The New Weird (27 page)

If the rats do discover Brey's mother, they might find it difficult to chew through her wrappings. It might take them long enough to chew through the sheets that they would choose instead to search out other bodies. Brey's body, for example, or that of his father. Brey's father can run from the rats. Brey can lumber from them. If he is not fast enough to escape, his keys might still protect him.

Even if the rats chew through his mother's sheets, they will chew through at only one spot. The rats will stream into his mother through the single hole, eating the body hollow. If Brey surprises the rats, he will be able to sew the hole shut. The rats will be trapped. They will suffocate within his mother.

No one shall wrap Brey in sheets when he grows feeble. There is nobody to do it. He will be easy prey to rats.

When he approaches death, he will hang himself from one of the light fixtures in the hallway, out of reach of the rats. Perhaps he will collect enough keys that his entire body will be covered, armored against rats. A smart rat, however, will snout past the keys.

The wrapped feet of Brey's mother hang over the edge of her bed. His mother says little, almost never speaking directly to Brey. His father claims, however, that she asks about him often. That she is concerned about him.

His father tells him things about keys, about halls, nothing else. His father says this of the keys: "There are two ways to get the keys: you can collect the keys or you can wait for them to collect you. I have done the latter. The keys have not come. I have no regrets ― there are things more important than keys."

His Knowledge.

His mother tells him little about herself. He knows that she has always been in these halls, little more. His father is modest, speaking seldom of his own accomplishments. He knows of his father no more than he can gather from his father's commentary on rats, halls, keys. There are only stories of rats, elaborate rat traps, his father's refusal to collect keys: "If I had it to do again, I would change nothing. I do not believe in regret. Nevertheless, I wonder if you should reconsider your own course."

His knowledge of his father lies in his father's drawings and poems. His father has mentioned thousands of drawings, of rats. Brey has found only a single sheet of paper with two ink drawings upon it, plastered underneath the sink. The lines are faint, but the shapes of rats are still trapped there.

Often, Brey himself traces rats on the table with his fingers. In this, he considers himself his father's child.

He has torn pages from his notebook and drawn pictures of rats upon them, leaving them scattered through the intersections for his father to find. The drawings have disappeared, but his father has never said anything about them. Perhaps the drawings are good enough that Brey's father thinks they are his own. Perhaps the rats find them first, destroying them.

His father's poems are in a slim volume labelled
Homage to Brey: (He Has Chosen to Collect Keys).
His father said nothing to Brey of the book's existence. Brey discovered it in his parents' room while his father was wandering, his mother asleep. The book was wedged between the headboard and the wall. He slid the book from its hiding place, apparently without his mother and father's knowledge, and conveyed it into his room to hide under his palette. At times, as he sleeps, he thinks he feels the shape of it beneath him. His father has never mentioned its absence.

There are forty-six poems in the book. Brey knows they are poems because below each title is written the words "A Poem." Since he has stolen the book, Brey does not dare discuss the poems with his father. The poems are about rats. None of the poems scan. None rhyme. Nonetheless, Brey is moved. He is secretly proud of his father.

The halls contain myriad sounds. He has the sounds of his boots in the halls, the echo of his fists upon the windows, the jangle of his keys, the drip of his water, the hum of his light bulbs, the sound of his father's footsteps, fading. When a light bulb expires, the light sputters and offers an ecstatic sound, much rarer. Then a hall falls dark, silent.

At times there is the sound of his father's voice in the halls. In the past, his mother's voice as well. Now his mother's voice does not leave its room.

His father never says: "I have written poems, and this is what they mean."

His father says, "Brey, I am not here for your benefit. I am your father, but I am other things besides a father. I will help you as I can, but I will not sacrifice myself to you."

His father says, "Let's speak frankly. Do you think collecting keys is the best choice for you, Brey?"

His Kitchen.

His kitchen is a room panelled in white plastic, panels stretching from ceiling to floor. Where two panels meet, a metal strip covers the crack. The walls, when soiled, can be wiped clean with damp cloth.

