Forever, in Pieces

by Fawver, Kurt

  The shifting Forever-thing stood astride the Forever-doll. Ben watched as the pieces of flesh that he’d fastidiously sewn, stitched, stapled, and glued into the doll burst from their moorings and converged on the Forever-thing, somehow melding with its bulk and congealing into a singular substance, like disparate puddles of mercury rolling together to form an uncanny lake.

  The doll’s head smacked against the floor, lifeless as it was intended.

  The Forever-thing ambled over the dead doll and stood beside Ben. He turned his head in its direction and witnessed the end of reason. This was his Forever—a teeming mass of undifferentiated body parts, of myriad faces and torsos, hips and thighs, skins and hair, all swirling and bubbling, scattering and converging like a human kaleidoscope.

  More fiery wind blew into Ben’s ears.

  “It is time,” the collective voice whispered. “Let us . . . consummate.”

  Ben tried to speak, tried to ask “Why me?” or “Why us?” but could only babble incoherently. He realized the answers didn’t matter, anyway. If it hadn’t been him, it would have been another lonely, awkward child. The story would have played the same, with slightly different characters. It always did.

  Forever knelt on the floor and placed two manically twisting, serpentine appendages on his shoulders. They burrowed under his shirt and coiled around his torso once, twice, three times, tying themselves tighter with each circumnavigation. Then they began to squeeze.

  Ribs and spine, mind and spirit: all snapped and cracked under the slithering force of Forever. Ben felt its arms crushing his willpower, his identity. Memories broke off and fell to the ground; thoughts shriveled and crumbled to dust.

  And, still, he couldn’t bring himself to be particularly concerned. Though he should have shrieked from the agony of his skeleton’s collapse or the horror of his soul’s implosion, Ben could do little more than swallow a hysterical laugh. His self was melting away, disintegrating into the whirl of splintered entities within Forever, and all he could feel was love—excruciating, incommensurable, terrible love.

  His relationship with Forever was finally, spectacularly, ending.

  His relationship with Forever was just now beginning.

  [back to Table of Contents]

  A Nuzzle, Inverted

  Heavy rain melted the world beyond Brian’s window, reducing hurried pedestrians to an endless stream of drab, earth-toned blobs. Brian sighed and stared at the edges of the frame, hoping to catch a glimpse of something real, something solid. There would be no living today, no meticulous construction of daily schedules and familial routines, no ascription of desires and joys, worries and terrors. Brian was hemmed into his parched pocket of existence, his basement desert where loneliness and anxiety whipped across beige-carpeted dunes. Most days, he stood on tiptoes inside the cinderblocked cube and gazed through the tiny window that looked out onto civilization. As passersby shot past the glass, he scribbled their preciously banal stories on the walls of his skull. From morning until nightfall, he stood under the pane, imagining what it must feel like to be able to brush against other people and not break out in a cold sweat; he conceived of casual conversations in which neither speaker dug his fingernails into his palms until blood welled up beneath their blunt edges; he squeezed fleeting images of skinny jeans, flowing skirts, and shoes of all shapes and sizes into his mind, then expanded them until he had an inflated universe with which he could actually interact. Today, though, due to the downpour, there would be no big bang rushing through his brainpan. Today would be a void day.

  Brian shook his head, plodded to his bathroom, and stared into the mirrored door of his medicine cabinet. A flabby, limpid ghost greeted his eyes. This was not Brian Searle. This was merely the pale remnant of a nameless boy who once dreamed he might be normal when he had finally grown into a man. But dreams never came true—not even while dreaming—and the fanged chemicals in Brian’s brain had never lost their ability to strike. For the past fifteen years, he’d swilled innumerable psychopharmaceutical cocktails in an effort to drown out himself and replace whatever “he” was with a cardboard cutout that could at least smile at random strangers and use public toilets. No combination of drugs had ever managed to do the trick, though, and the social sphere—a plaything to most but a tauntingly precious jewel to Brian—had continued to roll further from his sweat-slicked hands. Now, at thirty-one, Brian truly felt as though his existence would always be limited to himself, a clean but ill-lit room, and the chain-rattling phantom of emptiness.

