The Grand Hotel Bald Cockatoo

Large elevator buttons, ivory in gold. With a sudden drop you catch a stranger from falling, hold her hand, her fingers coming off in yours. She presses the stub hand to your chest. You press a finger to the call buttons. And they become kittens.

Mewling and horrid, but a bell goes off and oh my god you forgot you love kittens and you grasp at the kitten you have now named Jake Hudson with paper fingers that have no bones.

A gigantic skeleton made of pages ripped from diaries knits itself into being, assembling its own parts into something that has a kind of coherence, like a body composed of scraps of memories.

There is sand in the fruit bowl, kiwis, durians and mangosteen, flies escaping through the window into a lush garden where a naked architect is designing a fountain, bird-like creatures slyly invite you into the brush that grows with approach.

You like its dark, reaching ways and the smell of green, the way the brush is the size of your grandmother's home on the seaside, a size you think is just right. But, wait, the bush now blocks the sun.

And the bush catches fire, and there is an old woman's face in the flames, issuing commandments. Fluorescent lizards begin to scatter from the fire as an eclipse darkens the sky.

The roulette spins, numbers whirl. A word, "bird", repeats in a dizzying language, as she stares in your eyes, her arms a flutter and then revealing a trap, jumps from hind legs, with catlike precision, fangs forward. You swat.

Never quite catching his, or its, countenance. A creature in the shadows. There are more of them, their angry eyes glowing yellow in the darkness.

They are hungry for you, with lovely cartoon eyes and teeth made of candy. Nothing can hurt you here, remember? Look: when you laugh at the great thing it becomes moss or a Ferris wheel or a lollipop. Go ahead. Try it. That's it. Imagine.

A sniper uses night vision to fix a target. A drone passes over as satellites blinker in the grand vastness of space forming a comforting fence around the infinite.

Or, maybe a necklace for a person very loved. You squint and see someone lovely like that, now, riding the satellite side-saddle, like someone in an advertisement for the Great Comet of 1919.

The image: shooting past the planet, waving with ecstasy, hair in the wind on a flying bicycle, light streaming from the mouth instead of words, streamers passing for fires, fireworks for explosions. It is all the beginning and the end at the same time, and it is good.

There is a man overboard and waves furiously lash the side of the boat amidst a tumultuous thundering storm. Rescue helicopters circle overhead, to no avail. We zero in on the eyes of the man, utterly lost in confusion.

The birds bring him flowers and a small book of explanation, the kind given to children. It feels small in his hand, but still a miracle of connection. Ah, I see, he says. But he doesn't: he is just polite.

He has no eyes, only a vacant inviting longing. Not ugly, not horrific but rather a hollowing place of ecstatic moaning that draws one in, slow mantras, inhuman harmonies, politely drawing the insides out, organs to eyes, to mouth...

There is a bowl on the center of the table and eyeballs are rolling within it like marbles in a gelatinous pool. I'm searching for you but I'll never find you there, your smiling green eyes everlost in blue mist.

The swirls beckon -- familiar voices, children cry, waves lap, birds shriek, crabs scatter. You run, but the myst is slippery, the floor sinking, and there is an itch you have to scratch. You struggle for balance.

A voice calls. A lovely voice from a place long ago, sweet like a lullaby, and in a language you aren't sure you know anymore. Far away. But still reassuring, like a hand at your elbow and you no longer feel you'll fall.

The milkshake has the consistency of Elmer's glue as it spills onto the table. Lobster served raw and gelatinous. A filthy eater sits before an enormous bowl of spaghetti and meatballs that he keeps failing to get into his mouth.

The incessant chewing, a soreness of the jaw, the grinding of teeth into powder, the breaking of a jaw bone, the stretching of the mouth, the hardening of the lips. They stretch into a point. A regurgitation.

You spot a worm, and he looks at you with such tenderness, you cannot think of eating him. No. This is the kind of worm you invite to a birthday party. A friend, you think, and instantly he is wearing a red paper hat.

Come ON. Come on!!! Running through a meadow... holding a small girl's hand, laughing. Your feet push through the meadow, and it's now a river. A stream. Safe. Sun-dappled. Your hands touch water, and you pull out diamonds and watch them shine...

You begin to hum "Sweet Caroline" as you fondle the stones. You consider the forces involved, carbon crystalizing over billions of years, shot up from volcanos before arriving on your wicked palms.

Fronds swat, wrinkled trunks grasp and shoot outward, an electricity of a nature in rapture, orgasms of the flowers, a danger of strangers in the safety of the forest, fingers and ferns as smoke from wild fire streams darken all.

Fire crackling, feet slippered, robe soft, hot chocolate made with care on the stove and with vanilla, warm in your two hands. Outside, the miracle of snowflakes. You stick your tongue out and the window dissolves.

And you catch one... of the cuckoo clocks that are floating through space, all sounding simultaneously in an unbearable cacophony. The clocks fall and shatter as water slowly floods the rubble of the decadent dining room.

We float on the table, duck legs and starfruit in hand, pomegranate seeds lapping with the waters. We eat and eat as waters turn rough. The table rises toward the mosaic dome. It shatters and melts with bloody juices.

A bird hotel is no place for an Easter egg hunt, which must be completed - must be - and you furtively climb between leaves toward nests. No you are not a peeping Tom, a pervert. No! Not that, but a game player...

...moving chessmen down the table. The pawns are all teenagers, and they are animated, in motion, some of them smoking. The king and queen are, however, ancient, wizened like great grandfathers. Maybe even older.

Not great in a race against monsters, maybe, but look how light they are for the birds to carry and how high up the king and queen go and how fast. So wise and aerodynamic.

Impossibly green. So many leaves and so snug inside the warm, budding world, close to the mud, safely hidden from eyes and bears and work. Shhh. Focus on important things, like this small quartz stone in your hand, saying Hello.

It warms your hand. You hold it in your mouth, where it echoes. You pull it out and throw it toward a cave and follow its voice, to find it. You throw it again into the darkness and again it calls, Hello.

I just called to say I love you. I'm still here. Hello? Remember every last damn one of them we buried together. Hello? We have a permanent bond.

Every step brings you closer to the clouds. Step, windowsill. Step, rooftop. Step, bird's nest. Step, biplane. It's hard to tell, at first, if you are walking an invisible staircase skyward or if your legs are stretching. But it's both.

We get longer; shorter. We grab onto the elastic surfaces which spin us into balls curling and unravelling and thrusting us into the embrace of a large web, which drops us across a canyon.

The sound the spider makes, which you hear when you are shrunk to the size of a fly, is that of a howling wolf.