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“What are you doing?” Glenda shouts from her cross-legged position on the living room floor.
Sandra, in Arthur’s office, stares out the window, knowing any minute he would lift himself from the futon.
“Sandra!” Glenda yells again, this time more desperate.
Sandra strolls into the living room. “Don’t be like this.”
“My kids will be like puppets. They’ll need to be murdered by him, somehow, to get back to me?”
Sandra shifts her weight to her hip. “Puppets?”
“That’s what you’re saying isn’t it?”
Sandra says it in a small voice, “He never tried to hurt me.”
“Does that matter, suddenly?”
“After reading what he wrote to me a bunch, he never tried to hurt me.”
Glenda stands. “Isn’t he why you killed yourself?”
The confidence Sandra had possessed in the short time since her return, faded. Sandra, out of nowhere, reverted to her gentler person, back to the simple, photogenic person with the bright smile.
Sandra’s eyes glaze over. “Remember I told you about the film?”
“The pudding?”
Sandra wipes tears from her face. “I can feel it all over me. It’s here. Completely here, again. He’s back.”
Glenda eyes the doorway to Arthur’s office, waits for him to emerge.
“You have to help me do it,” Sandra pleads.
Glenda reaches out, grabs Sandra’s hand, and then squeezes. “We’re going to find that gun.”
“His words... He really didn’t mean to hurt me at all.”
Glenda straightens herself. “Do you feel you still love him?”
“I guess so.”
“Just because you love him, it doesn’t mean he gets another chance; it doesn’t mean you need to be with him or think of him in some high regard. You can love bullshit, but it doesn’t make it not bullshit.”
“I can feel it.”
A loud smacking sound, like a muted clap, gets their attention. They turn around to find Arthur barely holding himself up, slapping the wall while trying to keep his balance in the doorway. Finally, he grips the frame. His knees shake. Spittle drips from his lips.
Sandra rushes to him, guides him to the floor.
“The kids,” he says. “Are the kids okay?”
Glenda and Sandra look at each other.
“Get him some water, Glenda.”
Glenda hurries to the kitchen, finds a tall plastic cup, fills it with tap water. She takes her time on the way back, places the cup in his hand, holds it in his grip until she senses him pull it from her.
Arthur sips the water, takes a deep breath, and then sips some more. “Are they at your place?”
Glenda nods.
“Are they okay?” he asks.
“No, they’re not,” Sandra answers.
He presses himself to his feet. “I don’t know if I can do it to them. It’s too much.”
“You’re not going to help them?” Glenda says, in a gasp.
“It’s too much pain to come back. I won’t put them through it. I won’t.”
“And you know this, how? Because of the pain you went through to come back?” Glenda says.
“I know, for sure, because...” Straining to point at Sandra, he says, “Because she swallowed me.”
***
I know I had died. It’s something you know. I died. I don’t know how I know. You guys know. I died. That moment, the last moment kept happening again and again. The thing is, the only thing I could think about was you, Sandra. And those kids of yours, Glenda. Everyone I wanted to help, I guess. Then, Sandra, you, you seemed different. Can’t explain it. You had always been in that moment; you were there when I died, and were there each time it happened...after I died. The same few hours kept happening. Kept happening. But you suddenly seemed different. I figured that I must have unconsciously conjured you. I’m sure you remember me animating things for fun every now and then. Out of sand, sometimes out of mud, from leaves or whatever. Never on accident. Animating is a reflex. It’s me moving my energy around. That’s how I understand it.
“Arthur,” you said.
This version of you was foreboding. You told me, “You have to save those kids.”
You were you in form only; I think it was actually me I was looking at. Like with my old bear. That’s what makes sense, somehow. It was always me. You were me telling myself to come back to the real world and save the kids.
I had died.
“You know you’re not stuck here,” you told me, I told myself.
The key to getting out of there, I thought, was to get rid of that version of you, to get out of my own way. I had to take you out, no matter what, and it wouldn’t matter how long it took. It wasn’t you, because, like I said—it was me. My energy, my words. My hell.
You weren’t a person but rather a thing conspiring against me. More me conspiring against me, like I’ve always been. I’ve always been in the way of myself.
“You’re going to save those kids,” you told me.
I’m sitting there, finally sure that I was you. Am you.
“It’s only a little less painful than you might think,” you told me.
You put your lips over my feet, like a snake gobbling an animal larger than itself. You chewed your way up my leg. A soothing, continuous pain I can’t explain. Sharp blasts of energy brought me back. But also, each bite towards being devoured, brought me back.
I won’t put those kids through it, not if they’re going to relive how they died and need to be swallowed, just so they can come back to this place and possibly choke to death again. I won’t do it.