Cozy by Joseph Hirsch
A detective visits a woman connected to two missing persons cases, and finds something shocking.
My suspect lived at the end of a cul-de-sac in a two-story bungalow surrounded by similar small houses. Two children were out front playing - a boy and a girl - enjoying the summer weather. The boy had a yellow plastic dump truck in his hand, a load of pebble gravel in the berth of the dump body. The girl, meanwhile, was clutching a piece of chalk and busily etching out a hopscotch board on the concrete.
Kids. That could be a problem.
I parked my Crowne Vic in the driveway behind an old Econoline van that didn't look like it had been washed or driven in years.
Neither of the kids took any notice of me. I imagined they were used to seeing strange men enter and leave their mother's house. Or maybe they were just some neighbor's kids, but comfortable enough to encroach on Ariadna's property without fear. For all I knew she had a reputation around here as a nice lady.
After getting out of my car, I proceeded up the walkway to the front door. There was no knocker, and the sole decoration was a long-dead Christmas wreath, most of its shed needles on the straw doormat. I knocked three times, stood back and waited, thinking I should have rung the bell, thinking she might be savvy enough to know a cop's knock when she heard one. But it was too late now, and a thump came from inside, followed by feet moving quickly down a carpeted staircase. Then a dog barked, not hostile but alert, sounding big, albeit friendly.
But dogs, like children, could quickly go from friend to foe, especially if they saw their favorite person on Earth being put into handcuffs.
The door opened and she stood there, dressed pretty much as promised on her Cozy Cuddle profile. She wore a white ribbed wifebeater and grey drawstring sweats, no socks or even house slippers, just bare and slightly dirty feet. There was some space between shirt and pants, exposing a white belly rippling with cellulite and traced with what looked like staple scars leftover from a c-section.
Were the two kids on the curb twins? I had no children myself, but had heard that sometimes they did c-sections for twin births as a precaution. I turned around, looked back toward the curb. The boy was dumping a load of rocks while the girl, having finished chalking her hopscotch board on the concrete, was ready to skip.
"Yes," Ariadna said, "They're mine."
"I thought so," I said, spinning back to her.
At her feet was the dog I'd heard, a German shepherd whose coat went seamlessly from golden to brindled to black. He seemed to be smiling but people claimed that was just panting, that the perception of a smile was just projection, the human need to see the human in every animal.
Ariadna smiled. "Won't you come in?"
"Thank you," I said.
Cops were like vampires. You had to invite us in (at least when we lacked warrants) but once you did, it was usually to your detriment.
Ariadna made me coffee, and also served me a slice of apple pie despite my polite refusals. I was trying to lose weight, moreover was prediabetic and not keen to have it turn into the real thing. But she insisted, and so I thanked her while letting the pie sit before me on the glass table, untouched, next to the coffee. I would have gladly had a sip of the joe, except I wasn't sure if it was drugged.
After serving me, she took a seat on a chair across from the couch where I had sat down. The whole living room set was upholstered in chintz and patterned with flowers and thorny vines. Everything was also covered in those plastic sleeves old people tended to put around their furnishings to extend their lives.
But Ariadna wasn't an old woman. Maybe the plastic was there for another reason?
Meanwhile the dog wagged his tail in a friendly manner while sniffing around my person. Eventually his rooting with the wet nose led him toward my crotch, where he continued to sniffle with the intensity of a pig discovering a trove of Alba truffles.
"Ramses!" Ariadna said.
Immediately he retreated to his mistress's side, heeling by her chair's arm without having to be told.
She petted him with one hand, cut her eyes toward my untouched coffee and pie, then looked at me. Her eyes were big and blue, watery though I didn't get the impression she was on the verge of tears. If anything, the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth suggested she found something amusing.
"So..." she began, "I figure you're not here for a session. You didn't make an appointment, and you're not dressed in cuddle clothes. Most people here for cuddles are dressed like I am." She held up her hands, inviting me to look again at her loose sleepwear.
I didn't bother. Instead, I cleared my throat, got to it. "I'm searching for a missing person."
"Just one?" She could no longer hold in the smile, and let it break across her face. She had freckles I hadn't noticed a moment before, robin's egg smatterings spotting her nose, forehead, and cheeks.
"Charlie Platt," I said. "His mother was worried about him."
"He's a grown man, sort of," Ariadna said, smiling at some kind of inside joke. "And his mother never showed concern for him before. Certainly no affection when it mattered, when he was a child. Did you know newborns can die from a lack of affection?"
