I write this from a motel. I paid in cash. I haven’t been to work this week. I want to check myself into a mental institution, but I’m afraid of being convicted. I’m afraid everything is true. I’m afraid I have irretrievably lost my mind, and last night, I became convinced that I had invented Valentina. I had to pull up her social media on my laptop to prove that she was real. I left all the tabs open and checked them constantly.
As soon as I got to the motel, I became even more alarmed. I realized that I had left Beth all alone—and what if she was under real threat from Valentina? What if this was Valentina’s plan all along? To get me out of the way so that she could hurt Beth? So I called the cops immediately from the motel phone and placed an anonymous tip. I told them I had reason to believe Beth was in danger, that someone might be trying to hurt her. I gave them Valentina’s name and identifying details. I gave them our apartment address and hung up.
So many missed calls from people—Beth, my parents, my sister, my friends, my boss—that I had to shut off my phone. I gave the motel a false name and instructed them not to take any calls for my room. I haven’t eaten anything in days besides a few packs of chips from the vending machine. I’m afraid I will hurt someone. I’m not afraid I will hurt myself—it would be a relief if I could bring myself to do it. The good news is the motel door has a metal knob, so it is nearly impossible for me to leave my room. In my mind I’ve been spraying my tag on every surface I can see. There is lightning in my brain, and it will not stop striking. I don’t know what I am. Please help me.
Signed,
Mr. Boddy
P.S. I also feel really really itchy all the time and I think I might have some version of what you and your followers describe on the blog but then again I’m totally sure that I am not advanced or prophetic etc. so maybe I should just change my laundry detergent??? Please advise.
Mostly Rabbits
It was mostly rabbits, after that. You know how they’re a dime a dozen in this town. We only did it when Blandine was out, and we put them in the dumpster outside when we were done. If I had to guess how many—oh, I don’t know. Maybe five? Thirteen? I try not to think about it. I really hate to think about it. I’m not a violent guy. I’ve never gotten in a fight with anyone, never hurt a pet. You have to understand. I wasn’t myself. None of us were. When we were in the middle of a sacrifice, it was like I was—like we were possessed. Like in a horror movie. It felt good to control something alive like that, but it also felt like driving a car without brakes in a dream. Like we had no control at all. I don’t know. I really hate to describe it. You think they’re silent creatures, rabbits, until you try to kill one. Then they scream like death itself. You never heard anything so bad as a dying rabbit. Once a sound like that gets inside you, it never gets out. How? Oh, we used different things. Knives, water, our hands. I don’t know. Please, Officer Stevens. Please don’t make me describe it.
The Expanding Circle
Moses shakes on his comforter, buzzed and alarmed. He scratches his arms, lights another cigarette. His shades are drawn, and smoke hazes the room into a dream, prunes the consequences from the night. Normally, he has no trouble responding to the messages he receives. Normally, some otherworldly force descends upon him, dictating the response. He is the truth’s humble vessel. But there is something about this message—something like a reflection when you aren’t anticipating it—that makes the hair on the back of his neck bristle.
Mr. Boddy wrote it from a motel.
Mr. Boddy paid in cash.
Mr. Boddy gave a false name.
Moses imagines the man here, at the Wooden Lady, across the hall. He imagines the man trembling behind the door, afraid of the metal handle, subsisting on the fruits of a vending machine. Imagining the man right there—feet away from him—makes Moses feel like replying.
But a strong justification to ignore Mr. Boddy occurs to him: Mr. Boddy doesn’t suffer from the Toll. Moses can’t help this man! Moses doesn’t have the training or the information! Moses never studied psychology, psychiatry, medicine, counseling, sociology, anthropology, critical race theory, indigenous studies, queer theory, or women’s studies! What qualifies him to write a mental health blog?
With two clicks, he deletes Mr. Boddy’s message. Then he gets out of bed, walks to his duffel bag, and touches the glow sticks.
The trill of his phone makes him gasp. Fumbling around, he finds the device in the bathroom and squints at it fearfully.
He waits until the fifth ring to answer.
