George watched a little red-brown spider build a web in the bushes. He sat
on the porch stoop; fat pollen drifted through the street, caught in
exhaust fumes. It was warm for October and the rain had momentarily
subsided, but the spider paid no attention to heat or pollen or George. It
was an architect, stringing together a masterpiece. Not a home, though. A
trap.
Sometimes, George felt as if the home he’d built had also been a trap.
Only, instead of catching flies it was meant to snare icons of success. So
far, though, it had caught just him, trapped him in the American way of
life. His life passed day-by-day in the same manner: wake, shit, eat,
shower, dress, commute, work, commute, eat, shit, sleep. He lived the same
few frames of a film over and over. The spider was confined to the web as
much as the fly, George thought, but at least the fly’s stay was short.
The web swayed in the wind as it gained lines, gained weight. George’s own
home had also gained weight. Yes, the things he held onto for sentiment
weighed him down physically, but he also collected emotional weight, weight
that swayed in life’s breezes and threatened to catch fire, turning his
meticulously mapped ideas of what his life should be on end.
In the spring, he had moved into a one-bedroom apartment with his
girlfriend, Tandy, and her cat. The apartment had hardwood floors and he
and Tandy danced barefoot and had a lot of sex over the summer. George
forgot his fears best he could. He pushed those flames demanding to be fed
into the back of his mind.
George and Tandy bought a carpet and the cat clawed at it and stretched out
on it, especially when the weather was warm. Often, the cat lazily stared
up at the white cracked ceiling, which had a small hole in it resembling an
eye. Sometimes, George would follow the cat’s gaze up into that hole in the
ceiling and his mind would return to a time several years earlier when he
had still been unburdened with guilt.
In basic military training, George had worked out with the rest of his
squad in the early morning when the stars still shined. During their
stretches, after running miles and doing hundreds of pushups, he would lay
on the ground exhausted and stare into the stars dusting the pre-dawn sky,
letting his mind wander away, if only for a moment.
Staring at the hole in the ceiling, laying on his back on the carpet next
to his cat, his mind returned to those stars. They were still up there,
above that hole. If George could get close enough, he suspected he could
see them. He could peek out, as if looking through a keyhole, and see the
entire universe at once, instead of only in snapshots moment by moment.
The summer he and Tandy lived together, George had often sat next to the
window in their apartment and watched the street quite a bit. Across from
their apartment, a sea of leaves blew in the wind. Their veined surfaces
shimmered golden green in the sun, and people walked by on the sidewalk
toting groceries and babies and dogs. Some looked at their feet, ensuring
they didn’t step in shit. Others watched the leaves blow and meandered
along. George wanted to meander. To idle through life. But his mind
wouldn’t let him. His thoughts turned over too quickly … idleness took
concentration, which George lacked.
Once, a bald man with a long gray goatee stopped at the tree in front of
the apartment and cried for three minutes. Silent tears that fell onto the
oak’s roots. Then he wiped his eyes and walked on, pulling his pants up
around his skinny waist. George wondered what had broken him.
Somewhere, this reality always broke, for everyone, eventually. Just like
the spider’s web, reality was temporary. The internal structures would
inevitably fail. This, George knew, and he wondered how long it would be
before his life’s little anchor points no longer held. He needed an escape
pod. This he knew.
By late September, the rain had returned and George and Tandy had retreated
into hibernation. George spent hours watching tutorials online about boat
building, he read blogs about it, he took in all the information he could
freely find from library books. All the while Tandy laughed at him or shook
her head. She didn’t believe he would begin.
But then George bought some lumber, two saw horses, and set to building the
boat. He took over most of the living room, filling it with sketches, bits
of tutorials he had printed, even moving the couch out from the wall and
stacking lumber behind it. It was at this point that Tandy first called him
crazy.
George knew he had problems. Physically and mentally.
First off, his face was strange. His nose was crooked from a break, his
eyes a little too far apart. And damn, his ears would fit well on a tiny
elephant. Mentally, he was so small, and he felt it. He went through times
when he didn’t know if his thoughts were real or if reality was his
thoughts. A little of both, he supposed. And there were times when he lost
thought all together. It seemed as if he could only remember a few seconds
at a time. This was annoying, as he constantly was itching to recall some
little trifle of information that just moments prior seemed important.