  He grabbed a pair of dull scissors that were lying on the sink and plopped onto the nearby toilet seat. He stared at his bare arms, scarred and scratched as they were. Opening the scissors wide, he pressed one of the blades against his wrist. Its edge was cool, solid, and understanding. No misapprehended social cues here, no awkward silences or stumbling greetings. Pressing harder until he felt pain, Brian wondered why he never sharpened the blades.

  As Brian floated in his bubble of liminal suicide, a soft scratching noise began to diffuse throughout the room. At first, he didn’t hear it, utterly insulated by his funereal introspection and the ambient patter of rain against the window. However, over a matter of seconds the noise grew louder and more insistent, wiling its way into his secluded psyche and bursting any sanguinary intentions he may have held. He blinked rapidly, as if waking from a trance, dropped the scissors to the floor, and fled from the bathroom, vaguely and inexplicably panicked.

  The scratching continued, louder and faster, as though something was peeling away layers of reality, tearing into Brian’s apartment from an unseen dimension of space-time.

  Brian paced the borders of the basement until he determined the source of the sound. It was coming from his front door—a frightening thing he only cracked open once a week, when his groceries were delivered to his below-ground stoop.

  Brian stood behind the door and waited, knots balling and colliding in his stomach. The scratching did not cease. Apparently, the world beyond wanted inside.

  “Hello?” Brian whispered, more to himself than to anyone or anything on the opposite side of the door.

  The response: more scraping, more scratching.

  “Hello?” Brian asked again, this time with enough volume so that anyone who might be nearby could hear.

  Still, only scraping and scratching answered.

  Wringing his quivering hands, Brian touched the doorknob and recoiled. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t open the door on a non-delivery day.

  The scratching continued.

  Brian breathed deep. He mashed his teeth together, set his jaw, and flipped back the deadbolt. Swallowing what felt like a cannonball, he reached for the doorknob and, in one swift motion, spun it and yanked the door inward, letting the external world spill into his enclave. Instantly, rain splattered on carpet, car horns and muddled shouts rocketed along the ceiling, and the odor of a million bodies and a million engines stung Brian’s nostrils.

  Beneath it all, however, on the unyielding concrete doorstep, in the same place Brian’s box of groceries rested every Wednesday, cowered a small, black, short-haired dog with a stunted muzzle—perhaps a strange brew of three parts Miniature Pinscher and one part pug. Its fur was matted and soaked and, even from a distance, Brian could tell that its back was covered with accumulated grime and garbage.

  The dog stared up, its brown, buggy eyes gleaming. Though its tail was tucked firmly under its body, the dog reached forward with one paw, as if commanded to politely shake hands in the face of fear. Brian knelt—too quickly for a stranger—and the dog backed away, resigning itself to the full force of the storm. As the tiny animal retreated, Brian felt a tug somewhere deep under his flesh. Though he’d never owned a dog or considered himself much of an “animal person,” something drew him close to this dark little orphan. A kinship beyond reason or understanding united the two.

  “Here,” Brian called. “Here. I won’t hurt you.”

  Brian remained kneeling, hands and arms ou
tstretched. The dog shivered and held its ground against the bottom-most step to the apartment. Minutes washed away with the draining rain. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Brian didn’t care that he was outside for so long. He didn’t care that umbrella-toting pedestrians shot vaguely disapproving stares at him as they clomped along the street. The only thing that mattered was helping the dog. So, Brian waited. Outside. In full view of the omnipresent eye of People.

  Finally, after what had been nearly forty-five minutes, the dog crept closer and, again, held one of its paws aloft.

  Slowly, carefully, Brian slipped his hand beneath the paw; he felt its cracked pads on his palm, its pavement-hardened contours against his clammy skin. He let the dog gradually inch into his arms and, once it had acclimated itself to his scent and his threat level, he scooped it up and brought it inside, shutting the door behind him.

