Near the end of the ninth hour of the evening, the doorbell rang.
The visitor wore a long coat my mother hung up in the shoe closet. He sat on the sofa on which we sometimes slept on, his ass where we’d usually lay our cheeks. He’d brought with him a box that was placed on his lap and didn’t say anything and we couldn’t stop staring. When my mother re-entered the room, he looked up from the box.
“Where’s the girl,” he asked.
He didn’t even know her name—this man our parents knew in another country, in another century, before we were ever born.
He followed our mother up the stairs, and we followed him into her room.
She was wearing headphones, listening to a Schubert sonata at full volume.
“She likes to drown out the sound of this world,” Mother said.
“Music is for Melancholics,” he retorted.
She turned then took off her headphones.
“You remembered,” she exclaimed, her eyes darkening.
He handed her the box.
“This is all you’ll need.”
“Go on then,” her mother said. “Open it.”
A music box with a syringe with yellowish fluid in it.
“And you said it won’t hurt, right?”
“Yes,” he said. “At least not after the first few seconds.”
She took the syringe out of the box and he got on his knees and she injected it into his forehead, which began to bleed, dripping onto the hardwood floor.
“A dream without a mess isn’t a dream worth dreaming,” she said.
“That’s easy for you to say,” Mother said, turning to reach for the mop.
And when she turned back the girl—our sister—had disappeared; and inside the music box sat a black swan, whirling.