You Scratch My Back

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JUNE

Eric pressed the gas pedal lightly, rolling into the intersection as he watched the silver Chrysler approaching from his left, and only realized at the last moment that the driver had no intention of stopping. He stomped his brakes, his hand going automatically to his horn, which blared through the quiet late-morning air, drawing looks from several children in the nearby play area as well as two couples taking advantage of the walking path. The Chrysler passed before him, and Eric saw its occupants: a pair of pale elderly women with glazed expressions submerged behind their glasses. Neither so much as glanced over at Eric as they passed within a few feet of his fender.

Eric let out the breath that had congealed in his throat, his heart going double time and bringing that pleasurable shiver of adrenaline ebbing as the danger rolled farther into the park. Eric shook his head and made his right turn, imagining the back of the Chrysler stuffed with folded-up wheelchairs or at least heavy-duty walkers. He smiled faintly, felt the itch of a laugh, and gave it voice for the sake of the levity it brought. He didn’t want to ruin things already, and he’d be damned if he’d let a couple of old bags sour his mood.

Eric’s phone vibrated on the seat next to him, and he fought the urge to grab for it; the cops liked to sit inside the park limits, watching for people doing over the interior 15 mph limit or violating the newly passed phone ban, just another way for his day to be ruined by someone else’s callous disregard. Eric pulled his car around a bend and, as if summoned, spotted the cop sitting in the pull-off, the front grille of his marked pickup truck extended into the lane. The cop was staring down at his own phone, his thumb and index finger working and his face lit by the spastically shifting colors of clip content. Eric drifted over to pass the truck, careful to ride but not cross the median lest this earn him a ticket for “reckless driving.” Once he was past, Eric let out another pent-up breath and took one in through his nose, extending it until the flicker of anger calmed and subsided back into annoyance. Then, as he envisioned the day before him, even this passed.

The phone finally stopped vibrating, and Eric felt something in him sag, not in defeat but in relief; he was nervous, terribly so, and the idea of speaking to Aidra again was sending him into a spiral of adrenaline that first matched and then overpowered that which the Chrysler and its old driver had induced. He felt sick in all the right ways, his head gone thick with heat and his chest tight and fluttering like he’d taken more stimulants than was good for him and was paying for his exuberance. Certainly Eric felt as if he’d done something wrong, something unwise. How else could he feel this good, this amazing, this wonderful, if not for some transgression? Like most people, Eric had been raised to believe that man’s truest desires all came from taboos, their knowledge, and the specific refusals which each and every person collected in their life, the certain rules which they broke just to get a thrilling jolt amidst the steady decline that was life. This was so ingrained within Eric that his infatuation with the woman he’d met at the shopping center seemed to him a lie almost the moment the initial rush tapered off. It was the innocence of it; certainly he’d imagined them together, their limbs locking about one another as their bodies rocked, but there’d been (as of yet) none of the glaring warning signs which had been in abundance with each prior liaison, no matter how mercifully brief or agonizingly enduring. Each warning sign had been acknowledged for what it was: a necessary future evil, an onrushing misery that would catch him at some point but, until then, would provide excitement and distraction from the latest season of the new series and whatever pet media the new woman brought along with her, bearing tattered box sets of decades-old series that she would speak of remembering fondly, of getting her through her first heartbreaks and answering more questions than she ever would about why she behaved the way she did.

Then this Aidra, clean-skinned and, as far as he’d seen, missing the thousands of dollars’ worth of disconnected flash-sale tattoos that cluttered the bodies of all of the girls Eric had snagged. Besides this obvious sign of self-restraint, Aidra had smiled in a way that Eric had not seen in years, not since before high school, back when the first rush of surging hormones allowed for both interest and a nausea-inducing shyness with the opposite sex for most girls and boys. An honest smile, one that was what it purported to be, without the deep wells of performance and substance abuse, things for picture or sport, lures for unsuspecting (or willfully ignorant) prey. Even her voice was different, soft and enshrouding but with the hint of a rasp, the rustle of a blanket as it’s pulled to the chin, her aspect one of refreshing comfort.

