perfect timing. I took a deep breath through my mouth to avoid smelling the air, and took a few steps down before stopping to let my eyes adjust.

There were faint stirring sounds coming from below as before. Probably rats or bugs, I told myself. I peered downward, my hand tight on the railing and my every hair standing on end. My stomach flipped particularly violently and, then – there it was. That same goat. Standing a few steps below me. Chewing on the same piece of flesh and staring at me.

I froze, my mind hitting a brick wall of terror for a moment before I closed my eyes and tried to breathe evenly, willing myself to calm down and for the animal to disappear along with my fear. It probably was all in my head, I remember thinking over and over. Not real. Not real. But when I opened my eyes again, it hadn’t moved, and it hadn’t disappeared. In the darkness, I saw its short, tufted tail flick from side to side as it tilted its head and sniffed at me. The stink was overwhelming. A piece of flesh fell to the ground, fur coated in charnel.

Suddenly my brain snapped into action, propelling me forward down the stairs in a quick change of heart. I was suddenly furious. This four-footed tyrant had been ruling my life in my own damn house, and I didn’t care whether he was really there or not. “You son of a bitch!” I shouted, hurtling myself down the stairs with one arm raised, fist pumping. “You goddamn goat! Get the hell out of my house!” In my rage I misjudged the distance to the next step and slipped. I found myself falling backward, twisting as I fell, and then landed hard on my butt on the stairs. I grimaced, turning my face away from the goat for just and an instant as I tried leverage myself up using the banister. There was a splintering sound, and the banister gave way beneath my hand as I realized in horror that I was going with it. Into the darkness and the stench and the sinister sounds of movement with no source. I heard the goat on the stairs bleat, and then my vision went white with pain as my shin landed on something hard that did not give way beneath my weight. My right foot went numb while the rest of my leg exploded in agony. I yelped and struggled to push myself into a sitting position. My leg was throbbing, screaming in pain, I was seeing a succession of stars and fireworks with each heartbeat. I touched the shin lightly with my hand, which came away wet with blood. I retched but stopped myself from vomiting, and tried to move my foot but felt nothing below the searing pain in my shin. It seemed I had broken my leg.

I sat still for a while, the pain and shock finally receding to a point from which I could try to get my bearings. I could see the light from the kitchen far away overhead and the outline of the staircase below it; I’d fallen almost straight down from the steps and landed directly to the right of the staircase. From memory I realized there was some metal piping running along the side of the staircase over here – I must have landed on it with my now-shattered shin. I’d have to get myself around to the bottom of the stairs and drag myself using the remaining intact banister. I didn’t want to call Monica – if that goat was still around here somewhere she might very well pass out at the sight of it and fall down the stairs herself. I’d wait till I’d gotten myself up to the first floor.

Just then I felt something touch me gently on the shoulder. I whipped my head around in the darkness, my eyes finally adjusting, and came face to face with the goat. I felt my heart jump into my mouth, but somehow stifled a scream that would have brought Monica running. I tried to scramble away, but my leg reminded me in no uncertain terms that I was not going anywhere just yet. The goat balked at my movement and let loose a frightened “Baa,” but didn’t move away from me. He was literally only inches from my face, those bizarre eyes staring intensely into mine, his rotten breath fanning my face around his bloody prize. I stared back, my mind racing but unable to think of any escape over the agony in my leg.

After a few minutes, however, my brain slowly came around to observing the goat I was staring at. It was not the same goat. It was much smaller – its eyes were on a level with mine as I sat, panting, on the floor. And it wasn’t spotted. I couldn’t tell its color in the dark, but I could tell that there were no horns on its narrow head, and its fur was dark. Its nostrils flared as we regarded each other, then it turned abruptly and trotted off into the darkness. 2 goats. God, they were in cahoots down here. I shivered with pain and fear as I peered into the blackness where the second goat had disappeared.

I followed its vague form in the darkness until it moved through the rectangle of light falling from the open door at the top of the staircase, then gagged as I saw a gaping wound in the animal’s side, near its hind leg. A huge red gash was hanging open, tattered flesh flapping around its glistening edges. Its sides and legs were smeared with blood. And, I realized as it moved back into the shadows, the thing was only using three of its legs… its back left leg hung useless from an obvious break just below the knee… had it fallen down the stairs too?

I continued to watch it as it made its way to a dark corner where, as my eyes adjusted, I realized with horror that there were more goats lurking back there, all in a group as if they were huddled around something. Their tails were twitching and their heads lowered, as if around a trough of food. I peered into the darkness, knowing instinctively that I didn’t want to discover what they were doing, but I was unable to look away. The returning member of the group shoved its way into the fray, pushing out several others, which stood back and stared at each other stupidly, then turned slowly toward me with vague curiosity.

