The cyclical plot
The novella begins with its end. From the start, it is revealed that Amanda is on her deathbed and that she will soon perish. David is at her side, eerily whispering in her ear and holding a conversation about how everything started and how she got to this point. The ease, with which Amanda talks with David, is ironic considering the threatening revelation about him as the plot progresses, and implies that she has already in a realm that is not of a real world.
“He was mine. Not anymore”
The novella poses an examination between David as a child and him as a symbolic threatening force. He is introduced as a young boy who suddenly gets infected by touching the water near his home, and in an effort to save him, his mother takes him to the strange woman in a green house that performs a separation of the soul from the body and replacement with another. Ironically, the moment Carla decided to take that step to save him is when she lost him, and David as a symbolic force of decay is born.
The irony of relativity of loss
Telling her story to Amanda, Carla reveals to her how her perspective on loss changed as the things unfolded. Unaware of the events ahead, she was afraid to lose the prized horse which would mean losing her house, but events that resulted from that fear of loss only brought forward a greater one, which made the initially feared loss insignificant, which is the ultimate irony of Carla’s loss.
The irony of the end
The important truth that the ending reveals is that the decay and death is omnipresent in David’s previous home. It also reveals to Amanda where Nina’s soul ended up after the soul swap was performed. As Nina’s father is about to leave the house, he notices David sitting cross-legged in his car-a position that is recognizably Nina’s.
