The Binding Thing
Winner: The Robert Day Award for Fiction
Selected by Akil Kumarasamy David Lerner SchwartzThey were bros passed over for the newest dating reality show, so they formed a coven. It felt, at first, like being wrong. Tasted like battery acid. Smelled like week-rotted kombucha SCOBY. Their first lesson about witchcraft: as the rules of the world blurred, so did their senses, their sense of self. Finally, they thought.
And for how many years had men punished women for doing exactly this? It began after drinks. They’d been working on a master’s thesis about the love potion. They were also a chemist. They were also a veterinarian. They were also an ironsmith, well, an apprentice, who owned an impressive collection of shawls, and cloaks, and capes, and robes. They’d spent their lives togethering— during suburban nap time on plush mats and high-piled carpets and then at desks in public school and then on the sallow, sagging couches of their collegiate dormitory and then during yearly trips fishing and foraging, backpacking and camping, until relocating to their town of origination, the discovery of their equidistant haunt with the wicker backless barstools where their hands cast blue-glow phone-shimmer onto smiles from caught negs, disses. In short, they were destined to gather.
This is how it started: they went back to their home, the one past the hill, up the too-many flights of stairs, and continued drinking in the den. They watched a recording of a football game, splice-edited with highlight reel and afterward commentary,
DAVID LERNER SCHWARTZwitnessed how the passage of a ball caused thousands to take a stand. They looked at their phone, always searching facts for their own scholarship, which was still nascent.
A witch is a binding thing, they said. From wych, Old English. They said, The thin, whippy branches that can be used to bind things—baskets, fences, boats—together. Without it, stuff falls apart.
They oohed then clamored, they mixed martinis with the glug of olive oil they’d claimed to pioneer, they asked a question, they joked too loudly over the question, and so it returned to them only in memory, years later, after disbanding their sabbats, after they all left the town again and dispersed.
Certainly, they were binded together, they argued.
Bound or binded?
Maybe a coven could abound their bind.
Imbibe-ded!
The wych word, well, it sounded cannibalistic, they thought aloud, to bind that which bound others. No? To bind a binding thing.
Never bind, they said, to a laugh and yawns.
They’d almost all gotten to the final round of the reality show. They’d arrived to auditions with their metal cuffs and their leathered necklaces and their billowy linen and their coiffed hair and their waxed chests and their manicured scruff and their trimmed pubes—not that the camera would pan down that far, or at least not yet. They remembered the room as one large mirror, them all variations. They remembered the room as one large teacup, them all steeping the next season. They remembered the room as a void and a chance to name it. They didn’t remember the room.
Gentlemen, the casting director had said, and they focused their attention toward the front, where the halogen lighting was harshest, where on the TV screen were instructions about what
they would need to do that day to appear months later on the TV screen.
But there, in the den, where the gin had turned to rum had turned to a tinny rye, the lights were dim as puppy breath, warm as harp string. They said, What if we give it a try? They said, And what, like try spells or some shit? They said, Oh, what could change? They said, Or what wouldn’t?
Desperation is an interesting thing. They had just been learning. They had just been dating. They had just been saving up. They had just been working on their macros. After all this time— they’d just been. The show had been a chance for more. Reality was proof of something less. Magic seemed like it was somewhere in between. Or above. Or around-within.
Some covens start with a pact, they found. There was one online where the members had never met in real life—they didn’t even video call. They just typed and texted and messaged and still found raw power in e-union. In the den, they said, Don’t ever quit on me, don’t ever even think about it. Another coven focused on the art it made—labyrinthine sculptures co-authored and compiled from the members’ corporeal excretions: hair, skin, shit, sweat. They forced a belch. On the television was an advertisement for butter wherein a knife kept cutting into a creaminess in fact formed out of hair mousse. How did you know that? they asked. They smiled. It was beginning. They felt morning vitamin nausea. They heard after-clean vinyl-mat impact. They read about a coven of children, rumored all to have gotten into their universities of choice after introducing an enchanted supplementary text to their SAT prep studies. That could have been us, they said. They took from a drawer a knife that looked just like the one on screen. That could be us, they said. That can be us, they said. They struck a match. They fiddled with some palo santo. They opened a dating app. They sent off a meme. They checked their bets. They asked
about their weeks. They listened to the din of the game. They felt a disturbance in inertia. They left the recliner and knelt beside the coffee table. They left the couch and joined around the lucite table. They left the kitchen and joined around the twice-curved table. They shut the bathroom door and joined around the acrylic table. They bowed their heads and became a compass. And then they said the magic phrase, the binding thing.