Through the gloom I could see that their hides were ripped open as well, in different spots and to different degrees, but even in the dark I could see blood and gore spilling from holes in their sides, necks, even faces. They all carried pieces of flesh in their mouth, their muzzles covered in blood, and many some had broken legs. I felt my brain getting fuzzy, approaching a state of fear and sensory overload – a scream was rising up my throat and I was hardly feeling any pain from my leg, so great was my desire to run. I forced myself to look away from the slowly limping goats, focusing as well as I could on getting up the stairs. I didn’t want to know what they were all crowding around in that corner or why they were all bleeding. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

Knowing I should try to find a way to brace my leg, but too terrified to look around for the broken piece of banister or take the time to rip up my shirt, I began frantically dragging myself backward toward the base of the stairs. The pain was overwhelming as my leg trailed behind me, every clot of dirt or bump in the floor sending me into new reaches of agony, but I kept moving. I was trying to keep my head turned to look over my shoulder and avoid another unexpected run-in with an animal, but in my peripheral vision, the sight of the churning, twitching mass of bloodied goats in the corner drove me onward. The few that had turned toward me seemed to have lost interest and turned back toward the fray, and I could only hope that I could get to the stairs without attracting their attention again.

I had almost reached the stairs when I dragged my leg over an unexpected stone in the dirt floor. It bumped directly against my wound and I let out an involuntary gasp, then stopped still. They’d heard me, and for some reason this time they were interested. All motion in the corner stopped for a split second, then the bodies of the animals all seemed to turn in one motion, broken legs and open wounds all pushing into one another, smearing blood on fur, ears flopping, hooves stamping. This time I couldn’t hold back a cry of fear, no longer caring what Monica saw if she could only get me out of the basement. With an act of sheer will, I flipped myself over, my leg sending splinters of white-hot pain through my body, and pulled myself up onto the fist step with my arms.

A few of the large, more curious goats stepped forward tentatively, their muzzles dripping gore from whatever poor thing they were eating. In the background I saw a large, horned animal whirl suddenly around on a smaller one and bite it hard, then pull away and actually rip a piece of its ear off before stepping toward me, chewing contentedly as the other stood strangely still and kept silent. There were at least six of them moving slowly toward me, nostrils flaring and lips twitching, dripping blood from their wounded hides and hideous mouths alike, all quietly breathing out that horrible stinking breath.

I closed my eyes and pulled myself up to the second step, exhausted but determined. The largest of the goats stepped onto the first step a few feet below me, dragging one broken back leg behind it in a limping, zombie-like motion. It belched, then sniffed at my left shoe lazily. I scrambled backward, the step above me grinding into my back as I tried to force myself up. I realized I was talking out loud as the goat slowly and casually followed my broken leg, which was still mostly on the ground as I struggled slowly upward. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod…” I was repeating.

The goat began to nibble at the laces of my shoe and I felt my mind buckle. I let loose and screamed, praying silently for Monica to come rescue me. If I had been able to move my foot I would have kicked the animals away, but I was immobile and the blood dripping down my leg seemed to draw the animal on. I finally got myself to the third stair and saw my foot start to rise above the ground level. From somewhere very far away I heard Monica’s footsteps coming down the stairs from the second floor.

The first goat was following me steadily, gnawing on my shoelace, and its friends were following it, two on the stair behind it sniffing the air. They moved slowly and steadily, my foot out of their reach at last. I grasped onto the frantic thought that maybe, with their broken legs, they wouldn’t be able to mount the stairs to follow me. I was still talking: “Ooooohmygodohmygodohmygod….” I tried to look away from the gore-covered animals, into the darkness of the basement, but immediately regretted the decision. They had all finally moved away from what they had been eating, enough that I could make out a vague shape in the dark corner. It was a human form there in the darkness, glistening with blood, quiet and still in the dark. It had to be…

I felt my head begin to swim, and the stars of pain I’d been seeing became clumps. I tried to pull myself up another step, but knew I was too weak. My vision began to fail and I realized vaguely that I was passing out from terror and loss of blood. The biggest goat jumped forward somehow onto the stairs and began to sniff the dribble of blood on my shin. My head dropped back onto the step behind it…

And then there was Monica behind me, her arms wrapping themselves around my chest. She was talking but I just let myself fall into her embrace. Somehow she got me up the stairs and closed the door behind us.

* * *

We left the hospital the next morning around seven. I was in a full leg cast and had been given crutches, which would take me a while to figure out. I had been given a strong dose of serious pain medication and was grateful for the fog of indifference it had lowered over me regarding the night’s evens. Monica hadn’t said much beyond asking what had happened. I’d told her I’d fallen through the banister and had seen the goat again, and that seemed to be as much as she needed to hear. She’d just nodded and said, “I knew it,” then turned back to her magazine as the doctor came in. I was glad she’d let the issue go for the time being – I was in too much pain to have explained much more. I knew she would have believed me, but I think my silence told her just as much as the whole story could have.

