I am going to die. I was standing alone in my kitchen when it hit. I am going die. My knees felt weak. My heartbeat increased. I am going to die. I am going to die. It took hold of my stomach. It felt like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I am going to die. I put my glass of water down on the counter. I bent over and put my hands on my knees. I am going to die. Deep, quick breaths. It was emptiness spreading inside of me, I am going to die, a hole opening up into a nothing, widening from the dead-center of my stomach, expanding into my chest, into my legs. It paralyzed my thoughts. Until that was it: I am going to die. It just sat there in front of me. I am going to die. Nothing behind it. I am going to die. Nothing in front of it. I am going to die. Nothing else. All I felt was nothing.
I am going to die. Nothing. I am going to die. Nothing. I am going to die. Nothing. I am going to die. Nothing. I am going to die. Nothing. I am going to die. Nothing. I am going to die. Nothing.
And then I was afraid. Fear swept in like a saving force. The nothing was still there, inside of me, but I was afraid of it now, which meant that it wasn’t me anymore. I wanted to curl up in the corner. I wanted to hide from it. I wanted to hide from something that wasn’t me. But still, it stared at me, stared at my thoughts. But my thoughts were there now. Distinct from it. I wanted to run. I wanted to cringe. I wanted to react. It was desire. It rejected what had just come in. Desire and fear were fighting it down. They pinned it. And I was regaining control. My breathing became more regular. I had tamed it. It was something at the bottom of my thoughts now, just a small patch of a phrase: I am going to die, spread flat like a thin layer of soil.
The kitchen hadn’t changed, but it had. I stood still for a little while before I picked up the glass of water and took a sip. It tasted the same. And it tasted different. I looked at the microwave. Four numbers stared back at me. 11:32. Glowing red. It seems dumb, but there was someone behind those numbers. Someone, motionless, patient, who had just watched me suffer something of a panic attack. And I knew it was only me and that someone behind those four numbers. Our eyes locked, turning the moment into a contest, a staring match between me and that thing behind the numbers. And then its left eye blinked: 11:33.
The stood I found rocking I held out like a fist full of glory, a magnificent display I ran now for the pleasant sensation of post-life glow.How hard we should all try!Not to put it in the wrong light, it’s simply beyond my ability to capture it any other way.And the ways, the ways move away like rays from the sun.It being so preposterous that we were cluttered around a small table in this dingy, overcrowded bar, the seven of us huddled like football players before taking the line of scrimmage, our beers in hand, yelling at cross channels and abusing the acoustics that our wall of faces had created.
“Goiters! French!” yelled Stephen, his face beaming red from drunkenness.Alex slapped him across the cheek, screaming “Off with thee!” and everyone laughed because no one had a clue what was going on.I leaned back, breaking the circle and laughing so hard that my rib cage felt like it had incarcerated a monkey on PCP and I realized I needed to piss.
The line to use the urinals stretched five persons long and I moved onto its tail to make it six.There was a flush and a moment later our line became one person shorter.The walls were breathing, palpitating in and out of focus.Two new people arrived behind me and our line became seven-people long.I was jittery and having a conversation with the guy standing in front me.“I don’t agree with the one man rule,” I explained, slurring the syllables, “Should be the four men and five women rule, but no children.Over-breeding, arghhh, passé!”I was swaying, holding my groin.The man replied in French and the words passed over me without me understanding any of their content.I nodded politely.Another flush and the line momentarily shrunk.
Walking out of the bathroom, I was accosted by a pair of disembodied hands that literally dragged me over to the bar, where I was met by Jacqueline’s eyes, lusterless and dumb drunk, her pleading for me to take a shot of tequila with her.Two shots materialized on the mahogany bar as if by magic and, before I knew it, we were toasting to autocratic turtles.I tried to figure out if chance or design had the tequila running down my throat.Then I choked, trying to hold down vomit and desperately searching for a chaser.I grabbed some man’s beer and took two long gulps.I handed his cup back with apologies while reaching into my pocket for cash because, even in my stupor, I knew this man wanted to start a fight over me taking his beer like that.Jacqueline had disappeared and I wasn’t finding any money in my pockets and the man was standing in my face and yelling in French so that his beer-breath flooded over my nostrils.I felt a crisp something between my fingers and knew it was money.I handed a red note to the man and he smiled and handed me the rest of his beer.
I felt like falling over and was vaguely aware that I was swaying.I drained the beer in a single gulp.The faces in the bar were blurring together and the din was a raging storm and I was stumbling around when I stopped remembering.Dark ran this last act, who could rework the happenings of fourteen while it grew fantastically?Here the filth turned to the sublime, the vomit glittering with diamonds, canned bile and canned memories stocked along a shelf stretching off through eternity.Obliterated.
My name is Dinkle Funass and the story I am about to tell you is not one told out of bitterness, although the events herein did radically change my life for the worse. At the beginning of all this I was a pre-med student, studying to become an urologist. I was attending West Minister University in northern England at the time and had just become engaged to a beautiful, young boy named Bobby Bradles. While at the time I considered myself a man, I soon discovered that I was nothing more than a young girl about to attend kindergarten for her first day of elementary school.
It was a bright Saturday morning, looked as if it was going to be one of those gorgeous days for the month of May. I was heading down to the local bakery to pick up some breakfast bread for my fiancée and me. While I was walking down the street, minding my own business mind you, this rat stops me to ask if I knew where the garbage dump was. He was about regular size for a rat, with a rather large belly, but it wasn’t the sight of him that caught me off guard, it was the fact that he was talking to me. I didn’t answer his questions pertaining to directions immediately and I instead threw my own inquiries back at him.
“Why the fuck are you talking you silly duck?” I questioned. He couldn’t explain to me how he had learned to art of language and told me to piss off. He said he’d figure out where the dump was for himself.
“This has the makings of an odd day” I thought to myself as I continued to make my way down the street. I had seen days like this before, and they never turned out well. A little further down the street I was stopped again.
This time a red mini-cooper pulls up next to me and to my surprise the car was packed full of clowns. There were six of them; one of the clowns was sitting on another’s lap in the back seat. The clown at the wheel rolled down his window and stuck his head out, but didn’t make his business immediately clear. What followed was a few seconds of awkward silence as this clown, as well as the rest of the ones in the car, continued to stare at me. The clown in the driver’s seat had a particularly peculiar air to him, with his pink afro-hair, white face-paint and unblinking eyes; he seemed to fit the description of a deranged lunatic. When I deemed this staring charade had gone on long enough, I decided to keep on walking. It proved to be a bad move.
