by Garrett Cook
A God of
Hungry Walls
Garrett Cook
DEADITE PRESS
P.O. BOX 10065
PORTLAND, OR 97296
www.DEADITEPRESS.com
AN ERASERHEAD PRESS COMPANY
www.ERASERHEADPRESS.com
ISBN: 978-1-62105-195-4
A God of Hungry Walls copyright © 2015 by Garrett Cook
Cover art copyright © 2015 by Alan M. Clark
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Printed in the USA.
To the Houses,
Each of Them Haunted
Homecoming
The girl who left won’t make it out of this alive. I taught her about love you see, and now she knows too much. The girl who left will not make it out of this alive. She knows too much about love. With nightfingers under the covers and breath in the ear, I taught her. Secret shape pressed against her, I was warm and I was tender, I was kind. You may say that I was cruel—am cruel—will always be cruel but you cannot tell me ever EVER that I wasn’t kind or that kindness isn’t in my nature. Although she used herself ‘til blood sprayed and made white sheets a little rusty brown (a virgin with white sheets, imagine that) although I made sheets a rusty brown, although I cracked her open, let her out, I was kind. But she will not make it out of this alive. Who does?
The chill is back. Subtle right now. She is thinking of Ray Bradbury. I don’t know the name. I’m with her at the pharmacy as she takes in the not quite food smell of candy corn, inhales bittersweet. The plastic pumpkin pail gets her wet. Reminds her of me. She really doesn’t want to look at the plastic pumpkin pail, but I am in her. And when I get in you, I get in you. I am in deep. This thing is mine. It’s better she won’t get out of this alive. She knows too much about love.
She’s on her knees last year.
“You want a treat?” I’m shaking a plastic pumpkin pail. Tempting her with candy corn and Necco wafers.
She nods and opens wide.
She turns, startled by an inflatable ghost looking at her with big, googly stupid eyes. She thinks of me, but not fondly. The girl who left leaves this place emptyhanded. She walks to the train station past a street musician that she swears is me and she’s not quite right and she’s not quite wrong. She knows too much about love. She turns up her Ipod. It’s playing our song. I would miss the girl who left if I had gone away.
“Imagine me and you, we two…”
Happy Together. The Turtles. She loved the song, even before it was ours. She scrolls down the playlist, switching to the next track.
“That I’m the only one for you, and you for me…”
She closes her eyes and insists that she’s out and that she never never never ever…
“So happy together.”
She always loved Sylvia Plath. She read me some poems. I wasn’t sure that I could quite relate. I am never vulnerable. But that’s why she’s thinking about the oven. And the gas and getting out of this. Not alive. She knows too much about love.
Daddy, you bastard, I’m through. Don’t think about the pumpkin pail.
She’s going home to turn on the oven. And the girl who left is coming back home to me.
Inhabitants
Micah is up early. Sitting in the backyard meditating. He is listening to the trees, the plentiful trees, the great canopy of Jamaica Plain’s Emerald Necklace. A short walk to the center of town, a short walk from the pond, still in isolation, still in stillness. An ideal place for this house, for him, for me. He is listening to the trees and I am whispering through them. It’s a good idea to take in another. They had failed to fill the room the last couple months and their hearts are still heavy with the girl who left, but yes, it is the time. The Emerald Necklace has spoken, ground and leaves and wind.
He goes inside and brews his morning coffee in the kitchen, the only space where you can see the sum of who lives here. This is the only room where one might find any of them at once or all of them at once. Symbols of ancient mysticism, cartoon characters and pithy female empowerment slogans adorn the refrigerator, stickers and slogans paper the cabinets with liberation and love and light and lies, sigils of commitment to being better people than any of them are.
Kaz, in boxer shorts and black tanktop, is seated at the table. Micah looks up and down Kaz’s body, a dancer’s body, curved and strong in all of the right places, he tries not to let on that his gaze is one of longing. But he likes her Mohawk, he likes her eyes, he likes the way her breasts strain against her shirt, he likes her legs. He likes her big blue eyes. She likes him too, his long, blonde curly hair, his tan, his shirtless, unshod relaxed persona.