  Hurrying to the bathroom, Brian wrapped the dog in a thick, puffy towel and rubbed it until the squirming animal no longer dripped water in its wake.

  Crouched on the bathroom tile and soaked to the core, Brian stripped off his clothes and slid into a sitting position to watch the dog. Now swaddled in a warm towel and relatively dry safety, it closed its eyes and nestled on the floor. Brian laid down and curled up around it, sheltering it from the screeching, clawing everything that lurked outside. In this primal arrangement the man and the dog both fell into peaceful, unhaunted sleep—the first either one had experienced in years.

  Brian woke with a series of damp squishes leaking into his ears and a musky, fecund odor coating his nostrils. Something warm and wet ran along his cheek. He opened his eyes, expecting to see the dog standing over him, licking his face. Instead, he saw a morphological monstrosity.

  The creature before him—an aggregation of glistening, pulsing organs, exposed bone, and striated muscles—cocked its head to the side as it recognized that Brian had shrugged off his slumber.

  Brian froze, his breath caught in his throat. Freed from their sockets, two brown, dangling eyes defied gravity and floated upward to fix him in their sight. The thing didn’t attack; it just watched, still and silent.

  Allowing himself to breath again, Brian surveyed the monster. It was roughly dog-shaped, but it could be no dog. In fact, Brian didn’t understand how it could even be alive. With its organs out in the open, subject to the elements and the puncturing dangers of the external world, the thing had to have amazing resilience in order to survive. Brian stared at the floating eyes and the eyes, deep and old as a lost messiah’s soul, stared back. He wondered if the creature was dangerous. He wondered if he was hallucinating.

  Breaking eye contact, Brian glanced around the room. The tiny, frightened dog was nowhere to be found. He hoped the monster hadn’t eaten it—or worse. The protruding bits of bone beneath the thing’s eyes were jagged and pointy, certainly capable of shredding flesh and fur.

  Suddenly, the slick, slimy creature advanced. Its muscles bunched and lengthened as it came toward Brian’s mouth. Its organs throbbed with feverish desire. Viscous fluids glazed its every movement. The thing gurgled—a guttural, needful sound—and a wavering pink appendage loosened itself from the mounds of viscera. Brian screamed, lifted himself off the floor, and ran from the room, heart hammering. He flung himself behind his couch and waited, hands balled into fists.

  The monster didn’t give chase.

  Instead, a long, wet, ripping sound slushed out of the bathroom. Brian bit the inside of his cheek to prevent himself from screaming again and peeked over the edge of the couch, into the open bathroom. The creature was missing. He let a tense minute pass then checked again. No pulsing beast. No abject horror.

  Brian swiveled around the back of the couch, fists still at the ready, and crept toward the bathroom doorway. The puffy towel and Brian’s crumpled clothes were spread across the floor, as before. A few smudges of dark liquid—possibly blood—dotted the towel.

  Brian stopped and peeked around the corners just inside the room’s entrance. Nothing waited to pounce from either spot. Cautiously, he walked in and nudged the towel with his bare foot. Nothing sprung from beneath it; nothing within its folds growled. He bent over to pick it up and examine the stains. As his line of vision lowered, he noticed a tiny, pitch-black silhouette nearly hidden within the shadows under his sink.

  A wide smile exploded across his face.

  “It’s okay,” he cooed. “It’s okay, buddy. Come on out. The monster’s gone. Come here. Come here.”

  The dog didn’t budge from its hiding place.

  “I bet you’re hungry and thirsty,” Brian said, standing upright. “Let me get you something.”

  He rushed to the kitchen, filled a bowl with water, and snatched a pack of turkey luncheon meat from the refrigerator. Returning to the bathroom, he tore open the pack of meat and set it, along with the bowl of water, by his feet.

  With tentative steps, the dog emerged from the shadows, head held high, sniffing out molecules of sustenance. It approached the food and drink and lapped at the water, eyes never leaving Brian’s towering form.

