The boy, seeking privacy in the too-small house, begins to occupy its neglected corners. In the space behind the sofa, he finds a little note on the wall just above the floorboard, "Do Not Enter," written in thin pencil by who-knows, a prior tenant, some other floor-dweller, a child or a drunk. The boy draws around these words a tiny door with a tiny doorknob. He knocks on it and says in a tiny voice, "Is anyone home?"
In the space at the back of his father's closet, there's a mismatched pile of forgotten shoes: flip-flops, Converse All-Stars, synthetic leather loafers, all covered in a thick skin of dust. The boy builds these into a nest. There's a little window in the back of the closet, square and just wider than the length of the boy's hand when he stretches the distance between his thumb and his pinky. The window is covered in a metal mesh, probably to let air into the closet so nothing gets too musty, and the mesh scatters a diffused light across his hand while he measures the size of it. He peeks his head into the window like it's a porthole and he's on a ship, belowdecks, in the brig, kidnapped, sailing for unknown shores. "Can anyone hear me?" he calls.
There's a vent in the base of the house that opens like a trapdoor. It's too small for grownups. The boy crawls in through it on his belly, shuffling inches at a time, pretending he's a worm. Damp dirt and leaves go into his pants. He's under the house. The space opens up enormously, like a cave, like a low-ceilinged amphitheater, like the belly of a whale. The base of the house like ribs. The rush of far-off traffic like the ocean. Above him, the boy hears the floorboards groan as his dad walks through the house, looking for him and calling his name, but the voice sounds distant and muffled, and the boy doesn't answer. The footfalls and shouting grow more urgent, crashing swells, stormy weather. The boy listens without moving, without making a sound. He's holding his breath. He couldn't call out if he wanted to: he's a worm in the belly of a whale.
(This story originally appeared in Fractured West.)