Silk

“What do you want?” he asked, his voice so calm, like he didn’t feel the warm piss ru

So much pain in that one human eye and the lips moved, working silently a moment, and he didn’t turn around, but didn’t look away from the mirror, either, watched its reflection.

“What? What the fuck do you want from me?”

“Help,” and it coughed something up, and he had to look away, down at the sink, the spotless, safe sink, or he would have puked. “Help,” it said again.

“I can’t,” he said. “I’ve done everything I could do.”

“Please, kill her,” it said, phlegmy voice that suddenly didn’t sound like anyone he’d ever known, and that made it easier. “Please help…”

“You’re not listening. I didn’t say I won’t; I said I fucking can’t. I can’t kill anyone. There’s nothing else I can do. And I’m sorry. I’m really fucking sorry.”

And he turned the water back on, twisted both knobs all the way so the gush and splash covered up the sounds it had begun to make.

“Now leave me the fuck alone,” and he looked at it one last time, backed into its corner, quivering bristles and thick tears from that one green eye, before he put his fist through the mirror. The glass shattered, big razor shards that rained down off the wall, broke into smaller pieces all around his feet, slicing at his knuckles and fingers.

He waited almost five minutes, and when nothing happened and no one came in to see what the noise had been, Walter turned around and saw he was alone again.

5.

Niki’s sitting with her back to the wrought-iron fence that surrounds Jackson Square like a spiked bracelet, silent, watching as the girl turns her cards over one by one. Wind in the palms, the sewer-mud smell of the river and the girl turns up the Hanged Man and there’s only one card left. She points at the man dangling by one leg from the T-shaped tree, triangle of his legs pointing toward the earth, cross of his arms and the glow around his head, saint’s nimbus. “Ah,” she says. “That one,” and “That one can be trouble.” And nothing else, no insight or prophecy before she reaches for the final card, reaches for the outcome, before the wind gusts and scatters the spread along the paving stones. The girl runs after her cards, barefoot with silver rings on her toes and the wind making bat wings of her black shawl. Niki looks at the sky, clouds so low and black, yellow-green lightning lying up there like electric serpents, and she thinks she should get inside, leaves money in the girl’s cigar box and when she stands, tries to stand, she feels the pain in her ankles, the bottoms of her feet, coursing angry and hot up her calves.

She looks down and the stones are breaking up around her, busted apart by the writhing snarl of roots, roots as smooth as the slick bellies of worms, the red of naked muscle, the blue of naked veins: the roots that grow time-lapse fast from her legs and feet, holding her to the spot, that bury themselves, herself, deeper and deeper into the soggy ground beneath the Square, rich black soil and fat white grubs. The murmuring tourists who point and stumble past with their souvenir New Orleans Jazz T-shirts and plastic beads, to-go cups of beer, daiquiris and hurricanes, and she can see the fear and the awe on their drunken, puffy faces.

And the sky begins to tear.

And fall.

She woke up, and the room was still and quiet. A little candle flicker from the floor that made it seem darker outside, and her head was full of the dream and the confusion the Klonopin left behind. A stickywet spot on her pillow from sleeping with her mouth open. And then she remembered the dead boy in the basement and the mess at Keith Barry’s wake, the things she’d said to Spyder afterwards, the burns on her hands, all the things that she’d gone to sleep to escape. Things that made the nightmare silly, any lingering dread dissolved by simple recollection, replaced, and she called for Spyder.

No answer and she sat up in the bed, headboard at her back, and blinked at the dim light and shadows. “Spyder?” and she saw it, then, a few feet past the foot of the bed, mottled shades of sage and indigo, hanging down from the ceiling from taut cords or ligaments the same gray colors; beautiful and hideous and utterly unreal, and so maybe the dream wasn’t over after all, just a jump-cut to the next scene, a new set and she only had to wait for her cues.

“Spyder,” louder now and still no reply from the death-still house. And she couldn’t take her eyes off the thing, dangling like a misshapen butterfly’s chrysalis, and she’d been shrunk down to nothing. Except that she was begi

6.

Daria stood in the acid light, sizzling cold fairy light from the strands filling up Spyder’s living room, and she only had to let one of them settle on the bare back of her right hand to know that they cut. Another gash on her scalp before she finally stopped gaping at her wounded, bleeding hand held up and the light streaming through insubstantial flesh, x-ray revelation of bones and veins and capillaries hidden inside. She pulled her jacket up over her head, ducked and dodged as best she could through the living room, calling for Niki, cursing whenever the strands touched her. Less of the stuff in the next room, but it was still thick enough that she had to be careful, and she stopped, hands cupped around her mouth, “Niki! Niki, shit…” and she shook one of the strands off her arm, ugly S-shaped incision left behind in the leather.

“Niki!”

There were windows just a few feet away, past a low and uneven wall of paperback books, only patches of glassy night visible through clots of the stuff, but still another way out, maybe, and better than trying to go back the way she’d come.

She heard the front door creak open, turned around and there was Mort, an arm up to shield his eyes from the glare, and she shouted, “No! Go back! Don’t try to get through this shit,” and he squinted in her direction, as if he could hear, but couldn’t see. “Mort, just get the hell out of here!” And he did close the door, then, backed out and closed it, and she was alone again, alone and the sound of the strands falling around her was like the night it snowed, heavylight whisper of so many flakes hitting the window of Keith’s apartment at once.

Don’t think about it, chick. Think about it and you’re fucked. Keep moving.

Taut and nearly solid web across the doorway to the kitchen and all that left was the hall, a darker place in the blaze, leading back to Spyder’s room and other unfamiliar doors.

“Hell, I’m probably fucked, anyway,”

She stepped into the hall, narrow wallpaper gullet, wood and plaster, stepped careful over razor drifts and her hands pulled up inside the sleeves of her jacket so she could bat away the strands hanging from the ceiling. Daria saw the plywood covering Spyder’s door, no time to understand or even wonder before she almost walked into the open cellar, its door laid back and nail studded, nails bent and twisted at vicious, crazy angles, stairs that led almost straight down, and she would have broken her neck for sure.

“Niki!” Still no answer, just the snow sound, and she peered down into the rectangular hole in the floor, warmer air rising up from the cellar and incongruous scents: mold and earth, jasmine and the sweeter smell of rotting meat. And the blackness down there toward the foot of the stairs imperfect, dim red-orange glow, and What if they’re down there? Still feeling like a hero, Dar?