Making grocery lists in this state was impossible. He didn’t recall if this
had started before or after the military.
He knew one other thing for certain though. His self-esteem issues had led
him to his first career: He had spent several years as a soldier in the
high desert in Afghanistan. Dancing and singing was the name of the game.
He was the great circus monkey, the performing gorilla, the juggling bear
in a tiny hat atop his unicycle. He recalled one cold night in October,
almost two years ago to the day, he had dug into the earth, moving the sand
and rocks, and with every shovel full of sand, he loathed being a soldier
more. So he invented a place to go when reality was too much to deal with,
when he was too hot, too cold, too disgusted by the world and himself. He
called this place Kangaroon Country.
Kangaroon Country was a place in George’s mind where he could be free.
Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep because fear of his own demise—and worse,
the memory of the lives he had taken—flashed beneath his lids, he would
crawl, clawing his way into Kangaroon Country.
Once there, his fear lifted, his guilt stopped pursuing him. He saw beauty
and truth. A form of truth, a form of beauty, so subjective that they
became fantastical versions of themselves only George could recognize. In
Kangaroon Country, rabbits as big as cattle loped across brush-strewn
hills. Bananas grew from the ground as big as mountains. His mind twisted
the world into a wondrous place of escape.
Sometimes, George suspected he was depressed. He looked down now at his
hands. They were square blocks, made for smashing or gripping things that
smashed. Tandy’s hands were delicate, built for caressing, comforting, and
creating. George loved her hands, but he feared this would pass.
He had found that people were easy to love briefly. Then, you began hating
them. You hated their terrible faces, their stupid stories, their pathetic
problems. He hoped this didn’t happen with Tandy.
He thought of this a lot, as he lay on the carpet in the living room. Maybe
that was just an excuse, though. Maybe the truth was that George was
difficult to love.
Sometimes, if he stared too long, he could see that carpet grow like grass.
The pattern turned three-dimensional. It was gibberish, he supposed. His
mind playing tricks. But he would stare at it with all his focus, and it
would squirm across the floor. Eventually, if he stared long enough, he
would lose focus and get lost in the paisley patterns. Fireflies flitted
across his vision, just beyond his grasp, hints and nothing more.
Other times, dark splotches, shadows of things he’d done (he supposed)
crept around him and carried him forward in time.
When he left the military, his dance changed, his song changed, but he was
still dancing and singing in his head just to keep the ugliness at bay. He
tried to take the ugliness inside him and smash it into clay. Mold it into
something new. He tried to be strong. He tried to forget. He tried to chase
truth and beauty. But the death of his pursuit happened quickly. It
happened with those words Tandy spoke: “You’re crazy.” She didn’t say them
joking. She didn’t say them with a laugh. “You’re fucking crazy, George.
You know that, right?”
If Tandy thought he was crazy, George couldn’t be honest with her. He
couldn’t be himself if he felt he needed to act like someone else for her.
With the death of honesty died George’s pursuit of truth. And with it, his
pursuit of beauty. Once lies become reality, then honesty and beauty are
dead. Honesty and beauty are so closely linked that the death of one kills
the other. They’re symbiotic.
So George huddled into his mind with his guilt. He built his boat in there.
It got so large, it filled his head and he could no longer contain it. The
day that happened, he and Tandy had a fight. It ended with George saying,
“I need to know that this is okay. If there ever was a time for you not to
be cold, now is it. I need to hear that this is okay.”
“I love you but I’m not happy,” Tandy said.
“Happiness is—”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Tandy said. “This is over.”
George wept. She left. The door clicked closed. He was alone. Just him and
the cat, the little beast.
He twisted himself into the smallest space he could find, right up against
the couch, and he peeled his skin back and peered inside. He dug deep, past
the protective layers, through the meat, into the bone. He found he was
made of nothing. He existed and yet he did not. There was no George, only
flesh, made up of tiny bits of microscopic cosmos that he didn’t control
and would soon disintegrate to nothing.
Waves of saltwater flowed through the apartment. So much water that it
picked up the lumber and sloshed it side to side. His tools banged against
the boards, against the walls, against him. The storm rose to the ceiling.
If ever he needed a boat, now was it. Waves burst through the floorboards
of the living room. The hardwood floor they’d danced on was destroyed,
flotsam knocking holes in the walls.
Eventually, quiet calm overcame the sea and left him adrift in his mind to
fall asleep. That night, he dreamt.
