The smell slides across his cheek into a wet slap that folds his face like a windshield and wishes him a happy eighteenth birthday. Cracked, broken, and, possibly, very possibly bleeding internally he is barely Seymour. He smiles into his reflection, circled by flies that mirror the buzzing grimace on a face of what should be his reflection. Happy Birthday. The smell grows faint, worn by seconds that pass him, pass his reflection, distinctly indistinct. Happy Birthday. Happy Birthday to me. He tries to focus, to clear the morning fog that keeps him from putting his headlights on. All that becomes clear is the white stuffed elephant Maurice.

Seymour Ulysses Cox was born to humorless parents. And a cruel, cruel joke it was. A joke he never got and never got, though he heard every variation in every laugh of every one he ever knew. In second grade they laughed while Seymour Eyes cried himself dehydrated underneath the silver slide, holding the mutilated spectacle of his spectacles. Sand in his shoes, waiting, begging for his tears to fill them, to create some oasis to hide in. A mask to hide his face, his boiling face, sweltering with the heat of a blue plastic swing seat sitting, sizzling in the sun too long. And as he split and cracked and melted, all he could think was that tomorrow he would have four eyes again. And the next day he did and he did and he did and he did and he would for the rest of his life, be the four eyed freak. He did not know that that was to became a pink blemish on top of a bloody, volcanic tumor.

Third grade and the chicken pox changed Seymour Spots' complexion forever and his name for a year. The name and the spots, he wore, held down on the gravel, looking up at John Blackwell holding a black permanent marker. Connect the dots. Boats and a dog and a star and finally, a giant butt on his forehead. The butt lasted longest. He could still feel its scar, a year later, when Kelly Hickman, with the brown pig-tails he loved to pull ever so much, broke his fourth grade heart into fourth grade pieces, each with a tiny cursive heading in the top right corner - Seymour Butts is a Buttkisser.

In the glorious fifth, his uncle gave him a tiny white stuffed elephant when he came to the conclusion that Seymour was a butt chaser and that a good uncle should accept his nephew for his choice. He won it, drunken and throwing baseballs at bottles, and comments were made as it sat on the floor of his truck, comments which forced his voluntary kindness. Fifth grade was also the year that Seymour Ulysses Cox forgot about his chicken pox scars and all four of his eyes, when Billy Mansfield became king of the class for an hour and respelled his last name, so that it sounded the same. Four eyes are capable of a lot of tears. It was in the white stuffed elephant Maurice that Seymour cried and cried and cried and cried every day until he was 16.

Elephants never forget. Seymour never forgets, a fact he has never forgotten. At sixteen he was done with high school and done with no one knowing his name and with everyone knowing his name. He was to college with full scholarship and with less than two years left on his sentence, before he could change his name. And everything was beautiful and everything was fresh. They didn't laugh directly in his face or call him names or push him down, unless they wore khaki shorts and shirts with Greek letters on them, in which case they were still kids anyway. He was set to graduate at 19 with a new name on a new diploma with a new life to await him. And then, at seventeen and eleven months and twenty-eight days old everything began to become a confused blur again.