Eric spotted the sign for the Chattanooga pavilion and turned off the park’s main throughway and onto a gravel road which led to a parking lot. Nearly a dozen other cars occupied the lot, and as he pulled into a spot, Eric saw a group of five people starting down one of the trails, their hiking backpacks wholly unnecessary for the local trails, but obviously just part of the fun for them, a chance to dress up with their overpriced gear. Eric got out of the car and looked to the pavilion, but Aidra wasn’t there yet, and that was to be expected, seeing as Eric had arrived twenty minutes early. The pressure in Eric’s bladder drove him to the nearby restroom buildings, bare-bones facilities without running water or outer doors, just a quick series of ninety-degree turns to provide a modicum of privacy. Inside, there were still leaves cluttered beneath the pair of urinals, leftovers from last fall’s gusting winds, and spring had left the walls green with pollen. Despite the lack of a dividing wall, Eric was able to relieve himself in peace, besides the creeping worry that one of the buzzing flies might at any moment land upon his exposed self. Eric finished and briefly considered returning to search his glove box for a wet wipe or at least hand sanitizer, but his nerves crept in again, and Eric was compelled to walk them out.

As he’d driven in through the park, Eric had seen the numerous construction vehicles and pieces of equipment littered throughout. An overhaul was in progress at the park, one that would likely take closer to half a decade than the three-year estimate the news kept announcing, along with the astronomical price tag for adding a blacktop walking path alongside the main vehicle throughway. Near the Chattanooga pavilion were a backhoe and a soil compactor parked upon the slight incline that led from the pavilion’s parking lot back up toward the main road. Large sections of grass had been torn away along the hill just below where the base layer for the blacktop had been laid, and now these sections had been reseeded, the bare earth laced with plastic netting and hay to protect the seedlings, though Eric could see the washout below, likely due to the numerous heavy thunderstorms that had rolled over the area in the past weeks. Now, though, the sun was shining, and the rising moisture from last night’s easy drizzle added to the day’s humidity. He spent a couple of minutes looking over the equipment, trying to remember if he’d ever gone through that stereotypical boy stage of loving these sorts of oversized landscaping vehicles, but he couldn’t quite decide one way or another. He’d had a book detailing the different kinds—trucks and loaders and levelers—but Eric couldn’t remember enjoying that one any more than the others about spaceships or castles and any number of other books whose subjects were irresistible to a boy under the age of six. His curiosity was quickly sated, and Eric took himself back toward his car and the phone he’d only just realized he’d left sitting on the passenger seat.

As Eric returned across the final patch of grass, he spotted a domed form shifting in the grass. He stopped suddenly, only for his rising confusion and panic to resolve into an easy laugh as he realized what he was looking at. A turtle lay across Eric’s path, rocking slightly back and forth over a bit of disturbed ground. The head tilted and twisted toward Eric, ponderously, until its eyes held him, and neither man nor reptile moved. Eric was surprised at the way the turtle held his gaze, having believed that the creatures would retract within their shells at the first hint of danger. Eric was just trying to decide if he really ought to step closer for a better view when a barrage of sound split the peace. Eric turned and spotted a shape rushing down the hillside toward them. Fear of some imagined shaggy terror washed over him until Eric’s vision coalesced into a rather pedestrian mutt at the same moment the dog’s owner appeared over the top of the incline.

—JOURNEY! NOOOO!

The older woman’s voice was high with anxiety, but the dog ignored her, and as it continued down, Eric realized it was ignoring him as well, making straight for the turtle, which had stopped its rocking motion, realizing that something was wrong. The dog was too close already, and the turtle still hadn’t pulled itself within its protective shell when Eric lunged forward to cut the dog off. The dog’s forepaws slammed down as it tried to slow, but it was mostly unsuccessful, as this only caused it to lose control and slide down the slick, wet grass of the incline. Eric went to his knees and opened his arms. The dog slid into Eric’s grasp and nearly bowled him over, but Eric held his position, clamping one arm around the dog’s heaving chest and belly, and quickly found the leash attached to Journey’s collar. Journey gave a yip and tried to bolt away from him, but Eric’s grip was already fastened, and the dog was caught sharply at the end of the leash.

—JOURNEY!

