The thoughts rolled through her head in cadence with her steps, a simple ball of thoughts with alternating dull and shiny surfaces, the shiny parts glinting with each leaf cracking, root crunching step. Eggs (beat) milk (beat) spinach (beat) tomato (beat) spam (beat) bread (beat) beef (beat) pasta (beat) angel hair (beat) asparagus (beat) pencils (beat) Snickers ba—

Maybe they weren’t thoughts, after all. They were things, though. They were things in her head, a rolling ball of them, picking up momentum as she did the same. They were things in a basket, as well, swinging lazily at her side, too heavy to comfortably carry.

We won’t see the wild animal attack. We won’t hear the screaming. Instead, We’ll see that dull cum shiny cum dull cum shiny ball of thoughts roll, stop, roll backward, and tilt sideways. The glare of that one frozen, unhappy thought will blind us so effectively that a new sight will appear in the vague whiteness that has burned away our retinas.

A bird. A mallard. Its neck is broken, and the way it’s lying alongside the Encanto Park playground, its abnormally long tongue flopped out and covered in ants, suggests that We have blocked out this image for too many years for therapy of substance. So We return to the ball, and, knowing that the ball is only a visual representation of another’s thoughts and that our blindness, too, is only imagined, We return to the girl in the woods.

We look at her, laid broken in the leaves, and because We’re so enlightened We make no attempt to connect this sight to that of the duck; We know what is real. She’s crying softly enough that this could be love. The trail of blood from her mauled leg, visible just below the improperly raised hem of her red skirt, indicates that the animal is far from here.

“Are you alright?” We say.

“My…” she struggles to say.

“What’s that?”

“My…basket…”

It’s there. We see it clearly.

“I’m gonna help you.” That’s what We say. We never lie.

She looks long on us through the window of the cabin. We wonder as We stand here on this porch—black paint dripping slowly from our brush, looking upon the girl on the couch where We placed her—where the owners might be. Had We met them? We meet so many people in the woods that after a time it becomes difficult to know.

“Mister,” she says, her voice dull through the glass.

Inside, she tells us she isn’t feeling well: her leg, of course, but her tummy, too.

“I’m gonna help you,” We say, but she’s looking elsewhere, fading out, perhaps. “Do you,” We say, “know what it means to show respect?”

She hardly acknowledges the question, only spins an eye toward the door, noting the miles of rough, wooden floor between it and her.

“I,” We say, “am a big man in these parts.”

She blinks, nods—all of the pretty things.

“I doubt you can kneel, not with that leg, and I wouldn’t ask you to, but a bow, a simple, slow nod; that would easily suffice. A show, you see?”

She doesn’t see. We try to show her, and, of course, she resists. We reveal the portrait of ourselves bedecked in a halo of rays from behind the curtain We’ve hung. Once again, she doesn’t see.

“I blacked the window,” We say. “For you. For you I did it. I deserve your respect for all I’ve done.”

In the perpetual dark We’ve made for the girl, We see shadows of our former empire. How low We’ve become. When was the turn?

She watches the parachuting young of the spider’s nest drifting groundward in the lamplight as We assure her of the necessity of surgery. “The leg is infected,” We say, taking care not to graze too much those parts of her forbidden beyond marriage. That time will come, We reckon. She’ll ripen, of course, even absent some worthless limb. “The drugs,” We say, “will help you not to feel.” That’s what We say. We never lie.

They do help, and they continue to do so as the weeks pass. She slides in and out as We tell of our rise, of our reversal from pagan childishness, and of the vast golden city that was born from our walks in the mind of God. We avoid the more confusing details, those that stick in our gums if We try to speak them, the headache facts, the—she hardly listens, anyhow.

In time the knocks come, always the knocks.

“A child,” he says, his silver star glinting in the too-bright day-shine. “A girl, Mr. Steadler.”

“No Mr. Steadler,” We say. “Been renting from the Steadlers for a month or so, now.”

“Funny,” he says (and they never seem amused when they say it), “folks down in the village said they’d spoken with Mrs. Steadler recent as three weeks ago, no mention of renters.”

“Writer,” We say. “Sometimes quick offers are made when quick time away is needed. Deadlines, you see? Nice folks, the Steadlers.”

He notices the windows, of course. A look around is all he wants, and so We step aside with a smile of welcoming. So quick to his gun, always so quick upon seeing, but We know a knife when We hold it, and We’re quick, as well. Still, We sigh at the pain We feel upon striking him. He’s quicker than most, this one, and the two of us, stabbed and gunshot in our own turns, tumble backwise into the mud beyond the steps beyond the porch.

We regret keeping her in such dark for all this time as We struggle with the policeman. It must be so bright, the light through the door. Our poor little injured bird, blind and weak. She’s all We can think of as We thrash about in the thick red mud with the slackening man cum corpse. We slacken, too, in equal measure. We listen to our breathing and weigh it against his. Still stronger. Still vital. We bleed and breathe and watch for night and the return of our strength.

Night, of course, comes, but absent remains our strength. Instead, it is she that approaches. She kicks lazily with her remaining leg, claws toward us through the door and down the stairs, all the way to our resting place. She lays her head on our chest, sweetly, like a child.

“Where,” she asks, “did the baby spiders go?”

“All grown by now,” We struggle to say, but the weakness in our chest has proved a temporary victor. All grown by now, We think, babies of their own by now.

She finds our knife, of course. She looks long on it and us, and We can see how thin the drugs have stretched and how much she’s grown before our eyes, and We are reminded during what hours are left to us that great students, in their turns, often become great teachers, themselves.

Timestamp: 06.22.07 at 11:40 AM. Filed under: Fiction.