The Gray House

I just stand there, waiting for him to tire of loitering in front of me. I look at his chin pressed against the speaker. Then the speaker drops away, deposited on the floor. The chin disappears along with it. Black assumes a crooked pose, like his spine is somehow damaged.

“I see,” he says. “You’re a scary sight to behold, but I think I’ll manage. Is there any way I can help?”

“Sure. Stuff me in a crack somewhere and plaster it over.”

“Understood,” Black says, straightening up. “Let’s go. I’ve got what you need. The crack, the plaster, and the gravestone. Just hang on until we reach the first floor.”

He leaves the speaker in the middle of the hallway, as a monument to our momentous meeting. I follow him obediently. We come out to the landing. Go down, continue on. In the lecture hall someone is tormenting the piano rapturously, as usual, and the waves of exuberance crest over the entire first floor. Black leads me to a half-empty room. It seems to be some kind of storage space, with cardboard boxes stacked against the walls. One is ripped slightly, and inside it I can discern a commode in plastic foam. We’re in the graveyard of commodes.

Black grapples inside one of the boxes, mumbling indistinctly. Produces a bottle, and another one.

“It is my opinion,” he says, “that you need a drink. Can you hold this? I don’t have any crystal goblets around.”

“I’ll try,” I say. “What’s in it?”

“Grain alcohol cut with apple-juice concentrate.”

I laugh. Black upends an empty box and arranges the bottles on top of it.

“Your introduction to the Hound tastes. This is their favorite tipple. It’s not that bad once you get used to it. It all depends on the ratio.”

“For all I care,” I say, “this could be pure alcohol.”

“I can see that.” Black sits down on the floor and unscrews the cap off one of the bottles. “Now what’s happened? Want to tell me about it?”

I shake my head.

He passes the other bottle to me.

“As you wish. I’m not going to insist, of course.”

The doggy mix is unlike anything I’ve ever tasted. It’s vile stuff, but after three or four gulps that no longer matters.

“Lay off a bit,” Black cautions. “It really goes to the head.”

“Hounds are strange,” I say. “As are their tastes.”

“Our tastes,” Black notes. “I’m a Hound now too, don’t forget.”

“That’s right,” I say. “Brown. Shaggy. Very big. Have you ever noticed what color eyes Alexander has? Feuille morte. Fallen leaves. Dappled.”

“Never thought to look.”

“Your loss. There’s a lot hidden inside there. Do you know what my deepest secret is, Black? I mean, everyone has their own secret here in the House. And mine is that I can bail out of here anytime. Anytime I want.”

Black chokes and lowers the bottle.

“Where would you go?”

“Also here. But not exactly. The here that’s a little out of here. But it’s a secret, understand?”

“Got it,” Black says. “Inside the bottle with alcohol and apple juice. Looks like you’ve had enough.”

I spread myself across the wall and put up my legs on the box. The clamp on the rake is stuck closed, so I’m now doomed to be holding the bottle of Hound Delight until the day I die.

“Count the fingers for me, Black. I’m going to name for you the parallel universes suitable for hiding.”

“Go ahead,” Black says. “Be my guest.”

The door opens, revealing Noble, swaying elegantly between the crutches.

“Found you!” he says.

“Another one wearing my clothes,” Black says in surprise. “What’s with you today? Noble, come here. Looks like he’s already sozzled. Just started talking about parallel universes.”

“A fascinating topic.”

Noble floats toward us, flops down on an unoccupied box, and drops the crutches with a clatter.

I close my eyes, and open them again.

And find myself in everything at once. The walls, the ceiling, Black, Noble, even Noble’s crutches. I am a vortex into which the world is emptying. The part of me that’s the most intact is alarmed by what I’m doing. It’s alarmed that it revealed the bottle stash to the other me and allowed him, the bald and crazy-eyed one sitting across with his feet up on the box, to partake of its contents.

This part is also the most convenient to operate, and it says, “Damn. I didn’t know he was going to go to pieces like that. What do you think we should do, Noble?”

Yet another part of me, the one slowly crushing the cardboard box (the poor thing contained a bathroom sink once, and is now holding on for its dear life), is also irritated and a bit scared, and says, “Why are you asking me? What was it you gave him?”

I am sloshing inside the bottle, clinging somewhat to the sides, because one of my ingredients is a thick viscous syrup. I am not entirely colorless, and that’s syrup again. There aren’t any others like me, this kind of Me is only made here and exists here and nowhere else. I was stored among the commodes and I seem to remember that this Me is related to dogs in some fashion, as is the Me sitting across, while the other Me, the one looming over, thinks that I am poison.