They decided their first project as a coven was to take something happening on the screen and make it occur in real life. Like when they saw they held the same butter knife. Hasn’t the internet proven IRL is a myth, anyway? they asked. A mocking GIF—gentle, all chamomile.
And so from their day of covenant they waited for the premiere of the reality show. They lived. Were. They finished their thesis to little fanfare and returned to the bookstore of previous employment. They trained team members in better wafting protocol after a company-wide scandal. They excised a used condom from the stomach of a Great Danoodle, which, believe it or not, exists. They fashioned themselves a sword from their favorite video game, cried when they pulled it from the anvil. They texted about their pact, here and there, but mostly it was a shared secret, a whisper, spine-length frisson at the climax of the new bad action flick.
They met at the same apartment to watch the first episode. If not at their bar, they went to the home with the too-steep stairs, with the cloudy deco sconces, the ogee moldings. It’d been a while since they’d scrubbed the mirror above the mantle, and something was growing fuzz in a jar in the fridge. Take care of that dude, they said. That, they replied, is the most cultured thing in this place. They’d bought popcorn. They brought booze. They brought pot. They brought ring pops. Bro—you’re a sweetie. Bro—blue raspberry is it. Bro—will you marry me? They said, I do.
They sat slack-jawed during the intro, gawking at the glitzy beach drone videography, jittering from the doubled-BPM Americana. Didn’t you used to play that on guitar? They watched as the cast was presented and the season teased—close-ups of biceps curling coconuts, tanning oil smeared on abs, lips against lips situated in perfectly clipped beard. I’m the nerd next door, they would have said. I’m serious . . . about love, they would have said. I’m all about compassion, they would have said. I’m around rockhard things all day, they would have said.
A splinter of shrieks. Dude, are you serious? What does that even mean?
The premise of the show was simple, the host explained. Each contestant needed to form a pack of four, a group with which to woo the lead. It should be a decision of both camaraderie and strategy. Each week, the lead would eliminate another pack until one remained, at which point only one of its members would be chosen for a life of true love and a million dollars. The pack would be paid nothing.
Treachery, they said. Not fair, they said. Just a game, they said. What’re the odds, they said, like really, if we’re talking about soulmates?
They hadn’t exactly known the rules during the casting call. All they’d seen was the lead, and the details of the audition— the local mall at which to appear, the attire suggestions, the recommended personality traits. Showing up had felt like scrolling through someone else’s feed. They hit the gym three, four, five, six times a week to prepare. Creatine, whey protein shakes, with milk, or milk, or almond milk, or milk. Are you lactose now, bro? They logged calories and sent selfies and posed for hours. They depilated. Epilated. A tattoo, just because. Does this make me look edgy?
And how surprising it had been to move their morning-slick gaze from a stilted simulation of stratosphere cresting the plaza to
every other auditionee. Some were stretched, shrunken, swipable, emblonded, emboldened, hazelous, gregarified. Ombrétiated. Rippedious. Them: not enough, though no exact feedback was offered except in the form of a thirty-dollar voucher to the local motel. Our thanks for making it to the final round, the casting director wrote. In case you have a guest. To start your own love story.
The host said something similar during the first elimination of the series premiere. The packs snapped to a grid, encasing the host and lead in the center of the tropical garden by the pool before the mansion atop the cliff off the coast of the beach of an undisclosed location. Did you know moly, they said, like from holy moly, was a plant used for love philters? There are moly right there. It’s gotta be a thing.
Does anyone want a drink? they asked. They remembered their task was to make something happen when the first pack was sent home. You just didn’t impress me enough, the lead said. I kept looking for something unique, and all I found was a blur. And they in the den returned around the smudged coffee table, itself a trick of the light. Did you know light’s both a wave and a particle? they said. They’ve done studies.
