Gregor's New Year

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: as referenced in krisrophe's dxm nightmare

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.

the newspaper groans

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.

noir

The following events were narrated by freelance detective William Korton at the Bismark Metropolis Police and Detention Center on February 18^th, 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 16^th, 12321.  William Korton claims to have received a mysterious phone call roughly half an hour before the body was discovered in the Herbert Hoover City Park.  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 Herbert Hoover Park.

“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 Herbert Hoover City Park, 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.]

 

deadbeats

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.

cocksucker.