The son felt a warmth flood through his skin. Gumming. Groggy. Mental sunshit. Metal wash. He could not get his eyelids open. He felt pressure running in one ear. His corneas felt fat—so big behind his eyelids that they groped and grapped and stuck. The son rolled and moaned for someone. So many colors washed his mind—the color of every room he’d ever been in, one after another, roto-flashed, became white. To match the color, somewhere counting, the son heard a snake of language at his ear—every word he’d ever said replayed together, compressed into one brief, marbled gob. The words were coming slightly out of the son’s mouth. He was saying things he’d said before. He could hear himself but nothing else. He didn’t want to say it. The son’s nostrils allowed something in then something broke off and then the son’s head throbbed through sinking and he could see.
The girl was standing above him. Her arms were flexed with muscle through the gloves. Their heads were held together, inches. The girl was breathing in his breathing and he was breathing in the girl’s. Up close, the son could see the girl was wearing the locket he’d tried for years and years to throw out, its clasp unclicked. The son looked to see the tiny picture there inscribed: an image of him looking at him, covered in black hair, a ring of bees surrounding the tight perimeter of his two whiteless, gleaming pupils, in each of the eyes another son reflected, and in those eyes, and in those. As far back into the aisle of eyes as he could see the son saw him there, seeing. Then the eyes blinked, all at the same time, with the son’s.
They were in another room. There was a sofa, TV, rug, and chairs. Too many chairs. The walls were painted yellow. The room was small and common as any other room ever elsewhere, any room. Up close, the girl’s face looked like his. Her eyes were massive—cracked, bejeweling. The girl stepped back. The girl had boy’s clothes on—the same clothes the son had worn into the house. They clung tight on the girl’s soft body, showing weird tones and ridges in her skin. The son looked and saw now that he was dressed in a white gown, made of lace and ribbon with his full name stitched across the front. The name was written inverted so that he could read it plain by looking down. The gown clung at his throat.
I made that for you, the girl said, sighing. Or had it made. Regardless. Do you like?
The girl was holding a little plastic egg. The egg was made of tiny pieces that folded in or up and out, by which the egg could be modified or disassembled. The girl rummaged through the egg’s configurations absentminded as she watched the son from where she stood against the wall. The egg became a prism, became a thought, became a gun. The girl held it up to show him, near her temple. The egg made little clicking sounds.
The son opened up his mouth. The son was burping bubbles. He felt something crawl inside his throat. He felt his lips go smile and forehead nodding. The son sat up a little. His cheeks were raw. He felt heavy, full of something.
The girl was watching him intently. Are you hungry? Her skin rasped, making noise. The skin rashy, pockmarked, curdling.
The son felt his lips unlock.
The butler fed me, he said, in spouting old voice, then again he could not speak.
What butler? the girl said. What butler?
The man in the kitchen, the son said bending, another guttural gush. A little gray man. Sneezing.
The girl just showed her teeth and winked her eyes.