Fiction | Over Heart/Under Soul

Emily woke up in a stranger’s body and her feet on the ceiling. Just her feet and nothing more. She could look up and see right into the empty holes where her legs should’ve been. She knew they were hers like anyone knows an apple is red—deeply and fundamentally, but without any real idea why. How’d they get up there? she thought, staring up at them from her sweat-stained mattress on the floor. How’d I get down here? What’s my name again? Her curled up toes were bumping against the ceiling fan with a slow thunk, thunk, thunk. The sight was so funny that she couldn’t help but laugh, and when she did, her voice came back new. It was deep, dry, and when she looked down at her body as naked as the day, she saw a forest of hair, thick, dark, and curly. There was a penis down there, too. That made her laugh again, though she was less sure why this time. Her new feet, the ones attached to her now, were ugly, fat things with nails discolored yellow and bulbous callouses at the joints. She thought they suited her very much.

Getting up with some effort, she started to take in her surroundings. An unknown place, every bit a stranger as her body. It was empty, save that gross old mattress, with an opening to the right which let out the kind of fluorescent light that made her sure it was a bathroom, and a closed door behind her. When she walked, her feet up above followed. They didn’t make a sound.

In the bathroom (I knew it, there was never a doubt in my mind) was a mirror. She wasn’t quite sure how to feel about what she saw in it. A beard, rough and at least three days old. This time she didn’t laugh. Who am I? she thought. She couldn’t even remember her own name anymore. Knowledge that had once been there, that she knew she should know, had slipped away like dream dregs. God, I’m ugly. These wrinkles, these bags, and what’s with the black eye?

She tried snooping around for a clue about her, maybe a name on some pills, but the bathroom was as clean and empty as an in-store model. So was the bedroom now that she thought about it. Everywhere she looked, every wall and floor and object, filled to the brim with emptiness. It all reminded her of something. A room in a red rock tower with breathing walls, a man with a praying mantis head, a loneliness and a longing she’d never known before.

Back in the bedroom she took a real close look at her feet again. Step left, they stepped left; step right, they stepped right. But the movement was off, all wrong in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Delayed? Emily jumped. Half a second later her feet jumped too. She took off in a sprint then changed course suddenly, only to come to a halt just as quick. Her feet followed along in a fluster, taking a few too many steps at the turn and overshooting the stop a little, correcting themselves with quick adjustments. They’re trying to mimic me. She stared into the black holes at the ankles. There was nothing there.

It took her a moment to notice the sound. It came to her at first like a trick of the ears, distant, soft, dampened and obscure. Then it hit the consciousness in a violent flash. Ring ring. Ring bring bring. A telephone. Someone was calling.

Emily flung the closed bedroom door open and rushed out into her new home.

It was big and it was empty, walls and ceiling and floor all cheap faux-wood that felt more like fake plastic than anything. She was standing on a second floor hallway, one side a low railing with a flight of stairs leading to the rest of the house: A wide box room, weak lights buzzing on a ceiling too high. In the middle were two fold-out chairs and several empty beer cans. As for the phone—

Ring bring bring.

She saw it sitting on its own little table at the base of the steps, a cheap old cube of a thing with fat numbers and a small light blinking red.

Ring bring bring.

Emily hurried down the stairs, new feet slapping against wood, old feet silently following overhead, and picked up the receiver to quiet static.

“Hello?”

“Where is she?”

“What?”

“Oh, please Rodeo, please. It’s Marybeth. You found her, didn’t you? You know where she is don’t you? Is she there? Is she with you now? Where is she, Rodeo? Please, I can’t take this anymore, let me see my baby.”

That’s right, Emily thought, my name is Rodeo. How could I forget?

“Now’s not a great time, Ms. Horizon,” she said, because just as she knew her name was Rodeo, she knew this woman was Marybeth Horizon.

“I don’t give a damn what time it is. You called me, you told me—I just listened to the answering machine not a minute ago, listened to you say you’ve found her, listened to you tell me to call this goddamn number as soon as I could.”