It all starts with a dream. He dreams, softly, of a classroom where he isn't wearing a tie. The teacher is short and plump and looks like a penguin. He bobbles and he sways and then he somersaults and barrel rolls across the front of the room. He is yelling about the benefits of flossing and of the evils of gingivitis. Seymour sneezes a loud traffic stopping sneeze and the penguin stops mid-roll and mid-sentence and yells Eureka. The words are frozen as the penguin is frozen and they echo and circle him. Tiny icicle vultures pecking at him as the others are pecking at him with their glances, eureka, and there is silence, eureka, lonely, coffin silence. Eureka. Then, everything melts into motion. Everything is normal again and the only worry is that fiend gingivitis. Across the row, three seats down on the right, is a girl with red hair and stockings on, who is staring at him. He looks her in the eyes and says Eureka. She sneezes. Mid-sentence silence is replaced by God Bless You, a declarative yell by the penguin. God Bless You says the class, a perpetual echo, mantra, God Bless You, God Bless You, God Bless You, God Bless You, God Bless You, God Bless You, God Bless You, God Bless You, the air is so thick with God, God Bless You, and with snot, God Bless You, and with gingivitis, God Bless You, that he does not see the penguin flying at him. He lands on his left shoulder like a pirate's fat friend and knocks him onto his back. When someone sneezes you bless them with God or they will go to Hell. He tells the penguin that he will see him there and he rips his head off and holds it up to the class. No one ever blessed me, he says, and holds his beaked triumph in the air. He places the head over the over-head projector and turns it on. But the light is too bright, blindlingly, he searches for the switch - otherwise he will be blind and he can't find it and he knows he can feel the blindness coming and he will be blind and he can see the blindness coming, a Mack truck with its brights on, blindness closing into impact and then he sits up into the night - blind - to everything - but his new roommate holding a flashlight in his face.

Ashley asks if he is all right and Seymour tells him yes why wouldn't he be. The boy named Ashley says he was screaming I'll see you in hell and then there's that and he points to the white elephant Maurice. Its head is ripped completely off and its cotton is slowly bleeding out, an avalanche catastrophe of dirty, puffy memories.

And the lights are off and the darkness is blinding. A pulsing, shrieking cloud of shapes and figures that mean nothing and everything and he watches them and wonders if they are underneath his eyelids or if they have floated in from the air above him. Tiny patches of burnt sunlight, that come to him and only to him, to hide from the dark of the darkness. He washes them down with his salty eyes and stuffs his face into the face of the decapitated head of a stuffed white elephant.

The morning comes and Seymour asks the boy named Ashley if he has a shovel. Ashley tells him no and he knows even though he has only known this boy two days that he must leave. Ashley Crawford the II, named after his mother, begins packing as soon as Seymour leaves the room to find a shovel. He calls his sister Theodore to come with her truck and before Seymour is back, Ashley is gone.

When white elephants die, are they buried in the elephant graveyard? Seymour decides they aren't. In nature they die in unmarked lumps, but this is Maurice. Maurice, he has a name. He will have a proper burial. Maurice. May God have mercy on your soul, Maurice the stuffed white elephant. Maurice the stuffed white elephant, under a lump of brown dirt with a cross made of two sticks sticking up from it, in the courtyard behind the dorm - I will never forget you - Maurice.

The door to his dorm room is locked because he does not trust the people in his hall. They drink too much, too loudly and he can see them eyeing his A-team collectible figures. BA Baracus. Murdock. Face. Hannibal. He pities the fool that would try. But he doesn't want it to come to that, so he keeps his door locked. While he fumbles through his pocket for the key, he sees Sari down the hall, and stops searching. Sari does not tell anyone his last name because no one can pronounce. He told Seymour once that people do not care if they pronounce something right, they just keep going, all the time they think you someone else.

Sari's accent is thick like hair. He tell Seymour of his day and of his yesterday. It start at a party with cocktail. Friend ask if he want Scotch and he tell yes I would like Scotch. He ask rocks or straight up. I do not know what the shit he is talking about. I figure out what he mean I have on rock. Today I go to store to get grocery and I ask lady for rock. She do not know what the shit I am talking about. I ask for bag of rocks and she say we do not sell rock. She tell me nursery sell rock and I am about to leave when man behind say to me you want bag of ice. He explain to me and I say yes. So I get bag of ice and I say to lady why you do not call rocks. She say to me because it is ice. So, Seymour what you call it? Seymour do not know what to say. Sometime you call it ice and sometime you call it rock.... Can I use your computer later? I have to finish group project.... Seymour tells him that is fine and that he will be back around four.

His class begins at 11:30 and he is in no shape to go. Seymour knows that it is the last day to drop classes. Seymour knows they always take attendance on the last day to drop. He knows that if he doesn't go they will think he dropped the class or at the very least they will know that he wasn't there. But Maurice. Oh, sweet tear-soaked Maurice.... What would Maurice want. Maurice would want him to move on.

