Swamp Monster

1. I was fifteen when the Canadian Military sentenced me to count the innumerable points of light in the skies of whatever Dimension they felt understaffed in.

2. I haven't seen my brother or father in eleven years.

3. My apartment is always an ugly marzipan-colored catacomb.

4. I rarely make friends.

5. Sometimes, I feel a kinship with Marvin the Martian, in his over-sized sneakers and his obscured face—his tiny planet, flanked on all sides by darkness.

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6. I don't detest working in a cubicle like my father always told me I would.

7. I have a tattoo on my right calf; It's an ACME bomb.

8. I'm terrible with numbers, how did I become a star counter?

9. This dimension isn't so bad, not so bad as the last.

10. My name is Claudio. I burnt my brother's back off with a single blast from my father's Smith and Wesson Bachelormaker. I meant to do it.
He stood against the back wall of our garage and we covered him in vines until he looked like a swamp monster. He said, "Shoot me quick, before Dad comes home."
"What if you die?"
He said, "I won't die, I'll turn around."
The blast was quiet, barely a hum, and he sat down slowly, like he was just tired. Then he slumped over with a spasm, groaning like an unoiled machine. I lied down beside him, and held the blaster till my father came home.

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11. My tattoo is a an ACME bomb because my father loves cartoons. When he says the word, cartoons, he extends the oo sound, every time, like he himself is a cartoon wolf, howling at a paper moon. Every evening, after dinner, he would let my brother, Hah-mes, and me watch his Classic Looney Tunes collection projected against the sky when the field-lights went out. Now, after work, on the walk back to my apartment, I sometimes imagine I can see Daffy Duck blowing Elmer Fudd's face to ashes in the darkened screen of night.
This is why my tattoo is an ACME bomb.

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12. I'm terrible at math, but my job is counting stars. It's a large office, with many departments. Mine is a department of 80, we each get our own cubicle, and our own sliver of infinity to scour.

13. Sometimes we have to skip lunch.

14. Hah-mes would be good at this job. Once, at a garage sale, picking through a rubber tub of junk on someone's lawn, he found a stained-wood rosary. My father bought it for him, but never explained what it was. Hah-mes wore it around his neck proudly and counted through them when lost in his own thoughts.

15. The highest he ever counted was 6, 434.

16. Watching him mouth numbers to himself and thumb the beads between his fingers used to relax me. I would whisper numbers for him to count to, "hit 154 this time," or "let's try for 1,352," and his lips would move predictably, his tongue clicking against his teeth.

17. He never stopped before hitting his goal.

18. I think of him when I get so high in the numbers that they don't fit in my head, I bet he could tame them with just his thumbs and his rosary.
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19. When I'm transferred from one dimension to another, I feel closest to my brother and father. When Hah-mes was really little, we used to chase each other through the house we grew up in , yelling, "I'm a getcha, I'm a getcha!"

20. I loved catching a glimpse of an elbow or a floppy sneaker before it disappeared around a corner.

21. This is how I feel between dimensions.
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