“I’m sorry. Why don’t you come over? I’m sure we have a lot to talk about.”

“And where exactly, you piece of work, is ‘over’?”

Emily paused. Where is here? She didn’t know a thing, not even the time of day, and looking around she noticed for the first time that there wasn’t even a single window in the whole place and no doors either, except for the one to the bedroom and an open archway next to her that didn’t seem to go to anywhere useful. As far as she could tell, there was no way out of this house just as there was no more time and no space, not really, not in any way that mattered. Emily finally understood the truth of the situation. She was in a world all her own, trapped and alone, her only connection the clipped voice of a hysterical woman over the phone.

“I want you to figure that out for me,” she said.

“What? Rodeo, you son of a bitch, where’s my daughter? I am not playing here, this isn’t the time for jokes. I swear to God if you don't—”

The line went dead with a click beep hiss. Emily stood alone calling out to nobody, “Hello? Ms. Horizon? Marybeth? Hello?” but it was all pointless. Her feet waited above. The light on the phone continued to blink. Emily fiddled with it for a minute and started the answering machine.

You have twelve missed calls. First missed call. August 22^nd, 2008. 12:41pm.

An unknown voice. A man.

“Hello? What's happening?”

* * *

Rodeo woke up lying on the ceiling. He had the biggest headache he could ever imagine, a migraine like a hand-drill slowly turned through the left eye socket and right into the brain. He could hardly even see it was so bad, half his world black clouds and sparking floaters. When he managed to look to the floor, he saw his feet waiting above his body. No, he thought. No, no, no. Let me go back. Let me go back to the mall. He’d been so close.

“Hello? What’s happening?”

A voice popped the bubbling thoughts, and he forgot all about them or what they might’ve meant in the same way someone forgets a dream when waking up. He wasn’t anything anymore, an upside down existence with life at the tip of the tongue. The voice was cold, muffled, fuzzy. Rodeo could hardly make it out, but he could tell that it came from a phone sitting on a table by his old feet.

Third missed call. August 22^nd, 2008. 1:42pm.

“Hello? What’s happening?”

Rodeo looked at himself and wasn’t quite sure how to feel about his body, so naked and young. There was hardly a hair to be found, except faint ones on breasts he hadn’t had before and down where his penis used to be. It made him feel uncomfortable to look at it. He hated the youth the most. He wished to God he looked older. He couldn’t see his face anywhere, but he could feel it and know that his hair was long, his cheeks full, his chin smooth.

Fifth missed call. August 22^nd, 2008. 2:37pm.

“Hello? What’s happening?”

Set to the repetition of the machine, Rodeo searched for an understanding of his place. There was an upstairs to the home he was in, connected by a high ceiling and a second floor loft. His feet down on the floor were following him. He tried stepping onto the wall and walking down to collect them, but gravity had other plans, so instead he walked over the stairs but from the side, and his feet must’ve got confused by this, because they bumped into the wall of the staircase and, when he moved back to the center of the ceiling, weren’t under him anymore but a few steps behind. He crossed over to the second floor and his feet, all mixed up, wandered off somewhere under him and disappeared from view.

Eighth missed call. August 22^nd, 2008. 3:40 pm.

“Buzz buzz. It’s all set up, brother. Client’s pleased as peach, exactly like I told you they would be. Didn’t I tell you that there’s no reason to worry? Didn’t I say it’d all turn out okay? PK called about the issue in Vegas, but it’s fine, everything’s set up and working perfect. Tested it myself. Password’s…well, it’s the same as always. We only gotta wait and keep our eyes peeled for trouble until things calm down in a few days, and then we’ll be sitting sweet as cherry pie. This is what we’ve been waiting for, brother. I really think this is the one. I’m at the home, up top. Come on by when you get this, we should talk abo— “

Thunk.

Rodeo stopped. The voice below him faded to silence in the face of divided attention. But he couldn’t help it. His footstep just now was different. Hollow. He looked down. There, in the corner of the ceiling to the left of an open door to a bedroom (get a load of that mattress), was the outline of a faint square cut into the false wood. There was more to this home. Underneath and out of sight, his feet danced.

