In lieu of a promised ha ha ha:
I.
One morning a few months ago she forgot to put in her false teeth, which she leaves overnight in a glass of water; she has not worn them again since then; the prosthesis lies in its glass on the bedside table, covered in a kind of aquatic moss whence minute yellow flowers occasionally emerge.
II.
III.
Sometimes he dreamt of cataclysms and tempests, of whirlwinds that would carry the whole house off like a wisp of straw and display the infinite marvels of the solar system to its shipwrecked inhabitants; of that an unseen crack would run through the building from top to bottom, like a shiver, with a long, deep, snapping sound it would open in two and be slowly swallowed up in an indescribable yawning chasm; then hordes would overrun it, bleary-eyed monsters, giant insects with steel mandibles, blind termites, great white worms with insatiable mouths: the wood would crumble, the stone would turn to sand, the cupboards would collapse under their own weight, all would return to dust.
But no. Only those shabby squabbles over buckets and tubs, over matches and sinks. And behind that ever-closed door the morbid gloom of that slow revenge, that ponderous business of two senile monomaniacs churning over their feigned histories and their wretched traps and snares.