The woman’s voice came again, and Eric looked up to see that she was about to try to descend the incline toward them, regardless of the wet grass and the state of her knees and hips, which were obvious from her awkward gait. Eric waved his free hand, trying to stave off another disaster after he’d just averted one.

—Wait, I’ll bring ’im up.

The woman had apologized profusely, and then, when Eric hadn’t seemed inclined to report her, she’d switched to thanks. All the while, the dog had huffed and barked down the hill toward where the turtle lay, now pulled securely inside its shell. When she turned to leave, Eric watched the woman and dog go for a few paces before returning down the hill. To his surprise, Eric found that the turtle had already slid its limbs back out and was looking right at him again. The intensity in those reptilian black eyes arrested Eric’s progress, and he stopped to stand awkwardly on the incline, certain the turtle was considering him. There was something else, too, something in the air that came as the sun’s light heated his skin and the wind soothed it with cool kisses. Eric had to lower himself to the ground against the wave of dizziness as the sensations broadened, the floral scents and the stink of grass both so rich that Eric could taste them, and he nearly swooned at this sudden flared opening of his senses. Eric was not sure how much time had passed when the overwhelming sensations finally receded, but he was quick to fall upon the excuse of dehydration. He had been sweating out here, and how long had it been, anyway? A jolt of not wholly unpleasant anxiety passed through Eric as he remembered Aidra. He gave a final glance down at the turtle, which continued to regard him, and only then did Eric spot the clutch of eggs tucked into the hollow in the earth beneath the turtle. Eric nodded, feeling ridiculous even as he did so, and then rushed back down to the lot.

JULY

His car doors were still unlocked, and Eric pulled the front passenger door open and snatched his phone from the seat, seeing that it was ten minutes after eleven. Had he really been out here for half an hour already? This first thought was quickly followed by a second, much more pressing question: where was Aidra? Eric woke his phone and saw the missed call and a text message, both notifications bearing Aidra’s name. Eric read the text message twice, the first time so quickly that he understood none of the words, only the overall meaning, and that meaning was that Aidra was not coming. The second reading was slow, agonizingly slow, as he went over each letter and found even more meaning there: that he would never see Aidra, never feel the relief he’d been promised. The message reeked of courteous hallmarks, and these provoked only more shame and embarrassment.

Eric began a reply and gave up without even beginning to understand what he’d thought would be an appropriate response. Instead, he dropped the phone back onto the seat and slammed the car door shut. Suddenly, Eric feels as if something is rushing up behind him. It’s a ludicrous idea, and the thought of reacting is even more so, but he can’t help it. The hairs on the back of his neck are standing up, and a shiver goes through him so strong that he can’t stop his right leg from twitching at the multitude of small bolts radiating out from the very base of his spine. When Eric turns, he sees that there is nothing, sees only the pavilion’s parking lot and the shelter itself. A pair of unattended children are leaping from one tabletop to another, cackling, stomping, and fighting as the mood takes them. Eric sees nothing, but he can feel it. The sky retains its soft blue color, the wisps of white cloud, but its distance has shortened drastically, and Eric knows that it is crowding in on him, glaring down in order to get a closer look. Eric knows he’s panicking, knows this is just a reaction to Aidra’s sudden turn from potential to faulty connection, but this does not help Eric ignore the sudden intensity with which the trees are gesticulating toward him. Eric staggers back against the side of his car, the air gone thick with life, and he is loath to draw a breath of it in. The two kids at the pavilion turn as Eric finally breathes, emitting a deep, wheezing gasp as he does so.

Eric is bent forward with his hands on his knees to support himself when he hears the voice, tiny but confident, with a piggish whine.

—Are you high?

Eric feels his chest squeeze tight. This is the last thing he needs with whatever is happening to him.

—You ain’t apposed to be here if you high. The cops will come.

Eric doesn’t want to make eye contact, so he just lifts a hand and tries to wave in a nonchalant manner, but the flapping just feels impotent.

—Hey, he tried to hit us!

Eric’s head snaps up, desperate adrenaline firing through him, and the sudden motion and injection of stimulants make his head spin even worse. Eric can only catch a glimpse of two gaping mouths, white teeth splitting black faces, before his vision tilts.

—MOMMA!

