Six Calls

Dust blew into Ethan's eyes just outside the door to his apartment complex. Until his arrival, the wind had been to him despite its brute strength, and with that in mind, Ethan swore vociferously. Black clouds rushed along the sky like a rapidly swirling mural dangling over an infant's bed, pronouncing the end of the day far more efficiently than a sunset ever could.

With watering eyes, he pried his keys from the low pocket of his violently flapping, chocolate brown trench coat and reached for the handle of the front door with the other hand. The howling wind attained a shrill pitch as the door shut, becoming muffled the moment it sealed. A steel garbage can overturned then rattled its way down the street, making Ethan think of an arrhythmic pots-and-pans marching band comprised of—and conducted by—children. Enough tears streamed down his cheek to make him wonder whether or not something had become lodged underneath his eyelid. He shuffled through each of his pockets to find the keycard to get inside the lobby. Building's got a fuckin keycard system and they can't even send a superintendent to fix my thermostat, he thought to himself as he foraged through his pockets: business cards, candy bar wrappers, loose folded pages with assorted notes.

If possible, he would purge his wallet and his coat of excesses tonight. He looked forward to the prospect of doing so at midnight with the aid of blissful inebriation. This wasn't the first time he had come home with a bottle of whiskey and some new records. His girlfriend Kat broke up with him for the third time this year, in this instance over the phone with unusual vocal acrobatics: unintelligible sobs, shrieks, and murmurs that reminded him more of Gregorian chants in a madhouse than the delivery of that harsh blow all too softened by the ever expanding cushion of repetition.

“We're through,” “It's over,” “I can't take this anymore,” or something along those lines. Walking toward the elevator amid the smell of wet garbage, Ethan was hard pressed to remember which line she had used this time, although unlike past exchanges Kat's incomprehensibility had more than justified this.

And just like every other time, Ethan bought a record or two—Thelonius Monk tonight—and a twenty-sixer of whatever was cheapest and hardest. Wiser's was on sale.

OK.

He would listen to the album on his old record player, get drunk, and maybe watch pornography fed through his satellite before going to sleep. Adding the task of sorting his pockets simply diversified the pleasurable moments that would await him this evening.

A small Ethiopian boy raced to the elevator from across the hall followed by his winded, cursing father. When the doors opened, the father's reprobation drowned out the soft electronic chime. Ethan stood in the corner and gazed at his shoes, discarding his awareness of the boy, who was staring intently at the brown paper bag. The doors opened at the fourth floor, and Ethan shimmied around them with tiny, imbalanced steps as he exited. Half of the units on this floor were still empty as the result of both a mass eviction and a subsequent though incidental drug bust which made provincial papers and saved local law enforcement from having to indefinitely suspend two of its officers in relation to a previous incident involving one night, a couple thousand dollars, and two prostitutes per officer. Ethan may have only worked in the accounting department of The Star for that city, but that didn't prevent him from making minor contributions to the paper. He was keenly aware of the nationwide incompetence and corruptibility of law enforcement officials and their respective political appendages.

His apartment was a corner lot with ample sunlight, but living closer to the outskirts of the city also ensured that the nights were there much darker. Another apartment building—owned by a much more reliable company—faced him from across the street. Nonetheless, the sky at night was blacker than fresh coffee, and late in the evening when everyone was tucked away and fed the elaborate symbols of their unconscious mind, Ethan liked to stare out from his broad living room window and imagine he had breached the exosphere and was ensconced in the vacuum of space.

However, on nights like this, with his shoulders rested on the sill and his head poked out the window with a bottle of whiskey nearby, memories of Shibuya would flash and phase in like the blurry patches of morning vision. Heavy, humid air was bullied by potent winds that, aided by the black curtain in the sky, portended a vigorous rainfall. That sweet scent was already in the air, fueling his nostalgic journey all the way to that distant country known to its natives as Nippon.

Crosswalks for bullet trains and businessmen making a canopy with their umbrellas. A myriad of cyclists pedaling down narrow, rainslick streets. Cute girls too drunk to stand. Evening street vendors that sold spiced beef. Restaurants and okonomiyaki and sake; strange conversations about politics and anthropology and people that just bled together. Flasks of sake shared with salacious women whose eyes were keenly but subtly focused on 'the prize'.

