Entomology

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J.M.J. Brewer

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Day 43. Nine Mansion Members remained in the game. Angie awoke atop a dead arm because it was difficult to sleep comfortably in a bed shaped like a banana peel. This season’s Island Mansion! theme was “Inspecting Insects,” and in turn the Destitute Room theme was “Trash Heap.” She and the other two Destitutes—Saul and Robby, enemies to her—were scaled roach sized to the room. Each night before bed they scurried over plastic simulacra of sodden leaves, a vinyl extra-large copy of the Dallas Morning News with the headline “Storm of Political Controversy Swirls Around Kennedy on Visit,” and a giantess mannequin in regal profile clutching a viper.

Angie avoided cutting through the backyard to make the kitchen—the backyard was where Thanksgiving, leader of the rival “Five Seasons” Alliance, pumped iron. So, along the low corridors into the kitchen, where she was alone for about two seconds before Magpie stretched in like she’d been waiting for someone to bother.

“I’m actually allergic to milk,” Magpie said, pouring milk over a bowl of cereal. “I have to puke it up after every meal.”

“You must really enjoy the taste,” said Angie.

Magpie gestured at the selection of insects on Angie’s plate. “It’s not healthy to eat the same thing day after day, you know,” she said.

As if Angie had a choice; she was on Swill ever since she’d been on the losing team in last week’s Destitution Competition, which had required the Mansion Members to dress up in dog costumes and, using only their mouths, construct a phantasmagorical miniature of The Pieta. Jesus’s head was that of a queen termite, Mary’s body a thick millipede, her lap a frozen wave of ridged undulation.

Angie choked down a cricket. She was never quite sure if Magpie was immeasurably stupid or obliquely brilliant. Was this comment a psychological whacking? Or was Magpie so galactically self-centered and well-meaning that she thought it necessary to explain a primary game mechanic three quarters into the season?

Angie was saved an inquiry by Thanksgiving’s advent. Her eyes narrowed at Angie, but her mouth cranked into a dimpling smile.

“Morning, Angie,” she said. “Sleep well?”

“You’ve got some sweat,” said Angie.

Thanksgiving began composing a protein shake just as the house alarm rang out: this morning the buzz of one thousand flies at feast. A booming voice over the loudspeakers counted down from five minutes.

By three and a half minutes past all Mansion Members were in costume and eating on their respective sides: the Five Seasons huddling around Thanksgiving at the stovetop and Angie and her three Cimmerians whispering in the booth.

Angie and the Cimmerians—Bol, Cara, Hank Eerie—had been in an alliance since night six. But their numbers were down against this recent merging of the Body Shop and the Weasel Brigade. A four-five split this late into the game necessitated swift, brutalist measures to regain the majority.

“Two. One. Zero,” intoned the Voice. “Please exit by the backdoor.”

The Mansion Members filed outside. Soft white sand beach ringed the mansion. Palm trees overhung cabanas. The central palapa’s lanterns shook in the wind and wind blew the grass along the beach into running shapes. Floating silently above were drones like blackbird skeletons.

A massive screen sat on the white sand. It had not been there yesterday; production must have erected it during the night. Angie was forever unnerved by their swift ability to alter her reality—this procedure even more invasive, somehow, than the 222 cameras. The closest camera stuck from a palm trunk. Its red pinhole glowed like the portal to a red universe.

“Let’s go America!” yelled Saul. He raised the roof. His teeth shone skull-white from his uncomfortably symmetrical face. Angie had him as Thanksgiving’s primary enforcer.

Robby ripped off his shirt and screeched “Let’s goooo America!” He was good for a strip every few weeks. Angie suspected a voyeurism kink with which she, the Mansion Members, and America were forced to sporadically engage.

Thanksgiving performed strange, disco-like moves. Magpie feigned a sprained ankle. Cara, Angie’s vizier, aped Magpie’s injury, creating a double reflection of nothing at all.

The screen flicked on. Its image was the ten-times life-size face of Chris Hurley.

The Mansion Members cheered.

“Good evening, Mansion Members,” intoned their god. “And good evening, America! We are live at the Island Mansion! for the Master of the Mansion Competition!”