“Jamie,” he says.
“Moses?” Her voice is freakishly clear, as though she’s standing beside him. “Moses,” she repeats. “Wow. I—sorry. I just . . . to be honest, I didn’t think you’d pick up. So I’m just, um. A little flustered. Wow.” She laughs nervously. “Hi.”
“Why did you call if you didn’t think I would answer?”
“I just—I wanted to say that I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“For your loss. I mean, I know you didn’t have the easiest relationship with your mom or whatever, but . . .”
He can picture her: army-green jumpsuit and no shoes. Dark hair cropped, skin lathered in sunscreen, elegant nose wrinkled as she squints in the Los Angeles sunshine. She’d be calling from her yard in Silver Lake, under the pomegranate tree, with Pip the cat. She’d be wearing inventive gold jewelry and drinking a third cup of coffee, and it would be bright outside, but she wouldn’t be wearing sunglasses because she constantly misplaces hers.
“But sometimes, those are the losses that are the most painful, you know? When someone dies while you have unfinished business. I mean, that was my experience, at least. With my dad. Like, all this unresolved—a lifetime of conflicts just sort of surface, and they stare at you, and you’ve spent so much of your life wishing for closure, but now you realize that it will never probably—”
“Are you still with him?” Moses demands.
A long pause. “What?”
“Him.”
“Kevin?”
“Don’t play dumb.” Moses forces himself to walk back to the bed and sit down.
“Yes,” Jamie replies. “I am.”
Moses takes a swig of olive brine from the jar, then scratches his forearm on a groove of the metal bed frame. “It’s so strange that you called,” he says brightly. “I was just thinking of you, actually.”
“Oh?” Jamie sounds uncertain.
“I was remembering this philosophy thought experiment that you were always summarizing to people at parties. Remember that, Jamie? How relentlessly undergraduate you were about everything when I’d take you somewhere intimidating? How unbearably young? I mean, I should’ve expected it. You’re, what? Twenty-five? Your college days aren’t far behind you. I get that. I do. Believe me, your age was my favorite thing about you! But I thought you’d realize, eventually, that you bored people. I thought you’d come to understand that people were embarrassed for you, that referencing your nobody professors from your nowhere college didn’t impress people. We could see your desperation to prove that you were Smart and Different. You wanted everyone to know that, didn’t you? You wanted to prove that you weren’t like the other silly trophy girlfriends, with their blond highlights and their boob jobs and their cute little industry jobs. Jobs that their more successful boyfriends invariably got for them. You weren’t like those other girls, with their eager tans and their obsessive Instagrams and their fake enthusiasm for blow jobs, the girls who showed off their abs every time they got the opportunity—no. You were Jamie the Former Philosophy Major.”
“Moses, I—”
“And so, when you were starting to feel plastic and iterative at a party, you’d start referencing your godforsaken classes, with this annoying conviction that theory has something to do with actual life. Do you still feel that way? Whenever I heard you using that voice—your seminar voice—I always tried to intervene, tried to force a conversational miscarriage, you know. But I have to admit.” He puts down the olive brine and takes a gulp of gin. Jamie might have put herself on mute, but she has yet to hang up on him. He’s going to keep talking until she does. “There was this thought experiment that you blathered about all the fucking time. Do you remember it? That’s what made me think of you, just now. I was trying to recall how it went. Something about an expanding circle?”
A minute passes before he hears Jamie’s voice, disembodied and small. “ ‘The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle,’ ” she says. “Peter Singer.”
“That’s right! Peter Singer! I was wondering—since you’re so smart, such a brilliant student, would you mind refreshing my memory a bit?”
“What?” She sniffs. She’s crying.
“Just describe it to me,” says Moses. “The way you used to at parties. You remember how it goes, right? I know you do. I recall you quoting from it when you were chatting with Quentin.”
“I don’t. . . . I don’t. . . .”
“Oh, come on, Jamie. You owe me a favor, don’t you? After everything you did to me? After everything I’ve done for you?”
He knows that if he can make her feel small enough, he can make her do anything.