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*

People With Problems is a collection of stories I wrote, one a week, like scooping strange fish from the sea. All different sizes, textures, colors…

Then I asked talented artist friends to each choose a story to illustrate, and it was as if I had released my fish back into the ocean and saw them return with mates.

I put a lot of care into exploring the subjects of the stories, which range from absurd, to darkly comic, to heartbreaking. Kirkus Reviews was complimentary with regard to their breadth and depth:

A collection of 29 character-driven works of flash fiction … shows that a lot can be done with a very limited word count.

– Kirkus Reviews

I hope you enjoy meeting the book’s various People With Problems as much as I have.

It’s available as a paperback or ebook—both of which include the full-color illustrations—from these retailers.

If you sign up for my newsletter in the field below, you’ll immediately receive a copy of the ebook for free.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support!

We have no admissions desk, and no curators, but our collection is vast and eclectic.

The north wing borders the Kyner Playfield, and features an ever-growing collection of sporting goods. Soccer balls of all colors and patterns, from black-and-white to bright yellow, are suspended in the shelves of our vines. The sun has cracked most of their skins, and the seasons have relieved them of their pressure. Visitors are cautioned to watch their step, as the floor of the north wing is scattered with chipped golfballs and rain-swollen baseballs, split and spilling their strings.

We have two bicycles, one of which hangs from the ceiling of the north wing. It is a modern ten-speed, previously owned by Levi Orenstein and donated to us by Brayden Collins. Mr. Collins was our most generous benefactor of the last year, having donated the Orenstein bicycle, six baseball gloves, two basketballs, three schoolbags, five lunchboxes, one rented clarinet, and the headless body of a possum.

He recently departed to attend a military academy upstate. We thank him for his contributions.

The southeast wing features several exhibits dedicated to the science of time. This is where our second bicycle can be found, chained to a sapling by one Marcie Pittsmouth in 1975, and which now rests six feet off the ground, embedded in the trunk of that same tree. When it rains, visitors are invited to admire the drool of rust that issues from the tree’s lips of wrinkled bark.

The Green Tangle Museum is also excited to announce that approximately three years from now, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of Marcie Pittsmouth’s contribution, the bicycle’s front fork bolt will have completely rusted through, and the wheel will fall to the ground. We warn visitors that the timing of this event cannot be precisely predicted, and as such it will not be advertised.

While they wait, attendees may choose to explore the museum’s Dome, so-dubbed at its inauguration in 1988 by Crossbridge High School students Paul Ashby, Lindsay Milligan, and Roger Zarn, whose initials are inscribed in a commemorative tree in the Dome’s west wall. Use of the fire pit is open to all museum guests. But we caution visitors to wear closed toe shoes, and ask them not to disturb the Dome’s immersive diorama of drug paraphernalia and contraceptive materials.

The prize specimen of the Green Tangle Museum is not yet accessible to the public: the body of forty-four-year-old Herbert Selnick, offered to our archives in 1953 by an anonymous donor. The specimen’s exposure to the elements was mitigated by an archival covering of vines, and volunteer fauna served to remove the most perishable matter.

The “Selnick Skeleton” exhibit will treat visitors to a veritable time capsule, from the specimen’s intact ochre suit of polyester gabardine, to its red-and-white nubuck Oxford shoes. Ephemera enthusiasts will appreciate the still-legible dry cleaning ticket in the back pant pocket, as well as the matchbook from the long-defunct Cassman’s Deli in the jacket pocket. Amateur and experienced forensic analysts alike will marvel at the “kerf marks” carefully revealed by our preservation team, made in the lower thoracic and upper lumbar vertebrae with a Schrade Walden Muskrat 2 model folding knife.

The knife itself can be seen in the collection of the Silty Delta Museum, located six miles south, beneath the Route 80 overpass.

We encourage everyone to visit the Green Tangle, Silty Delta, or any of our sister museums worldwide—in forests, near freeways, behind buildings, under porches, or inside your very own home.