Rodeo bent down and pulled at a tiny little ring of metal he felt like a fool for not noticing, and the square swung open, vomiting out an unsteady ladder that crashed its legs to the ground right in front of the bedroom and leaving a hole where once there was nothing. He got on his hands and knees, bowed genuflect, belly to the ceiling, and peered inside.

Ninth missed call. August 22, 2008, 5:23pm.

“Hello? What’s happening?”

* * *

The next time Emily blinked, she was in a part of the home she didn’t recognize. The ceiling was lower, and from the side she could see that it led out to the main room. Her feet weren’t anywhere to be seen. Where the hell did they go? The room seemed like a kitchen, except there was nothing installed but empty cupboards, empty counters, and empty pantry space, all stocked with absolutely nothing. It was like her in that way. Nothing filled with nothing. She started knocking on the floor and the walls and anything she could. There had to be something here. Even if not a way out, something. She stepped into one of the built-in cupboards, hitting the walls to dull thumps. Nothing after all. This house and her were one and the same. She dropped to the floor and curled up into as deep of a ball as she could. Why is this happening?

And then a door that shouldn’t have been there, hidden perfectly like nothing more than another section of the wooden walls, opened up in the main room.

“I told you, Spooky, don’t matter if we’re here or there, we use the names until this whole mess is over and done with.”

“Sorry, Joe—Mosquito—sorry. You know me, I’m a little slow is all. Especially with all this. Who do you suppose set off the alarm? Someone from PK? One of the Powell twins? You think somebody’s trying to snipe our product, set us up, make a fool of us?”

Two figures, one large with thin stick arms, one skinny with a neck too long, walked in the front door.

“Nobody will be doing a thing,” the big one, Mosquito, was saying. “Don’t worry, brother. I don’t know who came in here or how, but if they’re still in these walls, you can be sure they’re not leaving. We’re going to take care of this, Spooky. We’re going to be okay.”

“You’re right. Of course you’re right. You’re always right. It’s gonna be okay and we’re gonna get our money and live the way we were meant to live. I mean, the alarm must’ve been a bug or a cat or something, right? It was just a mistake, right? One of those, what do you call them? Glitches.”

“Yeah.” Mosquito rubbed his chest. “Yeah, maybe that’s all there is to it. Say, sweep the first floor for me, just to be safe. I’ll go check upstairs.”

Hidden away in her cupboard, Emily heard two pairs of steps, one heavy and becoming more distant, the other lighter and coming closer. Names sparked like synapses in her head. Mosquito, Spooky, PK, Rodeo, product and me. Familiarity taking trips from the brain to the tongue but leading nowhere. She didn’t know who these people were, but the one thing she did know was there wasn’t a chance in hell they were her friends. The footsteps were getting closer. There wasn’t anywhere to hide.

“Can’t wait to be done with this mess,” Spooky said to himself, walking over to the kitchen. “Knew we never should’ve gotten into this business. Honestly, what do people even see in that place? Gives me the creeps. And how does it even work?”

Emily scrambled to her feet and pushed up hard against the cupboard wall. The footsteps were so loud they might as well have been her own, his voice like a muttering in the ear.

“If only Joe had never found out about PK. If only that dirtbag Rodeo hadn’t screwed us over in Vegas. If only, if only, my whole life nothing but if onlys.”

Emily pushed even harder to the wall as if she thought she could melt right into it as Spooky came into view. His nose. His cheeks. The start of an eye. Emily’s heart swelled into her mouth.

“What the—"

A dull bang echoed from above. Spooky spun around and rushed out of the kitchen. Mosquito, halfway up the stairs, smiled at his partner and put a finger to his lips, eyes pointing up. “Buzz buzz.” Spooky nodded, pulled a gun from his pocket, and started up the steps in awkward bounds of two, passing Mosquito to take the lead while his brother, who was holding a taser, crouched down and watched from the base.

The whole place was silent. Emily didn’t even dare breathe.