The shout pierces through Eric, dragging out the last of his hope and murdering it as he hears the ponderous crunch of gravel, a vast thing making its way toward him. Eric thinks of the sky so close and the tall trees leering down, but when he looks up, it’s nothing so fantastical, just an engorged woman.

—Wut y’all doing…no, not ma kids wit ur faggot ass.

Eric’s mind doesn’t allow him the mercy of ignorance, doesn’t allow him to misconstrue what’s been put into motion now. The crunching of gravel gets closer and then stops, and Eric forces himself to look up, a last-ditch attempt to show his innocence. Certainly this woman must see that something is wrong with him. Why else is his head throbbing with that whine that shifts into a thunderous crack?

Eric thinks he hears one of the kids say something, but whatever words are spoken are swallowed up by the pops and cracks which crowd Eric’s mind, as if the entire world is in the process of splitting apart. Then there is weight, impact, and a terrifying shudder running through the earth, and two screams that are ruthlessly cut off by another two impacts in rapid succession. Eric opens his eyes and cannot understand what he is looking at for several moments, and when he does, his legs go weak, and he slides down the side of his car to fall on his ass, where he waits for it all to go away.

The sirens chase Eric up from his stupor, putting an end to his retreat within himself. A cruiser pulls into the lot, followed by the pickup which Eric had seen on his drive in, and Eric wonders for a moment if they’ll arrest him or just execute him now. Despite the guilt that must be evident upon his face, the cops don’t seem inclined to do much of anything beyond waiting for the paramedics and questioning Eric, bemused by how the family of three all managed to be crushed, each by their own tree. Eric has no answers for them, no story about a sudden gust of wind, nor of seeing any suspicious figures lurking in the woods or hearing the revving of chainsaws. His mind is filled with the rush of phenomenal sensations that a quick glance at the smothering sky potentiates. Besides the utter insanity of trying to relay such things to law enforcement, Eric is having trouble making anything coherent up. He isn’t prepared; after all, he didn’t call 911. His phone is still inside his car, and it was a couple exiting the trail who’d seen the three crushed bodies and called. Eric sees more cops arrive and an ambulance, sees the other cops speaking to the man and woman, presumably about how they’d come up from their hike only to find a single man shaking, apparently having witnessed the terrible accident. That word, accident, blazes across Eric’s mind, teasing him, prodding at him because he knows it to be false. Eric wants to believe in the coincidences, wants to believe that he’s merely worried another tree is just about to come down upon his head to break his neck and crush his skull, but he knows better.

After confirming that the three victims are in fact dead, a pair of paramedics come over to Eric and give him a once-over, more for the sake of an excuse to talk to him. It’s obvious what he’s gone through: the shock, the guilt of having avoided death with it this close. They talk to Eric, provide physical contact, try to pull him back from his mind. They know what’s going on; they’ve seen this hundreds of times before, and they know just what to do. They’re wrong. Eric takes their comfort and their inane words, their attempts at silly jokes disconnected from the situation, and he knows what they’re doing. He can’t help but be aware because he’s not feeling what they think. Eric’s guilt isn’t something born of his own escape but of culpability. He knows he caused this, and if he had any doubts, the soft breeze slipping through the trees to comfort him has settled them. Eric can understand them now. Not quite words, but imports and emotions are clear, direct things, plain things, like the way a flower would speak or a rabbit, shrill and clear and with none of the obfuscation to which humans feel beholden when trying to express themselves. Filterless communication surges in from all of Eric’s senses, all of it warm and comforting and delighted, but Eric can’t help the way it makes him feel cold, like an acid come-up, as new inputs begin to overwhelm a mind not entirely convinced of its inebriation. Eric tries to fight it at first, this comfort, but he gives up after only a few moments. It’s too welcome after the terror, and he lets it wash through his mind, and he’s glad the paramedics are there, glad they’re making stupid little jokes because it gives his dumb smile an excuse.

