A foot came through the ceiling at six-thirty in the morning. There was no warning except a sharp crack, and suddenly a pale foot jutted out above the stove. The calf and ankle were visible. Blood ran down from a small cut just below the knee, diverted around the ankle bone, clung to the heel a moment, then fell on the stovetop in a teardrop splatter.

I can't be the only person in the world who has ever worried that would happen, Katherine thought. She watched the leg rise up and down a moment like a buttermilk churn. But the rest of it, somewhere upstairs in 4203-C, was firmly lodged.

Then, through the floor, came a muffled, "Fuck, fuck, fuck." And a quiet weeping.

Stray cats scattered from the stairs to 4203-C. The apartments were mostly well kept, and she paid extra to be in the cul-de-sac. It was drizzling, the next building over dark. The porch light on 4203-C was burned out. She had to knock three times, the third time with force.

"Come in, it's open."

"I'm Katherine, from downstairs," she said, opening the door a wedge. The apartment smelled like bacon.

"I feed the strays in the mornings," the voice replied. "That's why it's open. I don't leave it open. Unlocked, I mean."

"Okay," said Katherine. "Should I - can I come in?"

"I guess someone's going to have to, sooner or later."

He was stuck in a hole in the middle of the kitchen floor, immediately visible from the doorway. The hole in his floor was much bigger than the one in her ceiling. That was where the rest of him was wedged, in between levels and whatever mysterious space separated them and kept him from falling all the way through. He was enormous, stopping up the hole like a bloated cork, blue tank top hiked up around his girth in ripples, a tide upon the shore of his excess. Upper arms out of reach beyond barriers of fat were patchy with psoriasis and other neglected scabs. Lint and food particles and shards of spilled cat food littered the carpet she trod across. She should have worn her shoes. But she hated to wear them on a day off.

"I'm Alan," he said. "Would you mind turning off the stove? It's burning."

She crept around him carefully, keeping as far to the edges as she could, and flipped off the stove. She set the skillet on a back-burner. The bacon was charred, only three strips. But there was an empty packet on the counter, the plastic cloudy with grease. She crept back to the safety of the living room carpet. She hoped he didn't think it was because he was fat. It was because she didn't want to make things worse, adding her own weight...she winced at the thought, then quickly rearranged it in her mind so that she was at least thinking it in an acceptably politically correct manner. The thought was much more complicated that way, but it made her feel better.

"Would you mind calling for help?" Alan said. He pointed to a cordless on the counter, his fingers curiously slender, the back of his hand ripe and pink and bulging over them.

"Of course," she said. "I meant to. I should have." She picked up the phone and dialed.

"Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?"

Katherine looked at Alan. His eyes were gray. Shame yanked his chin into an angry palsy. "My upstairs neighbor has fallen down. He needs help."

"Has he passed out?"

"No."

"Is he breathing?"

"Yes, he's breathing and conscious."

"Has he hurt his back? Has something fallen on him?"

"I don't know. No. He fell through the floor."

"Is this at a construction site?"

"No. It's our apartments. I'm from downstairs. His foot came through my ceiling."

"Oh." So much in that 'oh'. "Is he bleeding?"

"Yes, he has a cut on his leg," she said.

"It's probably just a scratch," Alan said. "I hardly felt it. I mean, if it was bad I'd be in pain, and I'm not really in pain." Apologizing for injury on top of insult.

"Was that him?" the operator said. "What did he say?"

"His leg is bleeding and he's stuck, but he's not in pain," Katherine replied. She gave the address, received the warnings against shock and instructions to call back in case of, and hung up.

They looked at one another.

"Can I get you anything?"

He laughed. Left-over tears squeezed out the edges of his eyes. "A crane?" he said.

She didn't answer; felt something uneasy curl up in her stomach and clench. If he was going to joke about it, she wouldn't know what to do. Alan grimaced, spreading his hands helplessly. Remnants of tears made a dark Rorschach down the front of his shirt. "Hell, I'm an epic spread, aren't I?"

The whine of a siren saved her. She went to the door, but saw nothing in the parking lot. The sound careened around the apartment to the back. She followed it, opening the porch door and stepping out. The drizzle had let up already, without even leaving a good damp. From his empty porch she could see over the back fence of the house behind the complex. It was a wide expanse of mostly untended lawn. Even at this early hour of semi-dark two children, boy and girl, were digging a hole in the yard with small shovels. It was neck deep on them, about five feet in circumference, an astonishing feat of adolescent determination. Then the boy ducked under the overhang of the hole's edge and disappeared. Plastic pails of dirt passed from somewhere out of sight to the girl's hands.