  As Brian watched the dog gobble up turkey and slurp water, his thoughts returned to the monster. How had it gotten into his home? Where did it come from? Where did it go? And, most importantly, what was it?

  The creature had frightened him not so much because it had done anything particularly menacing, but because it existed in such an inverted state. It seemed to have no physical defense against the stings and slings that life might throw in its path. Yet, somehow, it seemed powerful, imbued with a nameless essence that made its very being unfathomable and untouchable.

  Brian shook off his contemplation and focused on the dog, which had finished its meal. He crouched, reached out, and let the dog inch into his waiting fingers.

  After a few minutes of petting, he lifted the dog off its feet and carried it to the couch. He caught a glimpse of the dog’s undercarriage and, if biology still held true—which, given the events of the day, might be foolhardy to believe—his newfound friend was male.

  “A boy,” Brian said, stroking the dog’s head as it sat beside him on the couch, “what’s a good name for a boy?”

  The dog cocked his head to one side, apparently invested in Brian’s decision.

  “How about . . . Doug?” Brian asked. “That’s ‘dog’ with a ‘u’ in it.”

  The dog moved forward and nuzzled under Brian’s hand.

  “Doug it is! Doug Dog!” he laughed.

  Brian turned on the TV and Doug cuddled beside him. It took all of Brian’s willpower to restrain himself from raising the tiny animal to his chest and hugging it until the two melded.

  “Doug, Doug, Doug,” Brian repeated quietly, a mantra for all the unexpected rainbows that might miraculously burst through the otherwise oppressive maelstrom of daily living.

  Sometimes the things that save you are the things that need the most saving themselves, Brian thought, flashes of scissors against wrists streaking across his cortex.

  Doug pressed himself tight against Brian’s thigh.

  “Doug, Doug, Doug,” he whispered in response.

  A few hours later, while Brian watched a late-night comedy show, Doug’s intestines began to rumble and shake, as though a seismic shift was occurring deep beneath the continent of his body. The dog made no overtures toward the door, so Brian doubted he had to relieve his bowels or bladder. He stroked Doug’s back, thinking that the upheaval could be no more than indigestion.

  Generally unconcerned, he flipped a channel and dove back into the digital sea.

  But the rumbling grew worse.

  Doug’s entire body vibrated with some sort of internal energy. He opened his mouth wide—a gesture that seemed sure to indicate a puddle of vomit was on the horizon—and let loose a few strange crackles, sounds that echoed the clattering of bones and the twisting of ligaments and tendons.

  At the sound, Brian dove off the couch and knelt in front of Doug, still rubbing the dog’s back.

  “Doug? D
oug? What’s wrong, buddy?” Brian asked, panic stabbing every syllable. “What’s wrong? Do you need to go outside? Doug?”

  Doug’s mouth remained open and, if it was possible, seemed to unhinge, such that his lower jaw stretched until it was perpendicular to its brother above. And it didn’t stop. The dog’s mouth broke even wider, pushing backward against its torso, while its upper parts flew in an arc in the opposite direction. Doug’s head was, impossibly, turning inside-out.

  “Oh shit. Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit. What do I do? What do I do? Don’t die. Please don’t die,” Brian moaned.

  Doug raised a paw, as he’d done on the stoop what seemed like lifetimes ago.

  While Brian’s shaking hand met and engulfed the vibrating paw, his eyes skittered around the apartment, seeking help. On the counter in his kitchen, Brian spied his cell phone. He ran to it, flipped it open and punched in a number, then returned to Doug’s side with 9-1-1 glowing bright on the its display.

  In the brief moment he was gone, Doug’s entire face had become the visage of roadkill, a hunk of fibrous muscle and rolled away tissue that left jagged, ragged exposed bone. Truth fell from the sky and crushed Brian’s mind.

  He dropped his phone and watched, awestruck, as the transformation rippled from nose to tail. Doug’s entire body was turning itself inside-out, his innermost being—a complex system of tender parts and hidden interactions—revealing itself to Brian’s concerned gaze.