Looking back at the situation, I should not have tried to walk away from the car, but should have ran. Running probably would not have even helped though; those clowns knew what they wanted. In a second the air was filled with the roar of a car engine harmonizing quite horribly with screeching tires as the mini-cooper jumped up on the sidewalk to cut me off. All four of the car’s doors opened simultaneously and the clowns began to get out. “Shit!” I whimpered under my breath as I turned to run. It was too late though; those clowns were on top of my white body faster than a cocaine addict can bump his own white fun. I started to scream for help, but the few people around were smart enough to not get involved in clown business. I was face down on the sidewalk, literally eating the cement with my bare teeth, when I was hit over the head with something hard. At least I imagine it was something hard because all of a sudden everything went black.
When I came to I was tied to a chair in the middle of a cold, dark room. The only light available to me came from a lamp hanging from the ceiling. The result was that I could only see about five feet in any direction that I tried to look. The air felt damp and heavy, I had the feeling that I was in a cellar of some sort. I tried to move the chair by jolting my body a few times, but it seemed as if the chair was bolted in place.
“Having fun, squirmer?” asked a creepily high-pitched voice from outside my radius of vision. “Why don’t you squeal a little for me?”
What the hell was going on? I searched the darkness frantically for the owner of the voice and increased my efforts to loosen myself from the chair’s seemingly glued position. I decided to quit the struggle and put my game face on.
“That’s more like it” the voice said from the dark. The clown that had been driving the mini-cooper walked into the light. He had a funny walk to him, with every other step he seemed to hop a little. “You might be wondering what you are doing here,” he said in that queer voice of his. “It has come to our attention that you have come into contact with a certain rat by the name of Radio Squad. Is this correct?”
“A rat asked me where the garbage dump was earlier, if that’s what you’re talking about,” I answered him.
“We killed your little boyfriend,” the clown informed me. He was smiling as he let this released information sink into my throbbing skull.
“What?” I asked in pure horror.
The clown retreated into the darkness and returned carrying Bobby’s limp carcass. He threw the deflated mass of what used to be my fiancée onto the floor in front of me. I stared into Bobby’s dead face and the reality of the situation washed over me like cold water from a river in hell. “Wha . . . wha . . . what the fuck! You sick bastard! What the fuck!” I was screaming wildly. I felt tears streaming down my face and a tempestuous rage began to boil inside of my chest. What kind of sick people would do this? And for what? “What the fuck is going on?” I screamed.
“We wanted you to understand the full magnitude of the current circumstances,” the clown told me. “We need to know everything that Radio Squad told you, starting from your first encounter,” said the clown.
“I just met him today,” I was basically sobbing now. “He just asked where the garbage dump was and then told me he could find it himself. That was the last I ever saw him.” I felt like an animal in a petting zoo. “You didn’t have to kill Bobby you sick fucks!” I spit out the last line.
The clown took a few steps towards me and leaned in close to my face, his breath reeked like garlic and rotten cabbage. I pushed my head back as far as I could and turned away, his rancid breath made me more nauseous than the corpse at my feet. His tongue crept out of his mouth like a red snake from a hole, and quite suddenly I felt his warm saliva on my cheek, the snake’s venomous bite. I began to puke uncontrollably. The clown continued to lick my face until I had completely cleared my stomach of all its bile, reducing my vomiting spasms to reflexive gags. He backed away from me and allowed a curious smile to play across his lips. “That’ll do pig” he said. With that he retreated into the darkness, leaving me covered in my own, disgusting vomit. He returned a few moments later holding a large, wooden bat. He walked back over to me, again prancing with that queer little hop/strut walk he did, and stopped about a bat’s length away from me. My eyes were level with his crotch. Suddenly he swung hard at the side of my head and once again I returned to a sea of pitch-black nothing.
I woke up on the same sidewalk I was kidnapped from. My head felt like a broken egg and I could barely see straight. It was night outside and I weakly brought myself to my feet. After wobbling on my flimsy legs for a few seconds, I collapsed, once again returning to the pavement. I spent the rest of the night lying there, crying with my head in my hands. “Why am I alive?” I kept asking myself over, and over, and over again.
“Marginal? What the hell is that supposed to mean.” Kenji dejectedly snuffed out his cigarette in the ashtray, jerkily pounding the orange cherry into ashes like a piston.
“Marginal,” repeated Jacqueline, a saturnine expression on her face, “As in almost, though not entirely, insufficient.” There was a silence and she looked pleadingly across the table at Kenji, who still had his eyes trained on the ashtray. “But that’s beside the point, Kenji. I’m not breaking up with you because you’re bad in bed, I’m just at a point in my life where I’m realizing that everything’s wrong. I feel like a ghost.”
“A ghost?” mumbled Kenji.
“Yeah, a ghost.”
The waitress moseyed over to their table.
“Can I get y’all some more coffee or something?” Nobody said anything. Kenji didn’t even look up, though he could hear the mucilaginous sound of the waitress’ teeth mashing bubble gum. The rest of the diner was empty.
“No thank you, we’re fine,” Jacqueline finally responded, glancing at the waitress with an awkward smile.
“Alright, just let me know if you kids need anything.” The waitress moseyed off again. From the kitchen came the noise of a plate hitting the ground and shattering. A loud curse followed.
“I’m going to leave.” Kenji reached into his back pocket to pull out his wallet, avoiding eye contact with Jacqueline. He dropped a few bills on the table and stood up. “I’ll see you around.”
“Good-bye,” said Jacqueline quietly, looking across the table at the empty space that he had just evacuated. She heard the bells on the door angrily rattle as Kenji shoved it open to exit into the night.
“Good night!” called the waitress from the counter. Kenji strode off without turning around. Jacqueline continued to stare at the deflated space across from her.
The waitress looked at Jacqueline for a few minutes and ruminated on her lone figure. She walked around the counter and over to the table. “Mind if I sit?” she asked, indicating Kenji’s former place. Jacqueline gave a disinterested hand motion. The waitress slid into the booth with her red, lipsticked lips pursed in concern. She reached across the table and took Jacqueline’s hand. “What’s wrong honey?”
Jacqueline sighed and looked out the adjacent window, which gave a view of the deserted parking lot. Her eyes felt sallow and sunken in her face. “I’m a ghost,” she sniffed mournfully.
Kenji slammed his open palms against the top of the steering wheel. Marginal? What the hell was she talking about? She’s the ghost! He rolled down the car window with violent arm movements and then lit another cigarette. The streets were empty and dissonantly lit by the tarnished yellow aura of the street lights.
