There is a man, and he lives in a house. The closets are lined with dress shirts, the doormat with dress shoes. Each morning, he wakes, gathers the bits of himself that have drifted to other parts of the room, loose foggy parts that have trouble reintegrating. Each morning, he wakes and goes to work. The house doesn’t know what he does there; only what the work does to him. Only the way that it sets loose the corners of his eyes, lets them sag, sends a nervous little tremor through his hands. The balding, yes. Oh, the shuffle of shoes on the doorstep, the click of the doorknob. The door thuds closed behind him. The tie comes off, the shoes, the suit jacket. It all comes off, strewn haphazardly until there is just a man, in his house, his skin of paper and his skeleton of string. He falls over, droops, and as the wind from the open window flutters in, one could nearly see the silhouette of a smaller, lighter house, coated in a fine sheen of what looks, from the view of the windows spilling light, like fairy dust.
~
There is a girl, and she lives in a house. The mailman comes by every Monday, leaves neat little packages at the other house, with its other story, dying flowers, roses, at another house, another story. He never brings her anything.
She’s always kept her hair long. There’s a brush by the restroom sink. Blue. White clouds printed onto it. Loose, long strands of hair, plastered to the bowl of the sink. She could probably pull a Rapunzel in a few years, she giggles to herself. Dip her head out the window, let her hair cascade down, an invitation. Cut it all off, braid a rope, climb out herself. But no, that’s dumb. It’d be pointless. The front door works just fine. Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty - where’d she learn those names, anyway? No, not a princess, she sighs. Just someone new.
She’s done this on her dolls before. Taken the scissors from the kitchen drawer, scampered away with them to some secluded corner. The quiet, drowsy snips of the scissors, shufflings, of the girl, shifting in her matted - but clean - slippers against the tiled floor. Still, there’s the soft ssk of more hair growing, more hair replacing the bundles that she’s already cut. The mound at her feet grows, enough to cover her slippers, to rise past her ankles, her knees. Her fingers are tired. It’ll be worth it. Maybe, if she just keeps cutting and cutting, until the strands come to cover every surface, every room, the dreams will all be able to leave her head, and maybe she can finally sleep.
~
There is a pair of goldfish, and they live in a glass bowl. Swim around each other, into each other, settle on the bottom of the bowl, mouths, eyes, gaping out at the world. They’ve never seen it. They’ve always had the presence of mind to at least want to.
The man, the girl, the house, the bowl. There’s a string tugging, insistently. The water splashes, the bowl tips, the fish spill out and lie, gasping and floundering. The man. Flimsier, soggier. Takes one of the fish, makes it a nest in his ribcage of fiber. Weaves it in, snug. Drags himself away, afloat. The girl. Misty-eyed, barefoot. Takes, one of the fish, considers it, swallows it down. Twirls a strand of hair around her finger. Folds and twists. A small leaf, dark and fibrous and made of cut, dead things. Pins it to the man’s collarbone, the paper stretching thinly over it. But the rain-
And now he’s crumpled on the ground. Rainwater filling his nice shoes. The girl watches from the window, turns away from the window. His skin disintegrates, his skeleton becomes laden. The leaf sags against twisted bone. They twist together, structures of the in and out, intertwine.