The Ambiguous Couple- an E-chap

They Forgot to Lock the Doors.

After they left the doors open, they forgot to close the knife drawers. They walked upstairs with blood dripping from their heels. The fluid left a trail all the way to their bedroom. They left the windows unlocked as well. No lights turned off. They slept on their backs with their mouths wide. A pale-faced woman sat on the bed over them. She was covered with the long black hair covering her body and her face looked powdered white. A dark line wrapped around her neck. She placed her decapitated head on their chest and waited. The woman's mouth twisted

 

into strange shapes. It looked like a triangle, then it looked like a square. The worst was the octagon. That was when they woke up. They stared at the eight sides and screamed. The woman had the knife. She took their tongues and held up the wiggling muscles. She stood up, leaving the tongues' owners behind. The tongues flapped around. They slapped against the walls. They slicked over the woman's knuckles. They hummed and vibrated. The woman passed the basement door and the tongues hit the door until it shut. The woman went through the front door and the tongues pulled it until the knob locked.

 

 

They Decided To Stack Floorboards.

This was a painstaking task because the nails had to be lined up precisely so the metal heads pressed against one another. But the ambiguous couple was not very good at this. Their veils kept getting in the way. There were three veils in total and each was thicker than the next. The floorboards and nails were just shadows in front of the fabric. We could take the veils off, the woman said but the man pulled his tighter. No, we must keep them on. That is our burden, the man said. The woman pushed the ends of her veil into her mouth and gnawed on the tulle. Her hands slipped against the nails and her thumb opened. Blood splashed everywhere and made the room stink of copper. We are only supposed to stack the boards, not make a mess of them, the man snapped. The woman dug her hands into the floors. She used her mouth to push the boards into place. The nails ground together. They lined up. The couple pushed together in a corner of the room. They wrenched the floorboards up around them and used them to top the pile. The man pressed his hips to the stack. Something knocked against the wood. The man and woman clasped hands as the knocks pushed the boards off-balance.

 

 

Something On The Other Side Hated

stacked floorboards and pressed against them until the top of the pile leaned over and nearly fell. The veiled woman on the opposite end raised an arm and pushed the boards back into place. Blood poured out of the woman's hands. She sucked the wound but the cuts wouldn't scab over. The boards fell again. The ambiguous man seized the boards and pushed them back with his forehead. The woman caught a worm wriggling around one of the boards. Is this a termite, the woman asked, holding the squirming creature up to the man's left eye. He squinted and closed his eyes. A nail stuck into his nose. That is just a creature. Termites have legs, the man said. I thought they were just bodies, the woman said. A floorboard near the center of the stack jutted out and struck her in the upper leg. The woman ate the board. The pile lowered. The banging increased. The man stood on his tiptoes and braced his body against the floorboard wall. We must keep it from falling, the man shouted. The woman put her cheek to the wall and listened. She removed the veil from her mouth and swallowed the nearest floorboard. The man screamed. Her stomach swelled as she ate to see what was knocking.

 

 

Tell Me Why The Men Looked Like

wolves even as the floorboards fell over. The woman pulled nails from her eyes. They were rusted eyeteeth with curved ends. She battered her face against the wall until the nails stuck into the floorboards. A green affliction descended upon the house and turned a veiled man into a gray skeleton. His bones clattered as he pulled his emaciated body across the floor and entered the kitchen. The woman boiled a pot of soup. She stole bones from the dying man's spine and dropped them into the broth. Fat accumulated at the top of the soup. The woman skimmed the lard off. It was yellow and hairy. It looked like a wolf's face. Then it dropped into a cup to settle. The woman poured the soup into a cup. She took a sip and splashed the skeletal man with the rest. Skin covered his bones. He stood up. He took five steps and each step made the flesh rip back off. The man huddled in a corner as his skin slipped down. The woman pressed her forehead to the window. She felt fingers tapping through the glass. Violet bile dripped down the windowpane. It puddled up on the sill, staining the glass. The woman scraped her tongue against the fluid. She drank, then screamed, it all tastes like werewolf guts!

 

 

The Veiled Woman Got Lost In The

walls but did not scream. She chewed the plaster slowly. Her male companion slid around the other side, blocking the tiny pinhole cracks with his body. He kept light from getting into her hiding place. The woman was not pleased. She punched the inner wall until plumbing pipes pushed out of the sheet-rock. The woman unscrewed a soldered joint and drank the dirty water flowing through. The water filled up the crevice the veiled woman huddled in. She floated to the top of the wall and pressed her face to the cramped ceiling. The man stuck his fingers into the holes, plugging the walls up. Water dribbled out of the plaster seams. It dripped onto the floor. The woman stretched out her body until it was completely flat. I am thirsty, the veiled man said and tapped the wall with an iron faucet. He filled a wine glass with the water, which was now a deep gray color. The man swilled the water but no matter how much he drank, the wall space stayed filled. He closed the tap and stuck another faucet up higher. He filled his glass there and the water was light red. The woman came out of the faucet. She turned in his glass, a red grease stain on the fluid. Were you found, the man asked.