They want each other and are scared that it might happen, but today they aren’t thinking about that for long. The girl who left is dead and they finally found someone to take the room she left behind two months ago before she moved away and before she ended her life. The upstairs room in the corner, the Blue Room, as they refer to it, since its walls are a cerulean blue.
“I think it’s gonna be cool,” says Kaz, “the new guy seems nice. And he’s a musician. You play guitar. You guys could jam. He’s written stuff for commercials and singers and stuff. He knows his shit.”
Micah nods.
“Yeah. He’s a good dude. I like him.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re up early.”
“Late,” says Kaz.
“Ah.”
Leah walks shyly into the kitchen. Pours hot water into her French press.
“Good morning,” she says, almost inaudibly. Though thin and graceful, darkhaired and beautiful, envied by Kaz for her Chinese exoticism, her posture is small, her body language protected. She is cocooned in her oversized sweatshirt, hiding her bust, hiding her size as she often tends to. She is surprised to see Kaz up this early, though for Kaz it is probably late instead, she may be a couple hours before seeing bed and waking up at three o’ clock. Kaz tends to be nocturnal, which is fine for Kaz. Leah isn’t judging, even though she is. Though nowhere near as harshly as she judges herself.
“Brian is moving in today.”
“Cool,” says Leah.
Micah feels her unease but isn’t sure where it comes from. She wasn’t around when Brian met the others but she’d said that was okay and mostly Leah kept to herself. So, it was probably okay. But Leah still seems uneasy and Micah doesn’t like that. Micah tries to keep the household running smoothly. He is a man of action and above the stereotypes about people like him. At least that’s what he tells himself. At least that’s what he seeks to prove. So, Micah doesn’t like Leah’s unease.
“You’re okay with this, right?”
Leah had liked the girl who left. Micah had seen the two of them together sometimes. Micah hopes this doesn’t mean she’ll be rude to the new guy but Leah doesn’t seem to be rude to anyone. She keeps to herself, which is fine, except that nobody likes it. Everyone tends to feel she thinks she’s better than they are.
“Yeah,” says Leah, “if you guys think he’s okay, he’s probably okay.”
Kaz can’t help but laugh.
“Yeah, probably. Barring some massive oversight, I guess.”
“He’s fat,” says Micah, “and a racist. He’s a big fat racist.”
Cytherea waddles into the kitchen. Seeing this bloated beast reminds me why he ogles Kaz. She is a skilled, insatiable lover but generally cruel and crude. As usual, she’s all gut and tit and ass and dresses in a generally whorish manner. Right now it is just a long, black
men’s t-shirt emblazoned with Blessed Be, which is a laugh. Generally seems her spells don’t work any better than the weights she sporadically lifts. Or maybe they do. It might explain how a fat purplehaired slut in far too much makeup picks up a man as attractive as Micah and manages to bring home as many lovers as she does.
“You talking about the new guy? I hear he’s a Satanist.”
Leah has no idea why Cytherea would think it would frighten her if he was a Satanist or why it would be funny. She wants Leah to be shocked because that would make her look cool in front of Kaz and Cytherea always wants to look cool in front of Kaz. There is really no place Cytherea would be cool.
“He’s hot. I’m gonna suck his cock,” says Kaz.
“I’m gonna suck it first,” counters Cytherea. Cytherea is only half joking, just as Kaz is not joking at all. Kaz would not mind sucking his cock. Cytherea will try to make it happen. Though Cytherea thinks of herself as an ethical slut and Kaz as a regular slut, Kaz is actually shyer, sadder, but less desperate in her way, less hungry. Literally too.
Micah waves his hands in mock protest.
“Whoa, whoa, let’s not count Leah out yet. She’s the dark horse in the race but she might surprise you.”
Leah forces a smile.
“I rove him rong time,” she deadpans.
