Tammy Peacy ~ Nothing Will Be Salvaged

So pay atten­tion, will you?

~

The philo­den­dron will live for some time after Daniel dies. Plants don’t think, sur­vival their only con­cern. A yearn­ing towards growth and sprawl, light and nour­ish­ment. Were the code of the plant’s final crav­ings to be deci­phered and trans­lat­ed into a lan­guage humans under­stand the last thought of the philo­den­dron would be of thirst.

When the men in the white space suits come noth­ing will be sal­vaged. As they clear Daniel’s apart­ment of his remains and his belong­ings, they’ll throw the plant into a dumpster.

~

Upon shoul­ders bor­rowed from an old man, he car­ries a heav­i­ness into his apart­ment build­ing. He stops briefly to tap light­ly at the door of the woman down­stairs. If it opens. If one fea­ture is revealed. He press­es the side of his face to the paint­ed met­al. There is silence.

He mounts the stairs to his apartment.

His mind churns with mem­o­ries of Sherri as he fas­tens the rope, long since fash­ioned into a loop, over the pipe in his clos­et. He tugs his dress­er to the clos­et door, pulls it part way inside, and climbs on top. Reaches for the noose. Checks the length. Holds the rope to his cheeks for a minute or two, maybe an hour, maybe more. Takes in the earthy, woodsy smell of rope, the rough­ness of it against his skin, con­sid­ers the last tex­ture, the last scent. Will it mat­ter if he holds the rope this way for twen­ty years?

The box on the shelf over­flows with pock­et note­books con­tain­ing all of his min­utes. A check is done and he finds there is no desire to review the pages.

He miss­es Sherri’s skin.

He clos­es his eyes. He opens his eyes.

He can’t decide.

He wipes his hands on his jeans.

He clos­es his eyes.

He should have answered the phone. With the noose snug around his neck, he fol­lows this rev­e­la­tion forward.

He push­es the dress­er back with his feet.

His eyes open.

Pretty soon he doesn’t think at all.

The next time any­one sees him he is a rea­son to take up the carpet.

~

The route to her is the same, in reverse, as the one he had tak­en away from her. It seemed to him back then it was this part of the city or the woman who’d raised him hold­ing him back.   His life a prob­lem of geog­ra­phy and genetics.

His moth­er has been sick. Her sis­ter calls his job to tell him his moth­er is dying. And what he wants to know is how did these peo­ple find him?

From the bus stop he sees the Emergency Room entrance. He is in no hur­ry and waits for two men to pass. The men he rec­og­nizes by their lack of bur­den in both coun­te­nance and stride as res­i­dents of the old hotel around the cor­ner. Also iden­ti­fi­able is the indif­fer­ence he expe­ri­ences with the real­iza­tion that lit­tle has changed in this part of the city.

Ignoring the sig­nage implor­ing she smokes 500 feet from the build­ing his aunt draws from a cig­a­rette jut­ted between her fin­gers. Tall, dark hair, dark eyes. As he approach­es, she drops the butt onto the side­walk, crush­es it beneath her thonged foot.

“Oh, you,” she says, her arms an invi­ta­tion. She looks so like his moth­er he doesn’t want to be near­er. She puts her hands on their oppo­site shoulders.

“Well, I could tell it was you. You look just like your dad­dy.” She con­sid­ers him a moment longer.

The doors open with a swoosh. He fol­lows at her heels. She had known his father. Into and out of the ele­va­tor, she drawls about the trip up, how sad it is to see her sis­ter so sick, how strong he must be, how she wish­es they’d all been clos­er over the years. She paus­es and turns to him.

“You don’t need to hear my whin­ing. She’s been your mom­ma and all.” She looks at him the way his moth­er nev­er had: soft, with skin imprint­ed by smiles, crin­kled at the edges of her mouth and eyes.

They reach his mother’s room. His aunt touch­es his arm. He does not pull back.