All of these images and a panoply of others appeared in no particular order, some interlocking and expanding on themselves via psychic feedback mechanisms. Ethan did well to curb his self-awareness and let the images flow, remembering all he could as the downpour in front of him began with the instantaneous quality of gunfire.

In his mind, he tried to sort the events as though he were telling a coarse narrative to a friend over beer: “Well, I first went there in 2000 cause I really didn't know what else to do at the time; my girlfriend then—Amy, remember her? Kinda tall brunette chick—convinced me to go with her. Anyway when we got there things fell apart, as you know, and I found myself broke, jobless, and nearly homeless. I met some unusual dude there that, I swear he was a squatter or something, and he got it into my head that I could work as a teacher privately.

“Of course, this guy was so shady that I couldn't take his word for it, but hey, I was stranded in Japan with no return ticket—Amy had that—so money was money, even if I was selling fucking heroin.

“I was definitely surprised when, two days later, I was in some big—big by Japanese standards, mind you, they have such tiny houses, all of them—anyway yeah I was in this big house and, well here I was helping some super typical Japanese schoolgirl with her math and English.

“Well I got a reputation and managed to make a lot of money...uh, until someone found out that I was there illegally Wasn't long until I was eventually deported.”

This was a concise summary of the last three months of Ethan's stay in Japan, though it certainly failed to account for a number of details that he would never share with others and scarcely shared with himself excepting moments of reflection such as this.

The shadows of apartments on slender alleys that ran like so many interminable veins. A new girl in his arm each weekend, chasing these veins to the heart of oh so many matters.

He wondered why he found that mentality so hard to stomach here when he had been perfectly comfortable seducing and abandoning women overseas. He wondered if this was the same dilemma that plagued the sailors of so many stories he'd heard. Maybe it was just easier to do. Either his conscience was absent in those days or his faculty for threading together action and consequence had taken a vacation with him. He wondered aimlessly until the phone rang.

Sighing, he rose. The dreamy images disbursed from his mind like high, fine cirrus clouds being overtaken by a low, swooping storm cloud; reality insisted itself upon him through the digital ring of the cordless receiver. As questions and concerns arose, Ethan's mind disappeared from the compact streets of urban Japan. He picked up the phone with a troubled hand, vaguely noticing a sharp pain in his side.

“You,” the voice imposed.

Ethan looked at his bottle for a moment, “People don't normally call themselves,” he replied snarkily.

“I'll bet you think I'm going to come cry-y-y-ing back to you,” the voice goaded.

“Kat?” he asked. Grogginess overcame him; he felt hazy, muddled. He looked at the bottle again: barely a dent.

“I'm strong; stronger than you know,” she said.

“I don't...”

“Don't know? Of course you don't, you don't know anything, sweetheart. Oh, but you miss me don't you? I'll bet you do, I'll bet you just wish I would come crying to you again.”

“Are you high?” Ethan asked; the question didn't come out as seriously as he intended; instead, it came out rhetorically.

“Mm...doesn't matter. What does matter is that, well, we're definitely, utterly through. No games. No more dates, no more ...contact.”

“What the hell is this about?” Ethan asked. The bottle was getting sweaty in his hand.

“Oh, but we had some wild nights together, didn't we?”

She went on like this, Ethan noticed, like he was hardly there—like he wasn't an actual participant in the conversation. He felt like he was listening to a monologue. It made him feel lonely and yet, with all that Kat was insinuating in her tone and diction, arousing in a troubling, vexing way. “Kat, why are you going on like this?”

“Just wanting to know that you'll still miss this body?”

“W...”

“Mm...of course you will. That's a given. You never could get enough of it, could you?”

Static wind burst through the line.

“Now you're just being childish,” Ethan answered, “We've been through this before...”

“L... ... ... cked Mary while I ... ... ... ... you only care about sex. You have no love inside you. You never cared about me, just my body,” it seemed like she had gone back to the wretched, tormented woman that had called him earlier. The phone didn't leave any room for clarity, but Ethan knew that she was still dwelling on his affair with her friend from high school, Marianne Chouinard. It was the event that, when unearthed, lead to Ethan and Kat's first break-up. She never forgave him for it, and it annoyed him that, even now, she was bringing it up.

“Look, I told you...it was a mistake. That was a year ago. I don't know what else I can do to make you see that. I've tried, but you aren't letting that wound heal.”