As the pack departed and the show’s cameras orbited skyward, as the contestants became starry and aclouded, the credits rolled past. They commissioned this song for the show, they said. And how did they know? Just listen to the lyrics. Or maybe: their magic was growing. I want credit, they said. I want space, they lied. I want fame, they thought. I want closeness, they replied. They concentrated, mumbled like the rappers they streamed online, bedroom troubadours of lo-fi beats for behind-desk indulgence, pipette-counted rhythm, commute-length distraction, postsmelting celebration. They wanted to summon something real—a cocktail from the episode, a Costero whistle-cry from the dolphinwatch challenge, a sudden rise in temperature as per the implied
tropical locale. All were attainable, though with some effort, or time spent waiting. But they sought truth at that moment, which is a different story, even for witchcraft. Are we just impatient? they asked. This is going to take some getting used to, they said. They bowed their heads, each crown a season.
And nothing happened until the rice cooker beeped. Its noise had been amalgamed in a production studio from reverb added to an aced ping-pong serve and a flattened sample of an iconic moan from a seminal rom-com.
They asked if someone had turned it on—No, No, I don’t think so—and found they’d simply conjured pack-like camaraderie. Had learned only how to leave if asked.
They met for episode two at the same apartment. Rarely the fixer-upper in the suburbs. Barely the townhouse by the gym. Sometimes the annex of the forge, which believe it or not had been booked solid before arranging the long-term rental.
We better get it right this time, they said to the mirror.
They opened the door, and they hugged. They pressed chests against chests well, chests well-pressed by chest press. They slapped their ass lightly. They proffered a bouquet of licorice to a breastbone. Bewilderment. Buoyancy, but thick like brick. A lick. It’s called a décolletage, they said. They said, Oh shut the fuck up.
This challenge, sponsored by the butter company, involved each pack electing its most athletic member to triathlon the creamery, a sprawling obstacle course that required the participant to run and bike and then swim through the consistency of hair mousse. Their pompadours quivered at the thought. Do you think it’s thinning? Like, get a good look and really assess my porosity.
We could make butter happen, they said.
What, and just open the fridge?
Or like whip some milk, they laughed.
It’s harder than it seems, you know.
Finally, they asked, What are we even doing? The half-filled glasses chimed with mezcal. Something was middle-ing. Middling. Maybe the reposado.
It was half-off, they said. A freaking steal.
And they sat on the couch. And they sat on the carpet. And they sat on the couch. And they lingered by the rice cooker.
We’re watching our show.
No, like, with this, they said. The coven, they whispered.
It doesn’t feel any different than when we weren’t.
And isn’t that the point?
It should mean something, if witch stuff is what it’s always been. Or was.
People die for this shit.
Died for this shit.
We’re supposed to be finding magic
The chandelier above had been manufactured in a faroff country out of recycled fenders found in the wreckage of automobile collisions from its most treacherous highway.
And how did they know that?
It’s something to keep our faith in, they agreed. They didn’t quite understand their promise, its rules, what was true and what was their imagination, and if it mattered. They tried to visualize pinpricks, or listen to schadenfreude, or mouth petrichor. Point zero zero zero zero five percent of the population are synesthetes, they reasoned.
The pack with the least brawny member was selected to evacuate the island. This time, a helicopter touched down on a butter-slopped landing pad. Landing strip, they giggled. Haven’t seen one of those in a minute. The pack boarded, shouldering luggage, baggage in tow; camera shots of sandals, baggage, and toes. The lead waved wearily, said, I really thought this could work. I just—
You could cut the tension with a knife, they said, which is when the commercial started playing. They looked at one another. They assumed their positions. They knelt, their butt against the couch. They rubbed their thighs against the coffee table. They sat on the other side of the table. They left the island, the one in the kitchen—not the one on the show. They bowed their heads, each brain a quartile. I think we just did that to the TV, they said. They lit a candle. They fingered a bookmark. They slid their knuckles against the lucite. They thumbed the wooden feet of the loveseat. It’s just a regular commercial, no? they said. Like, that’s how it works—they have the same sponsor for the same show, and its ads play over and over, like a habit.
Fate, they said.
