The Grave Eater Alana I Capria

The

Grave Eater

Alana I. Capria

Published by Chasm Press at Smashwords

This book is a work of fiction in all that the genre implies.

Published by Chasm Press at Smashwords

Alana I. Capria (born January 23, 1985 in Mineola, New York) is the author of several chapbooks including Black Bile, Hooks and Slaughterhouses, All the Painful Things, The Insomniacs' Asylum, and Alice and the Black-Eyed Women. She has a BA in English/Creative Writing from Montclair State University and is a candidate in the MFA in Creative Writing program at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Capria resides in Northern New Jersey with her fiancé, Eddie, and their rabbits, Andromeda Danae and Cassiopeia Isis. Her works are also available at http://www.alanaicapria.blogspot.com.

Dedicated to Eddie,

my own version of

the Husband...

you know what I need

to survive.

He calls me a whore because I have sex with other men in my dreams. I have slept with everyone I know: teachers, television personalities, best friends, family members, worst enemies, even animals with human faces. The worst was the snake. It had arms and legs. It grabbed hold of my waist and squeezed too tight. Its lips were not the right color. it looked like a man but I knew it was a snake. It bit instead of kissed. I woke up screaming and he called me a whore. He is afraid he will lose me to these subconscious suitors, that I will prefer their translucent hands to his. What I do not tell him is that I am afraid of how these lovers pull me out of reality and make me beg.

Sometimes, these lovers take my heart. I do not mean symbolically. Instead, they place me on a metal slab with sloped edges and a collection basin beneath. They wear rubber masks and a pig's nose. They do not give me anesthesia but simply strap my limbs down. The scalpel they use is curved at one end and straight on the other. It is dirty. Especially the tip. It is brown with rust and age. I watch them make the first cuts. They dig the scalpel in. It is not sharp enough to cut the flesh and so they make stabbing motions until my skin finally disintegrates. Then they saw in a large circle. I try to scream but cannot. I watch the ligaments pull and snap. They remove my skin in a single flap and place it over my naked belly button. They nearly take my nipple off as well. Finally, they reach in with gloved hands and pluck my heart out. It is not red but a purple-black. It does not beat but sputters. Tar oozes out the cut ventricles. The droplets wet my stomach. They sizzle and burn. The resulting smoke smells of sulfur. It is a mustard color with escaping tendrils that are pea green.

My lovers laugh as I wince. They squeeze my heart until it deflates. They drop its sagging body onto my belly. The tar burns through it, separating the four chambers. My lovers snort and leave me alone. It is dark without them. I pull at the restraints but cannot free myself. My skin is red from pressing flat against the table. In the distance, a door opens and a dead man with no legs crawls towards me. He calls my name and I try not to look down. He bites me and I wake up.

That is the sort of thing these dreams do to me. They are not pleasurable. When I wake up, I forget where I am. I look around for these lovers and am confused. I didn't know where I was when I woke up, I tell my husband later. He doesn't understand. My confusion insults him.

In other dreams, I have sex while he watches. They are graphic dreams. I see and feel everything. I sing my husband nursery rhymes while riding another man's groin. When he cries, I laugh. You are cruel, he says. This happens in both the dream and reality. I assume I am cruel. I tell him the more graphic dreams even while he is shaking his head.

In my dream, I told you I was going out for a little while. My lover was waiting for me in the car. I kissed you goodbye and ran to him. We talked about writing for some time, then about religion. Afterwards, we parked under a train trestle and made out. We didn't have sex though. Doesn't that make you feel better, I say.

His only response is, no. Then I feel worse. When he has his own sex dreams, he is always convinced that I am his partner. He says he recognizes my hair even though he can't see my face. He is monogamous to a fault. I'm so sorry, I say and kiss him.

More often than not, my dreams are about the walking dead. I am bald in those dreams. I run across rooftops and scale fences. The dead chase after me. They are nearly as fast as I am. Those are the only dreams where the horizon doesn't seem to stretch out forever. Then I can sprint and feel fast. When I run from lovers, every foot step feels prolonged and plodding. I stumble many times over. I trip over potholes. I try to hide but they are always right behind me, pulling at my clothing.

Once or twice, they rape me. I am aware of nothing more than their bodies, pressing against me. A few times, we are all huddled in a tunnel. It is a museum piece. I prick my fingers on the stalagmites and stalactites. The tips are too pointed. Blind creatures come scrambling after my blood. In these dreams, my lover is married and has many children. I am his first affair. He is just part of a long succession of men I have claimed and discarded. I keep their bones in an old shoebox. Their flayed torsos hang in a cavernous basement. It is cold down there so that the meat does not spoil. I cut racks of ribs from them. I feed these pieces to stray dogs. Their howling keeps me awake. The bodies, not the dogs. These lovers want to know why they could not possess me fully. Why did you steal all of us, they ask. My fingers bleed from the nail bed. When the sun comes out, I throw these lovers away. They mold in aluminum garbage pails until the raccoons come. I apologize again and again but their ears are already gone. I apologize for this as well. We don't accept your apology, these lovers say and climb out of the garbage pails. As they wander away, they try to touch my breasts. I lop their hands off with a machete.

The lover who resembles my teacher leans forward to kiss me. I wake up. My husband looks at me. You are such a whore, he says.

I eat graves. They are bitter and hard. Sometimes I lose several teeth while chewing. I begin with the tombstone. I like how it crunches. When I have finished them all, I continue with the dirt. I do not pick out the rocks and weeds. The only thing I do not consume are the worms. I toss them behind me. I hear them wriggle around. When I have eaten everything, the cemetery is sparse. The many skeletons lie on bedrock. I pity such morbid nudity. Shoving my fist down my throat, I vomit up my stomach's contents. The cemetery refills. The dead sigh their satisfaction. Several crawl out of the graves to pat me on the head. They let me rest on their laps. They sing me lullabies.

One day, while eating the graves, I meet a monster. It has five teeth and no nose. Its back is crooked and twisted to one side. It pulls a tombstone out of my hands and devours it whole.

That is mine, I say and reach down its throat to pull the tombstone back out. It bites my wrist and spits out blood.

I hate how you taste, the monster says. You taste alive.

I am alive, I say. I succeed in removing the tombstone. The monster hisses. I chew the tombstone and swallow. The monster grunts and punches itself in the gut. Its skin is tinged with orange. It has brown mottling down its spine. It glares and grabs a handful of dirt. It stuffs it into its mouth. I can hear the rocks rattling around its jaws.

This is my cemetery, I say.

Mine, it says and takes another handful. It chases the dirt with some worms. They squirm out of its lips and fall back to the ground. I pick the worms up and place them in my pockets. The creature grunts and tries to stick its hands in my pockets to take the worms back. I smack its face.

Don't touch, I say.

The creature grimaces and pecks the ground. It waddles in circles, picking up stones with its tongue. I dig into the nearest grave and remove a piece of casket. I the leather bindings. It tastes like nothing. I prefer that to the differences between sweet and salty. The creature crawls towards me. It nudges my arm. I pick another piece of the casket and eat that as well. I can see the body within the dark. I pick it up and put it to the side. Can I have the body, the creature asks hopefully. It bats its dark green eyes at me. I pat it on the head.

Of course. I never eat meat, I say. The creature scurries away from me and settles down on the body. It eats quickly, pulling at the meat and swallowing the bones whole.

The skeletons shudder. They slap at the monster's face. It eats their hands quickly. Give it back, the skeletons shout while striking him. The monster does not bleed. Instead, an inky fluid runs from its pores, darkening its complexion. It snickers and pulls the skeletons apart. I watch while eating dirt. The husband calls to me from the horizon.

Will you come back home, he calls.

I shake my head and eat another tombstone. Not yet, I call back. I am not full yet. He sighs. His footsteps make the landscape shake. He never joins me in the cemetery. He does not like the way the earth tastes. He does not eat meat either. We have spent lifetimes together and I cannot remember ever once enjoying a meal with him. I do not know what he does when I am not near him. I imagine that he might sit and make God's eyes out of colored yarn. What he would do with the finished crafts, I am not certain. Consume them? Perhaps sell them to old women?

The husband calls again, will the cemetery be empty soon?

I have not finished, I say. There is a monster here. He tried to take the dirt but I fought him. I let him have the skeletons. But they are angry. They do not want to be eaten. I pity them. They cry and shake their bones but the monster does not listen. He cares only about eating. I would take the bones out of him but last time, he tried to bite my hands.

The husband shakes again. I do not want this monster to touch you, the husband says. I eat more dirt. I pick up several large rocks and swallow those as well. I have heard many people speak of a taste known as umami. It is an earth taste. Warm and natural. This is what the rock's taste of. I let pebbles sit on my tongue for a time before swallowing. I want to taste the dirt between my teeth and in the back of my throat.

The monster looks at me. It grimaces. The skeletons clamor around him, half gone and hissing. He kicks their bones apart. They clatter this way and that. Make him give back the bones, they cry out to me. Please. Give us back our bones. We are incomplete. We do not want to be like this any longer. Make him give them back.

The monster hugs his torso protectively. They are mine, he says.

No, no, I say. The bones belong to my friends. You cannot keep them any longer. The husband roars in the distance. I seize the monster by the throat and lift it up. It kicks my arms but I feel nothing. I wrench its jaws apart and force the bones out. The skeletons stand behind me, waiting for the bones to be thrown to them. They catch them and reassemble their fragile frames. The creature howls as it is emptied. Finally, I throw it to the side. The skeletons return to the graves.

I stick my fist down my throat and vomit. The caskets come up first, followed by the dirt. The skeletons are covered. Finally, the tombstones land at the tops of their heads. They sing to me. Several climb back out of the dirt and offer me a place at their laps. They plait my hair and sing nursery rhymes. The husband sighs and rumbles.

Will you come home, he asks.

I will be there soon, I say.

I keep a prayer wheel beneath my pillow. When I dream, I spin the wheel and all those thousands of prayers are sent into the air. The husband tries to steal the wheel so that he can send off his own prayers but I protect it fiercely. I bite his hands and mouth. He whimpers like a dog and tucks his head between his legs until I stop attacking him.

I do not believe in religion but I always pray. There are gods wherever I go. They whimper my name. They have faces on the backs of their heads. They feed me entire cemeteries in one bite. They sit me on their laps and tell me stories about vampires.

Do you believe in vampires, I ask and the gods laugh.

No, they say.

Do you believe in witches or werewolves? Fairies? The Benandanti? Wizards and warlocks? Mermaids? What about cannibalistic monsters that have no name but walk along pastoral pathways with their feet on backwards, I ask.

We believe in nothing but ourselves, the gods say.

They reach beneath my pillow and spin the prayer wheel. It is a rickety object constructed of wood and gold. When it spins, something deep inside rattles and clacks. The gods laugh in time with the clicking. Several of them pull our hair. Too many pull their spinal cords out of their mouths and fling it onto my feet.

The gods pick me up and sling me over their shoulders. They carry me from country to country. I sample cathedrals and synagogues, mosques and temples. They crumble in my mouth and taste strongly of spicy mustard. I eat dirt to mute the taste in my mouth. When the gods do not keep me on their shoulders, they place me in the pants and let my head hang over their waistbands. You are very pretty, they tell me. A little too thin for our taste. But pretty. We like your hair. To prove their point, they pull at it lightly and kiss my forehead.

The husband stands off in the distance, blocking out the sun. I do not like when they touch you, he says. Several mountain peaks crumble off and fill in the surrounding valleys. The gods shake their heads sadly.

His love destroys the natural landscape, they say. Tell him to cease his jealousy. The people cry out to him. His affection for you will end the world.

I shrug my shoulders. I cannot control him, I say.

They do not kiss me again. Instead, they allow me to sit on the tops of their heads while they walk. They scale mountains and cross oceans without even wetting their ankles. There are many men who fight for our honor, the gods say. The problem is that we don't care. They should stop. Violence irritates us. We don't concern ourselves with men or their superstitions. They may give us food and pray to our names but we don't listen. Not closely. Just enough to note the sound. We like their voices.

I eat dandelions. I like the bitter milk that seeps from the stems. I suck the milk out and feed the gods the empty flowers. But don't you feel that you are letting them all down? They have such faith in you and you are completely ambivalent, I say.

The gods place me on the ground. We understand this. But there is nothing we can do. They will not live forever. So many will be dead by tomorrow. They will be buried and then you will go to their sides and eat their caskets. They will sing to you. You are all the reality they need. You will comfort them in death because you will not allow them to be alone. As for us, we will simply watch and judge. We are not dependent on their existence. If everyone in this world dies, we will simply move on. We will find something else to be interested in. But you... if they all die and become dust, what will become of you? You need the cemeteries and caskets. You and they go hand in hand. What will you do when they are all gone? Where will you go, the gods ask.