“It doesn't need to,” she said with crystal clarity.

“Huh?”

The line cleared up now, “I can share my open wounds with the world.” Her voice took on a luridness and malice that made Ethan's abdomen feel dense. The perfect clarity of her voice over the signal reflected the perfect clarity of her mind.

The entire conversation confused Ethan very much, but this sentence about open wounds breached even his limits. He broke down, asking in a weak, forlorn voice, “Why did you break up with me, anyway?”

There wasn't even a pause on her part: “Because, Ethan, you're selfish. Selfish and slimy and afraid.”

The line died; it beeped in Ethan's ear for two full minutes before he mustered the will to click the END button, and even then he stood still with a gaping mouth; his tongue and throat waited for the nervous stimulus to invoke sound. But his brain gave them nothing. He stood with his arms low in front of him, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a phone receiver in the other. Although his eyes were fixed on a physical point on the wall, his vision lacked importance or presence. Kat's disturbing, inconsistent behaviour dominated his thoughts. Could she really have been high? Drunk? With another man?

None of these things would have bothered him so much, but her behaviour had cut him, as though she knew exactly what to say and how to say it. He desired an explanation and knew that none would come. So he stood dumbfounded.

It took a minimum of five minutes for Ethan to break even the slightest effect of his bewitchment and migrate to the couch, placing the phone on the coffee table and holding ever-tightly the bottle of whiskey. He sat hunched over, arms like a tripod, and occasionally sucked back a generous portion of the bottle, holding his head back and the bottle upside-down for maximum flow. The bottle popped against his lips when he stopped; the sound echoed against the walls, repeating itself in his mind a few seconds later.

What a mess, he thought. Kat's voice at once reminded him of the warmth of her touch and the frigidity of her unstable personality.

The phone rang again, preventing him from entertaining any other thoughts or fantasies.

Ethan picked it up after four rings as endless as a gong's drone, “What do you want?” he muttered.

Crackling noises like paper or tinfoil erupted from the speaker and stung at his ear. He was barely able to hear the voice. Manic, afraid. “...fuucking liars maan...” It seemed to rant, accuse, and doubt. It was a male voice that Ethan recognized instantly but couldn't isolate. One of Kat's friends? An old friend of his? “They're all fucking liars don't trust them,” it said with uncharacteristic stability. The line muted.

“You've got the wrong number,” Ethan said into the quiet receiver before laughing to himself. The voice sounded, if he had to guess, half-stoned, and half like the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; when he superimposed the one over the other he concluded that whoever was on the other line was pretty much crazy and for a moment prayed that the phone wouldn't ring again.

He was struck very hard by the feeling that, yes, he was praying. Some voice in his conscious mind cropped up making aimless pleas and supplications. That was prayer enough, wasn't it? This thought perplexed and repulsed him. He had no use for praying, even if his mind was just begging itself, teasing itself.

Engrossed in this reflection, Ethan barely heard the phone ring again, barely heard the violent rapping at the apartment's door.

Torn between the two simultaneous occurrences, his body jerked both ways like a molecule compelled to split into smaller compounds. Ultimately, the phone took precedence and he walked to the cradle to pick it up. Phones have a more finite response time, and there was always the possibility that it was Kat, calling to apologize for her unpredictable behaviour. There was, of course, the possibility that Mr. Schizophrenia was returning to pronounce new absurdities, but Ethan's torment regarding Kat was far more deeply rooted than for his gut reaction to be dictated by immediate circumstance.

With the receiver in his ear, he heard a jovial voice unlike any he had heard in his life. It wasn't like Santa Claus, the Gentle Giant, Ronald McDonald, or any other popular figure of mirth. It was much, much more pleased with its existence. “I left a gift at the door for you,” was the only thing it said. A deep, swelling baritone with a song-like charm.

Ethan paused, aware of a new sensation. It felt like an alien euphoria that spiked in his head.

“The pituitary gland sends signals to the adrenal medulla, which releases epinephrine directly into the blood stream. Occasionally, epinephrine is released near the pineal gland too.”

“What?” Ethan muttered; his heart felt double its size.

“Norepinephrine is released as well. That's directly responsible for an increase in heart rate. The combined effect increases the amount of oxygen flow to the brain.”

Ethan crept toward his door, “What are you talking about?”

“The adrenaline rush you're experiencing right now.”