So. Deeper than neck-height, somehow.

Just beyond their house she could see the neighborhood street. Suddenly the police car raced by, lights flashing, and turned down another street away from them.

Katherine returned to the kitchen and dialed emergency again. She told them of the police car, and her recent call. She gave the address.

"We're in a cul-de-sac off a side street," she explained. "They must have made a wrong turn."

Tick, tick, tap, tap, tap on an unseen keyboard.

"The officers you saw are on their way to another situation. Someone will respond to your location in a moment."

She thanked the operator and hung up, then wondered why she'd thanked him.

"Are the kids out?" Alan asked.

"The ones digging the hole?"

He nodded.

"Yes," she said.

Alan smiled. "They're digging to China, you know. Always up early, although they should be going to meet the bus by now. I keep an eye on them in the mornings." He frowned. "I don't watch them, like that, you know. I just notice them sometimes."

"I knew what you meant," she said. "It's a school holiday, that's why they aren't waiting for the bus. I'm a teacher."

He eyed her frumpy khakis and Friday-casual polo. "Elementary?"

"High school," she said.

He shifted around in his hole a little. Only his shoulders and neck moved. Nothing else budged.

"Can I get you something?"

"No, thanks." He looked up at the stove, the irretrievable bacon. "I always wanted to go to China. Everything is peaceful there, I've heard. It's an art."

"I tried to dig a hole to China once too," she said. "I didn't make it. I think all kids try at least once."

He was quiet for a while. Then, "Would you go and check on them again? I want to know. I think they were getting close."

She went to the back porch and looked down. The boy and girl were sitting on the edge of the hole, swinging their bare feet, counting out pocket change in the dirt between them. A small stepladder had been placed in the hole. The girl had one toe firmly rooted on its top step.

Someday, thought Katherine, you'll slouch around school halls, angry and lonely just like the rest of them.

She went back to Alan and sat down on the linoleum floor with her back against the dishwasher. "They're counting pennies, and they have a ladder."

He grinned, resting his delicate hands on the firmament of his belly. "I bet they'll go," he said. "I'd go too, if I were them."

"You can't actually dig to China," she said.

He didn't answer.

Dawn came in, felt-soft, through the windows. It had been an hour. Her back, against the dishwasher, ached.

"I should call again," she said.

"Don't bother. They'll show up in their own sweet time. I'm not a priority, just a fat shut-in. I'm not dying, and I'm not falling through," he said. "Actually, if you put the phone down here by my hand, you could go. I mean, I don't want to keep you here."

She considered it. And then she considered the very likely possibility he wouldn't ever call back in case they forgot about him. He wanted them to forget, she knew. Between them she could imagine, for one moment, a scenario in which they left his foot to rot in the hole in the ceiling just so they wouldn't be bothered. She could take his meals to him. He could piss in a bucket. She shuddered.

"I'm a shut-in, too," she said, finally. "Except for the teaching. There's nothing else. I come home, I shut the door."

"It's easier that way," he said. "You don't notice how the world gets smaller around you."

"You should sue," she replied. "It's taking them too long to get here."

She saw it in his eyes. Stand up in court and say I fell through my own floor? How many judges would look at me and say it wasn't my own fault?

"Do you like it? The teaching?" he asked.

"I used to think it was all I wanted to do," she said. "Now, I'd rather go to China, or do anything else, actually."

"I'm sure they need teachers in China too," he said.

"Well." She shrugged.

"When did you start hating it? The teaching, I mean."

"Yesterday," she replied. "Or years ago. I can't remember specifically."

They lapsed into silence again.

Then, "I can have everything delivered, if I want," he said. "I never have to go out. It isn't glands or anything," he added. "It was just eating. When I was a kid, it gave us a better excuse not to talk to one another. I just keep doing it. I don't know why."

Katherine didn't like the conversation. She would rather do anything than wait there with him.

"I'll be right back," she said. She put the phone by his hand, just in case.

"That's all right," he said. "You don't have to."

"I'll come back," she said.

She kept a short stool in the closet with her old VHS tapes. She wrestled it out from a tangle of winter quilts and old sheets, then gathered a wet wash rag, a Band-Aid, some ointment.