I do not know the answer to this. I stare up at the gods and twitch my nose. They yawn. I imagine that the husband and I will simply wander. We will touch everything and listen. We will watch. We will have one another, I say.

The gods yawn again. They pick up a handful of people and consume them. I hear the soft screams as the believers drop into the gods' bellies. Several land with a splash. Do you even taste them, I ask.

The gods look at one another. Taste them? You mean, their flesh? Oh no. We don't care about their flesh. Perhaps they taste salty. Maybe with a hint of sugar. But that is the most we can assume. Have you ever tasted meat, the gods say.

No. I never eat meat, I say.

Bibles sprout from the ground. I eat them quickly, not even bothering to tear the paper from the binding. The gods open their mouths and religious texts fall from their tongues. I thought that man made religion, I say.

The gods pick the books up and toss them over their shoulders. We helped. Think of it as divine inspiration, they say.

The husband picks up my prayer wheel and spins it. The gods place their fingers inside their ears and hum. The prayer wheel clacks and spins. I imagine the prayers floating through the air and stabbing the gods like syringes. The humming changes to a prolonged groan. The gods pick me up and throw me. I land at the husband's side. He does not see me. He spins the prayer wheel again and again. He bites his tongue with each revolution and shakes his head so that a droplet of blood stains the bed. I croon in his ears, There are no gods, there are no gods. He spins the wheel again and again. It is a violent gesture. He does not know what happens without faith.

A mosquito steals my womb. It happens while I sleep. One moment, I am certain of my fertility and the next, I wake to find emptiness. It seeps out of me. It wets the bed. I shake the husband. He crawls out of the corners and assembles before me. It is gone, I say. He does not understand what I am saying. He shakes his head and points to his ears, then to his mouth.

I can see a hole in the window. It is a perfect circle, just the right size for a long proboscis to fit through. I feel violated. I touch my underpants but my clothing is together. I do not understand how this extended mouth was able to reach between my legs and into my abdomen. I grab hold of the husband and shake him back and forth by the collar. He rattles like bones.

It has been stolen from me, I hiss. Don't you understand? A mosquito came in during the night and stole my womb away. It was here and now it is not. I am afraid I have forgotten how to walk. I do not know how to exist without my womb. It was so important. What am I going to do? Now we can never have children.

Still, the husband does not react. He pats my arm reassuringly and fakes a smile. I slap him in the throat. We will never spawn, I say.

I think of my recent hunger and how it has grown harder to vomit up the cemeteries. I touch my stomach and realize it is not my womb that has gone missing. I stand up on the bed and walk in circles. It was my child! It has stolen my child. My unborn fetus. I didn't know it was there but that isn't my fault. How was I to know? It was not time yet. My stomach had not yet expanded. The hunger was not yet debilitating. How was I to know, Husband? Tell me this, I say. The husband crawls beneath the bed. I can hear him breathing loudly. It causes the bed frame to shake.

I touch the bed again. My hand is sticky. I stare at the stain on the mattress. It is not red or black but a thick yellow. It reminds me of mucus. I close my eyes and open them again. I can see the tiny needle pricks everywhere. They cover the mattress. They cover my clothing. The husband slips back out from beneath the bed and I can see that the fluid has dripped onto his face. Yellow stains his cheeks. I spread my arms.

Husband, I say. Please come to me. He steps forward and climbs onto the bed. He embraces me. His flesh is cold. It is like hugging a dead person. When he has held me for a few moments, he sets to work gathering the fluid in his hands. It is beginning to harden. As he collects the mucus, he works on molding it into a shape. I close my eyes again.

Find the mosquito, I say. The husband says nothing. I speak again. I need the mosquito back. I need my child. I need my womb. This was my only chance to breed. Will you please go and find them? I know it is still alive. I am afraid of what will happen if we wait any longer. Please, Husband.

Still, he does not respond. I hiss and twist around. My body lengthens and narrows until I am as thin as a string. I slip through the holes and dart out the window. I hear the mosquito humming. He is still close by. I dart through the bushes and sprint along the gravel walkways, moving towards it as quickly as I can. It beats its wings and tries to outdistance me. I can smell my child and womb. I would know the fragrance anywhere. It reeks of me. Behind me, the husband still gathers and forms.

The mosquito stops in the nearest cemetery. I throw myself at it. We fall over tombstones. My stomach growls. I pull the mosquito's wings from its back. It wears my child's face over its head like a mask. What have you done to it, I ask. The mosquito scratches my throat.

I was hungry, it says. You weren't using it.

I cannot help myself. I reach over and seize the closest tombstone. I swallow it in a single bite. There is an acidic feeling in the base of my throat. It spreads downward, entering my heart and covering my chest. I cough and beat a fist against my sternum. The mosquito watches, amused. It wears a black leather bag on its hip. I pull the bag free and glare at the insect.

Is that my womb, I ask.

If that's what you call the sack you keep within you, the mosquito says.

Where is my child, I ask.

The mosquito lifts into the air and buzzes around my head. I slap at it. I pull the womb out of its bag and hold it up to the light. It sags in my hands. Instead of being a rich red color, it is a dirt brown. I turn the mosquito's bag inside out and see the drying yellow smeared inside.

I stuff my womb back inside of me. I catch the mosquito in one hand and pull my child's face away. I stick the face over my heart before swallowing the mosquito. It flutters all the way down my throat. Once it is in my stomach, it flops this way and that, screaming from the stomach acids.

The husband appears at the cemetery entrance. He holds out his final sculpture. It is a fat, faceless child. I take our child's face and place it on the sculpture's head. She is so beautiful, I say and kiss the husband. The mosquito pokes its mouth out of me and drills a hole through my thigh. The husband reaches down and snaps the mosquito's beak off at the base. It screams and bleeds out. The blood makes my abdomen ache.

I am a waxen woman. Men wearing thin white rubber gloves pull me apart and put me back together. The husband towers over them, watching their progress. The men place a chilled needle into the center of my brain and twist it sharply to the left. They try to destroy my brain as if I were living. I blink and smile. They remove the needle and throw it into an old women's handbag filled with knitting supplies. I watch the needle shift on top of the yarn balls and finally fall through.

Then the men slice my skin off. They use scissors to snip it free at the wrists and ankles. When they come to my pelvis, they are gentle and remove the flesh with a razor. The husband grunts his approval. Finally, the skin is gone and I lie prone, a figure of red muscles and constant flowing mucus.

The men poke at my heart and chuckle. You are so lovely inside, they sigh and snap the blood vessels and arteries keeping the organ in place. This removal sounds like the twang of stretched rubber bands. I try to lift my arms to cover my head but cannot move. I blink again. The doctors smile.

Look at how her muscles twitch. Look at her lungs expanding. Her heart still beats. It is magnificent. We have never seen anything like this, the doctors say. They inset probes inside my chest and pull muscles away from the many organs. They push against my spleen and bladder, making me have to go to the bathroom. They test the strength of my ovaries and fallopian tube.

The husband does not try to touch me. He does not like this unadulterated view of me. He sniffles several times. I know he tries desperately to remember me with my flesh on. Without skin, not even my sexual organs are appealing. They are simply flesh. He looks at my breasts and they are strings of muscles with various tubes running this way and that. The men reach up to squeeze the nipples and test my breasts' lactation. They hope milk will come out. They imagine it flowing from me like it would from a cow's teats. I smile again and the fluid that leaks from me is a translucent water with strings of white in the center. The men shake their heads, disappointed. They put test tubes to my breasts and catch what they can. The lactation barely fills the test tube a quarter of the way.

The husband murmurs. He takes a scalpel from one man and swallows it. The men lean over my stomach and press their ears to the sack. They listen to the gurgling within and speak to one another.

It is so loud, half of them say.

Yes, so loud, the other half says.

They nod their heads many times. I look up at the husband. He tries not to make eye contact with me. He worries about many things, myself included. He does not know if the men will be able to repair me after I have been thoroughly dissected. He does not know if he will be able to love me still after seeing me so exposed. He fears that every time he looks in my direction, he will only be able to think of muscles and nerves. The husband is afraid of electrical impulses and involuntary muscle contractions.

The men cut into my stomach. They slice down and then across, creating four flaps that they peel back slowly. I feel as though they are stripping me down for bed. When my stomach is finally open, they peer inside. Several gasp. Look at how dark it is, they say. They reach inside and remove handfuls of my stomach's contents. Granules of dirt slip from their fists and land back inside of me. Dirt, they ask, looking at one another. It eats dirt?

They scoop all the dirt out and then use a high powered hose to wash my stomach lining. Bits of tombstones push out of the sides. The men remove the stone by hand. They throw it into a metal collection basin. I count the clang sounds as the rocks strike the sides and fall to the bottom. The husband goes to the basin and takes the rocks. He eats them quickly, placing them on his outstretched tongue and swallowing. His eyes roll into the back of his head. A bright red flush spreads over his cheeks and nose. He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. It comes away wet. The husband flicks his wrist several times, trying to force the sweat droplets off his skin. When that does not work, he wipes his hand on his thigh.

The men sketch me many times. They fill entire books. They do not know my name yet they still whisper it. Finally, they can take it no longer. With their tongues hanging past their lips, they climb inside of me and close my flesh up. I can feel them traveling through my body, touching this nerve and that, gasping over how dark I am inside.

The husband picks up a needle and thread. Carefully, he arranges me flesh back onto me and sews me back together. I wiggle my toes and fingers. I gaze up at him and flutter my eyes. The men push against the inside of my stomach, looking for a way out.

I rise from the table with the help of the husband's outstretched hand. When I am steady, I vomit several times. My old friend, the cemetery creature, comes scurrying in. He opens his mouth and catches the men in his jaws. They are silent when he bites down. They scream when he swallows.

I collect all the feet that wash onto shore. Some are made of flesh and others of porcelain. From time to time, I grow hungry and think of eating these feet. I never do. I am more afraid of what will happen if I become accustomed to eating parts of the body. Will I decide to maul innocent people to appease my hunger? Will I swallow the husband whole? Or will I devour myself? What would it be like existing within my own stomach, tucked into myself, pulled inside out?

The husband paces alongside me, watching as I put the feet into a mesh bag. It drags along the shore. Whenever it catches a fish or aquatic mammal, the husband wades into the water to free the creature from the net. Then he walks back to my side. Sometimes, he tries to hold my hand. This makes it difficult to drag the net and place feet inside. I want to pull away from him but I cannot bear to hurt his feelings.

Where do the feet come from, the husband asks.

I don't know, I say. Maybe a ship went down. Or there was some sort of animal attack. I have no idea. There are just feet. Maybe there was a factory that made feet. Maybe it sank into the ocean like Atlantis. Maybe it is Atlantis. The Atlantis of feet.

The feet are varied in their coloring. They range from paper white to ebony. Several have turned green from being in the water for so long. Even more are covered with barnacles. They cluster together, preserving the foot shape. I pause to pick the bivalves off and throw them back into the water. Some try to snap at my fingers.

We do not bite, I admonish them. They weep, ashamed of their actions. I pat them on the shell. The husband is not as kind. When the mussels try to bite his fingers, he wrenches their shells apart and devours the contents whole. I am afraid when he is angry. He eats everything. I have never seen him eat out of hunger. I kiss the husband's face.

Why won't you eat the shore, the husband asks. He looks at all the sand. I follow his gaze across the sand dunes and jetties.

There is too much salt, I say. Not enough death. Maybe if dead fish washed onto the shore with the feet. Perhaps if I knew there were bodies buried beneath the sand. But not like this. Not with just sand and water. It's just too alive. It would do nothing for my hunger.

The husband nods his head. He takes the bag from me and drags it behind us. I stop to pick up the feet that are wedged between rocks or sticking up from the sand. Many of the feet are damaged. They are missing toes or the bump of their ankles. A great deal of the feet are still inside their sneakers. The socks are there, too. The husband pulls the socks from the shoes and holds them up. Water drips from the fabric.

Pointless, the husband says and throws the socks behind him. I stare at the husband.

I need the socks, I say. They are part of my collection.

He turns around to retrieve the socks for me. I walk on. The feet tap at my legs and scratch me when I lean over too far.

I turn some of the feet over to see if there are any messages sticking out of the legs. I would be happy with anything. A message asking for a long lost love to return or even one making an empty threat against some enemy. I wouldn't care if they were asking for directions to get from one island to the next. If the messages were in code, I would be even happier. But there are none.

Understanding that I am upset, the husband compresses a handful of sand until it forms a sheet of papyrus-like paper. He turns his back to me and writes something. Then he takes a foot from my collection and pushes the message inside. He throws the foot into the water and waits for the tide to push it into my bag. I pull the foot out of the water and see the message rolled up inside. The husband smiles at me. I remove the message and read: I have seen the moon in many things.