“You go on in by your­self,” she says.

The room smells of anti­sep­tic and urine. There are flow­ers in a vase emit­ting a bit­ter fra­grance that sits just atop the sick air.

In bed with hoses and tubes in dif­fer­ent parts of her is his moth­er. He doesn’t know what is wrong, hasn’t seen her in a long time. He’d come too late. Tight, swollen skin, pur­plish where her arms rest on the bed, tells him she’d died while no one was pay­ing attention.

Then her dis­tend­ed tor­so heaves with effort. Then she is still again. Then anoth­er shud­der as her chest deflates, as air escapes.

Out the win­dow are the win­dows of the rooms, offices, and hall­ways of anoth­er wing of this hos­pi­tal. There can’t be anoth­er per­son who is as uncom­fort­able, as use­less, as he. To be in anoth­er room in that oth­er part of the hos­pi­tal, to stand at the side of any­one else’s deathbed. He counts the win­dows and then the win­dow­panes. In one a woman stands there, fac­ing him, obscured by the tint­ed glass. She rais­es her hand. He rais­es his.

“Danny,” his moth­er says. He turns. It’s been a long time since anyone’s used his name. He feels a cer­tain, sud­den lone­li­ness. A quick tug inward at his center.

He steps clos­er, lis­ten­ing for final words. “Yes?”

Her eyes are sealed by the bloat of her cheeks. His eyes move to the clock on the wall to avoid the strug­gle of her mouth twist­ing to speak.

“Every time I think of you, I cry,” is what he hears. There is a soft­en­ing in the hard place he keeps for her. He asks her to repeat it and she says, “Everything you know is a lie.”

“What about my father? Your sis­ter said I look like him.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

In the hall, his aunt waits. She is his aunt Leslie. When he is a boy she vis­its, brings him small toys and pen­ny can­dy. His moth­er nev­er lets him eat the can­dy or keep the toy cars and plas­tic hors­es. When she doesn’t come back after a while, he for­gets her.

“Where is my father?” he asks Aunt Leslie. The crin­kle of her eyes remain kind as she replies, “He’s dead. Died before you were born.”

“Oh.”

It isn’t kind­ness her face dis­plays. Had it been this all along?

“It’s okay. You know, me and your mom­ma, we didn’t have a dad­dy neither.”

Hope is weight­less until it’s leaving.

As he boards the bus back to his part of the city, he no longer seeks escape from her dis­ap­point­ment nor the bur­den to sat­is­fy, all the while know­ing her expec­ta­tions have no ceil­ing. This heav­i­ness Daniel car­ries to his apart­ment is knowledge.

He’s become the yel­low flow­ers dec­o­rat­ing the edge of his anniver­sary cake.

~

He works in the mail­room of a trade mag­a­zine ful­fill­ment house. The base­ment is a large room filled with emp­ty desks and sort­ing tables. This is his work­space. There’s no tele­phone, but there is a pri­vate restroom. Since email he’s the only per­son who works down here.   Co-work­ers are not missed. He prefers work­ing alone.

His job goes like this:

At a cer­tain time each day, a sack of mail is deposit­ed into a small ele­va­tor which opens to the mail­room. The envelopes are spread onto a sort­ing table, and opened with a thin, point­ed mail open­er. The final task is to sort the con­tents of the envelopes by depart­ment and then by recip­i­ent into a wall of cub­by­holes open on two sides; the mail can be retrieved with­out the retriev­er enter­ing the mail­room. It goes this way for sev­en and a half hours every day.

His paid thir­ty-minute lunch— a sand­wich, a piece of fruit, a soda— he takes at his desk. As he eats, he rifles through note­book pages and reflects on his time slots for when he fin­ish­es in the mail­room. Groceries: 38 min­utes; a movie at home: 108 min­utes; fos­sil hunt­ing at the beach: 24 min­utes. He chews, swal­lows. Drinks; swal­lows. Then lunch is over and he sorts the mail.

