An Incident of the Mind (First Report)

I first caught the rumor incidentally on Monday, overhearing the hushed and hurried words of a few colleagues in an otherwise vacant meeting room. At first I was tempted to saunter in, asking loudly how their roleplaying was, well, playing itself out, but they betrayed no excitement. Frowns and vacant stares and the very finicky, if expected movements of people who knew something and wished that it was not knowledge at all, and instead merely a jest or playful run of the imagination.

Hearing only singular words of the conversation which did not impress upon me any particular direction, “deep”, “behind” and “white”, I kept mental note of the exchange and decided that, once I was done licking my fingers clean of the very sumptuous donuts I had eaten, I would investigate. And by investigate, of course, I mean to say that I would do absolutely nothing and utterly ignore the talk. I was not particularly thrilled to be in this dumpy little section of a firm, and the thought that these people were worried about anything more immediate than gas prices was both amusing and sad. I made many renditions of the talk in my head.

“Yeah, I am so worried. He put it deep in her behind, and he’s white.”
“I don’t know how deep we are, but if we’re behind anything farther, we’ll be in the white.”

And so on and so on, extrapolations that explored and combined the humorous and macabre, the dense and the dolorous. I rarely find myself without expression, but the boredom at this place was phenomenal. My old high-school drool contests were put to shame by eight hours of plodding, menial work that I was spending most of the day not doing. I would finish seven hours early and spend the rest of my day a zombie, shuffling idly, knocking over unsecured baubles on desks and brushing tactically against attractive women. It was a running gag of sorts, one that I had kept amusing and charming through new venues of attack, but in truth I did not particularly like these people and wondered if continual effort and exposure was making me into something of a sociopath.

But that was merely the fear from a long and tiresome day. I would nap, wake for dinner, and suddenly feel wonderful. I take care to sleep lightly and nap heavily – in addition to exciting dreams which I do not seem to remember during regular slumber, I feel more refreshed after a nap. Later I learned this to be a pitiless and horrible habit, but that is later.
The next few days involved, as my bored and wandering mind conjured in rhyme, the “spread of dread”. Day by day more and more would come in, puce sickles holding eyes in place, jittery and nervous and fully convinced that whatever troubled them in thought would soon trouble them in manifest. I made jokes and tried to figure out this oddity myself, and to no avail. Perhaps they thought I was in on it – no! – perhaps I was the horrible thing stalking their pudgy and insecure fears. This wonderful thought occupied the rest of the day and provided for good Godzilla impressions.

On Friday I arrived to find that I was without a job. I yawned. Was this the cause? We’ll be laid off? I had been laid off, fired, and an almost seasonal quitter for ten years running. This was nothing more than a step on the stairway of life. I told myself these things because I was too lazy to actually think about them, or I wasn’t and I was repressing some very important feelings. Regardless, I had never been particularly unhappy and so continued by finding another area of employment the next day, on the down-low as an assistant mortician. Cash only, and a good amount at that.

This job left a very curious tinge that required almost twenty minutes of showering for every body I had to deal with. Though the women I procured never seemed to notice, I was continually smelling this stench as if I had left a particularly odorous pair of jeans on a bed-side stand. It did not bother me and instead left me in a state of contemplation regarding psychological facets of the human mind and what, exactly, the mind is doing by making me think that the smell is still somewhere around, somewhere intimately and unnervingly close.

Most of the bodies were, as my very genial boss-person pointed out, ones he had already seen before in some fashion. He claimed to have seen every death, supposedly, on the percentage chart, all the way down to lightning strikes and shark bites. I nodded and did not inquire further, assuming (and rightly I think) that whatever compelled this man to keep this job for such a length was surely fulfilling some sort of fantasy that I wanted absolutely nothing of. He still gave a wry and eerie smile when gave his frequent recollections, a mannerism that struck me so keenly as to force me to interrupt him and ask him about whatever else could come to mind. At one point I believe I interrupted a gruesome tale of dismemberment and rot to ask about the composition of joints in action figures. He took it well enough.

A week into this job and the first curiosity arose – one of the coworkers from that rough-grain soul-rub of a job was suddenly before me, naked and twisted in a way that I had not seen before. I made the usual shrugs and waited for the senior comment. There was none to be had. He stared at the body, clinically, detachedly, no doubt referencing every fetish and remembered fornication to think of what this death came from. He looked at me, my expectant face, and smiled warily.
“It’s probably an electrocution.” I shrugged again, preferring to feign ignorance rather than inquire about his curious mood and the heavily disfigured body.
The next day he did not come in. I was head mortician, which was a very dubious task for someone who has categorically ignored education on the subject and knew only how to move bodies (the best tip I recall was not to drop them, or otherwise “slip things into them”. Thankfully I did not hear the rest of the old man’s words). Bodies came in and I did what seemed best at the time – cover them in a plastic sheet and wait for my good buddy to come by. Only two had slunked in by the time a competent replacement arrived, a younger woman who made no comment on my improvised command and took care of almost everything for the rest of the day.

She was there the next day as well, during which two of the office folk, a man and a woman, arrived in the same mangled manner. I would be inclined to call their figures “ghastly”, but I am not one to make judgment calls on pretzeled people, so I will instead say that they were very curiously proportioned. The man was shrunk in spots and his arms tied up around his head – the bones seem to have melted in place, and we were forced to cut a good number of them in order to get the body into a more acceptable resting form. The woman was literally fused together at her hands, the skin utterly smooth between the wall of bone that I had seen apart before, opening doorknobs and emoting stupidly. The rest of her body can only be described as backwards fetal, with the interior ligaments fine and without any appearance of violent change. The new and nameless mortician made no comment and would not answer questions regarding the subject. She was perfectly receptive to my come-ons (categorically denying them), however, which made me question the situation further.

But only for the extended period in which I was near her and compelled by context to think of it. As soon as I returned home it was out of sight and out of mind, another curious complexity in a world I had resigned to as being terribly ornate and less humorous than I preferred. Midway through a session with one of the better women I’ve had, the phone rang and the very commanding, feminine voice of the new head mortician bellowed in my ear. There was something to attend to. She needed help. I ushered the woman out as kindly as a could, saying only that “Someone died. I gotta do clean up.” This was technically correct and proved worthwhile for her imagination, and within three minutes my apartment was vacated and I was in the subway awaiting the 3 line.

I arrived to find a good deal of the office there. Some of them were even fused together. I didn’t want to say much, as I found it very entertaining. Instead of seeing this as a horrible mesh of mutilated flesh, a physical manifestation of hellspawn, I was instead amused by the idea of these personalities combining and trying to navigate the streets of New York. I thought it would be a wonderful low-brow sketch. I made a mental note to write the ideas down, but this was interrupted when another under-the-table worker asked me a question.

