Dr. Heller never mentioned his problem, but everyone at the clinic knew about it. We were shocked by how normal he acted afterwards. He didn’t even take a sick leave or anything. A couple of days after his incident, Judy decides to bring in a vase of flowers for his office, some ugly artificial thing with a heavy cluster of lilies and roses and ferns. Dr. Heller thanks her and sticks his face in them and we all laugh because we think he's fucking with us. Turns out, he thought they were real.

Judy later discovers him in his office and we can hear her screams throughout the building.

The clinic is in a state of excitement, the staff milling around. Everyone keeps saying that he was fine all morning. We keep saying, how could this have happened. We keep talking about what we could have looked for, the warning signs. We repeat how much we miss him. A get-well card circulates around the clinic and everyone signs it from their hierarchical order of importance—the surgeons, anesthesiologists, RNs, the receptionists, even the fat, ugly custodian who only creeps in after everyone leaves for the day.

We draw lots to elect a person to go visit him. Our clinic’s been a family for more than ten years and is heavily involved in each other’s lives. We take care of our own. (Only the receptionists get recycled out every so often for newer, younger candidates. We take pride in appearances here.) Also, everyone is dying for more news about the late and great doctor.

No one volunteers to go, so we draw lots. I get chosen. They all clap my back and say, sucks to suck.

He is a beautiful man. His forehead is taut, his eyes etch upwards at the corners. The sides of his nose are perfectly symmetrical lines. With a ruler, you can measure the alignment of his eyes to his ears. Even now, hunched forward with his shoulders drawn up so he looks like a turtle receding into a shell, his flesh is smooth and hard like plastic. He adjusts his position over the edge of the bench as if uncomfortable, and his hands are spread claws digging into the wood.

Smile Dr. Heller, I say and lean closer to him. I take a picture of us on my phone, me with a huge smile and Dr. Heller looking lost.

The sun is out, but it’s cold. The sunshine deceives us. We sit on a bench on the lawn. His personal caregiver is in a chair a few yards away from us and glances at us over the cover of her book.

He is wealthy enough to have escaped the indignity of sanitariums, where they throw together the psychotic and the mentally ill indiscriminately. He has that small mercy for him. His wife is filing for divorce now, I hear, and will soon have sole custody of the kids and house, a substantial fortune built upon the splicing and reconstruction of flesh. Maybe this is his punishment for tampering with natures works, sullied as they are. Maybe this is punishment for playing God.

I take his face with my hands and kiss him. I feel his perfectly sculpted lips with my tongue.

It’s ok, Dr. Heller.

You’ll get over this.

Everyone at the clinic misses you.

Remember Mrs. Lebowitz? She threw a fit when we told her you went on vacation. She says no other doctor in the city does skin as good as you.

It’s dark when I leave. The neighborhood is unsettling in its quiet, undisturbed by traffic or people. I miss the dirty mess and the noise of the city. The stars are like dim, sad echoes of the city lights.

But, if I crane my head, I can see the city lights glow like a distant fire.

The oldest breathed water and wouldn't stay in the sea. Sprinting across the crags, he lived puddle to puddle. Why not just stay in the ocean? But I think he was broken.

The second found cadavers that walked and talked and kissed but were dead. Second would give them pieces of his soul so they could glow, but soul isn't sunlight.

Third lived in a cloud fishing for people. When he caught them he would reel them up and eat them. Little stink pieces of heart and blood dripped from the vapor. I would have liked Third, maybe. At least he knew there were worse things than being lonely.

Fourth lived by an ugly statue, a humpty dumpty god. At night he burned his hands in fireplaces, and in the morning he pieced the monument together with Third-World tools. Noon, he would write poetry on its corpse.

When the Fourth died, there were no children to complete his work. But dying isn’t disappearing.

These were my brothers. They speak to me and they make me want to do terrible things.

("Think Outside the Lines!")

By the time we get to the venue

our department table is filled

so we sit at an empty one

on the edge of the auditorium.

As our coworkers laugh

like the cool kids at school,

we fill up on stale bagels

and coffee that tastes like

charcoal and heartburn

and study the day’s agenda

(holy fuck, the ice breaker

is an hour long!)

and try not to look too desperate,

as seats fill around us. 

