David paced over and over across his beach deck, heartbroken. He had told himself a hundred times what she had done to him but the details stung fresh and moved back and back to their source. And rolled in waves of ache where he was slapped and washed across the deck over and over. He was a ship in a bottle, shook up, never to make it out to sea. He was turned on the tides again and again.
Teresa walked home in the heat and felt everyones eyes hungry. They looked on from street corners, bus stops, front stoops like panting dogs, all slobbering. She saw with their eyes each part of her body as a cut of meat and desperately slung her arm across her chest. She wished their owners would pull back on their collars, heeling them, wimpering at the leash. But they had none, so she ate herself before they could.
In the heat, Andy felt like he was swimming in a pool of himself. His pockets hung heavy with sweat and he emptied them out onto the sidewalk. He saw two children darting and dodging, playing tag and running towards him. He cursed their glands. As they neared, they pulled out bubble wands and blew in his direction; one landed on his cheek, a fat sloppy kiss. He whirled and screamed at them and the children cried cold tears that wicked away their sweat. Andy walked home, hot as hell.
Everything that Richard saw burned him— a Cardinal gliding from a tree, a bicycle whizzing and clinking chains, a homeless man shaking a change cup on the street. The burns started at his eyes and radiated over his whole body. At night, he put on aloe in vain, moaning in pain and unable to sleep.
One night things moved beyond unbearable and Richard let out a piercing scream. And as he did, thousands of seeds shot out of his mouth, collecting in a cloud above him. And soon began to touch down gently on his body, where they slowly took root and began to grow.
Everyone thought Rupert was crazy. He stood in the corner bookstore in his raggedy coat and touched books all day but never read them. He smelled their spines and ran his fingers down the lines of their pages. He said each book was electric, that you didn’t need to read them to know.
One day a young woman came into the store to use the internet so she could download books on her kindle. Rupert, seeing her across the room had an overwheming need to touch her. As he reached out for her shoulder, she shrieked and ran out the door. At that moment, Rupert wished he was cut in to thousands of tiny little pieces, so that he could be downloaded and read.
The friends loved nicole. She worked three days a week so she could party four. She brought booze and they all screamed into the pale pale dawn. When she decided to move to Puerto Rico, teaching five days a week, her friends were sad and sober. But then they smiled because they knew that they could always find her in the bottom of their bottles.
Bill waited for the 9:45 train that was already an hour late. He had nearly missed his meeting and every anxious minute he spent he grew fatter. He broke noses and bruised stomachs as the line cinched tighter. Fifteen minutes later, buttons popped and he exploded, shooting organs like confetti; his head went off like a firecracker. The line of patrons cheered and sang and closed tighter, waiting for the next one to go.
Michael wanted the perfect son, so when the child was born, he put a mask on him. It sparkled in the glasses of his party guests. The child grew up uneventfully until he began to feel a tingling at his ears, an itch on his forehead he couldn’t scratch. He began to smell rotting flesh. And then finally, in the mirror, touching gently with his fingers, he felt the mask. And went home and bashed his head into the seven stair stoop.
As Jane walked home from work, she ripped flowers out of their beds and drank them. She wrung out each pulpy gulp and reached, crazed for the next one. In the golden hour, vines poked out of her calves. At home, they worked their way upward, gripping her thighs, wrapping below her stomach. In bed, they cinched their way up her chest and wound tightly around her neck. She gasped in her sleep, choking till morning.
Peter ate sixty seven tootsie rolls a day and grew thinner. He was convinced he had a hamster in his stomach. His arms turned into toothpicks and his cheeks sucked in. He ate three cakes in a row and seven bottles of whipped cream, and cried and said he couldn’t taste sweet.