We welcome you and your donations any day, at any hour, year-round.

Jessica sees a few people crying. Under the rain rattling on the roof, she can hear even more. Life-jacketed and lined up on a plastic bench in a bright orange capsule with a hundred other tourists. Couples, families.

A four-year-old boy next to her keeps asking between sobs, “Mommy, why are we in the little boat?”

His mom has her sweaty face against the foam shoulder of her life jacket, and her breath heaves. They were all given seasickness pills when they boarded, but hers isn’t working. “It’s just a little longer, honey. Just sit—” she swallows, “sit tight, okay?”

Jessica sees the “big boat” out the rain-streaked window, many-storied and lit like a skyscraper, its nose sinking into the dark water as if ashamed.

*

Jessica bowed her head at dinner and chewed carefully.

She’d been liberal with the adhesive, because that night she planned to order the steak—her first in two months. She pinned her hair back and made up the scar on her cheek as best she could.

But even cut into small pieces and squished between her molars for a long time, steak was too tough. She was grateful that Chelsea and Trevor—those were their names?—probably didn’t notice her difficulty chewing while they described their cruise around Australia the year before.

Chelsea is pregnant and shouldn’t have ordered the swordfish, but Jessica didn’t say anything.

She felt her front-left teeth start to move. Too much adhesive. Her lip tightened against them. “Mm-hmm,” she said, nodding. She held up a finger and tried to say, “Excuse me,” but the teeth popped out and flipped between her lips, the metal support clicked against her real teeth.

Trevor said, “Oh. Sure,” and looked at his food.

“Oh,” as in, he hadn’t expected a thirty-four-year-old woman to have a denture. “Oh,” as in, now he better understood the scar showing through her makeup.

In her cabin Jessica spat the denture into her hand. Her left incisor stood alone at the front of her mouth, the one they could save. Her molars huddled in the back.

She ran warm water and scrubbed away the adhesive, then added more from the tube in her purse and pushed the denture back in. The false teeth settled around her incisor like strangers at the dinner table.

She decided to order room service instead—mashed potatoes and gravy.

*

Trevor is in the back corner of the lifeboat holding up his phone and frowning. Chelsea’s head rests on his shoulder. She and Jessica meet eyes. Chelsea looks away and puts a hand on her belly. Jessica has to make herself look away.

A crew member screeches open the hatch and fires a flare into the rain. The black water out the window lights pink-orange.

The boy asks, urgent, “Mommy, why is there fire?”

Others snap alert and look out the window.

“Honey, that’s not—” She covers her mouth. Her fingers graze Jessica’s life jacket. “I’m sorry,” she says, “could you wa—” she swallows, “watch him while…”

Jessica wants to say no, but the mom is already standing and shuffling between everyone’s knees toward the open porthole.

The boy screams for her and gets up.

Jessica holds his arm. “Stay here.”

*

Ryan said looking at her reminded him of what happened.

He should have been the one to drive, but he had a drink after dinner. The other car shouldn’t have swerved.

In the hospital, she felt his tears on her cheeks. She felt his lips push hers into the new emptiness behind them.

When he pulled away he didn’t look at her. It felt like he never looked at her again.

The last thing she said was, “Please stay.”

Her sister got her the cruise, for a “fresh start.” She shouldn’t have gone.

But she did. To get away from everyone’s sad smiles and overlong hugs. The house, empty of Ryan’s things. The closed room with the crib and playpen still folded in their boxes.

*

“Your mommy’s feeling sick. She’ll be back.”

His face is wet and red. “Why is mommy sick?”

She wants to say it’s because his mom is weak. “Because we’re in a boat, and there’s a storm.”

“Why?”

She waits for an answer to come. “Sometimes bad things happen.”

Ryan had jumped ship, and their son had drowned in her waters.

She feels the boy’s stare on her cheek. “What’s that?” He points.

She touches the scar. “I got hurt.” Now it’s her turn to cry. Her lips tighten, and she feels the denture loosen. In the midnight rush to get to the lifeboats she’d been hasty with the adhesive.