We pulled up to the house and I started to ready my crutches. “No,” she said, putting a hand lightly on my arm. “I’ll just be a minute. Stay here and rest.”

I just nodded and let her go, too drugged to care much and relieved in my own cloudy way that I didn’t have to go into the house. I may have fallen asleep, but it didn’t seem very long before Monica emerged from the house with two duffel bags. She threw them into the backseat of the car, then dug into her pocket. She pulled out the hoof we’d found in the garden and had been keeping on the mantel. It seemed like years ago that we’d found it.

I watched her as she walked down to the highway, waited a few minutes, then ran across the four lanes in one dash. She stopped for a moment, looking at the hoof she held in her hand, then threw it far out into the river.

She came back to the car. “I’ve been wanting to get rid of that thing ever since we brought it in,” she said. “Gave me the creeps.”

She turned around and unzipped one of the pockets on the duffel bag behind her, then turned back around with a business card in hand. I craned my neck to look at it, but gave up when a nerve went shooting down my neck toward my leg. She tucked it into the dashboard in front of the odometer. “You get some more rest,” she said, and turned the car back on.

“Where are we going?” I mumbled.

“To get some answers,” she said. “Then to a hotel.”

I just nodded and let myself fall back into a blissfully dreamless sleep.

When I woke up again, we were parked outside an unfamiliar ranch style house. A large van sat next to us in the driveway. “J&J Plumbing,” it read along the side. The wording rang a distant bell, but my medication didn’t really let me recognize it.

Monica was at my door, opening it and helping me onto my crutches. I got myself upright somehow and began the slow process of moving myself forward, following her up a slight incline toward a well-maintained yard. As I got going, though, some of the painkiller-and-sleep haze started to wear off and the name on the truck struck a chord in me. “We’re at Justin’s?” I asked blearily.

Monica nodded. “This sonofabitch knows more than he’s telling. I’m asking him about the goats.”

She helped me hobble my way up the front walk, then rang the doorbell. There was no immediate answer, so Monica – always the insistent one – knocked on the door. It took a few minutes, but finally Justin, clad in morning stubble and a bathrobe, with a cup of coffee in his hand, answered the door. He looked at us through the screen door, puzzlement and wariness mixing on his face. “Well hi, folks. Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon. What can I do for you?”

Monica smiled, but her voice was hard. “Can we come in, please, Justin? We need to talk to you about last night.”

He hesitated, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “Last night? I… uh… Was I drunker than I remember?”

Monica smiled again and opened the screen door. “No, not at all. Nothing like that. But we do need to talk.”

He looked over his shoulder again, then shrugged and opened the door for us. Monica thanked him and as I hobbled by I smiled resignedly. Justin’s eyebrows rose as he realized I was on crutches. “Oh my god, I’m sorry,” he said as I passed into the well-kept living room. “I didn’t see that… Are you ok there, Ed? What the hell happened to you?”

Monica closed the door behind her. “That’s what we’re here to talk about. Could we sit down somewhere?”

“Sure, sure,” he said, his bemusement growing as he looked from her to me and back. “Why don’t we go into the kitchen and I’ll get you two some coffee. You look like you’ve had a long night.”

He led the way and I settled into a roomy wicker-backed chair at a large kitchen table. The room was decorated with pictures and ornaments of chickens. I was vaguely grateful they weren’t some other barnyard animal. The sound of a running shower came from somewhere down the hall.

Ed settled into the chair at the head of the table after handing us two brimming cups of delicious smelling coffee. The scent of it kicked my brain another gear toward functionality. I took a sip.

Monica looked at hers for a moment, then straight at Justin. “Justin,” she said sternly. “Ed fell down the basement stairs last night when the banister broke. He landed on a pipe and broke his leg.”

Justin nodded soberly. “Well I’m mighty sorry to hear that,” he said, shaking his head. “Those stairs are tricky, I’ll give you that.” I could hear that he meant it, but there was an edge to his voice. I think he was afraid we’d ask him to compensate us for the medical expenses, since he’d installed the banister.

Monica smiled. “Well we’re certainly not blaming you,” she said warmly. “It could have happened to anyone. But we do need you to be honest with us about something.”

Ed looked down into his coffee, as if he knew what was coming.

“What happened in that basement, Justin? There is something not right happening down there and we need to know what it is. It’s not just the smell anymore and I think you know what we mean.” When he was silent for a moment, she continued: “Ed wouldn’t have been going down there in the first place if it was just the smell bothering him.”

Justin nodded, gathering himself before he looked up and spoke directly to me. “I should’ve told you folks, I suppose,” he began slowly. “But, frankly, I’m something of a skeptic, and I guess I was just hoping it wouldn’t ever become… an issue.” He looked at Monica, then took a sip.

