It’s 2:00 AM and the house is being violently searched. Valerie hears cellophane wrappers crinkling while the doors throughout the house open and close . All the ruckus vibrates the home into a low-intensity buzz.
Occasionally, there’s a pause in the noise.
As Val awakes, she places her hand on Ian’s side of the bed. There’s nothing there but a crater and a few wrinkled sheets.
She swings her legs over the side, plants her feet into some blue furry slippers, then puts on her silk kimono robe.
Opening the bedroom door, she trips on a trail of toys during her march to the kitchen. It’s there that she observes her husband of 10 years standing in front of eight opened cupboards and a single pantry door. He’s in his underwear and a stained white t shirt from the Honey Ham company.
“What the hell is he doing?” she wonders, while fixing the waistband in her underwear.
Placing his hands in a box of individually wrapped chips, the husband opens a bag, stuffs and crumbles them into his mouth while the debris and crumbs rain onto the ceramic tile.
Ian’s eyes are closed entire time. It takes 10 seconds to finish a bag.
Without pausing, his hands gesture a searching motion until he hits the pantry door frame, then makes a swift vertical move with his right hand, striking a box .
Placing his hand into the box, he pinches another bag, opens it, then devours it—tossing the bag onto the ground. By Val’s estimate, there are about 20 bags scattered across the floor.
Moving closer to Ian, she grabs his hand, but he swats at it like an insect.
His language is all vowels. O. A. E. Long U. IIIIIIIIIIIII.
“Jezus you reek of vodka and gin!” yells Valerie.
Then she whispers, “I told you not on weeknights.”
But it’s too late. He’s vodka-deaf, gin-blind, and trapped in a cell of his hunger. There’s no stopping him.
He continues eating all the snacks that his hands can feel.
Exhausted, Val goes back to the bedroom, locks the door, scrolls through her phone until drifting off to sleep.
#
The next morning Val finds Ian sleeping on the kitchen floor with empty bags of chips and cookies all around him. All the cupboards, drawers and pantry doors open to reveal the chaos of boxes tipped and spilling across borders of organization.
She worked all week to organize the kitchen— and now this .
Jennifer, their eight-year-old, enters the living room, ready for school.
“Good morning, mom.”
“Good morning, baby. Daddy got home late last night.”
Val takes a drag of her cigarette, sips some coffee , then tells the daughter that she’s going to have to buy lunch today— because the father of the year ate all her goddamn snacks.
Jennifer and Valerie leave for their day while Ian lay on the floor .
Valerie hears similar noises that nigh– but they’re scratches against windows– tree branches and shrubs scraping against the the corrugated siding.
She gets dressed, then heads upstairs to lock Jennifer’s door.
She follows the sound outside to find Ian. He’s in the side garden, stuffing a globe of Hydrangeas into his throat. One after the other, he devours every floral ball until the bush is naked.
Following the hydrangeas, his hands search the exterior wall of the garage until locating a hibiscus plant, just next to the garbage can. Each hibiscus flower resembles a cocktail parasol—circular,
merlot, and as thin as cigarette paper. His hands search and read the vine until he finds a flower, then ingests.
He’s been here for a while. All the vegetables are gone and there are crumbs of tulip flowers dusting his hair.
This was my garden the way the snacks were Jennifer’s snacks, Val whispers.
She moves towards her husband, kisses his forehead, tastes the pollen on his skin. Looking up, she stares at the silhouette of a pine tree , about 8 feet from a mailbox.
There’s a full moon sitting on top of it. And there’s a halo around the moon.
On this evening, the moon is a white hole leading somewhere. Perhaps a rope ladder will fall from it, so that Val can climb the conifer while dragging her husband through the branches.
Only then may she dispose of his body by dropping it into the portal so that it can rot with space junk.
Then again, maybe not.
Maybe something like God exists on the other side of the hole. Maybe he’s laughing at the naked garden and the colors planted in her husband’s stomach.
Or maybe he’s laughing that she’s stayed with him this long.