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The Sound, The Sky

by LINDA EDDINGS

It was more correct to say that he possessed the lizards at times. He made no claims on ownership.

Once there had been a skylight there.

Some of the animals liked the light, others avoided it even at the cost of their own lives. Few could be trusted to go outside and return intact. For those who could be counted on this way, he had rigged a decorative doorbell that would inform him the lizards wanted to enter.

He wasn't entirely sure what they did when he slept. Planned, he supposed.

When the skylight was there, the scar on his face would tingle at the first embrace of sunlight. It was then, but not only then, but most often then that he felt as a man like any other.

A woman came to his door one day. He invited her in and asked her what she wanted. She said that she was to survey the property and make an accounting that could be referred to by her superiors.

He asked whether there was some way around this and she shook her head. When she began to make a tour of the nursery, he could not decide whether or not to call out to the lizard they called Lead to spare the woman's life, and by the time he had made up in his mind he only heard the crunching of her bones.

He did not know what to do with her car. He could not plausibly leave it there. He wished her to come back, but this was now beyond his powers. Lead's personality became more attentive to the other lizards.

He decided to ask Lead what to do with the car, a blue sedan. The lizard resolved to take care of it on one condition. Before finding out what it was, he agreed to it.

He possessed the lizard named Tevitt and together they pushed the car into the woods one night, very late indeed. "If they find it," the lizard named Lead told him, "They will think she ran away."
 
The lizards made a kind of sense, but he remained fearful. He watched the newspapers for notice of her passing, but the woman's name never appeared. He thought it was Sheila.

At one time there had been a skylight, now there was only aluminum foil, papered over the absence on the ceiling. He asked Tevitt to go find a more appropriate covering. Tevitt agreed and suggested taking a few lizards with him to bring back what they could carry or persuade others to transport.

He did not hear the doorbell for a long time after that.

Linda Eddings is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can find an archive of her work on This Recording here.

Images by Duncan Johnson.

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