The screen cut to a long shot of Chris Hurley. He wore a cream-colored suit and black Converse sneakers. An offscreen crowd purred their affection.

“But first let’s get the opinion of some of our Mansion Members. Danielle: who is going to take the title of Master of the Mansion this week?”

Danielle stretched her arms with a flapping motion utilized by competitive swimmers. She took her time thinking. Too long, really, for Chris Hurley opened his mouth to remind her of things being Live when she said, “Robby!” The Five Seasons cheered. Robby and Danielle were in a showmance.

Chis Hurley did not miss a beat. “And you, Angie. How are you feeling about today’s competition?”

Angie spoke with carefully calculated bravado. “Well, Chris, it’s an important one. Gotta win to keep myself off the block. But that’s the game, brah.” She winked and gave the shaka—an homage to her game-idol, Skremits, Island Mansion! Canada Season Three Runner-up—and the roar of the live studio crowd echoed through speakers concealed in the sand.

“So, you predict you’ll win the competition?” The camera began a slow zoom-in on Chris Hurley’s constrictor-snake lips.

“First time for everything,” she said. The crowd doubled their roar; at least she had them on her side.

The shot cut to Chris Hurley in long pacing the iconic Island Mansion! stage. Like some latter-day Donnie Osmond, his cream suit refracted the LED colors shining from the plexiglass.

“Well, we’ve got a twist for you, America!”

But Chris Hurley’s charisma had abruptly flown: his smile mummified, his eyes became flat whirlpools which lead to nowhere and nothing. Angie had the horrifying realization she was being administered a dose of reality, essentialized, which had somehow seeped through the force-field illusion of TV vitality.

Chris Hurley snapped back into the right.

“That’s right, a twist, because with Island Mansion! you’ve gotta—” he pointed off-screen toward the crowd.

The rejoinder: “REMAIN ARGUS-EYED” came so loud through the buried speakers that sand floated in unlikely, lingering patterns. Angie thought maybe she could read the patterns like the Greeks or Romans or whoever read animal entrails. But the sand fell, leaving nothing but bare air.

The Island Mansion! logo, a regal cranium, that of a General, perhaps, or Statesman, with eyes abounding, floated onscreen behind Chris Hurley. Each eye was actually a camera subtly periscoping from the flesh.

The Mansion Members groaned. Twists were seldom in their favor.

“Don’t look too sad, Mansion Members. The twist is that this is a team competition. That’s right. With an individual winner. The last person standing.”

Chris Hurley stopped talking. He blinked slowly. He blinked again. Silence roared in the empty space.

Then, as if nothing had happened, he continued:

“By random draw, Hank Eerie and Saul are captains. Hank Eerie picks first.”

Angie could pretty much see their brains clicking away. Hank Eerie’s fast as a haunted calculator. Saul’s like the ticker tape on the day of a Stock Market crash.

“Begin,” said Chris Hurley. The Island Mansion! Argus lurked over his shoulder. Looking at everything, Angie reflected, was like looking at nothing.

“Angie,” said Hank Eerie.

“Um, Thanksgiving,” said Saul.

“Bol,” said Hank Eerie.

“Robby.”

“Cara.”

Saul hesitated between Magpie and Danielle. Thanksgiving whispered in his ear.

“Magpie,” he said.

Magpie joined her alliance while Danielle and Thanksgiving exchanged occultic nods.

Why would Thanksgiving bench her star player? Danielle’s week three and week five Master of the Mansion terms proved her spooky ability to win in the clutch.

“Danielle, you’ll sit out,” said Chris Hurley. “You have no chance of winning the title of Master of the Mansion this week, but you also cannot become Destitute.”

“Fine with me, Chris,” said Danielle, like an automaton who’d been preprogramed to mimic grudging good humor.

“Now, here’s the real twist,” said Chris Hurley. He waved one arm, a sudden matador, and the screen fell. Colossal Chris Hurley winked out of existence. What he’d been blocking was a vast plexiglass obstacle course.