Her living room was crammed with a small dining-room table, a moss-green loveseat gone to waste, and two costly but worthwhile end tables. It made her happy, occasionally, to rearrange knick-knacks on them. Beyond that was the linoleum wedge that was meant to signify a kitchen. She set the stool in the middle of the linoleum, and climbed onto it.

The long trickle of blood had dried brown, and she found a deep scrape, more rash than worrying, just under his knee where the leg broke through the ceiling. She bathed and bandaged it. He did not move, and might have been completely separate from his limb had she not known better. Then she bathed his leg, and the long brown streaks of blood, in gentle strokes, until she had made him smooth and pale again. His calf was firm as clay. Separated as it was from the rest of him she could imagine it the pillar of some temple whose gods were as wide around as the world, their heaven unfathomable and ever-expanding to make room for their enormity, their thighs and breasts and smooth shoulders the hills of a fertile earth.

She had to scrape a bit at the dried blood on the bottom of his heel, but still he did not move. His toenails were neatly clipped, and she wondered how much effort it cost him. He had the soft heel callus of a carpet-dweller, and she freshened her rag to sweep it over the top of his foot, the ball of his toes, the knot of his ankle bone; ten, twelve, fifteen times, though it needed only twice to be clean.

She did not clean up the puddle of his blood on the stove just then, and when she returned to him, he was hiding his face in his hands, his elbows propped up on the floor.

She went back out to the porch.

The children were climbing out of their hole. They wore kimonos with dragons embroidered on them. The boy wrestled with a sheathed sword as he climbed the stepladder. The girl wore smoky jade bracelets around her wrists, and tugged at a wooden parasol with paper covering. They consulted with one another at the edge of the hole, exchanged sword for parasol, examined the brighter edges of the things they brought with them, then turned back to the hole and reached down.

A small, brown, bald man in an orange robe clambered up the stepladder to join them, smiling, nodding his head. They made off toward the house, the monk falling slightly behind. The girl ran back to offer him her hand - c'mon, c'mon - and the monk laughed, raised the hem of his fine cloak of knowledge, took her hand, and followed. The boy stopped to open the parasol on the porch. White petals fell from it like snow. He shook it out thoroughly, nodded in satisfaction, and went inside.

"Can you call again?" Alan said, his voice hoarse. "Getting hard to breathe."

She went back to the kitchen and called. "He can't breathe," she told the operator. "You have to hurry."

"Someone should be just outside," was the reply.

"There's no one!" she said. "You said someone was coming."

"Please calm down..."

Footsteps on the outer stairs brought her to her feet. Men in crisp white shirts kicked in his door then, assuming him alone, a stretcher between them. They surrounded him carefully, strapped an oxygen mask around his face, and patted his cheeks to keep him awake. His eyes were bleary, unfocused. Katherine let the phone fall from her hand.

"He's a shut-in," she said. No one answered. She was gently pushed aside.

It took another hour, and police and a fire truck showed up. They had to hack and hoist him out of the floor, and built a pylon of her green loveseat in the middle of her kitchen for him to rest his weight upon.

Maybe I should have done that, she thought. But he never complained, and I never thought of it. She watched Alan slip in and out of consciousness, wishing she were in a place where she was huge enough to lift him in one hand, like a doll, and lay him gently down on firm earth, where he could never fall through again. She bit her fingernails down to the skin.

Finally he was freed, rolled over onto the stretcher, and lifted carefully down the stairs, two EMT's and three extra policemen on each side. As they loaded him into the ambulance, she grabbed his hand and squeezed it. It was slick with sweat. His eyes rolled once, eyelids fluttering, then focused on her, weary and frightened.

"They did it," she said. "They went down in the hole, and they came back up with a paper umbrella and a sword and a monk and flower blossoms. It's a big hole. Big enough for three or four people." She hoped he understood. She hoped he would come to her.

He gasped, lungs rattling. They shooed her out of the way, heaved him up into the ambulance, and drove away, sirens blaring.

She did not call in sick the next day, but she did call in. When the auto-recorder prompted with a beep, she jangled her little pouch of pennies and said, "I've gone to China. I'll need a substitute."

The End

Biography

M. Thomas is a teacher and writer. Her work has appeared in Abyss&Apex, Strange Horizons, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, among others, and is forthcoming in Aeon and On Spec. Her website is www.found-things.com.