Tony Burgess - The n-Body Problem

I launch off the wall and fall down. My palms in shit. No blood. I crawl to the dry wall. A loud fart that opens my body from asshole to mouth. I wonder if there were any opioids in that box. Fuck. That’d be great. Shut the digestive system down like it had a switch. Hard as hell to live clean. Not so sure it’s the best idea anymore. It feels like something is hanging off me. I can feel gravity on my belly. I stand. My belly is bigger. This is in my abdominal cavity. This isn’t Crohn’s or IBS. This could be far worse. Definitely cancer. And lots. I’m cascading here. I think I know what it is. I’m afraid to say. Sometimes accepting contains it and sometimes it just blows the shit right up.

“Holy shit. Are you okay?”

I sit on the ground and pull out my pad.

“Go back to the shed. Check the box for these.”

I write: Diazepam. Lorazepam. Xanax. Tylenol 3. Fentanyl. Oxicontin.

’“But, I thought…”

“This is an emergency. Emergencies are different. Don’t bring back anything but these.”

He drops a razor, soap, shampoo, and a huge tub of Vaseline on the ground. Grabs the list and runs. I’m scaring the hell out of this kid. He does not like it when grownups shit themselves.

I call out after him.

“I’ll be in the goddam river!”

Y turns the corner.

“Hey! Is there a river?”

It’s not quite a river. A stream. A crick. A mom nursing by the slide. A couple small bridges. Some trees. Big willows. Back up there there’s poplar. Birch. Manitoba maple. Lots of scrub. Don’t know what I was picturing but this ain’t it. Can’t live in a fuckin’ birch tree.

I salute the mom from a distance. It’s something I’ve picked up. Saluting teen moms with rape babies. The banks are landscaped and have good dropped shoulders so I can sit out of sight. I kick off my shoes and work the pants down. Just gonna lay all this under rocks and rub myself on the grass like a dog. There is strain on my rib cage. My lungs are pulling shallow. Pain hits again. Cold, waxy sweat rubs off solid in the grass. I am really fucking sick now. Hands and feet buzzing. Peripheral neuropathy. Feel like heavy socks and gloves. Could be unrelated. Who knows? If this is a cascade then I could have minutes. Shit.

I lie still on my side. I can feel some light on my naked body. Bad light is still bad light. I should cover up, but I’m dying.

“Shit! Shit! Hey! Talk to me!”

That’s Y. I must have drifted off. I’m shivering. He sits me up. I can’t stop shaking. There’s shit soaked into the grass around me. White vomit on my arm.

“What do you want? What do you want?”

The stroke egg is strobing. Y shoves the box into my hands. He brought everything. I thought I said…

“Just take something!”

Hard to read. My eyes feel dry and sticky.

“Oxycontin.”

Y flips the bottles around in the box.

“Here! Here! How many?”

I can feel a thick python separate my lungs.

“Six.”

I eat them like peanuts. Make a paste. Hold it sublingually. That’s the way. By the time it’s in my throat I can feel my toes curl a bit. A warmth in my eyes. A harmonica.

“What else? What else?”

“Diazepam.”

Y digs.

“Nope. None.”

“Shit. Ok. Lorazepam.”

Y pulls out a long thin bottle.

“They 1s or 2s?”

Read it, pal. Read.

“2.”

“Ok. Then four.”

I hold them under my tongue till they disappear. Lorazepam leaves the system after about eight hours. They’re tougher in large doses than diazepam, which sits in you for a good long while. My arms turn to pillows. My shoulders into smooth falling sacs. I close my eyes. I greet the egg. It is my old friend. No one has seen you. No one knows what you are. You are mine.

“Better?”

I keep my eyes closed and reach out to lay a hand on the grass near Y. I can hear water moving. He’s getting my clothes. Doesn’t like to see his uncle naked in the park.

“I’m sorry. These are wet.”

They are. I move my head so that the egg is in my shoe. Not sure why. I salute Y.

“Get dressed,” Y says.