I fold the message up and place it in my shirt pocket. The husband sits in the sand. He looks so calm. A white light emits from his nostrils and ears. I put my bag of feet down. The husband watches as I walk towards him. I do not want to stand in the way of your collection, he says. I sit beside him.

Do you think it is good luck to pull feet from the sea, I ask.

It could be, he says.

What if I were to put all the feet back? Would that be good luck, I ask.

Maybe if the sea wanted the feet to begin with. Who knows what such large bodies of water think, he says.

I stand up and retrieve my bag. I will test the ocean, I say. I take a foot from the bag and throw it into the horizon. It takes several minutes for us to hear the resulting splash. The husband cocks his head to one side.

Strange, he says.

We watch the water. If the waves bring the foot back, I will keep my collection. If I never see the foot again, I will dive to the seabed and secure the sack with a large boulder.

As I think this, the husband stands and retrieves the foot from the water's edge. He opens my bag and places the foot inside. It returned, he says, trying to explain. I already know. I take the bag from him and cradle it to my chest. The husband lifts me up and holds me to his chest like a child. He carries me along the beach. Every so often, he pauses long enough to feed me a handful of sand. It is saltier than I imagined. I lick my lips and look longingly at the grains. I become anxious for the husband to stop every few feet and feed me.

I do bad things to the husband. I rip his ears out and place them over his eyes. I shatter his favorite windows and put doors in their place. When the husband tries to lie down beneath the bed, I place wooden blocks all around it so that he cannot sink down. He curls up on the floor beside the bed and shivers.

I take the husband's clothing away. He is afraid of his own nudity. He huddles in a ball and covers his private areas. I beat him with a cat o' nine tails until he is a bloody mess. The husband speaks in another language. I never knew he was a linguist. As he speaks, I can think only of nonsense syllables. His words continually catch on his thickening tongue. He gets on his knees and clings to my legs.

The worst thing I can do to the husband is run away. When I do this, I do not leave a note or take my things. I simply run when he is asleep. When he wakes in the morning, he looks everywhere for me. He searches beneath the bed and opens the closets. He screams my name. He tears our home apart and leaves it in a heap. I watch him from a rooftop in the distance while eating dirt. I shovel it in my mouth like popcorn. The husband enters the basement and throws the foundation over his head.

I laugh as he cries. When the ceiling crumbles and falls onto his head, I laugh so hard I nearly urinate. The worst thing I could ever do to the husband is take a new lover. I have never done this. I would never do this. Despite wanting to hurt the husband, I could not bring myself to betray him. There are things he could not survive. There are things I might not be able to survive. I will not take such risks. Instead, I will myself to become invisible. I walk around him while he rampages around our home. He breaks the bed I sit upon without realizing it. I hand him dishes to throw. He thinks these things fall from the sky. Sometimes I sit on the couch and watch television while he runs up and down the streets, desperately trying to find me. He walks past me and I stick a leg out to trip him. I climb onto his shoulder and whisper in his ear until he screams at the voices in his head, to stop.

I would like to torment the husband by making his favorite foods and holding them beneath his nose to sniff. Then, when he tried to grab hold of them, I would slap at his hands until he winced. Poor husband. Sometimes I pity him. Often I do not.

When I run away, I do not come home for nearly a month. I sit in full moons and then hang on the crescents. I learn gymnastics. Soon, I am doing back flips and somersaults across the horizon. I make tracks in the ground that are as large as the husband's. I return to our home and start tracks there as well. I douse each print with a bit of gasoline. That is the husband's least favorite smell. As soon as I have finished pouring the gas, the husband rushes from the house. I dart into a bush and watch as he follows the prints around the world. He sniffles and sneezes as he moves.

I stuff dried leaves into my mouth to keep quiet when the husband comes too close to me. He cannot smell me. Not now. I blend into the surrounding area. A monster has taken her away, the husband rages and fells several trees. I duck this way and that to avoid being crushed. The husband nearly grazes my body several times. A rock scrapes my hip. I bleed slightly. Because I do not want the husband to note the smell of blood, I rub gasoline into the wound. The scrape burns slightly. I can see the husband pausing from time to time to sniff the air.

I grow tired of the husband's tantrums. I catch him in a metal net and make him sit outside for three nights. When he is burned from the sun and wind, I lift him up and carry him back into our home. While he watches, I make a pie crust from scratch. Everything I use is rancid. The husband wrinkles his nose. The butter reeks of old meat. I bake the bottom of the pie, then place the husband inside. I secure the top layer of dough and place the husband in the oven to bake until done.

The timer goes off several hours later. I open the oven and pull the husband out. He is covered with a thin film of ash and dust. He stares at me with wide gray eyes. He blinks several times and the gray falls out. Then he has green eyes. The husband sinks to the floor. Why do you hate me, he asks.

I never have an answer for him. I simply enjoy torturing him. It is entertaining. I keep a box of whips in case one breaks. I employ knives and faked photographs. I keep a stash of tissues beneath the bed. On rare occasions, I slip hallucinogenic mushrooms into the husband's open mouth while he is sleeping. Then I do not have to do anything. He simply runs this way and that, not believing anything he sees while I stand with my back to the wall and videotape his actions.

The tapes are for me. So that when the husband is not close to me, I can watch his face. I like that he is always afraid for me. Too many other men would simply sit on a boulder and pull the clouds down. They would say the air tastes like sugar. But not the husband.

He turns the boulders over and throws them. He replaces entire oceans with deserts. He will do anything to find me. And so I torture him. His affection is amusing. I like to have proof that he loves me so desperately.

I kill pumpkins. I do not like how they smile. It angers me that they are trying to be something other than what they are. They are pumpkins. They should act like it. They should not pretend they are people.

I hate how pumpkins use their hard shells to convince people to cut eyes and mouths into them. They look at one man named Jack as proof of their humanity. But Jack had arms and legs. He had a head made of flesh and bones. He had a brain and neck. What do the pumpkins have other than shells, rind, and seeds? They aren't alive.

Because the husband knows how much I hate the pumpkins, he slaughters them in their patches. I hear him at night, stomping this way and that, crushing them on their vines and leaving the orange innards smeared across farmland fields. He lets me sit on his back so that I can watch the destruction. I like how the orange entrails cling to the bottoms of his feet and create furrows in the earth as they drag.

The husband pauses to pull the pumpkins from his shoes. He is allergic to the juice. They make his face puff up with welts and boils. His eyes turn red and his throat triples in size. He can barely breathe. To help him swallow again, he must put a cup of milk into a bathtub of boiling water and breathe the fumes. Often, the steam scalds his face to the point that his skin puckers and nearly separates from the underlying muscle. Then the husband has to sit in the dark beneath the bed for nearly a month until his face heals.

When he cannot break the pumpkins for me, he gives me a baseball bat studded with two-inch long steel nails. I go to as many farms as I can find, shattering the pumpkins with the bat. I try to hit the pumpkins directly in their centers in the hopes that the shells will simply fall apart. When the pumpkins separate into equal halves complete with the seeds and strings in perfect condition, I collect the pieces in a bag. As soon as the bag is filled, I go to the nearest child's house and pour the contents onto the front lawn. Then I hide in the bushes and wait for the child to go outside. I record his screams to play for the husband later. The husband detests children as much as I do.

One day, I find a pumpkin outside our house. It is a perfect orange globe complete with a wooden green top. There are still furred leaves attached. I scratch my arms violently, leaving marks. The pumpkin is carved. It has no nose. Its eyes are large Xs and its mouth is a single gaping rectangle. There is no candle inside. The candle is the only saving grace a pumpkin has. At least the heat and flame blackens the orange interior.

The husband hurries over to me. We stare at the pumpkin together. Who would have left that monstrosity here, he asks.

I should take their eyes out, I say. I lift the pumpkin up and juggle it from hand to hand. The husband claps his hands in time with the beat. When I have tired of the weight, I heave the pumpkin in the air and kick it when it falls back down. The pumpkin shatters at its bottom. Its top rolls down the stairs. I scream and throw the pumpkin in the street. Cars run over the fruit. I scream every time I hear the squishing sound of the pumpkin being run over. Finally, the pumpkin has been reduced to a fine orange streak across the roadway.

I cut my hand open with a piece of the pumpkin's wooden stalk and let my blood drip onto the sidewalk. It bubbles and multiplies until there are several rows of blood-red pumpkins assembled before me. I pick the first pumpkin up and tap its shell. The pumpkins are hollow inside. I hand the husband an armful. We will give these to the children, I say. The husband walks away. He stops for every child he sees and slams a pumpkin onto their heads. The children walk away, stumbling into trees and finally, into the middle of the street.

That will teach them, I say.

The children don't learn, the husband says. He points again at our door. Another pumpkin is at the door. This one has a single circle cut out of its front. We can hear children giggling next door. The husband seizes one child who points a misshapen middle finger in our direction. He sticks the child's hand in one of the red pumpkins and sends him on his way. The child screams as he runs back home, the pumpkin waving this way and that. It grows teeth and tries to consume the child's wrist.

I laugh. When the children have run miles, the pumpkins choke and die. They fall off their bodies and lie on the ground, rotting quickly, turning into compost. Several sigh my name before they are gone completely.

The husband pats the back of my neck lightly. I can feel the welts on his palms. I take his hand and press it to my cheek.

The children do not understand how hard I have worked to make a household for the husband and myself. They do not understand how I scrubbed the floors and windows free of any other person's influence. And now they bring their pumpkins here, the fruits they carved with their mothers and fathers, with their siblings. They mock me with the pumpkins.

And so I do what any other would do in order to protect her home: I smash that godforsaken vegetation as though they were people. Then, I bury them in a mass grave. That is earth I will not touch. I let the creature have it. It likes the fruity taste. It enjoys the richness of autumnal pumpkin.

I ask the husband to institutionalize me. I have never been surrounded by bars and rubber rooms before. I would like to feel an evening with nothing but plaster. And so the husband carries me inside. He does not like this idea but knows better then to tell me no. He tells the nurses to take good care of me. They keep syringes inside of their aprons and smile until the husband leaves. As soon as the doors are closed, they turn to me and beat me with a clipboard. I pretend it hurts so that they are not insulted.

The nurses send me to a doctor. He is tall and dressed all in white. When the office door is closed, the doctor reaches out to touch my hair. I would like to help you, he says. The husband rumbles in the distance.

Hush now, I tell both him and the doctor.

You're very pretty, the doctor says. What brings you to our hospital?

I smile up at him. I would like to see what insanity is like, I say. To prove my point, I touch the carpeting and pick up a handful of earth. I eat it quickly. The doctor waits until I have finished swallowing before speaking.

Is that all, he asks.

I shake my head. No, no. There is much more to the process, I say. I shake my shoulders twice and vomit onto his desk. It is a dry vomit, made entirely of earth. It does not even smell. The doctor touches it with a finger and frowns.

And you do this often, he asks.

Of course, I say. Dirt is all I need for nourishment. Of course, I rarely allow it to stay down for too long. The dead would miss it. Sometimes I eat children and other objects but that is never due to hunger and only due to my continued pursuit of proving points to those who do not know any better. Do you know what it is like to have lived for so long? Even the gods are annoyed by it. They play games but no one ever tells them to stop.

The doctor nods. Fascinating, he says. He calls the nurse back in and gives her the name of a medication. She takes my arm and leads me out of the room. I bow to the doctor on my way out.

I never got your name, I call to him and he laughs shortly.

The nurse brings me to my room. She fills a syringe with a clear fluid and injects it into my upper arm. The needle breaks three times before she is able to insert it in my skin. I shrug apologetically. I never know how my skin will behave, I say. It's why I have never done drugs. Although I have heard that the spiritual properties are really second to none.

She nods and leaves the room. Dinner will be in a few hours, the nurse calls from the hallway. I listen to her walk away. Several doors slam shut. I stare at my roommate. The woman wears a pillowcase over her head. I can see the planets, she says. Her voice is muffled. I walk across the room and touch her knees.

I can bring them to you, I say. The planets enter the room. She removes the pillowcase and hugs Mars. I sit at the edge of Jupiter and try not to get in my roommate's way. When the nurses come, the planets fade into the walls. The husband peers through the bars.

Are you enjoying yourself, he asks.

It is different here. A bit more regimented. I don't think it is much fun. No one laughs and means it, I say.

My roommate follows my gaze. Who are you talking to, she asks. I point to the window.

That is the husband, I say. Well, my husband. But everyone calls him the husband. Even I do. He is very kind. Do not be afraid of him. He is a protector.

