Blake Butler - There Is No Year

Fine. I’m fine. Logborsis, the father shouted. He wiped his thumb blood on his gut. Busy cleaning. Nothing’s the matter. Go on a minute. Slarsords. Almost done.

The father turned toward himself therein reflected, in the mirror, through the wall. He saw himself seeing himself, and then himself seeing himself seeing himself, copied, copied, on. His eyes inside his forehead looked so small — surrounded. Inside, his skin went on for miles.

In the bathroom the father saw his many selves reach up to turn the lights off, and the father saw the dark.

The doorbell rang again all through the morning and into gloaming. The mother ran in fits. Each time she went to the door expecting— him, he, that one, which one, who? — and each time found someone other, someone new. Folks arrived in line with checkbooks, holding hands. Sometimes there’d be several families waiting. Each, as the mother brought the door opened, walked in proud, already home. Though the mother felt strongly about the couple’s offer, she gave tours anyhow. She showed. She baked scones with black molasses and passed them on tiny plates, which the people took and smiled.

By the time most people left, their expressions had scrunched and darkened. They went from bubbly to still. Though nothing particularly bumming happened — no carpet sizzled, no paintings moved, the rooms’ wallpaper did not peel — as soon as any buyer had been through one or two rooms apiece their eyes began to swim with blank foreboding. Their cheeks sunk, glazed and pocky. Good natures became terse. Hands stayed in pockets. Dry lips. Some spoke of hearing cymbals or a pressure in their chest.

And yet each person who came to see the home by the next day had made an offer — some as large as two or three times what the father and mother asked — enough to buy another house plus many other things. The house was wanted. There was wanting. People left long garlands at their door. They brought cake and wine and called for updates. Who what when where why when how would they know who what when what was going to have the house. The mother bit her lip and wrung her hands. She had their lawyer put forward motion with the couple now on hold. She liked the couple— knew them —but now, more money. She praised god they’d not yet signed. Into the evening, sensing their fortune, the giddy mother went around and polished doorknobs and floors and faucets until she could see things in the shine.

The family all slept straight through the next several days, contorted. They did not hear the ringing phone. At certain points their eyes might open, not quite seeing, while all around the house went on.

In his sleep the father saw the copy father in the room beneath their room. The copy father stood with both hands clasped behind his head, as if hunching for explosion or a sit-up, though the remainder of his body remained taut. The copy father hung an inch above the ground. The copy father looked up through the floor between them with his eyes stuck on the mother in the bed. The mother had moved to sleep so that her feet were on the pillow and her head was somewhere tucked down tight beneath the covers. The father could hear her grousing, breathing sickly and all wet. She kept asking the same knock-knock joke question over and over again, never getting to the punch line.

The copy father wore a yellow mink coat and a choker necklace with diamonds larger than the father had ever seen. Had the father received his copy of the current issue of Enormous Women , had his mailbox not been swarmed with bugs, he would have seen this exact getup on page forty-four. The father would have recognized the woman in the picture, though he would not be able to name her name.

The copy father spurted gobs of water from his mouth. When the water hit the copy father’s chest it sizzled, and when it hit the kitchen floor it sunk right in.

In the backyard — through the kitchen window, through the floor — the father in his bed saw so much light — as if someone had dragged the universe into Adobe Photoshop and bucket-filled the sky a nonexistent color. Most other nights, even in the day, were nothing like this — burst beyond seeing, beyond size.

In the father’s sleep the house was exactly as it was on most days except when you opened the door that led to the garage instead of a garage there was another house made of blue flowers that you could go inside or eat, but the father did not see this room — he just knew that it was there. In his sleep the father could not move. His arms were soldered to his sides. His shoulders were pinned back on the mattress and his feet felt very large.

Through the floor the father watched the copy father climb the stairs.

Through the walls the father could hear the copy father breathing in the hall. Heavy, labored breathing. It shook the bed frame and the lamp. It shook the mother in the bed beside him and she was laughing. She sounded high, shook with a shudder in her extra clothing and her fat. The way she breathed in with the copy breathing made him feel hazy, grazing, tired.

The copy father stood outside the master bedroom with his face against the door.

In her sleep the mother heard someone at the bedroom door and she stood up out of the bed. The mother walked to the bedroom door and listened. The mother nodded, cracked the door. On the bed behind her the father’s mouth and eyes were open, though he did not blink. The mother saw the father shudder.

The mother left the bedroom and walked down the hall and stairwell and outside. Overhead the night was full. Overhead the night had opened and all throughout it there were words. Words made of skin or spit or coffee. The mother followed one certain sentence through the sky in a straight line. The mother walked on mud and gravel, concrete, glass, and stone. The mother’s feet began to bleed a trail.

The sentence led to the front door of a house. The mother went in through the front door and locked it shut behind her. In the house the lights were off. Black lights, floodlights, stacked in masses. Several billion unburned bulbs. The mother went into another room. She went into another room. In the fifth room there was a glow and someone standing in the corner.

Long white walls.

Sleeping bees.

The mother left the house through a certain window some time later, leaving blood marks on the sill.

The window led into the backyard. The backyard was full of sand. The mother walked into the sand up to her hipbones. The mother folded her flat hands. With the grace of nowhere, the mother tucked her chin against her chest and fell headfirst into the sand.

Inside the sand there was a door. Through the door there was a hallway. There again the mother slept.

In his room awake now the son sat hunched over her computer typing into a chat box with a 45-year-old man. The 45-year-old man had contacted the son via a social networking website that the son did not know he’d joined. The son and the man had exchanged email addresses and written back and forth for several weeks. The last email from the 45-year-old man in the son’s inbox bore the subject heading RE: RE:RE: RE:RE: RE:RE: RE:RE: RE:RE: RE:RE: RE:RE: RE:RE: RE:hi.

The 45-year-old man said he had a wife and an ex-wife and two kids about the same age as the son. He said he lived nearby.

The son was not aware he was online. The son felt like he was sleeping. He didn’t realize any of the things he’d said to the man in all those emails.