Tony Burgess - The n-Body Problem

I bet you did, Dix.

“Where is she?”

“I’ll go get her.”

Y hands my case to Dixon. I see him stare blankly. He’s not going to take it.

“Phut him outside.”

I am here again. I am on a stage again. Dixon is there again swinging his arms like a bat man. The crowd is there again, their stupid faces deformed by fat bones. Saliva and pustules and missing teeth and fingers and arms. This is a late crowd. I am the One. I am the Oracle. I am a dead Disney princess.

I see something. Something no one else can see.

In the sky far behind the crowd and the buildings, slowly descending funnel of night and fire. The great ring is falling at seven hundred kilometres an hour, a thousand degrees Centigrade. The great pink death is about to fall on us. I hear the boom, then seconds later the glass bangs and a crack appears. Dixon stumbles back. The crowd drops to the ground. Y runs around in front of me, his balance is thrown. I can’t see the doctor. She may be gone. The rumbling earth beneath my case. This is the death we need. This is a good death.

Dixon runs to the display, to me. I am his most important possession. We’ve come a long way, Dix. Let’s go out with a bang. Just before the hood comes down I see Dixon’s eyes catch fire. His teeth fly from his gums. A far away whip has been cracked and its hot tip flips the brain from the preacher’s skull.

A blast punches my case and I leave the ground. Hot air has filled the hood and sent me into the air. I don’t know how high I am. If I’m ahead or above or inside. The case flies end over end like a manic hourglass in an epileptic’s fist. A panel has shattered and the glass snips my face. I want to go up. I want to go. The air is like a beast. It roars and strikes and twists. It stops. Silence. Wind.

Light is leeching up from the base of me. Cold fresh air is filling the sac. I am floating.

I land in water and it rushes in to drown me. I am tired of dying. I am tired of sleeping. Soon I will be tired of breathing.

I only make it halfway through the alley and have to lean against the brick. There is a sharp pain in my stomach. And it’s distended now to the point where it handicaps me. I push a hand in. Very soft. Like it’s full of water. I can feel a corner of the liver is hardened. Cirrhosis? Maybe. Too much anxiety about meds. Too much looking at the sky. This could be big. All my pushing has made me need to shit. I drop my pants and slide my back down the wall. It comes out as water. Like a tap I turn on under my nuts. I bounce over as it moves around my feet. There’s more. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s irritable bowel. I watch the dark leafy fluid run down the alley. If there’s blood then I am fucked. Crohn’s disease would explain the pain. Longitudinal ulcer in the large intestine. Inflamed, even morbid, splenetic plicture. Could explain the hard liver. Spleen might be going up too. What a mess. I study my shit for blood. So far nothing. What would be the outcome? Without steroids I might bleed to death. God, I regret dumping all those benzos now. Sometimes they can be magic. Feel good and everything falls back in line. I need a full spectrum light too. I finally stop shitting. I close my eyes and try to recall the scent of cedar, but all I’m getting is the bland filth rolling down this alley. I pull up my pants. The fabric fuses to my ass and wicks the muck up. Did he say there was a stream? Gotta be. Gotta move.

Apple purée is amazing. I could live on that. Not liquid rice. That is dreadful stuff. Makes me squirt. Tildy has gone to the city today. She explained that it could be dangerous for babies so she has left me in the care of her dog. Candy is a miniature dachshund. She bites. I am only slightly larger than her but our shapes are remarkably similar. On Candy’s birthday, Tildy painted my white wrap black and tan and she darkened my nose. She laid me down beside the dog and clapped. Candy tore the shell of my ear before Tildy could get me back up. Today I am in a high chair far enough away from Candy’s barracuda moods. The tray before me is a flowerbox of straws and baby food.

I have a nice view of the wide valley through the bay window. It is white from the cooled pyroclastic flow. Tildy’s house is high enough up the rim that it was spared. The sky is still black. Been like that for weeks. Tildy has an oil furnace and she keeps the house warm. She tells me that it is like January out there. It’s July. The baby food and formula is giving me astonishing nutrients. I’m pretty sure we will die soon. The oil will run out. The food. Some hungry man will eat us. For now, though, this is the most at peace I have ever been in my life. In the morning Tildy gives me tummy time on her bed and I roil from side to side. Her comforter is thick and deep and smells like tea. In the afternoon she sits in the corner and reads from the Bible by candlelight. There is no sun and the only ambient light comes up from the white shell of cold ash in the valley. It gives off a surprising shine.

Tildy thought for while that I was the baby Moses. She said she ran down the hill that awful day, toward the fire. She says she wanted it. The rapture. She didn’t want to be left behind. And when she ran through the stream she saw the torn black hood. My face inside. Eyes closed and body swaddled. She claims there were bulrushes but I’m pretty certain she made that up. In time she forgot this thread, me being the baby Moses. The day-to-day work of looking after a baby was enough for her tired old mind. There seems to be little Syndrome in her. Her dementia is light and honest. The elderly don’t manage neurotransmitters. They believe it is correct to die one day. There is a sadness to Tildy too. She must have had children and grandchildren. A husband. They are probably gone now. Delivered to the sun or burnt by those who fell from the sun. She hums.

Candy is sitting on the settee. Her head is on a pillow and her eyes rock warily from side to side. Occasionally she growls at me. I like her company as long as I am safe. The little machines broke away from my bottom. I must have a stomach after all. You lied about that Dixon. I also have not had a return of Syndrome. And I sleep. In a bassinet beside my Tildy. I constipate easily and I upchuck two or three times a day. Candy gives out a short bark. She springs up on her tiny legs. Someone is here. I see Tildy in her yellow parka dragging heavy cloth bags. She found some things in the city. Candy barks and whines at the door. I try to tell her to stop but only manage sounding like her, only weaker.

The door opens and I feel the cold curl into the room. Snow or dust or ash drifts inside.

Tildy heaves the bags up on the table and slides her fur-lined hood back. She puffs her red cheeks then smiles. She pulls a sac of dog treats out and drops them for Candy while making dove sounds.

“Well, Moses.”

She still calls me that though it’s not meaningful anymore.

“I didn’t get to the city, little man, but I did manage to find a warehouse outside of Mansfield. Not a store proper. Some kind of warehouse and I borrowed some things!”

Tildy lines up the jars of baby food. A tall can of dry formula. Some bags of frozen milk. A stack of three or four TV dinners. She’ll make a fire in the woodstove and heat those. I smile and clap my imaginary hands.