Forget Magazine. Remember, Remember, Remember.

The kitchen is alit.

The package the grey meat comes in is glossy and mainly beige in colour; the bright white fonts outlined in black are decked out in front of a red-meat coloured square. Catullus holds it up to the overhead kitchen light. He hasn't taken off his coat.

‘The square on the package is a delicious and inviting red,' Catullus says.

‘So? What's wrong with that?' Nelson takes out a can of corn from the bag.

‘Inside, however, grey shambles.' Catullus declares, flapping the package in the air. He

opens the package and holds the flimsy meat up to the light, in between its fingers, resembling a section of an outstretched pterodactyl wing.

‘From what animal Nelson?'

‘I'm not sure. Rhinoceros, maybe a timber wolf?'

Catullus stands over the toaster, not able to figure out why. The tips of the white bread peer out of the left and right metal slots. Cold and foreign, they don't budge. The greyish sandwich meat sways lifeless in his sausage hands. His gold rings tap the counter where the unplugged toaster sleeps. He plays with the grey meat, flapping it in the still kitchen air.

He has had a lot to learn. With a stuttering flinch Nelson steps in, almost manfully.

‘You push down the black things and it cooks the bread.'

‘How does it know?'

Catullus hands him a napkin filled with clumps of sandwich goo; things he wants to add to the toast; a colourful amalgamation of digestive refuse.

Nelson shifts Catullus over to one side to access the garbage under the sink. A mop tips over. Crumbs scatter across the floor. Nelson sweeps them up into a dustpan. Catullus observes the domestic patterns, each crumb and dust bunny, each bit of lint with legs…He had come a broken man, chewed clothes. He came… something about a dead brother, and a lover so recycled he portrayed her in his fever, so unclean, and foul that the first bath Nelson drew was almost instant. The sound of undigested reality tears muted as he cleaned the tub; a bath of pity foaming over simple limbs.

Remembering the ring afterwards; the tide of dirt splashing without odour.

Catullus eats some of the toast, and begins to walk back upstairs. “Are you done?” Catullus is nodding up the stairs, never looking back.

Looking at the uneaten toast, barely able to stop itching, a few crumbs remain on his cuticles. Nelson eats the remainder. He rinses the plate, puts on his coat and closes his bedroom door, scuttles down the stairs, and steps into boots and crosses the street.

* * *

That first night, he poured clean clothes over Catullus, spooning him a cup of hot lemon drink, and finally a long undisturbed sleep. By the nightstand Nelson arranged notebooks, pencils, crayons, glue and scissors, as well, a colouring book of ocean creatures and local advertisements that Catullus pawed at, unsure.

He sits up in Nelson's bed, says nothing. The room is unlit, sparsely furnished, nothing beyond the bed, a dresser, and nightstand, a folding chair, a shelf of videotapes. The closet has a double-hinged door, when closed it resembles a part of the large white wall. Out in the hallway, a crossroad of bedroom doors, the bathroom, and the beige broadloom stairwell leading downstairs.

Catullus paws objects in the dark, and stands up.

When he returns from his errand Nelson will drag his feet up the stairs and head to the bathroom. This new roommate, he will notice, takes up half the bed.

Nathaniel G. Moore