Exhausted, Bert leaves the crust of the last pizza slice in the box. With a burp, he ruminates on how his voice must’ve sounded while he was ordering. “Sorry, sir, still catching some static and noise on this end. This phone must really suck or something. Could you please repeat that?” After the girl’s voice leaves his head, his own remarks, At least you drove over to get it. That should’ve given you enough time to think things over before you got home. Of course, now you’re home and you haven’t really changed your mind. He burps again as the relaxing feeling in his stomach drives off a swelling headache. His eyes roll up to a punched-in hole in the wall with multi-colored cords streaming underneath.

“Fuck, Harvey,” he groans, remembering the lunch he was going to have in a few minutes with the neighbor who, years ago, had a guilty sob over putting the hole there. Feeling another swell in his head, he picks up the note he wrote and reads it. Rushed in thought and handwriting, it reads like an extended sigh, detailing various grievances about the shallowness of his relationships with people and the lack of substance in his escapes. Heading and footing the message is “I’ll find it.”

He carries the note with him into the bathroom where a serrated knife sits on the toilet seat. A quick swing of his arm throws aside the shower curtain and he twists the hot water knob. A gentle turn of the cold water knob settles the steam and he waits for the bathtub to fill while he fumbles out of his clothes. The rising water level makes a sound like castanets as he looks away, re-reading his note. The water gurgles up to the faucet and he twists the knob back to prevent overflow, then with paring knife in hand, steps in and sits down to feel the warm water rise halfway to his shoulders. A cottony feeling billows up his body into his head, drooping the eyes and slacking the jaw. Mother is the first image he sees, scrubbing shampoo into his hair and struggling to keep it out of his four-year-old eyes. His head sinks under the surface and he sees himself dragging himself inside the tub with cuts and scrapes on his arms and legs, hearing the pounding of fists on his front door, the rocks on the windows, and the wolf pack of screaming pre-pubescents. The next vision is being in there with his middle school girlfriend an hour before Mom’s return from work, both of them tensing up their bodies and not speaking to each other after his clumsy attempts to crawl over and kiss her. Next is him in his late teens soaking in the tub of his empty house, his parents having bought a bigger house and left him the old one as a hand-me-down. From there all other thoughts lead to the same moment he’s experiencing now: alone in his own house, in his own bathtub, and uncomfortably in his own skin. He gropes for the knife on the toilet and takes hold of the plastic handle. Knife and hands disappear under the water, and the first rough cut is made from the bottom of his left wrist to the elbow, mirrored as he stabs it into the right wrist and saws down. Next are the thighs, being sliced from the groin to the knee. All four incisions made, he sets the knife on the side of the tub and crunches his limbs inwards to stem the pain as he watches viscous plumes of blood spill over his belly and crotch, the water tainted yellow-orange by plasma. His numbing head sinks further into it, and the paler his limbs get, the less he feels able to move them. The vapor in the air is embittered with the scent of iron, forming the sound of a scratchy violin. One last acid burp as he slips under the thickening burgundy surface and drifts.

Gigantic floating specks, and then there are ripples. When the ripples stop, his vision pauses and then bubbles inwards, tearing apart until everything resumes animation.

Bert lifts himself up, and the first things he sees are wires in the tub. He feels the fluids wash down him as he looks around, finding that the stucco wall and shower tiles are gone, with only the steel and PVC pipes left. By the light switch he sees the electrical network snaking out to the free-standing bulbs and ceiling fan. Looking back down at the tub, he sees his doughy, hairy body soak just under the surface, where the copper wires trail out. Each one follows up to him, each wire in his shape covered in black plastic insulation. Trying to pull away, he feels coils undo in his arms and legs. Even as he stops and puts his arms and legs together, the wires gently ooze out of the retracting insulation.

Curiosity drives him into the rest of the house: wires, pipes, and foundation. The last pizza crust piece is gone from the box, replaced by a thick line of white paste. All of his other possessions made into silhouettes, he walks on and opens the front door.

More pipes are found outside, suspended underfoot over a distant glow by more constructions of wires, pipes, and concrete. The people walking above the pipes have similar bodies of wires, with various lights glowing inside of them. As they chat among themselves he hears static coming out of their heads, only made intelligible by their body language. He steps onto the invisible barrier and walks over to Harvey’s house, the ground speckled by lumps of aluminum. He knocks on the door, and the house burps in response. More knocks and burps, but Harvey doesn’t answer. Looking through the inner structure of the house, he finds more lumps of aluminum and no Harvey. Then, through an aural coating of electronic fuzz, he hears barking.

