Daniel Miller
The man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head has a headache. I know this because he tells me. We are sitting on my couch and the basketball game is on, but not so loud as to further cause him agony. He’s rubbing his temples—what I assume are his temples—one blue and the other green.
“It’s been killing me all week,” he says, “matter of fact, I can’t remember the last time my head didn’t hurt.”
I ask the man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head if he’d like some Tylenol or Ibuprofen.
“Nah,” he says, “I’ve already had some, but I’d love a beer if you have any.”
I do. It’s when I’m pouring the beer that I get the idea. Maybe the man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head’s head is all out of whack. Maybe all he needs is an adjustment. A few rotations and the headaches will stop. I suggest this to the man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head.
“Like going to the chiropractor,” I say.
He sips at his beer, makes a face like yeah, maybe that could work.
I bring a chair into the living room so that the man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head can still see the television. I can tell that he is tense. I put my hands on his shoulders and massage him gently. After a few moments of this, I can feel his body loosen, sink into a comfortability. I move my hands to his head and work my way around it, familiarizing myself with the ways in which the cubelets shift and rotate.
I ask the man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head if he’s ever been adjusted like this before. He tells me that he hasn’t, at least not professionally, but there had been a few occasions in his life that one facet or another had rotated. Once, when he was just a toddler learning to toddle, he fell, hitting his head on the edge of an end table. Again, as a teenager, when some friends triple-dog dared him. More recently, in an intimate situation. I make my first rotation as the man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head tells me all this, and when the facet clicks into place, he inhales sharply. I ask if I’ve hurt him, but he shakes his head, no.
“It’s not pain, exactly,” he says.
After two or three more rotations, the man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head seems to adjust to the feeling, and after two or three more, the axes loosen and the rotations become smoother, more fluid. Some time passes this way, me making rotations and him sipping his beer and us watching the game, and after a couple of beers, the man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head starts telling me a story.
“When I was seven,” he says, “we visited my dad’s family in Michigan. The upper peninsula.”
I stop shifting cubelets to put the game on mute so that the man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head knows I’m interested in what he has to say. On the television, a seven-and-a-half-foot tall center slam dunks silently, and I briefly wonder what it feels like to be so physically anomalous. When I get back to shifting, he continues his story.
“He took my brother and I hiking in some woods,” he says, “and he had some experience in the wilderness and camping when he was younger but had never been in that area.”
“Right,” I say.
“So we’re hiking for a couple hours, and when it’s time to head back, we get lost.”
“Shit.”
“Well, we get lost but really we get stuck in this loop, mistakenly taking the same series of trails and ending up in the same place over and over and over.”
“How’d you find your way back?”
The man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head hesitates.
“I,” he says, “I don’t remember. I remember wondering if we were stuck in a time loop or something, like we’d be stuck on those same trails until we eventually starved.”
“Huh,” I say. “But you’re here, so.”
“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I’m here. So.”
Once I’ve made the final rotation, the man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head shudders. I can tell it’s involuntary.
“Well,” I say. “Anything?”
I step back and attempt to visually assess the man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head, worried that I’ve made the situation worse, that I’ve hurt him, and a few moments of uncomfortable silence pass before he turns to me and nods. In his eyes—what I assume are his eyes—I can see a new clarity.
The man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head stands up. He walks to the door and leaves, and I follow him out, onto the balcony that all third-floor apartments shared. He does not return to his apartment. Instead, he walks down the stairs, across the parking lot, past the communal swimming pool, and out towards the street before I lose sight of him. After a few weeks of his absence, new tenants move into his apartment, a young couple with human heads and an English bulldog, and a few weeks after that, I stop thinking about the man born with a Rubik’s Cube for a head at all.
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Daniel Miller helps edit hex literary. His work is forthcoming or has appeared in Pleiades, Conjunctions, and Puerto del Sol, among others. He tweets @danthedadbodgod.