Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

Waterproof Paper

         aside a seaside, sufficient daylight basement nosides no that’s not right nevermind. vanished so to summarize. no, no time, it’s a story. not sure. but the sstorrry

auto-reset

I

         Yesterday I found an old I-Pad in the daylight basement of Coal River High, where I’ve served as guidance counselor too long. God thinks I’ve tried.

         There once was a boy. Almost a regular boy. Held back a year in middle, refused to jump through hoops, gave up and sent him onward to me, us. The solo freshman mustachio. Learned to laugh about things rather than cry about things. And yakkered funny things. Many painful things. Not hurtful things, painful manys.

         I’d caught wind he was homeless and close to it, couch-surfing but feeding warm nights. What to say. I didn’t. Don’t. Never answered questions but something funny he’d say. Like most days, one day, a few weeks ago, a Monday or a Tuesday, I can’t recall now, I was too busy to talk to him whatever day it was, so I figured I’d get him writing. Loaned him the old I-Pad, told him, “Write about your life.”

         Nonsense mostly. Some predicate, mostly not. No authority though spoken godless. Gist of deathwish. He hated himself to a dangerous degree. Said parents and friends had given up on him and nothing really mattered anymore. He might have been right. Parents hated tout-la-monde. In an honest assessment of the school system: “None of this really matters.” No adequate response. Just a platitude and flashing off to class, a return to infinite planning, a seemingly finite to-do list that never goes away. Sometimes even I want to go away.

         Anyhow, I spoke with the boy for a lot of every mornings or a lot of mornings in a series of rations of rows of days of nevermind nevernumber. He always said, “S’up?” and pushed his chin up cool-guy way, constructing a smile. Otherwise blanking at phones or scrutiny of hair of a mirror of a reflection of a wall of an office of a daylight basement. Mirrored since I started too many winters ago and so much longer don’t bother. I rarely change anything about a place. His hair, good grief! He permitted those bastards his everything. All for a laugh. Anything for a laugh.

         He stopped showing up for classes so I called his parents, no, no voicemail box, no box or not available nobox. Emails. Nothing for the rejoinderbox. Worried of him. Rarely slept nights, inabox.

         Yesterday, looking through a pen cluttered wardrobe, the I-Pad fell upon us, sorry, I mean it was that it fell upon.

         How’d this get in here? A whispering wardrobe. Spoken in daylight windowlight, but not anymore, a stolid basement

         god thinks I tried and I tried, I-Pad batterydeath. Lucky with an obsolete cell with an obsolete adapter. Plugin let charge, walked, and took care of the others’ business. Timepass got back, turned it on powerful. 

         Fresh eyes to: Tyler, the Creator white wig sunglasses background. I knew the boy’s password was “Password69?” because he had once told me. He said it with an eyebrow hitched up in a question. It wasn’t now then either, by the way, it never will be again. I-Pad files and folders strewn across rapper’sface. Totally disorganized, as expected. Such inscrutable titles: “bumpin it,” “d-7connect,” “marshaun cousins crib,” “wolf poop,” “terrorist plans,” “one thousand painted rooms.”  

         {click}: ““””ddd----7ccconn-n-nneccccccttttttt””””””””””””””””

auto-reset

:-)

         To get here I had to walk. And since it’s pretty much fall, I’m wearing my hoodie. I have to kick leaves that are wet and my shoes are looking less new by the second. In the morning I can’t remember anything.

         I look in the mirror or use my phone too much. I know I do it, but I can’t stop doing it. Piles of everything. I don’t know what my problem is. I don’t care.

         Walking is long.

         I see people sometimes but none of them are my friends.

         I think someone’s trying to kill me. Well, I know someone is trying to kill me. Otherwise, I’m just walking around like an idiot, doing nothing. Alone.  

         My phone doesn’t blow up and I’m scared, but I don’t care.

         The park is empty right now. I’m just sitting at the table, reading who carved their name in the table. I don’t even know any of them.

         I don’t like the way I am. I have a big nose and a stupid haircut. I’m barely even brown.

         How come no one comes to the park anymore? I asked them to come, but they aren’t coming. I check my phone. Then I check my stupid hair. It looks bad. I don’t even care about my hair right now though. Well, I do, I guess, but only a little.

         I hope they come.

         It’s too early this morning and the sun isn’t really in the sky. So what? Maybe it’s still night. The table is cold. My phone’s almost dead, but that’s good, I need to stop using it so much.

         They know where I am.

         A little dog runs across the wet grass and it’s a stupid dog because it’s all wet out and no one’s walking it and its shadow is too big. The dog never comes close, not close to me or anything. Dogs can tell what I am and they don’t like me.

         There’s no one here.

         There are a lot of things that I don’t want to think about. That’s an important thing to know about me I think.

         Now I remember something. It’s a funny thing that I remember, about me. It was funny to a lot of people and it almost felt good to be so funny in such a crowd of people, but it stung too. It was on the bleachers, where we were forced to sit together in assembly – me and a lot of people I don’t give a shit about – it was one of those stupid things where people do stupid things and people clap without thinking about it. I clapped too. I didn’t know what else to do, so I clapped. I felt like an idiot. After a while, I got up to go to the bathroom; I was in the third row back, pretty close to the front and by the stairs, so it seemed pretty simple to leave without it being funny. But then it turned out to be funny to a lot of people and I almost felt good about it. I slipped and fell in front of a bunch of people. Everyone thought I did it on purpose, so I told everyone that I did and I even almost started to believe it too. At the time, I didn’t know it was on purpose, so I stood up and waved to everyone and twitched or something I think and my hair was probably funny too, and then I just walked out of the place while everyone laughed. After assembly, people congratulated me and told me how funny I was and it almost felt pretty good, so I told them it was on purpose and they thought that was the best ever. It was not meaningful.

         It’s a cold morning and no one is awake yet. That dog is gone now. Now a squirrel is chattering at me, but I’m not mad. I cannot think clearly today. I know the date is coming soon and I can’t breathe. The sun is not up. The world is cold. My phone is dead and there are so many things I might never know.

         There are people trying to kill me. They should be looking for me here at the park and I wonder when.

         I have a fear of surviving everything. Not the surviving part, but the pain part, I don’t want any of that.

         I don’t see anybody around. There’s a streetlight at the entrance to the park and that’s where I watch for them, expecting any minute for the light to put them into view, or the moon to put them into view. The moon is brighter than the sun now, so it can’t be day yet. It’s thin.

         The table markings remind of something I don’t think about anymore. My stomach is sour with the feel of it and all those other things too, but maybe I’m just hungry or thirsty. I should get some water at least, so I try the fountain, but it’s off for the season. They blow out the system this time of year so it won’t freeze. It will be off until spring comes. I’m thirsty now, but there’s no water for me to drink and I stare at the silver fountain. Reflecting the gloom.

         They always think I’m joking. Maybe I am joking. I’ve always done it.  

         I sent out one text before my phone died: u comin im here im not waitin

         That’s the last thing they heard from me.

         So, I walk again, on a morning that looks like night. I feel like I’m sleepwalking. That would be a funny thing to do. I bet they didn’t get my text yet. It’s either too early or too late for them to read texts. Without my phone I can’t tell what time it is. There’s nowhere to plug it in here. Maybe that’s what I’ll do is find a place to plug it in. The library won’t be open for a lot of hours and the school is probably locked. Breaking into places I’m fine with, but I can’t get caught again, so I don’t.

         I run past the salad dressing factory and think about getting a job for like two seconds. Do people even like having jobs? I don’t even like salad dressing.

         It’s a long way to the lake. I have time.

         There are no cars at this time. It’s a perfect time. I cross the bridge. Everyone says this is the best place and I think they’re probably right. I like the river gorge. It’s a good place for this. I’ll need to get a ride, but my phone died so I’ll have to walk, I know, so that’s what I’ll do.

         I can break in my new shoes. There’s no one around and my hood is up. It’s windy on the bridge by the lake. No one is driving.

         I wish my phone wasn’t dead.

         I look at the blank screen now and can almost see myself in its reflection. It’s too dark to see my reflection though and I’m draped in the dark. It’s cold. This all means nothing. My hair is bad and my nose is bad and my skin is bad. I don’t like it. Oh, who cares?  

         As I walk, Jackie appears in my mind’s eye. Asleep in her bed by her sister’s bed and that almost makes me cry it’s so beautiful to think about. I wish I were in her bed. Recently I talked to her for a while and I thought it would make me feel better, but it didn’t. It made me feel worse to talk to her. She had to go.

         I’ve been working out everyday this quarter and I’m bulking up some. I need to eat more. Everyone thinks I eat too much. They’re idiots. They don’t know anything about me. I shouldn’t think about them.

         Roller-coaster road isn’t so fun when you’re walking. Everything’s too slow to be fun when you’re walking. I didn’t know the creek ran under the road at the bottom of the dip, so I climb down to the culvert and look into it. There isn’t anything in there, just darkness and running water. It’s a big metal tube, big enough for me to walk in, hunched over, so that’s what I do. With my feet out against the edges of the culvert, I am under the road. I’m halfway across when I hear a car pass overhead.

         It’s dark inside and outside.

         There are some sticks in here. I wish my phone wasn’t dead, then I could see. I can’t see anything in here because there’s no light. No one will kill me in here though and the date is meaningless anyway, so there’s no point.

         I’m spinning under roller-coaster road and I wish I could stop thinking about it. So, I put my face in the water. It tickles my skin and it’s really cold. It makes me wonder what it’s like to be dead. Is it like this? Probably not. I start to shiver and I think I’m pretty stupid to be doing something like this, but I can’t stop doing stupid things. I do mostly stupid things. It’s the way I am I guess. It doesn’t matter. If I die, it won’t. Here or there or wherever, who cares?

         The world is jam-packed with funny dudes sometimes and there’s no need. Supply and demand is telling me my worth.

         Whatever, I’m not even here anyway. I rarely am.

         And now it’s even darker still and I look out past my big stupid nose and see the black air outside. I see a shadow there at the end of culvert. Is this a joke? I slip and fall into the cold water, wondering if I care about any of these kind of things. Probably not. But it’s stabbing cold in the water and I don’t understand, not now, not ever. I need to get to the river gorge, where the really deep can do a trick.

         I am a funny dude and I tell a lot of jokes. I like it when people laugh. I don’t like very many things. I don’t tell any jokes but people laugh at the jokes I tell. I really only live for it. It’s funny to laugh and to tell jokes. I laugh too. I talk too much. I don’t even like talking, so I don’t know why I do it so much. I’m not good at it either. There’s nothing here.

         He was my friend before he promised to kill me.  

         We were at a table outside Albertson’s when we saw Jackie and her sister and I tried to talk to her. I wanted to tell her how I was feeling but she didn’t really understand what I was trying to say. I talk a lot but I’m not good at it. I don’t know why she didn’t understand or what. She was with her sister and I know her sister a little, we were in school together. Jackie is beautiful and I wanted to tell her that, but I don’t think I did. She seemed nervous, I could tell that she was because I was.

         Then my friend made a dick comment about how I was nervous, insinuating something. It hurt too much and I fell out of control of everything. I must have been embarrassed, but my senses went blank. I actually saw red, which is weird because I always thought that was just something people said.  

         He was only my friend back then, but it was over pretty quick. He said a lot of things to me that I don’t care about and I probably said some things too and she was watching me swing my fists and bust my knuckle on his teeth. But he’s a lot faster than me and stronger and more confident too, so I gave up pretty quick and just wanted to protect myself from pain, so I laid there getting pummeled for a while. It was bad time.

         Jackie and her sister saw the whole thing happen. Jackie even squatted down to help me afterwards. She smelled like drier sheets. I wanted to grab her, no not that, but to hold her yeah. She asked if I was okay and that brought me out a little. A little bit of hope her concern. 

         Yes, I told her.

         After that, me and him weren’t friends anymore.  

         I had to play wall ball with only my left hand that summer and it helped me to stop thinking so much. No one was ever around, so I didn’t even have to talk. There’s no way to win at wall ball, not by yourself. I like to play it in the summertime, but it’s not summer.

         Uh! What’s something funny? I can’t think right now, not very well and my legs are getting numb in this culvert. The water is trickling and there is definitely a shadow standing at the end of this tube, watching me shiver and be an idiot.

         The shadow clicks its tongue, moves closer to me and says, This must be your best yet.

         It’s him! my old friend that isn’t my friend any longer, and he’s here to kill me!  Please, I say, not meaning anything. His footsteps splash and everything is cold and scared. And then I go blank again.

:-)

         I called Jackie later that summer and we talked on the phone. It didn’t feel good at all. We texted some too. She’s a funny texter. She was going to let me charge my phone over at her house when I came. The garage door was open and I knocked. She laughed when she saw me. I had checked my hair three times on the way over, so that wasn’t what was funny probably. There were already Halloween decorations up at her house that day that I went over there. There was a gravestone made out of painted cardboard that said “Al B. Bach.” I thought that was pretty funny, but I couldn’t really laugh. My throat was in my feet and my stomach was in my fingertips.

         Shouldn’t you get home? she asked.

         Yeah, I said.

         Wanna come in? she asked.

         Yeah, I said. My voice was in my nose and in my ears and I couldn’t stop running my fingers through my hair and scratching my face. I asked if she had a bathroom, which was a stupid question, but it made her laugh, so I came up with some other stupid questions like do you have a kitchen? and do you have a floor?

         I think she was surprised to see me. It had been a bad idea to come. I knew it pretty quick, so I used her bathroom and stared at myself in her mirror, making ugly expressions and flipping myself off and pretending to be some really cool guy for a second. I went pee too. But then the pee splashed on the seat and I had to wipe that off. It always seems to splash when it really needs to not. She even knocked after a while, asking if I was okay.

         I made a crass joke and she said, Okay. I was locked inside, thinking too much and maybe even saying things. I freaked her out I think, for sure I did. So, I waited until I heard her footsteps moving away down the hall and I opened the bathroom door and walked out as quiet as I could. I even shut the door without breathing, slowly and quietly, and then ran away.     

         I did that. What a stupid thing. I ran from her house out to the ugly tree – which is a long way away. I didn’t even ever call her again or text her and she didn’t call me or text me either. And I guess that’s all there was.

         A bunch of meaningless bundles.

:-)

         No one really needs a funny dude.

         There’s always someone else who wants to try to be funny – and most of them can do it way better than I can. No one needs a funny dude.

         Another car rumbles overhead. I’m in the shuddering culvert. I’m numb. I can’t feel the water trickling over me. My new shoes have died young.

         I hear his voice: You’re just hiding in the dark?

         Hello? I shout, filling the tube with sound.

         If you don’t come out… he says.

         Hello?! I shout again, but he doesn’t laugh.

         Are you afraid or something? he asks.

         Hello!! I scream, but it’s not funny, even I know that.

         And he’s not in here with me anymore.

         Nothing’s fair. This whole business can just vanish and hopefully everyone will just forget about it. Someone funnier can replace me, that’s fine, really it is. I’m stuck with me, but no one else should be.  