Each sheet of the wall hides a pantry. To reveal the pantry, one must grasp the metal strip at a designated point, pulling outward. The pantries are expansive. There has always been enough food for Brey and for his parents.

His father says of the stove in one of his poems, "Once it was a great truth." What this means, Brey does not pretend to know. He is not privy to the truths of a stove.

The faucet handles of the sink have sheared off, but the gaskets remain relatively intact. Water drips slowly from the cracked spigot. Beneath the spigot, Brey has placed a pewter cup. When it fills with water, he pours it into a canteen.

It takes several hours for the cup to fill. As his journeys through the halls become lengthier, the cup sometimes overflows and water is lost. He collects a cup of water when he leaves to walk the halls, a cup when he returns to sleep. He does not know if his father and mother drink from his cup while he is gone. Brey is not dying of thirst by any means, yet he is often thirsty.

There is a table in the kitchen. Under the table is a paper sack. When the sack is full of garbage, Brey surreptitiously dumps it into one of the hallways.

On the table are stacked four books:
The Rat, Rats: All About Them, Our Friend the Rat,
and
How to Build a Better Mousetrap.
His father's name has been written inside each front cover, though Brey has had the books as long as he can remember.

Brey has read these books, studying the pictures carefully. He knows the rat. He is prepared.

His Tiles.

The floor of the bathroom is covered with thousands of identical square tiles. Brey has transformed this floor into a map, placing scraps of cardboard at the intersections of the tiles. He has found one hundred and twelve sets of keys traveling to the terminal wall, one hundred and twenty-nine more traveling along the terminal wall. Assuming that the halls form a quadrangle, there are a minimum of fourteen thousand four hundred and forty-eight sets of keys in the halls. Of these he can expect to collect five hundred ― approximately three and one-half percent.

He wets his finger in the bowl of the toilet, rubs it against his skin. Dirt and dead skin flake away. His father continues to warn him against using the toilet in this fashion. "Sanitation, son, is not a game." Brey sees no alternative.

His Windows and Walls.

His windows line the terminal walls. They are textureless, black, opaque. He has tried to scrape their darkness away with his keys. The keys slip from the glass without leaving a scratch.

He pounds on the glass with both fists. When he strikes the glass, it vibrates. The vibration is not unlike the sound of his boots striking the floor.

He stops pounding, presses his ear against the glass. He hears nothing.

Brey has seen pictures of windows in his rat books. He has seen windows with rats nestling upon their sills. He knows the purpose of windows. They are for rats to look through, a sort of transparent wall. When rats tire, they draw drapes.

He raises his hands to pound on the windows. He feels a hand on his shoulder. He lets his hands fall.

"Brey?" says his father. "Do you think that is wise?"

"Wise?" says Brey.

"Do you wish to attract rats?"

"Rats?" says Brey.

"Are you ready for them?" says his father. "Are you prepared? Brey?" he says. "Brey?"

His Fishline.

The fishline was the gift of his father. It is wound around a wheel-rimmed spool as thick as Brey's torso. The words "20# TEST PREMIUM FISHLINE: 21,120 FEET (APPROX. FOUR MILES)" are stenciled on both wheels of the spool.

Brey does not know what "miles" are. He has never heard nor seen the word "feet" used in this sense before.

His father, explaining, says, "It is called fishline because it is fishline."

His father volunteers nothing more about fishline, only informing Brey that it is fishline. Brey masters this information, makes it his own.

He takes a ring of keys off his belt. Opening the ring's gate, he slips the fishline inside the ring. He hooks the ring back onto his waist.

The fishline whirs past him as he walks, slipping through the eye of the ring, a hiss beneath the clank of keys.

He walks down the halls toward the next set of keys. He picks away a half-scabbed cut on one hand, lengthening it, deepening it. He stops to rinse his hand with water from the canteen. The water drips onto the polished floor, separating into beads. Holding aside the keys that cover his shirt, he presses his hand against the fabric. He wipes the hand dry.

