Swamplandia!

by Karen Russell

Tabasco-red

Their friendship commenced when Yvans pointed out to Kiwi a particular Lost Soul—a stunning woman on crutches in a red sundress, Kiwi’s age—and then very casually proceeded to detail the things he would like to do to her in bed, in a Jacuzzi, after a lobster dinner, on his Camaro’s hood … “Wouldn’t that be extremely hot, Yvans?” Kiwi was thinking about the thermal conductivity of metal, the insulation of her crutches … “Yes!” Yvans clapped his hands, the first person on the mainland to acknowledge Kiwi’s genius. “Hot, that it would be! Kiwi, I’m saying it but you’re thinking it, am I right?!” “N-h-h.” Kiwi made a clicky sound in the back of his throat. (Growing up with the Chief, Kiwi had become the master of the lukewarm assent.)

Inside the World of Darkness, Time happened in a circle. Shifts were nine hours, and the hours contracted or accordioned outward depending on several variables that Kiwi had cataloged: difficulty of task, boredom of task, degree to which task humiliates me personally.

mauve-and-navy-blue

Vesuvius

Pompeian

orc

wonky

“Really, it’s unproductive to ruminate on that particular problem of our sister’s,” he’d told Ava on the night before he left home, by which he’d meant “It hurts.” Ossie’s need was like a fire that ate all the oxygen in a room. Her “lovesickness.”

vim

“pulchritude”—a

numinous

But it was the smallest denomination that you stole, he wrote later in the Field Notes, that was the real measure of your greed.

making adjustments based on phantom increases that he planned to receive to his tiny salary.

melaleuca

Miss Callie’s Pixie Dust,

Most likely they were poisonous or carried some bad enchantment.

kapok.

diurnal

Decatur,

wimpled

Why did anybody fool with guns, he wondered, when he had just dispatched Mr. Auschenbliss and the cat-eyed Mrs. Auschenbliss with one bloodless swipe?

Cow pies, Louis T. thought, wrinkling his nose, farm perfume; but out here the air was salted, the feculence quadrupled.

chizzywinks,

Daybreak, sunset: he liked to watch the red sun pour through the tiny doors of his mosquito screen until his blue eyes filled. Behind the screen he had the face of a man in church.

Terraphobia? It was a fear of the rooted, urban world, of cars and towns and years on calendars.

Narcissus! Just making puppy eyes down at your face in that bucket.”