         The sun will eventually rise. I’m on this creek. Birds will eventually sing overhead, their jeering wisps. I won’t show up last night and I can’t remember things in the morning. I think I’d like to float down the river to the gorge where the fog hides the shadow.

II

         Bell rang. Staring clocks, not reading the time, just staring at time, not thinking about it, I dialed Shari's front office extension. Between passing period, she did not like receiving phone calls during these times, a zoo these times. But then she answered, Yes? Short.

         My voice said: Hi, Shari, sorry to call now.

         No worries, she lied, what is it?

         I’m just curious about… um… Couldn’t remember the boy’s name for some reason, notes of a daily calendar, no, no boy’s name there. Sorry, I said.

         Shari was speaking to someone, holding a phone to her throat, Bring those to your teacher, please... You’re welcome sweetie, have a great day.

         You still there? I said.

         Yep, she breathed.

         It’s a… the boy, the one that got held back a year, but was a freshman last year. Had a bad haircut, funny kid. I can’t remember his name.

         Ok, Shari said. I don’t know what kid you’re talking about. What’s the issue?

         Well, uh… he’s been homeless for a bit and… he, um, he’s been missing a lot of school.

         That’s a lot of kids, she said. Can’t remember the name, huh? Hello, just right over there, yep over there, thank you sweetie! Sorry, so you said you can’t remember his name. Shari clicks her tongue in her cheek and thinks, Any first letter pop into your head?  

         I don’t remember. Anyway, I found something he wrote on an I-Pad, and it sounds like maybe something that’s like not good, you know?

         So?

         So, I… Thinking without speaking.

         Look him up on Tyler, she said. I gotta go. Put that back where you… click.

         So, I open desktop computer onto Tyler program, computer, scrolling names. Pictures accompany alphabetical names, some time. Infinite to-do list waiting. From A-H no boy and a phone rang. It was Shari.

         Hello?

         Ok, she said, Now I’ve got a minute. You got me worried about… did you figure out his name?   

         He’s really funny and has a bad haircut, I said. He let some kids cut it.

         What? I never heard of anything like that happening.  

         Uh… he always looks at himself in the mirror and in his phone and… and… his hair was cut on the sides and the top was like a mop.

         Shari laughed.

         He also had a big nose, I guess.

         Sounds like a funny looking kid.

         No, he’s sweet. He’s always trying to make people laugh and getting sent out of class. Remember you sent him to me after Ben sent him down to the office? Just a couple weeks ago.

         A couple weeks ago? Shari said. I can hardly remember this morning.

         Ok, I said, well, I’ve gone through Tyler, A through H. I’ll keep looking.

         Is he in trouble or something? Shari asked.

         Might be, I said. I’ll get back to you when I remember his name.

         Sure, Shari said.

         Talk to you soon, I said.

         Sounds good, Shari said.  

         Click phone and painstaking scrolling I to Z. Time of half-an-hour. No boy in system. Leant back into my squeaky chair and thought. No more details in mind, no bother to call Shari back. Near end of a day not productive. Almost sad. Bell rang and a thousand voices and two thousand teenage footfalls for about three minutes of time of concrete halls and emptiness. Common complaints chatterbox Charlie in the hall, so I walked out but I didn’t say anything. Acknowledgement hum, A-hem, and trying to find my way. Nothing of interest. A day’s end, so I went back to my empty, a shared office and put on my coat. I grabbed my lunch bag and shoved a chair. Pausing finger-poised-lightswitch, staring at the I-Pad on the desk. Fingershook. Getting old. Florescents, glumhumming and void. Nothing happened. Indescribable walkback and the I-Pad underarm, I was leaving.

         Rain, hard rain, running to my Hyundai reached a hand in through a duct-taped window and unlocked a door. Dried spilled coffee and creamer, but then so did I. Emptylot watched a deluge, cover car patterroof. After a moment, I inexplicably punched the steering wheel and began sobbing. Eyes blurred, yellowkey ignition, only it didn’t fit.

         What the hell? I murmured, fumbling with my keys. Flipped it over, but it still didn’t fit. Wiping my eyes and inspecting it: it was the rightkey, only yellowkey. So, I tried it again – nothing. Everykey a keychain, otherkeys not rightkeys.

         Nothing.

         Is this a joke? I whispered.

         The rain was. I felt a bit sick to my stomach, just watching the rain of the windshield, blur of the world. There was nothing else to do, so I got out my phone to call someone. Scrolled contacts but didn’t recognize any of them.

         Oh God, please no, please, please no, I said.

         Then nothing else happened, other than the rain happened and my cold little jacket happened.

         I am here and it feels like now. I am wet and the heater is not on. Throw my phone. I-Pad passenger and I don’t know what to do with myself. Panic and I need less stinging emptiness, so the IiIIIIiII-Ppappad Then the background waas s s a different pi-i-i-icture of tttTtTttttTTTTttttttTTTtttttttTTyler, Creator buildinn smi smiling eyes. Whooooo chaaanged?!

         i stare o-o-of desktop trebbble. A dr-drop-dro-o-o-drop d-d-ddow-d-down-down-n m-mmy neckck s-s w-we hunchover to read “d-d-d-7 c-c-c-c-c-con

auto-reset

:-)

         There are so many problems.

         No never mind.

         There is nothing to do.

         This whole thing is bullshit and everything I say and do means very little. There might as well be no words left for me. I’m only tired now, coming out the other side of the culvert. It’s still night or morning too and there is not much I can do in the pitch-dark under these twiggy trees. What a season to survive in this muck.

         I walk out into silence and wonder how long it might take to walk back home. I’d have to go up roller-coaster road, cross the highway to Cheryl’s property, follow her driveway through Benji’s backyard, push through the brush to Brandy’s driveway, walk up and out to the paved road, up the hill, to the entrance to the rich neighborhood – where Steve Scheffler lives, I heard – past Randy’s up the hill – hope his turkey is safely stowed – past Paul and Matthew’s house, down the hill there and back up to the dirt road and from there it’s a half-mile. That’s beyond motivation right now. To only get stuck back at home with no means of escape would be insufferable. So, I think I’ll go into town. Maybe I’ll find something to do there.

         I have school today, so there’s that. Who cares? I’m not going to school today. There’s nothing less meaningful than school. Or I could go and charge my phone in the library. That’s something.

         My new shoes are soggy from the mud and I’m filthy. I walk up the slope to the road. I slip and get my pants dirty. I stop in the road and consider again going home, to change my clothes, so at least I don’t look like a bum.

         No, I walk toward town, up roller-coaster road.

         No, I turn around and start back home.

         No, I’m an idiot. Never mind, I turn around for the last time and walk toward town.

         My shoes squish with every step. It’s a steep slope to the main road. I’m not complaining or anything. It doesn’t matter. I’m just walking now.

         This town is surrounded by a slough. This town’s a slough.

         I’m a walking body. That’s all I am. No one is driving or walking at this empty hour. I’m not a dramatic type and I don’t need people. I don’t like people. I did, but I don’t. He was my last friend. We aren’t friends any longer and it feels like he’ll kill me. Is that really something I think? I think too much. I don’t do anything anymore. I just sit around thinking this and that and wandering around accomplishing absolutely nothing. Maybe I’ll move to L.A. and write a screenplay and try out for parts in movies. Anyone want to put a big nose, barely brown, hunchback with a bad haircut and no personality in their movie? The Adventures of Dumbass Lonelyboy. I’m afraid of what I’ve been doing lately, so I’ve stopped doing anything at all. I think I broke his teeth. I know I broke his teeth because his father called me and demanded that I pay for it. I told him I didn’t know anything about it and hung up on him. I blocked phone numbers. I blocked a lot of numbers by now. This will all bite me in the ass, I’m sure. It will. I know it will, but I don’t care and really don’t want to even think about it.

         I see headlights coming up from behind me on the road. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m jumping into the woods alongside the road, hiding from the car. My heart is racing. Swish! the tires hiss; the car passes. I don’t know who that was, but it was probably a baker. They work earlier than anyone I think. How do I look in their fading red taillights? I wonder. It’s strange, but I’m having difficulty picturing my own face right now. I know I’m barely brown, but am I dark? I look at my hand but it’s too dark out even to tell how dark I am. My father was tall and my mother is too. I am not tall. I don’t feel tall at all. I’m not like my parents, thank God.

         My mom is a real pain-in-the-ass lawyer, so we live in an isolated hell that looks like some redneck’s dream house. It’s her house, as she will constantly remind you. She’s right. I don’t live there much these days, but some of my old stuff is stored there. My mom is unable to know who I am. She only knows what she imagines, and that’s a bunch of Disney bullshit. She’s delusional. She thinks the world ought to be like the movies, and then she lives in a constant state of frustration becuz the world is nothing like the movies. She watches too many movies. That’s all she does other than work. She doesn’t even cook or clean. You’d think I was like Cinderella or something, cooking and cleaning up after my evil stepmother. Only she’s my biological mother and I don’t cook and I don’t clean either. The house is a mess until Grandma comes over on Thursdays for dinner. Then it’s all down hill from there until she comes again. I use the microwave when I’m hungry and my mom doesn’t come home until late. She doesn’t ever seem to eat anything. I think she’s a robot or something. She always complains about not having enough time to get things done and then every time she forgets about some big thing like birthdays or Kwanza she balls her eyes out and drinks a bottle of wine alone, watching Friends or something. I have no sympathy for her though, because I’m all out of it. Anyway “sympathy is a waste of time and energy,” as she’s told me so many times. “When you give charity to someone, you’re only doing them a disservice. In the long run. People get used to charity and it makes them dependent. If people don’t have to work for what they have then they will grow dependent and depressed.”

         What the fuck does she know? She’s blue blood as far back as I’ve ever seen and if she’s ever felt a speck of sympathy I’d be fucking surprised. She feels nothing but sympathy for herself. She’s like me I think.

         I’m ashamed of my family. Myself. We’re built out of the most self-righteous of genetics. We are. I am. I don’t plan on seeing any of them again. To hell with them.

         The ditch is running. I hear it trickling. I don’t know what I feel. I need to charge my phone. I wonder how soon school starts. It’s still just as dark as it’s ever been. I am cold in these wet shoes and lukewarm socks. I shiver and imagine myself in Jackie’s bedroom.

         Don’t mind the Care Bears poster, she would say and I would laugh. I’d have to plan something witty for a response. I could say Oh, I don’t care about bears. No, that’s rude. I could say, Pink’s my favorite color. Yeah, that would work.   

         Pink’s my favorite color.

         Oh, haha! She’d be blushing and I would like that a lot. I would like her so much in that moment. She would sit on her bed and I would sit on her sister’s bed. We’d find things to talk about maybe. Or she might sit next to me on her sister’s bed and that would be nice. We could hold hands, I don’t care, anything with her would be nice, anything. She could give me a dead-leg for all I care. Or maybe we’d kiss and she’d smell like pink lemonade.

         Then, I’d say something else funny. Let’s see, what could it be. I need to be better at flirting, like immediately. You remind me of the summer. No, too poetic, dramatic. I like kissing you. Simple, good, but boring. Do you kiss your sister with that mouth? Oh God, no! Not that one. Less is more, okay, less is more. I could say, I want to have your babies. Desperate, a Hail Mary, but could it land as funny if I struck the right tone? Jackie laughs at weird things, so maybe yeah. That’s the one I think. But only after we’re already kissing and I know she likes me.

         I stop at the big brick housing development sign with the rock waterfall pouring all over it. It says Meadow Brook. This is her housing development. I wonder if she’s awake. Probably not, nobody is. I hate being alone more now that I’m standing so close to her home. Standing, staring, and thinking, I’m more alone. I start wishing and that’s one of the worst things for me, to start imagining things as I want them to be. What a wretched world I would make. I don’t need to make a world. I wouldn’t know where to end and where to begin. But I’m daydreaming now, it’s no use.

         We’d go out walking on Springy Trail. It’s a wet place, but it’s green. We would hold hands in the sunlight through the hanging vines and branches. I wouldn’t have to tell her anything funny or anything. We’d be really happy to be with each other and that would make us happy enough to shut the fuck up for once. Isn’t that how happiness works? Together. I think that’s the only way to happiness. I’m probably wrong.  

         Being alone is treacherous. All these circular thoughts swarm around me. I can hardly breathe thinking about her when I’m alone like this. I’m trapped in this swarm of spinning bullshit, ugh. I’m allergic to myself.

         It’s an uphill walk to her house. Round and round curving neighborhood roads, planned roads that make no sense and keep drivers out. No one drives around here except to go to work and come home and to see the Christmas lights in December. It’s not December and no one goes to work this early I don’t think, except maybe the baker. There’s always the baker. Maybe I should be a baker. I like warm kitchens in the winter. Comfort and coziness sounds nice. I’m only walking to Jackie’s house. It’s a less nice house than my Uncle’s house. It’s a nice enough house to make me nervous. It feels less lonely than my Uncle’s house. Maybe it’s haunted. No one would ever want to haunt my Uncle’s house. Too many bad vibes there. Tense. Too much pressure in the air pushes ghosts out of his house. Sterile. Jackie’s house feels utilized, alive, creatively flowing. I used her bathroom once. I said something that bothered her. Well, either that or she was bothered by me. Can’t blame her. I bother me too. I talk too much and don’t think enough. No, that’s not right. I think too much. I also talk a lot about stupid things to keep myself from thinking painful things and awful things. There’s too much to think about these days and no one to understand. These things spin like saws inside me. I’m all sliced up into separate little bits that fail to communicate with one another. I’m just a boring puzzle. No doubt.  

         I swear I get lost every time I go into one of these housing developments. It’s like they want people to get confused and lost and then never come back again. To be left alone. Happy families live here. Childish mistakes and lessons learned. Moralistic pleasures abound! I will never live here. I might not live anywhere, but especially not here. Practically every house is beige or taupe. Every once in a while there’s a soft grey/lavender one. Those must be the party people. Wild cards of the neighborhood.

         I’d like a neon pink house I think, surrounded by woods, where no one can see in and I don’t have to look out at the roads and the houses and the families doing wholesome activities together. I could chop wood maybe and maybe like carve cabinets for a living.

         Jackie might even make it as an actress – not too famous though, but recognizable. We’d have pixie-looking children that believe in magic and a dog at our feet by the fire in winter. We’d never watch TV and wouldn’t want to. We’d only have a landline and no one would call. It would be a relief. We would live in the moments of our lives. There would be dinner guests from time-to-time, but only very funny ones that would laugh at all my jokes. I would tell such good stories. People would ask me to tell them stories and I would tell them real rippers.

         Still no sign of the sunrise. No one is awake here. No lights on, other than streetlights and porch lights. I want to see inside. I wonder who’s asleep and who’s awake and worrying, lying there staring at the ceiling. Is anyone up reading a book in a reading chair by a reading lamp? I would enjoy it if they were, but there’s probably no one. All the windows are dark, curtains pulled, venetian blinds. A garage door rattles in the wind. I jump.

