I tried to work on the project and watch at the same time. I thought I saw one of the tall, pale figures sprint along the path in a blur between the two barns.
When the sun set, I got my flashlight and scarf and went down to the field again. If the figures had been there the one night, it stood to reason they might be there another.
Although the moon was still engorged, there were dark clouds rolling across the sky. I had to use my flashlight most of the way down. I tried turning it off before I got to the field, but the pale figures had seen it and climbed down behind the trees before I could call them.
My husband e-mailed me and asked if I was “settling into the necessary routine.” Those were his words: “settle” and “necessary.” I wrote back that I had settled on a routine, which was true.
Each day, I was hitting my daily goal on the project, but each day it seemed that the scope of the project elongated. Each finished part necessitated two new parts, to be completed down the line. I kept reaching what I thought would be the end of the project, which now was merely another middle point. These middles stretched endlessly.
I tried knocking on the doors, politely of course. The other residents never answered. When I pressed my ear to their doors, I thought I could make out the sounds of people trying to hold their breath.
Going down to the field became part of my routine. There was never anybody else there, but I sat in the grass and listened to the distant noises that I took to be coyotes and owls. The moon was not nearly as bright anymore, and everything was in shades of gray.
One night, after a particularly draining day of work on the project, I kicked off my shoes. I dropped my jacket and shirt and pants on the ground. Naked, I was as pale as they had been in the dark. I thought if they were gathering somewhere in the trees, maybe their eyes were better than mine and would spot me and think of me as one of their own.
I waded into the tall grass.
The next day, my work routine was interrupted by the colony phone. The phone had not rung the entire time I was there. I waited with my ear pressed against the door, hoping I’d catch someone answering. On the tenth ring, I went into the hall.
“Hello?” I said.
“Good. It’s you. I was hoping you’d be the one to answer.” The voice sounded exactly like my husband’s, but soon I realized it was actually the director of the colony.
The director said that she was very sorry, but that she was going to have to ask me to leave. There had been, in her words, “many complaints” about my “disruptive behavior” at the colony.
I started to apologize, saying that I hadn’t tried to disrupt anything. The director of the colony sighed. She said she was sorry, and that this never, or at any rate almost never, happened. Yet her hands were tied.
“I hope you got some work in, for your sake,” she said.
“But my project,” I said. “I’m only just getting into a routine.”
“I can give you a few hours,” the director said, “to get your things in order.”
A few hours later, a taxi appeared on the colony driveway.
I got inside.
ROUTINE
This morning I murder your mother, but then I always murder your mother. You’re in the barricaded bathroom weeping or possibly asleep. I use the machete as quietly as I can.
I understand why you can’t kill your mother, but if I’m being honest, it’s hard on me too. Even with strips of skin hanging off her flesh like peeling paint, she bears an uncanny resemblance to you. You’ve always had her proud cheeks and slightly sunken eyes.
Your mother dies slowly, moaning all the way down. This is the worst part. I would never admit this to you, but your mother’s moans recall the moans you made when we used to make love. Although we no longer have the strength to couple anymore, it is when I murder your mother that those happy memories come back to me.
One of your mother’s lopped-off hands falls on my boot. I pick up the hand and begin moving her, piece by piece, to the front yard. I move a safe distance away and collapse on the ground.
But your mother returns earlier than normal this time. Her parts recollecting, her long-dead flesh willing itself to still more life.
I roll over and pull the machete from her femur. It has dulled on her bones. This time it takes twice the effort, twice the strokes, and this when your mother is only half-reformed.
It was easier to murder your mother when we had the bullets, and easier still when we had the shotgun shells. Then again, what part of life isn’t harder these days?
This time, I find the shovel and begin to dig a pit. My fingers blister on the wooden handle. My legs ache.
I push the parts of your murdered mother into the pit one by one.
I get the gasoline that we foraged from the neighbors’ charred car. It spills on my hands, burning the blisters. I’m too weak to even cry.
I shuffle back to the house, the smoke of your mother in my clothes.
Do you remember when we first came to this house? It was the first home either of us had ever owned. Our own little cottage in the woods, with a big red mailbox and a hammock out back. We thought we had our whole lives ahead of us.
I want to say it was a happier time then, but they weren’t all happy times. We fought incessantly, and our income dried up along with the creek out back. You were still very beautiful to me, yet cold. I was afraid to wake you when I came home at night.
There was happiness too. There were days we lay in bed together until sundown, covered in sweat. Yet the bad times seemed destined to keep coming back, the same way your mother must reform and be murdered each day.
I find you in the bedroom. The sun is going down, and in the dying light, your skin looks almost as blue as your mother’s. How long have you been lying there, still?
Tomorrow, when the remains of your mother dust off their ashes and return, I will have to murder her again. The only way to break this cycle is by failing. If I fail, then you will have to murder me alongside your mother, or else I will have to murder you alongside her, or perhaps, if we are lucky, some other people huddled in some other house will have to murder the three of us together.
EVERYBODY WHO’S ANYBODY
Anne gave Arthur a cold look when he opened the door. He was in coattails and balancing a tray of iced drinks with a gloved hand.
“Arthur, you didn’t tell us this was a costume party!” Roberta said.
This was just like Arthur, Anne thought. Always doing something nasty and telling you when it was too late.
Then another Arthur walked out of the kitchen wearing a smile and a blue windowpane suit. “I see you’ve met my butler,” the new Arthur said. He stood next to the first Arthur and let out a laugh.
Anne’s eyes got very large, and her mouth opened a little bit. Roberta reached out and squeezed the first Arthur’s cheek with her thumb and forefinger.
“It feels so lifelike,” she said with delight. “What is it? Latex?”
“Roberta, you’re such a spark plug,” Arthur in the blue suit said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “And, Anne, you look like one in a million.”
A few weeks ago, Arthur had gone inside part of Anne. Soon after that, Arthur had gone inside several parts of Roberta. Roberta and Anne were old friends. The issue was still unresolved.
Arthur was an architect and owned the entire floor. Large glass walls exposed the twinkling darkness of the city. The interior was divided into new geometry by bright wood walls and paper doors. In the largest room, a half-dozen guests were sipping cocktails and admiring a marble sculpture of Athena budding out of the head of Zeus.