He came to a red light and braked. All around him the city was completely motionless. The only sound was the hum of the car engine. Kenji turned his head from one side of to the other, glancing down both directions of the intersecting street. He took a drag on the cigarette and then pushed on through the red light.
He pulled out his cell phone and called Caitlin. “Caitlin, I’m not bad in bed, am I?” he asked immediately when she answered, adopting a slightly more desperate voice than he had intended.
“Oh boy . . .” she groused sardonically.
“I’m serious.”
“Why don’t you come over? You sound like you’re in rough shakes.”
“OK,” said Kenji gratefully. He hung up and took one last drag before he flicked his cigarette out the window. Orange embers flew as the wind caught the stub.
“This life ain’t no cake walk,” agreed the waitress, nodding in consolation, “That’s for sure. I remember when I was your age . . .” she trailed off dreamily.
“I mean, when I think about life, it always seems so endless in its possibilities, but . . .” Jacqueline paused, furrowing her brow in concentration. She lipped a couple silent words and then looked pleadingly across at the waitress, donning the same helpless expression she had shown Kenji an hour ago. The waitress took Jacqueline’s hand again.
Kenji rolled off of Caitlin and onto his back. He stared up at the ceiling panting, his face gleaning with sweat. He laughed out loud. “Caitlin, you’re the best friend a guy could ever have.”
Caitlin laughed back. “You’re the best guy a friend could ever have.”
“Is that your dad?” asked Kenji, pointing at a picture of a man that was propped up on Caitlin’s dresser.
“Yeah,” she giggled, “He’s been watching us this entire time.”
“That’s a creepy thought,” said Kenji. He rolled over and tickled Caitlin on the stomach.
“Stop it!” she squealed. He started kissing her neck. Caitlin’s cell phone began ringing on the nightstand. “Oh shit,” she said, gently pushing Kenji off of her, “It’s probably Derek. One sec.” She flipped the phone open and answered, tinging her words with a feigned sleepiness. “Yeah . . . That’s OK honey . . . no, no, come over, it’s fine . . . no, I’m awake now. Come over.” She shut the phone.
“I thought you broke up with that jerk,” accused Kenji.
“Yeah, but I still like sleeping with him.”
“For Allah’s sake,” it felt like a giant drain in his stomach had suddenly been opened, “You just slept with me! What the hell do you need him for?”
“Jesus, don’t be so melodramatic.”
“But I’m the Krishna for all you gopis.” Kenji felt like he was leaning over the brink of his sanity.
“Trust me, Kenji, you’re no Krishna. And stop being so melodramatic. I did you a favor tonight. Now hurry up and get dressed. Derek sounded drunk, and he’s gets mean when he’s drunk. Jehovah knows what he’d do to you if he caught you up here.”
“You’re running a friggin’ brothel,” mumbled Kenji angrily as he disentangled himself from the sheets. He looked away from Caitlin as he pulled his jeans on and slipped his t-shirt over his head.
“Well, tell the ghost I said hi, will ya?” Caitlin retorted.
“The ghost broke up with me tonight.”
“Oh,” her tone suddenly dropped its harsh edge, “That explains why you’ve been acting so strange.” She sat up. “You’ve been seeing that girl forever. Oh, you poor baby.” She got out of the bed and hugged him from behind. Her flesh felt warm against his clothes. She kissed him on the back of the neck. “It’s probably for the best, though. It can’t be healthy to date a girl who’s always talking about how ghostly her life is. She’s like a zombie that knows one song, but won’t ever stop singing.”
“I better get going.”
“Derek will probably be here any second.” She kissed him on the cheek one more time.
“I’ll see you around.” Kenji headed for the bedroom door, giving a parting gesture over his shoulder without turning around. Caitlin cocked her head as she watched him disintegrate into the darkened hallway.
“I’ve probably wasted enough of your time, anyway, carrying on about my problems and all. I’ll be fine, honest.” Jacqueline gathered her purse and coat into a bundle between her arms. “Thanks for sitting with me though. You’ve been amazing.”
The waitress smiled. “Hell, I appreciate you sticking around with me. Normally I’d’ve spent the whole damn night sitting behind that counter in a deserted diner. It’s been nice to have someone to talk to for once.”
“Have a good day,” said Jacqueline sweetly as she stood up. Her legs felt a little cramped from sitting so long. “The coffee was wonderful, by the way.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Jacqueline gave one more good-bye before she walked out of the diner. Her car was the only one in the parking lot. She shuffled through her purse, searching for her keys.
As she sat down behind the steering wheel, she realized that she had never even asked the waitress for her name. She paused to think for a second. “Whatever,” she mumbled to herself, starting the engine. She shifted into first gear and pushed on the gas pedal. The car lurched forward. “She’s kind of a depressing woman anyway,” addressing the city through her windshield.
Robert didn’t notice it until his boot brushed against its soft mass and it startled him so that he jumped back and he jerkily brought the flashlight around on it. The thing was small and wrapped up in cloth and slumped against the wall of the tunnel. Robert expected something to happen as he looked at it, shaking slightly and poised for motion, but the thing didn’t move and he just stared at it. Even with the beam of electric light trained on it, he couldn’t discern a definite form from it because of its cloth covering. He thought it might be an animal, but more likely a human. He’d never encountered any bodies besides human bodies in the tunnels, but it was strange that it had a cloak draped over it and it was so small.
He steadied his breath and reproached himself for being excitable and he kept the flashlight trained on it. He bent down closer and became convinced that, whatever it was, it was dead. He could tell by the smell and its stillness. He looked at it with pity, but didn’t get too near to it or touch it.
He stood up and scanned the tunnel with his flashlight. It was completely silent except for the soporific drips of water that echoed intermittently off the rocks. He turned to walk on. The shadowed mass flinched on his periphery, which startled him and he did a double-take and shined his flashlight on it, but it was lying motionless against the wall.
He started to walk away and took a few steps and then paused. He turned around and put the light back on the cloaked body. He hesitated and then moved closer. He crouched down and took its arm from under the cloak and it seemed like a child’s and he felt for a pulse on the paper thin wrist and he felt a dull throb from the artery. He pushed off the hood that shrouded its head and saw that it was a boy with sunken cheeks and a sweaty mat of blonde hair. He stood up and looked down at it and it couldn’t have been more than four years old. He looked down at it for a long time and then finally tucked his flashlight under his arm and hoisted the child over his shoulder and continued down the tunnel.