Behind him he sees the first sign of flesh: a golden retriever, trotting along with its tail raised and its tongue lowered, wearing a purple collar and leash that leads back to another wire-man. Bert follows for three blocks – lackadaisical, even as the four trails of copper continue to limp undisturbed on the ephemeral ground. The retriever barks once, then twice as it jerks against the leash, then whines through the rest of the way as growling static sizzles out from the wire-man. The dog’s dragging leads both of them to a wide gap between the skeletal buildings, with lazily inclining hills outlined only by how well they hide the lake beyond. Two thicker wire forms get up from where they were sitting, howling sirens as they kneel by the dog and collapse over it, the sirens lowering to affectionate gurgles. Their arms coil around the furry neck and begin to pulse, the fur sticking to them and their organs becoming steadier in their flashing. All the while, the wire-man holding the leash buzzes lower and smoother. The other two withdraw from the dog, clumps of fur still sticking to them as their voices lilt into inquisitive tones. Around the time that the dog’s owner answers in the same smooth static, Bert looks around and sees more animals being plugged-into by people, as well as a battery-powered T.V. being played at a family picnic, all participants reaching into the device and pulsing. The T.V. itself has no image on it, though just behind it are two flesh-and-blood people speaking to each other with exaggerated gestures and tones. Bert walks over to the set and reaches out, managing to touch their sticky skins and interrupt their acting.

“Well, what?” asks the first one, a man suited in business regalia.

“It’s not good enough for you to just listen?” asks the second one, a woman in sweatpants and a tank top.

Bert pulls away to feel the skins of both of them tear away in his hands. The clean strips hang loose like leather before metabolizing into the insulation.
The couple flashes away from him to act behind another T.V. several yards away, before Bert can say anything else. Looking back to the first family, he sees them pick up their T.V. and walk away. “Wait a minute!” he trumpets, rushing at both actors and grabbing them by their shirts, “I need to ask something!”

“Well, you’re disrupting us.”

“It’s our job to feed you, so shut-up and sit down.”

Bert reaches up and gently peels off the woman’s lips, leaving an airy space. Turning to the man, he asks, “How are you both here?”

The family sitting down to watch start to shout at Bert, the largest one of the group chasing him off with the sound of a blasting car horn. After the escape, his next reaction comes from a cacophony of noises somewhere to his right, where he sees tangled coils copulating to sounds of sputtering sirens and revving engines. At the last spurt of noise they disentangle and look at Bert, one of the two screeching at him and the other one whining while covering itself, and they both quickly leave.

Alone again, Bert walks further down to the lake, listening to its humming cello and looking at his reflection. His arms and legs have worn down to only a couple of receding strands as the black molts away, the ache in his wrists and thighs filing down to numbness. Tilting his head up, he sees more throbbing wire forms. There’s someone with a handheld videogame staring at the screen and tapping buttons on the opposite bank, two others nearby tossing a volleyball back and forth, and another one walking around with a book in its hands. Turned back to the water, he notices a dead trout float by, staring up with stringy copper streaming out of the gills and mouth that puffs a soggy and pungent aroma. He lifts it from the lake as the fish’s wires dribble water. As they dry, they coil like cotton candy and attach to Bert’s hand. The slimy corpse flops around, eyes rolling in its head. The more Bert tries to shake it loose, the more tangled it gets as its silvery scales flash in the gaps between his arm’s viscera. His fingers reach in after it, grabbing hold and tugging at the burrowing fish. By the end of the struggle, the entire upper-right portion of his body is aching from the jerking, and he feels the fish beating against his brain.

A lumpy bundle on a gray blanket shuffles into focus as he holds his eyes and temples. Around the stirring bundle are teddy bears, tiny magnetic train cars, and crunched-up graham crackers with the parents absent. It slowly mumbles as it picks itself onto its feet and waddles after a group of joggers. Fruitless ambition leads it over to the next tree, and now the mumble is a slow droning as it stops and stumbles back to the blanket. It brings the ends of both trains nearby and they snap together, throwing themselves out of the child’s hands. Picking the joined trains back up, it puts the end of one to its lips and bites down, trying to pull them away. As its neck snaps back thirty degrees, the car slips down its body and the wheels pull out some copper on the way. All the while, the child chokes out a clicking sound. Bert rushes over and tries to pick up the blanket to smother the wound, finding that his diminishing arms can barely lift a corner and that each step feels unstable as the fish’s independent movement throws him off balance. The child latches onto him with its innards spilling all over him, coughing up a laugh.