“Did you know these people?”
“Yep.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“I never said I liked them.” I smiled. He frowned. Did he think I kept a massive, magic arc-welder in the furnace room of my apartment complex? “I mean, they were good people, they were just kind of, I don’t know, not fun.”
“Hey man, don’t speak of the dead like that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just not cool.” I imagined billboards with images of punkish fellows pissing on coffins, “It’s just not cool” pasted in bold above. Or maybe a supermarket ploy, free bites that look like coffins, but with needles inside, a curt and honest reminder of how this kind desecration was, well, “just not cool”. I calmly continued.
“If you say so. You know what happened to them?”
“Nah, man. I think the CSI is guna be here.”
“CSI?”
“Shit, how long have you been here? Crime scene investigation. You think some people just dove into eachother and came out like this?” He pointed at the curious corpses. I imagined this in my head and managed to repress a giggle. The nameless woman approached. She was wearing a badge. Suddenly I realized that this job just wasn’t for me anymore, that it was time to move to greener pastures or whatever the equivalent might be in an urban jungle. I must have revealed my immediate plans for egress.

“Hey, we need all the help we can get. We’ll take care of you later, but as you can see, there’s something happening. These aren’t the only cases, you know.” I nodded. With my usual verbosity I managed the only appropriate response, which I kept to myself. Fuck.

For the next hour I moved around bodies. The large multi-person mushed things were astonishingly heavy in addition to being cumbersome, sometimes taking three or four people to move. I never got to see inside or see a report or anything, though. The hour went by and a suited coterie, mostly men, ushered us out, the woman police officer included. I had no idea why she was there, no idea why I was still there, and promptly made for the nearest corner to escape whatever was going on. I’m a tall fellow but my haircut is not very unique and my slouch is very subtle: I was back in my apartment within half an hour, curious for once about what was happening at the morgue but more focused on what kind of job I would get the next day.
After a restless sleep in which I conceded to being at least somewhat concerned about the melded-body issue, I awoke to a phone call from the police woman. It was cellular so I wasn’t particularly concerned about her knowing my whereabouts, but she seemed unconcerned with that.

“You’re a… persistent fellow – want to know more about what’s going on?”
“First, if you’re going to say annoying, by all means, get it over with. Secondly, if it involves what I consider to be considerable risk, I’ll gladly ignore it. I’d rather just get away from this.”
“All you have to do is talk to a person.”
“… who’s in a security complex which I’ll sweet-talk my way through, while competing in a chessmatch over radio and spinning plates.” Always with the details.
“Oh come on, it’s not that bad.”
“Yes, it is. I can tell.” I tried to sound indignant. She replied in a much softer tone.
“Do you know what my favorite restaurant is?” I guess I was easy to read.
“… who do I need to talk to?”
“Just go out to the nearest corner from your apartment.” I cursed and hung up the phone.

She was waiting alongside a cab, her demeanor neither expectant nor rushed. She smiled when I got closer, and I blushed. I must admit, I am easily inclined toward such things. I took a seat with her in the cab and hoped for some details, but she merely applied makeup while I fidgeted. I was well aware that if she wasn’t going to tell me anything, I wasn’t going to have much luck on this farce of an expected date. In fact, I had made peace riding the elevator down, admitting that if I was going down there, it would be for the sake of resolving these peculiar incidents. A date with her was in all likelihood going to be a drain. Then I raised an eyebrow. Maybe she’ll pay for it. Suddenly I was back in business.

“So, wh-“ She lifted her hand and pressed her index finger firmly against my lips. In a rare form of better judgment, I opted against sucking on it.
“You’ll see.”

We pulled into a grungy little street, the litter ripe and the lights nodding off in broken intervals. It was very atmospheric. I was almost compelled to stop for a few moments but she dragged me along, her attire far outdoing mine and making me feel inadequate on several levels. I didn’t catch the name of the place, the inside was dull and almost foggy, and the menus betrayed nothing save overpriced sustenance. The only words uttered were in ordering the food. A man came by, seemingly from the restroom, and sat down at our table. I spoke first.

“Are you here to play some motherfucking Yahtzee? You had better damn well be.” Strangely, the police woman was not perturbed and the man merely went about his business unbuttoning his suit and pulling out a few scruffy pieces of paper. I looked down at the paper, disgusted.
“You’ve never played before, have you?” No response.
“Pathetic.” He looked up and raised an eyebrow as if to say, “I am very busy trying to take a shit in this chair, would you please, please take whatever else you have to say and kindly deliver it into a nozzle to which I am sure you can already guess. And not mine, preferably.” At least, that was my guess. Maybe he was just annoyed. That might’ve been it. She spoke without warning, and the man looked over at her.

“Thank you. I told you, he’s a bit off but absolutely brilliant.” He looked back at me.
“Kanga-fucking-roos.” He stood and promptly left. She giggled.
“You’re so easy. If you don’t have control, you get so annngrrryyy. I could tell when you were trying, poorly, to hit on me.”
“Excellent. What did you get?”
“Tickets to get out of here.”
“Out? Um, from what?”
“Look, I’m glad you could be of help, and maybe I’ll explain it later, but we need to leave. This is our ticket out.” I blinked a few times, then squinted for effect.
“Our ticket?”
“I thought you wanted to go on a date with me.”
“Look, I’m not denying the date, but seriously, what the hell?” She grinned. I was angry. I was tired of these grins and these little looks, like I was supposed to know about whatever the hell this was. Before I could ask, she got up from the table, and as soon as she took a step towards the door, I followed suit. She left nothing for the bill, probably knew that I wasn’t going to pay it, and acted as if it wasn’t going to matter anyway.

The off-service cab took us to a massive warehouse. We entered in on the side, immediately descending through a tunnel lined by chipped and twisted rock to what my mind kept calling a lair. In truth in was a massive underground storage space with a rail-line poking through it. We needed a ticket, apparently, for a super-secret rail-line that made no sense. None of this made sense. Did the woman actually like me, or what, exactly, was the reason for my being here? I’ll be honest – I’m not the most useful fellow on the planet, despite my attempts. I like making things sound overly dramatic, and I like to act as if continually detached. But this, this was finally thrumming in my head, each pulse of realization uttering my name like some siren in the deep of the earth.

She gently took my hand and we walked to the line. She then looked at her watch, breathed a sigh of relaxation, and said something that I did not hear. Almost immediately a train darted to us, sleek and looking a lot like a polished aluminum bullet or some retro-futuristic concept train. It had no marks. In we went, sitting down on lush leather recliners with ornate wooden desks and what appeared to be liquor at every one. When I finally mustered up the courage to speak to her in this empty passenger car, that would save us, that apparently needed tickets (and why wasn’t anyone else here?), she was asleep. I stood up instead and walked around the cars. Beautiful, and lush, and empty. Fresh magazines were lain upon the reclining chairs, their subtle stink rising above the false cherry scent about the place. Moving between cars was soundless and easy, the door mechanisms feeling light and smooth. There were no lights outside of the train, and only the very slightest sense that we were in transit. The interior lights were calm and colored like diluted puke.