"You know him, then?"
"You know I know him."
I nodded, happy at the turn things had taken. Happy that she wasn't trying to turn this interview into an interrogation. And since she had been honest with me thus far, I decided to reciprocate. "When I went into his apartment, the computer was still on. The window for Cozy Cuddle was still open. And your profile was onscreen. The chat you guys had had about your first potential session was still there, too."
I'd found it strange, but not exactly surprising that such a service existed. People were lonely and sometimes "lonely" was not simply a euphemism for horny. Some people really just wanted to be hugged, held, cradled, told it was going to be okay. Or they wanted to hold others, cradle them, spoon and snuggle them. Hell, most people wanted those things, most men included; they just wanted them after they'd had sex.
Not Charlie, though, and apparently not a lot of other men, either. Like Allen Payne.
"What about Allen Payne?" I asked.
"What about him?" The smile was still on her face, but more as a trace of what it previously had been, a frozen residue of that earlier spontaneous mirth.
"Well, we talk to each other on missing persons cases, and the lead detective there said Allen also disappeared after trying to set up a cuddle session."
"Not with me," Ariadna said.
"No," I agreed. "But this detective says that Allen saw you directly before he sent a message to this other girl."
"Gracie Holt." A slight note of irritation had entered Ariadna's voice. Was there competition between the two women? Was the cuddle world as cutthroat as everything else?
She waved a hand, her fingers slender and as pale as the rest of her body. "It doesn't matter," she declared, before shifting her weight on her chair, making the plastic over the chintz crinkle like a fresh diaper.
"It matters to the loved ones of Allen Payne and Charlie Platt."
She rolled her eyes. My attempts to play on her sympathy had failed. "That's not what I meant," she said, standing.
"What did you mean?" I asked.
"What I meant is that I can solve both your 'missing persons' cases right now." She squinted so a pair of wrinkles shaped like crosshairs appeared in the center of her forehead. "Why do they say, 'missing persons,' instead of 'missing people,' anyway? I always thought it was strange. Why do people become persons when they go missing?"
I ignored her last question. I had my own. "How can you solve both my cases now?"
She jerked her head toward the back of the house. "Come on," she said. "I'll show you."
I stood, reflexively patted at my holstered pistol hidden beneath my jacket I had refused to take off even after she offered to take it, and followed her down the hall. Ramses, meanwhile, remained heeled by the side of the chair so lately occupied by his curious mistress.
The hallway was short, its colorless walls cluttered with framed photos of Ariadna with her children, Ariadna with her dog, one photo of them all together, mom, dog, and children.
At the end of the hall she turned left, disappearing into a room.
I followed her, stood in the doorway and leaned against the jamb. It was dim in there, with bars of sunlight slanting against the closed venetians but not penetrating the room.
"Come in."
She moved to stand on her bed, a queen-size covered with a quilted bedspread and layers of fleecy blankets patterned with wolves baying at full moons.
The closet was open, piled high with clothes, a suitcase or two, nothing on hangers, probably no one hiding in there waiting to jump out.
I moved forward, but pushed the door until it hit the wall behind it, just in case someone was back there.
"Close the door." Her voice was little more than a whisper now.
I turned behind me, glanced briefly into the room opposite this one, as cluttered with toys as her room was with clothes and blankets.
"Come in," she said, again, a little more insistently this time.
I turned back to her and the door closed behind me, pushed into place by the lightest wind, like when someone runs by you quickly.
She laughed, took her wifebeater off, cast it to the side of the bed, letting her loose breasts flop free. The nipples were thick, ridged with big goosebumps, some red and engorged with blood, others pale and close to bloodless. They were everted, the areolas collapsed after heavy feeding, maybe even bites when her babes were learning to latch.
She slapped her belly then, sending the cellulite rippling in fleshy waves, releasing a sloshing noise like a waterbed's vinyl mattress getting smacked hard.
"Where's Charlie?" I asked.
"Right here."
She pulled her sweats down, exposing thick, tree trunk thighs framing a triangle of dark red pubic thatch. Stretchmarks striated outward from the insides of either thigh, reddish pink and resembling claw marks.
I stared on, neither repulsed nor aroused, just confused.
The fat in her belly began to ripple harder, as if she were jumping up and down, forcing the adipose tissue to jiggle in undulous waves. Except that she remained still, standing there with her hands on her hips, looking imperious, a conqueror with their foot firmly planted on their defeated foe's chest.