* * *

Rodeo was in a mall entirely unlike any mall he’d ever seen before. It was big for one, impossibly big, bigger than even the concept of big could contain, made of a blood red rock so soft to the touch that it crumbled in the hands as if the whole place bubbled up from the earth itself like suds in a bath. And each floor, continuing on for what seemed like forever, was a whole new world of business and commerce. On the fifty-third floor, giant televisions displayed restaurant menus in an alien currency he didn’t recognize, shelves stocked to bursting with plush toys of creatures he thought he knew but couldn’t quite put his finger on. On the eighty-seventh, massage parlors and palm reading tents littered the halls, signs of hands and bodies and feet plastered like a million disassembled corpses. On the two-hundred-and-thirty-first, bathrooms on bathrooms on bathrooms, toilets as far as the eye could see. And on every floor and every inch, the walls—cheap partitions that only partly covered the cavernous expanses of rock the mall was carved out of—were breathing. They expanded and contracted, rose and fell, and if you put an ear up to the walls you could hear them too, gasping in air in great slow gulps. There wasn’t a single soul in the whole place besides him.

Time didn’t matter much in there. Rodeo didn’t know if it had been an hour or a minute or a year, but he knew he’d been wandering as an ant in that infinite place for long enough that he started to forget his own name. He started to forget a lot. Memories of a home, an upside down hole, a cellphone in an attic and a sentence spoken, all faded until there was only the mall and a strange sense that he was missing something. What was it again? The word “redial” repeated in his head so much he could feel his brain ache.

After the number of the floors stopped meaning anything, Rodeo wandered into a bathhouse hidden in the back of a store named Picturesque with naked mannequins lining the display case. Not a single one of them had breasts or genitals or eyes or even lips. He wasn’t sure how he knew it was there, but by that point it didn’t matter.

Things were as different in the bathhouse as they were the same. The breathing walls gave way to red rock like coals, heating up an unending pool not quite knee deep, steam filling up the air until he might as well have been walking through a cloud. Stalagmite statues made from the rock rose up from the pool by the dozens, each and every one resembling a posed body, contrapposto, slouched, crying, thinking, dancing, praising.

 And there, once Rodeo had waded for so long that there was only a hazed-out horizon in any direction, floating in the water like Ophelia among the joyous, weeping figures, was what he’d been searching for.

“Emily.”

* * *

“Spooky. Buzz buzz, brother! What’s going on up there, man? What’s happening?”

It’d been nearly a minute. A minute of stillness, of anticipation and of waiting; Emily waiting for Mosquito to move, Mosquito waiting for his brother to answer. But he couldn’t wait much longer. He fidgeted about and repositioned and craned his neck but couldn’t get a sight on the upstairs, much less his brother.

He couldn’t stand it. After a few more seconds, he swore under his breath, gripped his taser, and stormed the stairs. At the same time, Emily took off in the opposite direction for where the two men had entered. I’m sorry, my toes, she thought. But to her dismay, the door was gone. No handle, no knob, not even an edge to grab; just the faint rectangular outline of an exit that should be there and something resembling a keyhole hidden in a fake knot of wood. If she only had a bobby-pin or a toothpick maybe she could find a way, but in a house as naked as she was, there was nothing to be done. They must have a key. With no other options, she braced herself and followed after the big man back up the stairs. At the very least, she had a feeling they wouldn’t kill her. Not now, not here.

The second floor was different than she remembered. There were new stairs smack dab in the middle of the hall, hanging out perfectly over the room she’d woken up in and leading up to an open hole in the ceiling leading to who knows where. Mosquito was at the base of those stairs, staring at the upside-down pit. Dangling from his back pocket, hooked up to a keychain, was a doorknob.

“Spooky, you up there?” he shouted.

Silence.

“What’s going on, what’s the situation? Talk to me!”

From the hole, “There’s a plumber, Mosquito. They got a plumber!”

The nervous caution left Mosquito in an instant. The color in his face drained and he bolted up the new stairs, shouting up to Spooky, “Shit! Don’t do anything stupid, brother! I’m coming!”

