Blake Butler: There Is No Year

They ate. They were so hungry. There were all these hours. They chewed and chewed and then they swallowed. The food moved into the family through the flesh made from older food.

Some dishes were so hot no one could stand them. The son used his ring finger as a ladle and got scalded. The mark resembled the impression of a missing, inch-thick wedding band. The son sucked the finger with one side of his mouth and stuffed cooler food in on the other. He did not want to slow down in fear he might not get enough of something.

In another room, a room without the family, an indentation grew into one wall — a new pucker wide enough to fit a wire hanger, a pinky finger, something lean — a rip someone could breathe through — a hole for seeing out or seeing in. The home went on in this condition.

Outside, around the house, birds were landing on the roof. The birds could not stop shitting. The sun grew upon the white waste’s sheen, showing the shrieking sky back at itself.

The family all felt so stuffed they could not move. Though in their minds they were not full yet — had there been more food they would have ate and ate.

They had to crawl to the TV.

Usually the cable’s crap connection delivered all the channels with a rind of fuzz. The screen would sometimes spurt and bubble with long rips of swish, often in the most important moments of a program, or at least the moments the person watching would most like to see. The cable company had sent several repairmen with no success. Several of the men had fallen off the roof, cracked bones or bruises. One of the men had lost his thumb.

That night the set kept changing channels.

They’d be watching Trading Spaces and the set would make a sound and the screen would blip to channel 48, a station that ran live feeds supplying info on local traffic and weather. Each time the blipping happened, the cameras seemed stuck above their very neighborhood, their street. There in the center of the screen they could see their little house with the blood red roof with the strange pattern and the mold.

They’d be watching reruns of The $100,000 Pyramid and the set would make a different kind of sound and the screen would blip to 99, an adult pay-per-view-style station which for some reason came in clear. The family could see the rhythm and the thumping. They could hear the lady squeal. The son sat with his head three feet from the screen. The mother did not turn away. She heard her eyes move in her head, like mice, the pupils widening and resizing under the insistencies and contortions of the replicating light.

The father turned the set off and sent them both to bed at 4:35 p.m.

The father started in the corner behind the front door. From hands and knees to tiptoes he combed the walls’ perimeter inch by inch. He took down the still-framed photos, dragged the TV stand, the bench. At the windows he felt for errors in the glass, anyplace where fingers or wire or some other form or fiber could slip in. He dumped the cushions off the sofa and pet the frame seams, looking for bumps or tears or places sewn up, anyplace something could have been hidden.

Every few minutes the father went to throw up again in the kitchen into a yellow trash bag over the sink. Each time he tied the sack and sat it nestled in another, building a tidy, plastic nest. His arms seemed muddy. Seeing made him weak. The father had been feeling sick for several days now — it got worse the more he moved inside the rooms. Most nights since moving in the father dreamt of his skin peeled off in leagues — a surface pale enough to write on, wide enough to wrap the house.

In the kitchen, bedrooms, and bathrooms, he followed a similar procedure, removing the linens from the closets and the foodstuffs from the cabinets, running his hands inside each blank space over the flat surfaces of its innards. He petted the carpet for slits or patches, the way he’d hid certain photos from his mother as a kid, self-created creases in the house . He squeezed seat cushions, upended desk drawers, took the sheets off of the guest bed. He dumped a whole box of cereal out into the trash can and sniffed the crumbs. There was a ring inside the Corn Flakes, the inserted surprise: a black ring, gleaming, his size. He put it on, with all the others— his huge hands . He poured a carton of orange juice into the sink and watched it drain slow. He tapped the mirrors in the bathroom for hollow sounds behind the reflection.

Each thing the father touched became new things.

The father had all night.

In the silence left over after, the father went around the house and made a list:

— Unknown long scratch mark under recliner

— New bubbles in glass of guest room bedside lamp

— Did fan always spin counterclockwise?

— Son’s dolls in storage: more than a few are missing both eyes

— Garage bees

— Marks of insertion near top of wall in hallway. Larger than a pushpin? Who hangs things up that high?

— Handprints in the dust on top of the bookshelf by the mirror

— Initials and phone # in address book: RPT 515-3033. Who is this?

— Burn or other smudge marks on hallway baseboard, some kind of chewing

— Living room ceiling dripping what?

When not writing, the father clenched the list inside his mouth to keep his hands free so he could rummage. He bit down so hard, not realizing, his teeth went through the paper, through his lip. The blood fed him gulping, warm as from a mother’s nipple, brown.

On his knees down at the air vent in the guest bedroom, the father clasped his hands. He pressed his flesh against the grate’s face’s metal tines — a mazemap pressed around his eyes. Through the gaps a lukewarm air blew, moist like raindamp, stunk like rice. The screws that held the grate in had no divots in their heads. The father could not pry them up using his fingers. A screwdriver chipped the paint, caused him to cut his right hand open with its end — more blood, from a new hole, though this blood smelled not the same — not like blood at all, but charcoal. The father sucked the squirt. He pushed and battered at the grating, bumping his fists, saying god’s name, until after some unapparent pattern, the vent’s face fell off in his hands. Another pucker . The drywall shedded ash. Somewhere upstairs he heard a brief instance of strange brass.

The father had never seen such a large hole. The vent’s revealed mouth matched exactly with his shoulders’ width. He stuck his head in, already sweating, his teeth tight in his gums. The passage went along a long way straight before him before it turned quick at a right angle, toward the TV room and to the kitchen, thereafter blooming out to other rooms. The father felt a sudden want to sing into the warm hole, to fill the house with sound. He could not think of any songs.

With his shirt between him and the metal, the father forced himself in along the hole. He felt he’d gotten fatter. His flesh-bulged form fit to the rectangle. His feet and shoes dangled in the air in the guest bedroom and then, following his ass, became drawn in.

Where in the vent the roof had ridges, he felt his back’s long black hairs becoming ripped out of their pores. It kind of hurt more than it should have. The passage seemed too small. Some goop of residue caked on the pipe’s sides was rubbing off all on his pants and hands, his hair. He tried to stop and back out from already several feet deep. The air was blowing hotter, harder, at his body. Like someone breathing. Somewhere: babies. Mothers. Money. His hips seemed swelling. His thighs were meat. The vent’s skin sucked in all around him. Nearer. Leaning. The father cursed and breathed the ripping air. He half-called for someone to come and help him. Half-called less loud. Whispered, Help.