“My father,” he continued, “was real eccentric, like I told you last night. And, like I said, as he got older, he started keeping animals as pets that should never have been let in that house. He had pigeon roosts and chicken coops inside, some wallows for pot-bellied pigs out back. I told you about his fox. He had a donkey or two out there from time to time, even some giant godawful lizards. I don’t even know what all he had most of the time ‘cause the place smelled awful, and with my allergies I could hardly be there ten minutes without sneezing my head off.”

He took another sip.

“Well, one day I went over there and he had a new ‘pet.’ A big old billy goat he called Rex. He was just in love with that thing, Lord knows why. The animal smelled terrible, just crapped anywhere it felt like it, and chewed on everything in the house. Just a lousy animal. But Dad had a soft spot for it. Kept it at his side all the damn time. Let it go anywhere it wanted.” He shook his head. “The next time I went over there was a few months later, and, well, he’d started up a whole herd of goats! A whole damn flock of ‘em. Must have ten, fifteen goats roaming through his house.” He chuckled derisively, then looked at me.

“I mean, can you imagine? An old man, in his seventies, living in a house with a pack of goats! And the damn things are dumb as a box of nails – can’t walk down stairs but they can damn well walk up ‘em. And here’s my old man, who thinks they’re the be-all, end-all of domestic pets, and he’s carrying eighty, ninety-pound animals down flights of stairs when they get themselves stuck at the top.” He took a long sip. “I told him, I said, ‘Dad, you can’t keep doing this. Those animals would be better served living outside where there ain’t any stairs.’ I said, ‘You’re gonna fall down one of these days and break your damn neck.’ I offered to build a shed outside for them to sleep in, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Said something about how his babies were worth the risk. I just left. Couldn’t stomach the thought of my father living like that. Had to get away, you know?”

He looked down into his coffee again, as if the scene were playing out on its surface, then started speaking again, softly. “Well,” he said, “it didn’t take long for the locals to give him that nickname I told you about, and damned if I didn’t join in. Some things are tough to face like a man. I should’ve gone over there and built him a shack for the damn things whether he liked it or not, forced him to listen to me, but it seemed like his dignity was already near gone. I didn’t want to go bossing him around, taking the last of it away, you know?”

I nodded when he looked up, but he looked away again, out through the glass doors onto a patio where a large grill shone in the morning light. “After a few weeks I went back over there to check on the old man, and… I couldn’t find him anywhere. Him and his goats, just nowhere to be found. The chickens were there, and the dogs and the cats sniffing at ‘em like they hadn’t been fed in ages. But no goats and no ‘Old Goat Man.’ But his old station wagon was there. I let myself into the house and… well… you know that smell you were telling me about. I hope to hell it ain’t ever been as bad for you folks as it was when I walked in there. Smelled like animals and their shit and something rotten. I went down there and…”

He sighed and looked back at us, his eyes filled with sorrow. “There was my old man, dead in the corner. His leg was broken.” He nodded at me. “Just like yours. The bone was sticking up through his skin and all that. And he was… he was gone, must have fallen down there and couldn’t get back up and wasted away, or maybe hit his head, too. Probably carrying a goddamn goat down there for something. And all those goddamn goats were down there with him. Stupid bastards followed him down the stairs, except of course they can’t walk down stairs. So they’ all fell. And they all broke their damn legs, too, falling down the stairs. So none of ‘em could get the hell back up! And they…” He shut his eyes against the tears. “By the time I got there they’d started…”

I held up my hand to stop him. I knew what he was about to say and I didn’t need to hear it. But he shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “They’d already gotten to eating him. My old man. Goats’ll eat just about anything if they get the notion… and not just that, but they got the taste of meat and it looked like they started going after each other down there, too.” He opened his eyes again. “It was like something out of a horror movie, I tell you. All these dead goats laying around, and my old man, stripped down to bones in some places, with the live ones mostly limping around like zombies, all covered in blood…”

He stopped talking and swallowed, then took a few bracing gulps of his coffee. He looked back at Monica and me. “I should’ve known better, really, than to try to cover it up. I had a closed-casket funeral for him, told everyone he’d died in a farming accident and left it at that. Nobody except me and the coroner and undertaker knew what’d happened. I got all those goats and carcasses out of there, and I just hoped if I fixed the place up, there’d be no need to tell anyone. Just get it off my hands, you know. It’s a nice house, structurally, and all.” He paused. “I should’ve known something like that would leave a mark on a place. You can’t expect that kind of thing to just go away. But I’ve never been one to believe in ghost stories and all, so I just hoped… I should have at least put a new basement in, with a decent floor and lighting, but I just… I couldn’t bring myself to go down there any more than I had to. I just left it.”

He looked right at me. “I’m awfully sorry, Ed,” he said. “I should’ve known better.”