XXII
How many months, years, lifetimes had he lived down here? Since yesterday? Or the day before? The infinite chain of yesterdays he’d leave behind and bequeath to the creature in Catherine’s stomach. Thousands of yesterdays spent deep beneath a surface that he couldn’t remember anymore outside of the rare strikes of memory that came coupled with a feeling of selflessness breeding fleeting glimpses of an open soft blue sky and the sensation of a breeze brushing around his flesh and a darkness now . . . a terrible deep darkness broken only by the feeble penetrations of electric flashlights and dancing candle flames. Headaches. Nightmares. Moments of beauty. Moments of beauty when his thoughts unraveled around him as a silk robe sliding off his body in the serenity of this eternity of wet granite walls and their deep darkness.
He stroked Catherine’s thigh in the dark. Traced his hand over her swollen stomach, its hill of flesh where the creature kicked from inside. And the boy that had died that night in the corner. How he had carried its body for miles through the maze of darkness until he was almost lost himself and he put the body in a giant crevice in a wall far away and retraced his steps back home, an entire day’s, or an entire night’s (the distinction no longer mattered) journey. Who knows how many hours he spent carrying that body as far away as he could, the work of a lifetime, and how Catherine had cried and said before he left with the cold body in his arms that she didn’t do it, even though she hadn’t wanted it she had taken it in and she didn’t do it even if she had thought about doing it. And how that boy’s soul had entered into Catherine’s stomach, Catherine had woken up from a dream and shook Robert awake and whispered through the dark that she’d just felt the child enter her, enter into the creature in her stomach . . .
. . . after Margaret never came back, how long ago? Eddie had looked out into the tunnels and wouldn’t look at Robert and said in a low voice that cracked with static that he found her body without its head in the tunnels past the east line, her neck like a drainage pipe that led to a puddle of dark blood, past the east line where she never should have been and how they couldn’t make sense of it because it didn’t make sense. And now she was inside Catherine’s stomach, Catherine had woken up from another dream during another night and she shook Robert awake and whispered through the dark that she’d just felt herself enter Margaret, and Robert now kept his hand at rest on top of her navel, which rested slightly on the warm down-slope of the hill of flesh as it breathed rhythmically, and he could feel the faint kicks from Margaret and how Margaret was probably still holding onto all of those skulls she so desperately traded for their survival and how one of those heads belonged to Catherine . . .
. . . and now they were near starving. Eddie kept them alive with what little he could get and Robert looked through the darkness to where Eddie was snoring gently in the corner.
IX
Catherine stared into Robert’s eyes. She could see nothing. Nothing. Emptiness. Two little black holes imploding into the same enormous void.
III
When Margaret came back that night, Robert showed her the child and Margaret responded excitedly.
“Does he have a name?” she asked walking over to the corner where it was sleeping.
“I don’t know,” said Robert, following her. “At this point we’re just hoping that he makes it through the night. He’s only woken up once, and that was only for a couple minutes. The rest of the time he’s been like this.” He looked down at the boy and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Oh poor baby,” cooed Margaret and she crouched down next to the child and cradled his head in her arms and petted him gently across the brow. “We’ll get you feeling better in no time,” she assured it as she put her hand on its chest. “He seems to be breathing fine,” she addressed Robert, “Which is a good sign at least. How did you find him?”
“In the tunnels, he was slumped against the wall. Scared the shit out of me at first, my foot hit him and I didn’t know what it was.”
“Where’s Catherine?”
“I think she’s further back somewhere. Lying down.”
“Is she alright?”
“I don’t think she’s feeling well.”
“Does it have something to do with the boy?”
“That’d be a safe bet.”
“Did she say why?”
“I don’t know. She’d probably tell you if you asked her. She’s been behaving strangely toward me.” Robert watched as Margaret cradled the boy’s head in the candlelight. “How was the run? I’m guessing it went alright.”
“Yeah, but I think Reg’s ripping me off. Or someone’s ripping him off.”
“Why?”
“He gave less food than we agreed on. Said he didn’t have a choice. I mean, I’m bringing more heads every run and getting less food for them every run. Either Reg or the market is screwing me. I’m trying to figure out which one.”
“Especially because there might be another mouth to feed now.”
“Yeah,” Margaret looked up with an expression of concern. “I hadn’t thought about that yet.”
“Is Ed coming back tonight?”
“I hope so. I want to see what he thinks about Reg. He’s usually good with figuring these things out.”
VII
Margaret switched off her flashlight and the familiar and complete darkness flooded the tunnel like a silent ghost of a predator. She guided herself forward by stretching her arm out and sliding the tips of her fingers along the wet, bumpy wall. She could hear clearly now the sharp taps of footsteps echoing behind her, further behind her in the dark corridor, probably covering the same ground she had covered a few minutes ago. She listened to the lucid clicks of the footsteps through the monotonous drip of cave water that leaked through the rock. The footsteps were keeping pace with hers, maybe even gaining, definitely heading in the same direction and belonging to more than one person. And now her shoulder was beginning to ache. She adjusted the strap of the bag so that the weight shifted. She kept listening to the footsteps and concentrated on the sensations that ran from the slimy contours of the wall through her fingers and into her chest.
The events of the past twenty-four hours had her empty stomach in knots as she went over them in her head. Corifon had acted strange when Margaret had arrived at his place on the surface. Didn’t say a word when he opened the door, just ushered her in, his shifty eyes scanning the walls as if he was about to be shot in his own living room. He handed her the bag, put a finger to his lips and ushered her back out. Then the police outside of Brunswick. She had never had problems with them before, but this time they had seemed suspicious during the routine check.
The officer who had read her papers had an incredulous smirk on his face while he scanned the information and Margaret thought she was done for. They pulled her out of the car and began to search the vehicle and she stood there and shot glances at the stars that she so rarely had the opportunity to see and her heart was pounding in her ears. Then they stopped the search without checking the trunk, thank god they didn’t check the trunk, but that seemed strange. It was too obvious a place to not look. Why wouldn’t they check the trunk? And then Reg’s place had been entirely empty when she brought the heads over in the morning. Everything was cleared out. No trace of residency. Just an empty cavern and so she had to leave without being able to rid herself of the bag. And now this: the footsteps behind her, her being alone in the dark with this bag and she could feel through the bag the eerie, curved shapes of skulls as they jostled against the back of her thigh, and suddenly she wanted to fling the bag away and start running but her cargo was too precious. Abandoning it would start a whole new chain of problems. She hadn’t slept for forty hours now. The footsteps behind her were getting closer.