If he fin­ish­es sort­ing ear­ly, he tidies his work­space. Scrubs the cor­ners where the mops of the three-times-week­ly clean­ing crew push all the gunk and dirt from the rest of the floor.   He dusts the light fix­tures. Wipes the under­sides of work­ta­bles with a damp cloth.

He has worked in the mail­room for eleven years. The com­pa­ny gives him a par­ty for being a Part of the Team for so long. That’s what it says inside the card all the exec­u­tives sign,   “Thanks for being a Part of the Team!”

A cof­fee mug with a paint­ed-on orange cat is left on a table. A sil­ver Happy Anniversary bal­loon is tied to the mug. The bal­loon is tied with a blue rib­bon. Someone sprin­kles con­fet­ti onto the work­ta­bles. Mail is deliv­ered with extra sparkle.

In bed that night he tal­lies the details of the day:

Everyone in the build­ing comes to the base­ment and con­grat­u­lates him, then takes a piece of the cake pro­vid­ed by the ladies at the front desk. On the cake in blue gel script is  “Congrats! 10th Year.” There are hard, yel­low sug­ar flow­ers along the edge of the cake.

People he has nev­er seen come down to say, “Ten years, eh? Congratulations!” Then they take a slice of cake. Then the cake is gone. His last vis­i­tor is the guy who asks, “Any cake left?”

At the end of the day, sort­ing tables are seed­ed with cake-crumb soiled paper plates sprout­ing picked off yel­low flowers.

~

In his bed­room is a large clos­et. Inside the clos­et there is a strong pipe. The build­ing is old and there have been no updates to con­ceal its inter­nal work­ings. He push­es his dress­er to the clos­et and climbs on top. He toss­es a length of rope over the pipe and tugs. Twists the rope around his arms and hangs there, his thighs against the dress­er, until his fin­gers and fore­arms are raw with burns and his shoul­ders feel pulled from their sockets.

Suspended there, he doesn’t feel. Hanging from the rope, he disappears.

~

A note arrives via the postal ser­vice addressed to him in the mail­room. He doesn’t remem­ber telling her about his job. How did she find him here? It’s the only mail he’s received at work.  There isn’t a cub­by in the wall for him, so he places the enve­lope on an emp­ty sort­ing table.   He looks at it most of the day but waits until the end of his shift to open it.

It says this:

I was going to do it any­way. It isn’t ‘cos you didn’t answer the phone. Sort of is. It didn’t have to be you. It would be any­one. It just was you. I don’t want you to feel too bad. You are a pussy for not answer­ing the phone. I’m sor­ry I said you looked like a ser­i­al killer. P.S. Pills and booze in case you’re wondering.

He folds the piece of paper and slips it into his pock­et. He decides to always remem­ber Sherri. A few weeks lat­er, when lit­tle blis­ters form on the tip of his penis and open into weep­ing sores, her place in his his­to­ry is secured.

~

This site promis­es, “Hot Young Girls in Your Town Are Waiting to Screw YOU!”

According to her pro­file she is twen­ty-three, just look­ing to feel… real. She uses words rather than acronyms and he is fond of ellipses. Her pic­tures show a thick-limbed girl with bangs com­ing to a point between dark-rimmed blue eyes. In one pho­to her skin is milk poured into a black busti­er, a shot show­ing her back and side. He wants this liv­ing cliché, has an urge to lick the small sausagey roll of flesh pro­trud­ing between her armpit and the laced garment.

He expects rejec­tion but sends a shad­owy shot of his face tak­en with his web­cam. He includes a short mes­sage and his phone num­ber. He clos­es the com­put­er away in the wardrobe and is think­ing of her skin and its strug­gle to escape her top when the phone rings.

“Come over right now.” She doesn’t ask.

“Who is this?” he asks, fear­ing the woman with the peri­patet­ic eye.

“Sherri. Come over now.”