*
The lion hunted George mercilessly. He knew it was out there, so he ran.
He sprinted through trees, branches cut his face, and the leaves caught
droplets of his blood that slipped and splattered onto blades of grass
below.
He ran through strange woods and familiar forests both. Once through a
city, where there were no people. Until, he ran into an apartment where a
birthday party was taking place. People were laughing, eating cake, circled
around a pile of presents. The party ended, everyone left. Then the lion
showed up and began mauling him.
George slapped and clawed his way across the carpet as the lion played with
him. He managed to isolate himself in the kitchen, finally, and frantically
rummaged for a weapon. All he could find was a single paring knife, meant
for zesting lemons and slicing limes, not killing lions, but it seemed a
better option than his fingernails versus the beast’s claws and fangs. So
he picked up the fucking knife and grit his teeth.
The apartment faded away, and George was back in the woods, now with his
three-inch blade. The lion was still watching, following and circling
through the foliage. It got closer and finally sprang, latching on. It
ripped into George with its teeth, holding him in place with its paws and
digging in with claws. George stabbed at the beast with the knife in his
left hand and slapped and punched at it with his right hand.
But the lion didn’t flinch. George felt something sharp, though it didn’t
hurt. Terror had wiped the pain away. He felt nothing but rage. He slapped
at the lion’s face. He punched its nose and clawed at its fucking eyes but
its hide was thick, worn hard with muscle, and the open thrashing mouth
forced George to remain on the defense.
George never stopped fighting. Even when his teeth chipped on each other,
even when the lion tore the fingers off his right hand and swallowed them
whole, even when the lion’s claws pinned his leg down. He never stopped. He
fell back, screaming, punching in vain at the animal as it went to work on
his calf muscle. George kicked and raged and thrashed and swung and
hollered and kicked more. The fucking animal took his leg off at the knee
anyway, a blunt amputation.
Not soon enough, it could never have come soon enough, George realized the
lion was gone. He didn’t know how long he had been slapping and beating at
the air. He was just thankful that the lion had gone.
Trembling, he looked down at his body. His right leg, nothing below the
knee. The lion had torn it off. He could see his kneecap was still
attached. It hung from stretched tendons and was covered in blood, dirt,
and saliva.
George pulled off his belt. The Earth was rolling away from the sun. He
wasn’t sure how many minutes he lost to shock. Time lost meaning. When life
was measured in seconds, seconds become hours. Time dilates before death’s
door.
He pulled the tourniquet tight. Must have taken him ten seconds or less,
but it felt like hours. He cinched his belt around his lower thigh; the
flesh was so eaten, so shredded that the muscle tore away under the belt’s
pressure. The leather squashed the dangling meat.
He screamed and still the bleeding didn’t stop. So he pulled the belt up
further, into the remaining muscle, to the top of the thigh, still intact.
Sliding it just under his crotch and below his buttocks. He breathed
heavily and pulled the belt taut.
He dragged his aching, bloody body to the closest tree and propped himself
up. He lost about an hour then, he thought, to the shock. Terror stuns to
stupor. Violence takes root and becomes you, turns you to a zombie.
Memories fail to form, so talking of that state is impossible really. All
you catch is glimpses on either side.
The next thing George knew he was staring at a hand. A left hand. His left
hand. He recognized tiny scars from childhood scraps. Yet, at the same
time, it wasn’t his hand. His heart raced as he regained some clear
thought. He was missing his pinky and middle finger. Chewed off in the
fray. Most likely inside that fucking monster.
George gripped the knife with both his mutilated hand and his whole hand.
He held it out as the sun set. Red and yellow light pierced the blue. He
kept his eyes on the horizon, waiting. Because he knew that lion had done
just what it intended. It left him alive. And it’d be back to eat the rest
soon. These woods were a trap.
The night dragged on. George watched the dark rise. As his eyes adjusted,
he heard rustling, hoping it came from the canopy above but it was hard to
tell. He watched the leaves sparkle as the moon rose. He was so thankful
when the moon appeared low in the sky, a butter-yellow bowl of light. It
made everything seem so bright. His mouth turned salty from thirst and
blood loss. But he stayed still, holding the knife, waiting for the lion.
Until he grew too tired, half delirious.