 

 

The Veiled Things Went to Church

and worshiped burning candles. They scraped at the dripping wax with their fingernails and placed the residue on their tongues. The candles tasted like bees' innards. The veiled man gagged and pulled his tongue out. The woman sat on a pew and turned her head up into the chandeliers. She used her feet to knock the candles over. The fire spread across the altar. She laughed. The stained windows shattered. That was once a piece of heart, she told the man. The flames reached her. They struck her back and yanked at her vertebrae. She was spineless. Her back sagged. The man raised his fingers. You are a jellyfish woman, he said. The flames opened her legs and removed her uterus. She seized the womb and threw it at the man. The womb opened and engulfed him. The woman scratched her cheeks and exposed her jawbones. And now you are an infant child, the woman said. She crossed herself quickly, pressing her fingers to her forehead, the center of her chest, and then her left and right breasts. The flames hissed. They went up the walls. They lowered the chandelier. The crystals rolled off the ceiling and rained down on her. The woman opened her eyes to capture the drops. Her tongue glittered.

 

 

The Veiled Woman Spun Raw Eggs On

her index fingers and listened to the yolk rattling against the shell's interior. How did you come up with the idea, the veiled man asked from the bathtub. He pulled oranges out of the drain and squeezed them over his genitals. The juice stained his appendage bright yellow. The man tapped his fingers against his thighs and mangrove roots sprouted from his testicles. They wound around his legs. The woman opened three dozen egg cartons and added the farm-fresh eggs to her hands. She spun them around like a centrifuge. I saw it somewhere, she said dismissively. And she had. The eggs had spun and churned just behind a plastic curtain in an old meatpacking plant she had visited. A rusted doorway opened up to reveal a bronzed buttock with an egg stuffed inside its muscular crack. The woman had tapped the eggs with a tuning fork and listened the egg whites ring. The eggs made sounds belonging to twenty-five octaves. The woman couldn't hear some of the sounds but the glass still broke and machines ground to a halt. Then the eggs stopped and the glass restored itself and metal cogs whirred back into motion. The man was a tree with a head. She draped his branches with a yolk veil.

 

 

The Woman Became a Nun

became an ink black squid squirting holiness on everything and everyone. Her thin tentacles stuck to the veiled man's face. Where is my wife, he screamed and stretched his body out to reach the oven. He opened the stove and stared inside for five minutes before removing a tiny clump of charcoal stone. The man put the coal on his stone and crunched it. This is my mistress, he said and spit the coal out. The veiled squid-nun knitted rosaries while screaming blasphemies. You are just a coal spitter. You hematite sack of mines. How dare you take the bees' knot away, she shouted. The man turned bright red. He was a lobster being and clacked his claws at the squid. The nun crossed herself repeatedly. Her tentacles tied together in a knot. I have been subdued by my own religion, she gasped. She hopped up and down until the floorboards cracked. The hole ended in a vat of boiling oil. The woman threw herself into the fryer. She sizzled. Her limbs turned golden-brown and crispy. Her teeth connected with the side of the vat and she hauled herself out. The woman lay on a bed of paper towels, draining. She bit her crispy tentacles. They need a pinch of salt, she said after swallowing and wore a paper face.

 

 

The Veiled Woman Held a Doll Made

to look like the devil. It was a lovely doll cast from porcelain and painted scarlet red. The tail was made of pig hair and the hooves were studded with diamonds. The doll had three eyes covering its face and each one had its own precious jewel in the center. The veiled man was jealous was of the doll. He stood over it every night, a hammer in his hand, and imagined crushing the head. But he did not. He worried about the woman's loyalties. She whispered to the doll whenever she clutched it to her breasts. The doll changed colors depending on the woman's mood. If she was happy, the doll turned pale pink. If she was angry, the red color deepened so much that it appeared black. The doll bit the man's hand. The man no longer had a hand. He had a stump. He wrapped a veil around the stump. He licked the veil until it stuck to the wound. The flesh became a veil. The woman pressed her doll to the wound and laughed. You are a minimal thing, she said and threw rocks across the living room. This was for show. The doll knocked its legs together. It clattered and wrenched its jaw open. Where is my sacrifice, it screamed and the woman looked down. She pulled its head off and put it in a pot.

 

 

There Were Uneven Teeth on the

veiled man's surgical mask. He stuck meat against the teeth and let the hard points mash the muscle beyond recognition. The meat stuck to the fabric. The man moved his mouth behind the mask and grunted. Juice filtered through the mask. It wet his tongue. The veiled woman visited the man. She put her hands against the mask and pulled them back before the teeth could bite her. I do not like this look on you. You appear to be more of a cannibal than I have known you to be, she said. The man opened a box and removed three thousands yards worth of cords knitted together to resemble a spine. He wrapped the spinal column around his legs until the circulation cut off. His thighs turned bright blue. The woman stabbed him with a metal blade. She wrenched the vertebrae away from his legs. I think I might be hungry for your flesh, the man gasped. He bit the floorboards. The mask tore off his face. It lay on the ground, chomping the floorboards until they were mounds of pulverized wood. The woman stepped on the mask and broke its teeth. The mask whimpered. There are things out there that are trying to get in, the woman said. She pointed at the walls. She and the man climbed into the plaster.