Though his bi-annu­al Botox injec­tions have proven a wor­thy invest­ment, he takes an icy show­er, dries until the towel’s soft­ness hurts, and pats his arms and legs with pow­der. He walks jack­et­less through the cold air out­side and fights his anx­i­eties by count­ing the sec­tions of side­walk. Sherri is six-hun­dred-thir­teen con­crete squares away.

She has a one-room effi­cien­cy with­in a mul­ti-fam­i­ly Victorian house in one of the city’s old­er neigh­bor­hoods. Her place, he feels upon enter­ing, can use a good clean­ing. Then the lights are on. It should be burned. It occurs to him that he should flee, but he is horny and her clothes are gath­er­ing in a pile at her feet.

It has been a very long time since he’s been with a woman he is attract­ed to.

When it’s over, they lay glis­ten­ing on a drenched sheet. He is on his back try­ing to place a smell in the apart­ment. Sherri rolls onto her side, a cig­a­rette between her fin­gers, mas­cara smeared along the side of her face.

“Don’t take this wrong,” she says, blows smoke into his nos­trils. “But when you sent your pic­ture? I had to find out what it would be like to fuck some­body who’s so. You know?”

He doesn’t know.

She smiles and sits up. Ash rolls over her breasts. He brush­es it away. She scowls.

“Sure, you do. Fuck.” She picks at the fuzz pills on her blan­ket. “You know? Your pic­ture. You’re kind of creepy.”

The smell is unwashed dish­es or a bag of ripened trash for­got­ten under the sink. Or not in the kitch­enette. These sheets?

He’d stay, but she says, “No sleepovers.”

Every night since the first night, late, after one a.m., she calls him to her apart­ment. Never asks. Her tim­ing is con­ve­nient as he hasn’t allot­ted a time slot to the hours he would be sleeping.

Their rou­tine goes like this:

He arrives through the rear entrance (“The woman in 2B is a nosy bitch”). Leaves his shoes and socks in the hall­way (“Why do they smell like that?”). Washes his feet in the bath­tub and rubs in scent­ed lotion. His lotioned feet col­lect crumbs and cig­a­rette ash as he cross­es to the bed.

He removes his clothes. She is already naked and some­times beneath and some­times on top of the com­forter. He doesn’t tell her, but it’s best when she’s on top of it. He folds his clothes and places them on the clean­est sur­face, the top of her boxy television.

She asks him what he wants to do to her. He tells her. She demands dirt­i­er. He tells her. The game rests when she is sat­is­fied that he has accessed the dirt­i­est reach of his imag­i­na­tion.  Then he does it. She shouts a lot. Yells to God and Jesus, swears at them. She cries. A lot. He tries not to be embar­rassed for her.

He asks her one question.

In her bed, sheets pulled up to just under the crease of her bel­ly but­ton, Sherri is smok­ing a cig­a­rette. Ash pep­pers the sheet. He is on his side watch­ing her watch ten­drils of smoke loop over and through one anoth­er, reach­ing for the ceil­ing, before set­tling in amongst the map of age and struc­tur­al neglect.

They have just fin­ished for the sec­ond time. He hasn’t done it twice in one night with any oth­er women. Should he love her for this? He wants to run his fin­gers over the bare skin of her bel­ly, to flick his tongue over her unmarred shoul­der. Grows hard think­ing about it.  Instead of doing any of that, his fin­gers go to the white scars on her arm, some as wide as cater­pil­lars and he asks:

“Why did you do this?”

She snorts, smoke flows from her mouth and nose.

“Are you fuck­ing kid­ding me?” She jerks her body away from him. The bed shakes.

“Why? How dare you?”

His penis with­ers. He sits up.

“Sorry,” he mut­ters. “I’ll go.”

He gath­ers his clothes from the tele­vi­sion. She laughs and swears behind him.

