She slaps the paint up the wall, evens it under the stroke of the brush. It takes mere moments for her to realize she’ll never get anywhere like this: the shabby unpainted room yawns away. She dips the brush again. Their fish mouths gulp at the surface. Assia rocks on her bulb, her rooty filaments clumped and dirty. He’s spilling his milt into her, filling her little cup with it. It’s all so dirty—the hairs will never come out of this paint. Sylvia could pluck at the sticky walls forever. She drops the eyelashing brush on the newspaper and searches the floor for the drip pan and the roller. She’s gagging on the fumes. She wants to retch. She can’t clear the particulate out of her throat. If it weren’t for the children she wouldn’t have to see him at all. No—not this way. It’s unspeakable. It opens a hole gaping at the edge: Where would she be now without her children? And that idea’s frightening twin, a tiny figure escaping across a crater: Not seeing him.

Who was that? Blood spattered, clutching her stump, running barefoot in a flapping hospital gown? And the throbbing moon behind, pocked and scarred, indifferent as the dead. Her blood dripping, spraying in dark viscous drops. Drops that scar, that burn with a jellyfish sting, with an indelible acid, spraying over her arms.

The children—where are they?

Her rib cage, her body is shaking. She’s shivering, trembling in the cold. It’s not just the cold. It’s this irresistible stench. How easily she rolls in it, this decay. She can’t seem to help herself. It’s ghastly, this attraction. At an impulse it squeezes out a steaming deformity. Some animals frightened into stampede—sheep, antelopes—will simply abort their fetuses, dropping them spontaneously in their bloody bags onto the dirt as they flee.

The children—

Her teeth are chattering, reflexive. She’s trembling, running the long-handled roller up and down the walls. She can’t make out the difference between the white paint and the white wall underneath. White on white on white. It’s so cold; the mercury plummets with the night. At home in Devon, the apples she left on the trees, the highest ones she couldn’t reach, are freezing. They were red; they were green. Their skin carried the perfume of spring. Up in the crowns of the trees. Unreachable. Daylight will thaw them, and they’ll darken, rotting and monstrous. They will hang, heavy, revolving on their stems. Eventually they’ll fall.

The children are safe, she tells herself. They’re fed and washed and caressed; they’re read to and folded into themselves in their beds. Their blankets are tucked all around them.