“How?”

“I was—” Her teeth slip, click against the others. She puts a hand on her mouth.

“What’s that?” His eyes are patient, fixed on her mouth. His little barrel chest rises and falls under his life jacket.

She sucks at her teeth, pushes the metal ridge with her tongue until they settle back into place. Then she smiles. “My teeth,” she says carefully.

“Can I see?”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a crew member says from his windowed perch, “the coast guard is on their way. Shouldn’t be long now.”

Cheers and applause.

But the boy’s eyes haven’t left Jessica’s tight lips.

She hesitates. Then she parts her teeth and pops the denture loose, holds it for him to see. Four resin teeth in two humps of pink resin gum. Metal wire spans the gap between them and curls at either end to hold them among her real teeth.

His eyes get bigger. This is when he screams, her face forever burned in his mind as the toothless witch in the lifeboat.

Instead, his little finger rises to his mouth and pulls his lip down. He grimaces. His pink tongue squishes through the gap where he’s missing his middle-left incisor.

Jessica’s eyes blur. A drop crawls down her cheek. She asks, “Did it hurt?”

“Yeah.”

This led to the second way in which she was now stuck: Her brilliant idea to use washers, yarn, and thumbtacks to build a 3D model of book fifteen’s outline in her studio apartment. It was a wall-to-wall, criss-crossed web of events, relationships, themes, and symbols, and it had her literally cornered.

The nodes hung in the air like the stars of her fictional galaxy, pulling at each other with visible threads of gravity. She worried if she cut something, the whole thing would come apart.

She had to keep the side romance between the pit mechanic best friend (the large washer hung over the TV) and the butcher of exotic meats (the medium-sized washer under the desk), because that was the only way to trigger the Le Mans banquet horse meat scandal at the climax (hung like wind chimes by the bathroom door), bringing Marguerite’s journey full circle.

But the other major thread blocking her way was the series of flashbacks when Marguerite’s brother Clifford teaches her to cheat at cards, which details her adolescence at the Jespers estate, and leads to the fateful poker game when she loses her prize stallion to an opposing card shark, gets chased by bookie thugs, and escapes in a stolen ’66 Mustang convertible—without which part three of the book can’t happen.

She decided to move the knife fight in part four, when the bookies catch up to Marguerite, from the café in Monaco to the romantic beach scene with the Algerian jockey, so as to open up a spot by the coffee table for her to slide under the scene when Marguerite first meets the pit mechanic, and get to the couch to rest for a moment.

This put the jockey in peril and pulled the slack out of their romance, which had always felt a little forced.

Satisfied, she sipped from the mug of coffee gone cold and saw from a new angle. There was a large open tunnel between Marguerite’s decision to throw the final race in Le Mans and a cluster of thumbtacks in the kitchen cupboard representing Marguerite’s lifelong desire for her parents’ approval.

A thread hung over her head.

She reached up to take it. But then stopped and sighed, watched the thread sway in her breath. If she ever wanted to escape this mess, she’d have to leave one or two loose ends.

I kept the plan secret, assuming my parents would laugh and say, “That’s ridiculous, you’re not doing that.”

I spent my days thinking about all the swim meets, karate lessons, piano recitals, and soccer games all the other kids would have to go to—wake up early, get dressed up, pack into the minivan with a string cheese and a Capri Sun for breakfast, and rush off to this or that obligation with a bunch of other loudmouth kids.

But me, I’d wake when I wanted. Sit on a rock, whittle a stick, strip bark to weave, and stare through the endless trees between trees between trees.

If I saw a neighbor walking their dog on the trail, I’d slip beneath the ferns and wait until the collar’s jingle faded.

A big tree fell in a storm that winter, and the crater beneath its suspended root ball would make a perfect shelter. I’d use my knife to cut pine boughs and make a bed. Maybe a conical roof of boughs secured around the root ball.

