{"id":3479,"date":"2012-04-06T08:00:22","date_gmt":"2012-04-06T15:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sporkpress.com\/fiction\/?p=593"},"modified":"2012-04-06T08:00:22","modified_gmt":"2012-04-06T15:00:22","slug":"possible-non-homogeneous-planes-by-frank-hinton-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/2012\/04\/06\/possible-non-homogeneous-planes-by-frank-hinton-2\/","title":{"rendered":"possible non-homogeneous planes by Frank Hinton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slow. Always slow here. A girl peers around a boy\u2019s doorway. A sliver of her body, her face slides into view. He looks up, knowingly. He\u2019s chewing on a toothpick. He\u2019s holding it in his mouth. His face is bright, directly under bulb light. He looks at the peering girl and the toothpick in his mouth changes its angle. He\u2019s got a paintbrush in his hand. There are little globs of acrylic paint around him: blue, black, orange, white.
\n     \u201cWhat is that?\u201d the girl asks. \u201cWhat did you paint?\u201d
\n     The boy smiles. He stands up and tilts the painting, delicately, to a horizontal 90 degree angle.
\n     \u201cIt\u2019s a 1991 Dodge Spirit.\u201d
\n     \u201cWhy did you paint that?\u201d she asks.
\n     Slow.
\n     He smiles.
\n     \u201cIt\u2019s an ugly car,\u201d he says.
\n     The girl laughs. Half of her face is still covered by wall. She hasn\u2019t stepped into the door-frame yet.
\n     \u201cDon\u2019t make me laugh,\u201d she says. \u201cI had oral surgery today.\u201d
\n     She puts her palm to her cheek. Pale hide all over.
\n     The boy sets the painting down. He wipes his paint-y hands on his jeans.
\n     \u201cYou had a filling put in,\u201d he says. \u201cOne filling.\u201d
\n     \u201cMajor surgery,\u201d she says.
\n     A creeping shape on their faces, a trace of something known appears. Smiles.
\n     He steps into the hallway and the girl disappears into the shadows. The hallway is so dark you can\u2019t see a thing. It\u2019s black and it\u2019s cold. There\u2019s nothing hanging on the walls.
\n     \u201cWhich side did they fill?\u201d he asks. He moves his hand in the darkness.
\n     She points to her left cheek but he can\u2019t see where she is pointing.
\n     He kisses her left cheek without pressing his lips deep.
\n     Tissues connect, of his and hers, some wounded, wet or in repair.
\n     He says to her ear, \u201csilver or white?\u201d
\n     \u201cWhat?\u201d
\n     \u201cThe filling.\u201d
\n     \u201cI couldn\u2019t afford the composite,\u201d she says.
\n     He breathes on her from his nostrils. This part of the city is quiet now.
\n     \u201cCan I come in?\u201d she asks.
\n     He moves away, enters the bathroom and washes his hands. He cleans his fingers and wrists. With a nearby metal tool he scrapes the paint from beneath his nails. He is meticulous. Every fleck is drained away. He looks at himself in the mirror and then back at her through the angle of reflection. Something of her is alive in the dark hallway, more than just regularly alive. Half of her eye is moon-white. Bone white, maggot white. Her lips are painted and glistening. They are moving in the dark, lips looking at him, saying things that aren\u2019t words. Creatures living at her mouth, vestigial things.
\n     She tiptoes into his room and rolls her socks down. One is the color of rainbows, each bar a spectrum of light. As she rolls it down it slides away, until a cloth-red donut of sock drops to the floor.
\n     Water running down the sink. Paint drying on brush hairs. Her toenails are unpainted. He turns the light off and finds his way through. The entire house is dark now. They are the only ones awake here.
\n     
\n——-
\nFrank Hinton lives in Nova Scotia and edits the litzine Metazen<\/em> and alt lit gossip. Her first novel Action, Figure<\/em> will be released in June by Tiny Hardcore Press. Visit Frank here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slow. Always slow here. A girl peers around a boy\u2019s doorway. A sliver of her body, her face slides into view. He looks up, knowingly. He\u2019s chewing on a toothpick. He\u2019s holding it in his mouth. His face is bright, directly under bulb light. He looks at the peering girl and the toothpick in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}