Life as a thing starts almost immediately after he’s gone, but life as a thing is so unbelievable that I have to stay still for a long, long time just to wrap my head around it. Life as a thing is numb for a little while but pretty soon it gets absolutely unbearable once the reality of it begins to take hold, and then staying still is, like, someone else’s problem and it’s all I can do to just scream and scream and scream into the mattress instead of exploding all over the south wing and leaving thick layers of radioactive decay and poisonous fallout everywhere.

When the first wave of life as a thing subsides I can feel the sunlight dribbling in through the fog-which I can’t see but know is there because of the horn’s muffled moan out beyond the pier-but then Miss Thing comes back and who knows how long the new tsunami of convulsions lasts because really who’s watching the clock and why bother splitting hairs between things and objects like it even matters oh fuck it hurts and the sheets are soaked with I don’t want to know what of it’s mine and life as a thing is about to black out when the phone rings like a jackhammer and I freeze. It keeps ringing, five or six times-why’s the machine dead?-and just to make it stop I pick up but don’t say anything.

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