His creeping ceased and his head twisted from side to side with the speed of a distracted kitten, “Who is this?”

“Open my present,” the voice insisted placidly. It felt paradoxical to Ethan: it was pleasing in the way it's strength and insistence provided a feeling of security; however, it's ability to sway his opinion with so little accountability on his own part made him uncomfortable to the point that he felt the sting of sweat in his palms.

Feeling slightly less agitated by the biochemical reactions of his body and more responsive to the suggestions of the serenity of the voice on the phone, Ethan took calm, quiet steps toward the door and squinted through the peephole. There was, not to his surprise, nobody on the other side. He wondered if one of Kat's friends could possibly be playing some sort of immature prank on him as vindication for something Ethan would have presumably done—Kat invented some unsavoury rumours the last time they broke up, and Ethan wasn't inclined to believe that this bout would have been any different, especially so given the finality of her last phone call.

A feeling of danger inspired him to exercise caution while opening the apartment's heavy door. Undoing the locks and turning the knob, he opened the door with his eye through the peephole and his body pressed against the door's weight as heavily as possible. If he had to, he would use all his strength to slam the door shut on whomever would dare assault him in the expected security of his own home. It didn't matter to him if he broke anyone's limbs in the process.

Silence and stillness. Ethan inched along the door until he was wedged between it and the wall.

Through the margin between the door and the frame he could see, on the short, coarse carpet of the hallway, a small black gift box with a pearly silk ribbon.

“I hope it's not tasteless,” said the voice.

“Oh, no, it's very nice,” Ethan griped, walking around the door and peering into the hallway; he scanned the near end first with nothing but a flight of stairs, then he examined the full and empty length of the rest of the hall. No footsteps, no elevator. Silence and stillness.

The finely cut gift box with its elegant ribbon anticipated the clutch of Ethan's soft, nervous hand. He stooped to lift it, the weight surprising him as much as the texture.

At the bottom, the box was soaking wet. Ethan instantly placed it on the counter and noticed the distinctive red tint of blood covering his stubby fingers.

“What the fuck is this?” he asked with puzzled anger.

“My gift to you. I heard about your heartbreak.”

Ethan's eyes tightened as he stood across from the counter on which the soiled box sat. His free and bloody hand hung in the air as soft drips pattered on the floor in a delicate counterpoint to the hammering rain outside.

“Open it,” the voice insisted; Ethan imagined a broad and sinister grin of rotting, canine teeth, disturbing him when he compared it to all previous statements made by the voice on the other line; he imagined a time-lapse of Santa Claus transforming into the Grinch, or Lon Chaney transforming into the Wolf Man.

“I'm not sure I want to,” Ethan answered.

“Do it,” the voice grinned.

Ethan was convinced that within a moment he'd be having tea with a rude doormouse and a crazy man in a hat. He drew a strong, deep breath into his lungs and undid the ribbon with the delicacy of a bomb technician. He wondered again if this was one of Kat's friends despite the weight in his gut insisting that not even she could go this far.

Next came the lid.

Being poorly educated in anatomy, Ethan couldn't tell what exactly was sitting on the soft cotton inside the gift box. It didn't take a good background in science to know, at the very least, that whatever was inside the box came from a living organism.

Surprisingly, Ethan's reaction was minor: he shuffled back a step but his eyes danced around all the features of the grotesque mound sitting on soft cotton in an ebony cardboard gift box with white ribbon strewn about the sides.

“W...”

“A stomach.”

“A stomach?” Ethan stammered.

“A stomach.”

There was a quick beat that punctuated the exchange like a sitcom bit, making Ethan's discomfort and fear feel caricatured and ridiculous.

“The stomach, you see, was considered to be the seat of emotions—like anger—for a very long time in some cultures. Some meditative practices rely on the enormous strength generated in the tanden—that is, the abdomen, the gut—to achieve great spiritual development, like the unconditioned state of samadhi. A-a-and there's always the somewhat tacky expression that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Don't you think it's frustrating that we don't have gods anymore?” the voice chided.

“Our society reinvents them frequently,” Ethan responded, “They just take secular appearances.” His eyes were fixed on the box while his mind completely neglected the non sequitur.