“Yeah, you’ll fuck­ing go.” She extin­guish­es her cig­a­rette in a tum­bler of flat soda and pulls the blan­kets over her breasts, rolls away from him.

He dress­es as he walks out the door. He puts on his shoes and socks while sit­ting on the front stoop.

“Why do you look like a fuck­ing ser­i­al killer?” she shouts from the bed, through the open win­dow. As he walks his hand goes to the pock­et of his jeans where most men keep a wal­let and he real­izes he’s left his note­book behind. He con­tin­ues toward home.

It isn’t the one-sided fight or what she said that caus­es him to miss her call lat­er that night.

He hears a whimper.

From his bed he hears the whim­per turn moan. The woman down­stairs is mak­ing love to some­one in her apart­ment. He gets out of bed and crawls to the heat reg­is­ter. He has nev­er heard this hap­pen­ing before.

The phone rings as he picks out the sounds: the squeak of bed springs, a man’s breath­ing, and her words, tin­ny as they’re fil­tered through the duct­work, spo­ken low and qui­et. The phone rings again. And again. Lengths of silence short­en between the squeaks. The man grunts. Her moans become loud­er. The phone rings and he reach­es to unplug it. It is qui­et at the reg­is­ter; he’s missed her climax.

He plugs in the phone. It rings. And again comes the whimper.

He unplugs the phone.

He crouch­es on the floor with his ear to the grate. There. Quiet sounds, muf­fled words. He unbut­tons the flap on his paja­mas and puts his hand inside, he imag­ines her breath on his neck, in his ear. He has oth­er imag­in­ings. He press­es clos­er to the register.

He is sure she would nev­er scream or thrash about, or dig black pol­ished fin­ger­nails into his per­spir­ing back, nor cry real, anguished tears at the moment of her orgasm.

As he lis­tens and works inside his paja­ma bot­toms a mem­o­ry he doesn’t want forces into his head. An apart­ment where he lives as a child. He talks to the chil­dren who live below through the heat­ing vents. His moth­er catch­es him.

“It’s none of your busi­ness what peo­ple do in pri­vate,” she says through her teeth as she swats him. “Disgusting.”

Did Sherri return online to find some­one to keep her com­pa­ny in his absence? He hopes so. The day he moves into this apart­ment a plant rests in an inch of yel­lowed water in a mason jar, half on and half off the win­dowsill. He pots the plant, which is with­ered and turn­ing brown, and sus­pends it in a macramé nest from a hook in the ceil­ing in front of the kitchen win­dow. The plant thrives in his care, and he secures its trail­ing shoots over the drap­ery rod.   The spade shaped leaves on their vine‑y stems serve as cur­tain. He looks up its name and decides that if any plant can be con­tent then it is so for this philodendron.

He seg­ments days into min­utes, and the min­utes are sort­ed into slots and for every time slot there is an activ­i­ty assigned. There are slots for brush­ing his teeth: 7 min­utes. Slots for mas­tur­bat­ing: 13 min­utes. Slots for meals—Breakfast: 15 min­utes; Lunch: 30 min­utes; Dinner: 20 min­utes. He writes it all in a lit­tle book he car­ries in his pock­et. When the book is full, he places it in a box on a shelf in the clos­et of his bedroom.

One cor­ner of his liv­ing room hous­es a large wardrobe, which he’s con­vert­ed with a piece of ply­wood and a few two by fours into a hide-away desk. He sits with his lap­top at this desk and some­times he meets women on the Internet. He fre­quents sites promis­ing “Sex TONITE with a HOTT girl in your town!” Searching has a time slot: 22 min­utes, two nights per week.   The women will­ing to meet with him after pic­tures are exchanged are not HOTT. Not even a lit­tle pret­ty. Most of the women, how­ev­er, are not too unat­trac­tive to have sex with (time allot­ted: 47 min­utes, includ­ing travel).

