Like Bears in a Cave

You don't have to do anything, you know. Caves are for bears, but it seems really romantic to live in one with someone else. Things might get tense with all that sleeping on the ground and difficulty with food, but it would just take getting used to.

Would you eat brain? Not like, a person - but, if you caught something and ate it and let's say you've been living in a cave for a while now, long enough to be kind of forgetting words and the stuff that you used to do, and you caught something and were going to eat it, every part, as much as you could, do you think you might get to a point eventually where you eat brain? Cooked or uncooked?

No. I don't think I could. I think about it and I can almost sense the texture. In my hand and then on my lips and then between my teeth and then on my tongue. And that's about where I can feel my throat closing up. I can imagine gagging. And now I’m thinking that a brain would taste electric, in a way… tinny, metallic, pulsing. No matter how long it’s been dead. All of those intangible things are floating in a brain, you know. Emotions and feelings and memories and longing and hurt. I think a brain would taste metallic, electric. Even though it's soft.

Then what would you do with the brains from all of the things that you catch and eat? Leave them in their skulls? Because skulls are good for decoration or bowls or to top a walking stick or other things, but you would have to take the brain out first.

I think I would bury them, maybe even make up some sort of ritual, because it seems that important. Something that big should be in the ground.

That big?

It's small, yeah, but like I said, it's full of all these little floating orbs that you can't see or feel or know. There's so much in it, it should go in the ground. To help it stop.

So, you would find your own things to do.

Yeah, because you don't have to do anything. You could go live in a cave, it would work. Or something else. That's only one idea, and there's probably at least an infinity.

Would you live in a cave with me?

Why wouldn't I?

Because you don't know me.

I don't have to. I don't have to do anything. 'Knowing' is just another one of those untouchable orbs, it's not even something that you can pick up and eat.

Then let's go live in a cave.

Alright. I'm not doing anything else today.

47300 Vine st. There's a lattice arch in front of my house, nothing's growing on it. And my house is blue.

...

He stood outside of her house and suddenly couldn't remember a second of his thirty minute walk there. Was he going to actually knock on her door? He already was and she was already opening it and her face was flush and her hair was dusty and long and curled up here and there in little wisps. She looked bored, but all at once awake and energized. Her eyes were wide open, her pupils lost somewhere in the space between the two of them.

"Why did you trust me to come over here?" he asked without thinking, without breathing.

She barely lifted one shoulder with a small shrug. "You said you wouldn't eat brain and you had a lot of good reasons for it. It made you seem un-dangerous."

He didn't feel the way that she described him. He felt like he was someone that people should stay away from, but he felt that from a place of pity for himself. He was tall in a too-tall way and overweight and his hair had grown long in the sort of way that made it obvious that he spent too much time alone.

"I made some sandwiches." She turned abruptly with the words still hanging from her mouth and she trotted into the kitchen, leaving the front door open.

He knew that he should go in, that she was expecting him to. But he couldn't, so he sat down on the cement step and stared inside her home through the open door. There was a rug on the floor that was white and red and looked like a giant doily. It had obviously been knit by hand and was kind of like a circle-star with lots of small points. It was spread out on the floor in front of a rocking chair. The rocking chair had a tool box sitting in it. He wondered why.

She came back and sat down in front of him, on the inside of the door frame. She had two plates and handed him one while staring heavily at him. He took the plate, his hand feeling warm as soon as it touched the ceramic, knowing that her hand was also still touching it -- and knowing that she had made this for him, that she barely knew him and yet wanted to nourish him. He felt the coldness as soon as she moved her hand away.

"You look like my ex," she said suddenly, staring at him harder.

"I do?" he asked carefully.

"Yeah. It's weird because you have the same last name as him, too. I mean, it’s a common one, so… but I was already thinking about it, and then you got here and you look like him and it made me wonder: did I make you look like that by thinking about it so much? I mean, you didn't exist to me, visually, until you got here, so maybe I somehow formed what you looked like as you came into existence, my existence." Her words came out fast and mumbled and as soon as the last word was out, she forcefully shoved half of her sandwich into her mouth, pushing down the corners with her index fingers as she held the sides, and tore it by moving her head to the left, without using her teeth. Before chewing, she looked at him again and whispered through the bread. "I'm sorry I said that you look like my ex..." But he was already crying, unable to choke it back.