         There would always be music playing in our neon pink cabin in the woods. Good music. Nothing sad. I’d file the sad parts in a file cabinet in the basement. She would remind me of everything that is good and she would remind me to always be grateful.

         I see her house at the end of the cul-de-sac. My heart should be racing, but is it? Her house is a soft pastel blue. I really like her house, but I’m afraid of her house. The sidewalk winds and I keep walking around the sac. Rounded curbs and drains. I try to stop but I will not. I round the cul-de-sac, watching her house as it walks by me.

         Every house is silently dark. I check to see if I’m watched – I am not.

         In a grand effort of will I cross the cul-de-sac, heading straight for her driveway. The tiny concrete stones are rounded, soft. I go to her door, but I don’t know what to do now.

         In our old age we would find pastimes to pass the time in that little cabin of ours in the woods, watching birds perhaps, feeding deer and wild turkeys, keeping tabs on tree growth and gardening flowers in the springtime. And every night, before going to sleep, we’d kiss on the lips. That’s how it would be. We would like it that way. Never changing. Evergreen.

         I finger the doorbell, but I don’t ring it. The contact with her glowing button fills me with excitement; I could shout. I shouldn’t. I don’t. Not moving, I try to hear or feel something. There is nothing. Moving away from her door, I ponder. I know where her bedroom window is, on the second floor in the back. I go there. The grass is perfectly groomed to the edges of the yard and wet. My new shoes are a mess of green and brown.

         The ivy grows up the trellis and I am Romeo when I climb. It is too easy to climb. I have never climbed before, but I climb now with ease. I am looking in through her window. There aren’t even streetlight shadows out here. I cup my hands around my eyes and squint to see if she’s sleeping. She’s not there. No one is there. The bed is flat, empty. Is she reading in a reading chair downstairs?

         I try the window, but it doesn’t matter, I am inside her bedroom. To my relief, it is warm in the forced air. She does not have a Care Bears poster. There are pictures on a corkboard, by her little desk where she is not reading. She is not here. I sit on her sister’s bed and can almost feel her blankets, her presence. The room might smell like Jackie. There is no perfume. An empty garbage can. The lamp is bent at a funny angle, but it is not on. Her closet door is open and her dresses and shirts await. I move to them and smell them. They smell like Jackie. I like that smell and I am in a moment now. She wears a lot of denim. I’ve never liked denim before. I like denim.

         I would stay by her bedside, when she was an old woman with laugh lines wrinkled in her eyes. I would speak of her often and people would understand my sadness after her death. Why I mourn. I would write poems to her after her. Our children would cry in our living room before and after dinner. The sadness would be shared and sacred.

         Her sister is not here.

         Into the hallway. There is a little light plugged into a socket near the floor. It’s a nice nightlight. Every door is open. I peak inside every door. There is no one home.

         I decide it won’t hurt any to charge my phone in her bedroom. I plug it in. The little apple with a bite out of it glows and I am excited for no reason. I put in my password – who would ever break into my phone? I wait for the signal to arrive and then await any messages. The signal arrives quickly enough. I wait a long time for messages. There’s a voicemail! Who leaves a voicemail anymore? There are no missed calls. The voicemail says “Unknown.” I press play.

         Hello, says an unfamiliar voice. It sounds like AI. Hello. To hear certain option, press one. To hear option, press two. To hear another option, press three. Hello. Hello. We appreciate… {gzzt!} Press zero to end call… {gzzt!} Hello. Please… {gzzt!} to hear options…

         I almost erase the message, but then I don’t.

         I go to my text messages, to be sure, but there is nothing new.

         I check my email, nothing new.

         I check my other email, nothing new.

         I check my junk email, a shitload of new messages. I don’t bother.

         I decide to call Jackie.

         It would be winter when we’d get snowed in and thankful for the time. It would be cold, but warm inside. The kids would be somewhere else, so we could be alone together. The cabin would be someone-we-know’s cabin and they would let us stay there for as long as we wanted, no charge, just clean it afterward. There would be thick rugs and comfy couches. The bed would be magnificent and our dreams would be quiet dreams. We would drink orange juice and coffee and Earl Grey with biscuits we’d bake from the cookbook in the pantry. Flour, warm water, sugar or honey, butter, and baking powder.

         This is a wonderful place, she’d say. 

         Yes, I’d say.

         The snow would fall silently behind the crackling fire. Our teas and coffees would steam endlessly in our hands, up past our faces, cozy to drink. Jokes would be funnier too. Inside. We would laugh without having to explain anything. This endless banter could sleep beside her natural comfort.

         Can we stay like this forever? she’d ask.

         Yes, I’d say.

         Her number is still in my phone. I press “Jackie.” It says “Calling.” I should not call her this late. Where is she? Then it says “00:01,” and the length of our conversation is already being measured. It’s ringing. Now it says “00:06,” but it’s still ringing. Now it says “00:09,” and it’s still ringing. Then there’s a strangely long ring tone and then it continues to ring normally after that. Now it says “00:28,” and I don’t think she’s going to answer. It’s very late I think. My phone says it’s 5:45 pm, but that can’t be right. My phone is getting old and it needs updates that it cannot handle. My mom wants to get me a new one, but I told her to stop buying me things because when she buys things for me it’s like charity and charity makes people weak. She couldn’t argue with that. My phone says “01:03,” and I hang up.

         Where is Jackie? Where is Jackie’s family? She has school today too, I think. It’s a school night I think. I look out the window and it’s very dark. Who else might I call? I search through my contacts but I don’t like anyone. They won’t take my calls anymore or I won’t make them. I can’t decide anything and I do nothing for some time.

         My mother always told me that if I didn’t feel like doing anything then it was probably time to get some work done or time to go to sleep. So, I wrap myself in Jackie’s anorak from the closet – the one she wore that night at Albertson’s – and lay down on Jackie’s bed. I pull the pink Minnie Mouse blanket up to my chin and forget about my dirty new shoes. This will stain her sheets but nothing matters.

         I will not sleep. Not here. Not like this. I feel ashamed to be wearing Jackie’s anorak without invitation. It makes me feel colder somehow to wear it. I should have taken off my shoes, but I don’t care. The shoes are ruined. Nothing is new, not really, not for long. I sit up in her bed and wonder what kind of music she likes. I don’t like music, but I would like to know what she likes.

         I hear Jackie’s laughter downstairs. I throw myself from her sister’s bed and hang the anorak hastily in the closet. I move to the window, to leave, but it’s closed. I try to open it but I am outside, on the trellis, like Romeo. The window is right there. Closed. Shouldn’t I see my breath out here? I climb down the trellis with ease and then I’m at the front door, holding the doorknob, but then I’m on the other side of the door and the living room is pitch-dark. There’s a blinking green light coming from the kitchen. I move toward it, blocking it from my eyes. No one is laughing. Nothing is happening at all and the blinking light is on the dishwasher – it has been paused mid cycle. I would press the start button twice and it would start with a swish if I lived in this house. I do not press the start button twice. It does not start with a swish. I do not live in this house. Jackie is not laughing anymore and there is no one here. I don’t try the light switches. I don’t live here. I am not inside the house. I am at the front door, fingering the lock again. I am locked out of this house now, here. I do not live in this house with Jackie’s family, so I do not have a key. I am standing at the window now, watching nothing happening in the darkened entryway. I’ve never felt weirder in my life than I do right now. And I’ve felt pretty weird before.

         I am pressing the doorbell many times in a row. It makes the bell mechanism buzz. Now I am yelling, This is not a house! Jackie does not live here! My words can’t be true and I wonder if my mind is slipping. I can’t trust myself right now or ever. I don’t know why I talk so much. I don’t say anything of value or truth. It’s all pointless jabber. In my search for meaning in all of this I’ve found only anoraks, pink Minnie Mouse blankets, and disembodied laughter. And this, her house. Is this a house? Was there a trellis back then? Back when? I ask myself. The streetlights are full of misty rain now. It doesn’t matter. It feels like nothing touches me anymore, not even the weather.  

         I kick at the front door, but nothing happens. I punch the front door, but nothing happens. I try the doorknob and nothing happens. I push up on the garage door, but nothing happens. I yell and bang and make quite a ruckus, but nothing happens. I am disheartened by this and so many other things, so, I leave the cul-de-sac – is it even her cul-de-sac? Perhaps I’ve made a mistake in coming here. Perhaps I’ve mistaken a different house for her house. I don’t know.

         I can barely remember anything in the morning. So, if it really is morning, I can’t remember anything. Even if it’s not morning, I cannot remember much. Her name is Jackie and she lives in this neighborhood, I know this is true. My name is… oh great, that’s perfect, I don’t even remember my own name. I need to sleep, desperately and at length. I must rest myself someday, I know. My mother’s name, what is my mother’s name? There is nothing in my mind right now.

         With my soggy shoes on the sidewalk I barely walk away. I barely run away to the ugly tree. Perhaps she’s left something there for me. It’s there that we met.

         I run.

         The twiggy, jagged, ugly silhouette of a tree. It’s a dead tree, yet it remains standing for no other reason than a lack of wind. I search the grey trunk of the ugly tree. There are various names in hearts and vulgar words carved therein, but none of them do I recognize. I could swear that we would have carved our names out beside one another with a plus sign between us, surrounded by a splintered heart. I keep searching the trunk of the ugly tree, but find nothing. I wonder if it was all these carving lovers that killed the ugly tree.

         I do find, however, a “J” and an “R” within the confines of a carved heart. Who is “R?” I am not “R,” I’m sure of that. I’m not sure of much, but I’m sure that I am not “R.” Then who? I touch the letters to see if that will help me to remember, but there is nothing for me to feel. Is this an occasion for tears? Perhaps I would cry on such an occasion. I would cry about Jackie carving her initials into the ugly tree beside a mystery “R.”

         There is nothing for me to do here. I will leave soon, but first I will try to remember something about this tree. Wasn’t there something funny or sentimental that happened here? I swear it happened here, was it a long time ago? I don’t know, but it feels like that’s the way it ought to be, but things are rarely as they ought to be I think. A memory wiggles and my body warms.

         No, never mind, there is nothing to remember about this place.

         I run away from the ugly tree and am carried off into the woods behind Meadow Brook, where neither the brook nor the meadow can be found. I run into the darkness of the forest.

III

         Darkness of Coal River High parking lot. Pitter-patters on the rain of my Hyundai of the wind whips of the taped plastic passenger window. I want a drink, but I have no drink. Is this my car? I wonder, trying everykey again, but to no avail. Nonsense!

         Nothing to do, consider a return to an office, but an idea of its claustrophobic. Then of a sudden a car’s claustrophobic, and it’s now and now it’s raining and I dare not go out into the deluge. No raingear, only to and from my car today it should have been. A single streetlight. Wipe steamed glass with my sleeve and watch the triangle of illuminated rain parking lot pavementblack.

         Memories of voices of people of places of things to think while waiting for ideas or thoughts or memories otherwise of voices people spoke to me and I guess it’s a way to pass. Groceries, I think. That’s all to think. The storm of night thinking for me and outlasting time to drive home. I try otherkeys, no and not this time again.

         I need a drink, but I do not have any drink.

         I consider walking to Goldie’s on Main, but then I remember that the place got shut down because they weren’t making enough money. Dead end. I don’t live here, just work here. Waiting here to leave here. Nothing else here. Only to do here.

         No clock withoutkeys to fit in a metal-maw, unfamiliar. Steering column, not sure. Windshield crack in a new place. Episode, please, please no it isn’t. No, no, not an episode like this it isn’t, no soda pop and no drink. Check the cupholder in a new placement, this is so very strange and I feel sick.

         Inside the car for the rain and for the reading, waiting, reading:

:-)

         Rain comes in buckets sometimes in the place where I am. I am soaked. Numb, I feel nothing. The sun might never rise I think. I should find cover. I do. It’s Jackie and her sister’s tree house. It is a rectangular board floor with walls and an a-frame roof. A soggy wooden ladder nailed to the tree trunk leads up, not too high up, but high enough. I climb without effort. There’s a hatch with a latch that unlatches. I swing the hatch open and climb inside. It’s dry in here and I like it in here. I think I close the hatch behind me.

         The rain is loud on the roof. This is a well-made tree house with no leaks. If I could feel anything right now, it might be coziness or comfort. Those are two of my favorite feelings. Rare.

         Various items have been left here: an old bunny stuffy, a small trunk, a Box-Car Children paperback, and a broken snap bracelet. Everything is relatively dry in here. I touch these things and each gives me the sensation of gentle electricity through me, in a good way I mean. I enjoy the sensation. The trunk is locked with a rusted padlock.

         I was up here once before. With Jackie. Her sister was here too. I’d come across this tree house in my childish wanderings and I’d heard them speaking in the tree house, so I chucked a couple of rocks at the tree house and they’d shouted, What?!

         Can I come in? I had asked.

         Who’s there? Jackie had asked.

         It’s me! I’d said.

         Do you have anything to trade? her sister had asked.

         I have some pinecones, I’d said.

         They’d consulted one another.

         I also have a Baby Ruth I can share with you, I’d added.

         We don’t like Baby Ruth! Jackie had shouted.

         Yeah! her sister had confirmed.

         Do you have any Reese’s? she’d asked.

         No, I’d said.

         Then go away!

         I had walked under the tree house and put my hand on the ladder. They were made of fresh wood back then. Please? I’d said.

         No, Jackie’s sister had said.

         No, Jackie had said.

         You can have the whole bar if you want, I’d pleaded.

         We don’t like Baby Ruth!

         It’s pretty much like a Reese’s!

         No, it’s not!

         Yeah it is, it’s just that the peanuts aren’t ground up into peanut butter. That’s the only difference, I’d claimed.

         The girls then had discussed my point.

         You can have the whole thing, I’d reiterated.

         Fun size or normal size?

         It’s normal size.  

         Okay, Jackie had said, you can come up.

         I’d climbed up to the hatch and into the crowded tree house. The girls were wrapped in blankets and warm hats and they stared at me as I sat down cross-legged across from them.

         This never happened. I don’t remember this at all. This might have been a dream I had or a daydream or a fantasy or a plan that never came through or a play that I wrote and starred in with my stuffies for actors and audience.

         Now I’m here in their tree house. The one I dreamed or daydreamed or fantasized or planned or played. Many times possibly, I don’t know why. It’s drafty for a real house but cozy for a tree house. I’ve never felt more excitement than right now. Never. I feel like I’m flying. I feel like myself. Like I’m in a good place, a safe place to be myself.

         The wind blows the loud rain against the wall. I shiver almost.

         I’ll give you the whole bar, I murmur.

         Thunder rolls. The rain falls harder now. I am safe here and I will stay here forever I think. Maybe this is my place. Maybe this is a better place than… where was that place? The one with the fog that hides the shadows? A gorge? It must have been something deep like a gorge or a ravine, no a ravine is not deep enough I don’t think. Perhaps it was a canyon.