Birds and squirrels were plentiful but difficult to catch. I imagined traps I could make from branches, rocks, and pinecones. I’d strip ivy vines from tree trunks for cordage.

I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to build a fire to cook what I caught. There were some burnt pits, but they were behind the high school, littered with empty bottles and crumpled cigarette packs, and the trees around them were spray-painted with penises, so I assumed fires were probably illegal.

In the absence of meat, I knew spots for huckleberries and blackberries.

There was a muddy clearing far back, almost through to the next neighborhood, where a caravan was parked and taking on moss. Next to it was a chickenwire enclosure with a couple of decaying geese. When I discovered them, one goose’s feathers were still mostly white. There was a pitchfork leaning against the cage, and I used it to stab the dead goose until its head separated from its long neck. A waste of good meat, I thought.

The person who lived in the caravan had been so close to living the dream, but never connected the dots. Imagine, keeping geese in a man-made cage when there were plenty of birds all around them! The blackberry ravine was just down the hill. Surely in the caravan they had tools to do all the jobs a Swiss Army knife could do, and they hadn’t had to waste their energy building and maintaining a shelter.

Despite these concessions and cheats, this person had failed. I pitied them.

*

I didn’t get the Swiss Army knife for my birthday that year.

I mentally prepared myself every spring to receive that multifaceted key to my survivalist dream, but spent every summer without it resigned to my domestic existence.

By the time I got it for my thirteenth birthday, years of rain had filled in the root ball pit. My perfect shelter was ruined.

In one of the places I’d scouted, sitting on a fallen tree, I used my new knife to whittle a stick into a spear. I got it sharp enough to draw a bead of blood from my fingertip.

We can barely move in these tight quarters, so we weren’t surprised when they went to bed and we heard pop, pop-pop. It feels good to laugh.

They talk soft around the rest of us, and tiptoe everywhere, even when they’ve taken the antlers off to work.

Qualls made a pun: “Be a deer and pass me the salt.” Now everyone says it.

Shelby and Winston pretend to aim rifles and laugh at their eyes getting big.

Yesterday, during their off-hours, we couldn’t find one. Kent walked down the length of the sub carrying the antlers, checked every nook, behind the pipes, between consoles, and finally found him hidden inside a torpedo tube. He pretended to be asleep, like he’d forgotten it was time to antler up.

Tonight’s the big show. Eight Points waits by the bunks, Ten Points by the periscope, and we all sit in the cafeteria between them. We ante spare change and nicotine patches into empty dehydrated pea cans.

On Callahan’s countdown from ten, they’ll charge. The antlers will clatter.

The dark water all around us will keep quiet.

The Reverend would recognize his chapel by the bell still rising out of the dunes. The rest of the town had disappeared when, in his words, the Lord shook the earth like a rug and turned the ground to quicksand.

He’d fled with them, sullen, carrying sacks of meager possessions in their carts and over their shoulders. But he carried only his Bible and stared solemnly at the horizon, as was his purpose, his final mission as Pastor of the doomed mining town sinking into the desert behind them, to act as a mirror for their sorrows that they might feel less alone in the Lord’s mystery.

He spoke strong words by their fires, shared their food, drank their water, until they reached the next town. Constant sandstorms pushed many onward. The Reverend stayed and preached to the few left of the inspiration to be found in Jesus Christ. People had no alms to give but were eager to listen, because they assumed he spoke of their Lord and Savior, who could be prayed to and asked to calm the storms and still the earth’s trembling.

But the Reverend’s devotion was for a different Jesus Christ—a statuette made of solid gold and meticulously hand-painted, which stood behind the pulpit in his chapel, now under several feet of sand.

*

The steeple’s white paint had chafed but its iron cross still stood. If his parishioners could’ve beheld it they would’ve given over their first-born sons as acolytes.

He rolled his shirtsleeves and took a sack from the horse cart. Clawed up the shifting sand to the steeple. Took the rope from the sack, tied it to a beam and dropped it in.

“Oh, praise the Lord!” a voice said in the dark below.