I couldn’t reach any kind of conductor area, then made my way back only to find a similar doorless stretch of mahogany at the other end. I sat down, tossed the complimentary magazine aside, and tried to sleep or relax or just shut my eyes. I could not. My eyelids drooped but kept my eyes at half-moon, my state of trance for once being used in thought rather than utter boredom. I thought of useless things, of course, what sort of things might or might not be happening regarding this journey, and within an hour I was teetering on sleep, drifting in and out of ideas that would solidify in dreams then dissipate as I wiped the drool off my face and blinked.
This went on for a while, and I awoke as she was walking, halfway down the car, utterly placid. She looked at me without smiling, without doing anything really. I raised an eyebrow, still coming off the drowsiness and more than a little ambivalent about speaking. She walked up and sat down next to me, neatly placing her magazine on the desk in front of her. I leaned over, took the one I had tossed on the ground, and did the same. Looking at her and hoping for a response, I realized that something had changed. I spoke first.

“So?”
“So.”
“That’s not very helpful.”
“Nor are you.”
“It took you quite a while for that one, miss.”
“We thought you were someone else.”
“And who would I be mistaken for?”
“Don’t bother talking anymore.”

A dull blue glow appeared outside the windows. Outside was a fantastic and unbelievable sight, some sort of gimmick, I thought, made by someone with far too much time at the helm of this project. We were inside a glacier. An Antarctic glacier, I guessed. Skirting around one of the mountains that sit below the vast ice sheets. Where the hell had we gone? How fast were we moving? I cursed my nap and considered the three options: I slept for a long time, or, I was drugged, or, I still have a good sense of time and this train was exceeding the speed of sound by a very large margin. I was incredulous at my own suppositions.

“My explanation,” she said, “is not going to explain much. But you can still help, at least. Maybe you won’t turn.”
“Turn?”
“You seem a little to stubborn to have visited anything like that.”
“Anything like what? Seriously, give me something, anything. Where we’re going, when I get back, anything at all.”
“No. Do you think you’re worth it? I don’t.”

Her condescension got to me. I was frustrated to the point of anger, my admittedly useless life now in jeopardy by someone who refused to explain even the basics of the situation to me. I rotated my abdomen and punched her solidly in the throat, then pulled her to the ground and straddled her, my hands bound around her neck in a manner that was constricting but not immediately life-threatening.

“Look,” I said, my face appearing only calmly annoyed despite the sweat and blushed cheeks, “I think it’s within your best interest to tell me. I mean, the way it sounds, it wouldn’t matter if I killed you right here, you being a rather useless tease otherwise.” I felt terrible but I wanted some direction, so the façade stayed. She merely stared at me, tilting her head a little to the side as if a mosquito had landed somewhere on my face.
“How was your nap?”
“What?”
“The one that you probably thought only lasted a few hours. Oh, nevermind.”

I felt a little prick in my left calf and kicked away, but not before something went in. I was immediately disoriented. I tried to tighten my grip, and for a few seconds, who knows, maybe I succeeded. But her face began to slip and mesh, and every attempt at looking away from her made me so nauseated that I could barely move. I felt another prick, the sensation distant and telling, like the echo of a scream. I knew what was happening and sighed. I might’ve cursed. The world closed its doors and I was in a dark and dreamless sleep, one so heavy that by the time I awoke I felt as if only moments had passed.

It was my apartment, and nothing had changed. I grabbed at the sheets, and only after I realized that this was akin to grabbing grass in a tornado did I finally get myself and check. No sign of a prick anywhere along my left calf. I looked in the mirror. It was me, the same me, the same stubble and look of discontent and little puce sickles that cupped the eyes. The world outside clicked and whirred, hummed and bubbled, did all its paces in a terribly usual way. I paced and reviewed my memories, trying to find some sort of breach in reality where this could be passed off as an unusually vivid and coherent dream, and there were none. The kitchen table still had the cash I placed on it after working a solid day at the mortuary. I dressed, left the apartment with a dark and pensive look, and came to the first newsstand.

A year had gone by. I can’t tell you the thoughts that went through my head, the various pulses of anger and fear and confusion and intellectualization. My face did not change, however. I stared at it and read through the paper like I was going through my paces in a boring, unhappy fashion. Unlike the general insanity, the desperate filing through newspapers, I accepted this and found myself determined to continue existing, for it was all I could do.

Of course, not all things are a mystery, and my dazed and accepting state failed to recognize that this was a typo, that it was in truth the same year and the same day, in fact, that all of this seemed to have occurred. I realized this as I looked over another newspaper and asked to make sure it was the right date. He made a joke of some sort regarding the other newspaper, but I simply nodded and walked away.

There were certain facts that needed to be checked, and the first, really the only place was the mortuary. I walked in to find the old man having returned, expectant but calm. He spoke first.
“How you doing today?”
“Um, fine. Why were you gone that last week?” I took of my coat and grabbed at the rail on the side of one of the tables. It popped off rather easily. I held it kind of awkwardly and let him continue.
“Oh, that? I just felt a little strange is all.”
“Strange? What about the bodies?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to talk about it. You don’t either.” I rolled my eyes.
“Why the hell not? People I used to work with, fairly normal people for better or for worse, suddenly went paranoid and practically crazy. I switch jobs and they’re showing up looking like freshly-baked funnel cakes. Then you leave and this woman comes in, and shit just got stranger from there.”
He looked toward one of the tables. I heard the clack of instruments as soon as I turned, only to see the woman there. She walked up, very calm but much more lively than before.
“Hi.” Her tone was bright, every cheery. My reply was more than a little sour.
“Hi.”
“What’s wrong?”
“This is how you’re going to be like?”
“Be like what?” She smiled. I turned to the old man.
“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?”
“Well-“ I whirled around, the length of circular metal alloy gripped like a baseball bat, and hit the woman in the head. A thudding crunch told me that I probably had no need to swing again, but I did anyway. When I was done, the anger clear on my face, there was little left to call a head. I turned to the old man. His face had the hue of the corpses we handled.
“I assume you want no part in figuring this out?” His head wobbled very slightly, the only outcome of what was surely some epic mental battle between his id and superego. That, or he was simply aghast. I then realized that he was looking at the very recent corpse rather than me. I looked down and realized that her remains were not normal, not normal by any stretch of the imagination. Various tendrils, which looked much like images of parasitic infection that I had seen in high-school biology slides, were writhing uselessly amidst the remains of the skull. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t hallucinating.
“You see those, yeah?” He nodded. “And you’ve never seen them before, yeah?”
“Well, those other bodies, when I… yes, that was when I first saw them.”

I pointed the length of rail I had in my end, one end covered in blood and tiny bits of viscera. For a moment I wanted to joke about this being the most horrible tampon to have ever existed, but I decided that the old man would consider the situation a little inappropriate for the jest. I conjured up every image I could think of with the woman, an imaginary childhood, the tragedies that led to her infuriating personality and bad case of worms, but I didn’t feel much different. Coldness? Desensitized? The sense of justification? I had always considered myself a humanitarian up to this point.

“Here’s what I want you to do, with all your expertise on this. Prepare the most incredible report you’ve ever made. Put her body in the deep freeze, so we can keep those things fresh. This needs to be put to paper, released, understood. Something is at play, but I don’t know what.” I told him what had happened while he was gone. He blinked a few times. I shrugged.

