The Fat Artist and Other Stories Read Online Free Page A

blood runs down her body into a lake of boiling blood on fire that she is standing in. The lake is full of impurities and abominations, expectorate and effluvia. All the blood and piss and sweat and come and shit and puke and tears that have ever come out of anyone’s body are in the lake.
    •  •  •
    She opens her eyes and looks at the thing in her lap. It won’t stop screaming. For the moment she’s not exactly sure what this thing is but she knows she must hold it. It will be bad if she lets go. Her hands are cold and slick.
    The man in the seat in front of her turns around to look.
    A mouth, a nose, and an eyeball appear in the sliver of space between the seats. The eyeball is a tender glistening globe, a prick of black rimmed in a band of blue. It is looking at her.
    “Hey,” the mouth says. “You going to change that kid’s die purr or what?”
    What? What the fuck is a die purr ?
    The mouth, the nose, and the eye disappear.
    Oh.
    The moment the face parts go away she smells the perfect smell of shit. She wonders how long it has smelled like that without her noticing. This screaming thing is my child. It is my son. This screaming thing is my son and I have to make it stop smelling like shit.
    Odelia turns to Miles. He and Tessa are conversing closely. She’s whispering. Her hand is on his knee.
    “I have—” she says.
    Miles turns to look at her. Tiny bugs are crawling around all over his face.
    “I have—”
    Tiny bugs are crawling around all over Miles’s face. She closes her eyes.
    “I have to change the diaper,” Odelia says. Yes: That was a complete, coherent sentence. Good. She opens her eyes.
    Miles looks at her. His face is as blank as a blank sheet of paper rolled in a typewriter in front of someone with a blank mind.
    “Diaper. I have to change the diaper.”
    The world is receding into focus. Keep it there. Control it. Don’t relax. Control it.
    Miles scrunches himself sideways and Tessa folds her legs against her chest in her seat with her wrists wrapped around her ankles. Odelia squeezes past them with the screaming infant in her arms. Standing in the aisle, she asks Miles to hand her the bag underneath her seat.
    “The what?” says Miles, looking at her as if she’s speaking in another language.
    “My bag,” she says. “The bag under the seat.”
    Abraxas writhes. He’s screaming in an almost non-baby way, screaming as if his insides are on fire. Screaming in the way she imagines the human sacrifice screamed when the Aztec priest cut a slash below the rib cage, reached under the ribs up to his elbow, groping the organs, feeling for the one that beat.
    She thinks that Abraxas is thinking this: Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop, make it stop. He needs to be comforted and she cannot comfort him. He doesn’t know what is happening. The bond between mother and child has been cut, and he is alone inside his own brain.
    “Oh—” says Miles, finally decoding the message.
    He reaches under the seat and hands her the bag with diapers and talcum powder in it.
    •  •  •
    Odelia walks down the aisle of the airplane, picking her steps like she’s walking on a sheet of oiled glass. She hears decontextualized segments of people’s conversations in passing, their voices hushed and accusatory, murmuring with judgment.
    Orange spots appear and disappear on the carpet and the ceiling. They appear in her peripheral vision but disappear if she looks directly at them.
    Inside the cramped lavatory, even with the door thumped shut and locked, she can still hear the nasty sibilance of damning whispers. The toilet and sink are made of stainless steel. So is the floor. The lighting is the color of an egg yolk. The room pitches and wobbles. She has to grasp the corner of the sink to keep her balance. She lays Abraxas on the steel floor, her hand protecting his head. He’s hard to hold, he’s squirming all over. He won’t keep still. Streaks of orange rust are draining down the