Bad Glass

I watched for nearly half a minute, lost in the spectacle, before finally noticing the kid in the closet. He must have been about eight years old. He wasn’t hiding; the doors were wide open. Instead, he was just sitting there beneath the hems of abandoned clothing. His eyes were wide, his dirty face an expressionless mask. He was watching me with an intense curiosity.

And it hit me—that boy’s stare—like a punch to the solar plexus.

I stumbled away from the doorway, my stomach churning, suddenly very, very dizzy, my head just about ready to fall off my neck. I’m not right, I told myself. I cracked my skull. A concussion, internal bleeding, something serious and deadly.

I continued down the corridor, away from the room with the fucking couple.

Away from the child.

The hallway made a ninety-degree turn, and I found yet more rooms stretching the width of the building. Only one of these doors was closed, and, coming from inside this room, I heard something new. To my ears, it sounded like a seldom-used window rattling open—rain-swollen wood groaning inside its frame, the sound of physical exertion vibrating through glass.

Wendell, I thought, grateful for the distraction, for the chance to refocus my energies.

By the time I got to the door, though, the sound had stopped. Now there was only silence in the building. Even the sound of fucking, back along the corridor, had disappeared. Slowly, I eased the door open.

There were two people in the otherwise empty room. One—a young woman—was lying on her back in the middle of the floor. She was wearing a thin white dress; the material looked insubstantial, far too thin for the cold October air. Her face was pale, and her bright blue eyes stared up at the ceiling. Embedded up there—in the ceiling—was a naked man, his skin a sickly shade of black. The man’s body was spread facedown, reclined back against the ceiling in a relaxed pose. Where his body contacted the wood and plaster, his flesh disappeared, like a mannequin half submerged in a pool of water.

But this was no mannequin. And the ceiling was not water. This was a human body, and a large percentage of it was stuck—physically stuck—inside that solid surface.

The man’s right arm extended down, quivering slightly in the still air. His left arm was stuck inside the ceiling, his hand and half of his forearm stretching up through its surface, outside the room—or so I imagined. Perhaps those body parts were simply gone, his form just … halting at the boundaries of the room, becoming nothingness on the other side. His back and buttocks, too, disappeared into that solid surface. His left knee was steepled out in a V, forming an upside-down Greek delta with the ceiling. His left ankle and foot were gone, and his right leg disappeared midthigh. His uncircumcised penis dangled down like a broken light fixture.

The man was alive. At least his body was alive; I couldn’t say anything about his mind. I could see muscles twitching beneath his skin while his chest eased in and out, taking calm, shallow breaths. His eyes were wide, but they quivered wildly, rolling with the rhythm of short-circuiting nerves. There was no consciousness there, none that I could see. Just autonomous reaction: a body gone mad, without human control.

And the young woman in the white dress continued to watch, transfixed, lying on the floor beneath the body. She was just a girl, really, no older than seventeen. The man’s extended right hand made it look like he was reaching down, like he was offering the girl a tender caress, or grasping for his own salvation.

My hand started to shake, and I let it fall from the doorknob. There was a smell in the room, a strong, powerfully human smell. Sweat. Sweat and the sharp copper scent of freshly spilled blood.

Standing in the doorway, I hunched double, trying to fight back a sudden wave of nausea and vertigo.

And when I glanced back up, I found the girl watching me. While I’d been looking down, she’d turned her head my way, and now those bright blue eyes slammed into me. Her hand fluttered up toward the body in the ceiling, and she started to speak, her lips quivering weakly. I focused on her fingers. I was afraid she was going to reach up and grasp the dead man’s hand.

No … that was not what I was afraid of. I was afraid the man would grasp her hand.

I backed out of the room before she could find a louder voice. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. I desperately didn’t want to hear. I retreated back the way I’d come, making it ten feet before I had to hunch over and vomit against the wall.

After that, I dropped into a kind of autopilot, letting my legs carry me out of the building.

Wendell and my backpack were long gone. They weren’t even memories in my shell-shocked mind.

I’m not sure how long I sat out on the curb.