Two cattle chutes pointed at each other with a carousel between. The carousel’s walls were not a grid of teardrop bulbs, and the carousel floor housed zero exotic, saddled beasts. Rather, a mound of purple-and-green balls revolved as centerpiece in a translucent expanse.

Chris Hurley’s disembodied voice came from the world around them. “Team Hank Eerie is green. Team Saul, purple. Go to your color stations and personalize your costumes. I’ll explain the rules…after our commercial break.”

Angie heard the familiar click. She and the Cimmerians had deduced long ago that this click meant the main cameras weren’t Live. No broadcasting except through the feeds.

But Chris Hurley went on.

“My head is killing me like I’ve got Athena in there, dog. Who’s got a Motrin? No, Chuck, I don’t want an Advil because Marilyn kept Advil behind the mirror, and you just know she’s got Advil behind J.T. Crignot’s mirror. No, don’t—Wait? I’m still mic’d?”

Another click.

“Damn,” said Robby.

There was a moment of solidarity between the alliances. Angie proffered her hand to Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving gave it to her crotch to crotch.

“Luck,” said Thanksgiving.

“And to you,” said Angie. Thanksgiving retreated to her side. Her sculpted body spoke of a relentless character. An implacability. Above all, a sign of weakness: to be built was to imply building was to imply foundational deficiencies.

Angie and her Cimmerians went to their cattle chute. Marking the entrance was a table and atop the table burned objects of demarcation: green plastic plates meant, obviously, to be inserted into the clear sheaths of their ant-costumes. Angie got the competition, now. They were a child’s warring ant farms. Those types of ants you could dye whatever color you wanted by way of their nectar.

“One hundred and two,” said Hank Eerie, who had begun incessantly counting, for some reason. Inserting the crown plate, 103—the chest plate, 104.

“You okay, Hank?” Angie asked.

Hank Eerie wrote in the sand ‘105.’ “Just great,” he said. He crossed out ‘105’ and wrote ‘106.’ Paused. Wrote ‘107.’

“Think I should count the act of writing?” he asked. Hank Eerie had entered the game as a Lutheran choir director and tattoo artist. Below his hairline crept the three Wise Men as earwigs.

“I had a dream last night and it was just a number. Like, this huge number. The entire universe was the number.”

“What was the number?” asked Cara.

“It feels ominous to say aloud,” said Hank Eerie.

“Don’t let it bother you,” said Bol. Angie suspected Bol and Hank Eerie had a final two deal.

“Let’s lead with Bol and Hank. Angie and I will come in last.” Cara glinted brightly as an emerald. “You should get down like dogs, or whatever. Brush the balls between your legs. They won’t be able to get any. We’ll run the balls back.”

“That’s a good plan,” she told Cara. She imagined herself in a plane, flying above, watching human-sized ants fighting inside a manufactured hill.

“Well, boys?”

“Listen, you gotta get low and get mean out there.” Bol slapped at his broadness.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Hank Eerie. “When you apply my equation to Master of the Mansion competitions from older seasons, you find some interesting data.”

“I bet,” said Bol.

“Because the outcome of this game is predictable. I’m telling you. You take the number of Master of the Mansion comps, run it through the equation. Then you take last season’s opening credits, the one with everyone’s face and name? You count how long each person’s face is on screen, divide it by the number from before, right, from the equation? And this gives us a number—”

“Christ, Hank,” said Bol.

“Very interesting Hank,” said Cara. “But what does it mean?”

“We need to count off before the competition. Only, we need to randomize who starts the count. And include the Five Seasons. Whoever has the number, well. That’s that.”

“That’s what?” asked Bol.

“Then that person is going home. Or for sure staying. Might as well be written in stone.”

“Good point, Hank,” said Cara. “But it’ll be hard to get that count, right? Not that we don’t appreciate the legwork.”

Angie massaged Hank Eerie’s shoulders. “Let’s try and win anyway, Hank. I mean, we wouldn’t want to disrupt the inevitable.”

“Valid,” said Hank Eerie.

“Hank! What is best in life?” barked Cara. She’d assumed an uncertainly foreign accent.

“To crush the Five Seasons, to see them driven before us, to hear the lamentations of their partners.” Hank Eerie slapped his chest.