Introductions are made, 

the speaker thanks us for the

honor of being there and

…organizations work together to

demonstrate the creativity

and innovation happening in…

two members of the admin team,

late to the party, join us at

the rejects table. We stiffen,

straighten up unconsciously,

hide our game of hangman

and doodles, take copious notes

…only YOU get to define the

parameters of this game…

as the cool table laugh and talk

loudly among themselves

the admin women stir

and mutter to each other,

a storm is brewing

right in front of us,

and I nudge my coworker

…this is about how you present

yourselves to the community…

I could warn my friends, but

I don’t. One of the ladies,

the one with the severe gray bob,

cat-eye glasses, mouth twisted down,

marches over to them

and "whispers" loudly, so that

the entire auditorium can hear:

Y’all are being too loud

and distracting—show

some respect.

The table silences at once

and the speaker continues

as if nothing has happened

…we want to be active versus

passive—we want people 

to come to us…

The real estate agent tells her to reconsider. She says she has some truly amazing houses to show before she makes a decision. But I’m watching Evelyn not listen to her, and I see how she looks at the place with that little half smile of hers, that twitch of the finest lines around her mouth, wrinkling and smoothing over in an instant, and I know that nothing is going to dissuade her from purchasing this shitty, dilapidated house.

Friends and family make their appeals. She tells them I know I’ve heard the rumors, that’s all they are, rumors raised from nothing, created for the sake of gossip and for scaring naive outsiders, do people talk of nothing else in this shitty little hick town.

I only want what Evelyn wants, it’s been so long since she's wanted anything. I think she'll finally be able to start over here, maybe this will make her forget and live. But people keep telling her things she doesn't want to hear and they all sounded like variations of a theme, so finally she stops answering calls altogether.

I’m worried about the amount of work needed to make this thing halfway livable and Evelyn looks so wan and lost all the time. Here she is alone with this monster derelict house and each day is spring cleaning and after that there is still more work to be done.

Evelyn works sunup until she collapses in bed at night.

I'm sick of these halfway places, she says to no one. 

Evelyn, pretty Evelyn, I’ll never forget the day I ran after you in the rain, barefoot in the park, with Caleb just beginning to jut out of your stomach, and I was running after you yelling for you to stop, scared but laughing because you were laughing and you were beautiful in the rain with your hair dripping down your face, you were so goddamned beautiful, it hurt to look at you.  

Now you walk around tired and quiet, with those sunken hungry eyes.

When was the last time you laughed?

Slowly the house becomes whole again. She polishes until every surface gleams, she puts in new windows, paints, organizes, reassembles. Her room upstairs overlooks the garden and pond in the back of the house. 

There are things here, hidden in the silence, that I don’t like to think about. And the force that drives Evelyn to fix this place—that scares me even more. 

Caleb was two years old. He was the perfect baby, quiet and uncomplaining. We worried that he was sleeping too much, too often and too deeply, and not eating enough. We were good at fretting—everything seemed like a potential disaster. 

You brought us here with you, didn’t you, I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to shake her, grip her by the shoulder so hard that she could feel my nails digging in her skin. You disturbed our baby's rest, how could you do it, Caleb just two years old and a barely visible lump underneath the blankets. You dug us up, God knows how you did it, you had to work with my decomposing weight and Caleb like a limp doll tucked under your arm. (They told you to cremate and you said no). Caleb he loved the color blue, he loved entwining his tiny perfect hands in his mother’s hair and pulling, he loved to sleep. A deep sleep, almost impossible to wake up. 

Sometimes at night after another exhausting day, I’ll keep watch over my wife’s sleeping form. She curls up in a fetal position with her hands protecting her stomach.

Evelyn, I heard a laugh I swear I heard it, last night it came from downstairs. I couldn’t tell where it could have come from, or if it were male or female or even human, but I know I’ve never heard it before, and you were asleep. And sometimes in that area she calls the living room, there’s voices and footfalls, the swish of clothing, things clattering to the floor.

Sometimes I hear her singing around the house. Once, I heard her laugh and that sound broke around the house, and all throughout it, and the silence was quieter afterwards.

She doesn't eat. Her sunken little face and the bruised sockets, the limp wrists, and sharp edges of her hip and ribs—I can't take it.

