Tony Burgess - The n-Body Problem

Dixon drained the blood from fifty-four people into a dry swimming pool. Dixon studied the eddies and currents as they changed over days. Eventually, Dixon bathed in it and marvelled at the live blood and how its caresses varied endlessly.

Dixon has boiled an older woman’s head and removed, cubed, and eaten the brain.

Dixon, on a particularly random moonlit night, ran down the line taking single bites from faces. He then joined the corpses by hooking fingers into the holes.

Dixon has dropped people from the tops of bridges, tall buildings, hydro towers, waterfalls, churches, trees, and grain silos.

Dixon has lined up hundreds of naked people in chairs on a road then driven a pick-up into them at 160 km/h. He has done this numerous times. His record is seventy-eight people—that’s how many bodies it took to stop the vehicle.

Dixon has slept on a woman whom he thought he knew.

Dixon has skinned many dozens and taken pictures.

Dixon removed the testicles from eleven scrotums and inserted them through deep slits into the body of a heavy man, like cloves of garlic in a turning pig carcass. Dixon cooked him, but only ate the testicles, which he tore out with a rake. Dixon noted that cooking someone only slows movement and that when it cools the skin hardens like a carapace and only the fatty tissue beneath can move.

Dixon has put an unborn into a newborn into a toddler into a child into a teenager into a medium-sized woman into a medium-sized man into a large woman into a large man into an obese woman into an obese man and bound the latter in bailer twine. He noted the movement inside was almost undetectable but the sounds coming from the layers were complex and loud.

This is a partial list. I hate everything he has done since becoming a Seller.

I find about twelve cedar planks in the garage. Sit and lift them to my nose one at a time, inhaling hungrily. These are old cedar, maybe even predating the orbit. Real sunlight made them. The effect is gorgeous. I am lifted into memories I’ve never had. Runnning down a dock and leaping into cold water. On a high ladder hanging a birdhouse. Lying in the bottom of a boat.

X interrupts.

“What’s up?”

X stands. I bet he can’t be alone.

“Check out this wood. Want to build something?”

X hops down the step into the garage. I nod. He has just distinguished himself from the dead. The dead don’t hop. I give him the upturned bucket I’m sitting on and look at the narrow worktable. The smell of spruce. Faint though.

“Let’s build something, man.”

I turn to X sitting on the bucket. He is sniffing the cedar. His eyes are closed. It’s an instinctive thing to do, I guess. A natural hunger.

“Ok. That’s fine with me.”

I sit on the floor beside him and lift a plank to my nose.

X opens his eyes and sees me pushing my face into the wood. X laughs.

This makes my stomach roll over. It’s like an overly rich meal. I try to keep from throwing up. This is too good to lose.

It isn’t easy getting out on the roof, let alone dragging what we need up there. I find a rope ladder in an upstairs closet. It’s part of a emergency fire escape kit. Flashlight and water and a blanket. I lean out a top floor window and hammer the ladder to the facia board. A bit startled to see a school bus stop at a house near the corner. A child leaves his mother at the end of the driveway and boards the bus. It’s easy to forget that everyone’s situation is different. Who knows what goes on in that house. On that bus. Or the school. I peer back through the window. X hasn’t seen it.

We hand-ferry two sleeping bags and pillows up to the roof. And some sheets to hold us in. We’ll do this at the back of the roof so we can’t be seen. It’s a pretty simple, crude rig, the only drawback being the last time I did this was with Dixon in Daychopan about twenty-one years ago. Dix won’t think of it. We lay the bags and pillows out, then the sheets across. We nail the edges like a canvas stretched in a frame. X has had noticeably more life since the cedar and that’s good. I need the hands. Thought I might.

We slip down into the bags and test the strength. It’s a steep roof so my body pulls pretty good, but I put the roofing nails in a tight stitch patter. Should hold. It’s not raining, which is rare and lucky, but that could change. We’ll be sleeping in rainwater barrels if it does. X is swallowed by his rig. I have to help him up. I show him how to keep his arms over and the bag from under his armpits to clip himself in. He follows instruction well. Damn cedar is helping us both, I think. The sun will go down soon. We lie still and look up at the sky.

The sky.

I stare into the sun sitting low. You can’t see them. One billion obstructions moving invisibly across the setting sun.There is usually cloud cover, but not tonight. The sky is wide and clear. I study it, as everybody does, for its difference. There is a black sparkle in the sun’s corona. That’s been there for a few years. The blue turns green around the horizon. And there’s a pink flicker midway up. Fancy cocktail colours. Strawberry, lime, apple, blue Curaçao. Solid syrupy light. You feel that it must be sticky to touch. The thin clouds stuck like cotton candy to a wall. That might be why it’s overcast so often. The cloud canopy gets snagged to the tacky sky above. There is my stroke egg, like a too-close planet. Looks like it belongs up there. These colours appear at sunset. During the day the blue is different only because you imagine it must be.

I check X. Still clipped in. He isn’t looking up. I reach across and touch his face. It’s warm. There is some warmth coming from the sun still. Some radiation sneaking through. Pieces of the spectrum, the vitamins in fault lines and thin spots. Reminds me that I forgot to take my vitamin D drops. Can’t miss those. Makes your autoimmune go crazy if you do. MS. Lupus. Strange allergies. My arm turned to bloody rubble once, after a mosquito bite. Took months of Benadryl, which had its own knockoff effects. The arm is still grey. X looks at me. Or it’s not the sun. It’s a fever. Maybe he’ll die up here, in the next few hours.

“You think we’ll get any sleep tonight?”

X looks at me, into my eyes. He nods. The effect on me is powerful and sudden. He strokes the back of my neck while I sob. It’s something I never feel. I am grieving for my species. I am grieving for everyone. It is an emotion with no real history and it shatters you when it comes. I love people. I want to be one again. But this will never ever happen. X is pushing a water bottle to my mouth. He doesn’t want me to cry all the water from my body. I drink. I can’t cry and drink at the same time. I hand the water back to X. Thank Christ that doesn’t happen very often. Some people get started and never stop. Not me. I have a cold side. Smooth and silent and cold. I try to restore it. The water rolls down the cold stones stacked in my chest.

“Thanks. Sorry.”

X has turned his head. He doesn’t want to hurt me again. Irony is I feel my chest shake at the thought of him protecting me.

Car door slam. From the driveway. Dixon.

I place my hand firmly on X and he turns. I put my finger to my lips. Like he’s gonna talk. The front door bangs closed. X and I lie perfectly still. Dixon will walk the house. He’ll see Petra dancing on the rope. Paula squirming under water. Did I leave stalk ends on the counter? Will he pick up and check the wilt of celery? Know the time when it was cut? After the hanging and the stomping? Will he figure this out? If he does he’ll know where I am. He’ll check the room upstairs. The emergency kit on the floor. Did we close the window? He’ll see the ladder.