He’d wait for the right moment. The visuals were important; there was a huge difference between being caught devouring raw steak and licking a frozen pork chop, or inviting your life partner to do the same. There was no hurry, no mad rush. No madness at all; he was normal.

He went back upstairs.

She was waiting for him. But not in the bed, or on the bed. She was standing far away from the bed.

— What’s this? she asked.

She turned on the light.

She was holding a head on the palm of her open hand. A small head.

— A chicken’s head, he said.

— Where did you get it?

— I found it.

He was a clown, an eejit; he’d hidden it under his socks.

— It’s Barbara’s, she said.-Isn’t it?

— Barbara’s head would be a bit bigger, he said.

It didn’t work; she didn’t smile.

— Did the fox drop it in the garden? she asked.

She was giving him an escape route, offering him a reasonable story. But it was the wrong one. He’d found a chicken’s head and hidden it? He wasn’t going to admit to the lie. It was sad, perverse.

— No, he said.

— Well, she said, and looked away.-What happened?

— I bit it off, he said.

She looked at him again. For quite a while.

— What was that like?

— Great, he said.-Great.

Joyce Carol Oates FOSSIL-FIGURES

1.

INSIDE THE GREAT BELLY where the beat beat beat of the great heart pumped life blindly. Where there should have been one, there were two: the demon brother, the larger, ravenous with hunger, and the other, the smaller brother, and in the liquidy darkness a pulse between them, a beat that quivered and shuddered, now strong, now lapsing, now strong again, as the demon brother grew even larger, took the nourishment as it pulsed into the womb, the heat, the blood, the mineral strength, kicked and shuddered with life so the mother, whose face was not known, whose existence could only be surmised, winced in pain, tried to laugh but went deathly pale, trying to smile gripping a railing Ah! My baby.