N.B. Imagine these words gathered into a small book illustrated in pen, ink wash, and water color. Numbers correspond to page number. Further development and print publication by the Moon Rabbit Drinking Club & Benevolence Society is being considered, but thirty-two pages of drawings is a mammoth undertaking when Spring is setting in and the hammock my back yard calls, “Jonathan, Jonathan, leave your sketchbook in the kitchen—have a Smirnoff Ice.”

1.
Scrivener Elementary was closed for the summer holiday, so Stephen, Emily, and Aaron Even stayed home most days in their big house on top of a little hill.

2.
Stephen Even was the oldest and ringleader of the three children of Mr. And Doctor Ignatius Echo Even. Stephen could be sweet as cereal when he looked right before crossing the street and turn sinister as a dog on wheels by the time he glanced to his left.

3.
Stephen was a precocious boy, ambitious as Hannibal who marched pachyderms over the Alps. As he sat on the toilet reading one of Mr. Evans’ books on labor unions and the power of collective action, he hatched a plan.

4.
Emily Even, the eight-year-old middle child, sat on the maple floor of the family library with her brother Aaron, the youngest and oddest of the Even lot, constructing a tiny Constantinople of wooden blocks. “You call that Hagia Sophia? You’ve got the dome all wrong,” Emily scolded Aaron. “I was thinking what if gravity reversed itself?” answered Aaron, who was six and wearing his sneakers on the wrong feet.

5.
Aaron Even held a block on its edge and spun. It whirled across the floor and the miniature Hagia Sophia tumbled. “Let’s play ‘ballet’,” suggested Emily Even, inspired by the spinning block. “What about ‘crack-the-whip?’” countered Aaron, who fondly thought of centrifugal destruction, then, “or ballet’s fine if you really want.”

6.
They moved into the narrow hallway on the third floor, the third level being unofficially the children’s own territory. In the long hall there was room for cartwheels as as well as the battlements grande and petit Emily learned at after-school dance classes.

7.
“Let’s waltz,” offered Emily, “d’you think you can remember the box step lik I taught you?” Aaron nodded his head up and down.

“Okay, then,” said Emily, “I’m the man.” She curled her fingers over her much shorter brother’s and wrapper her arm around his waist.

“Just ’cause your bigger doesn’t mean you get to lead,” he protested.

8.
They laughed as they stuttered to the far end of the corridor. The door to the bathroom was cracked open, and both Emily and Aaron Even fell to still silence because of the very odd scene they witnessed through the aperture of the door frame.

9.
The witnessed Stephen Even holding Patrick Even, an ancient tabby and engagement gift from Ignatius Even to Dr. Even from the Way-Back-When when she was still called Claire Messbarger. Stephen held the cat by his haunches above the age-stained porcelain bowl muttering, ‘do it, Pattycakes, poop like a good’ole cat,” to the protesting feline.

10.
Aaron and Emily gasped, and toward this noise of their surprise Stephen turned his head and attention. Patrick Even seized the opportunity to flee and ricocheted through the bathroom door, widening the sliver through which Emily and Aaron peered.

11.
“I was about to come and to find you,” offered Stephen t his siblings, “I’ve got a new project under way.”

“What were you doing with…”

“Patrick?” Stephen interrupted his sister, “Patrick’s a fine animal but he’s not up for shaking the establishment through collective action, is he? I couldn’t expect him to understand.”

Aaron wondered, “what exactly are you proposing?”

Stephen gestured toward the toilet. His little brother still looked puzzled.

“We’re going to fill it, to surprise Mom and Dad,” he clarified, “we’re going to fill it to the rim.”

12.
The siblings stood over the cauldron and schemed.

“We’ll shit in shifts,” said Stephen.

Aaron hesitated, “Are we sure we should do this?”

“A pyramid of poo…” said Emily with a smile, “A tower of feces….”

“Mom and Dad won’t be mad?” questioned Aaron.

Stephen answered, “Oh, how they’ll laugh when they see.”

13.
At dinner the children stashed extra helpings into their pockets so they might dine again under the glow of flashlight.

14.
“More hashbrowns, please, implored Aaron to Ignatius the next morning at the breakfast table.

15.
“This hummus is so tasty!” remarked Emily at lunch, wincing as she lied to her father for to her sensitive palette hummus was roughly as pleasing as eating pencil erasers.

16.
“A pack of ravenous beasts we’re raising,” remarked Dr. Evans to her husband at dinner on the second day of the children’s project. She nodded approvingly at the empty casserole dish on the table.

17.
Ignatius Even kept the house on Elmwood Avenue clean and tidy by following a regimented regimen, so it would be on a Thursday when he entered the upstairs bathroom with scrub brush in bucket.

18.
Stephen, Emily, and Aaron knew their father’s schedule at deployed a base of operations in the library. They pulled the sheets from their beds, raided the linen closet, and constructed a cotton fort of Aaron Even’s design. They took turns making reconnaissance missions near the bathroom.

19.
Stephen Even had been out scouting for a very long time when he jetted through one of Fort Observistan’s battlement walls.

“Did he laugh?” demanded Emily.

“He was not angry, was he?” quizzed Aaron.

