Oh, he says.
He doesn’t say anything else but I can see the little-kid wheels turning in his head. Why are you sniffing it, then?
I think this chocolate milk is bad, I say.
It’s good, he says. I think it’s good.
Yeah. But sometimes milk just goes bad, when you least expect it.
Can I smell it? he says.
Of course.
He hops up and comes over to me. I crouch down so he can reach it and he inhales deeply, frowning as he does so.
Trust me, I say.
The boy nods, gravely. As if he knows the world to be a mysterious, often nonsensical place and is therefore willing to accept the notion that chocolate milk, while it may smell good and taste good, may in fact be bad.
What have you had to eat today?
He tells me that the lady brought him some chicken nuggets earlier.
Which lady?
I don’t know, he says. The lady who wears a mask and doesn’t talk to me.
The lady who wears a mask and doesn’t talk to me. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it. I head upstairs, taking the chocolate milk with me. I cruise through the kitchen, the living room and dining room. I peek into the Lizard Room and no one is about. The house is endless and silent. They could be anywhere, and I begin to go from room to room.
I find them in Molly’s room. I open the door and everybody is packed in there under white, hot lights. The air feels thick, almost humid.
Molly sits in a wooden chair, crying. She wears white underpants and bra. Jude is behind her with scissors in hand, bright steel blades that look very sharp. She is apparently cutting Molly’s hair. There are yellow tufts of it like a ring of feathers at their feet. There is a nasty bruise on Jude’s face, puckered and bloody. It looks like a bite mark. Her shirt is torn at the throat. Miller lies naked on the bed behind them, staring at the ceiling. Huck stands in one corner with a camera, Daphne in the other. They don’t look too comfortable. Jeremy sits in the green chair, out of the shot. By the expression on his face, I would say he has an erection.
Why are you crying? I say.
I’m okay, says Molly. I’m okay.
Jude, your face. What happened to your face?
She doesn’t answer. She snips at Molly’s hair and Molly winces at the sound.
Miller looks at me. What do you want, Poe?
Where should I start? I want to know why you’re naked. I want to know why Molly’s crying and I want to know what happened to Jude’s face. I want to know what’s in this fucking chocolate milk.
Jeremy giggles.
You. You’re in my chair, I say.
Jeremy stands up, shifting his gear to hide that inconvenient wood. He looks around but there’s nowhere else to sit. I brandish the jug of chocolate milk like it’s a weapon. I approach him, menacing but feeling ultimately goofy.
Have a drink, I say.
No, thanks. He scratches his head, confused.
Jesus. Just sit down, I say.
Meanwhile, tufts of yellow hair fall slowly to the floor. I find myself staring at them. The hair falls so slowly. It floats.
Dreamy, isn’t it? says Miller.
I look at him on the bed and he is lying on his side, playing idly with his flaccid penis.
What? I say.
Haven’t you ever noticed that our eyes, our very brains have been programmed to register certain images in slow motion?
I shrug. I have noticed that, yeah.
Television and film have been around for what, a hundred years? he says.
That sounds about right.
In less than a hundred years, our brains have mutated. We don’t process visual information the way our great-grandparents did.
What’s your point, Miller?
You walk into a room and you see the following things. Two attractive women in their underwear. One is crying. The other has a bruised face. You see a naked man on a bed. You see two minor characters in the shadows, holding cameras. You see a young, handsome boy who will soon be dead, sitting in a green chair.
What is your fucking point? I shout.
What do you see?
In the green chair, Jeremy croaks like a frog. I’ll be dead soon?
Jude, I say. What happened to your face?
Molly bit me.
Okay. That makes sense.
She stares at me like she has a thousand times before. Her eyes open in such a way that I know she actually sees me. The scissors gleam in her hand and her face is temporarily ruined. Her hair is braided into pigtails so that her face is fully exposed, as if she had planned for this.
What’s in the milk, Jude?
Chocolate, she says. It’s chocolate milk.
Where did it come from?
Who knows. A brown cow, I suppose.
Are you poisoning that boy?
What? she says.
There’s a mark on his arm, like the mark of a needle.
Miller scoffs. It’s probably a spider bite.
Taste it, says Jude. Taste the fucking milk.
Molly wipes her face and stands up. Everyone, she says. Everyone get the fuck out of my room. Everyone, please.
Her voice is silent and roaring at once. Her voice is mildly terrifying, like driving into an ice storm. The silence ripples and after a brief pause, everyone begins to come alive. I stand in the doorway, wondering if she wants me to go. Or just the others. Jude puts down the scissors and walks toward me. I step aside to let her pass, which she does without quite looking at me. Miller flops off of the bed and comes toward me, naked and hairless. He scratches his chest, grinning. He doesn’t say a word. Jeremy, Huck, and Daphne troop past me, their heads lowered. Molly stands in the center of the room, arms folded across her chest. I tell her it’s okay, we’re off camera. She stares down at the yellow hair at her feet and mutters a response I don’t understand and, with two fingers, gently pushes the wooden chair over backward so that it falls with a dull crash. She turns to the bed and violently strips the sheets from the bed, throwing them to the floor.
What did you say?
Molly turns her doll’s head around slowly to look at me, her blue eyes unblinking.
What did you say just now?
Dead flowers, she says. My hair looks like dead flowers on the floor.
Molly crawls onto the bare mattress and crawls slowly across it and for a moment it’s like she’s crawling across an endless table, blue and white. There’s a bowl of porridge at the far end and she just wants to taste it. She huddles in the corner against the wall, arms wrapped around her legs. She looks like a kid on a boat and she’s afraid the waves will take her away. Her hair is short and wispy but it doesn’t look bad. Jude could have butchered her, if she had wanted to. She could have cut her ear off or something. I expected her to, really. Molly looks cold and I crawl across the mattress to give her a sweater. I sit next to her, not touching her. The air in the
