Static

Moths and blackbirds swarmed the yard. Smoke-choked, the uprooted trees lay tangled. Someone lurked outside, but we had waited so long. Downstairs, the children were naked, screaming at the flickering TV. The garbled transmission had been whispering to them for days, urging them to defecate on the floor, shred their clothes, smash mirrors, and lock me away in the upstairs bedroom. My husband's scalp dangled from the ceiling, alongside the skins of countless neighborhood cats. At night, their shrieks lingered. The children laughed. They turned cat flesh into casseroles, salads, fur flambé. They fed me scraps through the keyhole.

Dan and I had once loved each other. We had three sons—blonde, blue-eyed, polite boys. I did everything to keep them close. Before the schools collapsed, I was active in the PTA, sometimes even substitute teaching their gym classes, embarrassing them in front of their friends. But school halls had become breeding grounds for violence—stabbings, decay, homemade bombs. A neighborhood boy lost an eye, and what grew back wasn't human.

I didn't want my children to be afraid, to be weak. We put them in karate, bought them helmets, gloves, boots, masks. Dan wrote warnings for them to memorize at dinner, his voice carrying an unsettling pitch, but commanding nonetheless. When words failed, his hands did the talking.

Motherhood had been my dream. As a child, I slept surrounded by plastic babies, each named, kissed, cradled. I had prayed not to end up alone. Dan had not been the man I imagined—bald, broke, aging—but he knew the right words at the right moments. And yet, in the end, his blood ran black, forming new patterns on the carpet.

We brought children into this world despite the sky sagging at night, the air thick as sludge, buildings crumbling or sinking into the earth. The TV static made the house tremble. My teeth rattled in my skull.

At dinnertime, they let me out. They brought me downstairs for milk. I hadn't nursed in years, but my body responded—after a pinch, a punch, a howl, I gushed. They fed, one by one.

Joey latched on with desperation, his skin yellowing. He blamed me for their hunger, squeezing my breast like a baseball.

Tum was more hesitant, his arms crossed, eyes averted. He was nearly at an age where he might have dreamed of women.

Johnson, the youngest, was losing his baby teeth, his mouth soft and clumsy. He let me hold him sometimes, let me coo to him in ways his brothers wouldn't tolerate. But tonight, something was wrong. He coughed up my milk, his swollen eyes glaring, his new teeth growing in crooked.

"Stop it," I told him. "Be good."

He bit me. I bled.

After feeding, they tied me to the sofa. Dan had tried to run—without warning me—but they caught him. The ropes cut into my arms, my skin swelling red. The TV shrieked. Their eyes were glassy, bulging with static. They watched and watched until they were drunk on it, then turned to me. They demanded stories of the past.

I spoke of childhood mornings in the grass, staring at the sky until I felt weightless. They didn't care.

I told them of the circus—where a man pulled off his head. The zoo—where babies grew in cages. McDonald's—what had become of value meals? Anything that had once been good. Anything that made my heart ache.

"Shut up. Talk about TV," Tum slurred, his neck bloated with mold.

So I did. The last game shows—men wrestling in mud for food. Soap operas—women stretched taut, their faces orange and over-stitched. The weather channel—layered with so many screens, unreadable. The news—I dared not say. The talk shows—paternity tests, pills, flying fists.

This they liked. They got riled up. Tum pinched me. Joey bit my wrists. They cut my hair, jabbed my stomach, shattered glass. They blindfolded me, forced me to touch things—a boiling kettle, a knife, something soft and unidentifiable. They gagged me, spread me on the floor, and fed again.

I stayed still. Thought of nothing.

Locked in the bedroom, I tried to want something, anything. The nursery had rotted, walls riddled with worms and aphids. I peeled wallpaper, chewed the dust, but my stomach howled. The bugs clung to my throat, too dry to swallow. I could feel things moving beneath my skin. Behind my eyes.

The ceiling blurred. The sky beyond it, swollen and drooling. I convinced myself that someday, somewhere, something would change. My arms were scarred. Larvae nested in my hair. My teeth throbbed. And inside, deeper, something nameless stirred.

When I heard the scissors, I sucked in air until they faded. I rocked, licked salt from my knees, counted numbers I used to know. My nails grew long and thick, yellowed. In time, I learned to eat them.

Then, in the floor where I had once rocked my babies to sleep, I found a mouth.

A man's mouth, warm, breath trembling. Not Dan—Dan had rot and gold in his gums. This was someone else. He whispered, again and again, a name I couldn't hold onto. His words blurred. To silence him, I spat into his lips. He sucked at the taste, desperate.

But the whispering always returned.

Eventually, I packed his mouth with dirt, sealed it shut. Silence crept back in. I taught myself words for when the world returned—yes, please, bless you. Ouch, why, I remember.

Outside, the children built something in the yard. They stripped the house—books, blankets, curtains—all burned in a pile. From the wood of their old treehouse, they built an altar, tall as me.

The room shrank. The air thickened. My body withered.

And then—fire.

The trees were burning. The grass. The sky cracked with light. I pressed my face against the glass, but the window was smudged, swarming with bugs. I pounded on the door until my knuckles split. The vents filled with ash. My stomach clenched, screaming.

They had crushed my glasses. I couldn't see.

I rummaged through my purse, searching for anything—a crumb, a scrap, a reminder of who I used to be.

I would get up in a moment. I'd go to them and say their names. I'd fill their mouths and kiss their earlobes. The days would wash. The boys would listen. The sky would come uncombed and gleaming. I could sense it. I could seem.