My wife had very dexterous toes.
When the phone rang because her
mom was dead, I watched them
contract and grip the blue shag
carpet. Between jobs last
autumn, she would sit on the
couch watching daytime TV,
working on a dreary watercolor
with one foot reaching out from
beneath the blanket, holding the
brush deftly between two slender
toes, the nails unpainted, black
from working barefoot in the
garden.
6. Fill the pits with charcoal. Buy
out grocers and hardware stores
and steal it from your neighbors.
Dress in black and crouch down low.
If a dog barks, run away.
When the phone rang because her
mom was dead, I watched them
contract and grip the blue shag
carpet. Between jobs last
autumn, she would sit on the
couch watching daytime TV,
working on a dreary watercolor
with one foot reaching out from
beneath the blanket, holding the
brush deftly between two slender
toes, the nails unpainted, black
from working barefoot in the
garden.
6. Fill the pits with charcoal. Buy
out grocers and hardware stores
and steal it from your neighbors.
Dress in black and crouch down low.
If a dog barks, run away.
The goat’s name was Grogan and I tied him in the corner. A tattered ear and hair all
matted with shit. I talked and worked, shoveling pressed black bricks of coal.
“Shut up, goat, you’ll wake up all the neighbors.” He was bleating dull, falling cries that
bounced through the darkened halls.
“I’ll be glad to slit your throat and drink your blood,” I said. “I’ll grin at the stink of you
cooking on the fire.”
Grogan flashed me square eyes and ate some hay. My hands were cramped tight around
the shovel, blisters torn and bleeding. I worked my fingers loose and went upstairs to get
an apple and some warm milk. He liked it best with a swirl of honey.
With the fridge door open, cool light bleached my naked gut.
She said she’d always had this thing for Henry. Henry, my best friend since fourth grade
Beaver Camp. Henry, who’d had a million things for her. In high school he stole her t-
shirt to sleep in, spied through windows, swore he saw her breasts hanging pale and
firm. I giggled and almost believed him when he told me. Late nights with my father’s
Penthouse magazines, he rolled in agony. He'd never feel the smooth curves of her
thighs, so softy they could have vanished into mist. But Henry felt them, caressed them
when he fucked my wife. And she left for three months to sleep her way through Asia,
came home to say she'd made herself a whore.
7. Open the box that says LATER. Take the ties from the box. Begin sewing. Stitch up
their backs and stuff them with dried beans. Attach plastic eyes and a sliver of dark red
felt.
My hands shook as I set them free among the rafters, slung them over the high back of
Satan’s throne. I could only find googly eyes at the hobby shop, so now they leered at
me with cross-eyed hate. I’ve made you what you were, I thought, constrictors. They
writhed above me, taut flesh covered in dots, or little bats and gloves.
8. The details sell it. Bolt a pair of shackles to a wall. Cover everything in blood, clear
away the tools and knock out all the lights. Let the coals soak a day in lighter fluid.
Strip naked and rub yourself with gore. When you are sure you’re ready, when the mood
is right, when night comes and you feel hollow as a leather drum, strike a long-stemmed
match.
Heat rose, darkness and jet-red glow and the waved-black curve of heat. Fields of
combustion dried out flesh, red towns of burning rock sent up sable plumes of smoke and
ash. Space squeezed, closed-in with the clear-eyed demons that flew between ripples in
the stifling air. A hazy black form descended, sat there smoldering where I bid him. I dug
my toes into the dirt to get away. I coughed and spit up ash. Snakes hissed from the
rafters and something snapped in my chest. I fell to my side in the dry earth, grinding my
forehead black, chest rising up and falling down. There are moments of heat that can kill
you. Not open flame, but dead, unflagging heat. It will dry you out and leave a calcium
shell.
My cell phone rang.
I sat up, slipped from a shackle, rubbed my eyes.
“Hello?”
There was a moment before her voice came, small and tinny through the line. “Hi,” she
said.
I sat still and held my breath.
“Where are you right now?” she asked.
Pause.
Pause.
Pause.
“In the basement.”
“Have you been crying?” Her voice was soft. No corners at all.
“My goat died today,” I said.
“Oh,” she said.
“I didn’t kill it. He got loose and chewed through a wire.”
She exhaled softly. “That sounds awful,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. I drew a circle in the dirt with my toe.
“I’m sorry, Honey,” she said.
“I know.”
“I love you,” she said.
“I know.”
I got my face down close to the dirt, keeping away from the fumes.
“The police thought you might be in trouble,” she said. “They called here.”
Lying down in the great heat, with the red coals and the black smoke, I twirled my cowlick
between two fingers.
“Yeah,” I said. “The neighbors heard Grogan.” I stopped a moment, wiping at my
cheeks. “And I stole their charcoal,” I said.
“Honey?” she asked.
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
“I know,” I said.
“I want to come home now,” she said.
I hesitated. There was something swimming in my guts.
My head pulsed and I needed air.
“No more ties,” I said.
“Ok,” she said, as I began to break and cry. “Ok, ok, ok…”
Geordie Williams Flantz was born and raised in southern Minnesota. He currently attends Oberlin College
in Ohio where he majors in English and Creative Writing.
For Grogan
