Kara stood at the open window watching the people lined up below. A woman held her bicycle and waited for two men to finish locking theirs together. Music fuzzed out of the downstairs theater and from two open doors on bars across the street. Cars were nervously inching across the intersection, trying to squeeze between all of the people gathered on the corners.
She pulled the window down and let it slam. The woman looked up as Kara drew the curtain and everyone outside disappeared. She could only hear the odd bass thud from below, and the scratching on the door to the closet. She got a towel from the bathroom and pushed it under the threshold. The scratching stopped for the first time in an hour or more.
She went to the kitchen sink where she had left the last jar of pickles. She ate two standing over the sink and then washed her hands. She drank a mouthful of brine and shook the jar until a piece of garlic fell within reach of her tongue. She scooped it into her mouth, ate it, and dumped the rest into the sink.
The G3D-P 3D printer on her desk stopped whirring and she remembered what she had been doing. She walked over, opened the lid, and picked up the translucent white rectangle. She blew on it but there was no dust to set loose. She put it with the other pieces and clicked the "Off" button. The lights on the printer went dark as the parts clicked back into place.
"Kara," came a muffled voice from the closet, "Please."
She picked up the parts and took them into the bathroom down the short hallway on the far side of the kitchen. With the door closed and the lights off, there was nothing to break the peace. She put the rectangles next to her toolbox on the table she had lowered into her clawfoot bathtub. She sat on the closed toilet lid and assembled the pieces. The first six panels snapped together like LEGOs, making a tall thin-sided box. There were four pegs which stuck into four small holes in the backboard of the box, and four tiny squared loops like stirrup bones in the ear. Stapes, Kara thought, remembering her books of anatomical illustrations.
Kara scratched her neck absentmindedly, then realized it was a reaction to the scratching noises in the other room, which had started up again. She turned on the faucet.
Up in the medicine cabinet was a bundle of plastic packaging from her G3D-P. She undid the tape and pulled off the outer layers. Water was dripping out of the inner pouch. The tape was half hanging off so she just stripped it away and slid the figure onto the table. Its beige skin was hard and reflective like porcelain, but the water drops clung to it. Kara dabbed it with a piece of toilet paper, and as the water came off it began to sag and wiggle. It heaved and sputtered lunglessly out of its open mouth-hole. She shook her head and dropped a dot of water onto the center of its face. The whole thing puddled like a rag doll.
Kara picked up the limp figure and lowered it into the box. With a pair of tweezers from the cabinet she maneuvered its hands and feet into the stirrups and carefully pressed them into place on top of the pegs. With each peg in place the figure was mounted in mid-air like a lepidopterist's specimen. At last she wiped its mouth and watched it suddenly flip back into taut motion. It strained and started up again with its feral child moan, but she clicked the transparent lid into place and the only sound was the faucet.
Kara set the box on the toilet lid. She moved the toolbox behind the wastebasket and swapped places with the table in the bathtub. She took a quick shower, not bothering to close the curtain, and toweled off. She turned off the faucet and pushed the table into the hallway. She grabbed the box and threw it into the oven and turned the dial to "Clean." She opened the closet door and took a dress off the rack and pulled it over her head. She stepped into a pair of shoes.
Dandelion reeled around the carpet, blinking against the light. Her nails were red and broken and it hurt to walk, and the sudden freedom bewildered her. "It's been days," she spat out, jumping up to eye level with Kara. "Where is he? "
Kara went to the window and opened it and stood watching the people below. There were so many people downstairs, crowding the sidewalk and stepping into the street. No one noticed her. She looked over at Dandelion. Her back was raised and she was whipping her tail through the air.
"Where is he?" Dandelion asked.
"The kitchen," Kara said. She followed Dandelion and as the cat stood staring in horror at the red-ringed oven, Kara's hand darted out with a pair of kitchen scissors and snipped the strap around its neck. Dandelion's tag dropped to the ground with a tinkle, and Kara stomped on the strap with its little beige gizmo. The gizmo shattered into a hundred pieces, throwing tiny diodes and circuits across the floor. She picked up a bottle of olive oil and spilled it over the fragments. "You can go."
Dandelion looked at the plasticky mess pooling in the bottom of the oven and turned back towards Kara. Her mouth opened and closed, and then she skittered away out of the kitchen, across the carpet, and out the open window. There was a shout, and then some hooting laughter.
Kara shut the window and the curtain. She unplugged the G3D-P and brought it into the kitchen. She opened the oven and waved away the acrid smoke. The smoke detector started to wail. She pulled out the oven racks and tossed them into the sink. She set the G3D-P on the glowing coil and let the door thunk closed. She pulled the table next to the door of her apartment, squeezed through the crack, and toppled the table over. She locked the door, slid the key through the crack, and hurried away down the hallway and outside through the crowd.
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