Will he protect both of us, my roommate asks.

Perhaps. What is your name?

Marie.

Marie, I say. Yes, he will protect both of us.

She breathes a sigh of relief and lies back on her bed.

Time for dinner, the nurse says. She opens our door so that we can come out. I see that she has yet another syringe in her hands.

Will you be pricking us on our way to eat, I ask.

I do what the doctor prescribes. This is what he feels is best for you, the nurse says. I look back at the husband and then at the nurse. Marie huddles on the bed, pressing herself in a corner. I approach the nurse. She readies the syringe. Gently, I take the syringe from her hands and break it. Her mouth opens slightly.

I am so sorry, I say, dropping the needle and vial onto the floor. But I do not like this visit. It is not as much fun as I thought it would be. I wanted to try something different but this is too much. I'm afraid I will have to leave. Please tell the unnamed doctor that I wish him only the best. And you as well. You have been a very good nurse.

She nods her head and looks down at the syringe. I pick it up. The needle turns to dirt. I devour it in one bite. The husband opens the window for me. The nurse turns to watch the bars break in half and fall into the bushes outside. Her hands shake as she hands me a clipboard. Just sign here, she says and gives me a pen. I scrawl my name across the line she has indicated with her fingernail. That's it then, she says as I hand the clipboard back to her.

Yes, that is it, I say. I go to the husband. Marie sniffles. I offer her my hand. She sits up. Would you like to go back to the planets, I ask. They are waiting for you. She nods eagerly. I touch her shoulder and she disappears. I hear her laughing. The planets rotate. The husband picks me up. I wave goodbye to the hospital. I can hear the foundation wave goodbye back at me.

The husband and I are afraid of children. We do not like how they look at us with those beady but innocent eyes. We cannot stand how they are always asking for things. They can never have enough. They cling to our chests and necks trying to pull our skin and hair out. They scream into our mouths. We choke on them. Children are worse than fish bones. They stick faster and deeper. I die every time I am near them.

Children come out of the closet. They grow on clothes hangers and reside inside our favorite garment bags. When we try to sleep, they coo behind the closed door before pushing it open. Then they leap at us. They steal the blankets and our socks. They wear our underwear as pants. Several gnaw on the husband's joints while he pries them off and hangs them from a clothesline. The poor husband. I weave large diapers out of spider webs and throw the children inside.

The husband and I begin collecting these children. We throw them into every receptacle available. We close them up in luggage and garbage bags, in trash bins and garbage compactors. I seal them in school backpacks and cardboard boxes. The husband pushes them into the refrigerator and freezer, into the microwave and the oven. He cooks them in a skillet and feeds the fillets to the wild dogs.

When our parents come to visit us, they ask why we haven't decided to have children yet. Then we open our dresser drawers to show them the freeze-dried children we keep inside. They sigh over the large heads and plump bellies. We let them take five home for a month's worth of stew. You should write a cookbook, my mother says, packing the children into her favorite handbag.

Our parents do not understand our fears. They do not know how lumpy our mattresses get at night as the children crawl this way and that beneath us. They do not know how the children keep us awake with the constant bed jumping. They want us to make them breakfast, lunch, and dinner at least twice daily. They are never content with anything we make and so we have to throw entire meals out and cook them again.

The husband stands over the barbecue and tries to breathe the fumes. The children step on my toes and break my ankles. I gather them up and slide them onto wooden sticks to make shish-kabobs. They like the onions I place in between them. Several eat the red and green peppers as well. I marinate the children in a mixture of vinegar and herbs. They whistle as they soak and when their meat is tender, I bring them outside for the husband to cook.

He lets the children burn on one side before turning them. I invite the creature and its friends to the house. They sit in the living room, crawling in and over the couch cushions. Several hang from the ceiling fan and spin this way and that. They eat the children raw, catching them with their clawed gloves of hands and stuffing them into their mouths.

The children cry out to me. Why are you letting them eat us, they shriek and I plug my ears up with carrot peels. I put the children in a popcorn bowl and bring them to the guests. They eat with gusto, licking their fingers after devouring the children. The husband brings in a plate of the baby-kabobs. The creatures each take a stick and pull the children free with their front teeth. They work the children around their mouths and spit the vegetables onto the floor. I sweep up the scraps and throw them into the sink.

Because I am so afraid of having children of my own, I scrape out my womb. It is hard to do this alone and so I twist backwards and allow the husband to do the work with an assortment of instruments. I imagine that he nicks and cuts various parts of me but I feel nothing. I wince out of obligation. The husband fills the sink with all the scraps that come out of me.

They are red and imprinted with children's faces. Their mouths open and close. Their eyes bat. They call out Mother, Mother, Mother, Father, Father, Father until the husband takes metal needles and pushes them through both of our ears. We turn the water on to wash the children down the drain. They stick to the sink's sides and refuse to move. They clog the drain. They corrode the pots and pans. They turn rancid and brown. They try to reach out and hold onto our necks. The husband pushes them away and stuffs them into the pipes with a plunger. We listen to their muted shrieks, their constant panting. Several ask for a bottle. We are so hungry, they cry. You have never nursed us at your breasts or genitals. What about your stomachs? They are horribly hungry. Please, Mother and Father. Won't you feed us? The husband pours lye down the drain. When that does not quiet the children, he opens several bottles of undiluted chlorine and empties them in the sink and bathtubs.

Later, the drains all back up and the children float to the top of the pipes. They are bloated and red. Despite their condition, they still attempt to grab onto our fingers and teeth. The husband is disgusted and throws them out the window. He digs a moat around the house filled with the cemetery creatures. They snap at the children when they get too close. The children try to balance on their upraised snouts and fall down their throats. The few that make it across intact tap on our bedroom windows.

The husband and I stand with our backs together. We strike the children with flyswatters. We hold the creatures on leashes and encourage them to eat. When they have disposed of all the children, we scratch beneath their chins and behind their ears. We tell them we will allow them to be our children instead. They kick their legs happily. Their faces are burned red. They have the children's eyes.

I sit in the microwave. It is for a game. I am not trying to die. I cannot burn regardless. I seat myself on the rotating glass plate and ask the husband to close the door. He seals any leaks with children's modeling dough and then sits cross-legged on the floor to watch my progress. With a remote control, he programs the microwave to cook at high temperature for several hours.

A light flashes and the plate moves. I plug my ears with popcorn kernels and close my eyes. My skin turns brown and then orange. The orange fades and browns again. From time to time, my flesh glows white. I rub my hands over my arms. The husband taps on the glass and waves. I wave back and lie down on my stomach.

Every few minutes, the microwave lurches. The plate squeaks. I grow dizzy. There are several husbands. They sit in the microwave with me. Several poke my libs with their large hands. The husband outside the glass drinks a bottle of wine and throws it back up. The kitchen tiles turn red. Everything looks so strange, I tell the husband and he taps the glass again while pointing to his ears. Everything looks so strange, I shout and he cocks his head to one side, confused.

He says, era uoy yako?

What, I ask.

seod ti nrub uoy, he asks.

I squint at him. I can't understand what you're saying, I shout. The glass shatters from the outside. The husband stumbles back from the microwave and pulls the shards from out of his face. He does not bleed. Any fluid that comes from his skin is a milky white color. The husband collects the shards in a plastic bowl and covers the top of the bowl with plastic wrap. He shakes the bowl and then throws it across the room.

The bowl shatters. The husband mumbles something. I press my ear to the glass. What did you say, I shout to him. The husband crawls in circles on the floor. He opens his mouth and scoops up tiles.

I eat the radiation. It stains my tongue green. The tip tingles and the back burns. I swallow and everything tastes like sugar. I swallow again and it all tastes like broccoli. I swallow for the third time and everything tastes just like yuzu. I lick my lips. They taste like blueberries. I touch my eyes and lick my fingers.

The husband returns. Tahw era uoy gniod, the husband asks. He eats green French toast and then swallows a dozen eggs raw. When he sticks his tongue out, he has a stack of eggs sunny-side up balanced on the tip. The yolks tremble but do not break.

I press my lips against the microwave door. Can you please give me a cup of dirt, I ask. The husband bounces off the walls. He strips naked and fits himself in the oven. He stretches his arms across the stove and turns the broiler on. His buttocks begin to sizzle. I try to breathe the smell in through the glass but cannot catch a whiff of anything.

I grow tired. I touch the light above me and turn the coiled filament into dirt. It pours into the mouth. It is too sour for my teeth. It is blue instead of brown. I grimace as I swallow. The dirt sits heavily in my stomach. I groan and clutch my abdomen.

The husband climbs back out of the oven. He has an apple in his mouth and small booties on his hands and feet. He opens his mouth wide and swallows his elbows. He winds vinyl blinds around his groin and rolls on the floor. He hits the refrigerator until the doors fall off and leave indentations on the floor.

I walk around the glass plate until I fall down. I like the feeling of being dizzy. I stand up and walk again. I fall back down. I do this thirteen times and finally stay on my back staring at the light. I lift my legs up and throw them over my head. I lift at my feet and arch my back forward until I have formed a bridge. The radiation makes my spine weak. I can feel my vertebrae rotating on the column. They grind together. They creak. The radiation turns them pink and purple. My coccyx grows and supports my buttocks.

I sink back down. I pull my lower jaw open and shovel dirt inside. This dirt is not as flavorful. It tastes bitter. My tongue separates into three strips. The husband raps on the glass again. He calls my name. I pull my ears off and place them on the glass. He shakes his head and offers me a turkey leg. I squint my eyes. They fall out of my head. I run around the plate, trying to catch them as they roll this way and that. At one point, they threaten to balance on the lip of the plate and fall over. I catch them before they can. I am afraid of them landing in the waste material puddled up on the bottom of the microwave. The fluid is neon yellow. It could turn frankfurters into frogs. It could make a fingertip grow its own head.

I grow tired of the microwave. It hums too loudly for my taste. My ears pop and un-pop. My tongue swells and shrinks. It feels moist and then too dry. Almost brittle. I reach into my mouth and try to snap my tongue off at the end. It does not break as easily as I had thought it would.

I scream. Everything comes to a halt and splinters. The webs begin at the corners and spread across the walls. I wait until all the glass is covered before pressing my pointer finger against the center spiral. The glass pushes out. Everything falls apart. The husband catches me in one hand. He pulls me to him. My skin glows. I am radiant. I have never been so beautiful.

The husband and I are interested in psychiatric crimes. We want to know more about the man who removes his father's face to wear as his own. We want to know about the men who decided to crush a friend beneath his own bed. And so we go to hunt them with pen and paper.

I sit on the serial killer's lap. Tell me why you took his face away, I ask.

His eyes roll around in his head. I was tired of him. I wanted to give the commands. His face annoyed me. It had too many wrinkles. Mother was always kissing his cheeks. He said do this and do that. He smacked my chin. He made me bleed. I wanted to see what else was inside of him. I wanted to understand what made father a father. I wanted to see if he could be wound like a clock. I thought that maybe he had sand inside, the man says.

I nod my head. What was it like to talk it away, I ask.

The man plays with a pocket knife. He pushes it beneath his nails. It was warm. I worked a razor around the edges. It took many days. My father breathed slowly. He did not miss his cheeks. I licked his lips. I saw through his eyes. His blood slid down my face. I wanted to remove my own and replace mine with his. I thought I might give him my own. Then he could know what it was like to be the son, the man says.

I nod my head again. The husband pretends to jot notes down on a clipboard. He scrawls this way and that, ripping the thin tissue paper with the tip of his pen. I pat the man on the head. The husband looks up, watching us closely. I smile at him and return my gaze to the man.

Do you regret anything, I ask.

The man shakes his head. Nothing, he says. I had my moment. They did not understand. The doctors did not know what it was like to finally become someone else. They found me just as I put my father's face on. It fit as snugly as my own face. It was my own face. They couldn't understand. They said that no person was meant to have two faces. But I was. I knew the truth. We all have two faces. Every one of us. We have the face we were born with and the one that we give to ourselves as a gift. Both those faces are ours equally. No one can take that away from us, the man says.

The husband picks the man up by the head and swallows him whole. I press my head to the husband's stomach and listen as the man walks up the intestines and into the esophagus. The husband coughs loudly and the man falls back down. I will make a mask out of lungs, the man shouts. The husband scratches his belly until a flap forms. I move the skin aside and watch the man cut into the husband's lungs. He takes several layers of skin and holds it down on his face with both hands. I stitch the husband's stomach back up.