She doesn’t laugh and joke with them often but she wants them to be on her side because the new one is an unknown quantity. They laugh with her. They sit in the kitchen and eat breakfast together. They act like a family, like they know what a family is at all.
“He’ll be into that,” says Kaz, “total racist. You can seduce him with your subtle geisha ways.”
“I will definitely give Leah subtle.”
“Like a ninja,” Micah chimes in.
“Racist,” says Leah.
“You want half of my bagel? I’m trying to cut out some carbs,” Kaz gestures toward Leah with half a bagel.
“I’m cutting out carbs too.” Leah is telling a half truth. She’s cutting out a lot more than carbs.
“You look fine,” says Micah, “you should be careful. Nobody wants you getting sick.”
Leah thinks on the subject. Thinks about the time she’s spent eating nothing, talking to nobody, hiding in her room with her grief and her anxiety. She looks around for anybody who she assumes would care if she got sick and she finds nobody among these people, who are always too wrapped up in themselves and their things to so much as ask how she’s doing. Julie was closest to her. Julie was her friend and they never stop and ask how she feels about her friend being gone.
“I’m okay,” she replies, “really. I know about diet and stuff. I’m a med student after all.”
“Really?” says Kaz “‘Cause you never bring it up.”
“Fuck that Cosmo shit,” says Cytherea, “you look good in the body that’s yours. Any body can be sexy.”
Micah really wishes she would lose weight. Micah wants to know what’s under Leah’s baggy sweaters. Micah would have a lot of fun with that. Any body can be sexy but hers? No, not hers. She is not nearly so secure as she lets on. But she has to be so she lays it on real thick.
“I know that,” says Leah, “I just want to be healthy.”
That’s a funny word in this house.
The New One
The new one, Brian—his hair and beard are long and I cannot glean his secrets straight away. He comes in part because there’s already a bed, already a desk, already a room. Brian comes with three suitcases and a couple of boxes of equipment that he has placed in the basement. He will spend a great deal of time in the basement.
The basement is full of memories. It is full of Antonia. It is full of Maddy and Clarence. It is full of me. The new one has set up his things but he is settling in and has not yet come down there. I will get to know him quicker when he does. I have been tapping the glass on his window, waking him in the middle of the night. His ears are keen since he’s a musician.
That much I know. I don’t know all that much more yet. At this stage in our acquaintanceship, I feel like a goddamn child, pulling juvenile pranks to gain attention. But he will not get to know me if he ignores me. I look at him through Kaz and don’t find out much. He is one of Kaz’s types. Kaz cannot tell me much but she wants to take him to bed because he plays the guitar and has a beard.
I see desire and thirst for approval from Kaz’s eyes so she doesn’t help much. Kaz’s desire is a gateway to Kaz and to nothing more than Kaz, this is true even for Kaz. She wants many things she doesn’t want to remind herself that she wants at all. If she ever stopped wanting, that would be the end of her, though that could be said for most people I suppose.
This makes me want to reach him even more. So I push hard. His mind doesn’t want me in there. It has no reason to. I have given him nothing and he has no reason to trust me or trust the home. I need something though. He is making me a petulant child but I don’t care. I want what I want. I hunger for what I hunger for. I am a hypocrite a bit for indicting Kaz.
I can smell that he is looking to forget. They will hang paintings on cracks in the wall. They will sweep piles of clutter into the closet. They will haphazardly toss sheets over careworn furniture as time and dust and vermin rot upholstery away. This one is in his way quite gifted, a prodigy, it seems, at the art of forgetting. I cannot find what I’m looking for because he can’t.
Feeling my intrusion but unable to articulate what or where or why the not alone comes from, he pops open a beer. For a musician, he is not terribly relaxed. That’s why he’s not in a band. He tells me that. Why his collaborations don’t last too long. He tells me that. His relationships seem weak too, vulnerable to the same things that wreck his musical collaborations. Antonia. Yes, Antonia will find a way. He’s high strung and nervous, vigilant and detail-oriented.