Usually she was at peace in the darkness. She could travel the branches of cave for miles without light or the slightest trepidation, relying only on her instincts. But now the darkness seemed a horrible nightmare, warm and viscous, oozing and enveloping and suffocating her. And the bag was getting heavier and she repositioned the strap but her whole shoulder was aching. She imagined the lifeless eyes that were staring void at the canvas walls on the insides of the bag, the mouths slightly open, the cold tongues curled and motionless within. She started feeling dizzy and sick.
Then she heard footsteps coming from further up in the tunnel. And the footsteps behind her were still clicking closer. And the clicking started to spin a web around her and she stopped, then started walking back the way she just came and then stopped again and pressed herself against the wall. A drop of water fell from above and rolled down her cheek.
Now adrenaline was pumping through her blood and she could feel the blood pounding in her ears. They were approaching from both sides. She snapped her flashlight on and ran the beam of light over the walls, looking for cracks big enough to slip through, to exit from. Nothing. Just the faint shimmer of wet rock, the shadows and the footsteps coming closer from both sides. She dropped the bag, no longer caring about its contents as she frantically ran up and down the corridor, shining the flashlight and searching for an escape. Nothing. Just the faint shimmer of wet rock, the shadows and the footsteps coming ever closer from both sides.
She switched the light off again knowing that she had seconds before they came. She slipped down to the ground and put her back up against the wall and breathed heavily. The footsteps were louder on both sides. She started to cry but the sob got caught in her throat as she burrowed her head into her palms and tried to make herself small. Then the footsteps came right up to her and stopped and her fingers were glowing red against her face but she couldn’t bring herself to move her hands away from her eyes.
V
Just a vague disbelief of all that had ever happened to him . . . a general confusion when he’d drag his hand over the bumpy, slimy surface of a wall, the cool, wet sensations of the rock. He was necessarily there, but he knew he that he wasn’t really there. An existence he could only define by rejecting what was all around him, rejecting what his perceptions gave him until there was nothing . . . but then again, he might be jumping to the wrong end of the spectrum, taking a road that only showed him half of the truth. There could also be everything. Not only the little that he saw, felt, heard . . . but also everything that he couldn’t see, feel, hear, touch, and this list ran off into the infinity.
He was stuck between these two ends, these two extremes, knowing that if he could truly understand both, he might be able to prove they were the same thing, that the spectrum was really just a circuit.
II
“What are we supposed to do with it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t just leave it to die out there.” He looked up at her from a bowl of soup.
“We can’t do anything for him. You know that. The last thing we need is a child to look after.” Robert stirred the soup thoughtfully and watched as the little pieces of vegetable surfaced briefly in the steaming brown liquid.
“You think we should just throw him back into the tunnels?” he asked. “Just leave him and hope that someone else finds him before he dies?”
“We could put him on the surface. He’d at least have a better chance of surviving up there.” Robert watched the candlelight flicker over Catherine’s face. The boy was sleeping over in the corner on a bed of clothes that Catherine had laid under him. A little while ago the child had woken up with a sickly look in his eyes and they had silently fed him some water before he went out of consciousness again.
“That’s bullshit,” Robert responded, “they’re probably hunting for him on the surface. People don’t end up down here by accident, they’re driven here. Someone desperate for that child to live probably put him down here or else he was abandoned by people already down here. Either way, they won’t tolerate him up there.” There was a silence and Catherine looked at the wall behind Robert and her yellowed retinas gave off a wet glimmer in the candlelight and her bottom lip quivered.
“We’re going to look after him,” he said firmly. “We’re not starving and we can spare a little of what we have to keep him alive.”
“Alright,” said Catherine quietly, “you’re right.”
They finished the rest of the meal wordlessly. The candle on the table was nearly stumped and started to sputter and Robert looked over at the child through the dancing shadows. Catherine stood up and went to a horizontal jagged crevice in the wall and pulled a candle from it. She came back to the table and blew out the nearly stumped candle and darkness descended on them. Robert could hear her trying to get the new candle into place atop the soft wax of the old candle. He took his matches out and struck one. In the match light he could see she was crying but she was trying to hide her face so he didn’t say anything as he lit the candle. Then she walked off, deeper into the cavern to be alone and Robert watched her recede into the darkness.
He began with Her Eyes. As if this pool of cool water was nestled in the heat of a summer day. Bordered perhaps by a wall of lushly bubbled shrubs like green reflections of the stratocumulus plumes above, though slightly warped. Now, if one were to look at the surface of water, which will ripple gently, they would glimpse a truer, though not absolute, reflection of the sky above, as well as a fleeting picture of themselves; and finally realize that they are also seeing through the surface, into the depths and down to the floor of the pool.
To a cacophony of car horns he, Gregor Pliny, slammed on his brakes, coming back into material with a sudden awareness that he had almost (as in not entirely) sped through a red light. He shifted into reverse and rolled backwards out of the nexus of street. Around him the car spirits shouted and pushed their palms into their steering wheels so that honks filled the air as if Gregor were in the midst of an agitated flock of geese. Che Guevaraesque fists shook in frustration through open windows. Gregor smiled sheepishly and shrugged within the confines of his own vehicle. New Year’s day.
“So this is how the new year begins,” he thought dreamily, remembering Her as traffic began to flow again after the brief interruption. He would say this phrase to himself throughout this New Year’s day, which proved to be a rather long one, and each time this phrase was repeated, the voice in his head would adopt a morose, ironic, dreamy, or contented lilt depending on his reaction to the particular moment.
For example, when he finally finished the aforementioned drive home, his girlfriend, Bianca said in a whiny pitch: “Dinner’s cold, you were supposed to be home an hour ago.” Gregor smiled in his mind and thought ironically, “So this is how the new year begins. Just like the old one.”
And so, we are informed that the eyes, Her Eyes, with which Gregor began, did not belong to Bianca, but belonged to a long lost love of Gregor’s. He had known Her in California, a place he had left and which he now pictured through his memory as a paradigm of sun-drenched moments in the presence of Her. Since Bianca constantly and tragically reminded him of Her, Gregor now morosely thought again: “So this is how the new year begins.”
Kendrid used his feet as leverage to push his swivel chair away from the desk. He spun the chair in circles while staring up at the ceiling. He blew out a frustrated, slightly dizzy groan and loosely clutched at his hair. Then he stood up and started pacing back and forth across his room, absently gesturing with his hands as he silently and emphatically lipped the various words of an imaginary debate with an even more imaginary person. He groaned again and quit his pacing. He stood still and surveyed the room. It seemed to be a perfect cube.
