But it didn’t sit right.
He couldn’t put his finger on it.
The Eighth Day clouds wore
sheeted shapes of color,
red and white like a circus tent.
The Eighth Day animals slept
in sweatless fits – choking
on sugary pits of mango.
The Eighth Day humans
sprouted superfluous limbs
and climbed high in trees,
swam low in cane, covered
in blood and resin.

The Eighth Day flora whispered
spores of secrets to the honeybee.
She, the worker, touches flowers
but doesn’t ask why. They call
to her—keep calling to her,
ringing out like pin-ball lily pads.

She busses nectar back
to the hive. Swarming, sated,
filing into honeycomb hexes
—Eighth Day cartography.
Exacerbated waves, boiling
oceans of gold. Creature’s tongues
lapped out, stuck. Eyes lolled
back—Lotus Eaters, we all.

And God thought what the hell,
seven is a nice, round number.

I tried driving home
’neath the dark, starless abyss—
I wondered if the blackness had frozen
too, and if the Sun would melt
the sky when it rose again
if it rose again

—but I lost it in the ice
somewhere by the airport.
I could tell because of the glow
on the low, static clouds.
Similarly frozen. A plane
just a few hundred feet

above the icy highway,
untouching the Tarmac.
People in the windows were waving
frantically; some jumped.
And like me, none of them
were going to make it

to their destination. I thought
maybe it’s better this way.
No more dreams or promises—
snuggling in cold covers at night
waiting for warm morning.

and they slash through your dreams,
boiling up from a barren pit—the one
deeper than the back of your mind,
behind all the back burners, black
now with pitch and smoking remnants.

i was still going to eat them
but you had none of it. standing
in the white, gravel driveway facing
me and not me with your hands
cocked at your hips
in those acid-washed shorts.
i could have eaten you, then,
but you spoke words in me with your body
and left no thought unpunctuated.
i sensed disappointment in your joints
as you pressed into me, warm
and cold simultaneously.
“there’s no sense in arguing,”
i heard your vertebrae say.
and there wasn’t.

still, in the void between clock ticks—
that old metronome can’t keep me in time—
you were you and not you, and
every powdery face i ever counted
with closed, flickering eyes.
you pressed and my blood grew sentience
because i felt each cell’s thought
like a hivequeen.

and me with you, all my noisy blood
and all your pressing body, unrelenting,
i swept us out of dreamspace
into an ocean of light,
no hydrogen, no oxygen,
—waves lapped and foamed
on sandstone beaches where
that ticking clock is irrelevant
and i can call my own thoughts back,
like reeling in a fishless, baitless hook.
and you say, still pressing me:
“there’s no sense in arguing.”

It didn’t feel like morning, save for the familiar scent of coffee seeping through the cracks in the door. I sat up and placed my feet on the floor. To my right was a dresser I’d failed to notice last night. I stood and opened the top drawer. From left to right in almost perfect organization, there were rows of black business socks, gray off-brand boxer-briefs, and white undershirts. The rest of the drawers were equally perfectly organized and had garments to complete an outfit. I put each piece of clothing on carefully, not sure what clothes in the underworld were made of or capable of. But everything fit as well as it was organized and I did not spontaneously combust. When I was fully dressed, I looked like a teenage kid suited up for his first job interview. Everything fit, but nothing stood out as high-quality or flashy. Black pants, black jacket. White shirt. Gray tie. There were matted dress shoes by the door and I sat back on the bed to put them on before heading out into the rest of the apartment for the first time.

The kitchen was visible from my doorway and immediately to the right was a hallway which broke off into other bedrooms.

“And he’s up again,” said Belial, who was hunched over a brown substance in a small skillet. “I tell you what, Ab. There’s no stopping this kid.”

“Ab?” I said.

Someone in the livingroom grunted.

“That’s Abdaraxus, your other roomie,” said Belial. “He doesn’t talk much.”

“Oh, so are you guys contractees like me?” I said.

Belial snorted and flipped whatever was in the skillet.

“God, no. They usually don’t let contractees live together. They get to fraternizing and what-have-you. No good for business. I’m in the Ministry and Ab here is an architect. Erm, was. But still is!”

“What’s the Ministry?” I asked.

“Do you ever stop asking questions? The Ministry is the “they” to whom I keep referring. Hell brass. I’m not supposed to say much; you’ll be briefed today at SHEOL 6. And you’re going to have a lot on your plate. But none of this delicious omelette.” He plopped his “omelette” onto a plate and turned off the stove.

“Oh, no thanks. I’m not hungry anyway,” I said. “Could I have some of that coffee, though?”

“Yeugh, that stuff? Never drink it. It’s Ab’s pot—ask him.”

“Ab, could—”

Before I could finish, he grunted.

I looked at Belial.

“Means yes.”

“Thank you,” I said. I opened a few cabinets until I found an old, metallic thermos that had seen better years. Belial took his plate and a bottle of hot sauce to the table and sat. I poured coffee into the thermos and gave it a big whiff. It smelled mostly like coffee but there was something else. I tasted a bit but couldn’t figure out what was strange about it.