Shall we speak to the next, I ask. The husband nods. He pulls more men out of the walls. They fall to the floor and quickly sit up at the waist. They keep their legs out straight in front of them. We want to know about the man you crushed, I say. The men push each other's shoulders and laugh. Several have tongues that are orange with purple spots. May I have one of your tongues, I ask. One of the men takes a pipe and beats it against the base of his outstretched tongue until the muscle tears. The severed muscle twists this way and that. I pick it up by its tip and hand it to the husband. I find this fascinating, I say. Do you believe this might be a sign of absolute insanity?

The husband holds the tongue in the air and peers at it closely. He shakes his head. I do not know, he says.

I turn back to the men. Please tell me about the crushing, I say. They nod their heads.

He would not speak, they say. He would laugh in his sleep. He told us that he had nightmares of windows opening and swallowing him whole. They had jagged teeth made of glass, he said. He could not pull himself free. They tore through his body until he had been divided into three separate pieces. He screamed and the windows ate those sounds as well. They left the rest of him to his bed. The bed doubled in half and split him lengthwise. After he was swallowed, it spit him back out. He coughed up feathers made of razors. We were afraid when he told us that. We began looking at the windows and beds differently. They were dangerous. We had to sleep on the floor.

And so you killed him, I ask.

The men shift their weight from hip to hip. We thought that the windows and bed would not hurt us if they ate the man. He didn't want to be swallowed but they wanted him. That's why he had the dream about them. They only wanted him but because they were hungry, they would eat the rest of us as well. We were afraid. We wanted to give them a sacrifice. But he would not die. He kept choking but wouldn't die. So we did what we had to. We gave him to the bed.

And then what happened, I ask patiently. I touch my hip and remove some dirt. I eat it in a single bite while smiling at them.

The bed would not eat. We had to force it. The man was screaming. We knew the bed was painful. We made it eat. We heard the crunching as it swallowed. When it was done, the man was dead and we were safe. We congratulated one another. But we weren't done yet. So we threw him out the window so that the glass would be feed, the men say.

Thank you, I say. The husband takes them and swallows them as well. I crawl to the husband's stomach and listen. The men rattle around. They take their beds and their masks. They destroy one another. Later, I will go inside and rebuild what is left.

The world might end. Apparently there are calendars that say so. The husband has never seen these works but he tells me about them at night. The world will end and everyone will die. Hell will be on earth. There will be swarms of flying insects and prowling carnivores. Man and woman will resort to eating one another. The children will all have three heads. Everyone will scream day and night, the husband says.

I count on my fingers, One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. The husband stares at me. Will there be a thirteenth hour, I ask, wagging my thumb.

The husband pulls a grandfather clock out of the ceiling. He winds it up and then lets the hands go. They stop on the thirteenth hour, directing between the twelve and one. Yes, there will, he says and the clock chimes loudly. Several mirrors break.

I cover my ears as the shards fly through the room. The husband opens his mouth to swallow them. They stab his tongue and the back of his throat. He swallows three times and pats the top of his chest between his shoulders. The shards smart, he says. He opens his mouth and I pull the remaining shards out with tweezers. When they fall to the ground, they turn into wooden thorns. We are careful not to step on them.

The end of the world will happen if anyone steps on a thorn during the thirteenth hour, the husband says. I dart around the thorns, trying to protect my feet. One sinks into my sole and I fall to the floor, holding my wounded foot to my chest.

The end of the world is here, I tell the husband. He lifts my leg up and pulls the thorn out with his teeth. Outside, we can hear the metallic clanging of weapons striking. In the background is a constant buzzing sound. Several people scream. I cover my ears again and huddle against the husband. Will the sounds stop soon, I ask. The husband shakes his head. Does the calendar say anything about how to stop the end, I ask. He climbs beneath the bed. The frame rattles and shakes. The husband finally emerges. He holds two stone tablets in his hands. I reach for them. The husband points to the various symbols.

The gods must eat the living, the husband says.

Have you seen the gods, I ask. The husband shakes his head again.

They just left for vacation, he says. I think they went to another galaxy for a few years. They ate a large meal before they left. They won't be hungry for some time. I look out the window. Everything appears as though it is on fire. There is an orange glint to the sky.

Husband, I say. We must take our place as gods. We must eat everyone and spit them back out so that the end stops. We can do this. We are larger than the world when we choose to be. I will call to the creatures. They will eat. They are always hungry. We will stop the end from coming.

The husband and I grow until the house looks like an insect. The creatures assemble around us. We touch them so that they grow as well. The creatures bark and lick our faces. We show them the tablet. We are trying to prevent the end of the world, I tell them. The creatures nod.

We are hungry. Will we be able to eat, they ask.

You are allowed to eat more than even the cemeteries can hold, I say.

The creatures wag their tails and run this way and that. We point them in the direction of the horizon. We all move across the world, scooping bodies up and swallowing them whole. I vomit into ravines. The creatures dive in after my stomach's contents and swallow the people again. The husband puts out the fires by licking them. When he lifts his head up, the fires have been reduced to mounds of black ash. The husband leans over again and breathes the ash up. The ash discolors his nostrils. He wipes at his face with the backs of his head. This only smears the color more.

I wipe the husband's face with a rag made out of tattered flags. He eats the dirty fabric like a spaghetti strand. The creatures run around our feet and dig up gravestones. I follow after them, eating the tombs and swallowing as much dirt as I can stomach. I vomit every few feet. The creatures' stomachs sag and drag against the ground. From time to time, they have to stand up on two legs and pick their stomachs up in their arms. They carry them until the flab has diminished and then they let the flesh go. The creatures unhinge their jaws and swallow houses and churches. I follow behind them, pushing my fists against their stomachs and into their backs until they finally vomit and shit. I scoop their waste up and mold it into entire villages complete with animals and citizens. The creatures look at these figures hungrily and try to eat them. I swat them in the mouths and they run away, whimpering.

The husband walks over to me. He balances the tablets on his head. I have made a mistake, the husband says. It was not the thirteenth hour we must beware. It was the fourteenth.

He smiles apologetically. I take the tablets from him and count on my fingers, One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. I wag my ring finger in his direction and frown. The fourteenth hour, I say. Which means what? That everything is not on the verge of being destroyed?

The husband looks from side to side. Has humanity always looked this way, he asks. I follow his gaze. The creatures shrink until they can hide beneath the arch of my foot.

I assume so, I say. We shrink back down to size as well. Everything moves as it always has. I eat the remains of the fires. It does not settle in my stomach well. I turn my stomach inside out and show it to the husband. Scrub it clean, I say and he sets to work scraping the ashes off the interior lining.

I have heart burn. My heart ignites to the point that fire pushes out through my throat. My tongue turns to cinders. I walk around and every time I speak, the heat melts something I love. Glass and silver and even light. It all melts and puddles up on the floor. I cannot walk straight. I slip this way and that. I knock into doorways and ceilings. I slide into China cabinets and open closets. I can barely breathe. I beat my hands against my chest but the fire will not subside. Smoke wafts out from my nostrils.

I drink water. It evaporates as soon as I open my mouth. I cannot keep moisture on my tongue long enough. It sizzles and boils. I pour salt water in my mouth and the salt immediately crystallizes on my tongue. It coats my mouth in thick white minerals. I grimace and swallow. I can barely stick my tongue out. I groan and push my tongue against the walls. The plaster darkens and smolders. I turn the faucets on and try to subside the fire with the rushing liquid.

The faucets go dry. Nothing drips from them. I stick my head in the oven, hoping that the additional heat might cancel the heartburn out. It does not. The fire rages deeper, traveling down my chest and entering my stomach. I gag and grab my throat with both hands. I look for a fire extinguisher. That might help. I imagine the cooling foam collecting in my mouth and soothing everything.

I find the fire extinguisher beneath the basement stairs. I pull the trigger and place the nozzle in my mouth. Foam goes everywhere. I swallow quickly but the foam turns to liquid as soon as it enters my mouth. I sit on the floor and cover my face with my hands. They are a fire red color. I sniffle and throw the fire extinguisher across the room.

Husband, I shout. Husband? Where are you?

I hear his footsteps over my head. I curl up into a ball and watch him descend into the basement. What's the matter, he asks. I point to my stomach.

I'm on fire, I say. The flames won't dissipate. I've tried everything but it won't work. It hurts so badly. I show him my tongue and he burns his fingers on the steam coming off the end.

How did this happen, he asks. I shake my head. He places wooden beams in my mouth. They ignite and turn to ash. I shriek. The house goes up in flames. The husband throws water at me. It sizzles and turns to steam even before it touches me. I pout and touch my eyes. They tear for a moment and immediately begin dehydrating. I can barely blink. My eyelids drag across the dry surface of my eyeballs.

Did you eat something you shouldn't have, the husband asks. I shrug my shoulders.

I only ate my dirt, I say. The husband produces a red barrel full of dirt. He wheels it over to me and waits patiently for me to dig my hands inside. The dirt dries and crumbles. I stuff it in my mouth anyway. The husband frowns as I bury my head in the dirt. I swallow it quickly. It moves past the fire and falls into my stomach. I choke and cough but do not stop swallowing. Soon, the barrel has been emptied. The husband tilts it until the last grains fall into my mouth. I show him my tongue which is beginning to crust over and turn to ash.

The husband sits beside me. I don't know how to help you, he says. He holds me against him. I breathe into his chest. His skin freckles and blisters. It puckers and wrinkles. It turns bright red. I touch his chest and ease the burned skin free with my nails. It comes free in large sheets. I roll them until they turn into scrolls. I stack the rolls up until they threaten to fall over. The husband presses his hands down against them. They smell like cooked meat. I breathe in deeply and smell chicken. I smell steak. I smell all the things I have never been able to eat before.

I flip myself inside out. The husband huddles over me, trying to find the source of the burn. He looks for matches and lighter fluid. He searches for gasoline and flammable elements. He digs around for charcoal and flint. Finally, the husband straightens up and shows me his hands. I couldn't find anything, he says. I stick my tongue out and touch it to my nose. My nose catches fire and falls off. I watch it roll across the floor and come to a stop in a dusty corner.

What if I'm on fire forever, I ask him. The husband picks me up. I burn him as we move. His shoulders sag and begin to cook. They roast. They bake. They broil. I baste him with sunscreen and gravy. I try to keep the scar tissue from forming. The husband hands me bottles of various coolants. I drink antifreeze. I pour bags of ice straight down my throat. Nothing stops the burn. I smoke cigarettes, hoping the smoke might counteract something. I look up at the husband and sigh.

I don't know what to do, I tell him. He carries me to the cemetery and sets me down. The cemetery dirt turns dry and arid. The dead claw their way out of the earth and move around me.

What is on the fire, the dead ask.

I am, I say. The skeletons exchange glances and then cluster around me. They all place a hand on my body and hold the pose. I breathe deeply. The smoke causes a thick fog to form over the entire cemetery. The dead move in and out of the heat. They eat my hair. They tug at my head gently. I close my eyes and feel them swallowing the locks and then releasing them.

The husband touches my knees. I keep my eyes closed. The dead whisper to one another. Sometimes guilt will make you burn, they say. But we like the guilt heat. It tastes good. I open my eyes and the smoke is gone. I swallow and nothing burns. The dead pour water in my mouth. Everything is moist and fluid. I look at the dead gratefully.

Will you eat the caskets now? We need the earth to be turned over, the dead asks. I settle down and eat quickly. The dead lie back down and wait patiently for the bedrock to be exposed and then covered.

I collect rocks. I collect them in my throat and stomach. I keep them in bins beneath the bed. I keep them in the closet. They pile up on tables and in the sinks. They fall onto everything. I trip over them when I try to go to the bathroom. The husband eats them accidentally. They catch in his belly and grind around.

The husband vomits pebbles. They are multicolored. I catch them in my hands as the husband vomits. They are compacted and shining. They are gemstones. Robbers gather around and try to snatch the gems out of my hands. I bite their chins and make them bleed. They stain diamonds red and turn them into rubies.

The husband is allergic to rubies. His eyes fall out of his head. He tries to grab hold of them but they slip through his fingers and fall down the drain. I sigh while leaning over his shoulder. I am so sorry, Husband, I say. He touches the back of my neck and squeezes too hard. My nerves jump. I whimper and pull the pulsing nerves out of my skin. They slip through my pores. I watch them slither and disappear into the cracks running along the floor.

I leave the husband alone. I go into our bedroom and pull my rock collection out of panels in the walls. I own boxes and books full of stones. I categorize them according to color. Within those colors, they are arranged by alphabet and weight. I sit on the edge of the bed and hold them up to the light, trying to see how translucent their surfaces are. One day, I will use opacity as another means of categorization in my collection. The husband always tells me I will eventually lose interest in the stones.