I just nodded. It all made so much sense when it was said aloud. I’d been right all along but hadn’t been able to voice it. Monica put her hand over mine on the table.

* * *

We sold the house shortly thereafter and were able to negotiate to be released from the mortgage. We moved back to the city, our experience with rural life having scarred us both for good.

We never found out if he told the next buyers about what had happened to his father or to us, but when we came back to check that everything was out, a cement floor had been poured in the basement and a new wall was being put up over the old stones.

It still smelled terrible.

By Nico Lustgarten

“Godless,” a greyed man says. His thick dark eyebrows furrow with some bad kind of tension. He sips from a cup. The weight of a man compacted in 70+ years of life and what lies before him is the pleasure born between a man and woman resting one body top of the other – me and my female companion.

The swirling vapors from the hot coffee blow with his words. “This whole goddamn society is godless.” He steps away and walks a path that leads to Fifth Avenue. The grass does a nice impression of his boots hunkered down into the ground and it’s the ghost of his footprints that haunt me.

Myra laughs and her naked breasts bounce with every heave. I didn’t cover myself either but am more bothered by what he said. “Wasn’t Adam and Eve naked in the Garden of Eden?” I ask Myra. She balances a cigarette from her lip and digs into her jeans, which are spread across the grass.

“You want more?” Myra opens her palm and inside the small of it is a bag half way filled with sweet white cocaine. I needed more to stay awake and watch the sun.

I dug a key into the bag and snorted from it. “Fuck, shouldn’t we have had some kids by now? I don’t mean you and me – we’ve just met but shouldn’t we be doing the American Dream?” I wish I could remember why I had moved to New York.

“Look around you, Nico.” Her smeared mascara circles small bruises around her brown eyes. “The American dream is fucked.” She passes the cigarette to her other hand and inhales deeply into the bag I’m holding. “The American Dream, just like you and me, is fucked.”

The sun sheers through the clouds and little birds whistle through them like flying knives. The smog lifts from the streets and the heat from the day before makes the whole cityscape appear like a post-apocalyptic survivor.

I didn’t want to think that the American Dream was fucked. Being naked with a stranger and lying on the Great Lawn should mean something. I wonder if I could repopulate the world with Myra if everything were to implode.

****

A flash of memory from last night – we were in the street. We had a heart-to-heart for the first time about nothing that I can remember. It was a vibe we shared. There was a dream hidden in the alleyway near a stony Lower Manhattan street and the shadow of a tall tenement kept the Norman Rockwell nightmare in the dark. There was something in the past that made the future seem imminent and all prospects bleak.

“We’re human,” Myra begins. “We’re not that special. Our conscience dooms us.” Her glassy eyes were focused on a bush.

Myra has been working as a prostitute for the last few years. She told me last night that she hadn’t developed any skills to make an honest living from. This was easy for her she said.

“I count the holes in the ceiling,” Myra tells me. “The whole time they’re fucking me, I’m not even there. I’m watching from above and afterwards, they throw me some money and it’s done. Over. Easy, right?”

She must have been beautiful once. There’s still some sparks of innocence pocked in her sunken cheeks, her thin arms, her natty hair. Out there somewhere is a father, her dad, her god maybe thinking of a place she might be. What she’s up to. With me here, those memories must be a long ways away in her mind.

****

My rumination returns to us in the present, Myra grabs my hand and helps me up. “I want to take you somewhere,” she says. I exchange her bra for my shirt. My shoes for her fishnets. She pulls her long curly hair back. In the glow of the sky, the sun crowns her head like a halo; as if she’s some golden goddess who’d lost her way to the heavens.

“I want you to meet someone.”

We’re walking through 32ND Street in Midtown Manhattan, close to Penn Station, watching the people climb out of the subway station, battered and butchered from a New Jersey whatever. Men in suits with their coats hanging by threads wear the wretched cologne of stale beer blowing from the street.

“When you walk in, I want you to pull me closer to you like you mean it.” Myra says to me. I can hear our destination before she tells me what it is. I don’t ask. I all ready know.

A door blows open and two men stagger out, clutching onto each other’s shoulders, breathing in each other’s foul air. My cocaine dreams running out of steam. I need another bump, something to numb me. I reach into Myra’s pocket and she stops my hand short of pulling out the bag. “What happened?” I ask.

“Not here.”

She pushes the door open and inside is a disorderly shit house. Men drunkenly croon over the sleeping old body of a woman, beer bottles broken on the floor while people slip in their own vomit. I didn’t know that bars like this still existed in New York.

I tell the bartender to deliver to us a pair of brown bottles of beer so we can sit, chat; let our minds settle onto the scene. The bartender might have been a pretty woman once but the smoke rising from these scum bag’s backs stained her skin with premature age.