Across the way, through the revolving doorway, Angie watched the Five Seasons display mimicry in purple. Thanksgiving flipped in and out of existence as if in a stop motion dance. A beetle-esque purple crown marked her the Ant Queen.

There came a distinct click.

“And we’re back!” Chris Hurley’s voice roared over the beach wind. His face accompanied; another screen had been inflated.

“Mansion Members. Are you ready for some…Ant Ball?” Digital trumpets sounded: Bwah! Bwah! Bwah! For the viewers at home a chyron reading ‘Ant Ball!” would have just appeared below Chris Hurley’s black-hole eyes and ivory veneers.

“The rules are simple,” said Chris Hurley. “Whichever team carries the most ant food back to their nest, wins. And the Mansion Member from that team with the most ant food in their nest will be crowned the next Master of the Mansion.

“Get to your starting lines.” Chris Hurley took a deep breath. In the shining plates of his teeth Angie imagined she could see the reflections of his wife mid-coitus with ratings rival J.T. Crignot.

The Cimmerians lined up. From this angle the Ant Farm was long and serious. Angie remembered how once, at Sunday School, a bird had slammed into the window. Her classmate Collie Green—cursed with ever-overflowing earwax— had placed his hand where the mess would be if inside and outside were reversed.

“Don’t hold back,” Angie said. “They won’t.”

“Low and mean,” said Bol.

“On your mark,” said Chris Hurley. “Get set. And…Go!”

They went. Angie felt like she was one of four leopards banded together for a generational hunt. Then Bol careened off the plexiglass and everything was pounding and screams and reflections.

Hank Eerie tackled Saul and Bol started bucking Robby, which left Angie and Cara to face off against Magpie and Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving shot forward. Angie tensed for a blow but instead Thanksgiving scooped balls behind her at devasting speed. Cara threw herself at Thanksgiving but only bounced off Thanksgiving’s violent stiff arm—rumor had it Thanksgiving had beaten a woman half-to-death for taking her parking spot at the gym.

Angie broke the tumult with an armful of Styrofoam balls. She dashed up the chute to her nest, #1 of four mesh containers which looked suspiciously like re-dressed laundry hampers. The wind made horrible gasping sounds that Angie did not pay attention to until she realized they weren’t the wind but actual cries.

Chris Hurley wept on stage. The stage lights danced behind him. His eyes reflected rainbows.

And a second later the picture cut from Chris Hurley to video of the competition from a drone’s lofty POV. From on high, Angie could see Hank Eerie divorce himself from the competition. He stood outside the plexiglass court and counted each Mansion Member.

The screen went black.

But Hank Eerie’s finger ticked inexorably. It was all happening so fast. With each tick Angie felt as if a brassy tone was clanging beneath the skin of the world. If she let her eyes cross, she just might be able to see the heartbeat of all things pressing behind the air and sea and sand. But what she saw in her mind’s eye was no living heart at all. Rather, a cold, oiled clock marking time until oblivion.

Hank Eerie ended his count. Which meant the winner of the competition had just been deduced. Ostensibly. He looked as if he were going to cry.

And in that terrible moment came two clicks. The first, familiar click of the broadcast cutting to commercial. And a second, deeper click which Angie intuited nobody else had heard. Only she and maybe Hank Eerie, far from the melee.

Angie reached toward a black camera which stalked off the top of the plexiglass. No red pinhole light shone. The tiny red universe inside had gone dark. Black hole. Dead star.

The camera was not recording.

She jogged to the next closest. It was similarly blind. She looked up.

Not a drone in the sky.

And so, they were alone for the first time in 43 days. Just nine people playing a game.

Across the way, Thanksgiving squatted in her own nest. She raised a black baton above her head. Oh god. Trailing from its ragged end were copper-tipped tentacles of red and blue and green.

“We’re free!” Thanksgiving screamed.

The words unleashed a frenzy. Cara, sweet Cara, slithered toward Magpie and bit her squarely on the calf. Then she dodged from the carousel and joined Angie at the nest.

“Full tilt, down there,” said Cara, tossing her balls into the #2 nest.