He went back to the chair and then dragged it over to the wall. He climbed up on the chair and carefully reached up to pinch at the edge of the ceiling. It came loose easily and moved down a little. It seemed to be hinged to the opposite wall. Supporting the ceiling with his arms vertically stretched upward, he slowly stepped down from the chair, which brought the ceiling a little lower with him. He stepped forward and crouched as he let go of the ceiling. It swung forcefully across the room like a planar wrecking ball. His desk, dresser, bookshelves, chair and bed made a violent commotion as they squished and broke against the far wall.
A rush of cold air descended on the room and Kendrid looked upwards to see the stars in the night sky that had come into view. He felt philosophical.
Then, feeling a need to complete the task thus started, Kendrid decided to take the wall to his right and pull it across the room until there was barely any space between the wall and the collapsed ceiling at his back. At this point, he noticed that he had grown relative to the size of the walls. The walls now seemed to be only a couple inches taller than him. This made it possible for Kendrid to hoist himself over the wall as if it was merely a low fence.
Hopping down on the other side, he took the next wall and folded it in the same manner as the last one. The room was thus reduced to two walls, a floor and his person. He then proceeded in the most pragmatic fashion to fold up the rest of the room. To complete the task, he had to trap himself in the compressed walls, because he was also still inside the room he was outside of. He decided it was worth it. As he pulled the last two planes of the cube closer to each other (which looked humorously like the jaws of a toothless crocodile swallowing him whole), Kendrid found that he held the six sides of his room between his fingers as if it was nothing more than a small, wooden card. Around him, the black of space ran off to the fringes of the universe, the unfathomable distance empty except for a peppering of stars. And, still, he remained wedged between the walls; the pressure crushed his chest as he pinched the card of his former room that he was holding as well as presently inside.
His fingers, unable to control themselves, began devouring the card (which seemed to have transformed into a paper-like consistency) that crumpled at the bidding of his hungry fingers as they wrapped themselves into a fist. Kendrid squeezed this fist tightly until he could no longer feel the difference between the crumpled room and his flesh.
After a short time, he opened his hand, which in turn revealed itself to be empty. He gasped at the realization that his room, with himself in it, had disappeared entirely.
He woke up a little while later to a room drenched in sunlight. The clock next to him expressed the time as exactly two o’clock in the afternoon. His mother was yelling something at him from downstairs. He sleepily sat up and ran a hand through his tangled mass of dark hair. His mother yelled again, but it was impossible to distinguish a single word of it. He figured her distorted message had something to do with him sleeping so late into the day. He squirmed out of the bed sheets and walked over to the mirror to press his hair down. He smiled mischievously at his reflection, an expression that his reflection promptly returned. He picked a blue t-shirt up off the floor and put it on.
Downstairs in the kitchen his mother greeted him with a smile that Kendrid promptly returned as he took a seat at the counter. His mother was a mousy woman with a disproportionately small head that was topped off by dull, jaundice-yellow hair, the bangs of which were draped above her pallid-gray eyes. She wore an almost constant expression of ironic amusement that had served as a mask almost since the beginning of her marriage nearly twenty years earlier. Her defining characteristic, if she’s to be summarized succinctly by the impression she gives to others, was a tendency toward obsequiousness. This was either her greatest strength or most tragic flaw, depending on the perspective of the person judging her.
“What’s for breakfast?” asked Kendrid, crossing his arms and putting his elbows on the countertop.
“You mean lunch.”
“I mean lunch.” His mother walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a bag of baby carrots.
“Carrots,” she said, handing him the bag. Kendrid took a carrot out and munched on it thoughtfully.
“Not a very substantial meal,” he mumbled after eating a couple more.
When he woke up, he groggily wiped his mouth with the back of his arm and afterward he noticed there was red smeared from his forearm to his wrist, which startled him awake like a bath of cold water because he had no idea why he would be leaking from his face. Instinctively he tossed his head back (so as to avoid getting blood all over his sheets) and he hurried from the bed over to the bathroom.
His reflection in the bathroom mirror was a frightening sight. Blood ran down from his nostrils and out of the corners of his eyes and mouth. Some of it had dried in black, crusty heaps and fresh blood rolled over and around these patches the way streams flow over and around rocks in their path. And he had bed-head (his hair was a mess) and blood trickled down from his scalp as well and his sideburns were matted in blood and suddenly his face started to throb painfully, though in retrospect he believes this was most likely a psychosomatic phenomenon.
He tilted his head back as far as he could and winced up at the ceiling, thinking that this turn of events was very serious indeed and he groped at the wall for a towel, coming to the necessary but disturbing conclusion that this emergency required the wasting of an otherwise perfectly nice towel. As soon as his hand blindly made contact with one of the towels hanging on the rack (he was still staring up at the ceiling), he brought the towel immediately to his face and as he did so he noticed fleetingly (and with slight tinge of agitation) that he had picked up his favorite towel.
He did not know where exactly to apply pressure because the blood seemed to be coming out of everywhere and so he tried to press the towel over the maximum surface area possible. Nearly suffocating himself with the towel (he was recklessly panicked at this point) he coughed violently and a warm liquid bubbled up his throat with the cough (a very unpleasant sensation) and he took the towel away to confirm his fear that he had just coughed up an enormous glob of blood and he then realized that the profuse bleeding was internal and the seat of his boxers suddenly felt sticky and wet and he looked down to witness (in horror) streams of blood flowing down his legs from his boxers and this was the exact moment that he had an extreme anxiety attack, or maybe he just went into shock, I must of gone into shock, he thought, I had never in my wildest dreams imagined that something so disturbing could happen. I paused, trying to reorder the scene in my head.
It’s beyond any rational explanation, commented Harry and I noticed that he looked a little pale as if he was going to be sick despite the calmness of his voice. We were sitting in a crowded café with cups of coffee in front of us (this was years after the incident) and for some reason seeing Harry’s nausea of how I was manipulating his imagination made me want to keep going on with the story, though I had to fill in some details because my memory is a little hazy from the moment I first went into shock.
After a few moments (though maybe longer) I recovered slightly and stumbled out of the bathroom. I started screaming for my mother (I was sixteen years old, but in moments like this, there’s nowhere more natural to turn and I bet that even fifty year-olds were wailing for their mothers that day) and the high pitch of my scream must have alarmed her because she came running out of her room (I was in the hallway, swaying slightly, naked except for my boxers and literally covered in blood) and when she saw me she started screaming.
