based on a true story

When he is seventeen or eighteen or so, Max wakes to the realization that he is not human, that he is, in fact, neither bird nor beast nor fish nor fowl, but some organic presence named Loplop. He walks through Zurich and there is a Loplop shaped space in the world wherever he goes, usually sitting, usually speaking, usually lying or telling lies. He avoids these spaces as much as he can, edges around them with his head and shoulders facing away, his whole body saying no as strongly as he can make it. He doesn’t know what sort of a life he has but it’s different from the one wrapped around Loplop and he resents the reminder and the temptation.

He dreams of Loplop.

In his dreams Loplop comes and sits with him and tells him stories and lies and mixes them together and winds them around Max like silk, not spider silk but the silk they kill worms for. The stories and lies are endless, and Loplop never gets tired of telling them, monstrous stories, funny stories, sad stories, boring stories, ordinary stories, stories without end and without endings.

Wherever he goes they is a hole in the earth in the shape of Loplop, which is to say, in the shape of Max. He avoids them as much as he can but they drag at him with the soft-handed insistence of gravity.