Through crooked woods, the morning light. The porch was sheathed in heavy silence and cold air, piling up next to a stool that housed a bowl overflowing with cigarette butts. The paint that covered the railing was peeling with impressive enthusiasm, reaching for the ground with just as much tenacity as the weary skin under his eyes. He had been awake for twelve days on speed, but it didn’t matter much to him. For him, the world was only as big as the rain-beaten porch.

He let himself in and marveled at the soft darkness of the place. Kenneth had a talent back in those days. When he walked into a room, he would stand perpendicular in the doorway and begin to flatten himself against the walls, fill the corners, and satiate the space’s dimensions. When he spread out to such a boundless size, the lines would start the blur, the rules not really rules anymore but a sort of guesswork, metaphysical boundaries only a timid suggestion. Time was a game, his body just another sack of bones, crooked teeth and chromosomes.

With this, he was well on his way. It was easy once he made his mind up. He’d started perfecting this technique around the same time he saw a real honest-to-God fight for the first time, a real brawl. He was maybe eight or nine. Three black girls were beating the s*** out of a fat broad with a face like the moon, pasty and pockmarked and round as hell, you know. They ripped one of her braids out and flung it at the ground, completely intact. It was incredible. Someone ran up behind them and grabbed the thing, just like how bears snatch salmon right outta some river, for survival. It was amazing.

Well and anyway he had filled every corner of the room within a few minutes. Wyatt was sitting at the kitchen counter. He was wearing basketball shorts and no shirt, so people could see his tattoos. He was covered in goose bumps, though. It must have been worth it to him. Wyatt was a mess of paranoia, but he was alright.

“Heyman,” he spat. “Heyman, yougottasitdown. You look TIRED, yougottasitdown. Jesus. Jesus Christ. Idonthaveanythingforyou. I promise.”

Kenneth sat down next to him, his mind still wandering the ceiling and the walls. He was good at this kind of multitasking. Wyatt licked his lips nervously, his hands shaking.

“Will you please chill out,” Kenneth requested. “Goddam, I just need a little more, I know you got some around here somewhere, you gotta help me. You gotta help me, man. If I go to sleep now I’ll miss today, look outside, it’s beautiful, I can’t miss it. You gotta help me.”

Wyatt shivered, mumbled something to himself, trembling with chemically-expedited electricity. “Yeah, ok. F***,” he declared. “S***.” He disappeared into the house and Kenneth was left alone in Wyatt’s kitchen. The air was as cold as it was outside, but stained with coffee and smoke fumes, and the tangible blood and gristle of screaming matches and stagnant unhappiness. Kenneth was sensitive to that sort of thing. It was as obvious to him as the tortilla-thin walls, as the lazy clocks and the boots by the door.

The funny part was that he’d known Wyatt long before their only encounters were putting things in their noses to stay awake. Once when they were just kids, maybe six, Kenneth went up with Wyatt’s family to their cabin up in the woods. Wyatt’s mom brought up this parakeet she had back then, this pile of wings and skinny feet. She was obsessed with home videos, always filming everything that ever happened. It was endearing, up to a point. So, they were playing football outside and all the sudden this bird is dead in the grass, its head crushed flat into the ground and throat bleeding all over the place. His mom started freaking out, her camera still in her hand. Wyatt’s dad said to rewind it and watch it, and maybe they’d see what happened to the damn thing. Kenneth didn’t remember its name. So they were huddled around the screen watching it in slow motion, right? There it was. Kenneth’s foot coming down, frame by frame, crushing the bird’s head. The worst part is they didn’t even get mad. They just avoided the subject and treated him extra nice. It was an American experience.

Wyatt came back with a fistful of meth twisted up in saran wrap and a grimy dollar bill; they flipped their brains upsidedown and Kenneth tumbled into the static, the morning light spilling through the crooked woods again, his friend becoming a blur of soft edges and hard lines, shards of the sun stretched over fragmented pieces of him and a marching band trumpeting through his veins-

“I knew a guy who got lost in the woods for, like, eight years, I swear, I’m serious, he got smashed and drove his car right into a lake, he got out alright but damn, he was just stuck up there, he lived up in a cave and ate owls, man. He ate owls, I swear, he said it was like Mongolian beef but real dry, he would snap their necks and eat owls-”

“Shut up, I gotta tell you something, it’s been on my mind like nothin else, I gotta tell somebody or it’ll eat me alive, when I was just a kid I used to get so mad at my dad I’d sleep with a knife under my pillow, nobody really likes my dad, man, not even his parents, so they’re always getting him kitchen s*** for his birthday n stuff, you know, so he has all these knives, these kitchen knives, he has so many, I knew he wouldn’t notice, I slept with it under my pillow for two years, man, it was screwed up, I would think about stabbing him in the back, I was such a messed up kid.”

“Did you do it?”

“Naw, I didn’t do it, I really didn’t, I just thought about it all the time, you know. He’d be starin me down n s***, f***in sarcastic and mean, man, he was just mean, but I’d just sit there and stare back and I wouldn’t cry or nothing cuz I knew I had that knife if he ever took it too far, see.”

“I mean, that’s f***ed, you know, but I’d be more impressed if you really did it.”

“I’ll do it, f*** you man, I could do it if I wanted to, I just had a sense of mercy.”

“I’ll give you a dollar if you do it.”
--