“Oh, yes, the god of money, the god of the Network, the god of Freedom, et cetera. I'm not talking about that new age, comic book stuff. I mean real gods; powers that control forces we can't comprehend in any way, like the creation of the universe. As far as you know, a bunch of non- got heated up and suddenly quarks magically appear and start eliminating each other and then a bit more et cetera. It's exciting, but it doesn't tell you much. Doesn't it sound like a great orgasm? They all feel like intergalactic cataclysms to me.”

Flashes of bedroom encounters rolled through Ethan like a compound montage. “Sounds like you're opting to define god subjectively.”

“Oh, hardly. I'm going to be quite objective here: I am God.”

Ethan's head shook, “Yeah. Okay. Are you going to perform any miracles for me today, God?”

After a brief pause, the stomach inflated like a balloon and deflated slowly at the moment it seemed ready to burst. When it returned to its initial state, all the lights turned off as the television roared static light and pink noise. Ethan walked toward the unit to turn the volume down, but with each step it turned down by audible degrees. Back in his living room, he stared face to face with the flickering, dancing screen.

“My opponent lives here,” God said. “He sings his songs in inward rings.”

Ethan wondered what God meant by his opponent but found himself struck more by the lyrical and schizophrenic clause regarding singing and rings. “You're not God,” he imprecated, “you're more like the Mad Hatter,” Ethan surprised himself with his capacity for allusion at that particular moment. He took a hard swig from his bottle, “Except...you haven't killed time yet.”

“Have you looked at your clock?” God retorted with his omnipresent smugness.

It was midnight.

“That's impo...” Ethan cut himself off. The sky outside was blacker than ever with the weight of the storm, but he didn't feel particularly fatigued. Had his clock's battery started dying during the day? He stood up from in front of the television with his eyes trained on the clock, squinting and blinking with the hope that it would stop showing midnight. After a few unsteady steps backward he fumbled into his couch with strange time.

“Yes, I killed time. You helped, of course. You are a killer, now.”

Ethan rolled his eyes, “Yeah. A killer. The only thing I killed was my chance at getting any pussy for a lo-o-ong time.”

“In more ways than one.”

A tense silence prevailed. Ethan felt his grip tighten on the receiver, felt hot little bulbs of sweat begin to coat his palms and fingers. What did I do in more ways than one, now? he thought with suitable confusion.

“Well, whose stomach do you think was in that box?” God coaxed.

Eyes exploding wide, Ethan drew a deep, sharp breath. His pulse raced and subsequent breaths were short and choked. “N...n...n...what-did-you...”

“Hm?” God teased.

Ethan calmed, “What did you do?”

God remained silent.

“Who are you!” Ethan shouted.

“I'm the one who makes the skies bleed in the last days where sinners roam free,” God answered promptly, “Look outside at my work.”

Sulking, Ethan turned his eyes to the window. There was something strange about the hue beyond the panes. It didn't take any effort for Ethan to surmise what was happening. The rain had turned to blood. It even sounded heavier as it hit the pavement, the window, the neighbouring building. Soon, it became impossible to see outside: thick red blood covered the windowpanes entirely. Rather than feel horrified at the sight of blood pattering against blood, Ethan felt the dread of isolation, felt caged, trapped.

Suddenly, the utter insanity of his situation struck him like the nails that slowly killed Christ. A stomach in a box? Blood from the sky? A voice claiming to be God?

The overwhelming intensity refused abatement: Ethan caught his reflection in the corner of his eye and turned to see himself press a gun to the side of his head and fire, his brains exploding onto the red leather couch and spattering against the walls and ceiling of the den.

He recoiled as though he had been struck by the bullet and crashed onto the floor. Before fainting, he heard the dim voice of God from the receiver: “Now we can be friends in death.”

The receiver beeped through the duration of Ethan's dreamless unconsciousness. Not once did it waver, change tone, or fade. When Ethan's eyes fluttered open, he wondered whether or not he had set his alarm. Stiff and confused, he looked around and blinked profusely. The apartment was dark except for the bluish glow of the television. Ethan soon realized he was on the floor of his living room and with this realization came the flood of memories and images associated with his last conversation. He felt his head for any blood or swelling, fearing for an instant that he would touch a hot, wet mass of exploded scalp and skull. The terrible image of his mirror suicide came to him in a very subdued manner; it didn't overwhelm him or send him into a panic, but it did give him the sense that either he was going mad or that he was in a dangerous place and worse was to come.