The skin of her belly, already loose and flabby, became more pliant, started pushing outward, responding to pressure from within, being tested to its tensile limits. Hands pressed against the flesh from the inside, leaving imprints, followed by a face, its mouth a moaning "O," the wailing portal matched by empty eye sockets, the visage all-but-featureless. The form within kept pushing until it somehow broke through the last membrane of skin, breaching the peritoneum without ripping tissue or unleashing torrents of blood.
A naked man fell out, landing on the bed with a soggy splat. He was coated in a translucent mucilage, the warm vitreous broth of her belly, scentless despite its sliminess. He looked up at me, shivering, cradling his arms to his body. The columns of his spine stood out sharply, like dorsal plates on the back of some saurian cryptid.
It was Charlie Platt, only looking slightly shorter than he looked in the photos in his apartment.
"Put me back in," he said. "Please, put me back."
"You see?" Ariadna asked.
I saw. But I could not speak.
"Now for Allen."
I wanted to tell her to stop, that it wasn't necessary, but my voice continued to elude me.
I could do nothing but watch as another featureless face silently screamed with its empty mouth and eyes, pressed its way against the skin from the inside. Ripped free of Ariadna's belly while seeming to cause her no pain, while she merely looked on, smiling with the lazy contentment of a bitch watching her newborn pups suckle.
Both Charlie and Allen lay there now, huddled together on the bed side by side, cold and shivering. Allen up against Charlie's body - belly to back - spooning to share what little heat they had between them.
When Ariadna's stomach had released Allen, it had also disgorged a small cellphone, remarkably still holding its charge, LED face aglow.
Onscreen was Gracie Holt, another well-reviewed professional cuddler; I knew she had a five star rating because I had checked.
Ariadna reached down, patted Allen on his shoulder, stroked his head, lullabied him in pouting voice, a mother soothing her baby's booboos.
Allen lifted his head, tried to meet her eyes, but his own eyes were glued shut with her secretions.
"My poor baby wanted a woman to cuddle while my belly was cuddling him, But Gracie can't come inside. No women can."
"Why not?" I asked, surprised to have found my voice again.
"Because, I only cuddle men. It says so on my profile. I used to cuddle girls, too, but no more." Ariadna picked up the phone, swiped the screen, moved from Gracie's page back to her own, turning the be-slimed cellphone toward me. "See?"
But I had seen enough.
I turned from her and the two men, both of whom continued to shiver and release low and pathetic mewling noises, begging to be returned to the belly.
Ariadna spoke to my back as I prepared to leave her bedroom. "There's room for one more, Detective. If you're tired of this cold world and want to try. Not everyone can come in, though. All you have to do to see if it's right for you is come press on the belly, see if your hand goes in."
I forced myself to turn back to her, stared on as she patted her belly, making the portal to the strange sanctum joggle as she thumped it.
I swallowed once. "And if I'm not worthy?"
She giggled at my fear. "No bolt of lightning will shoot forth to set you on fire or split you asunder. You'll simply feel flesh that yields only so much, and no more." She pressed her finger against the skin and fat, demonstrating its give, but also its resistance after she pushed past a certain point. Apparently she could not be swallowed by her belly, devoured in a self-swallowing like the mythical serpent eating its own tail.
"Do you want to find out?" she asked, in a playful voice. "See if you're ready to leave this cold world behind even if you don't know it yet in your waking mind?"
Truthfully I was more than a little tired everything. But I feared the warmth of her body more than the chill of the world. And so I left the room, the men's haunting pleas to be put back following me as I went.
She must have heeded their pleas, for soon there came the slurp of that warm and wet sloshing, then the liquidous roil of organs shifting to accommodate their bodies, returning the men to the hot and frothing soup inside her.
I kept moving down the hallway, all silent now except for my breathing, and the panting of the dog coming from the living room.
I rounded the hallway's corner to find Ramses raised up on hind legs, furiously humping the chintz chair arm, the plastic sheathing the furniture acting as prophylaxis. He glanced over at me once, purple tongue unfurled from his mouth and slicked in foam, before returning to the task at hand.
I ran back outside, relieved to find the sun still in place in its corner of the sky, something like sanity still reigning outside that bungalow.
The boy and girl were still on the sidewalk, both of them navigating the chalked squares of the hopscotch board.
Neither paid me any mind as I got back in my car, started the engine, pulled out.