“Actually, um, well, if the worm thingies aren’t much different in those other corpses, I say we just dispose of her.” He was a timid fellow but I wanted to be on his positive side. I was prepared to implicate him as an accessory to murder in case he thought about flaking, or just outright killing him, before I realized that I was already more than dabbling into sociopathic insanity and probably needed a break to think things over. I helped it cleaning up and promised to return; I had to think of a plan. I was, in the words of old hard-case detectives, going to blow this thing wide open.

I was once again pacing around the very elaborate 24’x36’ box I called home. I will send off all the documentations and various tests done by others to whoever I could, but first, and foremost, I will post anything I could make onto the internet. I am returning right now – look for anything you can, on these parasites, on the Kings County Medical Center, on a no-longer existent woman by the name of Myla Jdaiest (pronounced Juh-die-esst), a curious entrance to a warehouse, anything relevant. Take what you find, and tell whoever you can. I’ll continue this when I get the chance.

Some old satire...

In an astonishing news press today released by the Democratic Association, it was revealed that while it was originally thought that President Bush’s history in regards to his attendance of the RNWHA (Republican Ninjas With Hamsters Association) was immaculate, offhand records by a sister’s brother’s uncle’s former roommate reveals a far different story: he once arrived five minutes late.

One of the three members of the RNWHA, after deciding who was to be spokesman by way of rock-paper-scissors, came forth to comment on the attendance of President Bush.
“I really don’t have much to say. I remember the night like it was yesterday – he simply just showed up late. We speculate that he may have been doing drugs or earning his stipend as a prostitute: no one is ever late, especially ninjas, with hamsters.”

Before anything else could be asked, the self-professed ninja pulled a hamster out of his pocket and ran into oncoming traffic. The condition and whereabouts of the spokesman are currently unknown. The reaction however was not an isolated one as republicans abroad were amazed by Bush’s brash attendance.

“I just couldn’t believe it” comments Linda Versoconta, another Republican astonished by the news. “How could someone not want to attend the RNWHA? It seems to violate every thing I’ve ever held true and dear for Bush. I guess I’ll vote for Kerry, or Nader. I don’t really know. I’m in too much shock to really decide”

Jim Beam, another Republican, was even more upset over the Bush – RNWHA scandal.
“I don’t think I can go on living. I can’t take it anymore. He was the one, and now he is but a mere mortal! It cannot be!” Jim then decided that a one-way ticket to the great beyond was his only answer to this overwhelming dilemma and took a leap of faith that was abruptly ended about 20 stories below, where a small crowd congregated, slowly clapping as if some sort of perverted circus act had just been performed.

But what does this mean for Bush? Top analysts that happen to live next door say that this will severely hurt Bush’s approval rating, involving anywhere from a .05-95% change of faith in voters. It will be only a matter of time before this grave incident impacts upon the general public, and the truth is known – Bush was late to the weekly RNWHA meeting, and no one is ever late, especially ninjas, with hamsters.

A Sleepwalker

A Sleepwalker

It was in little jests that we would embarrass the man, asking him whether his Reich-heiling member would knock over lamps and smear across walls. Tit for tat, really – we at least gave him the benefit of the doubt regarding his vitality. And yet there was a singular tinge of despondence in his speech, a wistful longing from living every day with that thing he considered, in words more colloquial, as moribund. The early sun of summer bloated the walls in orange light, and he arrived at the delicatessen with news. I was the only one at the store.

“I think there might be a cure!”

“My friend, no medication will heal us of this job.” He was unaffected by the sentiment and apparently by the doldrums of this barely-keeps-one-alive job, blind as usual to the searing light of his obliviousness.

“No, no, the sleepwalking I always tell you about.” I was mildly surprised that he didn’t frame the sickness as the one we made fun of him for. “It’s apparently pretty simple, a pretty easy procedure. I’ll go in next week and I won’t have this rings under my eyes or this, what did he call it, listlessness!” His eagerness fascinated me. It was like the lunk who just discovered the greatness of a pyramid scheme.

“That’s great, man. Does it cost much?”

“Yeah, but who cares? I got enough in savings and my wife has a job too. And besides, with this, I won’t have to work here!”

“You have to work here? Did God come down and tell you that?”

“Well, no, but what else could I do?”

“Security. People would still think you were on the job, even if you were trying to balance the pepper spray on your dick.”

“Why is it always about my dick, man?”

“Why is it always about your sleepwalking, man?” The reflexive mocking was a bit much and I steered the conversation towards easier things.

“So, what’s the procedure supposed to be? I hope it doesn’t involve suction cups.”

“What? No, no suction cups.”

“Oh, good. Those piss me off. I can imagine it now – ‘Yes, by very careful suction cup application to your gentials, we can exorcise the demons and get you cash in the next thirty days! Cures sleepwalking too!’”

“No, uh, that’s just weird. All they do is a few CAT scans, some sort of wave technology thing, and apparently it works!”

“And you went to a doctor, yeah?”

“Of course!” Oh. Of course.

“Well, I hope it works out for you. Any idea what this thing was called?”

“Yeah, uh… hold on a sec. It was called ‘allotropic induction through resonance’, whatever that means.” I thought it was cleverly worded bullshit and resolved at the end of the day to look it up myself, curious and a little dubious about his density.

It turns out the process was peer-reviewed and about as well-tested as the theory of gravity. It could change a lot of mental aspects, but most of the applications stuck to easy and practical problems like somnambulism, rather than the more twitty and nebulous questions like, “If Bob calls me on Sunday and I know I’m free but, like, I say no anyway and I really want to, is there a way to make it so, like, I do say it that way? I mean, you know, the way I want to?” Personality changes were in the cards but not available at the moment. I was kind of worried that my sleepwalking friend expected some sort of complete life reversal, as if he would suddenly explode out of minimum-wage wankery and thud softly in the sugary sands of Cancun.

As was usual, the days seemed long and tiring. Shoulders weep, and by clock-out they seem to be at the same angle as the eyebrows, penitent and desperate for salvation. Our man of the legendary penis and second-act sleeping problem came in a few days after his revelation with a despair so palpable that some men who moved the goods into the store acted very loudly and visibly as if they had eaten fresh manure. We questioned him to no avail until the lunch break, where he finally broke the silence in a whisper.

“I… I don’t know if we’ll have the money after all.” One of my friends at the place spoke softly in reply.

“Aw, man, that stinks. Anything we can do?” I hadn’t yet explained to them that this was actually a real procedure, and put my bets on some sort of tragic and humanity-distrusting dupe among dopish friends. I often do this because I feel bad for cynics. Myopic wrongness has to take a toll.

“N-no… I just had to have somebody die now, of all times. Gotta get a casket and a service…” He looked down and never seemed to swallow, ruminating endlessly on one pulverized bite of pastrami on rye.

“Well, if there’s anything, let me know.” The faces were all serious, earnest. I wasn’t surprised, but I did lose my bet.

The next day he was ecstatic, in the greatest of moods. It was pretty obvious that Jack, the manager, had thrown in a helping hand. His smile had no interest when the man offered his explanation, only the complexion of altruistic contentment. It is not difficult to explain the face, but it is easier to say that it is not at all like the face apparent while one is defecating. Had it been like this, my sentimental-cynicism suspicion of Jack as a sociopath would have instantly been verified. I would also very much want to know why that face was his preferred one.

