The Box

"I'm gonna be indigo," Reggie said to me. We were playing this game called Chimera, where we guessed what mythical creatures we were going to change into. We had already done cheetah-man and hawk-man and everything, and any number of religious creatures and cartoon characters, so we were now trying to do really elaborate ones. We had made it up about an hour ago.

We were doing a sensory deprivation experiment at the university hospital. We were locked into a box that looked like the ice chest outside of a gas station and it was pitch black. I could not tell how long we'd been in, but our breath echoed close to our ears and where I heard Reggie's face was this pale, no-color fire. He described an oversized, potato-shaped thing, with a bunch of bristly legs all over it, hairs that it used to propel itself. It vibrated instead of vocalizing.

I thought that was pretty good.

We had signed up because we had very little money. We were in this warm, breathy, matter-sucking soup, bathing in it. So dark it was as if we were being eaten by space. We were. I had no idea what was going on out there. Anything. It occurred to me that I could be in love with him. Which was news and as soon as I thought it, thought to reach my hands out and feel for his face his face, to mash our mouths together, stubble on stubble, it was gone. I gulped hard and dry. Reached for a thought. It was the box, for sure.

"What kind of creature would you be?" he asked me.

I said "Fuck this game." We hadn't been given instructions. Maybe the experiment was to see how long two grown straight men would passively sit in a dark, black box without kissing, or thinking to. Maybe the experiment was fake and we were locked in here to die. We were nothing, we were insubstantial, in a stasis, neither living, nor dead.

My ears were fumbling around for sounds other than our breathing. My eyes had started painting negative colors on the air. If I kissed him, would we fight, physically fight in a space we were both crammed into? We could say it was just the box if we liked it. He was my roommate. He was grossly familiar. I had walked through his old, balls-smelling laundry, had watched him cook lazy meals and eat them, his fingers clamped around a stuffed tortilla, hot sauce staining his mouth. Plus I didn't think I was queer, so none of this made sense.

I asked him if he heard the music, although I didn't hear any myself.

"A little," he said. "Like little beeps?"

Yeah, I told him. "Do you want to kiss?" I asked him.

His breathing stopped and his legs shifted a little. It sounded like thunder. "No," he said. "Are you serious?" He fake-laughed.

I told him I was.

"No way," he said. And then he said "Thanks, though."

It was quiet a long time. I was saying "It must be the box," when the door opened and light flooded in, wrapping around everything, clanging all over our hands and faces. A doctor was peering in. He made some garbled joke my ears couldn't even take. We both climbed out on wobbly legs. They made us do puzzles in separate rooms and asked us to describe what we experienced. Then they gave us a small bill and let us go. When I was done, I went right to the bus stop, although me and Reggie had driven together in his car. It occurred to me that the box had been like being held. But by no one in this case, nothing, no one who had to or could stop. When the bus came, I got into a seat, put my knees up on the seat in front of me and hunched into my own lap. I shut my eyes.

Of Demon Bondage

“Hank, I got those lab results back.”

“Yeah?” he said with his mouth full, turning in his office chair, part of a sandwich in his hand. I don't know how he could be eating, after all the carnage we'd seen last night. But then I saw it was a French Dip and then I wanted one. He had au jus dripping down his chin.

“Okay," I said. "So amongst the bodies: blood, obviously, and lots of it, burnt vinyl and leather residues, as well as copious ash, Brimstone to be exact. Hard alcohol, which accelerated the flames. Cocaine on the ceiling, charred flesh and lots of bodily fluids, mostly semen and you know, that was man-semen, but there was also dog semen and fish semen... Coming from a marlin... But get this: the lab found a lot of demon semen.”

“Carl,” Hank said to me, “Do you want the rest of my soda?” He looked at me dully and belched. It smelled like baked pickles. Hank's skin had the texture of angel food cake. He kept hot dogs in his desk. He wasn't bright, but you didn't need to be for this job.

“Hank, this means there was paranormal activity! Those teenagers went to their Black Metal show and through magick and scrawling runes and chanting their Nordic chants, they opened a portal, I'm sure of it!” He opened a package of moist wipes and cleaned his fingers, shook his thick hands at the wrist and just looked at me.

We got a welfare call from the Old Woman in the Shoe, that lousy bitch. Her kid had gone missing, so we went to the show. He wasn't there, though. We picked him up stealing hot cross buns. He couldn't even pay one a penny. We were done on this. The Vatican cops were at the scene. Suddenly the precinct dog came in. I kicked it, I was so pissed and it shrank away whining.

“Carl, demons aren't our jurisdiction. We just found a burnt VFW full of dead teenagers wearing homemade wristbands and white makeup. And top hats and shit like that. So they probably were practicing some ancient pagan rite. So what? Their death is just the same. We'll let God's police take care of them.”

What Hank didn't know that I am into demon bondage. I love nothing more than going to a cheap motel out by the freeway and going into a closet and opening a portal into the Nether-realms. An imp comes out and lashes me with its pointy tail and cackles at me and titters “You a bitch... You a little bi-itch...” and I come through the roof. The wife doesn't care; she's a centaur fetishist, herself. What tore me up that these kids, watching Blackest Ashen Skies, Dark Unicorn, Moldyrdrygylarr, Hellgape, whatever the flier said, had probably had the best demonic orgy ever, really a demented, fierce, dark sabbat with the forces of Hell. I mean there was demon semen spattered like tar all over the walls and solid layers of twisted corpses on the floor, a Satanic lasagne of burnt, intertwined bodies. What were these kids getting into? I remember in high school, there was a forest spirit who would rub you through your pants if you gave it enough dew, but it was in the shape of a pussywillow. I might as well be a virgin.

“Hank,” I said, “We're gonna take this thing on. I know we're only nursery rhyme cops, but I don't care. Maybe this is related to some nursery rhyme we don't even know about: 'the teenagers banging/ at a metal show/ the demons who screwed them/ where did they go?'”

He opened a bag of chips, put a handful in his mouth, slicked back his hair with his greasy hand. A fly buzzed in a circle counter to the wobbling ceiling fan. It was humid awful. Simple Simon was out in booking, his head bandaged, moaning. I wished he'd been at this thing; I could go back. Hank picked up a dossier off his desk and handed it to me.

“We have to find out who the dish ran away with,” he said, crunching.

I didn't care. Whatever it was, it wouldn't beat me, it wasn't evil and I couldn't fuck it.

Chautauqua

Let us be Canada geese and the where to go. No.

We are rapids talk all night to no one, move shatter move, think themselves still.

Of all advice, I never paid attention I was looking out at barn swallows I wanted to see through break the sky and go past where I could see I never once heard what was said. Blood runs down the years, the place I was made and saw and wished not to see is gone it is locked it is buried I could burn all as well as know again.

Dark in the midst of trees and one sits low, what sleeps and what runs past. No voice speaks every voice is present telling. Saying rock drops on rock, shale and chert crack unless chucked in creek clay. Water pulled in pools scumming, blowing clouds of mosquitoes low cliffs over large lake throw bloated baby starlings high in the air where they land on gravel road. Car comes every so often alone the headlights wrench back night and sometimes drunk you don't see her green eyebright step in, brake shatter the back of a doe and the tears sung spooled among the fog where she is laid out thrown will tell her what you want to mean: O a mother.

Iroquois we know and never, hills with trees now trailers tires, boundaries water roads in names we cannot spell. We will bowl, tear tendons from tiny bones we pile brightest orange fat ripples in our bellies glistens fingers as we fumble, purr to sleep.

I only ever wanted to be warm the world screams white dunes crawl.