Wow, said Harry.
I felt light-headed and must have lost consciousness because suddenly I was hanging loosely in my father’s arms, swaddled in sheets and we were out in the morning sunlight, in the driveway and next to the car and my mother was struggling with the keys to get the door of the car opened and when she finally succeeded in unlocking it my father laid me across the backseat and then backed hurriedly away to close the door and rushed around to the driver’s side and I caught a fleeting glimpse of his white button up shirt stained with fresh blood.
As my father started the car my mother, twisting around in her seat, leaned into the back and took my hand and stroked and it and spoke soothing words, though I can’t remember exactly what she was saying, maybe I couldn’t even understand her then I was so out of it, but she spoke softly and I stared up at the ceiling of the car, sometimes squeezing my eyes shut and desperately trying to take control of my breathing, a task that seemed above all else the most critical (my mother’s voice and the shock of the situation bringing me into a state of surreal lucidity) and slowly I started to slow my breathing down and I turned my head to smile reassuringly over at my mother and . . . thinking back, it seems like a satire of a nightmare (though it was highly disturbing at the time) . . . I saw that she had blood running out of the corner of her mouth and I started screaming so loudly that my mother screamed too and my father swerved the car and there was a screech of wheels and the throw of inertia as I babbled, dizzy and hysterically pointing at my mother’s face which was twisted into this grotesque expression and the blood was running down her blouse and she touched her face and she started screaming all the more loudly and turned around, away from me, suddenly forgetting all about me and she kept yelling, actually shrieking in a glass shattering pitch:
John! John! John! (my husband’s name) over and over again, as if he could do something for me, I thought I was dying, actually dying, and John put his foot down hard on the accelerator and started weaving desperately through the traffic and I had no idea what the hell was going on, it was like a fucking horror movie, like one of those shitty horror movies that come on the television at four in the morning, my wife and kid covered in blood, staining the seats and everything else in the car, and all I’m thinking is that I have to get them to the hospital (George had stopped making noise and in my panic I jumped to the conclusion that he was dead, though he had only fainted and Regina was mad with – whatever – fear I guess – and she was screaming louder every second to the point that I thought my eardrums would tear) and I swiped a car as I sped through a red light, taking a sharp left turn, there was this sound of crinkling aluminum and this inertial slap but the contact was just a glance, the tip of a corner meeting the tip of someone else’s corner, but at the speed we were going I nearly lost control of the car and I wrestled the steering wheel (I don’t know how I was keeping my head), and I remember looking over at my husband when we hit that car, there was this sound of shattering glass and this sudden whiplash, and I looked over at him and felt my eyes roll back and I don’t remember much from that point on.
The hospital was like a mad house. There were hundreds of people swarming into the building, so many of them covered in blood, I was one of the few who didn’t seem to bleeding. The screaming that day is what really sticks out in my memory. It was like a invisible shrapnel bomb had been dropped on the city and the wails of all the wounded were resounding. Not that anyone was injured. No one bled to death. In fact, no one even seemed to have lost any blood. All the yelling and crying was more because everyone felt like they were dying or something. Hemorrhaging off to death, but that wasn’t the case.
Looking back, I kind of wish that I’d started bleeding too. It sounds silly, but you know, it was like this bizarre phenomenon that I never had the opportunity to experience.
In the waiting room the nurses were running around trying to maintain order and some of them started bleeding too. I had managed to get both Regina and George in there, but not to much use. They didn’t have enough room for everyone, nor nearly enough staff, not that it would have mattered if I had actually gotten a doctor to look at them because the doctor’s were all baffled as to where the blood was coming from. People were cramming themselves into every corner of that waiting room, into every nook and cranny, as if they’re presence in it would help the situation. Blood stained everything, it was disgusting, there seemed to be a limitless supply of this stuff. I’ve read articles since that day in which authors argued that the past we sat atop of had suddenly leaked through, or something as nonsensical as that. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything so baffling.
The following events were narrated by freelance detective William Korton at the Bismark Metropolis Police and DetentionCenter on February 18th, 12321.
[This interview was conducted by Lieutenant H. Danvers and transcribed by John Toperfin as part of an investigation concerning the discovery of Pierrot Le’Fue’s mutilated body on February 16th, 12321. William Korton claims to have received a mysterious phone call roughly half an hour before the body was discovered in the HerbertHooverCityPark. Mr. Korton told his story in present tense.]
“I’m walking to the office. It’s an early morning in February. The sky has only just begun to illuminate with dawn. There are almost no automobiles on the road at this hour. Snow is banked against the curbs and huddled like puddles of ghost in the shadowed alleys I pass by. The street lamps are still burning because they aren’t extinguished until the day has completely arrived: ‘The metropolis takes no chances when it comes to darkness.’ You’ll remember that was Mayor Thomas’ campaign winning slogan two months ago. I like the darkness though. You know why? Because I enjoy danger.”
[Korton delivers this last line with a grunting grimace. Lieutenant Danvers has a visibly hard time stifling his laughter and puts his fist between his teeth.]
“I can see my breath. It materializes from my mouth as if I was a mini-cloud generator. I can see that oil lamps are being ignited in the apartments as I walk by the tenement buildings. Curtains begin to glow. People are waking up and my ears are aching because of the cold. I dig my nose into my scarf and stuff my hands in the pockets of my overcoat.
“When I get to the office, the front door is already unlocked, which means that that abominable Taylor has come in earlier than I this morning and I hope to God the buffoon didn’t spend the night here. Last thing I need is that bum to transform this office into a home.
“I push the door closed behind me as I walk in; it creeks and then shuts with a groan that sounds like a death rattle. The coat room isn’t warmed yet and is still freezing cold. I can see my breath as I take off my hat, untangle my scarf and shed the overcoat. I hang each of them up on a separate peg. I smooth my hair to the side, my hair feeling like strands of milky silk running through my numbed fingers, and I continue on into the main lobby.
“‘Good morning,’ says Taylor, looking up from his desk. Taylor is my secretary. He’s an idiot and as useless as a castrated gigolo, but he looks nice today. His clothes are surprisingly well put together and his hair is neat. He might have even brushed his teeth, though this might be my imagination acting up. I have a deep disgust for Taylor and have no desire to conceal it.