         I want to open the trunk, but there’s a pad lock keeping it closed.

         I touch it and there is not a padlock keeping it closed. The trunk is presently set open against the plywood. What is inside? I don’t know if I can explain that, but I would. I want to ask her so many questions about this chest, her chest – it could be her sister’s chest – and what is inside. I see the fog as it pours from the chest and the cold wet gorge’s wind beckoning me. To fall. This is a thing that is wonderfully terrifying. I wonder if I feel anything. I might be terrified but I don’t care. I can feel myself falling now. The sensation closes the trunk. I almost shiver.    

         I must leave this place. This is not a place for me. I glide down the ladder and flee from the tree house. It is still just as night or morning as it was. Under these trees a childhood concluded. I feel I might vomit due to the sentimental sting. I wish to vanish now, but I cannot. I’ve always wanted to vanish. Into dreams and screens and… this is where the child has run into the imaginary forest siding my dreams. I am sorry he is lost but I don’t care anymore. None of it matters anyway.

         I need to get a ride into town is what I need to do. So I make for the main road without any effort at all. It’s the road with the Meadow Brook waterfall thing. I reach the main road and I can see headlights in the distance. I run out to the road, waving now, trying to get the car to stop. It’s too dark. I realize this too late and the car veers, tires audibly slipping, corrects itself for a moment, rumbles over into the drainage ditch, comes out of the ditch with a wild hop, flips over and rolls down roller coaster road.

         Oh my God! I say, practically flying there, to the ravine below, with the little creek and that dark culvert. The vehicle is destroyed. Whoever lies within cannot be alive any longer, I conclude. Now, I am at the windshield and I see through the splintered glass, wide eyes, unblinking, a bloodied face. I am certain that I know that face. It is my least favorite face. I fall back up the muddy bank.

         Is this a joke? I wonder. Who would play a joke like this?

         Is there any meaning to these events I’m experiencing? Am I a fool? A fool runaway, far from home? Is this why everything happens like this?

         I cannot make sense of things. This is a very strange joke no doubt. I don’t appreciate jokes of this kind.

:-)

         This is the most beautiful place. But for lack of a view where I stand, it is the most beautiful place there is. Everyone says there is not a more beautiful place on earth. I can’t say for sure if it is or if it isn’t. Beauty is not my specialty. If I were closer to the lake or the mountains perhaps everything would appear beautiful. Even at home I might see things better than here, where everything is green, shadow, and water. Tourist skiers can view the valley and the lake from atop the mountain and they can come down to town rosy cheeked and stoked to tell the people that really live here how beautiful it really is. No one likes to be told, but we believe them anyway. Who can argue with the joyful people? The rosy cheeked, lovely ones. The steamroller storytellers and jolly drinkers pouring out of the bars into the snow.

         Snowflakes drift down to the surface of the river, where the wreckage sleeps. The baker might be baking in the warm bakery about now, in the low glow of amber overhead. I am at the shattered windshield, but the glass does not cut. The one within is barely visible and I cannot confirm who has died. The whole thing is suddenly surrounded in fog and then again there is no one in the car. There is no car and I am alone. New shoes soaking in icy water as I forget everything that’s happened.

         In the mornings I forget things and that’s what happens. I am at the bottom of roller coaster road again, ankle deep and seeking the darkness of the culvert. Perhaps he will not be able to find me in there I think. Someone is trying to kill me I am sure of it now. I don’t know how, but I am sure of it.

         I need to go home for a change of clothes now that it’s snowing. It’s a sludgy trudge up the muddy bank and I’m falling. Not really very far falling, but slipping and getting my clothes dirty. It’s a cold season, so I wear my hood pulled tight around my face. People say that snow is lovely when it first arrives. I’m no expert. I don’t know what it’s like to appreciate things like snow, not really. It’s just frozen water falling. I could be snow someday I think. I’m mostly water.

         I go up roller coaster road and cross the highway. I pass through Cheryl’s property, follow the driveway to Benji’s yard, push through the woods to Brandy’s place and up to the main road, up the hill, to the rich houses – where Steve Scheffler might live – turn, go by Randy’s on the hill – the turkey either sleeps or has been slaughtered – past Paul and Matthew’s. I look at Rachel’s horses. Who is Rachel? I wonder. The fields and fields and fields to feed them. The horses. The people. They all eat. Am I hungry? I ought to be. By now. What time is it? I wonder. I check my phone. My phone says it’s 5:45, but that can’t be right. It’s a very old phone and the screen is cracked, splintered. I can almost see myself reflected in the splintered glass and I am reminded of a memory that I cannot access, something that hides from me. I have a lot of those kind of memories. Is that normal? Probably. I don’t care.

         I check my messages and there is a new voicemail from “Unknown.”

         Hello. Hello. This is a message. There is important information for you. Please call us if you are interested in entering a contest. And that’s everything that’s in the voicemail.

           I’m carried upon feet of cloud across land. It’s a long walk home. I live on the other side of the lake, across from the big mountain where skiers stoke and see the beauty for everyone. I don’t ski. I am not like those people. I spend most of my time walking around, doing not much and waiting to meet people that barely show up.

         I send a text to the one that plans to kill me, the one that used to be my friend before the fight outside of Albertson’s. Im going home. That’s all I text. He knows where I live. He will come there to kill me. That’s the way this night will pan out. Put me away. He’s a killer I think. He’s told me he is and I believe him. In a way I believe him. Maybe I don’t. He often lies.

         When we were kids, he came over to my house to play one time and said I could borrow Operation Wolf. He’d just gotten it, but he wanted a trade for something, I don’t remember what now. A trade to borrow. When his dad came to pick him up, he asked where Operation Wolf was – it was a birthday gift. Then he told his father that I’d threatened him and that I had taken it away from him and wouldn’t give it back.

         You’re lying! I shouted.

         No, I’m not! he shouted.

         His dad towered over me and I handed over Operation Wolf. He has my {I don’t recall what now}, I said. His dad gestured to his son with his huge, chapped hands and I was handed back whatever it was that’d I’d traded. His father never trusted me after that, which was bullshit because I was telling the truth. He took his son’s word over mine. I never did get to borrow Operation Wolf. I had to ask to play it every time I went to his house. I went over a few times. I never did save the hostages.

         His bedroom was under his bed. The bed was nailed up in the back entryway, blocking the back door completely, and beneath it was everything he owned. There was even a little TV under there. He was small enough to fit into his bedroom and I was too, but together it was a bit crowded, but I liked it under there, especially when we played Operation Wolf. When I went home one time and took a bath I found pink Lego in-prints on my knees. That was long before he’d promised to kill me.

         I turn before the rich houses and move past Paul and Matthew’s road. It’s a dirt road. I live on a dirt road too. My mother’s house is on a different dirt road than Paul and Matthew’s. It’s not my mother’s house. We rent. It’s barely a house. It’s a rotten house. It’s a manufactured home. It’s a doublewide trailer. The floorboards sink where you step. Dripping moss along the edges of the roof. Broke down cars alongside the driveway. A landslide of garbage bags along one side of the trailer. I don’t live in a big house. My mother rents it. My mother is not a lawyer and she doesn’t tell me anything about her work or what she does all day. She barely speaks these days. I am gone most of the time and she doesn’t speak these days unless it’s absolutely necessary. The fridge is empty but for a pitcher of spiked orange juice. Her vodka bottle under my mattress turns me in my sleep – it’s a gallon’s worth of bump.

         I have lied about everything since then. If everyone thinks I lie then I lie. I lie all the time. I’m a liar. That’s partly why he will kill me. That’s what I wish to hide down there in the fog of the gorge. Every lie follows another. I am overtaken by the shadows of lies. I will try to blame my forgetfulness for my lies, but even that’s a lie. Probably.

         I try to take off my new shoes but they will not come off. They are not new shoes. They are barely even shoes anymore. There is no reason to take them off. The floor is dirty. The floor is always dirty. I don’t use the broom. I should. Mother doesn’t use the broom. She should. It’s a dirty house where my mother tries to keep me.

         This is not where I live.

         I need to change my clothes, but I will not.

         Hello? I say into the darkness of the trailer. The TV is off. The TV is never off, how strange. The empties are stacked and stale. No one is asleep in the recliner. Hello? I say, louder now maybe. Mom? Why do I call out to her? There’s no one else to call out to. I look at my phone. It still says it’s 5:45, but that can’t be right. It’s broken. I need a new one. Mom? I am in the hallway, drifting past the radiator’s thud and drone. Every door is closed and I am on the other side of my bedroom door. The room does not resemble the room as it previously was. Things are changing. Unfamiliar stuffies are set up on risers before a cardboard stage awaiting my performance.

         Greetings, I say, stepping aboard the cardboard stage. I hum a song that reminds me of good feelings. I sway on my feet and step to unheard rhythms. I find no rhythms. I cannot dance, but stuffies are easily entertained. Welcome to the show!

         This is not the most beautiful place and it is not my home. There are mountains far away and a lake too. I cannot see anything from here. There is a reading lamp for a spotlight that blinds me. I am thankful to be blinded. There is nothing when I’m standing in the bright light. I have always wanted nothing. To vanish into it.

         Goodbye, I say to an unfamiliar teddy bear, but it doesn’t do a thing. I speak to each in turn. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. They are happy that I am performing and that I am happy I think. They are happy to see a new performance. Something with a happy ending. I always start my performances at the end, to let them know that everything will be okay. The stuffies love to know that everything will be okay, where it’s all leading and so do I, so I do it, though I know the lies I tell sometimes. This performance is titled, Operation Wolf, I tell them. I will be leaving you here to travel to Vietnam. There are many dangers, but I assure you I must return home honorably, bravely. Though my mind may never be the same, the miseries of war will mix with the excitements of adventures and wonders.

         The stuffies clap if they can.

         I raise my hands to silence them.

         There is a village where a family lives. They are a peaceful brood, rosy cheeked and wonderful. The children believe in magic and the parents live in the moments of their lives. This is a quiet village and the war does not touch them yet. I am a peacekeeper here, though I carry a gun. The gun is to protect them from the bad guys. I am the good guys. They feed me rice and sweet pork. I work for them to help them. It’s always fair trade here. I keep away the forces of evil and they feed me. I milk the cow and slaughter the pig and they cook in their tradition. I do love it here.

         The stuffies clap when they can.

         I hold up my hands to silence them.

         I yell, OPERATION INITIATED! RESCUE THE PRISONERS!

         The TV turns on in the living room.

         Hello? I say. Mom?

         No one responds.

         The spotlight is off now and the stuffies are stuffed under a bed unfamiliar.

         I slide along the room and into the hallway, sideways scrolling, aiming my rifle with caution, and awaiting the arrival of the Viet Cong. The TV is on. The walls are imitation wood grain wallpaper over cardboard or plaster. The heater clangs and blows warm air. I aim at the vent cover in the wall. There is a presence inside, behind the wall, but I don’t dare investigate the presence. Do I dare investigate? There are tiny screws that hold the vent cover onto the plaster. I don’t have a screwdriver. I have a rifle that is a stick or a broomstick or a rifle. I lace my fingers between the grates of the vent cover and pull the screws from the plaster – with ease, like everything now. Nothing crumbles, but I am inside, behind the wall, with a man and the furnace.

         He has eyes I cannot see, the man. It is very dark with this man and the furnace.

         The TV is on out in the living room and that is what we try to listen to while we are together in this dark place.

         Are you here to kill me? I ask.

         The man doesn’t speak, no. No, the furnace blows. It radiates. The man is barely there. I am barely here.

         Will you kill me? I ask.

         The man doesn’t speak.

         The TV is on.

         Is anyone here? I whisper.

         No, says the man. He’s nearly there.

         It’s dry and dusty. We are in a tiny space behind a wall. I could break these walls without much effort at all. I’ve seen it done before. My stepfather did it before. My uncle did it before him. He’s the one that rents this trailer to us. My brother did it before. They all broke through the walls with their clenched fists and it was very easy for them to do. I’ve had dreams of breaking these walls with my clenched fists. They are my favorite dreams, after all the nice sex dreams of course. The walls break easily and the insulation serves as pad for knuckles.

         Will you break these walls? I ask the man.

         No, says the man. He’s even less there than he was before but now he can speak to me in short bursts of negativity.

         Can you help me break these walls? I ask the man.

         The man is not there anymore.

         How does this work? I ask.

         The man does not say anything because he is not there. I am talking to the black space behind plaster walls. I want to leave and I am in the hallway, moving down the hallway. My toes tickle the carpet. The carpet is dirty and old. Things are changing but it does not look like much. Everything is slowing down.

         The TV flickers. The light casts itself across the living room. Flickering couches, blankets, a matted chair. Beer cans and a mirror on the wall, dust of a reflection. On the screen there’s a sun setting on a mountain lake, where two boys drink beers, lounging on the shore in sweatpants and t-shirts, a tent stands nearby. The boys are of legal age for drinking of course.

         The first boy says, This is fucking magical, dude.

         Yeah, says the other. Smelling the pine in the air and smiling.

         The sky is on fire!

         You ever wonder if ghosts are real?

         The other boy laughs in response.

         I don’t mean like spooky ghost, I don’t mean like spooky ghost, I don’t mean spooky, but I don’t mean like Casper or like spooky ghost, I don’t mean like spooky ghosts or Disney-Disney bullshit. I mean like… what are we, you know?

         You talk too much, says the other.  

         The first boy opens his mouth, but doesn’t speak, but breathes, but then says, Yeah, you’re right.

         That why Sharon’s not into you. You know that’s what she said, right?

         The first boy sighs, Yeah. He looks at the rippling sunset reflection, peachy-pink.

         Then comes the narrator’s cheesy voice over: I didn’t know it then, but maybe Chad was right. But Chad didn’t know the whole story, not my side.

         I pick up the remote control and change the channel.

         A somber woman drives an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Children are making a ruckus in the back seat. She does nothing to stop the children, she just drives, staring forward. The children scream at one another and are fighting over a stuffy. The traffic up ahead is not moving. The woman’s face becomes illuminated by the approaching brake lights. A mug of coffee leans sidewise in the cup holder, barely steaming, milk curdling. Let It Go, plays on the car stereo.

         There is a train crossing ahead. The bar is down and the red lights are blinking and there is a line of cars stopped at the crossing. The woman stares straight at the crossing and accelerates. Exhaust fills the air like fog and the woman doesn’t slow. Blank, the woman floors the pedal. Her Geo Tracker smashes into the back end of a PT Cruiser, which in turn smashes into the back of the VW Bug ahead of it, which smashes into a Corolla, which is sent through the railroad crossing bar and into the oil tanker train. The train’s wheels slice the front end of the Corolla off and the train spills sideways, scraping the rocky ledge beside the track. Sparks ignite and in seconds the oil tanker explodes, igniting the Corolla, the VW Bug, the PT Cruiser, and the woman’s Cutlass Supreme, each exploding in turn.

