I found her in the kitchen eating something out of a paper bag. It was a Tuesday. I'd come home from driving my cab and the building smelled like boiled cabbage and the hallway light was out again like it always was. I walked into the kitchen and Helen was sitting at the table and there was a paper bag in front of her and she was eating from it and she looked up at me and her eyes were flat like they'd been flat for a while now and she said "nothing" when I asked her what it was.

I looked in the bag. It was a rat. Not dead. Just... parts of a rat, pulled apart, the fur still attached to some of the pieces. Helen had been eating it methodically, piece by piece, like she was reading a book from left to right. She didn't flinch when I made a sound. She just went back to eating.

I threw the bag in the dumpster outside. I washed the table. I drove back to the cab stand and sat in my cab and smoked a cigarette and told myself it was stress. It was always stress. The mill had closed two years ago and everything since then had been stress—the cab, the rent, the doctor's appointments, the way Helen's hands shook when she held a cup of coffee.

The doctor called it pica. A symptom of heavy metal poisoning. Aluminum dust, fine as flour, getting into her lungs and her nerves. She'd been working at the aluminum plant in Aliquippa for eight years. They stopped making her wear a mask when the plant cut costs. She kept working anyway because the health insurance was the only thing keeping her alive. The plant settled for twenty thousand dollars and a letter saying they were sorry. Helen got worse.

She stopped cooking. I came home to a kitchen that smelled like nothing—no food, no smell, just empty space where dinner used to be. She stopped showering. I came home to a bathroom that smelled like sweat and old water and the tub was full of gray stuff that I didn't want to look at too closely. She sat in the chair by the window and watched the rain hit the parking lot and didn't move for hours.

I stopped going out. I got a job at a gas station on the edge of town, working nights, so I could be home during the day. I'd come in at six and make coffee and sit in the chair by the window and watch Helen watch the rain. Sometimes she'd look at me and smile and I'd smile back and we'd sit there together and the silence would be almost comfortable, almost like the old days before the mill closed, before the dust got in her lungs, before she started eating things that weren't food.

The gas station paid barely enough for the rent. I drove an extra shift on Saturdays filling people's tires and checking their oil and listening to them talk about football and the weather and everything that was normal and nothing that was Helen. I'd come home at midnight and Helen would be in the chair by the window and the parking lot would be empty and the rain would have stopped and the silence would be the same.

She died in a hospital that smelled like bleach and boiled cabbage. The doctor signed the papers and said something clinical and I signed my name and Helen's hand was in mine and it was light and I couldn't feel much of anything except the paper in my hand and the weight of her hand going lighter and then not there at all.

I drove home. I ate a sandwich. It was bologna on white bread and it tasted like nothing. I went to sleep in our bed and the pillow where Helen's head had been was still warm and I didn't turn it over.

I went to work the next night. A car pulled up at midnight and the driver said he needed gas and I filled the tank and I said "How are you?" and he said "Fine" and I went back to work and the pump clicked and the gas went into his car and the car drove away and I stood there in the rain and the parking lot was empty and I went inside and made coffee and sat down and the chair by the window was empty and the silence was the same.

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OTMES v2 OBJECTIVE CODE ======================= Code: OTMES-v2-CCC44D-180-M0-5R07.4-W5T2-C145 E_total (Literary Potential): 7.4 Dominant Mode: M0 Dominant Angle: 180.0 deg Tragedy Rank: 5 Dominance Ratio: 0.45 Irreversibility: 1.0 Description: Dirty Realism, Industrial disease, Zero agency

M_vector: [8.5, 0.5, 3.5, 4.0, 1.0, 6.0, 9.5, 0.0, 3.0, 1.0] N_vector: [0.35, 0.65] K_vector: [0.75, 0.25]

Tensor Transformation from original: V-01: M1->10, M7+2.0, R->0, TI 78.2->95.0, theta 125->240 V-02: K2->0.7, M10+3.0, N1->0.8, R+0.2, TI 78.2->55.0, theta 125->45 V-05: R->0, M1+M6, theta->180, TI 78.2->93.0 V-07: N2->0.9, C->1.0, theta->180, R->0.1, TI 78.2->38.0 V-08: M7+M4, M4->7.0, M1->10.5, theta->90, TI 78.2->85.0 V-09: theta->270, M4->8.0, POV->observer, TI 78.2->72.0 V-10: M9->8.0, M4->7.0, R->0.5, M10->4.0, TI 78.2->80.0