paired with its own spotlight), walks up to the front door, unlocks it, and enters his home.
The entry hall is white, white, terribly white. White marble walls, white marble floors, and what few unwhite spots there are (tables, pictures) are simple black. This is because Macey does not care to see color when he comes home; he is unused to the sensation, and it aggravates him so.
Yet there is color, he realizes. There is a splash of color at his feet, screamingly bright. They are the colors called pink and yellow, and once Macey gets past this irritation he realizes he is staring at a gift-wrapped present sitting in the center of his entry hall. It also features an extremely large pink bow, and attached to this is a white tag. Upon examination, he finds it reads BE THERE SOON!—M
Macey scratches his head. This, like the sudden intrusion of color, is a new experience for him: he has never received a present before. He wonders what to do with it. Though his familiarity with this process is limited, he knows there is really only one thing you do with a present: open it.
So he does. He lifts off the top, and inside are heaps and heaps of pink tissue paper. He prods his way through the top layer yet finds no gift inside, so he reaches in, arm up to the elbow in pink paper, and he wonders: why would the present not fit its box? Or (and even he knows this is absurd) does the box contain nothing but pink tissue paper?
Yet then his fingers brush against something small and dry and rough, some item nestled among all the tissue paper. He jerks back, and as he does he cannot help but notice all the lights in the house flickered a bit just now, almost exactly when his fingers touched that hidden little… whatever it is.
Curious, Macey starts pawing through the paper, digging past its layers until he grasps the hard little object. He rips it out, stuck in its own ball of paper, and begins to peel away each pink sheath.
And as he does, the form of the object becomes clear (and the lights flicker more and more and more) until finally the last layer is gone and his disbelief is confirmed:
He holds in his hands a small rabbit skull, its eyes empty and its teeth like little pearls. He turns it over in his hands,
(and does he feel a door opening somewhere in the house, invisible and tiny, a perforation in the skin of the world through which black aether comes rushing?)
examining it and thinking what a bizarre little gift this is, but his examination is interrupted.
There is a clicking sound in his hallway. He looks up, searching for its source, and he tracks it to the little (black, of course) table at the end of the hall. There is a plate of decorative black marble balls on it, and they are all clacking against one another as if someone is shaking the plate.
And then something happens that even Macey finds strange: slowly, one by one, the marble balls lift from the plate and begin floating into the air.
Macey stares at this, astonished, his eyes beginning to hurt from the flickering lights. He turns and looks at the window at the end of the hall. He can see the reflection of the living room there, and he sees that all his belongings in that room are floating, too: the womb chairs dangle in nothing as if hanging from invisible string, the copies of Southwestern Steppes Outdoorsman drift by with pages fluttering.
Then he feels it, a sensation he has not felt in a long, long time.
The world is bending. Something from elsewhere—something from the other side—is making its way through.
Macey rises, and walks to his open front door.
There is a man standing on the front walk.
(you know this man)
His figure is pale and somewhat translucent, as if his image were rendered in the blue flame of a dying candle, but Macey can see two long horns or maybe ears rising up from the sides of his skull…
(Brother Brother do you see me)
Macey stares at him, and whispers, “No, no. It can’t be you, it can’t be.”
Yet the figure remains, watching him impassively. Macey does not wait: he throws the door shut, locks it, and sprints down the hallway.
All around him his possessions are leaving the ground to hang in the air. The floor and walls shake as if