Dating : His Neck

His neck began to soften when he was in the middle of dinner at home with the wife and the children. At first he thought he was falling asleep, and he did lean over his dinner plate — simple if excellent pasta in vodka sauce with roasted broccoli in olive oil, half finished — but his neck was in fact getting longer.

It wasn’t until his neck had more than doubled in length, or is it height, holding his head out swaying toward the indifferent table centerpiece of a fired clay bowl painted bright blue, empty, that the wife noticed his neck. She reached out instinctively to touch him, but then brought her hand back and held it aloft, then instead touched her own neck.

By this time his neck was so long that his head grazed the ceiling. He looked down at the wife, and then the children, who finally noticed his neck and looked up at his head, which as his neck continued to grow was now pushing along the ceiling, surprisingly warm and slick rather than cool and rough, his head now turned down to face the wife and the children. The children watched, openmouthed, their eyes following as his head progressed across the ceiling, propelled by his neck’s increasing length, until he could only smile apologetically as his head dipped slightly, upside down, bending like a flower on a stem, as his neck bowed slightly to allow his head to track under the kitchen doorjamb, out the kitchen door, and into the living room.

The wife stood up from the table when she lost sight of his head, and the children boiled out of their seats as well, and they all followed his neck out of the kitchen. There they found his head already halfway to the front door on the end of his neck, swaying back and forth. His head was rotated somewhat on his neck so he could see them, and though he was no longer smiling neither was he frowning, or upset. He seemed focused and interested in what was happening with his neck, not distressed, curious.

As his neck extended further and came within arm’s reach of the front door, the wife briskly stepped across the room and opened it. His neck undulated and in one smooth wave of motion extended his head out the front door, and as his head passed by the wife on the threshold, the two of them met each other’s eyes and each wrinkled their brow at the other, not concerned, an expression of gentle inquiry from long experience and mutual knowledge, not expecting an answer as much as a companionable resonance, which is what they exchanged as his neck curved upward once outside the house.

The wife followed to see his neck rising but continuing to curve, and so spiraling like a spring, his head rotating around that axis, his face turning from sky to earth with each revolution. His eyes were wider than ever now but also more empty, though peaceful, and he smiled in a way that did not touch his mouth as the children crept out of the house to surround the wife, clutching at her as they looked up. How many of them were there anyway, and how old? He found it impossible to recall as his neck looped him upward again and again, his rotating vision strobing the horizon between the sunlight above, and below, the increasingly tall hollow helix silo of his neck.

The wife and the children craned up to watch the silhouette rising, faster as it rose, until they lost sight of where the top and his head must be. Then the wife gestured firmly but kindly for the children to go back inside, which they did, only partly sulking, and she turned and kicked off her shoes, then took firm hold and began to climb his neck.