It was time for me to dance. It would soon be a new day. I stood up and breathed deeply in preparation. Inhale, exhale. As a rule I like to put myself through a little leg-stretching routine prior to dancing. Gentle stretching gets the blood flowing and protects against soft-tissue tears, ligament sprains, charley horses and cramps. It was going to be difficult to stretch while wearing the Corn King mask. I hopped from foot to foot, lightly, as a substitute warm-up. Normally I don’t like to watch myself dance. Recognition of the body is a reminder of material existence. The dancing is an attempt to renounce the material world, surrender one’s will to the mask and the unconscious, and inhabit the kingdom of the senses. Tonight, however, I broke with tradition and took a quick peek down at my stomach and my legs. My belly was not too huge but it seemed soft and what you would call round; as I leapt in the air, it shook in a manner I found alarming. My legs were, it seemed to me, slight; brown shoes and calf-high socks did not make them appear mighty; rather, their boniness was emphasized. Hair was rubbed away in patches. I was disappointed to notice that my penis in the freezing air was shrunken. Often I feel heartened by the sight of my penis. Tonight it had retreated into me. It looked like a little boy’s. I jumped up and down and it trembled. Watching this made me feel insecure and self-protective, and I worried about the authority I would have over spectators. For a moment I saw myself the way others might see me—as a soft, leaping man wearing a weird, improvised costume: sport coat with pockets overflowing, a mask distinguished by its enormous complement of leafy hair and its lengthy chin, socks and shoes but no pants to hide genitals that did not impress. Quickly I made this vision of myself go away. I hopped more vigorously, breathed in and out, and little by little, began to relax. Falling water’s sounds were comforting. I had the feeling that people were watching me and so checked around to see who was out there. Figures stirred in the shadows. A solitary character in the vicinity of our dinner table carried a knife that shimmered brightly. This man looked to me like Siegfried. I say this because Siegfried is thick without being fat, and his sculptor’s arms are huge. Gruff Rex was loitering near the stone-tool collection; this unpleasant man had, it seemed, armed himself with an ancient blade, a valuable exhibit from our display. Both these fellows watched as I incorporated the first flourishes into the dance, a simple kick and gyrating, overhead arm movements, waving the pillow and that syringe. The allergens in the mask were getting to me again and I sneezed loudly, and a voice behind me said, “Bless you,” and I turned and saw that I was surrounded by my brothers. Drunken men converged from every side. William, Allan, Henry, Porter, and others displayed knives and sections of wood, clubs fashioned from the wrecked furniture. Seeing this, I felt that first rush of adrenaline—it was what I had been waiting for—and sped up the dance. Allan lunged at me with sharp porcelain, a lamp fragment with the contours of a rough hatchet. It was a halfhearted lunge by an aging schoolteacher and I fended Allan off with the blue pillow as Porter and Saul raised sticks and I twirled away through puddles. It was all so easy. New steps came naturally, effortlessly, and soon I was pirouetting across our waterlogged rug. When Donovan came close, I brandished the syringe, and Donovan, a known coward, backed away. Then Arthur’s wooden bludgeon made contact with my shoulder. His was a good shot, but I hardly felt it. The water poured down from the ceiling and rivers snaked across the floor, past our overturned card tables with chessboards spilled and black and white armies scattered and drowning. I saw Hiram leaning on his walker inspecting teeth that were out of his mouth and shining brilliantly in his hand. Hiram scrubbed his teeth on his sleeve, and his empty mouth smiled at me as I accelerated around brothers armed with burning sticks and fireplace pokers. For sport, and to honor family tradition, I shouted a few egregious criticisms of my brothers’ clothing and hairstyles. A man’s body lay nearby, and I approached and peered down through the mask’s eyes to see Maxwell’s bloody face. Chandeliers swung and I rotated my head over Maxwell. The sweat ran down my arms and my naked legs. This dance was a healing dance. My body felt no pain. I waved my arm and struck William hard with the pillow, whipping