Blake Butler - There Is No Year

and her warm body—

and her rubbed insides—

and all her wanting, measured in flume—

and all the rooms she’d never seen, and the rooms those other rooms contained—

and her need for forgiveness—

and her life—

and then the mother turned and turned, around in nothing, swinging the shovel at the father—

and the yard was smushed around them burned and buzzing — and the sky was smacked and stretched with mold and slip — and the trees were splotched with sores and raining color— and the son could not see the father could not see the mother could not see—

— from above the house — and around the house — despite these things — the house could not be seen — the house was hidden, sat in dry air cold and throat-choked with vast collision, all minor manner of humming creature swarmed in spirals through the sound — a sound of something soaked and squashed stung forever in the house’s lining — beneath the roof all bulged and scumming over through the thicket of new trees — bees and bats and ants and crows and cranes and gulls and geese and ducks and dogs and helicopters and doves and pigeons, dragonflies, gnats hung on waves from towers gashed in the weird glow of the sky’s head with translucent stepladders which in the warble now descended, folding and unfolding, cradled around the house, surrounded — this house with no good door — this house in which the son sat — the house in which other families had also sat and still were sitting, through which bodies had moved and opened doors and breathed the air and fucked and gone to sleep — the son with his head a box of years he’d had and years still yet impending — the son’s vibrating mucous membranes — the son’s serrated eyes — the son with his head rubbed quite wide open in the house slicked cream-thick from eave to eave — the rats and ruts and burns corroded — the sky above it wet with need, the sky colliding, the sky unfolded, the sky reflecting back itself — the son above the bed now levitating or coiled to nothing or not quite there — the windows of the swarmed house bending over curling in, falling out a final time to allow the entrance of things banging, begging — their heads a hammer — the house’s floors and carpets slathered, layer after layer, sight unseen — the house’s windows glossing over, revealing things that had been there and yet were not, not even now, yet, things etched on the breath hung as remainder — some reminder, who and who and who, what beds these rooms had nuzzled, what walls the brighter air had seemed — the son unraveled — the son’s cracked back — the globes of light creased and compiling — slurring junk sloughed off, ejected — the light wires crimped and full of glisten and new need — the house’s spreading open — the rooms revealing all in one moment what they’d been and seen and shown — what they wanted — who else they were once, what other inches, who they could be anew again — and the son’s lips and lids and other eyes and pores and holes and follicles sang fat with foam — the son congealing — the son in every window of the house — the son the size of the house, inside — the house walls swelling, the weird unbuckle, the teeming crust riddled with creak, the living layer they’d created warping — gel — the buzz of black transmission — the other houses — the tattoo ratted over the father’s eyes, the son’s, though the mother could almost peek, the mother who’d slipped this riddle, hole of holes there, the mother half inside the son — he in her and she in he and they in ever — the mother could feel the other weight, she could feel him lifted upward — the house now big as some balloon, the old walls warped and cragged with yawn or screeching — the house deforming — all other houses — homes — the sky a soft black zero as the son b u l g e d o u t t h r o u g h t h e s o u n d—

SOUND OF TRUMPETS SOUND OF SIGHING SOUND OF SHOTGUNS SOUND OF GEESE SOUND OF GLIMMER SOUND OF NOWHERE SOUND OF SON

— and in the midst of all of this, from the outside, from neighbor’s doors or windows and in the street — from all but a certain very minor other angle there was no way for most to see what had gone on — you could not see that this wasn’t one of many houses — from the street the house was fine — A-OK — today, tomorrow — on the walk the neighbors passed in silent indecision— what for dinner? glass or chicken? — though in the minute on the hour their skin went prickled near their teeth, they looked a second time in one direction, pulled their pets along to shit on somewhere else — that night they didn’t kiss their sons or wives — they grew one more new long hair or felt a ticker in their thigh — only in their sleep then could they see what they had seen.

The son was in the bedroom.

The son was standing on the bed. He’d brought the mirror back out from the closet and unsheathed it. The son felt very tired. The son shrunk and expanded both at once — so that from the outside the son seemed to stay the same size.

The mirror had fingerprints and footprints and breath steamed on the glass from, it seemed, several sides.

The son stood above the mirror. The son saw the mirror from above. With the masked light flooding through the room’s enormous window — a light that flickered, flexed and charred — the light of so many different days — the mirror seemed to bend. With his head like this and arms like this and humming, the son could see a hallway in the glass. And then depending on what the son wished or how he wanted or remembered or forgot — the son could make the hallway open up. The son could make the hallway fold around him.

The son could slip into the hall.

The son walked down the hall with both eyes blinking in and out and in and out.

The son walked and walked and walked. The son felt lighter. The son’s arms began to shake.

The son came to a door.

The light continued. Light ate light up, and shat light out, and light remained. Days rolled in the long blows of the hours hidden in spinning years and months and days.

In the houses men were laughing. Mothers made other mothers, fathers, too. Sick continued. Night continued. In the night, small pockets fried in endless sing.

The night gathered up in pockets, grew holes. The holes hummed around a rasping center, rolled. Centered in all air and in all bodies. The center’s center had no name.

The bodies aged. The bodies ate lunch, their old limbs shifting, breathing up in celebration, years of air. Resting. Nesting. Needing. Sleeping. Going. Sewing. Teeth on teeth.

Other things would happen. More words would pass from mouth to mouth. The weight of nameless light would overflow the houses, days unblinking, above ground.

The ground was light. The lunch was light, too. And the days, the beds, more holes. The light would fill the halls for hours. The skin would come and come and come.

Thank you, Calvert Morgan, magicmachine. Thank you, Carrie Kania, Dennis Cooper, Bill Clegg. Thank you, mother, father, sister, brother-in-law. Thank you, Heather. Thank you, Gene & HTMLGiant crew. Thank you, Featherproof crew. Thank you, Ken, Shane, Gian, Michael, David, Sean, Derek. Thank you, Atlanta friends. Thank you, Internet. Thank you.

BLAKE BUTLER is the author of the novella Ever and the novel-in-stories Scorch Atlas , named Novel of the Year by 3:AM Magazine . He edits HTMLGiant , “the internet literature magazine blog of the future,” as well as two journals of innovative text, Lamination Colony and No Colony . His writing has appeared widely online and in print, including in The Believer, Unsaid, Fence , and Vice , and short-listed in The Best American Nonrequired Reading . Butler lives in Atlanta and blogs at gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com.