“Well, thanks to a certain someone, I’ll be getting the procedure.”

“That’s cool, man.”

“Good for you.”

We were all very pleased by this – we all cited practical reasons, getting him to shut up or finally having a chance at ridding ourselves of the bastard - but I believe most were simply glad to see a fellow man being helped, even if it made them squirm to admit it.

The following days proceeded with a little drama, expected but, as always, coming in a different way than expected. My girlfriend of three months decided on separation, citing in less robust terms that she was “not prepared for a long-term relationship”, which to me, besides being true, transmitted a fair deal of other information. I, however, merely nodded and wished her the best of luck, and offered to keep in contact, as we certainly made good friends (knowing full well that her statement implied a variety of things that suggested we would probably never talk to each other again). It was my turn for questioning that day at the delicatessen, mostly oblique comments about my spacey staring. In truth I was concocting lines of wit, already anticipating another attempt at a relationship. I looked over regret with intellectual distance, applied the bandaging of wisdom surgically, and hoped that a full emotional release could be done within the next few days. The clinical approach was handy, as I never had the urge or the ability, really, to change or replace emotions.

I was still in this fugue the day before his treatment. I walk up to a woman on the street. We are at a crosswalk, and she is beautiful. I’m not sure which is more important, the beauty or the crosswalk, for the crosswalk is where reality intersects wit. Next to her, I lean forward then turn, raise an eyebrow, and ask politely, “Could you tell me when it’s okay to walk? I don’t think I’ll be able to see it like this.” I rolled my eyes in my dazed state, and my coworker asked. I told him, with the appearance of utter honesty, that ocular calisthenics are necessary for a day-dreamer extraordinaire. My disinterest in his question was apparent as I said this verbatim, making no attempt to soften a tone that I always thought was funny in an ironic, overcompensating kind of way. He merely frowned and went back to sweeping the floor.

The day of was uneventful and honestly dull, hardly worth the excitement we had brought up for it. I coined new and horrifying phrases; my coworkers did their usual in unpredictable ways; my manager Jack smoked a terribly skunky joint and fell asleep in the back room while drawing circles all over his arms. We played connect the dots as well as we could, using permanent marker and, of course, making sure that every attempt yielded a penis in some sort of position.

The following sunrise greeted Jack, clad in seasonally inappropriate long-sleeves. He was immediately followed by our man, who we all wondered about with a little bit of excitement. Through our usual work chatter we had decided that he would return some sort of superhuman or even a cyborg, to be revered as the first of a daring and no-way-I-want-it-too enhancement. He came in placidly, and spoke to us with an odd, stumbling, and utterly mechanical way of speech.

“They-said-that-some-speech-center-side-effects-would-make-this-a-little-weird-so-if-we-could-keep-talking-to-a-minimum-that-would-be-very-nice-of-you-thanks-it’s-a-work-time.”

He walked normally and performed his duties, answering questions only when necessary. We were not compelled to attempt humor, the idea to much like trying to conquer a hill embedded with landmines. The next day was similar and by the end of the week no progress had been made. Our man, however, did not appear frustrated and might have even been a little more sprightly by the end of the week.

I met with the other single coworkers for a game of billiards and some movie watching over the weekend. We all threw around our half-assed ideas in a drunken fashion, shooting for humor and easy laughs while either avoiding or trivializing the man and his procedure. What would his wife do now? He had a wife? Well, he has to inflate her first. And on and on, the empty banter an analogue to stereotypical Chinese food, satiating only to feel, fifteen minutes later, as if one had never consumed a single bite. The drinks would drown the hunger for something close, something real, and then we would awake, fresh in headaches and haze, grumbling and forgetful. I would wake up in the morning, fully understanding the desperation, and committed nonetheless to doing it again the next weekend.

On Monday the man was not there. It was of particular concern only to the floor, whose previous squeaks from rubber soles were now softened by dirt and dust into bumping, scuffling noises. That was it and all the all that day.

I came home that night less curious about curing somnambulism and more concerned about going on a grand trip some day. Far away, across the greatest deserts and widest rivers, slinking down the Amazon and skirting up the Nile, through the sandstone catherdral of Strasbourg and into a seedy tavern in the Czech Republic. For some reason or another I was compelled the idea of going there, convincing myself that this was a grand new place, then working somewhere eerily similar to the delicatessen I was at now. I would find another going-nowhere coterie, slip through the social scene, and move on a year later just as I had done with this town.

Tuesday saw the same neglect, and I was assigned to clean up shop. It made me wonder in earnest whether the job really needed the man. Jack was stone faced, or just stoned, and emoted only at the announcement of a sports score or record number from the radio. Another coworker had been replaced in the afternoon shift, a high-school kid looking to appease her parents take some “personal responsibility”. She whined on and on about how they knew nothing about personal responsibility, that if she was just going to have college paid for anyway, maybe they’d assign her some real responsibility and stop treating her like a child. I sighed. She took this as a sign to keep speaking. I turned around and left half an hour early.

The evening corroded. Dinner swam into view and passed into fullness. Bars glided by nosily, distortedly, hideous faces brackish on the stools, little windy triumphs of laughs and the sweet-low hum of a broken air conditioner dancing in a corner. Dancing, breaking the pulses of light like a slowly dripping film. I hadn’t tripped for a long time. God, everything seemed to right, fit so well with this bullshit in my system. It reassured me, billowed in brilliant smells and cacophonies too bright for me to see, and seemed to proclaim with pulpish glory that everything would be alright.

Morning. Wednesday. Hand in front of face. Five fingers. Five curling fingers. Five fingers to grab a broom. Broom. Vroom. Vroom vroom. I love waking – I see the world before I am confused enough to try and make sense of it. Everything is in focus after that trip. I am here. In an apartment. I feel lonely, unspent. Not impotent, really, just apathetic. This routine, this blinking sun. Blinking sun? Outside a few helicopters had passed by. Completely unrelated. I wanted them like a story. I wanted them to be symbolic things, I wanted to look over this unusual week like I had encountered some epiphany. Thumps from the apartment above. Swells of wind chaffing my window. I stepped in my shoes and set out to quit my job.

I met Jack and the man was there. Cigar in his mouth, a fedora and Hawaiian shirt.

“Jesus, man, this isn’t Miami, nor are you a detective. What the shit is this getup?”

“I’m a new man, can’t you tell? Hell, the wife died, and I’m free.”

“Your wife died. Hey, what? Free? Free like what? From what?”

“Man, I am free.” He walked out. Apparently curing somnambulism gave one… whatever the hell this was.

“Do you really think curing sleepwalking did that?” I asked Jack.

“I dunno. I don’t event think his wife died.”

“What?”

“She called in yesterday and said that her husband was ‘out’. No details, just sounded a little concerned and wanted to let me know.”

“Huh.”

“Then, get this. She calls this mornings and just apologizes. Says he’s a little different but he’ll do the work, same as always.”

“I don’t think he’s going to be doing the work, uh, ever again.”

“I’d be inclined to agree.”