“He just stood there looking at it,” reported Stephen, “just gazed at the pile. At first I thought he was frowning buy he also looked kind of goofy like his mind was floating in space, like he was trying to remember a dream.”

20.
It was Emily’s turn for reconnaissance. She slithered down the hallway but their father was not in the bathroom. She inched toward the toilet and peered at the great cone of shit.

“Ehem,” Ignatius cleared his throat. He was standing at the door.

“Hello Dad,” muttered Emily.

“Daughter,” he acknowledged.

Ignatius had put on his tool belt, Emily noticed, and it hung low on his waist. She retreated to the fort, where the children stayed until dinner, playing jumping jacks and Chinese checkers.

21.
At dinner Claire Even complimented her husband’s lasagna, which was her favorite.

“Here you go, Stpehen, have seconds,” his father offered, though as it was his favorite too he’d already had his fill.

“Thanks, Dad, but I’m not hungry,” he told him.

“Nonsense,” Ignatius insisted, “you’re a growing boy,” and he scooped a second helping as large as his first had been onto Stephen’s plate.

“Don’t forget Emily,” Dr. Even reminded her beloved, “She’s not a ‘growing boy,’ but she’s growing all the same.”

“So they do,” acknowledged Ignatius, “and there’s a second growing boy at this table if memory serves.” Aaron was slinking down his chair.

Ignatius carved two weighty slices of lasagna for Aaron and Emily.

22.
After dinner the children’s bellies were full and their mouths stained with marinara sauce. Emily went into the bathroom to wash her hands, sand so was the first of the young Evens to see the mound of dung where the upstairs toilet had been. Stephen was second in line for the bathroom, then Aaron.

23.
“What should we say?” asked Aaron, guiltily, in congress with his siblings in the library.

“Nothing,” declared Stephen, “we hold a united front.”

24.
A few mornings later Aaron Even went into the bathroom to brush his teeth and found that over night someone molded the cold pile of offal into a form approximating the shape of the absent toilet. Flusher handle, lid, seat—all were rendered in shit. He need to go but felt defecating into the brown impostor would corrupt it, so he squatted over the cast iron tube and let go. They’d just have to bathe in the downstairs bathroom, he imagined.

25.
In a week, Emily Even went to fetch a glass of water before bed and found the slop-filled bathtub disappeared, a double of formed feces standing in its place. On the rim of the tub where a duck of plastic one rested swam a new duck carved of shit.

26.
Aaron Even had been inclined toward apologies at the start, but as a few weeks passed he grew fond of the impostors of brown. The summer was halfway spent when he woke in his top bunk in the room he shared with his brother and turned over to see the colored wooden ballasts of his replica Alexander Calder mobile switched with his own dung. He gazed at the revolving orbs and imagined them sentient and walking, as if gravity reversed itself, then smiled wide and true.

27.
“This is getting ridiculous,” said Emily to her brothers a few days later. Her stuffed animals had been replaced.

“Look at poor Pathos!” she demanded. His plush unicorn’s horn had been replaced with a cone of poop

28.
On a fine summer Tuesday the children rummaged through the toy chest in the garage and found their croquet balls replaced with spheres of stink. They admired the fidelity of the replacements. The striped balls were indicated with chunks of undigested hominy from their dinner two nights prior.

29.
Aaron’s shared his birthday with the United States, the fourth of July, and as was tradition he requested take-away pizza for his dinner of honor.

“Extra pepperoni, as requested,” Dr. Evens enthused as she transferred a hot lice onto a plate of compressed excrement. Stephen and Emily hesitated, the pizza being so close to filth.

“The five second rule is universal,” urged Stephen. Their mother placed one slice of pan-crust pizza onto each of their new plates, and as fast as the rockets they’d set off after sunset they rushed dinner to their mouths.

30.
The scents of pizza and gunpowder faded into the shadows of the children’s memory as a heat-wave set in. Emily tolerated her brown summer dresses that tore apart if shed jumped rope. Aaron missed his video game system, the fecal game discs unreadable by the muddy box underneath the television. Stephen found his transformed bicycle unrideable, but summer vacation is by nature glorious so he was able to ignore such a minor inconvenience.

31.
Emily’s birthday was the first Sunday in August and so her day to set the dinner menu.

“Pancakes,” she’d told Ignatius earlier in the day, “buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup and butter and blueberry topping.”

“Dinner’s ready,” their father called.

The Even brood scrambled to their chairs and onto the plates of feces they’d grown used to their father placed sics of pan-fried shit. From the syrup jar he poured a stream of diarrhetic goo. On the butter tray was a single turd of gargantuan proportion, which sliced and dolloped onto their plates. Emily looked to Aaron who looked to Stephen who looked to Emily and in unison they nodded their defeat.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” said Emily.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” whispered Aaron.

“I’m sorry,” muttered Stephen.

The Evens loaded into their sedan and drove to a diner that served breakfast around the clock. Emily had pancakes with blueberry topping, while Stephen chose maple syrup. Aaron picked grilled cheese sandwich with pickle, since Dr. Evans agreed he was old enough to eat whatever he wanted.

32.
Aaron woke the next morning to see his mobile blue, red, and orange. Emily found her closet filled with green dresses. Stephen discovered his video game functional and plastic, but chose instead to play Chinese checkers with Emily and Aaron and Ignatius Even.