The denial has been thick enough to keep the delusion of reprieve alive and kicking, and then there was last night, which has landed squarely at this morning. Rocket from the bed and into the kitchen, and he keeps walking without looking behind him to see that he hasn’t made the bed and that the room is wrecked just like the kitchen. He has hidden the CT scan films, mostly from himself, between the wall and the stove in the kitchen. On the counter next to the stove, the white stone horizon is littered with tiny bear bodies; the contents of the honey bear’s head have thickened right where they spilled out after his head exploded from the pounding. A crowd of gummy bears looks on, rubbernecking and milling about, staring down at their feet and feeling the weight of just how wrong things went for the honey bear, and if it happened to someone so much bigger, couldn’t it happen to them at any second? Matthew steps over cabinet and cupboard doors, walks to the living room, and peeks from behind the curtain to make sure the UPS guy has jumped back into the truck and driven off before he creeps out on the porch quickly and recedes back into shadowy safety carrying the parcels left by UPS.
