Somewhere far away two hands fumbled open another bottle of white-out and splashed it onto Bullwinkle's face, and his mouth, nose, ears, antlers, faded, faded, disappeared, and I was back in my apartment, opening another bottle of white-out and splashing it onto his chest. And his torso, arms, and hands disappeared, but the pupils remained -- two miniature black holes suspended in my living room.

At least I could look away from them now. Part of me still didn't want to look away, but at least I could. Without the rest of Bullwinkle to guide them, they didn't seem quite so big and dark and deep.

I splashed two more bottles of white-out onto them. The liquid not only passed through the pupils, leaving them unharmed, but instead of passing out the other side and staining my carpet, the white-out was absorbed into them, as if the pupils were a portal into some other world, a world inhabited by the dead of this world, who kept a meticulous video record of the living, and who spoke a language that was not Greek or Hebrew or Arabic or any other human tongue, and who sometimes returned to the living in the skins of cartoon characters, so that they could watch TV and drink Pepsi with the living.

I tossed the six empty white-out bottles into the pupils. I saved the remaining full bottle, just in case any more dead relatives should visit. Then I pulled back the U-shaped tear in the carpet, brushed away the silverfish, took out a couple of cassettes, and tossed them into the pupils.