They couldn’t argue with how suddenly the episode had cut to a commercial break, if only a few seconds early. The lead hadn’t even finished speaking. It was a glitch they wanted control over. Maybe their witchcraft was a deep belief. The online coven said their witchcraft loaded like community; the artists’ coven said their witchcraft collaged toward inspiration; the student coven said their witchcraft percentiled as acuity. The advertisement cut to credits as smoothly as—Enough, they said. They ate some licorice from the deflated cone of butcher paper and jowled anisey tannins. They flexed their gains. They scratched their beard. They rubbed their tongue against their teeth. They felt their tongues against their teeth against their tongues.
They had once fallen in love. Once, by accident, they had syndicated their nudes to their family’s shared photo album. They were in fact the reason the condom removed from the bowels of the Great Danoodle had been used. Lately, they’d sworn off sex, because it had gotten kinda boring. Just fucking, you know? Yeah. Kinda. Sure.
Episode three they cried. Goblet-tears spilled shamefully. Pack three was special—a band, brethren; they saw themselves in it. They wanted to hate the host for sending them away, but they knew that’s what the show wanted them to feel, how the butter company wanted the knife to work. Are we really tearing up right now? Instead of at themselves or the lead, they should be mad at the contest, the constraints. How love is manufactured to be limited.
They played that game where they drew on part of a sheet of paper and folded it over, exposing only the end-point tendrils of their image before passing it along, where, blind to what preceded, they continued the illustration. On the count of four they unfurled the pages to reveal each chimera—their minds, spliced apart, put together. The word is cleaved, they said.
The beer had gone flat. They’d served it out a growler from a too-pretentious distillery on their block, the one with a streetlong line of parents escaping families and seniors escaping college and bachelors escaping singularity. They hated IPAs, they recalled during the nth sip, after the tears, that taste of swamp scum. What would it cost to change a preference? They’d brought a cloak, a shawl, a robe, a cape. Let’s try them on, they said, their breath all ogre. These? Yeah. Those?
The beer became wine—their hand motions were Jesuit in the uncorking and geysering, and suddenly cups of blood of grape. Eyes of newt. They sipped and saw vermillion colors. And then they stripped. To underclothes. They had gone through a period of sending pictures of themselves peeing to their thread, the tips of their dicks just nearly out of the frame. Headshots, they called them. Now, they slipped on the garments. They adorned the hood. They closed the clasp. They fluffed the train. They centered the mantle. They were surprised with costumes to all together look unlike themselves.
This is . . . weird, they said.
In high school, their intimacy was embarrassing. Force-fieldlike, which they grokked from their favorite movies paused at pubescent slumber parties, where by nightfall they’d perforate the couch with pillows and turn on soft-core about a brothel, or slouch in their dad’s hot tub, which was best when it was snowing because their hair would freeze but they’d still be warm beneath the water.
Their aim had never been to intersect the body but to be splayed adjacent. The first time they calibrated this, opened themselves like their AP bio dissections, was after their home basketball game, which they’d won, and they’d convened—they changed, and they’d remained in the stands, and they walked over to the gym, and they left the theatre, and they all huddled up, and years ago, they felt overwhelmed, from the win, or the watching, or the disturbance, or the side-tracking; or maybe they felt distanced, worried that college would separate them, though they’d chosen to go together, which might be worse in how obvious it would make their division should defecting occur, and so maybe what they said was insurance, or maybe what they said was intuition, or maybe what they said was a memory, or maybe what they said was a spell, because it had started then; back then was really the beginning—witchcraft is a seed sown in a life-long garden; it happened one day years ago before the mascot was defanged, before the school was re-dedicated, before one dead parent, two genetically engineered dogs, three used cars, and five collegiate degrees, when in the turned-off lights of the vacated gymnasium they showed their cards, each a suit of a deck, and said, I love you guys, the binding thing.
For the eighth episode, they met in the annex. Maybe it will help, they said.
With what?
But there was no response.
And so they took the bus. And so they took a car. And so they took their car. They texted during, to their group chat. Is this the second to last episode?
Penultimate, bro.
Did you know preantepenultimate is fourth to last?
Come on.
An internet search told them it was a double feature—the eighth and then the final—in one two-hour block. Kinky, they wrote.
I can’t believe we’re about to know what happens. Don’t we already kinda know, though?
