In the room below the son’s room the windows had gone tinted. The son had taken the video game console and put it in the trash compactor but it would not break. He’d put the mirror in the compactor and it had shattered, but when he went back upstairs there it was again.
The son stripped nude and got in bed, the wood frame groaning. He ran his fingers along his bruises. The skin there rumpled, rain-run, discolored, something beneath. The son chewed on the divots in his forearm: piano noise. He could taste it coming off in sheeting. His legs would not stay still. His brain would not go quiet. What if he’d been born several seconds later? What if he’d been born under another name? What if on the thirty-fifth day the mother was pregnant the mother had shone a flashlight down her throat; or read the Bible backward; or heard some certain song; or pressed her cheek against a saw?
The son’s flesh rolled between his small hands, doughy. He felt something spark between his teeth and there inside them. A little liquid dripped down from his ears. He heard a whirring in his stomach like garage doors. The whole room seemed to squeeze. The son was tired. He was talking to himself. The room seemed to flutter in his eyelids, eyes behind them. The walls would lean or move. The carpet grew long. There was a boulder rolling above the bed. There were eyes on every surface. There was someone in the mattress.
The son saw the bedroom door come open. The door moved forward on its hinges just a crack. The son closed his eyes, pretending. He heard someone move into the room. He did not want to look. He did not look.