The firefighters arrive and get to work with chainsaws, cutting and dragging portions of the trees away, and the paramedics leave Eric with a final recommendation that he not watch. Eric nods and doesn’t, but neither does he leave, at first telling himself that he’s waiting for the police to release him. But it’s a pitiful front; the inhuman language in him is too full, too honest for such self-deceit even to begin to work. Eric stares down into the woods, feeling new horizons open up within him, feeling his chest glow and sing as if something has needled inside to open up more pathways through his heart to allow for a richer flow of blood. The trees wave and dance alluringly, the birds sing come-hithers, and the scents drive Eric into an ecstasy he has never imagined possible, so high that even a glance toward the work being undertaken to free the bodies can’t dampen him. Death is nothing but a reminder that there is a cycle all life takes; death is nothing but truth, and Eric is alive, shot through with bliss and abandon.

Eric’s feet begin to take him toward the woods, toward the rest that is promised, but then his old self stops him, old concerns and the resolute strength of desire. Aidra and the promise of her fill Eric’s mind, a fiery need that hollows out his chest and burns down into his groin, not a mere desire but a requirement, a necessity that must be sated.

Eric rushes back to his car, and if his change in demeanor from cowering witness is noted, nobody says anything. He’s a little clumsy with the door in his haste but gets it open eventually, and there Eric sees the phone where he’d dropped it on the seat three lives ago.

Eric takes up the phone and dials Aidra’s number.

AUGUST

The first and second calls rang until Eric was kicked to a voicemail prompt, but when his third and fourth calls go direct to voicemail, he knows Aidra has blocked him. Fury plunges into Eric, burning his throat and filling his belly until he knows only the desire for violence, for vengeful love and imposition. The bright, clear sky has loomed even closer now, dipping down not to comfort Eric but to embolden him with this obvious sign of divine right.

He’s been driving for fifteen minutes, no destination in mind, just the need to move. He makes the call again, lifting the phone to his ear, “hands-free” laws be damned. Eric hears the siren but pays it no mind. Even when the flashing lights glare off his mirror, Eric has no intention of letting himself be delayed by such a thing as this, a paltry man in a suit, a possible rival for Aidra. Eric presses the gas pedal farther, hears the oversized engine of the police cruiser behind him, sees in his mind the massive waste of resources that have been poured into producing such a thing for such a purpose, as if the world hadn’t had such things figured out since the beginning of time. There’s a balance, a whirling axis upon which the world spins and dips crazily and without condition or thought to an ideal as hollow as “justice,” that man might make the whole of the world sit right and true while billions of forces scurry and bite and mutilate all around him, mocking his concepts of equality and law. Eric takes the opportunity that the curve in the road presents to stomp the accelerator. His car shoots forward, the back end swings out and then snaps back, but Eric keeps control as the engine shrieks its protest. Behind him, the cruiser accelerates too, but not without a pause, and that’s all that’s needed. Eric sees the pair of does hidden within the undergrowth ahead, makes fleeting eye contact out his window, and they surge forward just as he passes. There’s a scream of tires, and Eric looks back to see the two cream-colored, furred bodies go in through the windshield as if they’ve been suctioned there. Blood flies high along with safety glass as a single hoofed leg rises up and up until Eric believes it will rise all the way to puncture the sunken sky. He turns back to the road before him, to his purpose, believing that all has come to pass as it must, just as it always has.

Alone upon his journey again, Eric feels a weight lift from him as his worries dissolve. No longer can he question himself, no longer can he doubt his purpose or even his direction. Action has removed these; action is his purpose, and life is its own answer. Aidra looms in his mind, but she has lost most of her individual necessity and all of her specific allure. She is only a goal now, an endpoint against which Eric will rise, will dash himself to pieces if need be, but he will reach her no matter the obstacles. The air rushing in through the car’s open windows is warm and comforting, the sunlight and all and sundry having laid across Eric’s mind a state of being he’s never been able to attain before, despite a long history of experimentation and attempts at self-discovery. There is a superhuman clarity in vision and hearing, but none of the cloudiness of mind which usually accompanies these things. Neither is his mind overwrought with the endless thought loops. There is no loss of self because Eric has attained his full self, his full purpose. His existence has its answer, and it is now up to him to attain that, him and the wondrously true laws of the world around him. The trees dance and sing, their pollen thick in his lungs, while out in the woods which border this road to either side, Eric can feel life in its myriad manifestations, can feel it dancing, can hear it singing, feels it living and killing and dying, all in a spinning answer to man’s greatest question: Why? The answer isn’t something amenable to human language. To put it into words robs it of nearly all of its truth, but Eric knows the answer now, can even bring it forward into complex thought and the teeming connections this requires, but simple base language fails him, leaving him disappointed but not overly frustrated, for who would he explain this answer to?

