Thighs and shins of two legs were found at the cardinal directions.
The genitals centered the leg compass.
The torso had to be next. We could do an autopsy. We were thrilled. Autopsy is the highest expression of modern humanity. Another thing we learned.
We held a dark carnival. We dressed as demons to frighten demons. Warty prosthetic noses. Gnarled horns. Hooves over hands. Grizzled branches on our backs. Gleeful in our horribleness. We made curseful noises to banish the curses. Rucksacks of glass hurled against stop signs. Plastic bags fed through snowblowers. TVs dropped from heights. Vicious comfort in our cacophony. We pantomimed cruelty to defuse cruelty. Staged executions. Harmless lashings. Unspecified but unsettling devices. We replaced thrill with fake thrill. Whatever else we felt in consideration of this image of ourselves we defined as coincidental.
The torso was in the sewers.
In a glass case.
Perfectly preserved.
We opened the case.
The torso turned to mulch.
The guy who worked in the garden center, nice enough really, but talked about fantasy sports way too much, said it was organic cedar. But really, could he tell just by looking? It was just a fucking torso. It’s fine. He wanted to contribute. We all want to contribute. Most of us don’t know how. So we have kids. Hi, kids. We love you.
The head should appear soon and end this.
We discussed war heroes.
Uncles who died overseas.
One barrow remained.
The sense of carnival returned. Just the sense.
We vigiled in shifts, with snacks and flasks. Just like ice fishing.
We finally started talking about the Mound Man. We would look in his eyes. We would put him on the internet. We would solve a mystery. This ordeal would rebind what components of our community had drifted apart through capitalism’s tectonics.
We would contact the media.
We would give interviews.
Again.
We would sell the movie rights and build a homeless shelter. Or a playground. Or a free clinic. Mound Man Day would be the official start of our spring, a celebration of our triumph.
We would triumph.
The barrow melted.
There was another hand.
Katy Bars the Door
RICHIE NARVAEZ
Less than three hours after she tied the knot, after the escape from a Dutch oven of a church and then the bladder-jarring limo ride to Flushing Meadows Park, after posing for pictures covered in a steady drizzle and the clinging smell of defeated deodorant, and after another long zigzag ride to Izzy’s wedding hall, with a quick stop off at a Sizzler, all the patrons staring at her as she taffeta-ed down a cheap wood-paneled hall to a bathroom of greasy yellow tiles, and after arriving and after the first dance to the wrong song (“I wanted ‘My Blue Heaven,’ not ‘Tears in Heaven’”), and seconds before the cake was cut, the newly minted Katy de la Cruz (née Guerrera) experienced what she considered an epiphany.
The thunderbolt of insight revealed to her that her handsome-but-between-jobs new husband, Jesus, thought of her as a prize. Actually, it wasn’t so much an epiphany as her overhearing something that her sister said she had overheard: Jesus turning to his best man and saying, “She’s a career girl. I ain’t gotta lift a finger for the rest of my life.”
Later, as Jesus stood next to her, Katy stared into the photographer’s flash, just as someone handed her a knife.
She turned to look at Jesus, his bearded cheeks ruddy and glistening, as they both grasped the knife, and she knew that she despised him. Dutifully, she shoved the buttercream- laden cake slice into his face.
They went on to have twins.
Seven years later, her career in market-research analysis well on its way, she let her lover kiss her, his stubble like a cheese grater on her neck. He called himself Roberto, but she called him Romeo in texts to Adriana, her best friend and alibi. He was fit, dabbled in sales, and was very talented with his lips—except that he used them too much to talk about an upcoming zombie apocalypse.
For that reason, she broke up with him. But also because when he looked at her with emo eyes behind big black glasses, she felt that he, too, saw her as a prize.
Afterward, she sighed for a year.
But then the zombie apocalypse actually did arrive, and Katy felt pretty chagrined.
Adriana was the one of the first people she called. Before Katy could say anything, Adriana said, “Oh my god! Do you think a claw hammer is enough to kill these—is undead the correct term? Zombies just seems culturally appropriated.”
“I only know what I see on cable,” Katy said. “Do you have a shotgun or something like that?”
“C’mon, Katy, we’re not those kind of people.”
“Listen, the kids are with their grandparents in Florida. No one’s answering the phone, and Jesus’s t—”
The line went kaput. As did the Wi-Fi. And thus the world.
In the master bedroom behind Katy, shirtless and in sweatpants, her husband grunted about brains. She barred the door with the giant TV console and one of the kids’ larger Lego sets. Jesus banged at the door with more oomph than he had ever shown for anything in life.
Meanwhile, outside the window, emerging from underneath the blooming dogwood tree across the street, taking his time as always, came Romeo. How inappropriate of him to come to her house while her husband was home. But Romeo was a zombie now, too, his lovely lips reduced to monosyllabic muttering.
She barred the front entrance with a credenza and a coat rack, both from Raymour & Flanigan. Sitting on it and sipping cabernet, Katy searched for another epiphany.
To both these zombies—better?: people who are no longer living—she had been a prize. For her sex, her steadiness, her salary. Now she was a prize again, but for her brains. And not in a complimentary way. But what was the prize she was seeking, the thing she could win for herself, to make her life worthwhile?
What was it she looked for in Romeo? Was he, as her therapist suggested, just a prize as well for her? When she’d