She is fading into the house. I'm helpless. She no longer has eyes I can recognize, those aren’t the hands I loved and held and promised to protect throughout life, death, world without end. She teeters up and down the halls, in and out of rooms. I hear her talk to things I can't see. She leaves me; she goes where I can’t follow. She’s so thin and translucent, sunlight streaming from the windows looks strong enough to hurt her, to melt her away. She floats on drafts throughout the house, and mirrors hide her passing.

The voices are so beautiful she says and I didn’t believe her but I see now. The whole house swells with their presence, with colors bursting and small ripples of light extending, and they are calling where are you and I say here I am here I am here—and they welcome me with voices raised and over the singing and the echoes of ringing colors I hear the voices of so many loved ones, I see Evelyn and she is holding in her arms our son and they are coming for me 

My

index

finger

pokes

the bridge

of my nose

pushing back

the glasses

that I

left

at

home

The dogs are barking again.

I'm sprawled on a heaping trash nest of clothes and towels and papers and plastic bags. I stare at the ceiling. I've been staring at the ceiling for hours. My ceiling looks like the moon's surface: sickly yellow-pale like old cottage cheese and riddled with craters.

Each bark is like a hammer blow to my head.

There are flies everywhere. My head is filled with buzzing. Blow flies and flesh flies and bloated house flies like black motors flying. They descend on the overflowing piles of trash. They dance in and out of the open drawers of the cabinets that lie upended on the floor. Everything in the room is crooked. The kitchen sink is clogged with stagnant ooze, where food chunks float on a sea of oily grease.

Someone runs above me, THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP

and the dogs chase after them barking, yelping, baying like the hounds of hell.

Things moving behind me, things moving in the mirrors and in the windows. There are voices, like swarms of flies, the voices are needles drilling the buzzing into my skin, and there are thousands of them. It fills up the back of my eyes. They are talking about me, but I can't make out what they say.

The dogs are barking and barking and barking. 

I’m standing on the table with a hammer and I swing that hammer over my shoulder and into ceiling. The dogs are going crazy as I bring the hammer harder and harder into the ceiling, punching holes, showering plaster on the carpet and into my hair and screaming face.

Have I been screaming the entire time?

Shouts from upstairs and I hear the neighbor's big booming voice as if he's right there in the room with me, “I’m going to fucking kill him!”

Stomping feet down the stairs, like an earthquake shaking my apartment. 

I throw the hammer one more time at the ceiling, where it bounces off and thuds to the carpet, and I run into the decaying, stinking kitchen with the dingy lightbulbs and grab the wooden block of large butcher knives and carry it back to the door. I tuck it into my left armpit and my right hand lands on the doorknob like a distorted fly, separate from my body.

The pounding on the door intensifies.

The dogs are still barking. The room spins in a blurry funnel of colors and noises, and the neighbor is yelling something with his fists battering the door inches from my face.

The fly opens the door. 

It’s warm here, with my brother and sisters.

Crowded.

We writhe inside the small enclosures of our eggs.

We are the half-formed: brown translucent pods jammed

side by side in the dark hollows of our host.

Soon, our brood mother says. Long, serpentine, beautiful. Soon.

And then—the drop.

We are the fallen, flung from the sky, clustered

in brown globules on the shadow of a leaf.

Come closer, slow-moving snail! 

We entice you with our shiny ovals.

Closer, closer.

You are a languid giant sailing across the leaves.

And you take the bait.

You swallow us down your gaping slime maw, and we

travel down the dark length of you.

There we grow.

We grow in this new dark, forming long tubes, interconnected.

We dig our tendrils into your neural circuits and drive you.

We allow you to travel

To where you want to go—for now— 

places cool and moist and dark

Running your creeping circuits around

dark undersides of mushrooms and rotten logs.

We are the broodsacs.

As we grow, we spread out into your eyestalks

preferring the left tentacle over the right, 

As we grow, we grow fonder of you, our lumbering ride

and life source

As we bloom, we dance and pulsate in bright green and yellow spirals

You cling to the darkness, giant snail, always

but we draw you to the light and

the warmth of the sun, which catch our colors,

(we pulse in light only)

We draw the energy for our dance

The dance of death

Drawing the eye of a new feathered host

Down, sharp beak, spearing into the soft flesh of you

And we are drawn into a familiar darkness, down, down— 

The cycle begins again.

the currents breaking in

find words

that can’t be washed

away

the pain, though tossed

in still waters, is not lost: it

spreads in the black

absence of you

and lingers

with the obstinacy

of rock-clinging things

how do I grasp these words

to cut through the gray matter

suspended into the silence

the mass of it rises

up slowly, blearily

mutely screaming

if i surface,

i’ll lose my hold

on you

and all these words

these words

will be forced

into being 

I’m a man of many names.