The drive continues. Eric has an idea of where he is, but none of where he is going. The grocery store where he’d met Aidra is nowhere near here, but after all, he was well outside of his usual space when he’d stopped there, an attempt to grab a few things while passing through to stave off a real shopping trip for another couple of days. The memory bleeds into Eric’s mind, filling his head and nearly overcoming reality for the few moments when it is at its strongest, returning everything from Aidra’s pristine image to the background scent of industrial cleaner and the suspicious-looking stain on the grocery store floor, even to the song that had been playing on the intercom radio, an early-2000s one that spoke of long-suffering love pushed a little too far. The present insists upon itself again as Eric’s path finally removes him from the long, winding roads to a four-way intersection, and there, just beyond the red light, the corridor of trees through which he’s been driving broadens and then sharply disappears to reveal a sprawl of fast-food drive-throughs and shopping outlets. Eric feels them, his own, his kind, and the avalanche of buzzing activity as they go about their tasks, feeding and gathering, all with their minds elsewhere, consumed by doubt or undirected longing. Eric doesn’t wonder at what has brought him here, only follows his impulses, the scent of fate or maybe even of her. Eric feels his need for Aidra rise again within him, blossoming outward to catch a hint of her. Something pings back toward him, reeling him in; a sharp agony laced with the promise of depthless sweetness demands compliance.

Eric finds himself turning into the parking lot of a department store, one still in the throes of a grand opening, as proclaimed by the excessive and garish signage adorning its storefront. He kills the engine and steps out, sniffing the air again, but the life he catches here is something different from the park, unnaturally prolonged and dark with mold, sustained decay and the false sweetness that comes with it. A woman passes by, moving toward the store, her body trembling with each lumbering step, her face a swollen thing of burst veins and layered flesh, and horror takes Eric for several seconds as he watches her pass, his shared lineage with this thing making her alienness, born of excess and apathy, all the worse to witness. Moments pass during which Eric’s breath comes in deafening gasps, resounding, hollow things that rattle through his chest and pulse in his ears, and then he is standing by the rear of his car, staring down the row of other cars toward the store, past the twisted monster that has passed him. Eric takes another breath and looks up across the lampposts to see the birds congregated there, chirping and whirring, some nuzzling one another, others pecking and fighting, just another buzzing system.

By the time he starts toward the store, Eric’s rolling stomach has settled, and his mind has been washed clean again of cowardly self-awareness. The lane in front of the storefront is clogged with a line of idling cars, great blobs of flesh resting behind wheels as they await their lawfully wedded blobs trundling out from the storefront, laden with bags stuffed with shoes, with discounted electronics, with another few outfits of plus-size clothing. As Eric starts across the lane, one of the cars shoots out of the line. The abused axles shriek, but Eric doesn’t move; he only stares at the engorged faces of driver and passenger, and behind them the flabby face of a toddler already nearing that heartwarming milestone of one hundred pounds. The car lurches to a stop, its back end still resting between the others in the long line. The two heads appear outside their windows, their voices bearing tones similar to the creaking of suspension and wobbly brakes. Eric doesn’t hear them, doesn’t subject himself to the comprehension of these things; he only hears the birds as they alight from their perches and descend en masse. The screaming from within the car is a music Eric has never known he needed, balm to a soul aching from his thirty-five years of attrition upon this earth. The repetitive sensory assault of day-to-day life is not washed away but soothed for the time being. Ugliness breeds more ugliness, but the inside of the car shuddering with the fluttering of a hundred wings is beautiful. Eric walks on as the crowd forms and phones appear, all aghast, all nauseated, and all enlivened at the chance to record this moment.

