There was a small hole at the bottom of the bedroom wall, and Noomie couldn't figure out how it had gotten there. Noomie was lying on their side and weighted down by Someone's arm and that Someone was sleeping and so they couldn't confirm or deny that the hole in the wall had been there all along. Not that Noomie would trust this Someone's opinion anyway. Noomie has known this Someone for longer than they would have liked to. Someone had approached Noomie. They were at a mutual friend's dinner party. Someone had made questionable comments about an actor's weight. Noomie was drawn to Someone's blunt honesty and indifference to likeability, despite Someone having a horrible take on the actor's weight, and so that is why Noomie invited Someone over for a fuck.

There's a hole in the wall. There could be something in there, Noomie whispers to Someone. Noomie whispers directly into Someone's ear and enjoys the feeling of this, like a tickle on their lips, so says more. Secrets, Secrets tell me more. It was a little game Noomie had played before. Noomie waited for the response, but Someone said nothing. Only turned over, freeing Noomie from his grip.

Your mom's a whore.

Noomie thought of the shotgun underneath the bed that they could use if a nest of rodents was in the wall. The same shotgun they had threatened their friend with at the dinner party, which wasn't a dinner party but an intervention. And Someone had gotten his schedule mixed up and showed up thinking he was attending the real dinner party, which was to take place later in the week absent of Noomie, the alcoholic. They had met each other outside their mutual friend's home, waiting for their respective Ubers. Where the actor's weight came into their conversation because Someone said Noomie reminded him of the actor before the weight. The attraction became too powerful for them to limit into that moment, that unflinching discussion of flappy skin outside of their mutual friend's home, which was the site of both an intervention and perhaps, sometime later, a dinner party.

But when Noomie and this Someone made it back to Noomie's home, and Noomie realized that this Someone was familiar with the light switches and knew that the nearest outlet in the kitchen by the toaster was faulty and asked if he could charge his phone in their room, Noomie realized that this Someone was not just Someone it was their husband who did not want to fuck but collect some of his things. They were separated. Noomie's husband felt Noomie would be amenable to his request, having shown up to the intervention late and unassuming.

There was no present or future dinner party.

Noomie liked to tell themself little half-truths. Little moments of make believe. Liked to tell them so much that it became a challenge to figure out what had been real and what hadn't, especially after three bottles of wine.

The conversation between Noomie and their husband about the actor had been a whole truth. Whole truths were usually something Noomie could not half-truth despite how hard they tried.

Noomie was the actor. A recurring character on a daytime soap opera. The weight had come on after the birth of Noomie's only child, shared with their husband. The weight had only increased since the death of this child. Leukemia.

While Noomie's husband was waiting for his phone to charge, he fell asleep on their bed. He was a heavy drinker as well, which wasn't, as Noomie saw it, cause for too much concern. They lay next to him and put his arm around them because it felt right at that moment.

That is when the thought occurred to Noomie that there could be a family of rodents using the hole as their front door. Mice. Noomie thought they could hear the patter of mice hearts and imagined shooting them one by one, listening for the last moments of living through the wall. A trail of intestines would trickle out of the hole—little warm mice guts. And Noomie would hold the entrails in their hands and rub them until the blood stained their fingers, thinking about how disappointed their son would have been. He had been an animal lover.

Noomie got out of bed and walked towards the wall with the hole. And as they moved closer, they realized they had begun breathing from their mouth—something they had not done since childhood.

Noomie wanted to put their finger in.

And when they did, they felt a coolness, or maybe it was a wetness. It was like a mouth. Like Noomie's own mouth hung open, the only thing they could remember then of the body. Like a son's mouth when he explained to his mother that his imaginary friend Noomie was neither boy nor girl, they could be anyone, anywhere, at any point in time. And so Noomie began to scratch. To claw. So that the hole would be big enough to swallow them.


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