Pearl-Hill Freedland

Haruspex

The package arrived today, Friday the 21st at 2pm. When the delivery worker arrived and dropped off the package, she made a little face, you know, maybe a bit like disgust, or confusion, because on the package it read for educators and DANGER: CHEMICAL STORAGE with a skull and bones, and she was dropping it off on the porch of a home. i didn’t really mind, i let out a little laugh. It came in a bucket with one of those plastic seals you have to break off, the white plastic unwinding like fat skimmed from whey. A smooth, fluid flourish.

i really wanted to cut it, one of those little tremors, a bed bug nestled in folds of fabric; one of those vermin one can’t seem to rid. It’s remarkable what one can find on the internet these days, there’s a website for everything, the internet this pulsing black hole, even giant frogs submerged in a bucket of formaldehyde. i thought, how wonderful, because these compulsions had been keeping me up at night. The wind would pick up and usher in a melancholy dark, but it only emboldened me, the inky blackness. When i fell asleep, i would wake up with a start, the light creeped through the window, the sky a terrible, clarifying blue, and i felt like bjork when she wails “the day feels broken.” Little Cookie would pester me for her kibble, and i had gotten to the point where i was so close to brandishing the butcher’s knife on her. 

i had to sublimate my desire with the grayed formaldehyde flesh of those science class critters. Two clicks in the search bar and preserved somas would arrive on my doorstep in two days. i bought a frog and a miniature squid. It arrived in three days, not two. i wasn’t too disappointed, except all of yesterday i waited by the door, unable to contain my excitement. As 7pm stumbled, i began to understand my fate, stifled a sob, and carried on with my day, cooking dinner and preparing little Cookie’s meow mix. She made little snorts as she lapped up her fancy feast. 

 Suspended there in formaldehyde, the frog and the squid. The frog was larger than i had imagined, with a terrible protruding abdomen four inches long. Dark beady eyes stared back at me. Its muscles bulged, the leathery skin barely able to cover its sinews. The squid was small and shrunken. Its tentacles formed a mass below its elliptic head. Entangled and suctioned unto each other, as if the squid was attacking itself. Where had these creatures come from? i moved the bucket from the kitchen to the backyard, where i had set up a table—plastic cloth, knife, scissors, scalpel, gloves, and paper towel. i wanted to start with the frog first, and i pursed my lips. i picked up the scalpel and sliced the gray flesh. The intestines of the frog coiled in serpentine splendor. The smell was oppressive, like the cry of a mouse in a glue trap, high pitched and longing. 

i was wracked with a certain self-loathing once the smell overcame me. Why did i continue to live such a solitary life? So individual and conflicted, reneging myself to the shadows of bedroom, away from love and connection. i was alone in the night, bereft of friendship. i could see my faults like stained glass.

i told the pretty boy near the copying machine that i was considering quitting work so we could be together. He scoffed in my face and told me he was confused. What had he done to lead me on? Yes, he admitted, i bought you a drink. But that was out of pity and generosity. i didn’t even feel anything. Just a slow release of pressure that made a little hiccuping sound. My soul belched, that was all. i quit the job, anyway. i had been there for two years and was still packaging the same boxes, sending the same letters: there was no mountain to summit. Everyone was a competitor. i was the king of cups, except i lacked compassion. i burrowed myself in extreme boredom, fell for those that i could never have. Perhaps that was the appeal, meshing myself in parasocial relation for those that were always inaccessible because i feared any semblance of true love. But now i was facing the unemployed void while the world still operated on work’s clock. i fumbled and grasped through the portal of self. What is the “now”? 

To slice into the offals of a blackened gray frog half a foot long moved me, made my viscera turn and melt. it was all so… incantatory. Like a sung prayer, the way your throat’s sound reverberates throughout your body, thrushing your cells, self contained energy. The knife fluid against the flesh, like stroking a horse’s mane. The repetition a soothing of the sympathetic nervous system, how i felt myself reverting to some infantile state, this shredding of skin, these textures of organic matter, soft and very cold; the movement a promise of warmth.

