2:40
Patrick Miller
two minutes trying to keep it coiled in the space between his teeth,
but he couldn’t keep it still for long before he had to stretch again.
He was confused as to how he had never noticed this problem in
his ten years with a tongue. He folded it over onto itself and felt a
landscape of bumps and ridges against each other. The puncture in
his arm had stopped bleeding.
face from a window above the sink. He broke his reverie and
its way up his spine, pushing itself towards his head. She was a
good dog, only showing a sign of aggression once on a summer
day two years earlier when she had barked viciously at a hot air
balloon. Alex gripped the beagle’s freshly shampooed fur, trying to
pull the animal back from death. He got up and looked at the small
green digits on the stove next to the sink. 2:43. Mom would be
home soon. Alex relaxed his tongue, letting it hang partially out of
his mouth as he paced manically from the kitchen to the adjacent
living room and back. He realized that he was still gripping the
knife in his hand and walked to the sink, gazing out at the small
backyard as he washed the knife. His teeth worked on the tip of his
There was one tree in the yard, a small silver birch with
a handmade birdhouse nestled in the crook of a lower branch.
A cardinal was pecking some seed pensively, its head jabbing in
coordination with Alex’s teeth as he chewed. The knife was clean.
Alex shut off the water. He went over to the body and squatted
before it, once again examining the wounds in the anima 8