him with the pillow’s braided tassels. Then I held the pillow and the syringe in the same hand. While Zachary and other brothers circled, grimaced, and plotted to get me, I administered painkillers to Maxwell. It took only an instant to insert the syringe’s needle into a bottle from my coat’s breast pocket, another instant to withdraw liquid into the transparent chamber. As I did this, I performed an elaborate dance symbolizing death, regeneration, and the spiritual childhood that follows new life. I danced ecstatically over my brother, recklessly waved the needle to intimidate Rex, Arthur, Henry, the rest; then quickly bent down, felt around for a vein, and plunged the needle into Maxwell’s cold, exposed arm. “Feel better,” I said to Maxwell. After that I vaulted across the rug to other brothers. I shouted at the men chasing me, “Back off if you don’t want to get hurt!” I jammed Barry’s stethoscope’s earpieces into the mask’s ears, danced from brother to fallen brother on our floor. One of these was our young Andrew and I had no clue how this man had come to be stretched out before me on the carpet, but upon closer inspection thought I observed swelling and a reddish rash around Andrew’s mouth, and so drove the needle in with a full dose of lovely opiates drawn from Barry’s medicine vials. I tossed syringe and bottle away, reached into my coat’s pockets, took out fresh equipment. I ministered to every injured brother except dear Virgil, whose terror of needles is something I can respect even though I find it irrational and pointless. I went to man after man and emptied one bottle then the next and the next into one syringe followed by another and another. I used all the bottles and all the syringes. I was the bringer of health. I was the wearer of the stethoscope. I was the forgiving friend. I was the Corn King. I emptied syringes into men, and I was their Jesus. Water splashed down from the stain on the ceiling. The water ran over the mask and my face, and I felt cleansed and renewed. Wildly I played among the bottles and syringes littering the floor. I used my football skills to avoid Arthur and Henry diving at my feet. I heard beautiful singing in my head, and I heard wind howling and our windows rattling. I heard the cries of my brothers on the floor, and I felt the power and the peace that came from dancing. I gripped the mask by its chin and made crazy head motions. The spirit of the mask was inside me and I had no awareness of my body though I knew with exquisite understanding that human experience is made of desire. At a certain point Tom grabbed a piece of bric-a-brac from a table and threw it at my head, but this missed and crashed into the shelves. The water splashed over me and I felt happier, I believe, than I have ever felt in my life, which is to say that I felt nothing at all, not even the chill of the water or any fear of Zachary and those brothers with their blades and truncheons. My brothers moved in a circle around me. Joyfully, obliviously, peacefully, I danced with my head held back and my eyes staring upward at chandeliers. The ceiling gave up its water from a hole that opened and grew wider above my head. Bit by bit, and section by section, the wet plaster began to loosen and to crack. This was something that had been bound to happen eventually. Now it was happening. The plaster ruptured and I danced faster, spinning around and around and gazing upward at our chandeliers swinging into alignment. Shadows on our ceiling grew long, and my brothers approached closer, and I got dizzier. The terrible cracks spread across the plaster, and the first fragments of our ceiling came loose and descended and were washed away on the tide of water pouring down from Father’s mouth to splash me while I danced. It was all coming together for me. Past Dougs and harvest spirits. My brothers with their knives. Ancient societies and our red library. Everything was inside me and I was one of the Martyrs. There was Father’s nose. There was his horrible mustache. He stared down sadly. There was that burning cigarette, a jagged timber beam. The ceiling broke and a section of Father’s forehead in profile split in two. Black fissures spread across Father’s cheek, around the bloodshot eye. The water exploded from the ceiling and Father’s eye burst apart and was swept away in fragments. Next the nose parted from the face and poured down in the water spitting from Father’s mouth. Feature after feature came down on a waterfall. I danced in the waterfall as Father’s face fell to pieces over me.