He looked down and saw a filthy face appear in the patch of light.

“Reverend Holcomb, is thatchoo? Reverend, it’s me, Kasper Baney!”

The Reverend swallowed a groan. Nineteen-year-old Kasper Baney. Slept in the front row of every sermon Kasper Baney. Picked his nose before dipping into the holy water Kasper Baney.

Kasper shouted, “Oh, you’re truly a real, true savior!”

“My child, have you been down there long?”

“Since the storms. I was milkin’ the cows when the ground started shakin’ and I got kicked. Woke up in the middle of a sandstorm with the barn collapsin’ around me.”

“My, that’s—”

“I figgered it might be the reckoning! Safest place for the reckonin’s the church.”

“Well, you—”

“I been down here for days, huntin’ rats to eat with this knittin’ needle I found!” He held up a bloody wooden rod.

The Reverend shouted, “Kasper, let’s get you outta there, how about? Climb on up the rope, son!”

“Okey!” Kasper tugged the rope and began to climb.

The Reverend leaned against the steeple and waited, watched his horse stand patient in a world of sand. He’d take the Jesus to the city, where no one knew who he was. Where someone with money could do anything.

Kasper’s head appeared. He wrapped his hands over the lip of the chute, grunting.

“My child, let me help you.” The Reverend offered a hand and pulled.

Kasper’s head knocked the bell, he slipped from the Reverend’s grasp back into the steeple and landed with a bang.

“Oooooh, sweet sweet Lord, my leg’s broke!”

The Reverend looked down and saw Kasper crumpled on the floorboards like a spider half-crushed. The patch of light cast perfectly on his red puckered face.

The Reverend sighed, pulled his pistol from his holster and pointed it down the hole.

Kasper whimpered and stared at the gun.

The Reverend pulled the hammer back.

“Ho, Reverend!” said a voice somewhere behind him.

He turned to see Mr. Baney riding up. Mr. Baney’s shape was unmistakeable, almost a perfect circle with arms. While his son snored through sermons, Mr. Baney wheezed. The Reverend had often wondered how someone with so little money could be so fat.

Kasper shouted from below, “Help! Help, please!”

“Ho, Mr. Baney!” the Reverend said, discreetly holstering his pistol. “Your timing couldn’t be better. I’m afraid your son’s in trouble.”

Mr. Baney dismounted his horse and tried to mount the dune. It was like watching a grapefruit try to climb stairs.

“He’s down there—still alive by the Lord’s good grace.” The Reverend crossed himself. “But his leg is broken. I’ll need your help pulling him to safety.”

Mr. Baney found a shallow slope and wobbled up it, kicking sand.

The chapel roof creaked.

Mr. Baney tried to look into the steeple. “Kasper?”

“Pop, my leg! My leg’s broke, and Reverend Holcomb was gonna shoot me!”

The Reverend tisked. “He mentioned a cow kicked him in the head during the quake. He’s delusional.”

“Kasper,” Mr. Baney shouted, “we’re gonna get you outta there! Hold tight!”

The Reverend said, “I’ll tie the rope around him if you can pull him up.”

“I’ll try,” Mr. Baney wheezed.

The Reverend lowered himself into the steeple, and as his eyes adjusted to the dark he saw the Jesus statuette on the dais. “Give me strength,” he said.

Kasper stared. “You were gonna shoot me…”

The Reverend leaned in and whispered, “Down here, I’d be sure not to miss.”

He tied the rope around Kasper and shouted for Mr. Baney to pull.

Kasper screamed, Mr. Baney roared, and the boy rose toward the light.

Then Mr. Baney threw the rope back down. The Reverend tied it around the statuette and began to climb.

He saw Mr. Baney’s face appear above. The chapel groaned, and the roof crumpled. Sand shifted.

“Reverend!” father and son shouted. They both pulled the rope, felt slow progress through the sand and wreckage, and eventually saw Jesus rise from the mouth of the steeple.

