"I think so," Alan said. Dave used to spend hours wiring his dropped-off
parts back onto his body, gluing his teeth back into his head. "Jesus."
"We're going to die, aren't we?" Frederick said. "We're going to starve
to death."
Edward held his pudgy hands one on top of the other in his lap and began
to rock back and forth. "We'll be okay," he lied.
"Did anyone see Dave?" Alan asked.
"No," Frederick said. "We asked the golems, we asked Dad, we asked the
goblin, but no one saw him. No one's seen him for years."
Alan thought for a moment about how to ask his next question. "Did you
look in the pool? On the bottom?"
"*He's not there!*" Edward said. "We looked there. We looked all around
Dad. We looked in town. Alan, they're both gone."
Alan felt a sear of acid jet up esophagus. "I don't know what to do," he
said. "I don't know where to look. Frederick, can't you, I don't know,
*stuff* yourself with something? So you can eat?"
"We tried," Edward said. "We tried rags and sawdust and clay and bread
and they didn't work. I thought that maybe we could get a *child* and
put him inside, maybe, but God, Albert, I don't want to do that, it's
the kind of thing Dan would do."
Alan stared at the softly glowing wood floors, reflecting highlights
from the soft lighting. He rubbed his stocking toes over the waxy finish
and felt its shine.
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