One woman he meets has an eye loose in its sock­et. In bed he focus­es on her fore­head. Counts the bumps of her pop­corn ceil­ing. She calls the next day. Leaves a mes­sage: Thank you. Call me. Please.

~

Daniel steals two of his mother’s san­i­tary nap­kins from the cab­i­net under the bath­room sink. He stuffs them down the front of his pants and pulls his shirt over the bulge. He clears the hall­way and slips into his bed­room where he locks the door. Onto his bed he spreads a fresh t‑shirt tugged from its hang­er and yanked inside out. From his crotch he retrieves the rags, tucked away inside lit­tle plas­tic cov­ers. He opens a pouch, takes out a pad, unfolds it. He runs the palm of his hand over the cot­tony sur­face and feels a flut­ter in his mid­sec­tion. He peels away the paper back­ing. Presses the sticky side of the pad to the armpit of the inside-out t ‑shirt. He does this a sec­ond time. He rolls the plas­tic cov­ers and paper strips into balls and toss­es them beneath his dresser.

Standing before the mir­ror he pulls off his flan­nel. Removes his damp t‑shirt. Slips the new t‑shirt over his head, care­ful not to dis­turb the pads. Makes adjust­ments— a tuck, a pull— attempts to con­ceal the bulk under his arms. If he keeps his arms tight to his sides the lumps are almost not there.

By the third day there are two nap­kins left under the sink.

He’s walk­ing to the store to fetch anoth­er box when he feels a slip and then a slide, down and out of his shirt, onto the ground. He paus­es. “Excuse me?” comes a voice. His cheeks red­den. His back prick­les. Sweat gath­ers and absorbs into the elas­tic of his underwear.

“You dropped someth—”

He moves his legs for­ward; quick­ened his pace. Wants to run from where he sees her in his mind as she bends to retrieve the fall­en object. Perhaps she thinks it is a piece of paper, an enve­lope. She is bent and reach­ing, her fin­ger­tips graze the moist edge as she reg­is­ters the item and recoils. As her voice trails off, he is pierced by imag­ined dis­gust and real aware­ness, rein­forc­ing what he has until this point refused to accept ful­ly. He is not an ordi­nary guy, isn’t quite right and because of it, though he will nev­er unrav­el the why, life will be dif­fer­ent for him.

He can’t know what actu­al­ly hap­pens with the woman, which could be this: She stops, bends to retrieve the dropped item, sees it and is con­fused. She stands and looks over at the reced­ing boy, guess­es him to be about the age of her son, maybe sev­en­teen; they share an unsure and awk­ward gait. She is mis­tak­en. It had been lying there this whole time. Or maybe he isn’t a boy— he’s one of those poor zom­bies who live in that old hotel down­town; allowed to wan­der the city as long as they show up for med­ica­tion four times a day. Though pity tugs at her mid­sec­tion, she cross­es the street and slows her pace to get far behind him.

He rounds the block back to the small rental he shares with his moth­er. The heat of his embar­rass­ment burns bright in his ears and the high points of his face. His moth­er stands on the front stoop of their shoe­box home, halfway in and out of the screen door that takes two hands and a foot to latch closed prop­er­ly. Her arms are crossed. In her left hand dan­gles the near emp­ty box of pads.

“I don’t want to know. I don’t. You will go to the store and buy me a new box. Right now,” she says. “And, Danny, take this so you know which brand.”

~

This is his count­ing sheep:

He recalls the parts of his day. The flecks in the car­pet in the nurse’s office where he faked a stom­ach ache to avoid gym class again; the smell of the school cafe­te­ria— bread and bland­ness mixed with meaty sauces and gravies; the knit of his mother’s blue dress, the criss­cross, tiny Ls all in a row; the hap­pen­ings of that day, and the day before and the day before and so on. The very last slice he remem­bers each night is his father.