The department of sanitation had detected an excess of formaldehyde in the neighborhood of Sunset Peaks, and had located the house number to 1312 Gem Way. This house was in violation of Statute 218 of Housing Conduct, which states any excess of carbon and hydrogen is grounds for inspection of disorderly conduct. The pig was called in along with a health inspector. What they found was peculiar. The home had a lovely light green portico in the Queen Anne style. After passing through the plum colored door, the foyer presented a choice of many rooms, each a makeshift temple of sorts, with altars in the corners. On these altars were feathers, bones, and the occasional decomposing frog. Each of the frogs had their midsection sliced open, with the intestines missing. Everything else was there: the heart, liver, lungs. 

The dweller of this home was a very striking person of androgynous features. This was disturbing to both the pig and the inspector, because they could not figure out whether to circle M or F on this person’s report. Perhaps because of the irish coffee each had embellished that morning, or the sheer magnetic energy of this prophetic figure, both were too ashamed to ask what exactly was “going on down there,” terrified they might offend. Well, they thought, better that we keep it unknown for the sake of our skins. They left the question uncircled. 

i just want to know how you dispose of your formaldehyde, said the inspector. The person would often look through the corner of their eyes, darting back and forth which provoked hypnosis.

Do you ever think of time as a series of music? For example, how the train runs on a syncopated loop every 15 minutes, a loud thrushing vibration, a dehiscence of metallic grunt, the edges of wheels squealing as they halt; this thrum of kinetic energy and its death, the rumble, the squeal, the quiet, every 15 minutes, on a loop, punctuated by my movements, by their sound: the brush of my sweater against my pants as i walk to the fridge also a sonic vessel; how i crack Cookie’s meow mix open, the savory smell of chicken gizzard wafting through the air, meaty and pungent, round like a roe, in intervals of 12 hours. Train, clothes, kibble. You can measure a whole existence through sounds. Train, clothes, kibble. Through their lapping, their discord. Train, clothes, kibble. Their inhalation and exhalation. Train, clothes, kibble.

i want to talk about the music of life, about the music of time as ritual, about the music of breath instead of this damn frog. i really can’t bear it, the way i had to pierce it, maim it, the cries and pleas in the gloam. i threw out the chemicals because what other choice did i have? Nothing happened to the pipes, no one was hurt. i hardly understand why this interrogation is relevant. 

Why are they rambling about time and the ritual of music, thought the inspector. Their voice cracked. 

Where has my prayer gone? i used to summon myself into a fervor. Now i’m so tepid these days. You came here and told me that i was poisoning the gutter. You really ought to tell us these things! You really ought to tell us we can’t pour formaldehyde down the sink! i pay my taxes, why can’t you leave me alone? inspector, your coffers are fat; the military and blackwater are bloated. You came for me? The government actually came for me? Please, don’t ask any more questions, do not ask about how the frog began to move and tremble, began to speak in tongues, a cross that sounded between Finnish and German; how it began to yell, how it slapped me in the face! Please, i can’t think of these things anymore. it terrified me for months, the way i had to take the scalpel and pierce its flesh over and over until it convulsed and screamed and bled clear, viscous fluid. It gave me such heartache. 

The person looked him in the eye and laughed. They said, i am a lover of wind. i have gone to the shore and leapt on waves and felt the buds of trees as they crest. What have you done? 

But how do you get rid of your formaldehyde? The inspector was very irritable now. You must dispose of it at a chemical facility, not flush it down the kitchen sink! 

The person laughed. i drink it and then piss it out, they said. They lifted their arm and motioned towards the sink. Please, turn on the tap. i am seized by a hot flash. 

Ah, the inspector thought, so it is an F! 

The person began to uncoil the scarf wrapped around their neck. The pig and the inspector felt their stomachs knot. The pig reached for his gun. The inspector reached for the faucet. As he turned the faucet on, a thick, fatty substance oozed out. It was lard, and it made a soft thud as it landed on the metal lining of the sink. It dribbled and squelched. The scarf was being unsheathed. The person’s neck was exposed, and yes, yes, much to the terror of the inspector and the pig, were those not the tiniest slits on their neck, very imperceptible, very much in the likeness of gills. 

Awake. They were all very awake, for it was day.