I quit shortly after and left for a new residence in the southeast, compelled by easy access to the Keys. Flings and friends and a few years later, I picked through a newspaper and saw a picture of the man in the obituary. I laughed a little, morbid as it was. He had the same fedora on, a huge and wicked grin over his face. The obit was terse so I looked up some details. There were a few small articles regarding him, one of which caught my eye.

“Tampa, FL – A man found in the Seaside park today near the dog walk, mauled and killed after what eyewitness report as attempting to have sex with a German Shepherd. Details are forthcoming, however, locals report that this man worked at a drycleaners off of Somerset and was regarded as a “very strange man”.”

That night I opened my paycheck and stared at it, eventually letting it slide between my fingers and waft to the floor. I let one breath out slowly, then another. The feel of my chest, my lungs compressed, salty air expelled. I looked outside, to the moon across the bay, to the twinkles of skyline farther north, and decided that I would quit my job. Was it fear that kept me here? Longing, maybe false hope? I went inside and ripped out his picture from the obituary. Took a broad swathe of clear masking tape and stuck the photo cleanly to the wall. It struck me like a lighthouse that had caught fire from the pilot light. I felt embarrassed and immediately ripped it down. Even if a taped it to my forehead, what was it going to do? I let it sit in my lap for the rest of the night, the wiry face somehow looking down at me still, and wondered idly if his face had always appeared like a lighthouse in my mind.

On the Shoreline

There were no sounds and there were no sights, no sense of touch, no prickly taste, just a very faint smell of freshly-washed sheets. He had put them in the laundry the night before, leaving his book on the table nearby and staring into the little maelstrom through the plastic window like he was looking for a signpost. The spinning finished and he realized this fact half an hour later, bringing himself up slowly and transferring over the cloth and nylon and polyester like a poorly trained servant. It was night now. He adjusted himself with a shudder, though it was warm in the room. Immediately and with the composure of a monk he propped himself up, came to the bathroom, smiled in the mirror, then promptly slathered various portions of porcelain in a chunky chicken-stew froth. It will be a great day, he thought.

The woman met him at a typical tavern, decked in local camaraderie with an oaken bar and the seedy atmosphere that seems dry and unfilled in the daytime. He was surprised how fast the night receded and morning had dribbled by, and the woman took his vague surprise as a personal compliment.

“Do you like my shirt?”

“Sure.” He in no way meant to suggest that he was more impressed with something else of her, but it came out that way. She continued.

“Oh, is there something else, then?”

“We’ll see.”

“Oh?”

And so the conversation continued, his unintentionally coy apathy combining well with the woman’s poor eyesight. She couldn’t tell that he was staring some twenty feet beyond her, at nothing in particular. They agreed to something later in the night; he couldn’t remember, or at the least didn’t care to. She left smiling and he left shortly thereafter, picking his pants out of his ass and wondering how many buses there were in the city, or at least the metropolitan part.

He came back to his house, and everything seemed clearer with the drowsiness and nausea gone. Tennessee-style living room. Bland, sharply-defined kitchen. Clean and as clear of life as it could be. Even his mark was swept away by a habitual attention to cleanliness. He had no socially compromising habits in this department, however, it had occurred to him on more than one occasion that cleaning might be more fun stark-naked and dancing to the most terrible Reggae he could find. The thought no longer made him smile, though.

During the afternoon a call came in, some lawyer talking about estate transferal and blah blah blah he was busy on the internet and a few yes’s later he was off the phone and free to do the browsing he so desperately gravitated towards. Media of all kinds. Some days he’d just read the whole time. Others involved copious amounts of porn. Every once in a while he’d go out and walk, but the days felt dry and the warmth of the sun was oppressive rather than sensual or life-affirming.

Dinner came around and he ordered something. The person taking the delivery sounded like a very bored man, and for some reason he could not stand this, and made every effort to cheer him up.

“What’s your order?”

“I’d like 7,428 cheese pizzas, please.”

“I’m sorry, sir, we can’t take orders above ten at a time.”

“Ten? What if I’ve got a soccer team? Do we really need to make two calls?”

“Well, I don’t know. I’d have to talk to the manager.”

“Okay. I just want one medium pizza.”

“We don’t have medium. Small or large.”

“Okay, I’d like a smarge pizza.”

“Didn’t catch that, sir.” He conceded to his failure and finished the call.

As cheese oozed off his chin and onto the table, he realized with a kind of depressive clarity that it had been a year to the day. But the memory was just as it had been the day after. It just kind of sat there, inert, while he waited patiently for some kind of response. He cared, that was sure, but as it happened he was merely calm, the care more like the easy care of decent friends rather than intimate family members. He’d lost more than a few friends from his curious attitude, though friend was a dubious term and congenial acquaintance was probably more fitting. His response to their accusations was equally serene, and at one point he started countering their invectives.

“You’re terrible.”

“Nah, I’m pretty good at water polo.” Bafflement, followed by more complaints. He hung up the phone. Another met him in front of his house.

“You have no heart.” He brought his hand to his chest, brought his other hand up with his index finger raised, indicating that they wait.

“Are you sure? Do we have to get a sonogram or something?”

And on and on, until there were no more congenial acquaintances left, until there was simply a house and his parents somewhere far away and a few good friends who were busy in their own life and offered more personal condolences that he could actually sympathize with. One of the curt ones said, “shit sucks, gotta do what you can”, which was one of the reasons he liked the guy so much and wished he lived a little closer to the dude. A female mired in marketing more or less dismissed him and said, “if you need someone, I can’t really be there, but you have a good imagination, so I’m sure you’ll manage if it comes to that.” which was also truthful and one of the last times he could remember genuinely laughing out loud.

By instinct he was well dressed and out the door, and by instinct he came to the place where he agreed to meet the woman. It was an entirely emotional response, the streets and his pace and his demeanor simply feeling wrong or right, the physical manifestation something near nausea. His instinct had never been this good and he was a bit worried at his newfound precocity. He could not, however, get himself out of this very fortunate funk and instead went straight to the pier, smiles in hand and nothing in mind.

The night proceeded in a similar fashion, his gut feeling doing in his estimation a downright wonderful job of handling conversation. His selection of words was part of his chameleon approach to conversation, appropriating others turns of phrase and mannerisms is subtle ways that he himself had a difficult time noticing. The night twinkled blandly. Someone was stabbed and they had to leave. It was the perfect opportunity.

His come-on was practically engrained to the point of ritual, though he could not remember having ever done it before. The evening coasted gracefully though his detatchment was such that he wondered, while humping, what the average optimal path might be through the parking lot at the nearby supermarket. It consumed him. Where do the employees normally park? What’s the usual density and distribution of cars? Are there any habitual shoppers than can help the density? Shopping cart schedules would also be important. He conceded at his lack of information and made a very dedicated mental proposition to shut the hell up and get on with the fucking.

The next morning contained a few more rounds and in his dazedness he was a little more coherent and concerted. He patted her warmly and asked about her family, what her life was like. But that lasted only until breakfast, and by then he was once again the loving automaton that made good jokes and exuded the appropriate kind of confidence, while he was more concerned about spatial densities represented by words or Stanford’s prison experiments or whatever came to mind.