As if in agreement, a phone number etched itself out of the static of the television screen. Ethan viced his eyes, rubbed them, and opened them with the hope that the screen would show nothing more than a midnight snowstorm. Those ten digits were still crystal clear. He remembered the rainfall in Shibuya and looked out his window into a darkness that seemed impalpable.

Now's not the time to be reminiscing, dickwad.

Ethan sat with his legs in front of him like a diamond and slouched to pick up the receiver. He glanced at the screen one more time and with a slackened jaw he stared down at the phone, watching a turgid thumb dial, feeling the muscles act out of their own volition, feeling his mind completely disconnect from basic motor processes.

The phone raised to his ear, and he was connected without a single ring. Despite this, the line was silent for a long time. Initially, Ethan refused to speak first, but the other's silence irritated him to the point of shouting: “I'm fucking tired of this! Talk already you piece of shit!”

“I'm...I'm sorry...” the other voice trembled.

Ethan stammered mutely; for a moment he thought it was Kat. The muscles around his eyes tightened as he jostled his head quickly and his shoulders arched before he realized the voice was nothing like Kat's. “Who is it?” he sighed.

“I'm the Devil.”

Ethan hung up, took a deep, loud breath, and hurled the phone across the room. The battery jettisoned and the shell cracked, spilling out circuitry and wires. He rested his elbows on his thighs with his knees raised and pressed his forehead into his palms until he felt a burning heat in his arms.

The television began cycling through channels, stopping at the introduction to a televangelist's program. After an uplifting plagal cadence by a midi choir, the host began. “Hi, I'm Nate Hawthorne.

“Have you ever worried that you've been led astray? That, as a wonderful and innocent sheep of God's flock, your loving eyes had been cast aside—if not only for a moment—and behold! As you turn back, you find the flock is gone. You can no longer see The Lord in all his Love and Glory.

“It is in these times of loneliness, of fear and isolation—moments when everyone and everything you love feel far, far away—moments of despair and doubt, of lostness. Yes, moments of lostness and despair! In those moments the Devil will come S-T-RAIGHT from the bowels of hell to soil your pure, white wool and turn it into the black soot of sin and hatred.

“You will feel that, for all your Love, you can NOT go back to the ways of your Lord! That you can NOT—” the phone rang at the end of the room.

Ethan flinched, barely aware of his trance. He looked to the phone to see it die and was then alarmed by the drastic change of scenery on the television.

The televangelist was covered head to toe in flames and was running from the stage toward the audience in a blind, flaming panic. Black smoke rose from his body and clothing and his screams could be heard clearly over the terror of the audience.

The channel flicked, and the silhouette of a man's head filled the screen.

“Sorry about that,” the voice pleaded through heinous digital noise, “he's such a showman...”

“A...are you the Devil?” Ethan asked. He wasn't sure whether he was scared or baffled.

“You...s...sound as nervous as I...normally uh...feel.” On hearing this sentence Ethan recalled a nerdy little boy with a stutter whom he had once beaten up in middle school for being a nerdy little boy with a stutter, “We have our roles, I guess. He chose the roles. And the playground. And the rules. He's so bossy but he had the right to this time around since he won last time.”

“The TV sure is one hell of a playground. I thought God was being metaphorical when he said 'my opponent lives here'...” Ethan laughed heartily to himself. He looked around in the dark living room and found the bottle of whiskey, which was overturned and had lost most of its contents to the carpet's insatiable alcoholism. Ethan picked it up and took a swig, heedful of the fact that there were only a few more good shots left for him; he could still get drunker, at least. He rested the bottle on the coffee table next to a dying bonsai and looked at the screen with loose limbs, “Am I on Hell's version of Candid Camera?”

“Oo-uh...no. Oh, this is all very real, which is, I guess, unfortunate, if you really think about it, if you really want to, because I mean, you're stuck on the phone listening to crazy voices and seeing the uh...the Devil on a tee-vee and you can't be sure if any of it's real, and well you know, if it is then you're going to explain why blood rained onto your carpet and people may think you're a murderer or something, especially with the stomach in the box, which is also not good because you could uh, get arrested and go to jail for a very long time even just for having that nevermind how you got it or anything—cause if you said that you just found that stomach in a box they'd all wonder 'yeah well where'd that blood come from?' and...uh...well I don't know jail is an awful place to be if you're looking for stimulating conversation, very dangerous for normal people, and there are a lot of violent people and drug addicts and people who really just don't have values, which is pretty much everyone anyway, which makes me wonder why they don't send more people to jail or just kill them all since really, there's genocide everywhere and people who play progressive in one hand are playing soldiers in the other, which is really funny because it shows you just how divided human heads really are. Oh but I don't mean literally divided, though I'm sure that happens a lot too and I'll bet it's really messy because of all the blood and skull and brains and hanging bits of face and...”

