Amelia Gray - Gutshot - Stories

“Very good,” Mark said. “Very, very good.”

He ran his finger gently along the bird’s head. Katherine glowed with pride and fluid. Theirs was the happy family he had wanted for five or six days at least.

* * *

Mark’s mother arrived with the monthly fund. “Katherine, look who’s here,” he said.

“You break my heart every time you open your mouth,” his mother said.

“Well well,” he said. “Well well well well well.”

“I wish you would take your medicine,” she said. “It is trying to kill you. I hate you and I wake up every morning wishing you were dead.” She lifted a plastic grocery bag that was of course bulging, as they do. It was not a safe environment, and Katherine right there on the bed. He opened a drawer and tossed its contents at the woman’s feet. She trumpeted, the material of her bag grotesque and pooling. A dark fog seeped in under the front door, confounding Mark and the sparrow alike. When the woman was blinded by the fog, Mark pulled off his sweatshirt and wrapped it around Katherine. “I’m straight on,” he called out. “I’m straight as a go-dam row.” The fog rose like the tide and he gagged in it, finding the woman had become a central part of the fog, that it steamed from her. She went into his body by his mouth and completed a procedure. He held tight to Katherine in her sweatshirt, which had also become Katherine due to principles of matter and transference. “Obviously,” he said, sucking the top layers of fog into his mouth and holding them. The sparrow tipped its head above the fog and found its way anew and the sparrow spake: Once the rhythm is maintained, nothing can pull the orbit askew. We look to Katherine, soft within soft. Katherine, heart aloft, legs tapered reeds. Reigning queen of our bedroom universe. Matriarch and maiden in one, body within body, sourced and pulled free from the whole. Take care to maintain and sustain this tide. Take care!

* * *

Mark’s field of vision glowed amber. He returned to find Katherine pressed against his face, her cushion part wrapped protectively around him. Placing her behind him on the bed, he examined the area for danger. Hazards of fog skulked in the corners of the room but the woman was gone.

“Good God, we made it,” he said. “We went into it together and came out alive.” The bed held Katherine so safely, a raft on silent water, and he saw that she had grown to include the bed as well.

The sparrow on its perch had toppled over in the excitement and landed without ceremony on the floor, its brown feathers gathering sticky dust. It wasn’t right.

Katherine floated massive in the room. Mark sat cross-legged beside her on the floor, cradling sparrow and perch. “Fine then,” he said, resting his head. She was already deeping down into the planks and spreading across the room, broadening strong along the wood and becoming the lamps and books, the walls, the door.

I curl under my mother’s breast and bring my lips to her teat. It gives me comfort to do this and has since before my memory.

She carries me in her arms. Her legs and back and arms are solid from years of this action and there is even a place for me, a divot in her arms and stomach, where my body fits like a shell. I suckle while she speaks of how the span of one’s individual memory functions in the same way as a vinyl record, that there is a distinct moment when the needle is placed — by God, she supposes — and the music begins. Assuming all goes well, she says, stroking my hair.

Her own needle was placed forty years ago, at the moment of my conception. I had just begun walking when she first knew my genius. My mind was in a developmental stage akin to a rock rolling down a steep hill, and she was already supplementing my diet with nutrient-rich foods: smoked salmon and handfuls of blueberries, crushed flax. Each morning she gave me a bit of coffee mixed with whole milk. It was all with the idea that she would start the powerful engine early. Breakfast was followed by her special blend of math tutoring and recitation practice, wherein I would recite a poem after each time I had properly summed a fraction. And then our lunch, where she would drink a chilled glass of sugar water and I would lie down and latch easily. Even then I could feel a groove of skin growing in a place under her arm, the fleshy lip hooking over my chest and holding me close. And so the years passed.

I was happy with the life we made, but she decided she wanted to find me a bride. I laughed a little, milk spittling around my mouth, but she didn’t return my laughter. She said there would be a time when we could not enjoy these long afternoons and I would be in the world alone. She said her heart broke to think of me out there, wandering. The milk in my mouth took on the salty tinge of the tears she had absorbed.

I said Think of the myth of the pair becoming a tree, of an old couple looking out the same window while they share a silent song. We have each other.

But not for long, she said.

And so we auditioned prospective girlfriends. They sat on my mother’s couch, either too fat or too thin, too pretty or too grotesque. One was focused on the trajectory of her career, while another was practically bovine in her interest in children. A girl played with her hands in her lap, claiming her girlfriends talked her into the whole thing. It was a disaster.

Mother had been making notes in a book, but had taken to facing the wall during the interviews and at the latest girl stopped responding entirely. I told them all to clear out when I saw that she had begun to shudder. I stumbled to her feet, pushing my face into her lap, kneading her stomach and breast like a cat.

She clutched the arms of her chair, quaking so violently it seemed as if a spirit was leaving or entering her. These fucking women, she said. I reached for my divot, blindly trying to soothe her. She pushed me away but I pressed on, wrenching free the buttons of her blouse and drawing her breast roughly into my mouth. She screamed at the pressure of my teeth but quickly calmed and fell asleep in my arms. I held her, dipping my head to reach.

Smooth air into Chicago this morning. You would have liked it, probably. I mean it would have reminded you of yourself. The sun was rising over the big lake and the captain took the plane around downtown in a circle. We get sick of that kind of view, I mean the captain and I, because after all that splendor we have to bring her down onto some sad tarmac.

* * *

Everyone thinks I’m drunk these days. Even in the morning. I’m sure you’re doing fine.

* * *

As the navigating pilot, I felt like it would be fine if we made a nice soft landing in the water, which looked very smooth and dappled from the morning light or similar. That’s not something one suggests, of course. It was what we referred to in the Air Force as an internal opinion.

* * *

And then from Chicago we headed into Toledo. It’s hard to leave Toledo. Just kidding.

* * *

I do wonder what the captain is thinking while we’re bringing the plane into some place like that where people live their lives. I’m afraid of what he’ll say when I ask.

* * *

It’s probably time to go back to base when every question from the flight attendants inspires me to make the words “Please leave me alone” inside my mouth while my lips are closed while I am smiling and sometimes nodding a little. When you make the words silently, it becomes a secret you can keep. I learned about this in the Air Force.

* * *

Some nights, I feel I could slip away into a hangar and live in a janitor’s closet.