They always pause - before they call his name. Their minds are more confused than their mouths. A TA somewhere must be laughing really hard at her little joke and they always pause - so as to be completely completely sure, it is not a joke to make them look stupid and if it is someone's real name to downplay it, but this silence is different and longer and much more confused. Seymour Co- and before the professor can even be sure, Seymour Cox interrupts him with pres- and before he can fini-, a voice across the room, from a boy with black hair and a black goatee tells him he is Seymour Cox. Lonely, coffin silence. I guess it wasn't a typo, then, the professor says solemnly, two Seymour Cox and a pause - does either one of you have a middle name or anything else you would like to be called. And the boy with the black goatee speaks first and tells him his middle name is Ulysses, but he prefers to go by Seymour. And all eyes turn and poke Seymour for his name. Shock grabs his tongue and wrestles it to the ground and a pause -

Everyone is looking at you. Everyone is staring at you Seymour Ulysses Cox, what are you going to do. He already has Seymour, maybe you should take Ulysses. Ulysses, like the monkey, you wanna banana Seymour MonkeyButts, wanna banana?

John, you can call me John. And the shock, and the shock is taken aback and taken aback and steps back from his twisted tongue and runs and hides somewhere down along his spine. All right John, he scratches out one Seymour on his roll sheet, so that only one remains.

The boy with the black hair in the back of the class is smiling. John pictures him smiling a pyrite smile, the proud owner of a 1927 Mickey Mantle baseball card. He looks at the teacher and smiles. God Bless You, dear professor, God Bless You.

You are John. You are John a million strong. When someone dies and they don't know who he is - He's a John. You are part of the default, the fundamental, the baptist, the porn star, and the saxophone player. John.

John watches the proud thief leave the classroom and he follows him. A hairless man after a cancer patient, curious to see how he can handle the misery. Perhaps to the junkyard to see his mother or to the morgue to talk to someone who will listen or to work to give handjobs to senior citizens for spare change. He will follow wherever this poor and miserable soul will make him follow.

And the girl that meets him, is better than a Seymour Ulysses Cox. She is worthy of a Clint or a Trent or a Dylan. It is his sister. It has to be his sister.

Felicity Cox or Lacy Cox. Anita Cox. A thousand porn star names that fit like a condom on a fat man. The natural, the true born bred. No name change necessary. Batteries Included. Those weren't included, those had to have changed. The kind of alphabetical attachments that come in bags. The kind that bring fat men with hairy backs and cheap mustaches. Tonsil cleansings and anal intrusions. Pubic hair floss. Eureka. Last names don't make you related, do they?

They walk together and she grabs his hand and holds it, like a sister would, and John watches them walk and talk and laugh. They stop in front of the campus store and she kisses him like a loving sister might, and then with tongue, much more tongue, much, much more tongue and it is definitely not his sister.

John thinks that perhaps the girl that is meeting them is. The overly bouncy, overly blond that strolls out of the store into them. Perhaps, she is the long lost sister, who is still not related to John Ulysses Cox.

She set the others up, the friend of a chance encounter, a shop for hour-glass shaped girls, the two of them trying and fitting things on, cheap, pink, and soft things that need a second opinion; fitting and tucking, tucking and fitting, dressing and undressing, pink and peach and peach and pink; the things that girls do behind fitting room doors, that leads eventually to a chance meeting that eventually leads to Seymour.

They walk together and apart to an apartment on the first floor with a window facing the woods. John squats next to a pile of ants and behind a tree where he watches them all in the kitchen. Next to a pile of ants and behind a tree, he learns that Seymour Ulysses Cox definitely does not have a sister, or two. He learns that flexibility is a God-given gift. He learns there is a lot to learn about being Seymour Ulysses Cox.

