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Dad, said Heracles, as he raced to get a glass of water from the kitchen sink to quench the unquenchable thirst he had acquired after one of his many journeys, Sorry, Sorry. Heracles had then collided with Mr. Sweet, hitting him squarely in the head, causing starry lights to shoot out of his ears and nostrils and eyes, sending Mr. Sweet into a coma from which he emerged many years later and immediately he cut off Heracles’ head again. But that Heracles, blessed with a natural instinct to live that would never, ever abandon him, picked up his head and put it back on—again, where it rests to this day, in the rising just above his shoulders.
    Oh, was the sound of the harsh sigh violently escaping the prison that was Mr. Sweet’s lips, as he lay in the studio above the garage in the Shirley Jackson house. And he lay there on a brown couch, still, as if dead, but he was not dead, he only hated to be alive, with that wife, who now, now, knitted furiously, even with great vigor. Her heart raced with the effort, faster and faster and then even faster than that. Oh, so dangerously fast did her heart beat that it almost beat itself to death, but Mrs. Sweet said, gggggrrrrgghhhh, the sound of blood and oxygen combined as it simultaneously reached her throat. What the hell and oh shit, said Mrs. Sweet, and how surprised she was to hear these words catapulting out and around inside her head, for these were not her own words, these were the words of Heracles, Heracles spoke in this way when he thought no one could overhear him. But this (what the hell, oh shit) was in response to: the children—this would be Heracles and Persephone—won’t get out of bed in time to meet the school bus, the man who can repair the household appliances won’t come on a mutually agreed time, it will rain when the sun should shine, the fruit will rot on the bushes, Mr. Sweet will not emerge from the studio above the garage as Mr. Sweet, he will emerge from the studio above the garage inside a mauve velvet-covered coffin, an imitation of a jewelry box, Mr. Sweet will be dead. This last—Mr. Sweet being dead—if Mr. Sweet was dead what would happen to Mrs. Sweet, who would she be? Mrs. Sweet was a knitter and mender of socks, and she did that because while doing so she could delineate and dissect and then examine the world as she knew it, as she understood it, as she imagined it, as it came to her through her everyday existence.
    All that day, all that night, as the very thing called time collapsed within itself, Mrs. Sweet made socks and in that way marked off time, and in that way sought out the things that had not yet entered her mind. She mended and knitted away at the socks, repairing the holes, sometimes making just ordinary stitches, sometimes making a Christmas tree and a Santa Claus in the colors red and green to fill the holes, eventually undoing those to finally fill the holes with six-pointed stars and biblical scrolls in blue and white. Mr. Sweet hated this, how he hated this, the six-pointed stars and the biblical scroll in blue and white, the sight of it making him swear that he would be a deathbed Catholic, whatever could that mean, thought Mrs. Sweet, for she so loved Mr. Sweet and thought always that his contradictions were a source of laughter, whatever could that be or mean, a deathbed Catholic. But Mrs. Sweet loved Mr. Sweet without blinds.
    And so it was that one day, out of the blue, now, to be exact, Mr. Sweet said to her, you have said horrible things to me and to Heracles and to Persephone and to the other people that have not been yet born of you and me. On hearing that, Mrs. Sweet cried and cried, not wanting to believe that she was the kind of Mrs. Sweet who could say things that were not kind and sweet and she grew silent. On seeing her deep, black felt coat, her natural skin it was, for Mrs. Sweet by this time could from time to time be herself, Mr. Sweet wished her dead but she was so alive, mending the holes in the socks