The n-Body Problem

it just so happens that I am pulled from the stream by a senile old woman who thinks I am a baby, probably Moses, and takes me back to her house on a hill so she can raise me to deliver her people from bondage.

I only make it halfway through the alley and have to lean against the brick. There is a sharp pain in my stomach. And it’s distended now to the point where it handicaps me. I push a hand in. Very soft. Like it’s full of water. I can feel a corner of the liver is hardened. Cirrhosis? Maybe. Too much anxiety about meds. Too much looking at the sky. This could be big. All my pushing has made me need to shit. I drop my pants and slide my back down the wall. It comes out as water. Like a tap I turn on under my nuts. I bounce over as it moves around my feet. There’s more. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s irritable bowel. I watch the dark leafy fluid run down the alley. If there’s blood then I am fucked. Crohn’s disease would explain the pain. Longitudinal ulcer in the large intestine. Inflamed, even morbid, splenetic plicture. Could explain the hard liver. Spleen might be going up too. What a mess. I study my shit for blood. So far nothing. What would be the outcome? Without steroids I might bleed to death. God, I regret dumping all those benzos now. Sometimes they can be magic. Feel good and everything falls back in line. I need a full spectrum light too. I finally stop shitting. I close my eyes and try to recall the scent of cedar, but all I’m getting is the bland filth rolling down this alley. I pull up my pants. The fabric fuses to my ass and wicks the muck up. Did he say there was a stream? Gotta be. Gotta move.

Apple purée is amazing. I could live on that. Not liquid rice. That is dreadful stuff. Makes me squirt. Tildy has gone to the city today. She explained that it could be dangerous for babies so she has left me in the care of her dog. Candy is a miniature dachshund. She bites. I am only slightly larger than her but our shapes are remarkably similar. On Candy’s birthday, Tildy painted my white wrap black and tan and she darkened my nose. She laid me down beside the dog and clapped. Candy tore the shell of my ear before Tildy could get me back up. Today I am in a high chair far enough away from Candy’s barracuda moods. The tray before me is a flowerbox of straws and baby food.

I have a nice view of the wide valley through the bay window. It is white from the cooled pyroclastic flow. Tildy’s house is high enough up the rim that it was spared. The sky is still black. Been like that for weeks. Tildy has an oil furnace and she keeps the house warm. She tells me that it is like January out there. It’s July. The baby food and formula is giving me astonishing nutrients. I’m pretty sure we will die soon. The oil will run out. The food. Some hungry man will eat us. For now, though, this is the most at peace I have ever been in my life. In the morning Tildy gives me tummy time on her bed and I roil from side to side. Her comforter is thick and deep and smells like tea. In the afternoon she sits in the corner and reads from the Bible by candlelight. There is no sun and the only ambient light comes up from the white shell of cold ash in the valley. It gives off a surprising shine.

Tildy thought for while that I was the baby Moses. She said she ran down the hill that awful day, toward the fire. She says she wanted it. The rapture. She didn’t want to be left behind. And when she ran through the stream she saw the torn black hood. My face inside. Eyes closed and body swaddled. She claims there were bulrushes but I’m pretty certain she made that up. In time she forgot this thread, me being the baby Moses. The day-to-day work of looking after a baby was enough for her tired old mind. There seems to be little Syndrome in her. Her dementia is light and honest. The elderly don’t manage neurotransmitters. They believe it is correct to die one day. There is a sadness to Tildy too. She must have had children and grandchildren. A husband. They are probably gone now. Delivered to the sun or burnt by those who fell from the sun. She hums.