Blake Butler - There Is No Year

under the son’s hair.

The man motioned for the son to sit down on the flower and when he did the man sat the tray down on the son’s lap. The tray was hot and heavy. The son could hardly move. He looked up to the man and as their eyes met the man bowed low down to the floor and as the man’s head touched the floor the flowers rumpled and the room went superdark.

PHOTOPERIOD Inside the father’s eyes, white. A gold of many glows. xxx xxx Around his head, a second head. White-on-white-on-white. xxx xxx a hunk of blank space, meat or ceiling, a white of darkness inside the son, mask or fervor, him or he, or she: they scourged and beeping, gone, going xxx xxx A gold of man glows, unfolding. In stereo of stereos, so wide. xxx xxx [Inside the second head, the father [Inside the second head and house, a watched the space around his body city spinning soft. A sea which in the shuffle, open, like a deck of open caused a closing, a collapse of all decks of cards, into a house.] that ageless air same as it came.]

The mother grew, filled up with nothing — cells in cells on cells , a house.

In the light from off his forehead, the son still could see his hands. The dinner plate was larger than he’d imagined. Some of the dishes were labeled with square brass placards, many of which, by handwriting or in translation, the son could not at all read: pink meats and bruised fruit, slaws and sauces, all soft enough to eat without the teeth, and such reek.

Several other unlabeled items were the ones that tasted best. The son stuffed his cheeks to bursting. The son ate so much it seemed his teeth themselves were also chewing with other tiny sets of teeth — as if eighteen people lived there inside him — people in people — on and on. There was a drink that tasted like one thing until he wished it tasted like something else and then it did. The son ate everything on every plate. The more he ate the more he wanted.

This house was excellent, the son decided, spoke in a voice inside his eyelid. Whenever the girl showed up the son was going to ask if he could move in, or at least if his dad could get a job with the girl’s dad.

Completing this thought, the son tried to go on and think the next thing and felt the same words thereon repeat: This house is excellent— his screaming eyelid! — Whenever the girl showed up he was going to ask if he could move in— yes, please, now —or at least if his dad could get a job with the girl’s dad— he needed .

And the thought again. The thought again, rolled in warming foam inside his head. A tone. He could not shush it. It numbed his gums — the food gluing all inside him, singing, a blank recurring unto exhausted, fat-full sleep.

In the other house — the empty house— where was the father? — the mother went to Google search.

The mother had on a translucent negligee. The mother’s face was wet.

The mother typed in: man who fixed the mower .

She saw a bunch of lawnmowers and some fires and a knife.

The mother typed in: man in the house with so much sand .

The search results contained texts about a man who’d built his house on sand, a man who made sand music, a movie based upon a book, thoughts on how to enjoy beaches, a man who’d built his house on rock.

None of this was what the mother wanted, clearly.

The mother’s elbows creased with chafe, indention. Her forearms were so thick.

The mother typed in: he with such long fingers .

The mother typed in: he with teeth & gloves .

The mother typed in: him .

The screen went white. She felt her belly bubble, throb. It made a beeping.

The mother looked at what she’d done.

The father came out of the bedroom into the hallway and started down the stairs and then the stairs beneath him seemed to crimp in some way they had never before right there. The stairs seemed to cling against the father’s feet and also were crumbling in. Even as he stepped down onto the surface of the landing in the foyer where the stairs had always ended — there facing the door into the outside — the father could not help but feel that the room he was in now at the bottom of the stairs was not the room that had always been at the bottom of the stairs, but another room of the same shape and make and color — slightly off. Something about the texture of the wall or the way the window glinted or the way the light came in from outside and graced the ground. Something about the words that had been said in that room before then not quite sitting.

The father put his foot in certain places the way he had so many other days and felt a different feeling than he’d felt then. His right eyelid again twitching— inner houses . The father pinched and prodded at his skin. He punched himself hard in his chest, his gut, the sides. The vibration flexed through his body in other places: between his toes, against his scrotum (vessels), in his knees. His other eye sat waiting, clean.

The father moved from the landing to the next room, which on most days was the room where the family ate. They had just eaten there today, had they not? Were they not eating there right now? The dining table still sat smattered under the bright red tablecloth curtain, stained in all those places that would not wash out. It seemed slightly larger than it had once been, or the father smaller. The chandelier the father had hung himself there to replace the prior lamp — a lamp that refused to quit cutting in and out, the sockets zapping when he touched them — the chandelier was still intact — though this chandelier’s crimped metal arms hung so much lower — the father could step right up and take a bite. He could fit the tiny frosted bulb glass into his mouth and huff it. With the glow washed up inside his cheeks the father looked upon the room.

The father could have done anything he wanted. He could have walked right out of the house. He could have gone to the airport and bought a ticket to Lithuania. He could have walked to the grocery store and climbed inside the freezer bin and pulled the bags of broccoli over his face. He could have become a male prostitute and fucked for cash in bathrooms with his head beating in rhythm on the toilet tank. He could use the cash to buy stocks that would skyrocket and make him very rich, rich enough to live somewhere alone for the rest of his life and not stare at boxes in an office and not speak to anyone again. Not ever. At any moment, any of these things, the father could have done them. The father did not do any of these things.

The father left the room with the table and entered another room that the family did not have a name for. The father did not like the way he felt while standing in this room but he also felt that he did not want to ever leave it.

The father craned his head into the next room, which was a hallway, and the father looked and looked. The father closed his eyes. He thought he heard someone else enter the room he’d just come from. He felt light bending around his back.

The father looked again and closed again. He had to leave this room, he knew, but he did not want to touch the hallway carpet and he could not go back the way he came. The hallway carpet had a peculiar pattern.

The father held his breath and jumped across the air.

The father landed in another room. There were tiny holes in this room that looked out onto exact geographic coordinates of space. The father opened up his eyes.