He skimmed into strange places. Unreal scenes crept across him. The woods
stared back at him with a million glimmering moonlit leaves for eyes.
At dawn, the lion came back for more. George saw it watching from the
brush, low to the ground. George screamed and hollered and slapped and spat
and screamed more. He screamed until his lungs burst, but the lion just
stared, remained still. When George had screamed himself breathless, the
animal slipped from the foliage and went back to work on him. It was
breakfast time.
George beat at it with his mutilated hand, useless club, and stabbed at him
more, but he failed to scare it away. This time the lion took his right arm
and disappeared among the green.
Morning sun broke through the canopy. George was delirious from
dehydration, blood loss, but his heart kept pumping. Instinct is strong.
He pulled himself, gruelingly slowly, one armed, one legged, through the
woods. Perhaps he made it an eighth of a mile before passing out. Probably
less. When he woke, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. The sun was
setting again, but it could have been that same day or a week later. George
had no idea.
He looked into the woods and the lion watched him again. Its golden eyes
curious, calm, hungry. George dragged himself, inches at a time, across the
forest floor. The lion followed him, one soft step at a time.
George broke down then. He cried. As his tears splashed onto the dirt and
fallen leaves, the lion took his left leg off. George screamed. Less this
time. The pain was overloading his senses.
After the lion returned back into the underbrush, he continued on. He
pulled himself through the woods with only his left arm, hand missing
fingers. He made little progress.
Night fell. The lion came back again and ate George’s left arm. He let it
happen in silence this time. There was no thrashing. The lion left George
limbless in the woods. And so, George waited to bleed out but he never did.
He stared into the stars as the world turned over. Round and round it went,
and all the people and all the jobs and all the industries and governments
and militaries didn’t stop it. It all turned over as George lay limbless,
helpless, hopeless.
Finally, the lion walked out of the woods again. This was it. It would
finish him. George screamed at it, only now he was yelling for it to kill
him. To just end it. Instead, the lion lay down next to George for the
night.
George had no arms, no legs. He couldn’t move away. He silently laid next
to the lion, the monster that mutilated him, waiting, hoping that he’d die
at dawn, but knowing the lion would never let him die. It would continue to
pull him apart bit by bit for the rest of his life.
*
He woke trembling the next morning. In the shower, the water washed away
the good with the bad, and by the time he shut off the water, he was numb.
But when he closed his eyes to dry his face with the towel, he saw the lion
staring back at him from the darkness. That beast would follow him the rest
of his life, it would tear him apart and leave him broken until he figured
out a way to kill it.
Tandy returned an hour later and silently began packing her things. She
didn’t have much. A few boxes. Suitcases. A lamp with a broken shade. She
left the cat.
As soon as she was gone, George set to building his boat in privacy.
He spent the better part of the autumn constructing the boat. It was hard
work, especially to do alone, but it was good work. He laid the frame, on
blocks, in his living room, and by the time he had constructed the ribs he
knew it was going to be beautiful. Yes, the project blocked the whole
living room, but no one was there to complain, so George kept building his
ship.
That fall, he and Tandy began speaking again. Actually, with the pressure
of romance removed, they became better friends than they had been lovers.
She started dating a literature student named Stan who was working on a
doctorate degree, studying symbolism in forgotten literature and other
things that few cared about any more.
Once in a while, Tandy and Stan would come over for a beer and they’d sit
on George’s stoop, and they’d tell each other stories and talk about
nothing in particular. It was nice. George liked Stan. It was odd how
things worked out, so George had been told by people smarter than he, and
now he saw firsthand that was true. Sometimes, the people that come into
your life are like a stone skipping across a pond. They touch, they go, and
then they sink out of sight, leaving ripples behind that last much longer.
Before long, George was spending more time with Stan than he was with
Tandy. And he had himself a 15-foot vessel in his living room. The wood was
almond orange and smoother than George’s palm. It was grand, immaculate
even.
“And how do you intend to get it out?” Stan said one afternoon as the boat
was nearing completion.
“Out?”
“Of your house.”
George looked at the boat, at his front door, back at the boat. “I’ll be
damned.”
And so there the boat sat, days, months, years. His real-life ship in a
bottle, often with George in it, drinking a beer, and the cat perched on
the port side, its tail dusting the wood. He put a TV on the stern. It
would never sail, not ever see water, but damned if it wasn’t beautiful.