He had found her on the forum for that fantasy series that they both read, just like his older brother told him about before. And he knew that she liked to have vague and macabre conversations with anyone who would start one with her, and he knew that she had met his brother because they started talking on there and she asked him over to her place the same day, even though he was joking about being a necrophiliac. He saw it as something easy, something that he had insider information on and why shouldn't he use it... he wanted to sleep with her and he didn't care that his brother was dead. Or maybe he wanted to because his brother was dead.

But she was just a strange girl; not something to use to be closer- through betrayal- to his brother. It wasn’t going to anger him out of the ground.

He wiped at his face with his sleeve and awkwardly hurried his large frame to its feet.

"Thanks."

He started staggering away through the front yard, to the black tar street lit up with the whiteness of the sun. She got up, managing to kick up both of their plates as she did. He turned around to the crashing sound of ceramic against wood and saw her running at him. In front of him, she stopped hard, looked down at her feet, and tugged on his sleeve.

"I'm lonely."

...

Her bed was like an old woman's... a bed ruffle and a cheap, over-embroidered, faded and threadbare peach-colored comforter with the stuffing inside all in knots and lumps. Everything matched; each piece of furniture was part of a cheaply manufactured set. It all looked very tacky and barely lived in. He loved it, for some reason.

Everything about her was like dust. Even the way she acted, the way her face contorted, the way she didn't sweat even though it was hot out, even though he was shaking her body. His large frame felt strange against her smallness as he thrust against her with rage, with sadness, with self pity. He pushed his body against hers so that she wouldn't feel so alone, even though he didn’t feel like his proximity to anyone could possibly mean that they weren’t alone. Every arched movement felt like he was filling something within both of them at once; some sort of warmness was running through the blood that wasn't there the moment before he threw her down on that old woman's bed and saw how her smile was like smoke and how she moved with slow, curling movements like a pile of disturbed dust.

All of her clothes had slipped softly off, not making a sound as each piece was tossed to the floor. He grabbed up fistfuls of her hair, but it was all made of weightless strands and felt like nothing in his hands. Her skin was dry and cold and he was filled with an overwhelming need to make her warm and wet, so he pushed his palm sternly against her chest, pinning her down. His lips drew together and eyebrows lurched in towards each other creating a dark crease in the skin between them as he pushed into her.

...

He left with an understanding that he should come back the next day, though he couldn't say why. She didn't tell him that... but it felt like that, and he wanted to assume rather than ask and get an answer that he didn’t want.

The next day when he went to knock on her door, the impact of his fist pushed it open. He paused, unsure, then wrapped his hand around the wood and pushed it further, edging his eyes over, looking in. She wasn't there, and the toolbox on the rocking chair was gone. He went inside, stepping carefully, making no noise. He stopped at the waist-high bookshelf that sat against the wall opposite the rocking chair and ran his finger along the top of it, collecting a small pile of grainy, smokey dust. He stared at it longingly, then took both of his hands and placed them palm down on top of the bookshelf, at opposite ends. He slid his hands along the surface towards each other, pushing together a growing mound of dust. He closed his eyes once his hands met in the middle.

She couldn't live in a cave with me. The water would destroy her.

He absently played with the dust, flipping over his hands and coating them, like coating meat in a pile of flour. The two of them could stick together easily, but they couldn't live in a cave or near the ocean or even have a pond in their backyard. That's when he remembered that his brother had drowned, and he suddenly saw the bond between his brother and her. And he realized that he could be less afraid of death with her; at least he'd be safe from dying like his brother.

He stood there for an hour with his palms leaning against the short bookshelf. Becoming aware of himself again once pins and needles started to spread through his wrists, he moved away from the shelf and sat down in the corner opposite the front door, still slightly ajar, and watched it shakily grow dark outside. As the air from outside flowed in through the open door, there was a scent, familiar and sharp. Wet concrete. Soggy dirt. He heard rain steadily splattering on the leaves of the shrubs outside the door.

It was dark enough that he couldn't see at all - but he could hear. Hear the world growing warm and wet, hear himself breathing, alone. The sound of one person in a dark place, huddled in the corner of a cave.