But the beer in his hand is a talisman, one that keeps him from overthinking. Which he does. Such an overabundance of thoughts, still waters running deep as they say. His mind races from the taste of the beer, from the settling of the wood, things that make him take a glance backward. We must try not to glance backward, hence the beer. I wish he could glance backward to help me find exactly what I am looking for. When he pulls away the blankets from the paintings, he reveals more blankets beneath them or that the paintings were paintings of blankets.
He looks out into the hallway because he feels not alone. Leah, who seems nice enough, is coming up the stairs but that’s not it. He hadn’t even heard her on the bottom stair. I show him a short, still image to distract him and take in what he’s made of. Like one of Doctorpuppet’s Rorschach blots.
I give him a naked man, over four hundred pounds, body made of rolls and wrinkles, blemishes, boils and sores. He is wearing on his head the skull of a bull. On her knees in front of him, naked, with freckle-dotted skin and flaxen hair, is a girl of about ten years old. He is holding her head up by pigtails and is gagging her tiny mouth with his giant cock. There is no action, no motion, it is suspended in space, a snapshot of this moment of shame and pain and exploitation. I show it to him for long enough for him to think he saw it, then I splice it into his memory again. Lurking between moments, between glances, is the child’s supplication. I remember testing Doctorpuppet with this one. Doctorpuppet got out of bed and went to the shower to masturbate and cry. Because Doctorpuppet was terribly sick in his head, a physician that could never have healed himself.
Brian neither showers nor masturbates. I’m not sure if this delights or disappoints me, to be honest. He simply sits alone, with his feeling of not aloneness fully intact and his feeling of not quite rightness and his feeling of uncertainty at what he witnessed. Brian chugs down his beer. He contemplates calling someone or knocking on Leah’s door to offer one of his beers to her. But he looks at his watch and he sees that it is only 3:30. It’s too early to be drinking and he doesn’t want to make a bad impression. And she probably doesn’t really drink anyway.
If she drank, she wouldn’t drink
beer at 3:30, that’s for sure. Maybe he needs some food or some fresh air. I try to tell him that his face is crumbling off and there is something unspeakable underneath, but it is too soon for that. Yes, I am getting impatient. I don’t know him well enough to convince him of this, so there was no reason for me to try and with a great deal of shame and annoyance and humiliation, I am ejected. He decides it would be a good time to take a walk. I don’t have him nearly enough to follow him out.
And so instead, I check up on Leah, in her room with its bare yellow walls, with only calendars of great works of art to make it look like she thinks of herself as a person. She’s studying and listening to music, trying not to get carried away again and therefore not to get carted away again. She wouldn’t want to end up back in the hospital. She says she likes her body. She says she’s doing well enough. She says that a bowl of frozen yogurt or an episode of Project Runway isn’t going to hurt her. She subvocalizes this too many times for her to count. As if she could eventually believe it. It will hurt you. Make you fat. Make you fail. She makes a well of self assurance as she takes in the names of veins or nerves of bones of arteries, of all the things that can break them down, the myriad maladies that she will have to know by heart. The facts slip in but she loses them if I tweak just a little.
I ask her about the new guy because Kaz has been so uninformative. I want to know what she thinks. She isn’t mine completely but she could be. She thinks that he is somewhat handsome though too scruffy for her to taste though he isn’t actually all that scruffy all things considered, not like those friends of Micah’s. She is worried he will not pay his share of utilities and that he will make a giant mess of the kitchen and that he will have loud parties and that she will not be asked to come down and join him. When Kaz has friends over, she never invites her down. She never asks if she would like to watch a movie or something. Or to have dinner. But Leah doesn’t have dinner very often. The banana on her desk is moldy and disgusting and oozing with fat. Mustn’t eat that banana. And Brian won’t invite her to dinner either. And Brian is too cool to talk to her and Brian wants to be left alone. Everyone in the house just wants to be left alone. And that suits Leah because Leah needs to study to become a doctor and Leah is good enough and almost almost thin enough to become a doctor.