They too were synchronized by an app that shared their locations in perpetuity, but on the bus and in the car and in their car and in the backyard apartment they didn’t need to open it, had some sense how the pins would align and move within more accurately than GPS ping. As in: nearby. As in: nearly there. As in: dearly.
Bro, it looks great in here.
Did you light candles special?
Guys—I literally churned us butter!
They laughed, they thought of the knife, they hugged and dapped and kissed on the forehead. They said, You tiny, little baby. They said, You immaculate troll. They said, Fruit of my loins and funk of my jock. They said, What divine luck to coexist with you. They smiled and growled and took off their shoes and asked the rest to take off their shoes and they took off their shoes.
The annex was small, but there was a leather couch and plant clippings tentacling from glass orbs. Wax from candlesticks dripped onto unshined silver saucers. The one window was opalescentstained, their bed vaulted above it and them. A loft, they said. Aloft, they said. Loft me, babe, they said.
When only one pack remained, the lead took each contestant on a date—a weekend at a far-off farm, a hike to a nearby volcano, a tour through a celebrated village, a scuba dive toward the depths of the ocean. I’m exhausted, they said. Can you imagine? they asked.
The sex was censored. They wanted to see the parts. But they also wanted to be the blur. A mosaic or some shit, they said. To be disassembled and reconfigured, in a way that wasn’t themselves, but still suggestive of the source. Capital S or nah? they asked. They felt their pecs. They rubbed their necks. To be dissolved but still here.
And how? they asked.
Metaphysics, they said.
Existentialism, they explained.
Get on reality TV, they joked. We tried.
A laugh. A drink. A toke. A drink.
Maybe we’re misunderstanding it, they said during a commercial break where the butter animated into homunculi who broke out of the fridge and onto the countertop before rolling themselves into biscuits.
You don’t think people-turned-soundbites are real?
No, the witch shit, dude. Maybe it’s not summoning this, burnyou-at-a-stake that. But like, changing an idea.
A subtle witchcraft.
At least right now. Or at least with us.
I mean, after all this show, and nothing, no?
The forced air from a wall duct by the lit candles carried over to them a new musk, activating their amygdalae so their subsequent, soft anxiety was both applicable and circumstantial, they figured. Have we really been trying? they asked. Or have we just been hanging out?
Um, shouldn’t that be enough?
They shrugged. They tucked dip into their bottom lip. They texted, What’s good?
No, for sure, they said.
One hundred percent, they said.
Like, did those kids get into school because of some enchanted whatever or because they believed they could because of the enchanted whatever?
Oh, like Goody Proctor vibes?
Years later, they would make far too much money at a software company. Years later, they would run a chemical business with a compromised record of greenwashing. Years later, they would swear off animals and be the oldest in their class training as a pediatrician. Years later, they would move from the forge to helicopters, blades the similarity.
At the final ceremony, the lead struggled through tears in the closing monologue, concluding: I didn’t know this was possible.
The host asked, What is this?
The last pack remained statuesque.
I don’t know, the lead said. So much change. So many paths to choose. So much to matter. I came here with nothing. I thought I’d leave with just enough, but look at all of you. I wish I could have all of you. Be with all of you. I want it all. And I hope you all want me. Unless, and the lead started laughing, everyone just knows how to butter me up.
They nearly choked on their vodka tonic. They sing-songed mockery. They grabbed a butter knife. They put it back.
The lead selected the winner because of what was soliloquized as a deep connection—a spiritual bond that at the same time transcended and disregarded any of the actual events depicted on the televised version of the show. I just feel it in my soul, you know? I do.
And they guessed the winner was the one who looked most like them. If they’d committed to frosted tips. If they’d gotten more sleep growing up. If their mom had let them join the JV hockey team. If they’d found a way to apply their stage-bound charisma to real life.
Some metals in the TV were foraged from deep-sea vents that heated ore pressurized hundreds of thousands of years ago, forming from nothingness to be scoured and scavenged and shaped into an animating box which assembled them on the couch in front of no coffee table within the annex behind the forge in an undisclosed location.
