down at the keyboard again.
Hours later, screaming and in tears, she came back and told him he could take
that big Bekins storage box, if he ever found it, and jam it up his spreading
ass!
The razor was beginning to strike bone.
The computer had grown larger. It seemed to be bursting out of its metal case.
The word bloated came to mind. Chris had begun to perceive a strange, almost
lopsided aspect to the machine, as if it were off-balance, from the shifting of
weight, the addition of new cargo. And it continued to take sips from his hands.
And he was forgetting many things now. Not the least of which was the precise
moment when Sharilyn had left.
He knew she was gone, because he couldn't find her anywhere in the house. But he
couldn't exactly parse the circumstances that had driven her away. Had it been
one of the fights? Or the fact that he sat before the PC night and day now,
growing paler, getting foggier in the mind with each passing hour? Could it have
been that? Or perhaps it was the moment she came downstairs and saw him feeding
one of the neon tetras to the computer. Perhaps it was that moment. Maybe not.
He couldn't remember.
The house was always silent. Cobwebs refused to grow.
He sat in darkness, the only light provided by the monitor -- a sickly
blue-green abyss across which fleeting sighs and portents scuttled like crippled
creatures. The figures and letters would bump against the perimeter of the
screen, fumble for a moment as if lost in the wilderness, and then run back into
the center of the information field, where they would vanish with tiny squeals.
Chris worked with his eyes closed most of the time. He had lost the need to see
what the computer was asking. But through his fingertips the machine drank and
drank, never seeming to slake its thirst, never seeming to get its fill. Bloated
and cockeyed in shape, but always sucking from Chris whatever he had left.
He tried to remember when his mother had died. He knew she was gone . . . just
as others had gone . . . but he couldn't exactly say who those others were. Yet
he remembered her face. The sweetest smile. And a phrase she used to say:
"Woof woof a goldfish."
It meant nothing, really; but she would use it when he -- or anyone -was coming
on too strong, being a bully, threatening in some silly way, like a guy in a ear
on the street who thought he had been cut off, making insulting remarks. His
mother, with that sweet sweet smile, would lean out and say, "Woof woof a
goldfish!" It was so much nicer than giving someone the finger. He loved his
mother. Where was she?
He called out, but there was no answer. The house was silent.