I like their weight as they hang in my pockets. I turn my favorite stones into necklaces. The pendants dangle from sterling silver chains and hang between my breasts. The stones clack together when I move. When the husband and I make love, he must hold the rocks to the side to prevent them from striking him in the face. I never wear rubies around my neck. They are not my favorites. I prefer quartz and amethyst. I would rather wear sapphire and aquamarine. Still, when I lean too far, the stones still choke the husband. And so he protects himself from them.

One day, the husband and I go on a train ride. I feel that we are never able to travel as well. My hunger gets in the way. On this ride, the husband carries a large bag of dirt so that I can eat whenever my stomach rumbles. The other passengers watch me. I can tell they are concerned. I want to tell them about how one day, they will see me again. I want them to know that I will visit their graves everyday and consume their caskets and everything surrounding them. I want to assure them that I will always protect them from the creatures. But I do not say anything to them. I simply eat the dirt and stare out the window as the landscape glides by.

The husband and I get up at every stop. The husband stands on the train's steps while I get off and gather a stone. I keep these stones in my pocket. They are all shades of gray and white and black. A few have a bit of brown to them. Even fewer have a hint of blue. My pockets hang low. It grows hard to move. I plod up and down the train, listening to the rocks. The husband follows behind me. He picks up every stone that falls out accidentally. He stretches his arm out the window to catch hold of any rocks that I miss during my search.

Finally, the train reaches its destination. The husband and I climb to the top of the train and sit on the engine. We drop rocks off the sides and watch as the stone walls increase in height. The husband I lean together. He touches the rocks equally. When his fingers brush against a red stone, his hand swells. I take those rocks away and eat them. Then he can breathe easily again. The husband lifts me into his arms and holds me as the train moves backwards. Will the stones treat you well, he asks.

I hope they will, I say.

The husband is too caring. Despite hating the stones and their monotony, he goes into rock quarries to gather geodes for me. He cracks the stones open like an egg to show me the minerals inside. They are so beautiful. I place my hands inside and the crystals cut me. My blood turns the inside of the geode bright red. The husband sniffles and blows his nose on the edge of his shirt. I stare up at him. I am so sorry, I say. I didn't realize.

I stuff the geode halves into my mouth and swallow quickly. The husband blows his nose again and rubs his throat briskly. My allergies gradually worsen, he says. He shrugs his shoulders and pulls more geodes out of his pockets. He breaks them all for me and presents them on a silver platter. I marvel at the crystals. Time and time again, I reach in and cut myself. Repeatedly, I have no choice but to devour the stone shortly after. The husband sighs and hangs his head. There are only so many quarries he can visit so as to bring me back gifts.

I decide to keep my collection in my stomach. I organize them by digestible, easily digestible, hardly digestible, and not digestible. My stomach keeps them stacked in vertical lines that nearly come out of my throat. I am careful when I cough. I am careful not to cough. I do not want the stones to be rearranged. The husband kisses my navel and blows into it. The breeze whistles around the stones. They sing. They thank me for collecting them. The husband thanks me for no longer hurting him.

The husband molds bodies from wax. He would like to be like god. He makes wax from my body and places it on an examining table. I stand beside the husband and hand him instruments. He asks for a chisel and I give him a long-handled one and a short-handled one. He asks for a scalpel and I give him one with an elongated blade and one with a blunter blade. He asks for a hammer and I give him a soft rubber-headed one and a harder metal-headed one. Then he asks for silence. I try not to breathe.

When the husband needs more wax, he holds my head in both hands and squeezes. Wax comes out of my mouth in a long piece. The husband cuts off the length he needs with a scissor he keeps tucked in his hair and pushes the rest back into my head. Turning, he resumes his operation.

He makes a woman. I do not know what he makes her for. She turns her head this way and that as she forms. Her eyes change color as the husband paints them various shades. He alters the shape of her chin and then of her nose. Her forehead broadens and narrows. She looks at me pleadingly. Will you make him stop, she asks.

Her voice is small and high. The husband massages the base of her throat. Her voice deepens and strengthens. Will you make him stop, she asks again.

I stare at the husband. He turns to his artist's palette and mixes paint together to form the perfect flesh color. I watch as the color darkens and combines a bit of beige with olive green and black. The resulting color is a deep coffee. It is warm. I can see the flecks of red mixed in, the bits of metallic reflection. The husband begins painting his creation. The woman opens her mouth and screams. She reaches out to grab hold of my hand.

It hurts to be changed, she gasps. I am so afraid.

The husband has not started yet on her genitals. She looks at him fearfully. He puts the paint down and sets to work molding her breast and vagina. She moves her feet and slides around on the table, trying to distance herself from him. I touch the husband's arm.

Perhaps we should let her go free, I say.

He shakes his head and grabs hold of my head again. I vomit up wax. The husband kneads the wax until it is warm and soft. He applies it to the waxen woman's chest. He plucks and tucks the wax, creating the breasts' mounds and the tips of the nipples. He uses the paint again to darken her nipples and lighten the flesh of her breasts. She raises her arms and touches her hands to her face.

I am so afraid, she says.

She heaves herself upward. The husband pushes her back down. He touches her too hard and leaves an indentation of his hand in her shoulder. The woman screams. The husband sighs and takes more wax from me to repair the woman's injury. He hums softly as he works the wax into the woman's body. She shifts her weight from side to side and stares at the overhanging lights.

I imagine that I am a woman who is with child, she says softly. I imagine that I am on the examining table and a man steals my child from me. He cuts me open and scrapes me out. There is a vacuum. There is a mop. There is a rag wet with my sweat and blood. The man tries to sing to me so that I stay calm but this does not happen. I cannot relax. I can only strain and breathe irregularly. I want to know where my child has gone. Only the man eats it. He swallows it whole. He places his lips against me and eats the child directly from my womb. His mouth reminds me of a mosquito. I am so afraid. When he eats, I bleed. When I bleed, my ears ring. My eyes are always watering. I try to eat but have no appetite. Everything tastes of chemicals. I touch the man's face and leave a bloody print on his cheek. He pretends not to notice. I disgust him. As soon as I close my eyes, he rushes to the sink and cleans the blood off. He does not want to be marked by me. He simply wants to eat his fill and leave.

The wax women begins crying. I hold her hands as the husband shakes her waist and hips. Shouldn't we be kinder to her, I ask the husband. He shakes his head and sinks his chisel into her skin. The woman sobs and closes her eyes.

It is like giving birth, she says. She touches her forehead. I realize she has no hair. I touch the baldness of her scalp and stare at the husband.

Where is her hair, I ask.

The husband pauses in his work. I had forgotten, he says. He takes a razor and gestures to me. I walk to his side and dip my head. He takes the razor to my head and slices along my scalp. I feel blood dripping down my neck. The husband tugs at my hair and my scalp comes away from my head. He holds my hair out. I touch the long strands and straighten up. My skin grows back immediately. My hair grows out. I take the scalp from the husband's hands and place it against the waxen woman's head.

She whimpers. It is so warm, she says. She reaches up to touch her new hair. She turns her head. Thank you, she says. I smile and brush her hair out with my fingers. She sighs and melts into the table. I stroke her hair and plait it. The braid extends the length of the table and across the floor. The husband steps over it as he moves around the room.

It is time for her to die, he says. He turns the lights on as far as they can go. The woman inhales sharply. She sinks into the table. All the melt drips onto the floor. I hold the hair in my hand. When the husband sings, I stuff the braid into my mouth. It tastes like firewood.

We visit the Dark Church. The gods had originally told us about this place. It is dark, they said. It is dark but beautiful. There are things there that you will never seen anyplace else. You will think you have died. But no. You will simply walk through and want to taste everything. You will want to hold it to your heart. It is a mystery. They gave us books on the subject. They painted murals on our bedroom windows. Finally, the husband told them we would see this church if they would leave us alone for the night. The gods left after I cooked them fried chicken.

Are you satisfied now, I asked.

The gods looked at one another. Could we just have a bit of vegetable tempura before we go, they asked. It is so much better for us if we can have more of a balanced meal. Vegetables and meat just go hand in hand. How do you think we have lasted an eternity so far?

I fried their tempura and the gods left. Several complained that there was not enough broccoli. The husband closed all the windows and sealed the doors. He patted my head and secured our belongings.

We cross the ocean and more than two deserts.

At a rocky outcrop, I look at the husband. Do you think we are lost, I ask.

The husband points to the carved towers and windows. He shows me the bas reliefs in the stone. They are etched so perfectly that even the stone takes on shadows. I lick the images until I have an imprint of the holy family on my tongue. They taste salty. Moving aside several boulders, the husband leads the way inside.

The church smells old but is cold. I run my hands over my arms briskly. The husband wraps a blanket around me. We touch the murals. The colors are vivid. The lines are thick and black. I breathe onto them and the colors run. They move down the ceilings and puddle up onto the floor. The husband sighs. They will stone you, he says.

This is the modern age, I say.

Not here, he says.

I breathe again and again until the church is a melting mess. I laugh loudly in the husband's ears. He lowers himself to his knees and prays. The stone cuts his flesh. I bend over backwards and watch the blood drip from his leg. It wets the stone. When enough has collected beneath him, the blood runs along the cracks and comes to a stop outside where it immediately hardens into a rare mineral.

Old women chip at the blood, trying to take pieces large enough to sell at the market. The husband watches them closely. He does not like to see the elderly work so hard to make money. He cuts his hand open with a stone crucifix and makes a fist. He squeezes the blood into their hands. The blood hardens immediately. The air reeks of copper. I plug my nose up with black stones. The husband and I walk towards the altar.

Lining the front row of pews are the gods. They look up as we approach. Fancy seeing you here, the first says.

We thought you were against religion, I say.

The gods look at one another. They reach up and pull pieces of the ceiling away. They eat the sheets of painted stone. We never said that, they say. We said that we believe that humans place too much emphasis on religion. We said that we had nothing to do with religion and that we rarely listened to anything humanity asked of us. That's what we said. By the way, dinner was truly magnificent. Can we come by again next week?

The husband groans. Can't you learn to cook, he asks.

The gods laugh. Cooking is something that humanity learns to do. We're gods. What would we need to learn to cook for, they ask.

The husband frowns. We're immortal, too, he says. We learned to cook. In fact, we cook for you, which is not something we would like to do every day. I pat the husband's knee comfortingly. One of the gods stands up and walks to the altar. He climbs to the top and clears his throat. The husband stops talking and stares at the figure spread eagle. I cock my head to one side. Pilgrims walk around the altar, poking the god's torso before moving away.

I am the sacrificial lamb, the god says.

He was the Catholic God model, another god explains to us. The husband and I nod.

The god upon the altar lifts his head. Could you be quiet? I am speaking for dramatic effect and you're making my words lose their effect, he says. The gods zip their mouths shut. They stare at the first god intently while running their fingernails over the metal zipper teeth. Several pick at the tabs and pull the zipper up and down.

The Dark Church closes up around us. The walls close up. The doors seal. There are no windows. The stones darken in color. I hold the husband's hand. He squeezes my fingers lightly. The gods sigh and shift in the pew. They scratch their heads and look at the altar. The Church always does this when he gets on the altar. It gets insulted, they say.

The god on the altar lifts his head again. You would think that it would realize, he says. He waves his hands and crosses fly off the wall. They stab him in his arms and legs. The god wriggles. It stings a little, he says. His blood runs off the table and onto the floor. One of the gods leans over and collects the blood in a silver cup.

It is the Lord, the pilgrims shout behind us. They cluster around the altar, touching the wounds. The gods pass the chalice to them so that they can drink. Our lips burn, the pilgrims shout as soon as they swallow. The gods cover their mouths with their hands to keep from laughing.

Silly humans, they say. How we love this church. The god on the altar pulls the crosses free. The husband guides me through the cracks in the wall. The darkness holds us back for a moment. The light brings us forward. We leave the gods behind. They smell strongly of religion and fried foods.

The husband and I grow interested in spiral things. Seashells and galaxies. Tornadoes and fiddlehead ferns. Those sorts of things. We like how there are so many edges rolled up into one. The husband and I sit in the kitchen and roll up herbs to cut into chiffonade.

The husband tells me about the Golden Ratio. I imagine this as a number gleaming in the heavens. Obviously, it would be golden. I would prefer it to have a silver base. I paint several portraits of this number. Because I do not know the exact sequence, I use letters instead. The husband stands over me and changes the variables in my portrait from e, f, g,s, y, and z to simply a, b, and c.

He tells me the number I should have been painting the entire time. 1.61803399, he says. Repeat this.

1.61803399, I say and the husband nods.

The husband continues. You must add a to b and place this equation about a. This equals b divided by a. This means the Golden Ratio.