His father had been there and had loved him, and some­where, loves him still. He doesn’t under­stand why this should be impor­tant, only that it is. His father’s face nev­er pulls into focus. It remains a hazy sil­hou­ette at best, but each night Daniel hears his father’s voice, low, hum­ming, and mut­ter­ing words he can’t make out just before he kiss­es him goodnight.

~

Daniel’s grade school days are high­light­ed by pokes from just sharp­ened pen­cils dur­ing a math quiz, chil­dren gath­ered on the play­ground to call him names or spit on him, wads of wet paper tow­el­ing thrown at the back of his head as he stands at a uri­nal. They aren’t clever chil­dren, but they are very clean and pret­ty and dry.

There is an under­stand­ing of his pur­pose and his pur­pose is this: To make the pret­ty chil­dren feel even better.

He is a sep­a­rate kind of boy.

There is his damp­ness, and the wet marks left on desk­tops and oth­er sur­faces if his hands are still too long. He swipes them on the front pock­ets of his jeans, a ges­ture that devel­ops into a ner­vous tic as he grows old­er. His smile is a spasm tug­ging the cor­ners of his mouth, anx­ious, twitchy. His clothes are dif­fer­ent— items his moth­er choos­es at ran­dom from the clear­ance racks of thrift stores: pants too short and shirts with loud, col­or­ful prints, pop­u­lar the decade before, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to blend into brick walls.

He bounces a four-square ball against the equip­ment shed. After a while of this he hooks his feet through the mon­key bars and hangs upside down until his vision ignites with pin­points of col­or and light. He los­es the now of his life.

His teach­ers describe him as Melancholy and Withdrawn in his Permanent Record.

On Saturdays his moth­er sends him to the Y, where they have a free mem­ber­ship. When he is sup­posed to be swim­ming, he sits behind the bleach­ers in the gym­na­si­um and waits for the time to be up. He takes a show­er with his suit on and walks home in it.

On Sundays, she sends him to church where he earns a full-sized can­dy bar for mem­o­riz­ing, in order, the books of the New Testament. He learns of a giant book, big­ger than Earth, and how the names of every per­son who has ever lived are writ­ten there, start­ing with Adam and then Eve. Next to the names are lists of the good and bad the peo­ple record­ed in the book have done and the good and bad they will do. His Sunday school teacher tells him that when he dies his list will be read. His eter­ni­ty will be deter­mined by what is writ­ten there on that day. That day is called Judgment Day and it is com­ing soon.

By the time he moves up to the pre-teen Youth Group, the great book has become a film. His life, the good and the bad, from end to begin­ning on a giant screen inside him: clips of steal­ing from his moth­er, deny­ing love, and play­ing with him­self, an unend­ing reel-to-real, loop­ing again, and again.

Eventually it will be dig­i­tal and in real time. God is get­ting lazy.

~

This is what’s going to happen:

The pret­ty chil­dren will grow up and stop spit­ting and pok­ing and begin to ignore unpleas­ant­ness. They’ll paint over any mis­ery in bright shades of cor­po­rate jobs and lines of cred­it, pret­ty chil­dren of their own and mini vans. The pret­ty grown-ups plas­ter smiles to their sag­ging faces with anti-depres­sants and alco­hol. They cov­er the despon­den­cy of their own pret­ty chil­dren with amphet­a­mines, music lessons, and smartphones.

The pret­ty grown-ups embrace him and claim him as Our Man of Sadness, patron saint of fear at how a life might turn out.

After many years spent reg­u­lat­ing his hours and min­utes, Daniel will leave the mail­room one day and vis­it his moth­er in the hos­pi­tal. He hasn’t seen her in twelve years. At some point after he returns home from that vis­it, he’ll hang himself.

There will be no epiphany. To those who pay atten­tion, it won’t be a surprise.

~

Tammy Peacy has pub­lished three col­lec­tions of short fic­tion: Too Also And As Well, The Color Magenta Does Not Exist, and On a Clear Day You Can See Chicago. She lives and writes in SE Wisconsin.