Father Shenanigans,

Ernest Henry,

Christ Michael,

Sergeant Jacobs,

Thomas Edison,

I’ve been in existence too long.

I know you well,

But I know you by other names.

You don’t even remember

that you are a fallen angel, 

do you?

We did some pretty wild things

back then,

Things I can’t mention here.

Do you know how long you’ve slept?

Eons. I almost gave up hope for you.

We had eons on either side of time,

past and future,

a linear scale,

where the negatives were just

weak replicas of ourselves.

I’m a vet, sergeant of the 7th division,

You can always tell marines apart,

they walk like they don’t give a shit.

If it's raining or hailing,

they'd still keep walking.

I pick out the old vets like me and

the younger generation marines—

They’re always good for a smoke or drink.

You like my nails?

I got them done here in town,

I like to support the local businesses.

Chinese lady did them.

Or maybe she was Vietnamese.

Something oriental.

She didn’t do exactly what I said,

I wanted a red, white, and blue stripe

on each nail.

Language barrier.

But the results are festive.

I’m a vet, got to support the troops.

This shows my patriotic devotion to

our country, and this state, even this city.

I love this shitty place, don’t you?

Fucking Santa Barbara—

what a sleepy place.

It needs to hear the wakeup call:

Wake the fuck up, Santa Barbara!

Don't worry,

I know those cops.

They aren’t so bad once you get to know them.

But never trust the quiet ones.

They listen with their big ears to the walls,

then squirrel that information for future use.

Is that half a cigarette by your feet?

I’ll smoke anything,

I don’t care.

I’m interchangeable, like Proteus.

Right now, I’m a snail, a turtle,

a crab-thing,

I carry my home with me, always.

Do you know how to protect yourself?

I’m talking about total incapacitation.

You have to kick them in the balls

and then head for the jugular.

You knock him out,

and don’t fucking let him get up.

Make sure that he’s down and stays down!

Then you carve your name into his skin.

Well, I guess not your real name—

That’ll get you caught.

Barister, Barister,

One coffee for a mister.

Look, I found one more messenger.

No more sleep for you sleepy angel,

now that I woke you up,

Nap time’s over.

Is that mocha for me?

I'm going to go get sugar packets.

I’m going to get all the sugar packets.

I know it’s already sweet—

I’m not fucking senile.

You can never have enough sweet.

Do you know what they say about

tall men roaming the earth?

Giants.

They're real.

Night walkers.

They’re real.

UFOs, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster—

They're all real.

You have to go back to the beginnings,

You have to, you have to—

Hey, I have an idea,

let’s go to Vegas.

Let’s plan it.

July 1st. Vegas.

We'll shoot pool and play roulette

and poker and craps.

Father Shenanigans and his messengers.

They’ll watch us drive down the Strip,

laughing at the fucking world.

In the beginning, in the garden of eden

Eve, my wife, ate the apple,

but god forgave us,

you don’t think he would have

barred his firstborn after one mistake?

I like apples,

Apples are wholesome and good for you.

That was not my doing,

not through my actions,

but the earth was.

I made the earth and its hollow.

The dinosaurs are hiding under the surface.

People think they went extinct

but they’re down there.

My time is almost up now.

And I’ll be going down to see them.

Look at the people walking

under the lights.

The streets are on fire at night

and no one knows that 

we are one power outage away

from eternal darkness.

The trouble is—the trouble is—

People get hard for disaster and chaos.

Before Sodom and Gomorrah fell into ruin,

before god smote them,

even on the brink of destruction

there were people who kept on

drinking

and partying

and worshiping their golden idols

and fucking,

because to face angry omnipotence,

to yell fuck you to the power wielder,

is the biggest high you can get—

it’s sexual energy and rage and joy.

That’s what it’s like to defy the gods.

I am man and entity.

Buddha only got it half right,

but he was mortal, the sad fuck,

and prone to man’s imperfections.

I made learning.

And learning made me suffer.

And eons of suffering means that

each experience,

each death and loss,

is like stabbing yourself with a knife

over and over,

familiar

unbearable

all at the same time—

And that is god.