I stare at him. The husband begins again. You have heard of Fibonacci. He was a great man. I knew him personally. Don't you remember that I invited him to our wedding? He also knew about the Golden Ratio. He understood the importance of numbers. He explained that the appropriate numbers, the most important numbers were 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987 and so on. He knew this. He taught it to me. He actually wrote it out on a piece of canvas as part of our wedding fit. Don't you remember? You used the canvas to dry your hair one day and I cried. Then you grew angry and set the canvas on fire.

I do not remember any of this. Sometimes, the husband cannot help but make up stories. Sometimes, the husband remembers different things than I do. It does not mean that he is wrong. It is simply that he and I have different interpretations. I clear my throat. And so these numbers describe the world, I ask.

The husband produces a chalkboard from his back pocket. He sets it on the wall and scribbles upon it. Describes the world, he says. Puh. It doesn't describe the world. It describes us. It describes humanity. It describes nature. It describes the universe. It tells why some galaxies orbit until they are sucked into Black Holes. It tells why we are designed so perfectly. He pauses and erases a series of numbers from the board. His fingers are white from the powder. He sneezes once and rubs his nose. The chalk collects beneath his nostrils.

Ah hem, the husband says. This is, of course, all purely theoretical. Nature has a number of abnormalities. There will always be measurements that are vastly different from the numbers in question. Surely you understand this. You know that sometimes, the numbers say one thing because numbers are so exact but in practice, the measurements can be skewed. The nautilus can have too many chambers and are bones can be thinner than implied. He blows his nose on his hand and sighs. But this does not mean that the mathematicians are failures. They are geniuses. They tried to mold nature but it would not give in. It did not want the structure attributed to numbers. It did not want two plus two to equal four. It wanted a variation. It wanted the numbers to equate to five and six and seven. Nature wanted two plus two to equal nothing. To equal everything. Do you understand? The numbers could only tell nature so much. Nature did not want to listen and so the numbers were put aside.

I guide the husband to my lap. He lies across it and sobs. It is such a shame, he says. The numbers all went together. Even the Quadratic Equation. The Golden Ratio could be derived. Do you understand? All the formulas belonged to one another. Each could signify a characteristic of the next. And in the Quadratic Equation a was multiplied by the variable x squared and then added to b times the variable x and then added to c and that would give you 0. Can you imagine? All those numbers simply canceled one another out and gave nothing? Just like nature. Just like how it gives the numbers nothing, the husband says. He wipes his eyes and cries again.

I kiss the back of his neck. They were all geniuses, I say. The husband nods his head. His nose itches my thigh. I adjust his position so that he cannot scratch me with his face.

They were the greatest men who ever existed. Everyone took this world for granted. They did not know why certain patterns existed. They did not understand the complexity that was the individual number of barbs on a specific species of leaf. They did not know what made us fall instead of float. But they did. All those mathematics. They knew. And I feel fortunate to have known them. They have changed the way I have seen the world, the husband says. He sits up in my lap and wipes his face. He places his head on my shoulder and sighs into my neck. Do you feel lucky to have known them, he asks.

Of course I do, I say.

The husband still looks tortured. I frown. I pull the galaxies down from the sky and fill our living room. I turn glass stones into seashells. I hold all these items out to him. The husband stares at them. He does not seem to understand. His fingertips touch their chambers, their many spirals. I guide his hands. I whisper in his ear, Show them what mathematics has taught you, I say. I begin counting, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765.

The husband touches the shell. He strokes the chambers. He lifts his head and counts with me, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144... When he grows tired of counting, he stop and begins the recitation again.

For a month out of the year, the husband and I reside in a bone room. It is a large white room filled with bones. All in all, there are enough bones to make seventeen complete skeletons. We spend the first week learning the bones in the body according to their regional locations. The bones gather around and quiz us on their names.

First the cranial bones. The husband and I say, Frontal bone, parietal bone, temporal bone, occipital bone, sphenoid bone, ethmoid bone. The bones clap. They reassemble.

Then the facial bones. These names are considerably more complex. The husband I take deep breaths before beginning. If we misname the bones, they will beat us across our foreheads until our skulls break apart. The husband and I begin, Zygomatic bone, superior and inferior maxilla, nasal bone, mandible, palatine bone, lacrimal bone, vomer bone, and inferior nasal conchae.

The bones applaud again. When they are happy and believe we are working our hardest, they reward us with chocolate. The type I am given is always mixed with hot peppers while the husband's has various fruits. He takes the chocolate when the bones have turned away and sticks them beneath the radiators. He lets the chocolate melt. He smears them on the bones and laughs.

We are then quizzed on the middle ears. Malleus, incus, stapes, I say.

The husband must know the single bone in the throat. Hyoid bone, he says.

We answer the shoulder bones together. The clavicle and scapula, we say. These are our favorite bones. The husband and I would like to tattoo their images onto our bodies but tattoo ink does not last more than three generations at a time on our bodies. To keep the bones as long as we would like, we would have to be needled at least once every seventy-five years. The husband does not like to be stuck with needles so often.

The thorax is the easiest region to name. Sternum and ribs, I say. The bones do not make us state the exact number of each. As long as we know the names and their faces, we are given credit.

We then name the bones in the spinal column. There are the cervical vertebrae, I say.

These include the atlas and axis, the husband says.

And then there are the lumbar vertebrae and the thoracic vertebrae, I finish. The bones applaud again. They feed the husband dissected butterflies and bring me plastic pails of dirt. I eat hungrily, not caring that the bones do not like the idea of dirt being on a person's hands.

We tell them that the arm bones consist of the humerus, ulna, and radius. There is also the condyles of the humerus and the head of the radius although those are specific features and not separate bones. We are given extra points for knowing about the bones' individual characteristics.

Our next quiz is on the hand bones. These include bones in the wrist, palms, and fingers. The husband and I answer in a single breath, Scaphoid bone, navicular bone, lunate bone, triquetral bone, pisiform bone, trapezium bone, trapezoid bone, capitate bone, hamate bone, metacarpal bones, proximal phalanges, intermediate phalanges, and distal phalanges. The bones are silent for a moment. They murmur to one another, glancing at and away from us. Finally, they applaud loudly. My ears pop.

We come to the pelvis. The husband and I answer, Ossa coxae, sacrum, and coccyx.

We move down to the legs. The femur, include the head and shaft as well as the greater trochanter and the condyles. The patella. The tibia, including the shaft and the tuberosity of tibia. The fibula, the husband and I say. We clap our hands with the bones.

There is one last test. We must know the bones of the feet. There are as many as in the hands. The only saving grace is the that the hands and feet have a number of the same bones. Beginning with the ankle bones we say, The ankle is known as the tarsal. It has the calcaneus bone, the talus, the navicular bone, the medial cuneiform bone, intermediate cuneiform bone, the lateral cuneiform bone, and the cuboid bone. The foot's instep consists of the metatarsal bones. Finally, there are the toe bones which consist of the proximal phalanges, the intermediate phalanges, and the distal phalanges, we say.

We are given these quizzes many times over the first week of the month. When we are able to complete all the questions without being beaten, the bones bow to us. They simply want to make sure we will not confuse one for the other. I understand their concern. I would not want to be given another woman's name when I have my own just like the husband would prefer to be known as such instead of being given another man's name.

When they stop quizzing us, the bones hang from the ceilings and walls in complex shapes. They form chandeliers and flower pots. They make unique tiles on the ground. The bones throw the best parties. They know how to cook the most amazing food. Never mind that they are the types of bones that do not oxidize outside of the body. Who cares that they are a light yellow instead of bright white? Not us. We are not fans of that bleached look. In fact, we tell our favorite bones that if they ever want to get rid of that pale pallor, we have a dye bath waiting for them. The majority accept.

They sit on our shoulders while the dye sets in. They beg us to tell them stories. We tell them the one about the hand that lost all its phalanges because it couldn't stop being greedy. We tell them the one about the bone that was so ugly all the other bones made fun until they needed help and only the ugly bone was able to save them. They laugh at these stories. Then we tell them the story about the bones that were not happy being bright white and so asked the gods to make them a pale yellow. The bones cry. We are very good at making the bones feel guilty.

On the Day of the Dead, the husband and I gather for a traditional party. We sit in graves and rise out slowly. Men and women pretend that they are our ancestors. They bring their children to us. They tell them stories about the meals we once cooked and the various Christmas traditions we adopted. The husband and I exchange looks. We enjoy these stories. We like to hear about poinsettias catching fire and fruit cookies being so hard that they can shatter teeth. The husband would like me to make these cookies for him so that they can see just how hard they really are. I slap his knee as the children lift me onto their shoulders and carry me through the plaza. Pregnant women come to me with armfuls of roses. They present the flowers to me. When ever I touch the stems, I get cut by a thorn.

The crowd carries us to an old wooden room. They open the door for us. The room is filled with scented candles and old flowers. The husband enters the room first and turns to wait for me. He takes my hand and helps me inside. The crowd closes the door. Two outfits hang from the back wall. One is a pale yellow suit. The other is a yellow gown. The husband and I remove our clothing and put the new outfits on. We look at ourselves in the mirror. We do not like how the yellow washes out our skin color. We look sickly. I am afraid that I have developed gangrene, I tell the husband.

He rubs my back soothingly. It looks more like jaundice, he says.

We knock on the door. It opens from the outside. The crowd applauds when we step outside. They have all changed as well. Their clothing is such a pale yellow that it almost looks like an off-white. They fall to their knees and clasp their hands together.

They whisper to one another, There was a man and a woman who began the universe. The woman was a womb. She did not need the man to produce. But over time, she grew lonely. When she and the man came together, the creatures they conceived lasted longer. They were stronger. The man and woman decided that they would come to earth. There, they found their counterparts in the garden. They slaughtered them. The man and woman sank into the stone. They walked the world by means of its caverns. They pretended they could not hear humanity. But it did not work. They still desired to be a part of everything. They wanted to breathe in the same way humanity would. They wanted to copulate and give birth many times over. They resided with the gods.

The husband and I smile at these stories. The true story of our union is not as romantic and hardly as epic. It was simply this:

I sat alone watching the moon pull at the tides. I wanted nothing to do with the world around me. I ate coral because I was too tired to get the cemetery dirt. A man came. He offered me dirt he had hand-picked. He did not know why he picked this dirt. He simply did and carried it with him. I was hungry and so I accepted. I had no fear of being raped and killed. I was immortal. What problems did any man present for me? I ate the earth while looking at him. He was handsome. He offered me his hand. I told him my name and he told me that he would like to be known as the husband. Because he appeased my hunger, I readily obliged. And so we married. The moon led the ceremony. The sun was his best man. Several planetary guardians served as my bridesmaids. The gods filled out the rest of the ceremony. They clapped and sobbed. They said we were a beautiful couple.

And that is it. We are nothing interesting. We are simply a man and woman dressed in yellow because that is what humanity expects from us. The old women present us with skull masks. We pull them on over our hair. The women dab makeup around our faces and blend the latex into our skin. They paint flowers and scars on our cheeks and foreheads.

The women bring the husband and me bouquets of flowers. We are given roses and lilacs, tulips and daisies, irises and lilies. The husband breathes in heavily and starts sneezing. He is allergic to most things sweet smelling. Sugar. Baked goods. Candy canes. He eats them and his mouth swells. At home, he gives all the sweet things to me so that I can bury them in the backyard for the worms to enjoy. Over time, the worms plumpen and the creatures descend upon them with open mouths. Then the husband and I lie beneath the bed and fall asleep to the screams outside.

The women bring us hard cakes in the shape of skulls. They bring us sugar skulls. They bring us skull underwear. Young men come with tattoo guns and take our arms. They tattoo skulls onto our biceps and the backs of our necks. The needles break even before they touch our flesh. The guns shatter when they push in. The ink stains the men's hands. The husband and I point to the cemetery.

The crowd carries us past the iron gates. They decorate our hair with colored ribbons and throw us into our graves. I turn onto my side to face the husband. I eat the casket. It tastes like lemons. My lips pucker. My tongue curls. I eat the earth. It tastes like cinnamon. The husband writhes on the ground. He turns inside out and does somersaults. He grabs his throat and chokes. I eat the husband's casket. It tastes of fresh oranges. The aftertaste has a bit of an acidic bite. Soon, the dirt is gone. We rise out of the caskets. The crowd unfurls flags with our faces emblazoned on them. We bless their foreheads. The husband walks around me and does the Heimlich maneuver. I spit up the dirt. I fill the cemetery in. The crowd cheers.