The show ended with a flurry of doves and cascade of fireworks. Neither is particularly compatible with the implied habitat of the show’s staging, they explained. The camera kept tight onto the lovers’ faces, focused on how their steel jaws trembled, opened. The way they interlocked. Will they ever unstick? they asked. Might need some—The pop music was a battering ram. The credits revealed the artifice of the show. The butter company’s logo danced on the edge of the screen. It had taken a quincunx of animators two months to coordinate the avatar to so accurately impersonate the running back’s signature dance moves that went viral following the rerun of the game they’d watched in the apartment up the acclivitous stairs after their equidistant bar with the rattan stools. The narrator segued to a sneak-peak of a special reunion episode, where the lead and the winner—both sporting new hair and clothes and surgery—were further examined and distilled, with commentary from the winning (but losing) pack, and confrontations among the most dramatic participants. But most importantly, was this true love? Or was it just a—
Hey, why’d you do that?
Yeah, seriously. We were watching that.
But they felt like it had already ended.
We don’t need to break it down like that. Let’s just let it be a thing.
It was a thing. It is a thing.
They chugged their drink. They asked if they were going to finish. They checked their email. They sent a call to voicemail. Well, alright then, they said.
I guess it’s getting late, they said. Is that it?
Maybe that’s it.
And so it was the double-feature finale, but it was also just another night. And it was wavering like heat atop a highway in the desert. Did you know that’s actually a phenomenon of physics called an inferior mirage? they said.
I wish that other one won.
With the tattoos?
No, the rings.
The forehead?
I guess. Or with—
I can’t remember now! They’re all the same.
But that’s not the one I would’ve picked. Yeah, same. For sure. Then which? They laughed. None?
With the culmination of the show came a reek of curdle, whiff of occlusion. How could they ever be satisfied? Maybe that’s what happens when things conclude, they said.
I hate endings.
But I crave them—
They make beginnings possible . . .
So what’s next?
They said goodbye like nomads. They said peace like activists. They said later like compulsion. They said thanks like prayer.
Of all their time together, this was when they expected the magic to happen. They were practically begging for it, pouting for it, waiting for it, ignoring it. Once, the notification settings of the online coven had all been reset, alerting each member in every time zone of a message of a single heart emoji. Once, a sculpture from the artists’ coven was accepted into a high-profile show, which was enough to dissuade a few members from applying to tech jobs before the opening and continue to pursue their craft together. Once, the schools attended by the student coven went online for a year, and so its members collocated once more in a shack on an island that would later stage a hit reality show.
But for the coven of bros, they went back to the apartment up the steeple stairs, where they got into the robe they’d left behind and finally rid the fridge of the years-old yogurt; and they drove back to the soon-to-be-flipped house in the suburbs, which would sell for twice the asking price, though the appliances would routinely die in two-year intervals, renewing their warranties ad infinitum; and they went back to the townhouse near the distillery—or they planned to, but instead waited forty minutes to try the new special, just in case this batch tasted less like quag and smelled less like mire; and they stayed, and they drew a bath, begrudging the panoramas projected in each bubble.
The real magic was: years later, after the software company and chemical multinational corporation and pediatric practice and helicopter manufacturer, when they were retired and dead and consulting and tinkering, they would be in their four quadrants, from which they would keep in touch but of course less so, and they would see one another but rarely, and they would be shopping and
rotting and at the office and with their grandkid, and they would be near a corner of a mirrored wall, and they would be within four corners of a box, and they would be looking out the wall-to-wall window, and they’d be peeling stickers off a floor-length mirror, and they’d sense their reflection, which for a moment they’d mistake for themselves, until they realized it was them.
And they would say: Hey.
And they’d say: What’s good?
And they’d say: Lads.
And they’d say: Loves.
And they would repeat the question about covens, from all those seasons ago, the one they’d missed or misheard or joked over or drank around, and they’d mull it over this time, really ponder it, think it through, and they’d be beside each other or adjacent to one another or dearly-near themselves for one moment longer, for one final episode. They’d later try to explain to their partner or their visitors or their ex or their kids, but no one would ever really buy it, no one could ever really conceive how they would kneel beside the coffee table they were considering, how they would lie perfectly still, how they would sit in their upholstered chair, how they would take a knee among the stuffed animals, how together they’d bow their brows in respect in solidarity in longing in admiration, each head a dimension, and, after all this time, still choose each other.
***Acknowledgement: The title of this story and a line of dialogue are taken from an excerpt from Caitlin Moran’s More Than A Woman.