“So when’s this briefing?” I asked.

“You’re already late,” said Belial through a mouth full of food. “Just tag along with Ab to the bus stop.”

“Uhh—”

Ab refolded the newspaper he’d been reading and stood.

And that was that.

***

Turns out our apartment was on the fifth floor and the elevator was out. Going down wasn’t bad, even though Ab took steps two at a time, but I was not looking forward to coming back. And the walk from Brimstone Terrace to the bus stop wasn’t bad, either. Down two blocks to the right. What was bad, and actually terrifying, was the landscape. The buildings decrepitly reached up to where sky should have been. Instead, the sky was covered in a thick, brown smoke that shrouded everything in darkness. It seemed to come from nowhere, though I could tell it was moving–billowing. And there were flashes of lightning amidst the towering plumes of smoke, but no thunder. The murmur I remembered from last night at SHEOL 8 was back, too, only it sounded closer. Like a swarm of bees or locusts. And the temperature wasn’t too bad. After having heard the phrase “hot as hell” several thousands of times during my upbringing and using it a few times myself, I can accurately say that Indiana summers are indeed, hot as hell.

We passed other people that looked more or less like me and Ab. They all had their own destinations, though, and kept their eyes to themselves. There was one person, however, who was sprawled out in an amalgamation of trash and clutter who cried out to us: “Please! Please, forgive me! Why have you forsaken me?” I paused but Ab grunted and nodded me onward.

When we got to the stop there were others waiting, but no one speaking. It was eerily quiet and isolating. I still felt fear at the sight of the burning sky, though the others seemed to pay no attention to it. It was like this was just another day. And it was.

The bus showed up quickly after we got there and it looked and smelled like any other city bus. I entertained a thought about public transportation–wondering whether we stole the idea from Hell or vice versa. There were enough seats to sit down so Ab and I did towards the back. When everyone was on, the driver pulled away. As soon as we started moving, a woman came running down the street towards the bus stop. I could see her only briefly as she gave up chase and the bus rounded a corner, but she seemed unlike anyone else down here. Like there was some kind of life in her. Was she another contractee?

“Hey, Ab,” I said. “You’ve been here for a while, right? Where are all the other contractees?”

He grunted and nudged me with his elbow. Everyone else on the bus was staring at me.

Thank you for sending us “Memory”. We appreciate the chance to read it. Unfortunately, we are going to have to pass on it as this time.

Thanks again. Best of luck in your writing career.
Sincerely,
Bruce Priddy
Eschatology Journal

This sloth thing takes over in the mornings.
It turns off all my alarms before I even know what’s happening.

My neighbors assure me: no one comes in or out
unless it’s you. But I refuse to believe

that I could be this hideous sloth thing.

II.

I don’t know how it happened,
I don’t know why it happened,
but I got toothpaste encrusted—
white-limed—into the cuticle of my thumb.

Next to a hangnail,
athwart dead and drying skin:
wrinkles crags, freckles
all impending.

So I’m scratching at it,
rekindling the scent of mint
and dentist-recommended whitening power.
Outside, the snow collecting.

III.

Have you ever watched a dog
watch the air?
Particles must move quite a bit.

And by the slip of the lips, mind
you,
mother calls out to the girl,
who is falling behind and unable
to keep up…
“Hurry up, Claire.”
But Claire isn’t right. No, now
the steel-clattered cart, full of
bread, eggs, all things white—
crystalline. Unbroken.
Claire
is not her name.
From my post
by the produce, I can’t tell if
the mother knows her sin, or if
the daughter’s chest splinters…

My tongue feels heavy; it needs
to be swallowed or caressed, told
everything’s alright because
a name is the first thing
we are given, and the
only thing we have.

Leafless trees cackle as skeletons,
brown, soaked in gray.

Posed at the edge, I, a seabird twisted,
eyes diving for fish.
No scales—just concrete.
Fingers curled at the edge,
white like talons. Ready to press.
I’m ready to swim. To taste gray
earth, which rocks me like the sea.

They swept at its roof, shingles, and siding
like a corrosive liquid—cawing, morose.

When all had landed, packed feathers in tow,
atop the roof, lining the gutters, brimming the chimney, a silence came.

A swelling in the atmosphere, the absence of sound
somewhere far off, a barometer ticking back the visage of time.

But from the door comes a man, as it always is.
He is clad in a tattered robe—coarse face, lines engraved

as though he were carved of limestone.
With a bow, he greets the gray sun and black birds.

Their whole heads twitch when they watch him;
their eyes are refractive.

They have made a deal, the man and the starlings.
In the mornings, they will come and sing him a song.

And the man will wake, take comfort, remember
the arid tinge of breath, and continue his ritual.

In the evenings, the man will come and climb their trees.
He will tuck each of them in and leave the nest undisturbed.

Some nights, the ones the starlings prefer,
he, too, will sing a song.

It will be a whisper, a resonance containing the DNA
of all life—nether, unfurling, as he climbs down and goes to sleep.