A tuft of skin stuck between her red teeth.

Angie didn’t know what to say so instead she clapped Cara on the back. Cara bounded back into the fray like a released dog.

Thanksgiving held her black scepter aloft and the wires wove around her wrist. Angie could not parse where Thanksgiving ended and the circuitry began. Her hand was now the aspect of another body, a spinal cord connected to the brainstem of a larger host of eyes, each one 65 inches and open in every living room in America. Eyes? No, for they did not see at all, but instead reflected another organ’s recording, gave strange expression to distant mindscapes. They were a new organ burgeoning to indicate and organize a new sense.

“Danielle!” called Thanksgiving.

Danielle drifted from the bench like Agent Orange on the breeze. She slipped through the carousel and her elbow struck Bol in the neck and he went down yelping. Cara gawped at her, and Danielle popped her in the nose.

“Shit,” said Cara. She sat. Blood poured through her fingers.

Danielle took Cara by the braids and before she could do worse Bol slapped Danielle so hard that her head hit the sand before her feet did.

Cara crawled to safety while Robby confronted Bol. Danielle, suddenly risen, kicked Bol in the crotch.

Angie’s Cimmerian’s were outnumbered three to five. How could she remain aloof? Her body ran with currents as ancient as the moon’s tug of the sea. Fate carried her or else everything she perceived became fate.

“Cimmeria!” she screamed.

Magpie advanced toward her. “You’re so fucking lame, you know?” she said.

Angie dropped her hips low. She poked her right foot straight forward and her left at a right angle. She pretended to hold her epee.

“Why are you standing like that?” asked Magpie.

“You’re named after a bird,” spat Angie. And before Magpie could do more than gawp Angie gave her the fleche. No sword, but she she’d accounted for that in the spacing. Her fist punched Magpie’s sternum.

“Gahhhhh,” said Magpie. She dropped to her knees.

Angie kicked her in the face.

“Cimmeria!” screamed her warriors.

Angie and Thanksgiving locked eyes. As Angie sprinted toward her rival, she had a vision of the Milky Way hung over a field of electrical cords fruiting with twin-slit outlets.

Thanksgiving tried to thwock her with the camera-limb. There was absolutely no separation between the two objects now. Angie feinted left and went right. Thanksgiving’s manicured claws took three furrows of abdomen skin, but Angie was past, running, scooping up a handful of balls and not even bothering to turn around before diving to the side while Thanksgiving’s heel sundered the air she’d recently occupied.

“You’re mine,” Thanksgiving said.

Angie tossed a ball into Thanksgiving’s face and as it hit, she gave the ol’ fleche, again, hanging her elbow out to smack Thanksgiving in the face as she whizzed by.

Her fencing coach’s adage was that a proper fleche ends on your face. She was dragging herself up from that stumble, elbow smarting, when Thanksgiving fell upon her. Three quick punches to her kidneys and Angie vomited a single cricket, undigested. She tried to struggle away but Thanksgiving pressed knees into the small of her back.

Thanksgiving ripped her head up by the hair and pressed her face into the plexiglass, experimentally, as if to figure out the relative strength of the interacting surfaces.

“No,” said Angie.

Thanksgiving did not answer. Angie wrenched around to see Thanksgiving in her periphery. Only her chin, square yet cherubic.

The hand in Angie’s hair reset its clench.

Angie knew she was alone. Nobody was coming to help her. The plexiglass was so far away and so, so close. Through it she could see grains of sand tumbling in the wind.

She wondered how many slams until her nose broke—no more than two. Her jaw could withstand perhaps seven or eight. She mused on whether to keep her eyes open. Was it best to watch the glass approach, or to experience a brief span of nothingness before the pain?

A sudden rush of movement behind her. The weight lifted. The hand released her hair.

“Run!” cried Bol.

Angie scooted away. Above her two titans raged. Bol roared as loud as any mother Bigfoot. He overpowered Thanksgiving, who twisted away, scooped an errant ball, and retreated.

Angie struggled to her feet. A white, square splinter stuck out of her elbow. She yanked it free. Nothing hurt, yet. Bol took the shard from her hand and held it against his lips.