Emily watched him vanish into the abyss. It only took her a moment to realize what must be up there with them. My feet. She followed, quiet as a mouse, into the ceiling.

Mosquito arrived in time to see Spooky reach up and touch the abyss of the feet.

“No! Dave, stop!” he shouted. It was too late. Spooky Dave Kieslowski was there and then he wasn’t. There was no movement, no falling, not even a blink. His body simply ceased to be, as if it had never been a thing in the first place. All that was left were his feet and a gun, dropped to the floor next to an old burner phone Mosquito had forgotten up there the night before, LCD screen still shining green.

“God fuck!” Mosquito threw the taser to the ground behind him and pulled out a pair of black rubber gloves. Emily watched, head peeking out the hole like a gopher, eyes darting between the weapon only feet away from her and the doorknob hanging half out from Mosquito’s back pocket as he snapped the gloves on and plunged his hands into the holes where her ankles should be.

“You idiot,” he muttered, rummaging blindly through the foot. “You fool. You know not to do things alone. What do I always tell you? Jesus Christ in heaven, what a mess. This is why you don’t fiddle with the handle. This is why you call, not touch.” He kept talking as he fumbled around inside the foot. “They must be trying to find her. Someone must’ve hired them. This is why we do things proper, Spooky. This is why. God, oh God, what have you done, brother?”

Eyes unblinking, Emily inched forward and reached out. Her fingers brushed the metal of the knob.

* * *

Christ, she really is here, Rodeo thought, and touched Emily’s shoulder. It melted like wet sand, fingers running straight through her. Her insides were cold.

“Can you hear me, Emily? What am I saying, of course you can’t. You aren’t even here, at least that part of you. But listen, Emily, even if you can’t. Your mom, she’s looking for you, she wants you back more than anything in the world I’m pretty sure, and she hired me to make it happen. Do you understand, Emily? My name’s Rodeo. I’m a plumber. I’m here to take you home.”

His fingers wriggled around the inside of her arm. They were stuck in there now, but that was fine. He didn’t have any intention of letting go anyway.

Among the steam, one of the stalagmites stirred. Slowly, silently, it rose up, bits and pieces falling into the water but not making a sound, and stepped towards Rodeo. It was a middle-aged man, gut large and hairy. They had the head of a praying mantis.

“Oh no,” Rodeo whispered.

“Hello?” the man said. He was holding one of Emily’s legs in his right hand even though Rodeo was looking right at her and could see all her limbs were fine. In his left he had an axe. His voice stuttered like a broken radio. “What’s happening?”

A customer.

“You’re from PK?”

“PK? No glot, the red rock isn’t free. You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Look,” Rodeo said, slowly picking Emily up and stepping back. “I don’t know who you are and to be honest, right now I don’t care. I’m here for her, that’s all. Let’s both make it easy and pretend we didn’t see each other, alright? Business is closed. Go and complain, go get your money back, go try somewhere else, or better yet, stop. Get your rocks off some other way, because take it from me, there isn’t anything good to be gained from this. One day PK is going to screw you. That’s what they do. They probably already have.”

“Bookmarked? Drink wine after a shower. I paid. Bank’s all red, bet it on black. Voyeur eighteen plus cuckold watching. I paid.”

Rodeo sighed. It was never any good trying to reason with customers.

“Well, you paid wrong,” he said. “Sorry.”

“I paid. I paid, I paid, I paid, I paid.”

The mantis lunged towards Rodeo and swung the axe down heavy. Hand still stuck in Emily, Rodeo dove with the body, axe tip tickling his back and splashing into the silent water behind him. Shit. He scrambled up with Emily, and looked around frantically for something, anything, he could use as a weapon. Why couldn’t she have been in a gun shop? Not a single damn thing here but water. But there was no more time to think. They swung again. Rodeo jumped back and took off running with Emily in his arms. Exit, exit, where the hell’s the exit? He could hear the mantis right behind him laughing or crying, or maybe both.