I have a fear of mirrors. I have known too many people who have died before the mirrors. I warned them to keep the mirrors covered at night. I told them to take them out of their bedrooms completely. But they would not. Their superficiality got the best of them. The mirrors stared at them for many nights, slowly depleting their vitality. And then, one day, they opened their eyes and died. The mirrors were not satisfied. They were still hungry. They waited impatiently for someone to enter the room. I banned everyone to leave the room alone. I barred the windows and locked the doors. When everyone was safely in the dining room, listening to one of the husband's many stories while eating homemade rice pudding, I slipped into the room through the keyhole and faced the mirrors. They thumped and hummed. They tried to reach towards me. I beat them with baseball bats and my fists until they were simply empty frames surrounded by shards of glass. Then I set the glass on fire. It melted and bubbled. It glistened as it liquefied. The husband played a guitar loudly to drown out the glass shattering over and over. I stood over the glass, waiting impatiently for it change from molten water to a fine ash. The glass tried to avoid the transformation but the heat was too much. They grayed and dried out. Finally, they were silent. I swept the ashes into an old shirt and brought it to the nearest cemetery.

The husband met me there. He helped me bury the shirt. Already, the shards were coming back together. They screamed my name. They cursed me. You stupid bitch, they screamed. How dare you? What right did you have? You will die, woman. You and the husband. You will both die. We will see to it. No one destroys us without being destroyed in turn. Just you wait, they screamed. The dirt fell onto them. My stomach growled. The husband nodded his head. I bent at the waist and ate the dirt. I swallowed the shirt and the shards. I swallowed all the surrounding caskets. I ate until my throat bled. Then I vomited. When I was done, the husband opened the shirt to check on the shards. They were now a small ball that was a deep pink in color. The surface was matte. It had no reflective qualities whatsoever.

I first knew of the husband because of glass. This was long before tides and celestial bodies orchestrating our marriage. It was when I had human friends. They were young. They wore corsets and heavy gowns. I joined them as they gathered around the bathroom mirror. Someone switched the light off. Giggling, they each stepped up to the mirror and stared at the surface. Someone held a candle up. When the girls looked over their shoulders, they gasped and placed their hands over their mouths. Our husbands, they cried out. I could not see what they could. I saw only swirling shadows and barely formed limbs. Still, my friends pushed me towards my place at the mirror. I press my forehead to the glass. They all clustered together and clucked. I raised my hands and touched the mirror with my fingertips. I breathed in and out. Everyone was silent. They watched the mirror closely, waiting for a disembodied face to emerge from the darkness.

I don't think it is working, I said. And then I saw it. A parting of the shadows and the beginnings of a forehead and mouth. I whimpered. There were eyes and hair. Cheekbones and a nose. Soon, I was staring at the husband. He smiled at me. He reached out to touch my hair. The girls waited anxiously for me to speak. Several touched the small of my back, urging me to say something.

It didn't work, I said. I saw nothing. The mirror laughed. The husband disappeared. The women looked at their hands. When they looked up again, they giggled and pushed one another.

Oh, it was simply a game, they said, hugging me. You'll meet your husband one day, just as we will meet ours. Hopefully it will be the man of your dreams. We left the bathroom and its mirror. I could hear the glass rippling. It called to me. I knew what it wanted. The girls continually returned to the mirror. They brushed their hair in its reflection. They turned the lights off at night in an effort to divine their futures. And one by one, they all died, months and years apart. I went to each of their funerals. When they began to look at my un-aged face strangely, I took to wearing a cloak over my head.

I am so sorry for your lost, I would say to each of them in turn. I would touch the corpse's forehead. I would leave an iris in their folded hands. Goodbye, my friends. I tried to tell you, I said before leaving the funeral.

Then I waited at the cemetery. I sat in a tree and waited. I sat behind the tombs. I waited until the crowds came and went and the iron gates were locked. When everyone I had finally gone, I descended and went to them. I ate the dirt. It was peppered with bits of glass. I hissed and spat the shards out. I ate the caskets and the tombstones. I ate until I had uncovered my lost friends. I assembled them in a row before me. I told them stories about my beginning and my future. I told them that the mirror had showed me my husband. They cooed and cried. They reached for me. When they began to have trouble moving, I vomited the dirt up and recovered them.

I always felt guilty. I still do. I knew the mirror's power. I should have shown them. The husband understands. He saw me in the mirror as well. Together, we hold hands. We keep our mirrors locked in metal boxes. We eat the keys to resist opening the lids. The mirrors know our suppressed vanity. They whisper and whistle beneath the floorboards. When we feel the urge to reveal them, we bite our own fingers and suck out the cold blood.

We sleep beneath beds that others occupy. Their shifting keeps us awake at night. The husband and I clutch at one another. These people do not know that we are there. They go about their daily lives while the husband and I hide. They throw apple cores beneath the bed and the husband gathers them in his hands. He presses them together until they turn into ash. I open my mouth and the husband pours the ash into my mouth.

When these people leave the beds, the husband and I get up from the floor and hide in their underwear drawers. We fit into their thongs and boxer shorts. We eat their deodorant. We put their socks into our ears. They walk in and out of the bedroom while we move from drawer to drawer, trying various bits of clothing on. I wear men's pants and the husband pulls on a dress. I put on lacy lingerie and the husband fits himself into a black and white tuxedo. We shatter their mirrors and look at ourselves in the resulting shards. The husband cuts his soles purposely and walks laps around the room, scraping his feet against the floor until a spiral of bloodstains result.

I crawl after him, licking the drying blood up. The bedroom door opens and we scurry beneath the radiator. The people slip on the blood and fall into the wall. The husband and I sink to the floor. We shrink until we can fit beneath the floorboards. When we are small enough, we drop down and walk underneath the planks to the people. We help them back up and when we are standing, we bite at their heels until their skin hangs in ragged strips.

The husband and I giggle. We do not want to hurt anyone but we do require our own space. We eat spiders' eggs and vomit them into the people's pillowcases. We fill their comforters with tacks. We cut their pants so that they are shorter on one side. We run their baths so that the water is so cold that they get frostbite as soon as they dip a foot inside.

Still, the people do not leave. They wake in the morning and go to sleep at night. They wake up in the early morning crying from nightmares about cannibalistic zombies with bees' heads. The husband and I crawl out of their ears and sit dejectedly on the backs of their heads. We pinch the nerves on the base of their necks. They rub their shoulders trying to ease the pain.

I look at the husband. I am not happy, I say. These people will not leave. I demand our own household. Where are the monsters and the daydreams? Won't you kill them?

You know that we never kill anyone, the husband says. We only eat them. And then vomit them. That is all. It is okay. They will leave one day. We must be patient.

I sigh. I know, husband. Can't we go to the cemetery until they leave?

The husband shakes his head. I slap him in the face and leave. I sit in the cemetery for five days. I eat the dirt and vomit it many times over. The dirt begins to taste less like dirt and more like buttered popcorn. I do not like popcorn. I do not like how the kernels must be picked out of the teeth and discarded. I do not like how there are always those pieces that do not pop and remain as scorched seeds.

I return home. I climb in through the window and settle down in the husband's ears. The husband pats my head. I missed you, he says.

The dirt no longer tasted right, I say.

I didn't think that it would. You ate it for far too long. The dirt was meant to go bad, the husband says. He spits blow darts at the people. They grimace and grab their necks, trying to soften the sting. The husband hands me the dart gun. I put it to my lips and spit the darts out. The husband and I compete to see who can blow the most darts before the people find us. When they lift their heads, we climb into the closet and swing from hanger to hanger.

When we get tired of swinging, we take their belts and form loops. We insert our heads in the loops and tighten them. We secure the buckle and jump from the top clothing bar. We hang from the belts, kicking our feet and moving our arms around wildly. The husband's face turns blue and then purple. He kicks so hard that he leaves holes in the walls and doors. I turn somersaults and cartwheels in the air.

It is like gymnastics, I say to the husband as I spin. He applauds my efforts. I stop spinning and roll up and down the belt. The husband takes photographs. The belt turns into a ribbon. The lace weakens and breaks. I jump to the closet floor and land in a pair of shoes. We hear the people outside the closet. The husband comes down from the belt and darts into a sneaker. The closet door opens. The husband and I stare up at the people. Shall we bite them, I ask.

The husband shakes his head and wags his finger at me. My shoulders sag. I would like to bite their fingers but the husband is right. We should learn to coexist. We should be able to make our own household inside another person's home. I use the shoes to make a kitchen. The husband sits at a table made of shoeboxes. I make a roast turkey and mashed potatoes. I mix dirt into everything. I make a stuffing of chopped vegetables and dung. The husband eats everything. We leave the closet, climb into the bed, and vomit onto the mattress. When the people go to sleep at night, they complain about how wet the mattress is. They lift it up and scream. It is dripping, they cry.

The husband and I climb beneath the bed and laugh together.

The husband and I decide we want to play Prince and Princess. We enjoy regal affairs. The husband likes seeing me in a full-length gown of taffeta and lace and a tiara made of white gold and clear rhinestones. He prefers to see my brush my hair from my eyes to reveal my face. He says my hair is so black that it has streaks of blue and purple running through it. My eyes are an amber and green color. It is an unnatural shade for most people. But my irises have always been this color. My eyes glow from time to time. They emit a brilliant green light. It is so green that it could be mistaken for white. It is blinding, the husband says.

I dress the husband in a cloak made of foxes. The foxes bury their noses into the husband's back and breathe with him. The husband and I are not the kind of people who slaughter animals for their pelts. We simply ask the animals to climb upon us like a garment for a small period of time. We feed them raw steak cut free of fat in exchange. On cold nights, we allow the animals to sleep in the house before going back outside come daybreak. Every so often, the foxes grow excited by the scent of meat permeating the household. They wag their tails. The fur thumps the husband's face. He scratches the foxes behind their ears to calm them while I gather the meat into a bowl and bring it into the room for them to eat. We always feed them before and after. They need a reason to stay and do a good job. They need something as a reward. The meat at the end is salted and sprinkled with some pepper and oregano. This is a special treat for the foxes.

The husband and I create two thrones of solid silver. On either side is a small stone made of bronze. We need parents and so the gods come over to pretend to be the King and Queen. They sit on the throne and eat green beans, pods and all. They wave acorn squash like a scepter and scream, Off with their heads.

That isn't part of the game, I tell the gods. They look at one another and eat the squash in three bites. Would you please stop eating the props, I ask. The gods glare at me and devour the thrones. I cross my arms over my chest and tap my toes impatiently. Hanging their heads, the gods pull the thrones out of their throats and set them back up. I give them a bowl of bones. They giggle and eat them slowly. The husband walks in and out of the room, whittling a sword out of an oak tree. He paints the sword silver. I touch the tip of the sword and it turns to silver. Always doing things the hard way, I say to him.

The gods pull on deer and pigs. The deer eat a salt lick we keep on the floor by the gods' feet. The pigs snort softly and nuzzle the gods' ears. I throw them corncobs and the pigs chew on them. The gods settle down on their thrones and run their hands through their hair.

I clap my hands. Now it is time to play Prince and Princess, I say. The husband will be the prince and I will be the princess. An evil warlock has stolen me away from the kingdom and keeps me in a stone tower outside the kingdom. He wants me to marry him but I will not and so he keeps me locked away as punishment. The prince goes on a journey to find me. This is a mission given to him by the King and Queen. He must slay a number of dragons and have a battle to the death with the warlock.

The gods nod their heads. Who is playing the warlock, they ask.

The cemetery creature leaps through the window and lands on the dining room table. It snaps its jaws and rises up on two legs. I am the warlock, the creature says. I sit on its back and the creature trots around the room. The husband follows after.

Where are the dragons, the gods ask.

Several small lizards come into the room. They spread their legs and hiss at the dragon. He pats each on its head and puts it in his pocket. Inside, they try to bite his thighs and draw blood. When that does not work, they think about their family members being roasted on a stick. This causes them to cry. I look back to see their bloody tears soaking through the husband's pants. Would you stop, the husband asks. He seizes the rest of the lizards and lifts his sword into the air. The gods applaud.

He is a hero, they shout. The husband bows to them. The lizards smack his legs with their long, barbed tails. I lean over and pat their heads as well. They quiet down. I feed them large crickets. They curl up in a ball and fall asleep. The husband jumps onto the table.

Unhand the princess, he shouts to the creature. It rises onto its back legs again and shows the husband a balloon-like crest beneath its chin. It swipes at the husband with its front claws. I hold onto the creature's back, trying not to fall off. The husband smacks the claws with his sword. The creature nearly drops me. I slide down his back and walk across the table to take a seat beside the gods. I will kill you, the husband says. He lifts the creature up by the sides of his heads and drops him onto the floor. The creature screams. The husband bows. The gods applaud. The husband runs up to me and kisses my hands. The foxes howl.

What a wonderful game, the gods say, helping the animals off of them. I give them all bowls of food. I give the animals their meals and ready their beds. They all sing me to sleep because they like the idea of my being a princess. I cut my hand upon my crown.