         Let It Go is not playing due to explosions.

         Jesus, I almost say. I turn the channel.

         Hold on, I know this one. I’ve seen this one. A familiar character drives a Cutlass Supreme on a two-lane highway in the dark. The driver is a boy in a hoodie. He doesn’t listen to music or anything, but only drives. It’s raining and there’s a lot of fog. The road winds and turns and twists amongst green overhanging boughs. The windshield wipers screech with every wipe and need replacement. Scree! Thump. Thump. Scree! Thump. Thump. Golden needles fall from the trees and gather along the edge of the wipers’ reach. There are no other cars on the road. A spider crawls across the dashboard, but the boy doesn’t do anything about it. For a moment, he only watches the spider. It crawls. Then, he grabs a crushed McDonald’s cup from the passenger seat and squishes the spider with it.

         Sorry, he says. He rolls down the window and throws the McDonald’s cup out onto the shoulder of the road. Sorry, he says again, pounding the steering wheel. I’m sorry, he continues to say. He sticks his head out of the window into a deluge of rain. I’m sorry! he screams into the woods alongside the road.

         The car rounds a corner and he brings his head back inside the cab. He rolls up the window. The wipers wipe, Scree! Thump. Thump. Scree! Thump. Thump. The Cutlass Supreme approaches a bridge. It’s a very tall bridge that crosses a deep gorge or a canyon or a ravine. Fog collects there, concealing the bridge’s shadow. The car pulls to the side of the road just before reaching the bridge.

         Nothing happens for an uncomfortable duration of time and I start to wonder if the show has frozen. No, not frozen. The director wants to build tension. Only, it’s getting really boring, this. I almost want to change the channel but I can’t remember how this one ends. I try my best to remember things, but I cannot. I can usually remember, word-for-word, TV shows, movies, and video games. I’m weird like that. I got tested for a photographic memory, but I didn’t have one of those, they said, just a really good memory I guess.  

         The car door opens and a familiar person gets out. They walk out onto the bridge. They walk for a long time. The fog is billowing up and all around. It is windy here. They stop near the middle of the bridge and look over the side.

         I turn the TV off and I am soon looking at myself in the darkness of the screen. I can hardly see past my own nose. It’s a big nose and my least favorite nose. It’s just a bad face; I can’t really help it. I try to fix my hair, but it’s too far gone to be worthy of any effort. I try anyway. I always try. I sometimes try. There’s no reason to try. Most of the time I do it anyway.

         There, beside the mirror wall, I punch my clenched fist through the wall. Everything is crumbling. I am punching everything and everything is crumbling. I punch my clenched fists and crumble it to dusty bits, white dusty plaster-bits, petite. Will this even exists as a place if it crumbles?

         There is a breaking of the sides that starts the work, but demolition is so much more than just breaking apart the plaster walls. There are goddam supports all over the place. So, I splinter and demolish my fists on them, destroying myself on them. My hands are slamming apart the hard things and working toward the impossible. I am in the white dust cascade of smashing bones on smashing wood on smashing bones on smashing rocks on smashing bones on smashing plaster on smashing bones on smashing wiring on smashing bones on smashing pipes that burst.   

         I remember something funny he said. It’s the funniest thing he said. Or it’s one funny thing he said at least. He said other things too. Some of them were funny, perhaps even funnier than the funny thing that I remembered him saying, but I don’t remember them now so they’re not funny.

         He said, You should be on the radio. He said it my mom.

         Why? my mom asked.

         Because then I could turn you down, was the punch line.

         Everyone laughed because that was a funny joke he made. I bet he heard it from another person before, but he never would admit to it. He was always so proud to pretend that it was his joke.

         Oh shut! my mom said. She was laughing because it was a joke.

         Nobody sings songs anymore. Not because of the joke, but maybe because of the joke. It was a funny joke.

         I have never told a joke in my life, but people laugh at my jokes all the time and I can’t help but feel happy to make them happy or at least laughing. Things can be funny that aren’t jokes and I don’t understand anything. That’s almost funny in a way too. People might have laughed if I’d said something like that.

         For example, had I been working on a complex problem and had I said, I don’t understand anything, that might have been a very funny thing to say.

         The best jokes are never told.

         Some jokes need to be explained. Those are not good jokes. Most of these are pretty not good jokes because I explain a lot these days. There’s nothing else to do.

         Mother was doing the dishes when he said the joke about the radio. She finished the dishes I think and the dishes were not funny. They were dirty. I think I told a joke. A dirty joke, ha! ha!

         My fists are in the crumpled walls and everything will soon disappear I hope.

         No that’s not a thing to disappear.

         Nothing disappears.

         Not really.

         Everything I’ve said so far has been true. 

         Something has been left out. There are a lot of jokes that have failed to come to fruition and there are even jokes that have died before anyone ever heard them, like the one about the radio, or the one about the dirty dishes, if there was no one to hear them.   

         Other things that are in this house are real things. I only see the unreal things in this house. Everything else I’ve thought, everything I’ve said, everything I’ve broken thoroughly, everyone I’ve run off, everything I’ve done, such stupid things I do, over and over and I don’t know why, but yes, I am referring to all of those things, those things will whither into the ether I think. Maybe god can laugh at all of those missing jokes.

IV

         Sudden door and someone throws me out on wet pavementblack. I still look up, an old I-Pad, and I see someone I don’t know punching this face, saying, What the fuck are you doing in my car!?

         I blink the rain and dare not comprehend, but none of this is making sense. It’s my car! I shout. But then I see that it is not my car. It’s not even a Hyundai. Did I have one? Where’s my car?! I shout. I stand up and charge the man.

         Forms of fists blast broken cheekbone. What a grand flash, down count.

         Blank and then out the tunnel again, not a real tunnel, it’s black, blank, the car is gone and the parking lot. The moon is a blanket of clouds and I have no idea what time it is. Rain is mist and over shuddering, lost.       

         Two feet and wash the rain. Soaking dripping and the clothes. I walk back to the school.

         Lightsout, trythedoor. It’s unlocked, but just past the front door is a room I do not recognize. I don’t work here. Not only empty, but devoid of it and missing of everything else too.

         Hello? A bellowing concretecorridor.

         Nothing. 

         In a daze and leave.  

         It is traveling. My place the Night Fog Apartments, rain has stopped. In the jacket drips. Climbing all stairs apartment C-3, my apartment is a place I’m familiar, only mykey to fit the lock, but no, can’t be right.

         A living man opens C-3. Hey, what’s up? in a huff. You lost or something? The man wears a robe and holds a big stupid can of beer for pointing at me. An unfamiliar TV in an unfamiliar living room.

         Double-check, C-3 yep! my apartment. Why are you in my apartment? I ask the man in the stupid beer.

         Tips his robe and ties a loop and shakes his head and doesn’t and what’s this and huh. Sorry, dude. Wrong apartment. Door before me slams and latches it. I look in through a window at the stupid beer man sipping his stupid beercan, there’s the beercanman in easy chair, I don’t understand. Everything and the whole place is a different insides. 

         wind gusts. It’s a cold, strong. Shivering lean, by stucco wall. Cold gores but I am numb. Pounds of door and demanding to be let in I am here now and this is happening to me like it is. I carry on in a way for some time until then meets now and here I am. I am again. We look through windows, finding beercanmen resting in unfamiliar easy chairs, sipping beers and watching TV’s.

         HEY! in shouts, knockings of rumble glass. Yo! Let me in!

         The beercanmen watch TV’s and sip beers in our should be homes, waiting, not even turning our heads, not even watching our heads but nearly watching. Too many TV’s and too many beercans and too many beercanmen and too many I and too much it’s an episode of sitcom rom-com bromance.

         Let me in! I shout again, but nothing seems to register with this guy. I lean on the bannister and look out into the courtyard, spotting Hector Suarez, our neighbor. Hey! Hector! I shout, but Hector doesn’t. A run of steps. Hector, I say, who’s that ass-hat in my apartment?

         Hector fisheskeys from his cocket poat and heads for mailboxes, littleboxes.

         Hector! Have you seen that guy in my apartment? Who is that guy?

         Hector stops and does not turn our heads but turns his head, brows creased, thinking brows, stink eyes the courtyard, scan. We wait.

         Standing right beside him shouting, Hey!!

         Hector steps away, darting corners, omnidirectional gazing. Shaking unlocking mailboxing. Three envelopes and a magazine, twistofakey and its lock.

         Hector! to a shoulder. Don’t feel a thing. numb.

         Hector walks up the stairs and enters apartment C-2 without a sound.

         A strong wind is blowing and the rain has returned.

         A seat of dirty welcome, a staring I-Pad. And before I know it, I’m reading again.

:-)

         There is a man behind the walls here in my mom’s house, the one she rents, it’s a real house I think, no, it’s a manufactured home, it’s a trailer, a double-wide. I can hear the man breathing. He’s almost a rat, only man-sized and anxious, popping pills regularly, constantly, always complaining of the noise in the house and the smell and the mess, but he does nothing about anything because of the consistency of his consumption of pills. Maybe rats are anxious too, I don’t know. He talks about things that happened here in the past. He holds some of the secrets of this house, things I’ve never wondered about. He tries to tell them to me, but I can’t listen, not well enough. The man in the wall, he’s bad at words. He fights with himself behind the fake wood grain. He breathes plaster all day and licks dew from the furnace. He can’t survive long now. Not this way.

         I tried to tell the man about the game, Operation Wolf, but his interest was nil. He skipped over that part to get to the action. I understand his inclination to do so.

         Marvelous dancers can be celebrated in big cities, he says to me. He seems to be standing there next to the heating duct.  

         What big cities? I ask.

         New York City, for one.

         Never been there.

         Marvelous dancers there.

         I bet, I say.

         The best of the world come to New York.

         What about everyone else? Are there not good dancers everywhere? I ask.

         No, not usually, he says. Not dedicated like they are in New York.

         Why don’t you go there then? I ask him.

         I am no marvelous dancer, he says.

         Why not dedicate yourself to it?

         No, too late for that.

         What do you mean? I ask, already knowing exactly what he means.

         He does not answer me, but I can hear him mumbling back there in the walls, Everyone is in here with me.

         I am walking in the yard. It’s a good time of day to go walking in the summer, but it’s November, so it’s not. It’s cold and wet. There are neither stars nor moon. I am lucky because my hoodie is warm. My shoes are tired and slapdash. My hair is a mess and everything is flipping nowadays. I am walking through the wild ginger and the tamed heather. It is the most beautiful of all places I think.

         I am inside.

         Brown is a good color for dirty carpet; it’s brown shag. The coiled-up creatures in corners sometimes have faces to see, but I don’t like to want to think about them or talk to them anymore. They are not my enemy. They slink around through the brown shag and tell me stories I don’t like.

         Here’s one of the stories that the uncoiling creatures tell me:

         One day the eggs hatched. Very strong birdsongs in strange tones for the escape. Cracking things. No one knew what to do so no one did anything. They only watched the strange birds emerge. No, the birds didn’t do anything and everyone did the things. The birds didn’t move thing, nor did they keep things, and but for their strong songs in strange tones, no one would have thought them silent. They came up close to the strange birds, the people. To see. The birds were shining like plastic and were they toys? An ear up close, very very close. A nearby eye. Then the thin things shot out. It turned into a silent world that day. Very quickly it happened and nothing could be made of it.

         I do not understand their stories and I don’t listen to them any longer. Nonsense those.

         Okay, let’s make sense of it all. I went to the park but I never saw anyone but a stupid dog that was all wet. I was supposed to meet someone that planned to kill me and they never came. I left the park. Then I went to roller coaster road. Was he there? The baker drove by. I walked to Jackie’s house and Jackie was not home. No one was. I went to the woods and went inside her tree house, but no one was there. I went back to roller-coaster road and crashed the baker’s car. Was that the way it happened? Who was in that car? It wasn’t a baker, not yet, it was a driver. The driver. Such a familiar face. A dead face. My least favorite face.

         I am as home as possible.

         I am in need of new clothes. I need to clean myself. I must be dirty by now. I look down and don’t see a lot. I’m barely there. The new shoes are old now. I look away. There are some things I can’t see. There’s no need to dwell on those things that I cannot see. Straining my vision like that, no. Everything is see-through if you look long enough.

         What time is it? My phone says it’s 5:45, but that’s not right. It’s getting old. That phone is a broken thing. I don’t want to keep broken things. Broken things clutter so be gone with them! Be gone with them? What a thing to say! I never said anything like that.

         My phone is ringing. “Manheim” it says.

         Hello? I say.

         “Manheim” is the man from the wall. Try me at home, he says. Then, there is breathing and the sound of cutlery on settings. Then, Mr. Manheim is chewing, crunching. Try me at home, he says again. More breathing before two dialing tones. I’m no longer a marvelous dancer. I am at home always, whenever I get home. That’s where I find it. Are you at home?

         I shiver almost. Sure, I say.

         Wherever I go is there, he says. Mr. Manheim is chewing again, crunching again, breathing through his nose again. For everyone in your home, I am a marvelous dancer.

         Okay, I say.  

         Where I go is there, he says.

         Who is this? I ask.

         I am a marvelous dancer here.

         Where is everybody? I ask. Why is no one here?

         Mr. Manheim pauses, making a sound like he’d been socked in the gut.

         Where’s Mom?

         Everyone is in here with me, he says. I can hear him adjusting himself in a rickety old whicker chair.

         In here? I ask, not seeing anyone.

         Yes.

         There’s no one here except me, I say. And those coiled up creatures in the corner. But they’re not real.  

         Mr. Manheim laughs and hangs up.

         The creatures are uncoiling, sliding through the brown, becoming the brown shag, faces in there and talking mouthpieces, feet in there and walking. This isn’t real, I say knowing that I should be right. But those faces are familiar faces and they sing almost like angels. Their voices are not too good.

         Like they should be on the radio! I say, feeling the presence of many listeners. I smile to continue: Welcome to this, our first in a series: “Homme de L’Ombre.”

         No, no, no, there are cameras all around me! In these crummy walls where my fists have nearly always been!

         Everyone sees me! I shout, cracking like a whip in the hallway of the house where the coil creatures crawl. I tell tales: The first of November was the coldest of the season. Everything was empty nearing the end of rush hour at the end of a season, quickly. I was missing everything. I didn’t like anything, so it made sense to do it then, when it was already getting dark so early. It felt like snow.

         The lady in the lobby had questions, but I had practiced my responses for too long and ended up sounding insincere, obvious. So I was tired. I needed a suite for the night. “Top floor please, I just love a view of the city,” I said. She smiled a lot and she was built like a fresh brick wall. I liked her enough I guess. I didn’t care, but I deep down knew that she might be the last I speak to. That made me sad: that my last interaction with anyone would be with this vacuous smiling customer service blondie. She was pretty. I wanted to touch her, but she was a fresh brick wall, like everyone these days.