And during the evening he came back into focus, pain splintering his hand. He was on a beach. He was punching a rock with a very stern dedication. His face, he realized, was folded into something near anger. Wait a minute, he thought. I’m punching a rock. It was so stupid to him that for a moment he just stopped and wondered what he had eaten, wondering what drugs had made him trip, and where he might score some more. But then the events of the afternoon piled and congealed and he at once started to understand this rock. As he recalled it, he was still miffed that he had to find himself punching the rock, of all things.

His wife had been in the habit of wearing a little blue tube top when they went to the beach. It functioned as her bikini and the form-fitting nature combined with water was a sight he could never disagree with. His son had noticed and had asked how mommy got blue skin. She would often sit on the rock, cross her legs or, when he was the only one watching, open them wide and pull aside her underwear. This was in fact a rock they had been near often, a rock they had straddled as they died, but their deaths were kind of inconsequential to the whole rock beating thing.

She walked around their house like a stray feline. Her movements were quick and smooth and graceful and always with a hint of paranoia, like the wall might jump after her or, more appropriately to the metaphor, animal control was hiding in the closets. He had passed this off as a quirk, some sort of habit culled from childhood, and didn’t care as she seemed to be in heat almost constantly, her itinerant nature providing for quite the house-exploration and more than a few explanations to the curious son about storks, birds, bees, and anything else that would generally piss the son off.

A few days before their deaths she walked up to him, barefoot, keeping the heels of her feet elevated with every step, the hardwood barely creaking under her petite frame.

“I think we should have some real fun.” He smiled, the worry sufficiently buried.

“Oh?” He hugged her, stared down at her. “Like what?”

“We should have fun with him.” She looked past, though he already had the feeling he knew as she was walking up.

He was unsure what to think. His imagination had led him to every possible avenue, most of which appealed to him, but the application to reality was often complicated enough that he just ignored it and stuck with a fairly conventional role.

“We could work on a daughter, if that’s what you’d like…” She licked him from his chin to his ear, making a noise that might as well have been a cat purring. He had to bend down for her to reach his ear. He was rigid with excitement and not the least bit ashamed.

“I… agree… we should, uh, talk about it first. I mean, after this.” She raised an eyebrow but was not frustrated.

“Fiiiiine.”

The next day they sat down. He was dressed casually, and she was unkempt. There was no sign of the son around.

“Where is he?”

“Over at a friends house. So, what do you want to talk about?” She was direct and seemed genuine.

“Well, uh –“

“Hey, your concern is perfectly understandable. I don’t disagree with it at all, I know all the arguments against it. However, he’s hit puberty and as you know I don’t agree with most ideas of sexual taboo anyway, most of the arguments being a matter of belief rather than objectively reinforced fact.”

“I don’t like the taboos either, um… I don’t know. Maybe you could give me a day or something? I’ll have the day off tomorrow, I won’t be bothered by work.”

“Sure.”

“But don’t take too long. He won’t be… that way forever.” He nodded robotically and left the room. He could hear her sigh as he left.

The sunset was paled to gray by a broad swathe of clouds when he went out the back door and sat on the deck. He didn’t have any problem with her proposition. The kid was smart and curious, actually in the habit of reading the more mature aspects of authors like Heinlein, and he himself still had a few similar unlived fantasies hanging around his noggin. He had hated his own family, their deeply conservative and dull path, so this could be something like vicariously living a dream, in a way. But he was still nervous. Not because of the sexual freedom – no, he approved of that wholeheartedly, even encouraged it – but something else. He was terribly tired and fell asleep on the couch after he returned to the living room.

The next day he no longer felt the nervousness. He realized at once what the problem was – his tiredness. Whenever he spent a long time focusing on something, as he did the day before over a computer screen, his brain fatigued. When it did that, even the slightest and usually-dismissed fears would culminate into horrors that he could not escape. Today he felt fine, ready to accept the proposition and more than a little interested in what her ideas included.

They were nowhere to be found so he turned on the news, and the first image, in some stranger-than-fiction kind of coincidence, was his mangled car and a police line with a reporter speaking in front of it. He was not a dull man, nor was he overpowered by emotion save on the very rare days of true mental fatigue. He knew what had happened and turned the television off calmly, waiting for the phone call which he would answer with a cheerful hello and receive the news with no noticeable change, like pouring water into a lake.

Nothing came to mind. He was expecting a racing heart, he was expecting some frantic attention to detail where he would remember every aspect of the television, the weather, the world as it was, but it did not materialize then. Instead he just idly watched T.V., wondering with visible languor what to do now that they were gone, as if a couple of buddies had moved out and now he had to pay all the rent.

His wife had been the owner of a large estate near the northwest end of Montana, and while he was now entitled to it, he planned to take all the time he could in getting it for no reason at all. It didn’t interest him. She had inherited quite a bit, and his work was the product of an idea that he occupy himself with something he enjoyed. Now it was a life of utter peace, the terrible ideal kind, where he could waste away in indolence and avoid conflict like so many myopic morons wished for, apparently unaware that any kind of peace where everyone and anything gets along perfectly is stupid and uninteresting, to say nothing of a dystopia.

He later looked over the counter where he found a note by his wife, presumably the last she ever wrote, which said,

“Dearest – I had the pleasure of introducing him to a few new things, all of which he enjoyed immensely – and he wants to learn more! Sorry I didn’t wait for your answer, but you said you didn’t mind it last night before clamming up, so I figured you just needed some rest.”

He was surprised at her powers of observation or, he guessed it would be now, at the powers of observation she had possessed. And that was all. He had nothing to forgive her for, nothing he had but memories and times and a son and a few other things, and they were gone and what did he have now to believe in? He had lived for them, really, and had a poor time living for himself. The thought of making another family was reasonable, but he felt as if he had turned off the engine, just sort of drifting off the track and into the grass, to roll to a stop and watch as the vegetation slowly consumed him.

And yet that was not the reason for his punching of the rock. A few months later, languidly rolling in bachelordom and apathy, he came up to the rock in a drunken haze with a few parasites of present cheer, those boring and chirpy folk who are eager to revel and loathe to live. They played around near it, the memory floating around in his head, a little chunk carved out from where the car and hit, and it did not affect him.

“This is the kind of rocks! Woooo!”

“No, that rock is totally my throne, man.” Neither was really sure what the other was talking about.

They sat on top of it, vomited on it, then drifted off to another bar down the beach, laughing the whole way.

“Dude, I heard some people died on that rock man.”

“On it? No way, maybe near it or something. Like you’d want to cook people on a rock like that.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, dude, I mean some people did a wicked crash right into the thing.”

“Oh, bummer. You hear about that?” They turned to him, and he replied with what sounded like a full heart.

“Yeah, I knew them too. Must’ve sucked for the husband.” A few yeah-mans were had in reply and they continued speaking about whatever came to mind, veering towards lighter subjects.

He looked back at the rock, thinking matter-of-factly, that is where they died. Or was it after they were extricated from the car? Did they die later? Dramatically? Instantly? He didn’t know. In his drunken ambling he turned back to the conversation and ignored the dark splat of quartz adrift in the sand as it faded in the distance.