“I get it,” Ethan interrupted, having a vivid mental picture of his skull being split by a logging axe, “it sounds really unpleasant, yeah.”

The Devil sighed, “Is there anything else you wanted to ask me?”

Ethan shook his head from confusion; he hadn't asked the Devil very much.

Regardless of his intent, the Devil took Ethan's gesture as a negative and continued, “I'd wish you good luck at this point cause I suppose that's the customary thing to do, but the plain truth is that you're plum fucked and there's nothing I can do that'll make your situation better, even with a nice little conciliatory remark like 'good luck' which could easily just make you feel more hopeless, but really you're hopeless anyway so I don't know what the difference is except how it makes you feel: the end result is the same because either way one of us is going to win and one of us is going to lose because I guess that's the nature of things, even though I'd really hate to have to be the loser...again. This is all so incredibly unfair and disappointing and it really breaks my heart that I have to keep going through this again and again; well hopefully things will be different this time for us and we can all live happily ever after like those wonderful children's stories that crazy adults write to hide the fact that they're crazy from us. They don't know how much we know. Anyway, s-sir, um. G-g-ood Luck. Bye.”

The television fizzled out and then erupted with a bang and some fantastic internal sparks. Ethan jumped, thinking the screen would explode and mutilate him. He wasn't sure whether or not he was fortunate that this wasn't the case.

Ethan let himself fall back onto the floor, and although he wasn't sure he wanted to drink anymore, that didn't stop him from lifting himself up just enough to secure the bottle to his lips and take a final, brutal guzzle which quashed the bottle. Deciding that it could share the phone's fate, Ethan threw the bottle to the far end of the room, where it smashed against the wall crisply and chipped off sections of paint and drywall. His upper body fell again, his eyes reeling with the fog of intoxication. He could barely see the contours of his ceiling through the darkness.

Rain pattered outside lightly now, but in spite of the storm's easing, the outside world was imperceptible, almost intangible. As Ethan raised his head to get a fuller sense of the weather, he reflected on how foreign the outside world felt. The wind hissed through the crack in his window like a kettle, but even this sound did nothing to bring Ethan back to a sense of outsideness; wind left no impression on him except for its immediate reality. He walked toward the burgundy wall to look outside and discovered that outside still made no sense, looking like a cypher or a canvas-like dream symbol. The feeling of slicing as his feet were impaled by glass made no impression upon him. The hot pooling of blood between his toes was unimpressive. Even the simple thought that his carpet might be permanently stained and need replacing came to him with the same impermanence of the thought of a stop sign: I must stop now. Now I can go. On to the next thought.

He stood in this absence of acknowledgment for a very long time, letting the soft rain confuse him afresh with every moment, letting the wind speak in a language he could never understand, permitting the light from street lamps and the meagrest break in clouds to be engulfed in the abysmal flame of darkness unknowable.

Until now, Ethan had totally forgotten his cell phone. It rang and vibrated in his pocket, invoking a sequence of curses which brought him back to reality; furthermore, it drew his attention to the careless scoring of his feet, which if washed of blood would have looked marked like grilling patties. He bounded around and cursed in his typical manner, collapsing to the couch with an impressive, showy fall.

The phone didn't stop ringing, even though it should have skipped over to his voice mail service long ago. Since he knew he had ample time, he plucked the larger shards of glass from his feet, fearing he would almost faint from the pain. Each breath was slow, broad, and calculated. Each excision was adumbrated by a new and creative expletive.

Satisfied with the results and his overall endurance, Ethan finally pulled the phone from his pocket. Blood was the last thing on his mind now.

“Who is it now?” Ethan grumbled.

“Well...it's you,” was the response. His voice, his intonations and inflections.

Ethan's nerves weakened. He felt his grip on the small cellphone weaken.

“What's the matter, me?” the voice goaded.