         A broadcast continues as the corner creatures slither all through the brown shag, under my feet. They carry me around the house. I should stop them. I should fuck them to stop them I think, but how? I do not want to think about them. So I don’t. I should leave this place.

         I leave this place and collapse back to town. It’s the side of the road that I see, but there’s someone there that wasn’t there before. As this someone gets closer to me I can see that they are moving very slowly. I try not to be strange sometimes and act normal a lot. I’m getting better at it. Closer still, I see that it’s a very old person, judging from the slope of their walk and the silver topped cane. I am less scared now because it is an old person. I could stomp an old person if I had to. Not that I would do anything like that, but I could.

         The old person pauses under a streetlamp at the entrance to Meadow Brook, catching their breath. It is a very very old man, silver hair halo of streetlight. I skid my feet to let him know I’m coming, but he doesn’t know. I don’t want to scare him. He looks fragile. He shakes. He rests his body between his cane and the stonewall. He does not hear me. I cough. His eyes are shadow and he looks at me. I can’t tell what color his eyes are.

         Who’dere? he grumbles.

         Hi, I say. I’m…

         Heh? he shouts, scrunching up his face and cupping his ear. Wrinkles stripe his face. Liver spots across a face and his never-ending forehead. He is very short of breath. The man does not look like he is physically qualified to be out walking.  

         Are you okay? I ask him.

         I’s an eng’neer fer twenny-five year ‘fore I switch. Well, atchally dey jus’ tole me I’s switchin’. The old man squints. Breathes heavy. Had me on colors. Now, mine-you, I got twenny-fi’teen vision. Perfeck vision. Ann-I ain’t colorblind er nothin’. But lemme tell ya, ’s jus’ “this un er that un, beige er taupe, lime er evergreen?” Well, I says de hell widdit n jus’ start rejeckin’ ev’thing, ev’ option, ev’ color, ev’ design I jus’ rejeckit.

         I’m presently working on what this old man is talking about and why.

         Dey din’t liddat. So, dey put me back eng’neerin’.

         Like what you were trained to do, I say.

         ‘xackly! he says, grabbing me gently by the shoulder, for support but shaking me. I left de parkin’ lot n dere uz near a ass’dent inna crosswalk. Some kid widda thermuss. Well, kid throw it, right inna win’shield. Glass splinners n ev’thing. Hah!

         Oh, wow. You headed to town? I ask.  

         Heh?

         Are you going into town? I ask loudly.

         Yeah, yeah, town, he says. Anyways, ’s a funny story, de driver’s drivin’ way too fast n de, de kid widda thermuss, well mebbe de kid’s thirdy er so, not really a kid guess, but well he near got cream by de guy. Goin’ ‘bout fiddy-five inna parkin’ lot. So de kid throw de thermuss n de win’shield jus’ splinners! Heh-heh! That’s it. ’s a goodun.

         Do you need help walking? I ask, not really wanting to help him.

         I’m ra-coverin’ fromma stroke, he says. No, I’m… ‘ey you chop wood?

         Sometimes, yeah, I say.

         Log splitter?

         No, I just chop it.

         Maul?

         Yeah, an axe.

         I bin usin’ a ol’ haatchet, he says, sounding confused by the sound of it.

         That can’t be easy, I say. You cut your own wood?

         Heh?!

         Do you cut your own firewood?

         Yeah, fire stove. You use fire het?

         Sometimes, we have a radiator too. Electric.

         We walk slowly.

         I ask, So, where you going?

         Goin’? He breathes out and looks around the dark air, eyes watery. Goin’ ta, uh, ta uh, ta work, uh, jus’ uppere bit.

         Where do you work? I ask.

         Where? Imma eng’neer. Mechanical.

         Where is your work?

         The old man scratches a liver spot with a shaky hand. He says, Well I use’lly dri’ dere… bu’ dis mornin’… He breathes an audible, Ah…

         I don’t push it. We’re walking.

         We walk now past the grange, and he laughs, remembering something. Dere’s a girl innere… he laughs again.

         A girl?

         He smiles and shakes his head. I’s a yun’ fool.

         I’m still a young fool, I say with a smile.

         Nev’ eve’ asker ta dance neither.

         Why not?

         Too ‘fraid.

         Of what? Who cares about some girl?

         ‘fraid o’ losin’ mebbe.

         That’s stupid.

         ’s not stupit; ‘s de way idduz! the old man almost shouts.

         It’s not like hooking up with girls is a sport, man, I say.

         He starts to shout, but falls into a coughing fit.

         You okay? I ask, but he just coughs. I pause and wait it out. You okay?

         Love’s magic, he says and he is no longer coughing. Love’s magic.

         Love’s just some bullshit they made up to sell Valentine’s Day gifts, I tell him.

         Na’s not! Na, na, na. ’s not! He grabs me again by the shoulder and pulls me down to him. Grrls wunners of’a worl’. Grrls, no wimmen!

         Yeah, I guess so.

         Wimmen runna worl’. It true. Choo know dat?  

         Well yeah, no shit, I say.

         Wimmen’s jus’ stron’ as us, nowdays dey stron’, the old man adds.

         Nowadays?

         Heh?! The old man’s yellow teeth are misshapen and turned in all directions. He must be the oldest person I’ve ever seen.

         How old are you? I ask him.

         Noddaz ol’ az I shoul’ be! he laughs at his own nonsense.

         Do you need to get back home? I ask. Where do you live?

         I live, he looks around and points at the old building before us.

         What? You live here? At the grange?

         Sure.

         Do you have a key? I ask.

         Don’ needit, he says.

         Well, could I come charge my phone there? It’s dead.

         The old man laughs at the request. Deadt?

         Yeah, my phone, I clarify, holding it up. Wait, didn’t I just charge it? I press the home button but nothing happens. It is dead. You got a charger?

         A wha’? he asks.

         A charger.

         Na, don’ thinzo, he says.

         We slide across the road where the light is red but no one is coming. There is a gangway bridge over to the upper entrance to the old building. The building stands by a river in a ravine. I think I’ve been here before, but it doesn’t look the way I remember it. The old man walks through the door. I am inside the grange with him now. There are no lights on and the moon is shining in through high windows. We are down the stairs and in the main room now.

         How’d you do that? I ask. How’d you get down those stairs?

         Jus’ walkin’ guess. How you do it? he laughs.

         I don’t know, I say. I’m unsure of everything now and I’m scared. There are lapses in my memories, this never happens, I remember everything, I think.

         We are in a showroom with a stage at the end and folding chairs unfolded, ready for an audience. It’s a low-budget affair, no curtains or anything, just a bare stage set about two feet off the floor. The old man sits in the farthest seat from the stage. He groans as he sits.

         ’s where I seen her, the old man says. She’s one dem folk-singer. Dey’s popler a’ de time n I like ‘em, gidda kick outta ‘em. Pete, Paul, n Mary, Joan Mishell. Love ‘emall. He sighs and his watery blues wander the big room. Grrl sang dat… and here he began to sing quite poorly, “W’ere of alla flower gone? Lon’ time passin’. W’ere of alla flower gone? Lon’ time ‘go…” She singit boot’ful dough. She’s a guitar inner lap n she’s kneld right dere onna stage, jus’ lookin’… ahh… Dere’s flowers drawin’ onner guitar n I thought dat uz pred’ neat. She’s like a pixie fromma fores’, a springtime fairy flyin’ in fer visit. The old man chuckles.

         I don’t know how to talk to old people, so I just don’t usually.

         The old man jerks his arm and drops his cane. How we gedd‘ere? he asks.

         We walked, I say.

         Na, na, na. ‘s too far. Can’ be.

         Too far from where?

         From… uh… from… The old man’s eyes flicker and he is confused. From… uh… His mouth shudders.

         Sir, I say, we should get you back home.

         Who’re ye? the old man asks me.

         I’m just a person, I say.

         Heh?! Person? Dat some kine-a lib’ral thing? he asks.

         No, I say.

         Jussa person?

         Yeah, I’m a person, I say.

         He knocks on my head with his knuckle. Dere ana’thin’ goin’ on inn’ere? He knocks again. De hell are ya?

         I don’t know, I say. I don’t know.

         Whachoo mean? Ain’tchoo gotta name? He is angry with me now and continues to pummel me with his wrinkled, boney fist. Wha’ kine-a person are ya? You criminal er somethin’?

         No, I say.

         Tell me, Goddammit!

         I’m just a funny dude, I guess.

         Funny dude? He rubs his bristly chin. What’s tha’ spose ta mean?

         I’m just… I tell jokes. I’m funny.

         Jokes? Tell me un.

         I only tell jokes sometimes.

         Why n’now? he says.

         Nothing’s funny to me right now.

         The old man grumbles to himself, scratching his wool pant leg. He comes back quick, saying, I kin tella joke, ya red’ fer goodun?

         Sure, I say.

         Okay, so’s a gay, a nigger, n a spic… 

         Stop, I say. I don’t want to hear a joke like that.

         Joke li’wha’?

         Racist jokes, I say, Homophobic jokes.

         Homa-wha’?

         Homophobic. I don’t like jokes like that.

         The old man eyeballs me for a long moment, sizing me up. You a gay?

         I’m not a gay, I say.

         Well, y’ain’t a black, he says.

         No, I scoff, I’m not a black either. Doesn’t mean I like racist jokes.

         Wha’ ‘bout Jews?

         What about Jews? I say. What do you mean?

         Y’like Jews?

         I guess so. I like some of them.

         Figgers, the old man says. He is now lighting a cigarette.

         The room is too big to be so empty. The stage is sad. I read the clock on the wall, 5:45. That can’t be right… What the hell is happening? I ask.

         Y’ain’t ver’ funny, the old man tells me.

         I’m not trying to be funny, I say, feeling dizzy of a sudden. I fall over sometimes, I say, catching myself before I do.

         A spotlight snaps on from the balcony, shining down on the empty stage. A twiggy young girl walks out carrying a sparkling flower-trimmed guitar. Her eyes smile more than her mouth and she blurs and she moves, like time can’t keep up with her. Then her mouth does smile, a revealing smile – she’s nervous.

         Hi, she says. I’m gonna play “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” I’m not very good yet, so, sorry if I mess it up. She almost giggles and my heart suddenly and violently violates every earthly commandment. Am I smiling?

         The old man claps. He looks younger of a sudden, rejuvenated by her presence. Yer doin’ great grrl! he says.

         Thanks, in her whispering smile. Then, she sings. Beautifully flawed. Basic, finger strummed chords and her disarmingly natural voice fill the showroom. Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing. Where have all the flowers gone? Long time ago.

         I have never heard this song before I don’t think. It does feel familiar though. And I do forget nearly everything all the time. The song makes me feel something that I don’t want to describe. It’s like the last succulent bit of a sweet candy. Like the sunrise through unfamiliar curtains. It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense to me. I can’t explain any of it. It’s not my job to explain everything anyway. It’s not my place to even understand. I don’t know the meaning of any of this. I don’t even care about any of this.

         The girl flubs a chord and huffs, but then she bravely continues. When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

         The old man is crying at full now. His tears sparkle in the bright light as they ripple down the wrinkled canyons of his face. He’s enrapt. His hands are still for once, resting on his cane.      

         Where have all the young girls gone? Long time passing. Where have all the young girls gone? Long time ago.

         There is only myself and this old man watching all of this happen. It’s basic guitar and she’s a pretty all right singer though. I think it’s been a while since I’ve liked anything and I think I like her pretty all right singing. I wouldn’t sign her or anything, if I were a big record executive, but she’s magical in her way and I am listening. There’s rarely money in magic and there is most certainly no magic in money.

         When will they ever learn?

         I find that I’m thinking instead of listening.

         Where have all the young men gone?

         This is about war isn’t it?

         Where have all the soldiers gone?

         Yep.

         Where have all the graveyards gone?

         She’s pretty good and these words are giving me chills and making me fall in love with the singing girl.

         She fizzles out and appears to come out of a trance, blinking a lot and smiling a lot. She has glitter on her face, sparkles around her eyes. It’s as if we’ve stumbled across her in some mystical forest and she’s summoned something into the room that fills it like a fresh air. We’re still in the empty showroom and her voice has turned into nothing again. Then, nothing else happens for quite some time. It’s only her and that blinking and that smiling that so beguiles the old man and myself.

         I clap my hands but they don’t clap.

         The old man stares at her like a child at the movies. She’uz m’ true love… he says. I know ittuz true love n ye know how?

         How? I ask.

         I feel it, he concluded. I feel it ev’where. She…

         But isn’t that just, like, when you’re turned on by a girl? I say.

         Heh? Turn on?! he shouts. His voice makes our beautiful singer vanish. His voice does not charm the room as hers once did.

         I mean, you just had a crush or something, I say.

         A crush? Wuddent a crush! the old man gets up quickly from his chair and his hip pops. Ah, shit! he screams, falling to the floor. Ah, shit! Ah, shit, mud-fucker!

         Are you okay? I ask.

         No!

         He’s hurt, but I really don’t like touching old people, so I ask, Can I do anything to help?

         Quit bein’ a fuckin’ dumbass, begin wit’!

         I’m not a dumbass, I claim, unsure.

         Yer a winey-ass, third-worl’-problem li’l shit, he says. Yer whole gen’ration’s liddat.

         That’s bullshit though, I say. Just because I’m not starving to death or something doesn’t mean I don’t suffer. I understand that water is important and a house and all that. I’m not complaining about any of those things. Those things are things that I… I don’t know.

         Oh, fuggoff, he says. Ye don’ know whatchoo got. Ye eve’ stand onna ‘ssembly line inna factree all day? Huh?

         No, I’m still in high school.

         So what!

         Well, I need to get my education, I tell the old timer.

         Wha’s edjacation?

         You know, math and science and stuff. Everyone knows that stuff.

         Ah bullshit. He rolls onto his side, punching at his hip joint. You don’t know how good you’ve got it. Ye goddam crybabe.

         I almost never cry, I say.

         Not onna outside ya don’. Yer too busy lookin’ et yer goddam phone. Ya don’ eve’ give yerself a secon’ ta think ‘bout annathing. Too ‘fraid ta ac-chally stop n think! Too ‘fraid ta ac-chally ‘sperience yer own Goddam life.

         I don’t believe this old bastard. Well, you’re too afraid to feel anything. You think that working is gonna make me think? Working in some bullshit position that slowly helps the human race fuck the planet to death? You think that’s gonna make me think?

         The old man sighs, having knocked the socket back into place. Jus’ hep me up wouldja? Fer Chrissake.

         I say, I think about things all the time, and I hoist the old heap up onto his feet.

         Yeah, but ye don’ do it useful. Ya jus’ sit ‘round n mope allatime, feelin’ sorry fer yerself n dwellin’ inna buncha bullshit.

         What should I do? Go drill for oil?

         Sure, why not?

         Fuck that.

         Yer spoilt da’s what, he concludes again. Yer whole gen’ration… spoilt. Ya got ev’thing inna whole worl’ a’chore fingertip, buchoo don’ want nothin’. Ye want nothin’. Ya don’ do nothin’ at all.