I fall asleep for a second. “Okay. Help me.”

Y sits me up and drops the icy shirt over my head. It’s good. I wake.

“I found something else. Look.”

I drag the denim up my thighs and pinch the button closed.

“Look.”

A portable full-spectrum lamp. I haven’t seen one of these in a long time. Very expensive.

“It was in our trunk. My dad bought it for my mom for her birthday.”

I turn it on. Bright. Good batteries. Holy shit.

“My dad had money. He owned the quarry.”

I hold the light up to my face. Y keeps talking.

“What’s wrong with your stomach? It’s huge.”

I can’t answer. The light and the pills are profound in me. It’s like the cells are giddy. Everything is turning in every direction. There is so much good.

“My mom’s gone.”

That’s good. Made the pick-up.

“She’ll be up there.”

I grunt. I feel freshly split cedar in my marrow. Dark rich hardwood in my veins.

“We could clean up the car.”

Nope.

“I mean. It’s a car.”

Not a chance.

“How you feel now?”

I pass Y the spectrum.

“Much better. Here. Take a turn. Five minutes.”

I have stopped the cascade. Not solved the problem but at least I won’t die in the park this morning.

“Thanks. Your belly is still big.”

It is. Not getting bigger any more. But if this is what I think it is then it’s left me a little present. Y looks thirty. Teen mom appears behind Y.

“What are you guys doing?”

She takes it in. She turns, runs.

“Shit.”

Y stands to see where she goes.

“What?”

“We just lost an advantage.”

Y looks like he’s going to run after her.

“Why?”

“Your Seller knows we’re still alive.”

Y takes a step back. Attaboy.

“Let her go. Can’t go around killing moms in the park.”

I try to stand. There is pain but it’s not from anything advancing. It’s from the volume in my abdomen. I can walk.

“Let’s go find a sharp knife. I’m gonna need you to cut me open.”

I remember Barack Obama. I re-member terrorism. Higgs-Boson. I remember a cure for AIDS. Charity walks for breast cancer. I remember when they told us to sit up straight at computers. To clench and unclench our buttocks while we sat. Guns going off. Iron Man 4 . It’s strange that you stop thinking about things. Even further back. I remember Iggy Pop. Safe havens in Bosnia. Me as a teenager. I didn’t really know it at the time but there was nothing to it. It’s not that things fade in time. It’s that they were never really there at all. All of it. Light as birthday cards. Gone.We are at the loading dock behind the hardware store. Y has snuck in to steal a blade. Narcotics have encased my bowels in concrete. It’s better than collapsing in shit, but it hurts. It’s hard to move freely.

What I think I have is… it’s a cancer that coats organs in the abdominal cavity. Doesn’t enter the lymphatic system. Not for a while. I hope it hasn’t anyway. It starts like a coating on the spleen. A woman’s shawl. And it triggers peritoneal fluid to build up. Ascites. The bells thicken and the cancer cells are released into the fluid-like spores from a bumped fungus. They drape the liver. They drape the colon. The stomach lining. The fluid accommodates this by separating the packed bodies. Creating living space for itself. And the more this cancer silt builds, the thicker and heavier the mucous becomes. Eventually the spleen sloughs off its new deadly skin and releases it as a transparent tube, a hovering jellyfish in a dark thick sea. It is a new part of you. It is a distinct creature looking to live in you. Your body recognizes it. Even in the insensate mash of glue and fatted lungs, it is awake to this new thing, the birth of this tube. And your body trusts its origin. It is a child of the spleen. It is your tissue. It is splendid and structured and hungry. So the body feeds it. That’s how you die. Your body is so desperate that this tube survive that it takes all the blood and oxygen away from what you really are and feeds this new child. This lovely tube-shaped wonder. It flattens and expands and floats. It is free. It is alone in you. It is wonderful. And then you die. Not of cancer. The cancer is just starlight. The cancer is a maker. You die of a neglected liver. Abandoned to necrotize like an old city. You are ruins.