�Christ, Jon!� I yell amid the plaster dust sifting down from the doorframe. �They�re breaking the door down!�
He�s angry at me. �Why don�t you just answer it?� he yells in return.
I can�t deal with this kind of thing. It�s too much noise, too many things to hold in my head. Each knock magnifies this; even Jon�s gentle voice as he hands out the fun-sized Snickers and Milky Ways is too much. I flee.
My room is small, but it takes up half of the upstairs. We have a garret, and a strange, small-headed Frankenstein of a house. I wouldn�t be able to deal with a downstairs room, though: there is too much room to ramble in.
I imagine that it changes each night, rooms shifting to the point that it�s difficult to navigate around in the morning. I point things out to Jon when we make breakfast. I point out knotholes, empty spaces where there was space just yesterday, and he tells me that the spaces were always there. Sometimes I wonder if he just humors me with this. The house is riddled with holes like these; I think we are primed for a snake infestation.
That�s another nighttime wondering of mine. I dream of California kings and coral pythons and boa constrictors oozing from the blank gaps, like wormy Swiss cheese. In my dream, the house smells rancid and earthy and unimaginably old.
The Most Creative Costume Award went to the small girl dressed like a pile of leaves. She grinned big gaps at Jon when he gave her an extra Kit-Kat, and he grinned back.
(Jon has big white teeth, with no spaces.)
Sometimes I think about those teeth�when we�re old, where will they go? Pried out one by one from rotting gums. Floating, dead, belly-up, in a glass of water and Alka-Seltzer for him. Or cold, in the ground, prompting future anthropologists to exclaim:
This one, all we need to do to find his species is dig up his dental records!
And then to toss his sacred head from man to man, grinning like children (like the ones on my doorstep). Maybe there is music playing, maybe there isn�t. I can�t really see all of this, not like how I see Jon�s teeth or the small horrible people knocking down the door. Maybe you didn�t know this.
Two skeletons show up, surly teenagers with spandex glowing-bone jumpsuits, bulging strangely at the calves and the crotch. Jon imagines their undoing: a quiet one with houses and kids but the two will be just as restless until they die. Two bars fall into their open pillowcases. The skeletons swear and plead for more, but Jon�s closed the door. He is looking for me, but he probably won�t find me for a while. I am on the roof.