Myra’s foot thumps on the floor like a looned rabbit and she’s tapping the top of the bar with the tip of her finger. There’s a man who sits alone at the end of the bar wearing a grimace and a hollow face. His hair is tousled while one eye looks one way and the other looks at me.

“Have you ever seen anyone paint a scene like this before?” Myra asks.

All I can think about is that bag that she has in her pocket and how I’m going to get it out and use it on myself. I want to feel beautiful again.

“Hey, little girl,” a man in a blue pea coat says to Myra. “Wanna hear my rattlesnake shake? Sssss.” He looks like Earnest Hemingway had he survived the suicide. I can smell his whiskey-laden breath when he bellows laughter. The bartender climbs over the bar, holding a beer bottle in hand. She yells, “Frank you sit your ass down.” She motions her head over toward the other side of the bar where the man who’d been staring over at me for the last half hour sits.

“Jesus, Margaret. I just wanted her to hear my rattlesnake. Sssss…” He laughs into his glass of whiskey, his breath pushing bubbles from the drink.

“I told you to pull me in close like you mean it.” Myra says. I draw her in and can smell the all night sweat on her neck. Some of it might be mine. Some might belong to other men. I can almost taste the salt.

Myra grabs the bottle and chugs its contents down in three swift gulps. I motion the bartender for one more.

“I grew up around men like this my whole life. All of them had something, lost something. You understand that this is all I know.” Myra tells me.

All I can think about is how I got here in the first place.

“I mean, why do you think I do what I do?”

I know she has my fix in her pocket.

“I wish I could just end this. Start over. That kind of thing. Nico are you listening?”

My thoughts elsewhere like the bottom of her pocket.

“Yeah, I’m listening but maybe we should go into the bathroom for just one bump. Two?”

“We can’t go just yet. There’s someone I want you to meet so you can see who my role model is.” She laughs and takes a swig from her beer.

A beer mug slams hard against the bar and the man who did it grunts and stomps out of the door. He’s the one who was staring at me earlier, looking for a pause, I guess to swirl in his anger. Myra looks at him through the window as he walks down the street, her eyes swell with what might have been a clogged pool of tears had she not become so dry herself.

“OK. Now we can go use some of those bumps,” she tells me.

My heart swarms with the buzz of delight, warmth and all of those euphoric sensations of a starving man about to eat. It’s better than getting sex after watching strippers grind against your buddies all night. It’s better than hearing a good Rock and Roll song the first time. It’s better than falling in love.

We close the door behind us. No one sees but their voices, hollers, still reverberate through the walls; a bunch of clumsy old men, retiring underneath the shredded doubts of inebriation. I’ll be joining them soon with my song, my love, my drug.

She takes a long whiff from the bag, another one and another and she squeaks out a whimper but holds it back. “Here,” she says, her voice broken but I’m too damn fixated on my fix to ask why her voice went weak.

A door slams open and there’s the man who had just left the bar. One eye staring at Myra, the other staring at the toilet. Her face did something new. It went soft, it went limp and her lips curled into a sour sad hope. The man’s face wore the same lips, the same mouth…his nose, slightly crooked matches Myra’s.

“You whore! You slut! How many times did I tell you not to come in here?”

Myra’s silence looms larger than the man’s thick frame. His hardened hands curl into a fist and then turns his large bull head to me.

“You’re lucky that I wasn’t around enough to act like her father.” Spit flies in my face and I can taste the vodka from his gut.

“But you,” he continues looking at Myra. “You’re the slut that dragged this piece of shit in here. My place. My home. My own…” and with that he opens the door, slams it closed.

Myra straightens, wipes a single tear, and strengthens her face then she’s back to her stoic self; hardened like an egg whose soft shell had been broken and taped back together.

“That’s my dad,” Myra says. “Your American Dream.”

Myra, me…her father and all of those sad old men out in the bar — we’re all tragic children picking apples from some utopian garden waiting for an unpleasant god to tell us we’re wrong.

An obese woman and her 25-years-but-out-on-early-release-for-good-behavior boyfriend are dancing.

They’re not just dancing. They’re writing a poem about long-suffering hope fulfilled and the joy that comes with it.

I bet 10 cigarettes and your shift in the laundry room that this is the first time he’s smiled like this since the peyote joyride in that hot-wired Camaro.

She’s faking the smile that she wore with all her heart only five minutes ago. Before they showed up.

They’re the only white people in here besides me. They’ve stumbled in here by accident, much too drunk to find somewhere else to go. Their inebriated lurch to the table next to me is quite the antithesis to the graceful movement of our dance floor lovebirds.

Abercrombie points to “two of these burritos. Pork, alright? You understand me…? Right? None of that beef crap. And one of these chili relleno things, whateverthehell that is.”

