Hungry Mouths

• She rises early to check on her children. She remembers those days in the laboratory, conducting experiments, collecting data, staying up until the sun was up, red-eyed, finishing after a long night's work. But she has grown old since then, and now her life is changed. Here she has her hallway and the now dark room full of little sleepers; her bathroom with the ugly ceiling light. Lately, she has been thinking that she should return to academia. Perhaps, now that the children are born, she should take up her old position, or an even higher one, and probe again reality’s tiny, fundamental truths. She switches off the light in her bathroom and returns to bed. There she covers herself up to the neck with her still warm, down comforter. Lying in bed, she is unable to sleep, and finally decides to begin breakfast. Getting up again, she walks gingerly, careful not to make a sound. As she descends the stairs, she is confronted with a memory of descending into that much feared basement lab in Macky, the campus building where she used to work. Transported, she can hear again that silence that seemed only to be concealing the noise of ghosts and lurking things; she can almost see the painted yellow stripe on the floor beneath the last step. What smells there were there! Thickly perfumed walls soaking in the chemicals of thousands of experiments, decaying carpet, the smell of mold and dust. Why had she come here again? She was looking for a meeting, to make a scheduled appointment, she was going to re-enlist—what joy it would be! But it was so dark here? "I can’t seem to find the room," he thought, feeling the edge of panic. No. She stops. "It’s just my lonely old kitchen." Her eyes adjust to the details. The kitchen is vast, reaching far and low across the long floor, narrow in comparison to its length, with a counter more suited perhaps for a bar. She makes a slow trek to the refrigerator. Nothing but leftovers and milk. She takes out the over-sized jug of milk and searches in the dark for the handle to the dry goods cupboard. Opening it, she takes out a giant cereal box. She opens an adjacent cupboard and removes nine bowls, each decorated with the same twisting-vines-and-flowers design (one, the top one, chipped ever so slightly on the pink-bordered rim in the shape of an upside-down triangle, or maybe a sinking sailboat. "this one’s for Mike," she thinks). In a dark the eyes will never adjust to, she finds the transparent, metric measuring cup, and a tan pitcher. Lifting the extremely heavy milk jug, she fills the pitcher all the way, and then carefully measures out a third of a liter for each of the bowls—the pitcher empties quickly and she must refill it several times. Then she adds to each bow of milk a thick layer of corn flakes. Finished, she replaces the milk and the cereal box. All is ready for the hungry mouths. She removes nine forks from a drawer, and heads up the stairs towards the children’s room. But in the hall she notices that the sun isn’t even up yet. With a start she looks at her watch. Quarter to five! The kids don’t have to be up for another two and a half hours! She puts her hand to her forehead, exhausted. What should she do? "If I don’t wake them," she thinks, "the cereal will surely get soggy. And the stuff’s so goddamn expensive these days! "In a panic she flies down the stairs. Taking the cereal box down again, she reaches into the first bowl (which just happens to be the one with the chip), grabs a wet handful, and stops herself just in time to prevent her hand's dripping re-entry into the box. What am I doing? She places the cereal box on the counter, tosses the handful back into the bowl, runs back to the staircase, picks up a spoon, returns to the bowls, digs in, and in no time she has finished the first. Setting it down she takes up the second, but she cannot finish it. It’s too big. These bowls are at least twice her size, and she is no small woman. Defeated, she puts the bowl down, returns to the refrigerator, takes out the big jug of milk, fills the measuring cup a tenth a liter, pours it into the second bowl, then refills the first to its optimal, and covers both with another layer of flakes. Then, having put everything away again, she heads up the stairs. She’ll just wake those little bastards up! She’s almost in a fury. Throwing open the door, she screams: “Wake up and eat you fucks!” Silence. Then the sound of leather rubbing against leather as nine tiny, frantic bodies, none taller than a foot, each apparently smudged in some sort of shiny black gloss, fly from their beds, their grinning mouths and sharp teeth swarming and bright in the darkness, rush out of the room, down the stairs, and in seconds are yelping for more cereal. She follows after them, sickness rising in her. "I can’t go back to the lab," she thinks, "I have to feed all those hungry mouths after all, and what appetites!"