The Transmigration of Bodies

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A scurvy thirst awoke him and he got up to get a glass of water, but the tap was dry and all that trickled out was a thin stream of dank air. Eyeing the third of mezcal on the table with venom, he got the feeling it was going to be an awful day. He had no way of knowing it already was, had been for hours, truly awful, much more awful than the private little inferno he’d built himself on booze. He decided to go out. He opened his door, was disconcerted not to see the scamper of la Ñora, who’d lived there since the days when the Big House was actually a Big House and not two floors of little houses — rooms for folks half-down on their luck — and then opened the front door and walked out. The second he took a step his back cricked to tell him something was off.

He knew he wasn’t dreaming because his dreams were so unremarkable. If ever he managed to sleep several hours in a row, he dreamed, but his dreams were so lifelike they provided no rest: only small variations on his everyday undertakings and his everyday conversations and everyday fears. Occasionally his teeth fell out, but aside from that it was just everyday stuff. Nothing like this.

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