Driving away, I cast a final look in my rearview, watched the boy and girl get smaller, wondered where the father was, or if they even had one. Thinking that maybe after Charlie and Allen spent enough time in that belly they might emerge again, only this time once more as children.
Or even worse, newborns.
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| Image generated with OpenAI |
Kids. That could be a problem.
I parked my Crowne Vic in the driveway behind an old Econoline van that didn't look like it had been washed or driven in years.
Neither of the kids took any notice of me. I imagined they were used to seeing strange men enter and leave their mother's house. Or maybe they were just some neighbor's kids, but comfortable enough to encroach on Ariadna's property without fear. For all I knew she had a reputation around here as a nice lady.
After getting out of my car, I proceeded up the walkway to the front door. There was no knocker, and the sole decoration was a long-dead Christmas wreath, most of its shed needles on the straw doormat. I knocked three times, stood back and waited, thinking I should have rung the bell, thinking she might be savvy enough to know a cop's knock when she heard one. But it was too late now, and a thump came from inside, followed by feet moving quickly down a carpeted staircase. Then a dog barked, not hostile but alert, sounding big, albeit friendly.
But dogs, like children, could quickly go from friend to foe, especially if they saw their favorite person on Earth being put into handcuffs.
The door opened and she stood there, dressed pretty much as promised on her Cozy Cuddle profile. She wore a white ribbed wifebeater and grey drawstring sweats, no socks or even house slippers, just bare and slightly dirty feet. There was some space between shirt and pants, exposing a white belly rippling with cellulite and traced with what looked like staple scars leftover from a c-section.
Were the two kids on the curb twins? I had no children myself, but had heard that sometimes they did c-sections for twin births as a precaution. I turned around, looked back toward the curb. The boy was dumping a load of rocks while the girl, having finished chalking her hopscotch board on the concrete, was ready to skip.
"Yes," Ariadna said, "They're mine."
"I thought so," I said, spinning back to her.
At her feet was the dog I'd heard, a German shepherd whose coat went seamlessly from golden to brindled to black. He seemed to be smiling but people claimed that was just panting, that the perception of a smile was just projection, the human need to see the human in every animal.
Ariadna smiled. "Won't you come in?"
"Thank you," I said.
Cops were like vampires. You had to invite us in (at least when we lacked warrants) but once you did, it was usually to your detriment.
Ariadna made me coffee, and also served me a slice of apple pie despite my polite refusals. I was trying to lose weight, moreover was prediabetic and not keen to have it turn into the real thing. But she insisted, and so I thanked her while letting the pie sit before me on the glass table, untouched, next to the coffee. I would have gladly had a sip of the joe, except I wasn't sure if it was drugged.
After serving me, she took a seat on a chair across from the couch where I had sat down. The whole living room set was upholstered in chintz and patterned with flowers and thorny vines. Everything was also covered in those plastic sleeves old people tended to put around their furnishings to extend their lives.
But Ariadna wasn't an old woman. Maybe the plastic was there for another reason?
Meanwhile the dog wagged his tail in a friendly manner while sniffing around my person. Eventually his rooting with the wet nose led him toward my crotch, where he continued to sniffle with the intensity of a pig discovering a trove of Alba truffles.
"Ramses!" Ariadna said.
Immediately he retreated to his mistress's side, heeling by her chair's arm without having to be told.
She petted him with one hand, cut her eyes toward my untouched coffee and pie, then looked at me. Her eyes were big and blue, watery though I didn't get the impression she was on the verge of tears. If anything, the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth suggested she found something amusing.
"So..." she began, "I figure you're not here for a session. You didn't make an appointment, and you're not dressed in cuddle clothes. Most people here for cuddles are dressed like I am." She held up her hands, inviting me to look again at her loose sleepwear.
I didn't bother. Instead, I cleared my throat, got to it. "I'm searching for a missing person."
"Just one?" She could no longer hold in the smile, and let it break across her face. She had freckles I hadn't noticed a moment before, robin's egg smatterings spotting her nose, forehead, and cheeks.
"Charlie Platt," I said. "His mother was worried about him."
"He's a grown man, sort of," Ariadna said, smiling at some kind of inside joke. "And his mother never showed concern for him before. Certainly no affection when it mattered, when he was a child. Did you know newborns can die from a lack of affection?"
"You know him, then?"
"You know I know him."