He ran and ran until his arms and legs were so tired they could fall off and then he ran some more, but he must’ve ran in the wrong direction, because it wasn’t long before he hit a great wall of the rock bodies all intertwined like a rat king, reaching up towards something unseen. He bolted left, but more bodies rose from the water as if they knew where he was trying to go; he went right, and they did the same. There was nowhere else to go. Just my luck. He turned to face the customer.

“Did you know?” the mantis said, approaching slowly. “Cut off the head and the arms feel lighter. Does she feel lighter? Do you?” He raised the axe and swung. Rodeo curled up around Emily’s body and braced for the end.

It never came. Rodeo opened his eyes and looked up. One of the statues born from the rock had caught the weapon between its fingers, bits of red flaking off. With great effort, the mantis pulled his axe back and stumbled into the water as the statue broke off from the mass of rock corpses to fall between the two. By then it wasn’t a statue anymore. Rodeo saw their face.

It was Spooky. Rodeo groaned.

“Jesus, Dave, you and your pain in the ass brother really can’t leave anything alone, can you? Didn’t have enough in Vegas?”

“Rodeo? Is that you, Rodeo? Oh God, why’d I stop him? Why didn’t I let you get killed right on out of here? Why’d I have to touch her?” Turning to the mantis, “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll get rid of this man right away so you can enjoy the rest of your day. I’m really sorry. These things happen sometimes—double bookings and accidents and all that—but PK will do everything in its power to make this right.” Back to Rodeo. “And what do you mean ‘have enough’? We beat you blue back there. Only reason we didn’t kill you was because it’d have reflected bad on us.”

Rodeo frowned. “Not how I remember it,” he muttered.

“Say, why’d you do it, Rodeo? Why’d you have to turn plumber? We had a good thing going, didn’t we? PK has taken care of us, haven’t they? This business makes us as lot of money, doesn’t it? You know how close we are to being made, being out of it, being able to stand on our own feet. Didn’t we mean anything to you?”

“Dave,” Rodeo said gently. “I hate you. Always have. I hate you so much I can barely take it. I hate you and how incompetent you are and how slow you are and how you treat customers like anything other than puddles of scum and I hate your little brother and how blind he is and I hate PK with their so-called tech, whatever the hell it is, and I hate their threats and strong-arming and lies. I hate it all. Why would I have stayed? You all make me want to kill myself, Dave.”

There was quiet for a moment. Spooky’s face went pale, then bright tomato red. When he managed to speak, his voice shook, barely contained. “It’s Spooky. How many times do I have to tell you? On business, my name is Spooky.”

The customer watched the both of them with his beady bug eyes. “Tango soft wrapped exclusive and now. I paid. Decline. I paid.” And with that he charged at them both. At the same time, Spooky lunged towards Rodeo who, not knowing what else to do, dove into the water right as the axe went into Spooky’s head.

He could stand in the water fine, but he could dive miles deep in it, too. Floating all around him were dozens, no, hundreds of the girl’s limbs, all popped off from her like the parts of a doll, bloodless and smooth. Just as many of her heads were down there too, eyes open and glancing all around, following Rodeo as he sank.

He was so close. All he needed was to get her out of the mall. Get out of the mall, get into his car, and drive the two of them away. Then everything would be okay. They’d go back to their bodies, go back to her mom, go back to how things were.

When he dared look back, he saw his leg. It was floating away, the customer pulling his weapon back as naturally and smoothly as if he were on land. They took the leg of Emily he was holding and shoved it into Rodeo’s new stump. Rodeo’s vision began to fade. No, no, please, no. The last thing he saw was the eyes of a thousand hers looking his way. He could hear the mantis crying.

* * *

Rodeo woke up on the ceiling. He couldn’t see his feet anywhere, but he didn’t think about it much. There were eyes below him instead.

Spooky was looking right up at him, Mosquito still pulling his body out of the feet. Slowly, slowly, Spooky raised a finger. His mouth opened.

“Rodeo,” he said in a whisper. Then, in a shout that shook the walls, “Rodeo! It’s Rodeo, Joe, he’s in her! He’s on the ceiling!”