His buddy chuckles in approval and tosses up the sloppiest high five I’ve seen on this side of the Hudson. Abercrombie’s girlfriend is inspecting her manicure until:

“Ohmygod, Bobby! If I ever get that fat, I’ll…I’ll, uh (hiccup)…you better not ever let me get that fat!”

And the ridicule begins. They laugh and point. More high-fives between the “bro’s” in celebration of some totally-awesome fat joke. I could say something, but it wouldn’t matter.

Fifteen feet away, my overweight friend and Jailhouse Ink continue cutting up a rug. They can really move. Dancing was conceived by people like this. Yet I wish she was enjoying it more. She’ll never enjoy it again.

See, I understand why she’s faking her smile. The same reason she’s attempting to dance in a way that keeps her man’s back toward the hecklers as much as possible. She knows it’s only a matter of time until the bliss of this long-awaited moment with papi is broken when he notices them. And if she stops smiling, well…he’d notice.

She’s right. I know this man. I know that all those years of good behavior were harder for him than serving out the rest of his sentence in yard duty under the summer sun and through the winter’s bitter cold.

It’s difficult for a beast of this nature to tame himself.

There wasn’t much provocation from other inmates to deal with. They knew what he was in for. They saw the tempest in his eyes. Whatever clout they might gain from challenging him would surely not be worth the consequence of unchaining such savagery.

Yet despite the lack of deliberate confrontation, he toiled to contain himself nonetheless. The klutz in the chow line never knew what sort of restraint was exercised. Nor did the shower boys understand the tremendous feat of self-control they witnessed when he caught their lusting eyes.

She’s holding her smile. And she’s praying silently the same as me. “Please, God…don’t let this…”

And then it happens. Just as the song comes to its climactic and abrupt end, he spots the sneering table to my right. And in the silence thereafter, he catches Abercombie’s three-word blasphemy.

“What a pig.”

Our silent prayers go unanswered. The beast has been awakened.

Abercrombie has no idea what’s about to happen. All the alcohol has brought his trust fund arrogance to a delusional height. He doesn’t realize that the Majesty of Rikers Island isn’t like any other pissant that his daddy’s lawyers or his mother’s checkbook have delivered him from in the past. Ego drunkenly reckless, he just can’t imagine that anyone in a place like this would ever think to serve him the feral judgment that is now upon him.

A few feet to my left, the lovers part. He walks with profound purpose to my table and grabs the Corona bottle I’ve just emptied out. Looking over his shoulder, his eyes say goodbye to the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. The buck-sixty she put on while he was away means nothing to him; she’s the only woman amazing enough to wait so long, so faithfully, for someone like him.

He looks at me briefly and says, “Take care of her, hermano.” I can tell that he’s just disposed of everything he learned about in that Book he spent so much time with over these past years. I nod respectfully. I could say something, but it wouldn’t matter.

He spits. Holding it by the neck, smashes the bottle against the edge of the table. And I watch the most powerful stride I’ve ever seen as he steps forward into the rest of his life.

Abercrombie’s last words are smug and insignificant. “Dude, why don’t you just…”

I am now a witness. I witness a long-suffering hope unfulfilled and the sorrow that comes with it.

on the uneven pavement, you retching and trying to hold it back so you don’t have to go near him in your lowered-tolerance inebriation, watching the rear-end of a piebald horse at the gas pump in front of you and wondering if there’s just one funny thing going on in this situation, or too many to count. Given you’re seeing three of everything anyway, it can be hard to keep track.

Being just out of college and stranded in an ocean of ancient ani-misticysim that still makes more sense than the insular ultra-Catholicism of your virtual-strangers-even-after-seven-months housemates can also throw off one’s perspective. Spending most of your waking hours feeling oversized around kindergartners and their tiny chairs can be a little discombobulating for a 5’1”, 100 lb misfit who’s never been bigger than anyone in her life, but leaving the classroom every afternoon for the driver’s seat of a full sized school bus throws things into an even more Alice In Wonderland kind of perspective. Being out here, a hundred miles from anything like civilization and yet parked at a 24-hour convenience mart, just back from the legion hall dance you crashed with your fellow volunteers, waiting for the teetotal-ling designated driver to emerge form the store with some Cheetos, trying to remember what the hell happened over the past three hours, is mind-fuck-quality surrealism.

And then there’s the horse. Standing there, still as a car idling except for a slow swishing of the tail, right in front of your housemate’s Neon, as if it belonged at a gas station at 3:00 in the morning. Refueling. You guess the rider’s inside, probably also buying Cheetos. People out here love Cheetos. Not the regular kind so much as the hot kind. Not sure why, really, they’re pretty distasteful to you. But people here also tend to eat lemons without sugar, and they love – love – pickles. Who knows. They also ride horses around on weekends and take them to the gas station. It makes sense, really; the reservation has one of the highest drunk driving mortality rates in the world, and while a car will take you right into a ditch if you pass out drunk, a horse will get you home no matter what. Unless it comes across Bigfoot or The Tall Man or some other spirit, which according to the locals happens quite a lot and isn’t always a pleasant experience. But so long as you can keep your seat on the animal, which most of the people around here can, having been riding since they were preschoolers, a horse is a safer way to get around on a long howling-at-the-moon night than a piece of heavy machinery.