The Reverend didn’t answer their calls.

Kasper sobbed and hugged the statuette on his lap in the cart. Mr. Baney led the way on his horse.

They left the endless dunes, where now only an iron cross jutted from the sand.

He was a software engineer, which I guessed even before he told me. Shoulder-length greasy brunette hair twisted into a sloppy bun. Pink splotches of acne in the creases on his forehead from always looking surprised or frowning. He alternated between two fleece jackets—a red one and a light blue one—over various tee shirts with warped collars and cracked iron-on graphics for local IT companies, cargo shorts with pockets full of stuff, and flip-flops. He said he wasn’t allowed to be barefoot at work, so on weekdays he wore socks.

His voice had a goofy wobble in it that worsened when he thought something was funny. When he concentrated hard on something he rubbed the tip of his middle finger between his brows, which made me wonder if he used to wear glasses.

The house was a small three-bedroom, his childhood home. He told me he was a few years out of college, living in an apartment in the city, when someone broke into the house and his parents died trying to defend themselves. Never caught the killer.

Nelson later moved back into the house and used his meager inheritance to build a powerful gaming PC. I heard more minutiae about that computer than his parents’ murder. Maybe it was a defense mechanism; maybe he was trying to be honest without scaring me away.

He told me all of this over pizza after I finished moving in Tuesday night.

It was the first I’d heard of a break-in—let alone a double murder—in the house. The neighborhood was quiet, with decent schools nearby. I could see it as a potential target for someone looking to nab some heirloom jewelry or a small wad in a safe, but lacking the nerve to hit a rich house. An amateur who might panic and murder a couple in their late fifties over some pearl earrings.

I didn’t want Nelson to think the story creeped me out, but I didn’t know what to say about any of it, so I shook my head, finished my beer, and slowly crushed the can.

“Wow, I’m sorry,” I finally said.

“We should do this every week,” he said.

I put the hunched can on the table. “Sure.”

He pointed at me. “Tuesday’s our day, Chris. Mark it.”

Wednesday morning I set up my desk in my bedroom and got to work. Cold calling homeowners to offer them eco-friendly alternatives to spray foam insulation. I’ve got a headset, and I like to pace around when I’m calling, but with the bed and the desk my room is too small for that. So I sat jiggling my leg and staring out at the driveway and the identical house across the street.

Nelson spent almost all his at-home time in his bedroom—his parents’ old bedroom—and he said the third bedroom had been his parents’ office. Since he wasn’t using it, I wanted to find a way to make it my office.

But endearing myself was hard with Nelson’s erratic schedule.

The few times I saw him out of his room he was on the couch writing code on his laptop, with metal music loud in his headphones and the Game Show Network muted on TV.

He usually left early in the morning, and he’d come back in the afternoon, microwave a can of chili or a bowl of ramen, shut himself in his room for several hours, and leave again around eight at night.

I made a point of heading to the kitchen around that time to find out where he was going. Maybe to a bar; maybe he actually had friends and didn’t want to intrude on my time settling in, when on the contrary I was happy to buy him a few drinks.

But he said he was heading back to work. His company was in the middle of updating its server security, a round-the-clock operation.

“Amateurs,” he said shaking his head.

I didn’t mind having the place to myself. I hadn’t had such a big couch and TV in my apartment. So I indulged, thinking I’d see his headlights through the front window and politely head to my room when he got home.

*

When I woke up there was an infomercial playing, and I heard movement in the kitchen. I only had to move my head a little, and in the glow of the TV I saw Nelson behind the kitchen counter, shirtless, hair down and ratty, rummaging on a shelf.

He turned around. I squinted my eyes to look asleep, and watched his dim shape come around the counter—he was completely naked. There were scratches and bruises on his torso and legs. He cradled a box of crackers and a couple of cans in his arms. He crept. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but I could tell he was watching me as he went, then disappeared into the hallway, and I heard him shut the door.

I waited a long time before I turned off the TV and went to my room.