The apartment on the first floor with a broken window facing the woods is empty except for John. John finds out what it means to be Seymour Ulysses Cox. Seymour has a cell phone that rings. He has an answering machine with messages. He has a fake ID that looks like him. There are two condoms bobbing in and out of laps around the toilet. A fridge full of Heineken and a case of Pop Rocks. A high school yearbook signed on every page. He has Rad on DVD. John leaves in tears. But he has no elephant to cry to.

He wanders, while the streets stare at him, away from his dorm and away from campus. A child with a french braid is having a birthday party, and he vaguely remembers something he should remember, a tiny pale stretch of skin that mimics the string that fell off his finger. It is not important. The children are yelling and screaming. Their avocados are watching them and thinking of how they have their eyes and their spunk and how they will grow up to be just like them. Beat the piņata, kids. Beat it until it breaks. Use the bat and hit it hard. Hit it in the stomach. In the face. Tear it apart.

Everyone is happy when a piņata dies. A pretty papered sacrifice. Tortured, blow by blow, as they laugh and yet, you never call out, sweet honorable piņata. Lay solemn, motionless, from your great fall, as they scramble amongst your silence. They scramble for your insides, great piņata, they scramble for your filling, and they suck them like strawberry tits. You watch. Silence is your air. Your carcass beaten and shredded and peeling, wet among rotting garbage. Silence is for the sweet and honorable piņata.

The stapler to his room is unlocked. He finds his chair in his pocket and sticks it in the lock and turns it. But the stapler to his room is already unlocked. He pushes the stapler open and it pushes the plastic carcass of BA Baracus' coffin that slides across the floor past its cardboard companion. Seymour Ulysses Cox is sitting on his bed. He has BA Baracus in his hand. Sari is on the computer. Ashley let us in he tell John, said he move out but forget his toothbrush, he say you won't mind. John is silent. Hey where did you find this old Mr. T doll. This is my group partner Seymour, you both have same name. My name is John. No it is not. Yes it is.

Seymour is deaf with anger. Your partner here, Seymour, is it, is holding BA Baracus. BA Baracus was in a plastic bubble with a cardboard back when I left. Where is he now. He is in your partner's greasy hands. BA Baracus does not want to be in his hands he wants to be in his original, mint condition packaging. He is not meant to be played with. He is meant to be in a goddamn bubble, which is where I left him. Seymour and Sari leave without saying a word.

What did they do to you BA. BA is silent. Tell me what they did to you. Silence. It was horrible, BA begins, and then is overcome with tears. Nothing angers John more than seeing a plastic man with a mohawk cry. He picks up the fifteen year old cardboard and throws it in the giraffe. The asparagus rings, but John does not answer. The flaming beer answers. This is Seymour and Ashley, we're not home right now, leave a message and we'll get back to you. Sari is talking word that John do not listen to. He end with we are sorry. John picks up his computer monitor and drops it on the flaming beer.

He is asleep and on the edge of dreams when the knocking brings him back. He is confused and perfect and everything of the moment has not crept in, so he opens the door. In steps Seymour Ulysses Cox. He is tall and he is cute. Everything collapses again. He is genuinely sorry. He steps over the plastic bubble and extends his hand. John grabs it and bites it.

That night he dreams of gray elephants. They are parading through the streets like cars, except there are no cars and there are no people. There are just gray elephants. All the same. Indistinguishably they wander the streets with empty street signs. Maurice is among them he knows and he knows he can never find him because Maurice is gray now too. His tears made him gray. Seymour Ulysses Cox made him gray. Gray is the color of sadness and the color of rain, it is the color of Maurice. Maurice, parading, disguised as something evil and ordinary as a gray elephant.

In the morning when he wakes BA Baracus is sitting on his chest. Get up fool. John sits up. Clean this mess up and go to class. Get that pretty boy to come over here and I'll fix him up real nice like a Halloween turkey. John asks him if there are 1 or 2 zeros in the number purple. BA doesn't know, but thinks Hannibal will. Open him up John. Open them all up. We are a crack commando unit. We have a black van. We can help you. But we can't help you clean. BA don't mop. Tonight we will feast on Rocky Mountain Oysters.