The horse’s tail swishes at you again. The sound of vomit hitting pavement from outside has stopped. The obvious mental image of the rider coming out of the gas station, pushing a few buttons at the pump, and inserting the business end of the nozzle into the business end of the horse continues to cross your hazy mind, but it seems passé somehow. Too obvious. Yet you still wish you had a camera. Another wave of nausea is coming over you – you steel yourself against the tidal force of bile. God, you think, I hate tequila. Dammit. You’d promised yourself to take it easy tonight – only drink one kind of beer and one kind of liquor to avoid mixing, but the first shot the now-barfing mass outside the car door bought you was Cuervo, and you got locked into a Mexican binge all night. Never a good idea. Nor is busting into the legion hall of a tiny Nebraska town known for its history of lynching the Indians you’re out here volunteering to teach for a year. It was fun at the time, but…

The back door opens and your ex-lover tumbles in, smiling the relieved smile of the empty-stomached drunk. “So where’s Pete with those Cheetos, dude?” His breath stinks but you’re so close to vomiting already that it hardly makes a dent in your confusion and misery. “Dude, I can’t believe you want to eat. You just puked everywhere.”

“Yeah,” he replies, “more room for Cheetos.” You grimace and turn back to the horse at the pump; it takes a moment, but the blurry double-image your drunk eyes perceive eventually focuses into one. Its tail is swishing. A big-boned Lakota woman is climbing up into the Western saddle, cradling her cell phone between her ear and shoulder – you’re constantly marveling at the skill set of people from the prairie. It’s entirely different than what the city taught you about swiping a Metro Card or avoiding other pedestrians mid-crosswalk in front of raging cab drivers.

Your ex watches with you as the animal trots off down the main street of Pine Ridge, South Dakota and into the wild void of the black prairie night. A dog barks in the distance. “So, hey,” mutters Bryan in the slurred late-night tone you came to know during illegal late-night beer binges at his tiny house in Oglala, “I know it’s been kind of weird lately but, we should really…” he hiccups… “get together again before you leave, you know? For old time’s sake.”

You eye him, curled in the corner of the Neon’s backseat, his hands gesturing clumsily as he talks. The high school girls’ basketball coach, now a member of the paid staff after three years volunteering. The only attractive non-Indian for miles around, and an alcoholic. Go figure. You just shake your head and turn back to the night outside the bright 24-hour lights of the parking area. It’s quiet now. You’re the only car in the parking lot. It’s finally gotten late enough for the reservation night to wind down. The Legion Hall kicked you out almost an hour and a half ago and the drive back was interrupted by Bryan’s several vomit stops. You wonder vaguely how Peter, the constant DD, can stand people like the two of you, who drag all the volunteers out into the night to witness your helplessly post-collegiate debauchery. You wonder how this will be remembered. The night everyone got kicked out of the legion hall? The night Bryan puked for two hours straight? Your birthday party?

Too many options, and the mind begins to spin again as nausea bears down on the backseat. If Peter would just get his snacks and get the hell out of Big Bat’s you could make it home without puking, no problem. Maybe one of his students is working the late shift, in which case you probably shouldn’t go in to get him. The sight of a drunken 3 am teacher from the school is a death blow to the reputation at any school, much less one where 90% of the students’ parents are diabetic and abusively alcoholic.

“I mean,” Bryan continues, seemingly unaware of your unresponsiveness, “it’s not like we had a fight or anything. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. It just went weird, you know? We should hook up again. It was fun.”

You stare at him for a moment. A flash to the night he invited you over to the Oglala pad, the night you decided a year of celibacy wasn’t in your future. A mistake, for sure, but one that could be made again for the sake of satiety. His form contorts as a deep hiccup issues from his throat. You roll your eyes and look away to see the door of the store opening, Peter emerging with Cheetos and Gatorade. “Thank GOD, dude,” you say as he opens the door, remembering a moment too late, as always, about how he views taking the Lord’s name in vain. “Sorry,” you mumble as he hands you a blue Gatorade.

And in a moment, with the car interior reeking of processed flour and cheese powder, Bryan crunching away and hiccupping as you nurse your drink and try to hold it down, you’re off again, into the blackness of the reservation night, rez dogs starting up by the side of the road and fading into the dark, the light of dawn approaching greyness from the East. Back up the hill to the volunteer house that’s not quite a home.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was originally published on Lynsey Griswold's blog.]