Mosquito shot a look up.

“Rodeo, you son of a bitch,” he yelled. “I should have known it was you. Couldn’t ever have been anyone else. Fate got us three wrapped up tight like a ring. So what? Wasn’t satisfied throwing us to the dogs? Wasn’t happy enough betraying your partners on the biggest get of our lives? Had to make sure this one falls apart too? Well, I’ll let you in a little something, Rodeo. I’m going to kill you.” Mosquito scrambled for Spooky’s gun. “I’m going to shoot you through your stupid little head. She’s ours. You hear me? That body is property of PK.”

Rodeo knew he was out of options. There was only one way to get her out of there now, only one way to bring her back from the mall. For a moment, less than a second all told, he looked down at this body he’d been trapped in, so young, alive, bruised and tired. He looked at his pretty little toes with their pretty little nails. He looked and he looked at this him that he could hardly bear to see and was so happy to know existed, this body he’d spent so much time searching for and finally found.

“You know, Joe,” he said, “Out of everything I hate—and believe me, it’s a lot—the thing I’ve always hated the most was this job. Nothing about it makes a goddamned lick of sense.”

Rodeo started to run.

“No! Christ, no!” Mosquito lunged for Spooky’s gun. Loaded, aimed.

Bang.

Smoke rose, glass shattered; bodies reflected and mirrored in dancing shards a thousand times over. It was too late. The bullet met air. Rodeo had already thrown himself out the window.

Mosquito ran up to the broken glass and looked up to the sky. He could see a body floating up far in the distance like a lost balloon. “That fool. That lunatic fool. Why’d you have to go and do a thing like that?”

Mosquito stamped at the floor, pounded the wall, and kicked the burner phone so hard it shattered. He shouted and cursed and screamed, and when he was too tired to do any of that anymore, “Come on, Dave. We gotta get out of here.”

“What about our names, Mosquito?” Spooky asked, standing up with the help of his brother and leaning on his shoulder. “I’m Spooky, remember?”

“Forget it. The job’s finished. They don’t matter anymore.”

“Oh.” Both were quiet for a moment. “Are we going to be okay, Joe?”

“We’ll find a way,” he said. “Just leave it to your brother.”

“Say, Joe? Where’d the stairs go?”

Sure enough, the hole that they had crawled up was gone, trap door closed up tight. Mosquito bent over with a tired grunt and pulled on its handle. It broke right off in his hands. He stared at it stuck on his finger, then sat on the floor with a thud. His back pocket was empty.

The doorknob was gone.

“Rodeo was right,” he said, not to his brother or even to himself, but to no-one at all, setting sun framed perfectly by the window, casting him in heavenly light. “I hate this job.”

* * *

He fell and she fell and she flew and he flew, up up up into the deep dark blue. Was it for minutes? Hours? Days? It didn’t matter, it was all the same in the end. He fell for so long that he stopped thinking, stopped feeling, even; fell so long that she became as empty as they come, and eventually they fell right up into a cloud. Body on body, soul on soul, the whole world a fine mist until finally and for once there was nothing at all. Just a beautiful, big cloud in the clearest sky you’ve ever seen. And before it all left them completely and forever, they let themselves think for one last time about their feet. Those wonderful feet with their pretty, pretty nails.

* * *

Dusk was settling and the neighborhood was quiet save crickets that had woken up and the soft hum of a nearby highway. The doorbell rang. Emily answered it with tears in her eyes and a smile on her face.

“Good lord, Rodeo! Why are you naked? I can’t believe this, I can’t believe you. First you say you found my beautiful girl, then you make me find you, which wasn’t easy, mind, and now that I’ve made it here, you decide to flash me? Humiliate me? I can’t believe you, Rodeo. You’re disgusting, you’re scum, I wish I’d never hired you, I—what? Why do you look like that, what happened?”

“I found her, Marybeth. I found her. I finally found her.”

Marybeth stared at her daughter for a long time, then began to cry.