The next morning I found a note under my door saying I should ask before taking his cans of chili, since he always bought a specific amount to last until his next shop.

To keep this from blossoming into resentment, I bought some more chili and met him in the kitchen that afternoon. I offered him the cans—a couple more than I’d seen him take the night before—but specified that I wasn’t the one who ate the chili.

“Maybe you were sleepwalking,” I said, thinking of the scratches and bruises. “Some people do that. Sleep eat, or even sleep cook.”

“I sleepwalked when I was really little. I don’t remember that, but my parents said I scratched up the walls and stuff a few times. I saw a sleep specialist when I was five, and it hasn’t happened since. But I never ate during it.”

I made a mental note to put a lock on my bedroom door. “Okay, well, I promise I didn’t take your food. But here’s some more chili anyway.”

He stared at me and his voice got wobbly. “I mean, I was hungry this morning. How could I be hungry if I apparently ate two cans of chili and a box of frickin’ crackers?”

*

That evening while he was at work, I went down the hall past his room into the closed office. It was the same size as my bedroom, but with only a desk in it there was much more space. Enough to pace around. Or I could even get a treadmill like I’d wanted in my old place.

There was a framed photo face-down on the desk. Teenage Nelson and his parents in front of a forest backdrop, the gilded signature of a mall photographer stamped in the corner. Young Nelson looked the same only less developed, his forehead wrinkles just beginning. His dad was thick and bald, with suspenders and a big smile. His mom was lanky and beaky, had a page boy haircut and warm eyes.

I put the photo back face-down.

He hadn’t mentioned how much time had passed between the murder and his move into the house, but some boxes labeled with his spindly handwriting were stacked against the wall. I wondered if his boxes could go in the wall cabinet, out of the way.

Three of the cupboards were full of binders marked with addresses and logos for Green Groves Landscaping.

The furthest cupboard was empty except for scraps of pink fiberglass insulation and dust bunnies. I bent down to look, and noticed that a messy hole was broken through the wall into a dark crawl space. The air from the hole was cool with a faint stink of feces.

Keys ratcheted in the front door. There wasn’t time to get back to my room so I closed the cupboards, shut the office door, and turned off the light.

His keys jingled, the door closed, and the deadbolt slid.

I wondered why I’d reacted that way. It was technically my house too; I paid rent. But now I had to commit to the choice to hide.

Footsteps went into the kitchen. Metal peeled, a spoon scraped, the microwave beeped and whirred.

“Hey, Chris.”

I heard him go to my bedroom door and knock. I don’t know why I’d thought to close it, but I’m glad I had. My neck went cold trying to remember if my light was off.

“Chris. You wanna beer?”

I didn’t want a beer, I wanted to ask him about the hole in the wall. I wasn’t about to set my office up next to a nest of rabid raccoons. But I also couldn’t ask him then, when it was obvious I’d been sneaking around behind his back.

The microwave sounded five loud beeps and he walked back into the kitchen, took the bowl from the microwave, and came down the hall.

I ducked behind the desk.

His bedroom door closed, his knob lock clicked, and I heard the beep of his computer starting up.

I waited by the door, ready to lunge behind the desk if his door opened. His spoon clinked in his bowl through the wall.

When I heard typing and clicking, I pulled the office door open slowly, stepped into the hallway hearing the soft sound of carpet pile under my socks, and pulled the door closed behind me.

But I hadn’t pulled enough, and the latch slid past the metal plate on the jamb, striking loudly as it sprang into place.

The typing stopped.

I took lunging steps on my toes down the hall, ready to hear Nelson’s door open behind me.

But I made it into the living room, and by the time I reached my bedroom door I heard typing again.

*

In the night I awoke without knowing why. No light, no sound. Just a feeling that made my eyes open, and I stared at the dark streetlight-orange ceiling. Then my eyes moved further down and saw my door was open.

Barely visible in the doorway stood Nelson’s naked shape. His face was hard to see, but I could tell he was staring at me.

