Disposable Skin

The season begins in hope and slowly unravels until only its cork'd center remains. Alice has nothing left to show for her tribulations -- she has buried the silverware, she has wrapped the baby hamsters in plastic and sent them floating down the river in hopes that they might find themselves adopted by the pharoah. They were prized once; an infusion of royal blood will set their little hearts pumping. In a possible future, their organs sit beneath the earth's surface in mason jars stalked by snakes.

Alice lives in a quiet, suburban pile of rubble. Every morning she sweeps part of it away, binds her bones together in rubber bands and heads to work in disposable skin, a paisely flesh she bought off the rack. Co-workers find themselves hypnotized as Alice's lungs expand, as she weazes out clouds off ash. Her forearms sit limp on her desk for most of the day. Her pancreas splurts bile and the office explodes into applause. Not much work gets done, the company's going under, but the Workers With Disabilities Act protects what remains of Alice's ravaged frame. She pours milk over romain lettuce and goes face first into lunch. Her hands flop about, semi-autonomous and clacking against office-desk material. Around three, when swirls of humans clot the coffee rooms, Alice's skin begins to flake and peel. She spills fluid as she jangles toward the door at the end of the day. Frank is a pervert, but he takes pity on her and shuts down her computer, as her clicking finger does not click, but bounces uncontrollably.

When she returned to the office after the fire, everyone applauded her mutilation with flavorful martinis. They chucked her on the chin like her father. They lashed their sadness to Viking boats, but could not spark the flint in that kind of weather. They sit, forever docked, ready to burn, and so they celebrate Alice, returned from Elysian Fields with an every-changing array of tarps holding her insides inside, a gift from the Gods.