“‘Keep working,’ I tell him, narrowing my eyes as I pass on the way to my private office, flipping through my ring of keys. Taylor shuffles some obviously random papers and then gets up to follow me. As I’m trying to unlock the door the key gets jammed and it takes some jiggling to make the door open and the fact that Taylor is looking over my shoulder almost makes my blood boil, but when I finally do get the door open I realize that my office has taken an angelic form this morning. The dam of night seems to have completely collapsed since I’d entered the building because the sunlight is rushing in through the windows, running along the floor, splashing up against the walls. My desk is neatly ordered and the brass telephone on it gleans lambent like the Holy Grail itself. And I can still see my breath, which is a nice touch. ‘Taylor, have you turned the heat on yet?’
“‘Yes sir,’ he replies, adopting that loathsomely obsequious tone of his, “And the coffee is percolating as we speak.” He anticipated my next complaint. I guess the jackass can learn after all. I walk over to the desk, slip off my suit jacket and sit down in my chair. Out of habit I move my fountain pen from the left side to the right side of the desk. It’s like flipping a switch. I can’t start a day of work without first completing this ritual.
“‘Any messages?’ I ask, glancing up at Taylor. He’s standing across the desk from me with his hands folded behind his back like a flamboyantly homosexual soldier at attention.
“‘Umm, yes-’ and then the telephone rings, which cuts him off and I shoo him out of the room by flapping a hand at him. I let the phone ring a couple more times, then pull it towards me, hefting the metal earpiece off as I lean the console in toward my mouth so as to allow me to have a proper conversation with the caller.
“‘William Korton,’ I bark professionally.
“‘Mr. Korton?’ The voice on the other end of the phone sounds artificially deep as if it’s trying just a little too hard to sound ominous. No one says anything for a second or two.
“‘Speaking,’ I say, finally breaking the silence with my carefully measured word.
“‘I’m in need of a Private Eye.’
“‘You called the right man, Monsieur . . .”
“‘You’ll refer to me as Senior Ésteban,’ he commands.
“‘I don’t like mysteries,’ I warn him.
“‘That makes absolutely no sense, you’re a detective,’ he growls in accusation.
“I’m momentarily taken aback, but I recover coolly: ‘Think of me as an exterminator, Senior Ésteban,’ (my voice is pure sangfroid now) ‘and think of your mystery as a meddling infestation. There is nothing this exterminator hates more than roaches and, sir, I will stop at nothing to ruin each of their nasty little lives.’ This brings about another bout of silence.
“‘We-we’re getting off track Mr. Korton,’ the deep voice stutters briefly before regaining its composure, ‘Be at the Herbert Hoover Park in twenty minutes. I’ll find you.’ I start to object but I realize the line is already dead. I hang up the earpiece and push the phone back over to the corner of the desk. I have a foreboding feeling concerning this Senior Ésteban and I stare at my pen contemplatively. I have, admittedly, little choice but to follow the stranger’s orders as I have been out of work for nearly three weeks. So, I get up with a sigh and pull out my leather suspender holster and pistol from the desk drawer. I weave my arms through the suspender loops and secure its latches to my belt, then I stuff the pistol into the holster. I make sure to leave the safety off. You can never be too careful. That’s my motto.”
[Lieutenant Danvers interrupts to ask if Korton has a license to carry a concealed firearm. Korton looks briefly confused before continuing as if he hadn’t heard the question.]
“Mentally preparing myself for the worse, I straighten up and take a deep breath. As I exhale, I can no longer see my breath, something I’m already nostalgic about, despite the now warm and rather pleasant atmosphere of the office. On my way out, I warn Taylor that he’d better keep busy. He doesn’t say a word, just blinks at me like a deer on valium. I swear to the maker, if that dirty rat wasn’t my son, I would have fired him years ago.
“Once I’m outside, my breath is visible again. The temperature rarely rises above freezing during winter in the Metropolis, as you well know. However, the street I return to is much more animated than the one I had recently left. The sounds of automobiles and the breeze of passing pedestrians is perhaps the most prevalent of my perceptions.
“I then consider the time frame that I am operating in. The park is a fair hike from the office, so I figure I might be slightly late for my meeting with the mysterious caller.”
[Lieutenant Danvers groans and requests that Korton speed the story up.]
“Dear Sir, detail is the juice of a detective’s work. I will spare nothing. Now, where was I? Ah, yes, I’m standing on the crowded street just outside my office. The Metropolis is alive, purring like the engine of a jet, prancing like a puppy in the farm fields, cavorting like young Werther and Lotte on the ballroom floor well before the dreadful return of that all-too-balanced Albert, and the enormity of these stimuli fills me with such a tremendous vitality, a vitality that swells up in my heart like the sails of a magnanimous ship having just embarked to chart the uncharted seas of an unknown planet!
“Ironically, the pressure of life’s ephemeral beauty that builds in my chest only accentuates the empty feeling in my stomach, a result of my (suddenly acknowledged) neglect of breakfast this morning. This spurs me to the indignant conclusion that I have absolutely no obligation to be punctual for the rendezvous with Senior Ésteban, and I decide that I should grab a bite to eat before the meeting. Luckily, there is a café, a local favorite of mine, en route to the HerbertHooverPark.
“As I begin walking, I reflect on the tragic irony that, at the times we feel most alive, we also feel the most insatiable appetite. Had it not been for the electricity running through the metropolis, an electricity that had found its way to my body, an electricity that shocked me into the most reverential vigor (and now I feel like a robot too long on a weak voltage)-“
[Lieutenant Danvers slams his fist into the table and curses, though Korton does not seem to notice.]
“-I might never have realized that I had forgotten to provide myself with humanity’s most important sustenance of all, the sustenance of food. As I become fully aware of the profound significance of my intellectual reverie, I understand that I must give the bright morning sun the good long stare it deserves, something my mother had repeatedly warned me not to do during the sickly years of my childhood . . .”
[At this point I ceased transcribing. An hour later, Lieutenant Danvers and I learned that William Korton never actually made it to the HerbertHooverCityPark, therefore rendering him useless in identifying one of the four suspects we are holding in suspicion of the murder of Pierrot Le’Fue.
Besides suggesting that the person on the phone, reportedly self-identified as “Senior Ésteban,” might have been an elderly blonde-haired woman (a “tremendous hunch” as Korton described it), he offered nothing in the way of our case.
His nine year old daughter, Taylor Anne Korton, has since been placed in a child protection program.]
when i fall asleep
the world dies
and shrapnel
opens her eyes.
now step back
into the void
where nostalgia
meets loyd,
the man with
a musical lisp,
who says every-
thing that happens
was a leper's
silly wish
to have had a
childhood smell-
ing of freshly cut
grass.
