A Matter of Life and Death or Something by Ben Stephenson Page A

around. That didn’t make a lot of sense either, but maybe a little more sense.
    I decided that it was the guy with the eraser who was the thing that was around since forever. Most people just called the erasing guy “God,” I think, because what the heck else are you supposed to call something like that, and so I guessed I usually did too. But I also realized that no one could know for sure about anything before the big bang, and it was really too scary to look back farther than that, which made me kind of angry and sad at the same time, especially because what if it was a question that made me angry and sad for the rest of my entire life?
    After I erased the universe I made the page black again a few times and I kept thinking about the questions without answers, and eventually my page started to get all messy. It started to look kind of like the cover of Phil’s notebook, just white and black splotches all over.
    Then I swept the eraser shavings off of the edge of the messy universe and they fell and bounced off of the crinkly leaves on the forest floor. Where did the shavings fit into the puzzle? They were the rubber that was used to create everything from nothing. I thought hard. Maybe they were dreams? I didn’t want to even start to wonder where they went after slipping through the cracks between the dead leaves and into the soil.
    So I slapped myself in the face pretty hard. I looked at my watch, and was shocked. It was almost 5:00 PM already, and it was time to stop thinking. I had a house to check out.
    I snapped my sketchbook shut and headed out of the woods and had supper with Simon. It was nothing special, it was the usual: meat, potatoes, carrots, green beans and white milk. I finished my milk, shaved my moustache, and asked to be excused.
    â€œWhere are you rushing off to?”
    â€œFrankly,” I said, “I’ve still got a lot of work to do in the woods,” but obviously I was lying because where I was rushing off to was actually the beginning of my investigation.
    â€œAlright, I guess. Be home before dark though, Arthur?”
    â€œYup!” I slid off my chair.
    â€œOh, Arthur, will you change those sheets, please?” Simon said for the nine-thousandth time.
    â€œDooon’t wooorrryyy,” I crooned while heading for the door.
    I picked up my backpack from the floor near the hallway and shoved my arms through the straps. Phil was in there.
    I shut the front door behind me, dropped off the porch and headed up the street. It was still grey outside, and kinda damp from the rain the day before. There were shrivelling worms on the side of the road every once in a while, who had evacuated their burrows when the flood had started, but then didn’t make it back home afterwards. Aha! They had transmigrated, in the first meaning of the word. And maybe in the second meaning too. Two or three of them were still moist and slimy though, so those ones I picked up and put in the grass on the side, where they had probably come from. Then I kept walking.
    My stomach felt a little funny, I don’t know why. I pictured the potatoes in there with all the carrots and the steak and the milk. The mashed potatoes trying to calm everyone else down. One thing I like about potatoes, now that I think about it, is I like how when potatoes sit on your counter and get old they just grow more eyes. I like how they’re called “eyes,” and not warts or lumps or chicken pox or anything stupid. It would be nice if by the time I was twenty I would have another eye grow somewhere, like on the back of my hand, or right above my belly button. I would cut holes in the belly of all my shirts so I could look around with that eye too, and check out things without anyone noticing, like secretly check the soles of their shoes to draw their footprints if I was investigating them or something. Then I’d keep growing more eyes every couple of years, and the older I got the more