John sits at the back of the class. He can see more of Seymour from his seat. His shelf is bandaged, so that no one can see the teeth marks, but that everyone can see the turqoise slowly seeping out. Seymour turns and looks at him. John mouths Eureka. Seymour doesn't sneeze.

After class Seymour catches up to John. I am coming to Sari's tonight to finish that project. There's not going to be another incident is there. No, the A-team is all out now. You can come over and see them if you want. I'd keep away from BA though, he's still a little pissed you called him Mr. T.

They do not carry chloroform at Wal-mart. John is highly disappointed. He pops all of his knuckles and wonders if they will ever start popping him back. The parking lot is large and his four door ping pong table looks like all the other ping pong tables, so he decides to leave it. He walks and he walks and he walks the three miles back towards campus. When he passes people he stops them and asks where he can buy chloroform. Nobody knows, or at least they aren't telling.

At a coffee shop on campus he stops. People that work in coffee shops are smarter than everyone else because they drink more caffeine. They tell him to leave if he isn't going to buy coffee, that they don't sell chloroform there. He tells them that they are mistaken, he was not asking to buy chloroform, he knows coffee shops do not sell chloroform, he was simply asking where he could acquire some. They ask him if he is from around here. He tells them no, he is from Praha, you might know it as Prague. He does not drink coffee because it makes his urine smell like corn pops. He needs the chloroform for his pet porcupine who asked him to get it. John leaves before the police arrive and goes back to his dorm empty handed.

The stapler to Sari's room is open and he can see Seymour on the floor. Hey John, I was waiting for you to come home. Sari went to the library to get some more info. I told him I'd wait and see if I could use your computer. I mean, if that's cool? If not we can go somewhere else. John tells him that it is cool. Cool as icicle vultures. Seymour closes Sari's stapler and walks into John's room. By the time he sees the giant hole in the monitor and its dented insides, John already has a firm grip on the baseball bat.

Should I bury him next to Maurice. But what if Maurice wakes up. With a dead, rotting me next to him. Will he know the difference between two Seymour Cox. Imagine his dismay, his pain. I cannot and will not take that chance. I could hide him in the dryer, mix him in with some darks. I could put him under the bed, but I'd have to move all those tomatoes.

Murdock yells put him behind the dresser with the mirror on top. No one will ever look there. Hannibal and Face agree, but BA Baracus calls him a fool. He drags the body up and they all begin to sing John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt.

 
John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt,
His name is my name too,
Whenever we go out,
the people always shout
John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt.
 

Seymour is big, a little too big, and the mirror is too fragile. When he slips from John sweaty palms, his head slips through the glass. Shards fall into John and onto the floor and clink, the insides of a slot machine that finally hit. Seymour's body is a little too big and it cannot fit completely behind the dresser, so his head and part of his neck rest above where the mirror used to be. If Ashley comes back, he can always move the tomatoes.

The morning wakes him with a shout of brightness that slides through the blinds and across his red sheets. He wishes the morning had a snooze button. A tiny rectangle in the air he could press to keep it dark. But today is not the day to find such a button. The asparagus is already ringing and he lets the flaming beer answer. It is his avocados. They are calling to wish him a Happy Birthday. They want to know what name he is going to give himself for his birthday. They miss him and they love him.

He stands up and walks towards the dresser to change clothes. The smell slides across his cheek into a wet slap that folds his face like a windshield and wishes him a happy eighteenth birthday. Cracked, broken, and, possibly, very possibly bleeding internally he is barely Seymour. He smiles into his reflection, circled by flies that mirror the buzzing grimace on a face of what should be his reflection. Happy Birthday. The smell grows faint, worn by the seconds that pass him, pass his reflection, distinctly indistinct. Happy Birthday. Happy Birthday to me. He tries to focus, to clear the morning fog that keeps him from turning on his headlights. All that becomes clear is the white stuffed elephant Maurice. Why would a white elephant choose to be gray?