The n-Body Problem

The rags are keeping me from freezing. They have lessened the corrosion. Some of my lower body has sloughed off into my wrap and smells of putrefaction. I hope the bleach can stem advancing infection. I may well be lying in my last place on earth. I have fought very hard not to die. Did I fight too hard? No. It was my point not to die. It was never my point to live. I am a perfect result of the path I took. I hear movement in the kitchen. The barricade is being disturbed. I lay still and listen.

“I don’t see it.”

“Oh, it’s in there.”

“There’s knives in a block by the sink. Just run in and pull a couple out. When you see it just carve the fucking maggot.”

I hear things being moved. Carefully. Something heavy topples and bounces twice. A crack. The floor cracks under weight. A foot in the kitchen. Another crack. Someone is walking.

They think I’m an animal or a demon. They don’t know I can hear them and understand them. I am not going to just offer my soft body to their knives. No. I am buried in caustic rags in a dark confined space. No one is going to take a chance on this. I hear the knife sing a high note as it leaves the block. His feet are so close. I could dive to them from here. Cram his heel in my mouth and dislodge it with a single flex of jaw. He would fall backwards. No heel. The knife would fall. I’d fly across him like a crow and yank his face clear off with a cinching tear. The rest would of them would faint of fright. They would give up. Wander off. Freeze to death on the hard ash.

I stay. Who can say what would happen? Cupboards are opened. He yells and jumps back every time. The door to the rags is opened. A knife is plunged into my cheek. He pulls the knife but it’s imbedded in bone and I come out with it, hanging in the air, twisting and howling. He drops me and bounds back up the barricade.

“I got it! I got it!”

I turn against the blade and ease it from my face. I see two heads peering over the pile. I killed the other two.

“It’s still alive! Go back in! Finish it off!”

“No! No!”

A heavy black log sails in over the barricade and shatters beside me.

“What are you doing?”

I fire a dead mouse from my ass. When did it crawl up there?

“Burn the fucking thing!”

The coals are spread across the floor and are melting tile. Another log. There are flames on the wall and in the box I hid behind.

I have to go down. These two will die. They will end up combined and moving like Paula and Petra in the ashes of this house. I will escape down.

I return to the rags and press my cheek. I will do this until the flames are close. I have to slow the bleeding. I see a dark triangle in the back corner of the adjacent cupboard. I launch myself at it and slip through. There is a wide plastic pipe. I try to move along it like an inchworm but the surface is too smooth and I slip off. Hit the concrete floor very hard and have to lie still. They are burning the house down to kill me. I manage to fill my lung again and roll over. I hear the floor above me crackling and the air in the kitchen start to hammer. This house will go up fast and all the children will die. Fire goes up. I go down. The house will come down eventually. I try to move. My skin has dissolved into linen. The hole in my side is like a deep canker. I have had a long knife in my face today. My one lung is scorched with ammonia. The children will die in my funeral pyre. I look for the place I want to die.

Discs of fire slip in and out under the door at the top of the stairs. Its blue-tip fingers have lifted all the tile. I would like to picture the kids not escaping but they might, after all. I feel the expectation that I should release them. That I should give life back while mine goes. But really, what can I practically do? I let you live. I can’t even say it. I have no tongue and even if I could, the roar of the fire would drown my voice. And even if it didn’t, even if it was heard, say, in the sky above the house, spoken by birds and repeated by rabbits, there is nothing in the words to shrink the flame or dim the heat. Even if there were birds and rabbits to speak them. So I am safe to say that they should live, that that is my last wish because I know that they will not. The fire is bounding down the stairs like a Slinky. Part of the house leans and opens an edge. They will burn in here or freeze out there. I hope that they are safe.