3 pieces from "Out of the Brilliant Sky, a Bloodbath"
1 Out of the brilliant sky, a bloodbath fell out and wet the ground. It was moist with black tar and pulverized crystals. Five androgynous children got close to the stones and pressed their hands against the outside. The flesh peeled off. The children became giant blisters with swollen white heads. They took three steps and popped. Their parents stared out the kitchen windows and ran the water in the kitchen sink. The faucet, which was once bronze, turned deep charcoal and developed an inflamed lip. Metal bit into the parents' hands and pulled out
clumps of blue vessels. What is happening, one unaware adult asked, fishing around the sink for her lost wrist. I think the sky is falling, another adult said. This one stood at the chopping block and practiced stabbing around his fingers with a large knife. All the adults were hairless and lacked clothing. They were simply limbed torsos with engorged genitals. Male and female by virtue of pubic variation. The children wandered around in draped togas. They were only children. Down the street, a Lizzie Borden figure watched her parents take their afternoon nap. She stood over their unconscious bodies and ran her fingers across the ax blade. The fingertips halved. She stroked the edge again and again until her bones pushed past the nail bed. When one parent snored, the Lizzie woman chopped the wall apart. Plaster fell around their heads. It made a chalk outline. Dust fell into the pillow wrinkles to mimic cranial wrinkles. Every wall loss let more light in. Soon, the parents slept in the sunlight. They were simultaneously outside and in. Lizzie brought the ax down and butchered them. She hauled the meat cuts to the front lawn and washed them. The children ran past her. Some paused to sample the bits of seasoned sausage links Lizzie had arranged on a plate beside her. She dressed the slices with black salt crystals and licked her fingers clean. Across the street, a motherentity cracked an egg open and poured the yolk out into her stepchild's open mouth. She worked his jaws around until the egg churned into a thick mayonnaise mixture. This is for his father's favorite recipe, the woman said to her neighbors and ground the boy's legs into a lean chuck. Lizzie helped the woman push the mixture into intestinal casings and boil them. I prefer my meat grilled, Lizzie said. She checked her watch and then flung herself onto her back so the noon sun would burn her cheeks to a deep ruddy red. Shall I be expecting you for dinner, the mother asked. Lizzie said: I will bring along my famous parental souffle. She sat down on the bloodbath stone and pulled her toenails off. The stone flickered three colors, then cooled off. Lizzie picked the rock up and grated it into her father's stomach using a nutmeg utensil. The bloodbath flaked like truffle shavings and added an umami flavor to the meat. The fat marbling was thick and yellow. Lizzie ate several strips of the meat and packaged the rest for the afternoon communal dinner.
2
Later, sausage links fell from the ceiling and shattered the walls. The bloodbath fell with it. The children were just waking up from their basement homes when the floorboards crumbled. They descended into a dark place with all those collapsing bits. The rest stayed behind in the sunlight. Some pieces had gargoyle heads. The broken mouths inspired angry young men to rise from their attic dwellings and stumble around the house, screaming and beating the plaster with old baseball bats. They hadn't eaten cooked sausage in a long time and were starving for the links. But no one offered them any. They continued to suffer, even when heaving their bulk through the windows and knocking the sills to the ground. The androgynous children stared at the domestic massacre and closed their eyes. They went into a cemetery and pulled the eyelids off of dead men. Several mourning parties stood by the grave plots and covered their eyes with their hands. What a tragedy, the mourners said. They plucked the eyeballs out and placed them into a plastic pail meant for beach sand. The children ran past the graves and knocked the bucket over. The eyes roll, they said and laughed. They picked up the grave markers and whistled into the concrete etchings. None of the stones had the old skull heads they were used to. There were no wings. The words simply said: name, date, legacy. The children were opposed to such reductions and boiled soup as a social response. They clapped their hands when the first bubbles appeared. Once the vegetables went mushy, they lifted the pot off the burner and splashed the stew into their faces. None of them cried over the blisters. Instead, they went back outside and milked every mammalian animal they could find. Every jar of lactation was sealed and stored in the fridge until dinner time. The children licked their lips hungrily. They wanted bone-in cookies to serve with the milk assortment. They tweaked their own nipples and tried to lick the small dots of fluid that rose out of the milk glands. The milk maids came running down the roads. They kept a bloodbath stone in the bottom of their milk pails. The children shed their clothing and let the maids empty the nipples into the metallic containers. The nipples turned bright red and soon, the milk yellowed. We will use the fatty parts for fresh butter, the maids said and went away with their drowned stones. The children placed bandages over their nipples and waited for the scabbing to reduce. They stuck their nails beneath the hard parts and wedged the scabs up. Watery lactation welled up and splashed the fronts of their tops. The parents woke up from the dining room tables and gnawed their lips. They stuck the faucets into their mouths and practiced turning the stove dials with their gums. Several tongues were split down the middle and bleeding. The adults cracked the milk lids open and washed their mouths out with all the calcium-fortified products they could produce.
3
But then there were terrible messes no one cared to clean. Sausage links on the floor and cracked furniture. Too many men lost their toes. They walked around with a faux uterus strapped to their abdomen. Its steam engine churned frantically, trying to make sense of blood flows and menstrual cycles. It was like harvesting the moon. Completely problematic. Too gelatinous in texture. The men hissed and gnashed their perfect teeth five times until the molars showed through the bottoms of the gums. Their jaw-lines no longer wanted to cooperate by staying inside their mouths. They kept pushing out and making a drool puddle in the bathtub. The saliva was stagnant and filled with mosquito roe. The eggs looked too similar to jelly fish sperm and stung anyone who got close. The female adults came forward with their exposed genitalia and used a fishnet to flush the mucus from the drain. They dipped the net many times until nothing stuck to the interior. All the solid waste was thrown into a frying pan and scrambled around a brown butter mixture. They added some fresh garlic bulbs and all the bitter root ends. [Oh, but the roots were gone. They were there and then there were none.] [The children cried into their teacups and tried to fit the handles over their heads.] Their uteruses dropped down. The females. They lost the body pieces hanging off of their fronts. The bloodbath stone sat in the kitchen sink and bathed. The women took fresh sponges to the backs and scrubbed brittle brown barnacles off the stone. [The children stuck their fingers in their ears and yelled. Their brains made shrilling sounds.] Poor children. Poor children. They gnawed on the kitchen table legs and grabbed the wombs off the floors. They suck the bags into their mouths and slapped their tongues around. The fallopian tube pressed against their roofs of their mouths. They got stuck. Like a peanut butter mash. Sealed in the throat and left to congeal. The bloodbath stone crawled to the refrigerator and bit the coolant. Light bulbs shattered. [The children waved glass shards around.] The androgynous children flung their glass bits and stick them into the walls. [Pierced walls. Pierced ears.] The monster leaped against the windowpanes and tried desperately to break through. It had gray dough on its nostrils. [The children forgot how to breathe and rolled around the tiles, struggling to dislodge fat from inside their breathing apparatuses.] They devoured the monster in one piece and left the tiny bone fragments for the bloodbath to eat. The stone had a bottomless stomach. Its digestive system flipped inside out so it could reach across the cutting board. Bloodbath reached the wombs and pulled them apart, layer by layer. It was endometriosis festering beside the sink. The disease touched the burner and got fire. Everything tasted of gasoline. [The gas fumes came down the walls. They fell in tiny streams and ran in furrows along the porcelain.] The children licked the incendiary.