         You know what I want? I say. I want to not feel like shit. That’s all I want. I want to not feel shitty.

         Ah please! he says, walking through the door. We’re outside now. We’re by the river. It’s very cold and damp. The roar of the water fills the silence. I useta fish here, he nearly shouts. I hear him okay.

         Cool, I shout, giving a thumbs up in case he didn’t hear me.

         Great fish, big ol’ fish, sometime. Summada bigges’ in Coal Riv’, right ‘ere. Dis de spot. We’d ride down ‘ere inna summer, carryin’ fishing rods n ev’thing. The old man sniffs the air and laughs.

         Hey, I’m gonna leave, I tell the old guy, hoping for an easy exit.

         An easy exit, however, is not available. The old man says, We gotta go ta roll-coaster ro’.

         What?

         Roll’coaster ro’, he repeats, licking his deeply chapped lips.

         I’m scared now. We can’t go to roller coaster road. There’s a dead guy there, in the cold water. Why? I ask.

         Dey’s a dead guy dere, he says.

         I back away from the old man. He lurches along on his cane after me.

         Ye wave ta ‘im, back onna ro’. It wudden’t ver’ lon’ go. Ye wave ta ‘im. Tha’s why it heppen.

         What were you like watching me or something? I ask.

         Somethin’ liddat, he says.

         What’s that supposed to mean?

         It mean we goin’ beck ta roll-coaster ro’. Something snaps, a twig maybe, or a rock tumbling. The water is not cold. The current moves quickly here. There’s no way there’s good fishing here. That old man is full of shit.        

:-)

         The car should be destroyed. The man inside is certainly dead: the blank stare, the dripping blood, the pools. There’s nothing I could have done. I do not feel guilty about it. I was just trying to get his attention, not kill him. I don’t know why I need attention, a lot of it. I hate that I need it. It’s not something I control, I don’t think. If I could I would. I could have maybe done it different in that moment. No, it was just stupid. Why didn’t I think that jumping out in front of a car at night might scare someone or make them swerve? I sometimes do things and I don’t know why I do them.

         I say things and I don’t know why either.

         Are you dying? I ask the old man.

         Me? No.

         You said you had a stroke right? I say.

         Yep.

         I’m sorry, I don’t know how that all works.

         Yep. Healin’ frumma stroke. Makin’ it hard ta puddon m’sock.

         But don’t people usually die from strokes?

         No, no, no. Plenny peep s’vive ‘em. Jus’ gotta keep de machine movin’, ye know.

         Why?

         Why?

         Yeah, why? Aren’t you in a lot of pain?

         The old man laughs, Wha’? Pain?

         I mean yeah, I say. Why live if it’s only painful?

         You n yer complainin’. Wha’s pain an’ways? Buncha signal ta m’brain tellin’ me dis hurt n dat feel bad. Well, fuggit! Who needsit? Not a problem. Jus’ fergeddit.

         We are at the car in the river at the bottom of roller coaster road. It is demolished. Shards of glass twinkle starlight. There is a bloody, head-shaped, splintered dent in the windshield. And there it is: my least favorite face of all. He’s all mashed up and grey. He does not blink. I hate him.

         Welp, says the old man, placing his hands on his hips, dere ‘ee is.

         Who is he? I ask, hoping I don’t know.

         Ye know ‘im, don’cha?

         I swallow hard. No.

         Yeah, ya do. Look ‘gain.

         I don’t look again. Instead I scramble up the slope, slipping and getting mud on my new shoes. They’re new shoes. I appreciate my new shoes sometimes. It’s with gratitude that I wear them in. They’re making me slip some, no, that’s not right. Can’t blame the shoes. They’re not even new anymore. I’m walking away from whatever is happening down in the river. I am very cold and I am shivering.

         C’mon kid, the old man says, gimme a han’, wouldja?

         No, I’m not… I can’t, I say.

         Quit bein’ sucha puss ‘boudit n get down ‘ere. Dis guy’s ‘live. We needa geddim outta ‘ere. The old man opens the passenger side door and pulls the floating dead man out into the river. The dead man limply bobs in the slow water.

         He’s dead, I say.

         ’s fine, the old man says. Now gimme a han’ widdim!

         I’m in the river now with a dead man in my arms. He’s exactly as cold as the water. This guy’s dead, I say.

         Wouldja shut yer mouth aminnit n jus’ hep me geddim outta de wowter?! The old man looks dead himself now, having soaked for too long in dangerously cold water. C’mon! he shouts.

         Fight, flight, or freeze and I am frozen.

         How does one become a person? After everything that’s happened, all of the forgotten things I’ve supposedly done, all of which I cannot remember, I cannot remember how, so there is no answer. They say that it’s easy: just be yourself. Easy for them to say. I’ve never been myself. I’ve never been anyone really I think. I can’t even help when there’s a dead guy in the water. I can’t even think about going into the water. I’m frozen. I’m ashamed.

         Get yer ass down ‘ere! the old man growls.

         And then there is another voice coming from the river. I cannot understand what the voice says.

         Is he? I say.

         Get yer ass down ‘ere!

         I shiver. I am numb before I’m in the water. I’m in the water beyond my will. I scream as I enter it. And as I wade over to the car, the man grasps ahold of the old man and myself, grey, battered, covered in blood, but no longer bleeding.

         How’s that? the dead man says to the old man.

         We getcha, c’mon, c’mon, the old man says.

         It’s very kind of you to have stopped, the soft-spoken man says.

         We pull the softly spoken accident man from the river, up to the shore where we huddle around him to warm up, but he is very cold.

         You okay? I ask, stupidly.

         Been in a bit of a fender-bender haven’t I?

         Yep, says the old man.

         It was my fault, I surprise myself by saying.

         What was? Mr. Manheim asks.

         The accident.

         How’s that?

         I caused you to swerve, I say. You were driving and I needed a ride, so I waved to get your attention.

         You did?

         Yes.

         No, no, no, he says, that wasn’t the way of it.

         Yes, it was, I say.

         No, no, no. It was the fog that did it. I couldn’t see a thing through the fog. The man looks around, but sees that there is no fog. Must’ve blown out, he adds.

         Are you okay? I ask again.

         The man pats his chest and his legs, pats his head to see. I must look a wreck, he says. He turns back to the car and points at it. Like a bump or something. Must’ve… he looks around. He doesn’t say anything further.

         Do you have a phone? I ask the man.

         He just points at the car and shakes his head.

         Mine’s dead, I say. We could go charge it at my house. It’s only a couple miles from here.

         The man says, I live just up the road. Let’s go there. He brokenly lumbers up the muddy bank and beckons us to follow.

         The old man needs help up the slope though he’s doing surprisingly well after what he’s been through. Maybe he is recovering.

:-)

         We are sitting at the man’s breakfast nook, looking at a mailbox that says “321 Melbrook” and “Manheim.” There’s an amber hanging light that says Olympia and Mr. Manheim brings us steaming cups of tea on a tray. The nook is quiet and everything smells like peppermint and chamomile. Mr. Manheim lives like an old maid. There’s embroidery and tasteful curtains at the windows. His cutlery is beautiful and the parquet floors shine. His phone is rotary, with the spinning dialer. I haven’t seen one of those in ages. I laugh when I see it.

         Shouldn’t we probably call for an ambulance? I suggest.

         No, I’ll be all right, Mr. Manheim says.

         But you’re pretty hurt, I say.

         I’ll take a shower in a bit. I’ll be fine, be fine, I’ll be fine, he sputters, blowing the steam from his shuddering floral teacup. I just need a few minutes to get my bearings.

         You’ve been through hell, the old man says, drinking the scalding tea without flinching.

         Only way out is through, Mr. Manheim says.

         Don’ I know it, replies the old man, scratching his wet polyester baby-blues.

         I wrap my hand around my teacup, gripping it hard and waiting for the heat to become unbearable. Then, I keep holding it for as long as I can stand it burning my palms. It’s something I like to do. Well, maybe not like, but it is something I do. I do a lot of things that I don’t like because it’s too hard to like anything and if I didn’t do anything I didn’t like then I would do almost nothing at all. I can stand the heat of a boiling gripped teacup for a very long time. It proves something to me.  

         No one speaks for some time. There is a windy sycamore branch tapping at the window, but otherwise everything feels like cotton balls and stagnant fog in here. 

         I’ve been having this dream lately, Mr. Manheim says. It’s behind Albertson’s. Are you familiar with the Albertson’s in town?

         Yeah, I say.

         Well, so I’m playing wall ball or some kind of game with a blue bouncy ball. I’m by myself in the dream. There’s no one there at all in my dream. It’s just me there, playing a game. I bounce the ball and run after it and all that. But then, I get this strange feeling. I don’t even know how to describe the feeling. Like a sinking feeling, like when you smell something you haven’t smelled for many years. It’s like if you were to stumble upon a place you’d been as a child but couldn’t quite place it or like you couldn’t access the memory of it. Do you know that sinking gut feeling?

         Sure, I say. Like you remember it, but you don’t really.

         I suppose, yes. Like that. The memory is inside or something, but only hidden.

         All m’memories’re liddat, the old man says, half in jest.

         We smile at the old man and Mr. Manheim continues. Well, anyhow, I get this feeling, but it’s like the feeling is urging me to enter the woods behind the Albertson’s.

         The woods? I say. My insides turn over.

         Yes, the woods.

         Wha’ wood? the old man says. Ain’t no wood baddere.

         The little strip of woods behind the Albertson’s there, Mr. Manheim says. Between the Albertson’s and the estates beyond.

         No one goes there, I say.

         What d’you mean? Mr. Manheim asks.

         I’m not sure, I say.  

         Well, in the dream that’s the place that’s… I don’t know… it calls to me, like a place I remember but don’t remember. Like you said. A memory without substance. It feels like I’m being pulled to it.

         No one goes there, I repeat.

         I turn around and see a little footpath, he continues, there through the brush. It’s just a tiny little path, maybe a wildlife path or what have you. There’s nothing particularly strange about the little path, but something about it terrifies me beyond explanation. I don’t want to go there, but I can’t stop going there.

         No one goes there, I say.

         Wouldja shuddup? the old man says. Ledda man tell a story.

         Sorry, I say. I just don’t think that anyone goes there.

         We hear’ ye de firs’ t’ree time, Goddammit!

         That’s all right, Mr. Manheim says. There’s not much else to tell about the dream. There’s no big “wow!” moment or anything. It’s just that little pathway to that little strip of woods.

         Does the bouncy ball roll down the path? I ask.

         Wha’ ball? the old man says, scowling and grumbling at me.

         The bouncy blue ball, Mr. Manheim says. It rolls past my feet and down the path. How’d you know that?

         What happens then? I ask. I have a bad feeling I’ve known the ending of this dream before.

         Mr. Manheim sips his tea. His lips are still purple and he certainly still looks like he’s dead. The bleeding has stopped, not because his cuts have healed or because they’ve been sutured, no, it he looks like he’s out of blood. His fingers rattle the spoon. The honey bear smiles.

         The old man has given up on the story of the dream – he looks past the curtains to the darkness outside and the tapping sycamore.

         Mr. Manheim nervously laughs as if he’s gotten this far into retelling his dream, but didn’t consider how exposing it might be to tell it. Never mind, he says. It was just a dream I had.

         What happens then? I foolishly ask.

         Nothing much, he lies into his steaming tea.

         I know that there’s more to it than he’s saying. I don’t push it because the guy was in a terrible car accident. We sip our tea and think about the things we’re thinking about. I feel indescribably lonely here. It’s a nice place and it makes me feel lonely to be in such a nice place that could be a home if things were different. For me.

         Do you want to see what I found there? Mr. Manheim asks, pointing to the cutlery drawer. I could show you I think. It’s in there. Everything’s in there with me.  

         No, I say.

         And then nothing else happens, no.

V

         A self-sabotaging philosophy hinders existence and deters a pursuit and whatever of a people. After reading, it’s November, I think Ishivermore.

         A missing boy bother. Brother not others, no furtherwords for an inquiry pit. The irony is meaninglessness. A circular meaninglessness. Of bottomless mug tea – a mess of teatime, his spill no mop.

         Asleep in a stairwell of Night Fog and a stare of filthy concrete. The rain is loud enough on the roof.  

         Inexplicable put-ons. Even I don’t know why.

         I read the other documents on the I-Pad, but none are worth anything. Most of them don’t even make sense. In every significantly poorer a “d-7connect.”

         I almost drop the I-Pad, no I do. Shaken burden, stare of concrete of a concrete earth of a scorched sage. I pick up and scroll his pages. Read until I feel as I’m going like I’m infected like I’m sick I’m going. Under a sound, reading an entirety of “d-7connect,” and it’s night or early morning in November again to borrow Hector’s Cutlass Supreme to drive out to the woods to be behind Albertson’s. Hector’s hiskeys in visor. I know this because he told me this.

         Below is the conclusion of the document “d-7connect”:

:-)

      Mr. Manheim puts a CD into a DISC-MAN that is connected to little white speakers on the kitchen counter. Just above the cutlery drawer.

         You like rap? he asks.

         Sure, I say.

         Rap? the old man says. Buncha gol’-chain-wearin’ fools. 

         Ice-Cube from speakers.

         Mr. Manheim is encrusted purple and his right eye is swollen closed and his upper lip is severed and his forehead is dented and one of his arms remains slack at his side and his scalp is halfway peeled up.

         ‘s garbage, the old man grumbles. Whudd’eve happen ta playin’ yer own instament n bein’ talen-ned? Now dey jus’ steal a song n talk abuncha trash ove’ it. Garbage.

         Mr. Manheim is opening a hidden drawer in the cupboard. You guys smoke? he asks us.

         Sure, we both say.

         Mr. Manheim looks at the dried blood on his hands and laughs, Better wash my hands first. He staggers to the sink and turns on the faucet. Seeing his reflection in the darkened window by the sink, Mr. Manheim gasps. Jesus! What’s happened to me?

         You’s inna car acciden’, the old man says.

         Oh, my God, he says. I look like Hell!

         We’ve been telling you that, I say. You ready to go to a hospital yet?

         No, the man says, pausing and staring at himself as a window reflection. Time cures all ills.

         Wha’ kine-a bullshit iddat? the old man asks.

         Time. It cures everything eventually. The man soaps up and scrubs his hands, rinses and dries them on a kitchen towel.

         Time kills, the old man says.

         Exactly, Mr. Manheim agrees.

         Well, none of that philosophical crap is gonna save your life, I say, wondering if it’s true. You need to go to the hospital.

         Nah, he says, still only staring at himself, pushing at bits of skin on his face. What can they do anyway?

         Are you kidding? I ask. You’ll die if you don’t go. 

         ’s on’y a change, says the old man. Ev’thin’s always changin’.

         That’s not a cure, I say.

         It can be, says Mr. Manheim.

         That’s stupid, I say. So you’re saying that if I get cancer and want to cure it I should just go jump off the bridge by the gorge?

