The Cipher

by Kathe Koja

I knew: friends, yeah, but it was the Funhole she wanted. You can know something and never think about it, if you’re any good at it. Me, now, I’ve been avoiding so much for so long that the real trick becomes thinking straight.

She appeared, naked and thin as a ruler, stood in the diffused light of the bedroom and observed that she had never actually made a man sick before. I think it was her smile, all teeth, that made me finally barf.

Ah God, the happy hells I can create, you too, all of us. Even Nakota. We are all our worst best friends. Don’t agree? Go fuck yourself.

a good morning is still a good morning, even if it leads to apocalypse at night.

Will wonders never cease. Not as long as there’s a Funhole, they won’t.

No questions from me, though. See her rarely, touch her never, but if that was all I could get, then I was going to take it and be, if not glad, then sorry, but in silence.

It’s so easy to be nothing. It requires very little thought or afterthought, you can always find people to drink with you, hang out with you, everybody needs a little nothing in their life, right?

“I tried to kill myself,” I said, and flicked off her touch; still, a tremor. “It worked.”

I shook my head, positively no, and said, “All right.”

I thought I heard from its deeps not music but the elegant drone of bodily organs, a sound so unimaginably soothing that I felt I could not only sleep there, I could sleep forever,