This One Crossed the River

A story about animal skins.

I hold up three fingers in front of the other man. He looks at me with terror. I lower one finger. I lower another. Now I’m flipping him off. I lower that finger also, and he disappears. I leave the street corner and step inside the tannery.

Slow voices move around me. My mind is a glass prison. I slice open the soles of my feet. I slice squares into triangles, triangles into smaller triangles. I imagine I am entombed within an immense steel pyramid, where there is no light, no matches to strike, and I grope my way from room to room through narrow passages, half-opened doors, my feet slipping on steep inclines. There is no sound but my own breathing, the dull resonance of my step on cold metal. My hands would brush against bolts, rivets, patches of rust. In one room I would find a raised altar. In another, a pool of stagnant water too deep for me to measure. I would continue in this way for many days, until starvation took its toll on me. Lying in some silent corner, too weak to even crawl, I’m sure I would have the transcendent realization that, thus far, has been denied me. I like the sounds that young girls make when they’re struggling to breathe.