I stared back, waiting, my fists clenched the comforter with the childish idea that I was safe as long as I stayed under the sheets. But the rest of me knew that trick only worked against imaginary monsters.

In the vague shape of his face, Nelson’s mouth opened—another dark hole in the dark doorway—and a shriek rushed into the room, felt like the sound reached under the covers to grab me.

And he moved. Fast. On top of me.

I jerked the covers over my head, contorting myself under his weight.

“Nelson!” I shouted into the mattress, “Nelson, you’re sleepwalking!”

He clawed wildly at the comforter. I heard it ripping.

I curled up to fold my knees under my chest.

The stuffing of the comforter was thin, and I felt his nails scratch through the last layer of fabric over my back.

I extended my legs and thrust upward.

He screeched and flew from the bed, thumped loudly against the wall.

I jumped off the bed and flipped on the light.

“Nelson, wake up!”

I saw the scratches and bruises all over his body, his angry eyes through dirty hair, dried chili smeared around his mouth. He sprang up and clawed at me. I tried to kick him in the groin and grabbed his neck and squeezed.

The back of his head exploded and sprayed the walls. His body fell onto me, heavy, and we toppled back onto the bed.

I threw him onto the floor where he fell splayed, and I saw a gnawed plastic band on his wrist.

The light in the living room turned on. Nelson appeared in a tee shirt and briefs, with a smoking pistol balled in his hands, pointed at the body on the floor. His splotched forehead wrinkled, eyes wide through hanging strands of greasy hair.

“Who is that?”

I grabbed the shredded comforter and jumped behind the bed.

“Chris, who the fuck is that?”

On the street, Brian’s waistband itched, his bowels ached.

He watched two pockmarked men pull the guts from a beaten stereo. A woman with red cheeks massaged her foot, which looked like a ham rolled in an ashtray.

Keith sucked the gap of his missing incisors. “Got a gun or a knife, Brain?” Keith was calling him “Brain.”

“No.” His parents took his Swiss Army knife before they kicked him out.

“Guys’ll cutchyer throat.” Keith pointed at a man straightening a cardboard awning. The man glared.

Brian’s abdomen groaned. He looked down and asked, “Where do people around here, uh… go?”

Keith said loudly, “One or two, Brain?”

Brian murmured, “Two.”

Keith made a show of leaning to look up and down the block. “G’wan behind that white car. Coast is clear. I gotcha.”

The stereo men chuckled.

Brian left his backpack, walked fast and squatted behind a white sedan. He reasoned this was something the others experience all the time.

A woman with keys appeared between the cars and said an involuntary, “Uh-guh,” and got in her car and pulled out, revealing Brian to the street.

The tents roared with laughter.

Brian didn’t look at Keith as he picked up his backpack, pulled out his cigarettes and lit one.

Keith laughed. “Look, kid, I’m sorry. Say, you couldn’t spare…”

Brian offered the pack. One left.

Keith stared at it. Then took it, and his eyes went serious. “Gotta get you a weapon, Brian. We’ll figure somethin’ out, don’t worry.”

What would it feel like to crush them in my fist? Not in the living room, over the light yellow carpet. I could do it outside.

I could put them in a bowl with a spoon, and just before Rosalyn gets home I’ll add milk.

Milk would ruin them; it’s not worth the joke.

Plus, then she’ll know that’s what I’ve been doing instead of my résumé.

I take a mug from the cupboard and pour them in. They sound like balled-up saltwater taffy wrappers. There still aren’t enough to reach the brim. I take the mug to the basement, and after an hour of moving grime-grayed shelving, flowerpots, and broken patio furniture, I have enough to look straight across the lip of the mug and see legs like eyelashes, wings like nail clippings, red eyes like hardened drops of blood peeking over the edge.

I wish this were a real job. I’d get a van with a logo. I’d be the go-to.

It would be irresponsible not to count and photograph these. For posterity.

Two hundred and fifty-eight flies.

In slippers on the back patio, I carefully ball my hands around them.