Both of his hands drop off and hiss as they strip, and he scrambles to pick them up. He feels a firm poke in his back and he turns around to an officer with a shiny badge in her face and a black baton erecting from her arm. “Sir,” she says, her voice amplified through the badge, “I suggest you go home, you’re making some of the park patrons uncomfortable. Here, let me give you a ride.” Bert agrees and carries his hands into the back seat of a stripped-away car with its unpainted metal frame, roof strobe beacon filaments, and exposed engine. The key turns over and the engine mutters its consent. A loud groan rumbles forth as the gas pedal is pressed, Bert looks out the window and watches the buildings zip by and vanish. In his lap are the remains of his hands and the tumor-like toddler tangled in his right arm, all of it clumping together as a heap of copper. The car begins to jitter as it treads over the exposed wires that Bert bled. He hears them flop over the tires until the tires wheeze and seize up. The officer shifts into reverse and pulls back an inch, and then she shifts into drive, flooring the gas pedal. The engine screams and jerks forward, catching more and more in the tires as Bert crashes against the door with his wounds stuck against the jammed opening. One more catch, and then he feels the corded entrails rip out of him, insulation crackling and twisting away from him in great black strips of plastic. Once fully dismembered, his torso tears away.

“Stop the car!” he blares out.

“Try to remain conscious, sir. We’re almost there.”

“What?”

“Just take a moment to relax. You’ll be able to thank Harvey when we’re through.”

Bert says nothing else as the car stops and the officer pulls him out of the seat, carrying his fish-laden head and the near-stripped child through his front door. The drywall is crumbling, and the foundation is fractured into a puzzle. All around him the pipes and wires split open, and as he turns his head, he sees the last black pieces of the kid’s face split away and cease to animate. The officer steps through the doorway to the bathroom, the last black strands of Bert’s lips curling away. Then, as the black curls begin to fill his vision, he finds himself looking down into the violin-screeching bathtub marinating his body in red, yellow, and brown. The officer’s arms give way, he and the still child plummeting in. Looking through the murk, he sees his excreted shape being lumped on top of him and the fish flopping its way out from between his eyes.

His vision comes to a halt, then it horizontally splits itself with overlaying white spots. A flashing white picture vertically repeats itself, and then the water goes clear.

Gloved hands rub around him with washcloths, belonging to people wearing turquoise scrubs over their bodies and red crosses on their faces. Their voices garble out low tones, sounding like microphones left to moan, overlaying the elevator muzak in the water. Bert tenses as they wipe through ticklish crevasses under his belly and between his butt cheeks. In doing so, he feels the ache of needles and tubes feeding into him. One more dip in the tub, and they pull him up to polish him with towels before slipping a gown on him and setting him on a wheelchair. Trailing behind intravenous hangers they push him down the white hallway past gurneys that drip peeled wire insulation from the mounds under the sheets. The works behind the walls bulge outwards, making veins along the white paint. His own veins are smothered by large bandages, stained reddish-brown where he cut himself.

Bert’s wheeled into room 141, on the nearest side of a dividing curtain with a fish tank holding a silver trout by the bed. Sitting in a chair opposite his bed is Harvey, wearing a wife-beater tucked into a pair of denim shorts and socks worn inside of sandals. After a swig from a tall can of beer he grins, the gap between his front teeth filled with the pink bulge of his tongue. Something heady drains into Bert as he’s raised into the bed. The nurses gone, Harvey pulls two spoons from out of his pocket. With both in one hand, he reaches up and turns on the overhead television. As the screen flashes on, a commercial fades to black and then to the show. A business-suited man is peacefully arguing with his hostile and athletically dressed wife, each exchange interrupted by a laugh track. Harvey takes one of the spoons and dips it into the screen, scooping out a chunk of the man and eating it. With the other spoon, he scoops a bit out of the woman and walks over to Bert, feeding him the plastic-tasting goo and tipping the edge of the can to his lips to wash it all down with lukewarm booze. “I’ll bet you’re happy to be alive,” says Harvey. “Can this make up for the hole in the wall?” To Bert, both sentences would’ve been more comforting if they didn’t sound like air horns.

Harvey continues to feed him spoonfuls of the actors with intermittent swigs of beer. All the while, Bert notices his body begin to pulse.

—