stepping across the railway tracks that cut through the CNE looks up and calls back through a bloodstained bubble: “Hello!”
15
Ammo
Inside the house Les lies across a kitchen counter, frozen momentarily by the burn of hairline fractures in his elbows. He straightens them painfully, making angel wings of space in the dishes and debris that he’s sent crashing to the floor. He wiggles his nose like a witch at the thick gas of garbage. He notices a wasp’s nest of crack pipes on the kitchen table.
Helen’s a drug addict.
Les steps into the hall and cranes his head around the corner.
A living room. Empty. A huge new sofa and a television. There are about eighty burns packed tightly into a small area on the outer edge of one of the cushions. A laptop computer idles on the floor. It’s marked twice with long burnt grooves.
The writer’s a drug addict.
Les proceeds up the hall. There are five cell phones and two pagers on a low table by the front door.
They’re dealing.
Les hears someone coming down the stairs, so he steps back through a door into a small bathroom. He closes the door, softly releasing the knob to close it silently.
A man’s voice. “What the fuck is the army doing out there?”
Les opens the medicine cabinet. It’s lined with prescription bottles. Dilaudid. Percodan.
Junkies. My son.
He opens the doors under the sink. About twenty stiff, dirty rags. No. Diapers. The dirt shifts position, a vortexof dots. Baby cockroaches the size of pinheads turn in a hurricane pattern at the edge of a diaper.
My little boy.
Two large plastic containers with biohazard labels hide in a shadow at the left. Used syringes.
My boy is learning the three R’s.
“What the fuck? Hey! Is somebody in here?”
Les grabs one of the plastic jugs. The side has been cut away. Les turns the opening upward. It holds a crazy tiara of stingers; bright, gleaming needles fill the space.
Never touch us, don’t even look at us for very long.
When the door opens behind him, Les swings the jug, releasing a swarm of tiny missiles across a man’s face and chest. The needles grab skin with their tips, and some, pushed by the weight of other syringes, are plunged deeper. The view from inside this man’s body would appear something like the night sky in the city, thousands of stars becoming visible. In the country, millions. One of the needles slides precisely into his tearduct, destroying its tiny architecture before burrowing far enough to permanently ruin the man’s ability to narrow his eyes. This particular jab also causes the man to flip a gun out of his hand. The gun slams heavily against the back of the toilet, cracking it, and then spins halfway around the rim before being carried to the bottom by the weight of its handle. The man collapses against the wall, disbelieving —
You just don’t do that
— and he watches Les retrieve the weapon from the bowl.
The first thing to exit the gun is a twist-tie drool of toilet water. The second is a speeding bullet. The bullet disappears into the man’s head and exits along with a single chunk of brain. The tofu cube of brain walksdown the wall on its slippery corners and covers the black spider hole left by the bullet.
All of the doors are closed at the top of the stairs. Les bangs on one. A baby cries.
“Helen?”
No answer.
“Helen?”
He breaks the door down. The room is empty except for a baby who doesn’t look over as he continues wailing. Les feels an energizing burst of relief.
“Helen?”
No answer. Les steps over to another door, and this time kicks it in. Helen is in this room. She is lying on her back across a bed. She has been dead for days. Her yellow arms are marked with bruises that run from her shoulders to hands that are pulled back in retraction. Eyeliner-black track marks fill the crooks of her arms. Her face is dry and large, with purple roots beneath the skin. A cracked riverbed of fluid crosses her cheek.
Helen is dead.
Beside the cupped toes of her
15
Ammo
Inside the house Les lies across a kitchen counter, frozen momentarily by the burn of hairline fractures in his elbows. He straightens them painfully, making angel wings of space in the dishes and debris that he’s sent crashing to the floor. He wiggles his nose like a witch at the thick gas of garbage. He notices a wasp’s nest of crack pipes on the kitchen table.
Helen’s a drug addict.
Les steps into the hall and cranes his head around the corner.
A living room. Empty. A huge new sofa and a television. There are about eighty burns packed tightly into a small area on the outer edge of one of the cushions. A laptop computer idles on the floor. It’s marked twice with long burnt grooves.
The writer’s a drug addict.
Les proceeds up the hall. There are five cell phones and two pagers on a low table by the front door.
They’re dealing.
Les hears someone coming down the stairs, so he steps back through a door into a small bathroom. He closes the door, softly releasing the knob to close it silently.
A man’s voice. “What the fuck is the army doing out there?”
Les opens the medicine cabinet. It’s lined with prescription bottles. Dilaudid. Percodan.
Junkies. My son.
He opens the doors under the sink. About twenty stiff, dirty rags. No. Diapers. The dirt shifts position, a vortexof dots. Baby cockroaches the size of pinheads turn in a hurricane pattern at the edge of a diaper.
My little boy.
Two large plastic containers with biohazard labels hide in a shadow at the left. Used syringes.
My boy is learning the three R’s.
“What the fuck? Hey! Is somebody in here?”
Les grabs one of the plastic jugs. The side has been cut away. Les turns the opening upward. It holds a crazy tiara of stingers; bright, gleaming needles fill the space.
Never touch us, don’t even look at us for very long.
When the door opens behind him, Les swings the jug, releasing a swarm of tiny missiles across a man’s face and chest. The needles grab skin with their tips, and some, pushed by the weight of other syringes, are plunged deeper. The view from inside this man’s body would appear something like the night sky in the city, thousands of stars becoming visible. In the country, millions. One of the needles slides precisely into his tearduct, destroying its tiny architecture before burrowing far enough to permanently ruin the man’s ability to narrow his eyes. This particular jab also causes the man to flip a gun out of his hand. The gun slams heavily against the back of the toilet, cracking it, and then spins halfway around the rim before being carried to the bottom by the weight of its handle. The man collapses against the wall, disbelieving —
You just don’t do that
— and he watches Les retrieve the weapon from the bowl.
The first thing to exit the gun is a twist-tie drool of toilet water. The second is a speeding bullet. The bullet disappears into the man’s head and exits along with a single chunk of brain. The tofu cube of brain walksdown the wall on its slippery corners and covers the black spider hole left by the bullet.
All of the doors are closed at the top of the stairs. Les bangs on one. A baby cries.
“Helen?”
No answer.
“Helen?”
He breaks the door down. The room is empty except for a baby who doesn’t look over as he continues wailing. Les feels an energizing burst of relief.
“Helen?”
No answer. Les steps over to another door, and this time kicks it in. Helen is in this room. She is lying on her back across a bed. She has been dead for days. Her yellow arms are marked with bruises that run from her shoulders to hands that are pulled back in retraction. Eyeliner-black track marks fill the crooks of her arms. Her face is dry and large, with purple roots beneath the skin. A cracked riverbed of fluid crosses her cheek.
Helen is dead.
Beside the cupped toes of her
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