I nodded, happy at the turn things had taken. Happy that she wasn't trying to turn this interview into an interrogation. And since she had been honest with me thus far, I decided to reciprocate. "When I went into his apartment, the computer was still on. The window for Cozy Cuddle was still open. And your profile was onscreen. The chat you guys had had about your first potential session was still there, too."
I'd found it strange, but not exactly surprising that such a service existed. People were lonely and sometimes "lonely" was not simply a euphemism for horny. Some people really just wanted to be hugged, held, cradled, told it was going to be okay. Or they wanted to hold others, cradle them, spoon and snuggle them. Hell, most people wanted those things, most men included; they just wanted them after they'd had sex.
Not Charlie, though, and apparently not a lot of other men, either. Like Allen Payne.
"What about Allen Payne?" I asked.
"What about him?" The smile was still on her face, but more as a trace of what it previously had been, a frozen residue of that earlier spontaneous mirth.
"Well, we talk to each other on missing persons cases, and the lead detective there said Allen also disappeared after trying to set up a cuddle session."
"Not with me," Ariadna said.
"No," I agreed. "But this detective says that Allen saw you directly before he sent a message to this other girl."
"Gracie Holt." A slight note of irritation had entered Ariadna's voice. Was there competition between the two women? Was the cuddle world as cutthroat as everything else?
She waved a hand, her fingers slender and as pale as the rest of her body. "It doesn't matter," she declared, before shifting her weight on her chair, making the plastic over the chintz crinkle like a fresh diaper.
"It matters to the loved ones of Allen Payne and Charlie Platt."
She rolled her eyes. My attempts to play on her sympathy had failed. "That's not what I meant," she said, standing.
"What did you mean?" I asked.
"What I meant is that I can solve both your 'missing persons' cases right now." She squinted so a pair of wrinkles shaped like crosshairs appeared in the center of her forehead. "Why do they say, 'missing persons,' instead of 'missing people,' anyway? I always thought it was strange. Why do people become persons when they go missing?"
I ignored her last question. I had my own. "How can you solve both my cases now?"
She jerked her head toward the back of the house. "Come on," she said. "I'll show you."
I stood, reflexively patted at my holstered pistol hidden beneath my jacket I had refused to take off even after she offered to take it, and followed her down the hall. Ramses, meanwhile, remained heeled by the side of the chair so lately occupied by his curious mistress.
The hallway was short, its colorless walls cluttered with framed photos of Ariadna with her children, Ariadna with her dog, one photo of them all together, mom, dog, and children.
At the end of the hall she turned left, disappearing into a room.
I followed her, stood in the doorway and leaned against the jamb. It was dim in there, with bars of sunlight slanting against the closed venetians but not penetrating the room.
"Come in."
She moved to stand on her bed, a queen-size covered with a quilted bedspread and layers of fleecy blankets patterned with wolves baying at full moons.
The closet was open, piled high with clothes, a suitcase or two, nothing on hangers, probably no one hiding in there waiting to jump out.
I moved forward, but pushed the door until it hit the wall behind it, just in case someone was back there.
"Close the door." Her voice was little more than a whisper now.
I turned behind me, glanced briefly into the room opposite this one, as cluttered with toys as her room was with clothes and blankets.
"Come in," she said, again, a little more insistently this time.
I turned back to her and the door closed behind me, pushed into place by the lightest wind, like when someone runs by you quickly.
She laughed, took her wifebeater off, cast it to the side of the bed, letting her loose breasts flop free. The nipples were thick, ridged with big goosebumps, some red and engorged with blood, others pale and close to bloodless. They were everted, the areolas collapsed after heavy feeding, maybe even bites when her babes were learning to latch.
She slapped her belly then, sending the cellulite rippling in fleshy waves, releasing a sloshing noise like a waterbed's vinyl mattress getting smacked hard.
"Where's Charlie?" I asked.
"Right here."
She pulled her sweats down, exposing thick, tree trunk thighs framing a triangle of dark red pubic thatch. Stretchmarks striated outward from the insides of either thigh, reddish pink and resembling claw marks.
I stared on, neither repulsed nor aroused, just confused.
The fat in her belly began to ripple harder, as if she were jumping up and down, forcing the adipose tissue to jiggle in undulous waves. Except that she remained still, standing there with her hands on her hips, looking imperious, a conqueror with their foot firmly planted on their defeated foe's chest.