Inside the store, Eric can only stare around himself for several moments as his senses are assaulted, the waves of light, sound, and stench clawing at his brain. When he can finally pick out specific points within the chaos, there is only deeper ugliness and more personal affronts. If not for the terrifying array of sickly skin tones and varied selection of sleepwear apparel, Eric would have been sorely tested to differentiate this vast sea of humanity from one another, their thighs all bulbous and rubbing great swaths of chafing against one another. The scents of shea butter and Gold Bond are overpowering, driving a deep ache into Eric’s mind as he struggles to focus, struggles to pinpoint her amidst all this decay. Her memory calls out to him, that image of her before him, that perfect scent, and the sound of her voice, angelic by comparison to the bovine lowing Eric hears all about him from mouths and the speakers of phones. Out of the misery and decay, Eric lands upon an island of diminishment, of relative quiet and comparative grace, and he makes for it like a man on the verge of drowning.

It is Aidra, but not as he believed. Certainly the reality before him is the girl with whom he passed moments, words, and numbers, but this woman is a far cry from the memory which Eric had retained. He has a moment wherein he tries to chide himself, to tell himself this is not her fault, but then that self-doubt is gone again, and only the betrayal remains, a concerted effort by Aidra and his own dumb, unopened mind. The falsity is clear, the lie blatant, and Eric is overwhelmed by an impulse, and he lets out a long, droning tone, a funeral dirge for his own kind. With this call, the horizons for humanity have gone black, the earth is fired, and the smoke rises to choke out the sun, and every living thing bows its head in mute praise to this impending annihilation. Eric’s eyes clear, but his mind remains gripped. He sees the rats and the mice congregating as two distinct groups. Snapping and biting break out where the outliers get too close, but they do not kill. They have not come together to kill the other; this is no genocidal race war. These opposed species are here for Eric at the behest of his benefactors. The pink newborns stumble and roll, their limbs not fully developed, and the aged rodents lumber along, ragged gray fur and dull pink noses. Aidra has noticed the vermin now, as have the other shoppers, but Eric’s eyes are held upon her, and as she traces the extent of the rodent congregation, she sees Eric at their rear. Aidra’s eyes crinkle for a moment, a ghost of a smile that doesn’t quite manifest, and then she is only confused, squinting as if she knows she ought to be able to place him but cannot. Eric’s pain thunders down around him, but it is mercifully brief, a storm of heart agony that blazes out quickly, dissipated as much by its own fury as by Eric’s newfound perspective. The rats swarm forward, and Aidra is the first to scream, but the rest take up the chorus in earnest as the teeth and claws begin their work. Here Eric exists as both observer and impetus, calling down this judgment upon his fellow man and bearing witness to its execution. Eric gives voice to the funeral howl again, willing it to continue on as a warning against apathy, against despair, against life as a performance, for he knows that such things will no longer be tolerated.

There is more shouting by the store entrance, and when Eric turns, he sees the men in blue-black uniforms spotted with silver medallions and other trinkets whose sole purpose seems to be to set them apart from the crowd. Eric recognizes them as police, revealed by their scents of Old Spice body wash and TRT. They order him to the ground, but Eric doesn’t obey. He can’t, not now. He doesn’t dare; the internal directive insists that he remain standing, that he defy these men. Their guns crack and pop, and Eric feels the impacts, feels himself reeling, and then he feels the cold, man-made floor of the store beneath him, cold and yet sticky, a lecherous mass of consumptive desire. The pain is intense, but Eric can live with it, and he gets back to his feet. As he does, the rodents have already turned from their stripping of the bodies and are rushing forward, a wave of fur and raging pathogens. Eric’s head falls back until his neck is pressed against his upper back as he stares up at the ceiling, feeling the penetrative invasions begin to tingle, and then the bullets are being consumed, broken down, and fed into the roaring furnace that his body has become, a thing of electric life and endurance.

Eric passes the screaming line of cruisers as he heads back into the world, curving into the winding roads held on either side by rows of trees. Green sears into Eric’s eyes as if to blot out the glare of red and blue, and for several moments Eric is nearly blind, but he feels no fear, and he does not remove his foot from the gas pedal. It guides his hands, the minute twists to compensate for the road, as Eric gives himself over to the experience, to the trust in this season of renewal, and for this faith Eric is rewarded tenfold, life surging until he knows nothing but its stinging embrace.