A month before a year had gone by, he returned to it, unsure why he was there, quite positive that he was not going to wish inanimate flesh luck or pray or anything like that. He had never understood praying to begin with. It seemed to him a fear of death and a practicality regarding the stink of dead flesh purported that, and he only agreed insofar as burial simply to do away with the smell. But he kept staring at the rock. The rock, the rock, a dimpled thing, reddish and a nice contrast against the dull blue sea. For the life of him he couldn’t fathom why he came back. It was a pretty place, but that was it.

And then the day of, sitting there with his hand mauled and one his knuckles broken, tears descending quickly and haphazardly upon the rock, the wind calm and moist, pushing his hair and prickling his scalp, warmth seizing his chest and what else? He did not know, did not understand, looking at the rock. It was not loss that raged at him, not discontent, but something he could not rightly place. He wanted to beat the rock more, but it had found a place, a purpose, and suddenly he understood that he had lived as if guided, as if uninterested, as if he was tenant to this fated flesh and fortunate instinct, looking over the lolling combers like he was watching the rolling numbers of a metered life, and it was there as he caressed his bloody hand that the world suddenly came into focus, if only for a brief and unsettling moment before fading back into cozy, instinctual apathy.

He met the woman the next day, and she was glad to see him.

Burning House

We finally get to his house and the dead guy is kind of bubbling. And of course, all these people are doing their conspiracies and freaking out and I’m in the corner, neutral in face and mind, calmly anticipating some sort of emotional response. I can’t bring myself to care. All the wonderful things in the world, I think to myself, and this does nothing for me. In fact, all these people around me don’t look much different, head an hair and body and all that. Never have, in retrospect.

But there’s a dead guy and that’s first and it’s all about who did what and who’ll do what but I can’t even hear them, really, there’s a leaky faucet somewhere in the crumbling mess of this house, on the second floor maybe, and it’s shuddering through my bones, I think I’m feeling the sounds but I haven’t had anything in the last ten days. And for some reason I’ve met this guy a hundred times and his name eludes me, I start wondering whether I ever really talked to him or if I just avoided listening to his name out of spite, but nothing comes to mind.

They get a little more organized and I saunter over calmly, looking over them like a part-time accountant looking over a list of numbers. I just want this over with, done and gone, out and out, slipped in the recesses of some memory that will come back later, arbitrarily if I’m feeling in the mood to think it arbitrary, and that will be it. That will be all this experience amounts to, a memory, and here in the present it’s like a very calm waterslide that I am inextricably sliding down.

And they notice my calmness and give me a few looks. These people have seen too many films, they’re imitating mobsters who think their intuitive step has suddenly caught the right rung and can now reach the top of… whatever. I just stare. Finally, I ask them what the problem is. Of course, now I’m the problem. They can’t focus on the topic at hand and think that some kind reconciliation on my part is going to ease their emotions, make the situation nice and even and clean. I wonder if they’ve had two funerals across the country on the same day. I wonder if they’ve ever had to pick between saving one person out of a burning bus full of people. I wonder if they’ve ever had to lose either an arm or a leg. I wonder if they’ve ever had to choose.

So I answer nicely, calmly but with a calculated bit of nervousness, I need to act well or their shitty intuitions are going to think that the stonefaced guy is the one. And they buy it, they’ve always bought it, I’ve been living in this body for thirty years and everyone has bought it, even the ones who say they see something empty end up buying it, and even I like to think that I’ve bought it when the wind sweeps high in the clear blue sky and for a moment I think I’m alive and I’ve seen something beautiful.

By turns they chatter towards their objective, no one is fessing up and everyone is ready to pitch in, an eerie sign but these aren’t the dumbest people in the planet, they won’t leave simply out of fear, so a plan comes to fruition and I’ve already retreated to a couch. They give me shit for it, tell me I’ve got something coming if I plan to leave evidence like that, so I get up and raise my hands and they just frown and wonder if I’m on some kind of drug they haven’t heard of. By definition I might be.

I am a thousand miles away, watching calmly on this nice little sphere that my imagination has given to me. I descend, this imagined projection now looking at grassland, then this lone and dilapidated house, and finally to this living room which looks something like a war table. Everything is laid out, strategies are written down in little codes to make it look like a game in case, for some retarded reason, they don’t burn it after the fact. I find it kind of amusing that they’re this slow despite being decidedly above average in the brains department, I’ve known by talking to them, and I smile just a little bit. No-one notices.

And now it’s time for my part, my time to shine, I walk in and give them a new and tantalizing piece of information, completely false, I don’t remember it now but it was exactly what was needed to throw this place into hell. Silence, followed by crying and assuring pats on the pack. I look penitent, I tell them this was the reason for my detachment, I’m sorry, oh god I’m sorry, and they just can’t stop with it. I stay around, I’m sure that they’ll ask a few confirming details, and they do. It’s a neat little puzzle I’ve made, and it’s a neat little puzzle they accept.

Their options now are few. Two can turn themselves in and the rest can get out, or they all go in and get let fate sort out the scapegoats. They’re trying to measure life now. This is the best part, my favorite part, where they take every method of measurement and thought and convoluted moral code and try applying it to this, this clusterfuck that has nothing but peril ahead.

Around and around, one of the women wants to run, fuck that quiet guy and the guy making the plans, she just wants her friends to get away. But the friends don’t see it quite this way and the strategy guy and I are a little less than pleased. A long discussion begins. What is life? Who’s going to do the most in their life? Who’s done the most? The most what? How do you qualify that? It comes around in the strategy guys’ head that there’s no winning this situation, so he pulls out a knife and lunges at the girl.

A brawl ensues and some light cuts come about but in the flurry I’ve already left, I’m stripped and naked and pure, my feet lightly touching the earth. I can hear the scuffle ensuing, a scream, maybe someone stabbed or beaten pulpy but I could care less at this point, my attention is with the task at hand and even then I almost walk out on the whole thing completely oblivious.

But I feel like I might have a chance, someday, somewhere, maybe at some kind of life in love or a hobby or work or something, anything, not this soulless husk lumbering around, the echoes from within mimicking those twitchy things of flesh that populate the world around. I can’t feel this chance and truthfully I just lack the impetus to kill myself. I look down to the disfigured thing, the jumble of flesh that marks some early accident I cannot even remember, the lumpy surgically-fashioned hole where urine on occasion comes out, and I am serene. There has never been anger, looking at this. Who am I kidding? There is no chance. There has never been anything.

The grand finale, oh boy, the grand bore, I’m barely able to light the match and get this over with, it bores me to hell, to see this hell, just the thought makes me sigh. The rustle is still going in desperate kicks, exhaustion clear in the voices, and I light the match. The slithery line of gasoline spreads to the house and this time I made sure not to overdo it or do in incorrectly. No vaporized fumes annihilating the house, no poor air circulation or unspoken saferooms to fish a survivor out of. I can hear the screams and the house burns, full and bright, and inside I can only feel a tinge, the slightest tinge, and it seems like there must be something better, more affecting out there. I can't even remember the bubbling man I killed.

Ah.

So, liek, um, I write stuff! And, um, well, you should read it. Yupyup.