The skin of her belly, already loose and flabby, became more pliant, started pushing outward, responding to pressure from within, being tested to its tensile limits. Hands pressed against the flesh from the inside, leaving imprints, followed by a face, its mouth a moaning "O," the wailing portal matched by empty eye sockets, the visage all-but-featureless. The form within kept pushing until it somehow broke through the last membrane of skin, breaching the peritoneum without ripping tissue or unleashing torrents of blood.
A naked man fell out, landing on the bed with a soggy splat. He was coated in a translucent mucilage, the warm vitreous broth of her belly, scentless despite its sliminess. He looked up at me, shivering, cradling his arms to his body. The columns of his spine stood out sharply, like dorsal plates on the back of some saurian cryptid.
It was Charlie Platt, only looking slightly shorter than he looked in the photos in his apartment.
"Put me back in," he said. "Please, put me back."
"You see?" Ariadna asked.
I saw. But I could not speak.
"Now for Allen."
I wanted to tell her to stop, that it wasn't necessary, but my voice continued to elude me.
I could do nothing but watch as another featureless face silently screamed with its empty mouth and eyes, pressed its way against the skin from the inside. Ripped free of Ariadna's belly while seeming to cause her no pain, while she merely looked on, smiling with the lazy contentment of a bitch watching her newborn pups suckle.
Both Charlie and Allen lay there now, huddled together on the bed side by side, cold and shivering. Allen up against Charlie's body - belly to back - spooning to share what little heat they had between them.
When Ariadna's stomach had released Allen, it had also disgorged a small cellphone, remarkably still holding its charge, LED face aglow.
Onscreen was Gracie Holt, another well-reviewed professional cuddler; I knew she had a five star rating because I had checked.
Ariadna reached down, patted Allen on his shoulder, stroked his head, lullabied him in pouting voice, a mother soothing her baby's booboos.
Allen lifted his head, tried to meet her eyes, but his own eyes were glued shut with her secretions.
"My poor baby wanted a woman to cuddle while my belly was cuddling him, But Gracie can't come inside. No women can."
"Why not?" I asked, surprised to have found my voice again.
"Because, I only cuddle men. It says so on my profile. I used to cuddle girls, too, but no more." Ariadna picked up the phone, swiped the screen, moved from Gracie's page back to her own, turning the be-slimed cellphone toward me. "See?"
But I had seen enough.
I turned from her and the two men, both of whom continued to shiver and release low and pathetic mewling noises, begging to be returned to the belly.
Ariadna spoke to my back as I prepared to leave her bedroom. "There's room for one more, Detective. If you're tired of this cold world and want to try. Not everyone can come in, though. All you have to do to see if it's right for you is come press on the belly, see if your hand goes in."
I forced myself to turn back to her, stared on as she patted her belly, making the portal to the strange sanctum joggle as she thumped it.
I swallowed once. "And if I'm not worthy?"
She giggled at my fear. "No bolt of lightning will shoot forth to set you on fire or split you asunder. You'll simply feel flesh that yields only so much, and no more." She pressed her finger against the skin and fat, demonstrating its give, but also its resistance after she pushed past a certain point. Apparently she could not be swallowed by her belly, devoured in a self-swallowing like the mythical serpent eating its own tail.
"Do you want to find out?" she asked, in a playful voice. "See if you're ready to leave this cold world behind even if you don't know it yet in your waking mind?"
Truthfully I was more than a little tired everything. But I feared the warmth of her body more than the chill of the world. And so I left the room, the men's haunting pleas to be put back following me as I went.
She must have heeded their pleas, for soon there came the slurp of that warm and wet sloshing, then the liquidous roil of organs shifting to accommodate their bodies, returning the men to the hot and frothing soup inside her.
I kept moving down the hallway, all silent now except for my breathing, and the panting of the dog coming from the living room.
I rounded the hallway's corner to find Ramses raised up on hind legs, furiously humping the chintz chair arm, the plastic sheathing the furniture acting as prophylaxis. He glanced over at me once, purple tongue unfurled from his mouth and slicked in foam, before returning to the task at hand.
I ran back outside, relieved to find the sun still in place in its corner of the sky, something like sanity still reigning outside that bungalow.
The boy and girl were still on the sidewalk, both of them navigating the chalked squares of the hopscotch board.
Neither paid me any mind as I got back in my car, started the engine, pulled out.
Driving away, I cast a final look in my rearview, watched the boy and girl get smaller, wondered where the father was, or if they even had one. Thinking that maybe after Charlie and Allen spent enough time in that belly they might emerge again, only this time once more as children.
Or even worse, newborns.
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