He passes empty intersections, enters dark halls. Light returns, then fades. He trusts to the fishline.

He reaches the last explored intersection. He finds his father there. "Hello, Brey," his father says. He and Brey shake hands.

"Are you sure that collecting keys is the right choice?" says his father. "Are you prepared for every contingency?"

Brey nods, passes through the intersection. Beyond, the halls grow brighter still. He approaches the next intersection. He hesitates, halts. Allows his eyes to adjust.

The intersection is heaped ankle-deep with dust. No keys are visible.

Brey hesitates. He turns away. The intersection behind him is empty, his father gone.

[TWO]

His Dust.

The dust meshes and thickens as it approaches the intersection, coming together in a solid sheet at the near edge, thickening as it moves in. He turns away, follows the fishline back the way he came. His father absent, he consults his mother.

"Where the halls are dusty, the halls are full of dust," says his mother. This can hardly be disputed.

He waits for her to say more. He stands motionless at her bedside, watching her lips purse and relax as she breathes.

His keys rattle as he walks toward the door. He hears his mother behind, calling for his father. He opens the door and goes out, pretending not to hear.

In his room, pinned to the mattress, a note from his father:

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Father.

What ashes are Brey does not know. Dust he knows. Father he knows.

He tears a square of paper from a page of
Our Friend the Rat.
He drops it onto the tiles to mark the intersection.

On his written maps, he marks dust-filled intersections with the letter "d." He marks dust on the original map of his halls. He does not mark dust on the other maps. He will wait and see.

His Father.

His father squats in an empty intersection, pushing Brey's fishline about with his fingers. Hearing Brey's approach, his father rises to greet him.

"How do you explain this, Brey?" says his father, holding the fishline pinched between two fingers. "Fishline?" says Brey.

"Unspooled through the halls?" says his father.

"Collecting keys," says Brey.

"Is that what fishline is for?" says his father.

His father stands twirling the fishline, awaiting a response. Brey takes his father's arm, tugs him down the hall.

They stand next to each other, staring at the dust. His father moves to move his arm around Brey. Brey squirms away.

"This is dust, Brey," says his father. "Similar to ash," his father says.

He is on his knees in his parents' room, crawling. He unwinds a strip of sheet from his mother's leg, spreading it flat on the floor. He scrapes together the dust under her bed. He sprinkles it over the strip. Lifting the two ends of the strip off the floor, he shakes the dust down into the middle curve. He twists the strip into a purse, knots it closed, hangs it from a keyhook.

He starts to unravel his mother's other leg. Beneath the strips her skin is mottled and cracked, weeping. She calls out weakly, as if injured. He unravels three broad strips from her legs and crawls away, her cries in his ear.

He soaks the strips in the toilet. He wraps three wet strips of sheet over his face, knotting them together behind his ears. The wet rags adhere to his skin. He gashes holes for his eyes. The top of one strip and the bottom of another strip join at his mouth. When he opens his mouth, the strips part. When he closes his mouth, the strips join. Water gathers beneath his chin, dripping down onto his keys. Perhaps the water will rust the keys.

The dust thickens beyond the intersection, fingering the walls. The dust gathers thickly near the walls further down, bowing the floor.

From the edge of the intersection, a series of identical marks leads into the dust. The marks are staggered ― right, left, right. They lie separated at an equal distance.

Each mark consists of two portions. The first is an elongated ovoid peaked at the front, flat at the back. The second, behind the first and separated from it by a narrow strip of raised dust, is a half circle.

He looks over his shoulder for his father. His father is not behind him. He squats down. With his hand, he wipes out all the marks he can reach.

He takes the bundled cloth from off its hook, unwraps it. Inside is gray dust, finer than the dust of the intersection. He pinches some yellow dust from the floor, sprinkling the dust onto the dust in the bundle.

Behind him, the sound of his father's boots. He knots the bundle shut, stands.