“This, my dear, is a human tooth.”

They both laughed. Couldn’t stop. She and Bol walked the chute and scored with no interference. Their ant food piles far outstripped the other team; the game was up. Against all odds, they had won.

Except Robby and Hank Eerie were still in the carousel. Between them rolled the last ball of ant food. They lunged back and forth for it until the ball popped free and all at once Hank Eerie was sliding onto Robby. He pinned Robby’s shoulders down with his knees.

“Hank, get off me.”

Hank Eerie gripped Robby’s collarbone. He leaned far, far back.

“You’re number nine,” said Hank.

“What?” Robby shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

And all at once Angie became frightened. Terrified, actually, because Robby was terrified. You could see it all over him.

“Hank, buddy,” pleaded Robby. “Night one, right? We shoot pool, right?”

Hank Eerie punched him in the face.

“Hank,” Robby said, but it came out like “Phrank.”

Hank did not relent. Half-a-dozen flat smacks later and Angie realized Hank was counting. Seven, eight. He started over at nine.

Bol ran down the chute. Saul and Thanksgiving ran from the other side. They were awfully slow compared to Hank’s piston. Angie wanted to laugh except she did not, at all.

But before they could reach him, Hank Eerie stopped. It was like watching a switch turn. And, in cosmic symmetry, a deep-rooted click broke the crystal silence of their world. The click of a hundred microphones and a hundred cameras become revenant.

On the screen blazed a projection of the Island Mansion! Argus and the subtitled message: “Technical Difficulties! Be back soon! Sponsored by The Tile Farm.”

Angie felt as if her senses had moved past their normal scaffolding into architecture ancient and wild. The Island Mansion! Argus morphed into a wasp nest; its camera-eyes became blindly recording silver larvae.

Chris Hurley’s voice broke out from everywhere. “Stop, please. Stop. Where’s security? Where the hell is…”

Angie allowed Chris Hurley to blend into the world around her. Into the wind and the sand and the sun. The cameras were nothing but plastic flora. Just a new nature, a novel variety in this world of microplastics and islands made of garbage.

Hank Eerie rose to his feet. His right fist was a mangle. “We’ve won it, now. It’s only the structure of possible worlds—the essence of mathematics.”

“You should sit down, Hank,” said Bol.

Hank sat down next to Robby.

“No, like, over here.” Bol tried to help Hank Eerie away, but Hank would not budge. Dimly, she noted the throbbing approach of speedboats on the waves. Of buzzing drones dropping to head-height. Of Mansion doors slamming open, of the approaching footstep of production, finally revealed, about to intercede in the game.

On a reflex she looked to the sky, looked away from Robby‘s revolving corpse. She could feel production members around her, halting, likewise staring skyward.

A shadow rolled over. A plane? No, too massive for that. And if it was a cloud, it moved against the wind.

The day drew suddenly into false evening. Above, the shadow stretched on and on until Angie began to make out its intricacies: the hint of concrete chambers, of columns, of sharp arches in that style called brutalism, of a vast weight held impossibly aloft.

Lower, lower, she willed it, and the craft sunk at her whim. She was not surprised. Its hull was composed of hexagonal prisms, some combination of interstate underpass and Mosque arch in infinitude. Set within each was a digital jewel—a shining pinprick of red light. She willed the craft lower, again, and this time it flashed brighter than the sun and—

It was gone.

Its last trace was a violent glare that stained her vision as would a neon clockface at night, except writ large, exposing a dimension more important than time, one that held nascent senses for her and her like.

She blinked, over and over, the world flitting in and out of existence. She could see the drama of Hank Eerie’s shackling and of Robby’s covering and all the rest. But this was secondary to what she saw within herself, inside her eyes, where those shimmering stains squirmed into mysterious shapes. Into stage-of-the-art organs. Into sensory apparatuses ushering a strange, new reality.

__________

J.M.J. Brewer (he/him) is a staunch supporter of nature conservation. He is an assistant professor of English at Tarleton State University. You can find more of his short fiction at jmjbrewer.com.

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