On the third floor, I find Dad's cardigan, the one Mum gave him one anniversary,
and put it on. She carved it herself from foam and fixed it with some flexible,
dirt-shedding bath, so by the time I'm done with the third floor, my arms and
chest are black with dust, and the sweater is still glowing with eerie
cleanliness.
I know Dad wouldn't want me to wear his sweater now. They say that on the
mothaship, the bugouts have ways to watch each and every one of us, and maybe
Mum and Dad are there, watching me, and so I wipe my nose on the sleeve.
#
When the ballast is done, phase three begins. I go to work outside of the house,
spritzing a line of solvent at the point where the foam meets the ground, until
it's all disconnected.
And then I got to kick myself for an asshole. A strand of armoured fibre-optic,
a steel water pipe, and the ceramic gas line hold it all down, totally
impervious to solvent.
Somewhere, in a toolbox that I ditched out the second floor window, is a big old
steel meat-cleaver, and now I hunt for it, prying apart the piles of crap with a
broomstick, feeling every inch the post-apocalyptic scrounger.
I finally locate it, hanging out of arm's reach from my neighbour Linus's rose
trellis. I shake the trellis until it falls, missing my foot, which I jerk away
and swear at.
#
The fibre cleaves with a single stroke. The gas line takes twenty or more, each
stroke clanging off the ceramic and sending the blade back alarmingly at my
face.
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