The House Beneath the Highway
At 3:30 a.m., my wife and I wake up fully clothed and clump into the walk-in shower in the crawlspace. There we step over the bronze skeleton on the floor and scarf our soggy breakfasts amid the hot daggers of crystalline water. With a mouthful of ketchupy eggs, my wife asks me what I will depict in my next painting.
I stare into her milky eyeballs. I think for eleven minutes. I nod in satisfaction and say, the house beneath the highway.
Which highway, my wife says, swallowing her eggs. Which house?
The one with the balcony and the tower and the pink marble statue of the eastern bluebird in flight, I say. The one where we lost—
Oh, I remember now, she says, with a red-stained smile and a wistful glance at the bronze skeleton gleaming in the steam at our feet. I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Yes, I say.
It sounds beautiful, she says.
We’ll see.
Beautiful and terrifying and ravishing and wonderful.
We’ll see.
We stand in silence for forty minutes.
Do you want the rest of my eggs? My wife says.
I study her water-crinkled hands and nod. I slip off my black leather oxfords and sit on the floor of the shower. She hands me her dripping plate. She unbuttons her cotton-blend blouse. She hides behind the canopy of her saturated graphite hair.
~
A Wall of Glass Bricks
I built a wall of glass bricks in front of my house in the woods. I wanted to build the wall so wide that I’d never have to deal with another human being again, but somehow, random people kept walking around the sides of the wall and coming up to me. Each time this happened, I stacked a series of new bricks in a panic to extend the wall as far as I could on the side where the last person had come from. But I wasn’t able to make much progress. Every few seconds a new person would appear out of nowhere, prod me on the shoulder with great impatience, and ask a random / confusing / infuriating question, such as, do I need an umbrella for the walk home? or, where’s the ice cream machine? or, which aisle is the tomato sauce in? or, how many teaspoons are there in a gallon? or, what is the state bird of Minnesota?
At first I pointed in the direction from which each person had come and said, over there, but that response didn’t apply to most of their questions, so they quickly became enraged and belligerent and surrounded me on all sides. Moments later, the crowd began shouting aggressive insults. They jabbed me in the torso with sharp fingers like pool cues. They sprayed my pulsing cheeks with a mist of warm saliva. They crushed my frail body like an orange between two dumbbells.
Suffocated with fear and rage and frustration and despair, I threw my head backward and roared like a trapped bear. I dropped to my knees in the mud and clutched a glass brick in each hand. I slopped to my feet in desperation and thrashed my body in a wild frenzy.
~
Steve Gergley is the author of The Great Atlantic Highway & Other Stories (Malarkey Books ’24), Skyscraper (West Vine Press ’23), and A Quick Primer on Wallowing in Despair (Leftover Books ’22). His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in X‑R-A‑Y Literary Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Maudlin House, Passages North, Always Crashing, Rejection Letters, and others. In addition to writing fiction, he has composed and recorded five albums of original music. He tweets @GergleySteve. His fiction can be found at: https://stevegergleyauthor.wordpress.com/