“Is this some sort of sick joke?”

“You got your binocs, buddy?”

Ethan got these as a joke gift from his cousin when he moved into the apartment. Not too many people knew about them. At this point, however, he had forfeited logical explanations to the phenomena he found himself exposed to, “...yeah...” he finally answered.

“Across the street. Fourth floor. Fifth window from the left.”

Ethan raced to his window and grabbed the binoculars on the sill. He crouched below the window with his back to the wall and heavy breaths, cradling the phone with his shoulder and taking the binoculars out of their case. “How do I know you aren't gonna kill me?”

“That's stupid.”

“You're right, that is stupid.” Ethan rose with a short nervous laugh and peered over the window sill. An unexpected, mild euphoria dulled the pain better than any drug any hospital had ever given him. He took his binoculars and followed his double's instructions exactly.

What he saw disgusted him: a ghastly mirror image of himself waving with minimal gestures. He stumbled back and hurt the wrist of his free hand under the weight of his upper body.

“I guess I'm not so handsome...” said the doppelganger.

Ethan's fast breaths came out as nasal grunts.

“So, that's a no. That's okay, I don't really need the confidence boost for much of anything. But listen, chim-chum, we're in trouble.”

Its skin. It's skin was peeling...

“You know that we're in trouble, right Ethan?”

Ethan made another nasal grunt, this one sounding more affirmative.

“Good, now stop crapping your pants, sissy. We need to think. We're two halves, don't you see? Jesus do I have to talk to you like a stupid child all night?”

Ethan calmed and stood up with his back against the window.

“It's okay, you don't have to look at me,” the doppelganger said.

“So what's the deal?”

“We're becoming fractured. A little too fractured.”

“And?”

“And we're not alone.”

Ethan's vision felt spotty, “Huh.” It was the pain or the blood loss.

“I had a dream while we were out of commission thanks to Uili-...”

“You...had?” Ethan cut him off, “Wait, what was that last...” The weakness was taking him away. He felt too heavy to stand.

“Oh shit, are you okay?” the doppelganger asked. It was tense, fearful.

Ethan stumbled forward and crashed his shin into the coffee table, stabilizing himself with his wounded wrist. Although the pain hastily raced along his arm, through his shoulders and into his neck, the entire process became slower and slower as the pain became more dull and distant, like he was an observer and not a participant.

“Ethan, buddy, don't go, I need to tell you abouuuut thhhaaaaat drrrrrrrr...”

“Listen...I'm really sorry things turned out this way, really, I am, but there's no changing the course. Rivers flow in one direction after all. I really thought this thing could be fixed, but there's no returning...”

The room was pitch black; the small window covered over with venetian blinds, refusing to let in even little blades of the bright darkness outside. He rested against an unmade twin bed; to his side was a dead alarm clock staring at him from a nightstand. Across from the nightstand was an armoire angled against the wall. None of this could be seen. Only vague silhouettes at best availed themselves to his vision, which absorbed details indiscriminately and without distinguishing.

He stammered impotently, “No...I'm...I'm not crazy! I'm not crazy! You're crazy!”

“Nuh-uh,” the other laughed, “You're crazy!”

“No, you are!”

“Nope, you my friend!”

“You're crazy! You're crazy! Nuh-uh, I'm not! You are!” He fought, reducing himself to whimpering. Rarely, a syllable would emerge coherently.

The phone was unlit. Sinister and glacial laughter pierced the speaker.

He cried, bawled, and continued his blubbering whimper. The door was kicked open and blinding light shone as the doppelganger charged up to him. His scent was of decay and his skin peeled and hung like strips of cheese clinging to a grater. His eyelids were slashed open and peeled back like flowers in bloom, revealing shiny and enormous, spherical worlds that hosted rivers of blood and islands of jaundice that ran toward a hollow abyss.

“You're crazy!” the doppelganger laughed. In spite of himself, at himself. “CRAZY!”

The phone voice was also laughing. Ethan's fractured shell looked down at it now, at the broken phone with dangling wires and buttons falling out. As his body shook with his tortured howls, the circuitry rattled and bits of broken plastic fell to the floor. The speaker remained in its slot against the earpiece, laughing in its restricted bandwidth and shouting wild proclamations that were, at this juncture, of no use to the flaccid mass that was Ethan.

It was just the three of them, all wild and laughing away into the night.

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