         That’s oddly specific, the man says, grinding and patting marijuana into the pipe.

         I saw it on TV, I say.

         The man has a lighter with a tulip on it. Flick-flick. He fills his mouth with smoke and then breathes in deeply, no coughing, no sputtering, just deep inhalation and a long satisfied blow. You like creepy shows like that? Mr. Manheim asks.

         Well, no, not really, but I see them sometimes.

         What? Did you accidentally watched the show or something? he laughs, handing the pipe to the old man.

         The old man thanks him.

         Yeah, I guess so, I say. I just saw it.

         The old man hands me the pipe. You ol’ ‘nough fer dis? he asks with a laugh.

         Yeah, of course, I’m twenty-one, I say.

         Bullshit, the old man says. ‘n’ I’m twenny-five, he laughs. Go easy, kid.

         I cough.

         If this were a normal day, the sun would have been up a long time ago and I would be convincing myself not to get up for school. Today’s different though. It’s a blend of things that makes it the way it is here in this stranger’s kitchen, it’s a good day, listening to A Good Day, and feeling like dancing suddenly, and so we do. Kitchen late-night or early morning dancing is a good kind of dancing in some sweaty room I’m not sure I’ve ever been in before. I’ve never been much of a dancer, but I do it sometimes, usually by myself or close to it like today’s company of kitchen dancers. The old guy is barely moving at all but what the hell do you expect, he’s old and it’s a miracle that he’s standing at all. It’s a miracle to be dancing here. And there’s so much to dance for: mysteries, technologies, friends, lovers, families (if that’s your thing), so there’s no reason to hold back from it.

         It’s still dark outside and I ask Mr. Manheim what time it is, but he doesn’t know, so I ask the old man and he tells me Quardder six. I ask him why it’s still dark, he just scoffs and tries to move his hips – slowly he’s doing his thing, a joyful grimace on his face.

         Why am I here, coughing and dancing with these two men I’ve never known? I’ve probably saw them around before – it’s a small town – but I couldn’t tell you their names. You ever wonder why we’re here? I ask, feeling stupid for asking.

         No, says the old man.

         There’s really no purpose for us, says Mr. Manheim. Whether I’m here or not makes very little difference in the grand scheme of things.

         Doesn’t that bother you? I ask.

         No, he continues, it really just frees me up to do whatever I want. If I sit here and smoke pot and stare out the window all day, it really doesn’t change much. And unless it bothers me or makes me sad or keeps me from doing essential things like eating and cleaning up after myself, then it’s okay to just sit and stare at whatever interests me. I think about anything I want; I let my mind wander, or not, or I can go do something exciting, or not, or I can call anyone I know and tell them off, or not, or I can expect something to happen to me, something exciting or invigorating or life-affirming or whatever, but even that doesn’t make any difference to anyone but myself.

         I’m twirling the lighter around the top of the pipe’s bowl.

         Mr. Manheim pauses and breathes. Then he speaks again, I used to always try to prove myself to the world, to prove that I was worthy of living or something, by doing noble, selfless things, and when no one cared about what I’d done, I took it as proof that I was not worthy. But then I realized that that’s just complete bullshit. I can do or not do the greatest things and that does not change the fact that I am here, I am thinking, I am alive, and I am worthy. Even Shakespeare or Einstein woke up in the morning and wondered whether they could carry on. Their greatness likely did not occur to them. They just did what they did and we for whatever reasons, as a civilization, have held onto their works, their ideas, as things worthy of study and worship and analysis and historical record. Do you see what I mean?

         Yer a asshole, says the old man.

         Doesn’t it make you sad? I ask.

         Yes, says Mr. Manheim, dabbing his scalp with a handkerchief and checking for blood, sometimes. But even my sadness doesn’t carry more significance than it would if it were happiness or contentment or rage, so because of that, I can let that sadness wander around and go away like any other thought.

         Oh, so Zen o’ ya, mocks the old man. Ye reach nirvaina yet? 

         No, he says.  

         Mr. Manheim puts on snorkel-goggles and is laughing and now so am I. What a wonderful time to drift into things, whatever it is we’re doing. Then, from outside, light suddenly pours in through the window, blinding us and silhouetting us on the wall. It’s a pair of headlights.

         Who dat? the old man grumbles.

         Don’t know, says Mr. Manheim.

         We walk to the window and look out, but all we can see is the front end of a big truck and it’s four headlights. Looks like a truck, I say.

         A truck?

         Yeah, a big truck, Cummins or GMC, not sure.

         I don’t know anyone with… Mr. Manheim turns down the speakers and hides his pipe and baggy in the cutlery drawer. Stepping down hallway, he turns on the fan in the bathroom, turns on the overhead fan in the kitchen, and opens the window. It’s very cold out and the room quickly grows uncomfortably cold. Mr. Manheim jogs out to the front door, along the way grabbing a baseball bat from the closet. He opens the door and shouts out, Who’s there? No one responds, the engine is loud and it smells like diesel. Hey! he shouts, stepping out onto the porch, Who’s there? Nothing but a chug-chug, rumble-rumble. I’m coming out, I’ve got a baseball bat here, so you better not fuck around with me or I’ll be forced to bash your fucking brains in! Dribbles of Mr. Manheim’s thick blood now drip from the clenched end of his bat. He’s chewing on nothing, bulging temples, sweat forming.

:-)

         In the back of a truck. Windy hairs and blocking the view so that it’s impossible to see anything but the windy hairs and the whipping branches along the sides of the road. Crackling gravel. No moon. No sun. Count the stars I might. A broken down thing that always tells me that I should be going somewhere, but laughs because it can never take me there, not now, not in the condition of everything. The truck is not broken down, that’s not what I mean anyway. It’s a loud truck and the wind is loud and my thoughts are louder still, as they always are, and the old man is gone and Mr. Manheim is gone and I am alone in the back of a loud truck. It’s very cold but I don’t care because we turn away from the trees and soon I’m moving so fast that I can’t see or tell. A river highway. Winding of ups and downs and views of which I am unable to catch a concrete glimpse, that’s why this is a ride or I think so, and so where am I? I can barely see past my big nose and I think every time I think I see something my thinking blocks or maybe alters everything I think I see, but I’m riding on a dark road and there are no streetlights here and I like it here because I am in the shadows of mountains. I sit in the back of a truck –    a Cummins or a GMC – hair whippy. Should I knock on the glass? No. I don’t do anything. I am in the back of a truck and it is taking me away to somewhere, but where? I don’t care where. That’s the gist of this ride. Flashy stars behold black mountains, whippy winds anyway. Stars are blurs. There is nothing I can’t see now, everything is here as before, only now everything is changing and I am changing I can feel things changing as before, only now there is nothing I can’t see. I am almost breathing the air and it is only in my lungs for now, but then it will be more than it was and I will be breathing again and all might become well again, if it really ever was. I’ve heard stories that make me think that things were different a long time ago. Everything was different in the past and things were probably better back then. Nowadays are bad days I think. I don’t know anything, Christ! I know nothing at all, not one thing is sure anymore, it just grows more and more complicated until I feel like the fog. I dream I’m not what I am even when I’m quite sure I am. That’s the difference between me. It’s a smooth road and I appreciate the lay of the land, my arms stretched back, staring at the stars. I laugh.

         The sky is bringing me up again maybe.

         This is a formless time and everything comes and goes, the physical world is slipping by as we drive inside the night. I am a formless time of thoughts and ideas that maybe have never formed because of what I am or whatever I’m not, but that’s impossible, can’t be the way of this experience. I am watching those dark silhouettes of leafless limbs as they zip past the rest of the universe and myself and I wonder if they really do keep me. Is gravity really enough for all of this? Is gravity it? Is that all that keeps me? Does it? What about the things that gravity doesn’t affect, whatever those things might be as I interlace my fingers behind my head, whipping hair, and then I try to relax, perhaps, but that has nothing to do with gravity at all. Or it does. There’s so much I can never know, makes me feel sick to my stomach sometimes, not knowing so many things. It doesn’t matter so who cares.

         Here it comes again, it’s like a wave of everything piled up washing over me and drowning my ability to cope with existence. No, that’s a stupid thing to say. Everything twists up in me and I want to throw up. That’s more like it.

         But no, see this! see this sky tonight, don’t miss anything because it will never come again. The sky! This one is mine and I hold it in my palm, it’s all so small here, I’m very small and everything is so very far away from me. A streetlight flashes overhead, blinding my night-sight, a shooting star across my eyelids now, keeping me from seeing beyond it. That’s the nature of light unnatural.

         In a deep maze everything makes sense at once and then again not after I reach the exit, but here I stand I guess, only it’s the entrance of a maze. There’s just so much noise to sift in this maze. I know it well by now but I get lost every day. The wonderful maze.

         If not for the sky I’d be here now.

         I’m inside the sky and blending. It’s quite jarring. Another streetlight and I’m seeing trails. That’s it of the things I’m speaking now to you. That is the what of if. There are so many things to be thinking in November in the back of a truck when the leaves have all fallen like the fog in the morning. Or is this night? It doesn’t matter to me at all any of these things and I’m not even really thinking anything anyway, so let’s just forget this. No that’s not right. None of this is nonsense anymore.

         My body would be tense about now. I am waiting for wherever we’re heading and that’s just of what I should be thinking. I shouldn’t be thinking about things that cannot be or never were. I worry too much. This is something I’ve always been told and have told to myself. I try not to remember it, but it comes around when it pleases and anyway I can’t remember anything in the morning. ;-)

:-)

         The truck arrives without warning and I’m inside the old man’s home. Colostomy bag unchanged. Don’t open the refrigerator! Turn the heat down please. That’s where I am of a sudden. Memories are lapsing in here, I can feel them, his memories are lapsing in here, I can see them on the walls as the movies he’s always loved. First is John Wayne. He’s got that pick up yer bootstraps and get down to it type that the old man has dreamed he’d be, given similar circumstances. John Wayne is shooting a tribe of fake Indians. That’s what it is. And this is a circumstance that the old man never faced – thank the Lord – but if he did face such a circumstance as that, sure as shit the old guy would come through.

         The old man stands up from his wheelchair, coughing some, a good bit of coughing and he nearly falls over before sitting himself back down again in his wheelchair and whimpering loudly before pounding the arm of the chair and masculinizing his whimpers. That’s what he did. I swear that’s what he is still doing. What a sad thing to see.

         ‘ey, says the old man, Don’cha dare piddy me! Don’choo dare.

         I wasn’t, I say, I didn’t. I mean I don’t, you know, I don’t pity. Pity’s useless.

         Damn righ’! says the old man.

         I continue, though I don’t know if I believe what I say, It just makes people weak. The words sound good together and they make sense, like a puzzle, but how I wish life were just a puzzle.

         But then this is maybe a horror because I am scared of everything now and I know he’s going to kill me, not the old guy but the guy that used to be my friend and lied to his dad about Operation Wolf. And I know you probably don’t believe me by now but it has to be true or else I’m just out here wandering around and waiting for nothing. That cannot be. Absolutely not.

         I turn on the old man’s television set on the table before him. The apartment is a mess so it’s a relief to have something to look at. We watch a show in which a man is driving a car in the dark, headlights illuminating the road as he speeds along, when suddenly a burst of fog comes out of the darkness and the driver thinks he sees a face and he veers off the road and tumbles down into a ravine.

         ’s jus’ how it happen iddent it? asks the old man.

         This is just a TV show, I say.

         Yeah, bu-cho wave yer arm n dat car crash dinnit? Ye fe’t guilly ‘boudit di’n’cha?

         No, not guilty, I say. I am very nervous about this situation unfolding in which this old man’s television set shows me bits and pieces of everything. I can’t make sense of these shows or what they might mean in the context of my life. My life is not in a TV. That’s not the way things happen. I don’t remember, I admit.

         Ya don’… the old man huffs. Ye gotta be kiddin’ me! How come ye ferget sucha thing happen? Guilly bury ye fer-eve’ if ya leddit, kid.

         I don’t care, I say, meaning it.

         Now da’s de firs’ thin’ you saidt dat I ac-chally b’lieve. He’s sitting up in that wheelchair of his now pointing at me as he speaks and unintentionally spitting all over me. It smells like aged urine and bologna in here and I feel the urge to run outside into the fresh air, but I don’t because I am curious about this TV of his.

         It’s not like I’m lying to you, I tell him. I only say what I think.

         Well, wha’choo think ain’t wha’choo say. n tha’s’a  fack.

         What?

         Ye think alotta thing ‘fore ya speck don’cha?

         I guess so.

         Den ye don’ on’y say wha’choo think. Ye think firs’ den ya plan n den ya speck.

         So?

         Heh?

         I said, so?

         So wha’?

         So what is your point about planning and thinking and all that before you speak?

         ‘fore ya speck.

         Yeah, whatever old man, I need to go soon.

         Go where?

         I have school today, I tell him.

         Don’ waste yer time, he says.

         Don’t waste my time with what? School?

         Annathin’.

         So don’t do anything, that’s your advice? Just like stare at a wall all day and do nothing? Don’t think about anything?

         Na, do ev’thing, but don’ waste yer time wid schoo’. ’s jus’ foolin’, schoo’. You betta off learnin’ a trade n jus’ getting’ on widdit.

         Getting on with what? I ask him.

         The old man grimaces and falls back into his wheelchair with a harsh sigh.

         Nothing like that car wreck ever happened, I insist. I forget things in the morning or in the middle of the night. It’s 5:45. And watching TV. A long time at the TV. I have served my time and I wish to be free of it now, but I am sitting with this old guy I met only recently or today, I think. I cannot remove myself from gadgets. Screens haunt me. I feel better in a screen, safe. It’s where I’ve belonged for all my life practically and the journey away from it is not an easy one. I wish I didn’t watch so much TV. I’m ashamed of my ability to really watch a TV. I’m good at it, really I am. I once considered going for the title, but then I found out that’s not a thing. I think I just told a joke. Was that funny? It doesn’t matter I don’t care. 

         The TV was all about me and I was all about the TV. It’s a friend that talks but does not listen. It’s a crowd in an empty space. It’s voices wander in my dreams. The TV is a terrible friend. This is the saddest of all, I think.

         Hey, I say to the old man. We should go outside.

         Yep, says the old man, but does not show any signs of moving or preparing to go outside. Tha’d be…

         I’m going outside, I say and I am outside. The old man is following me but he is not speaking. He is only following me, watching me. His backyard is overgrown and unkempt and there is a sad grey wood fence that’s leaning in places and missing boards. I am on the other side of the fence and there is a dog that is walking itself there, and it’s a stupid dog because it is alone and wandering. It’s like me. And maybe the old man.

         We were outside for some time I guess, and we were making our way to Albertson’s, where there awaited us, behind the grocery store, down a trail that nobody goes down, in-between the store and the housing development, a secret that even I cannot keep very well. 

VI

         a car of loadingdock an albertson’s. in grocery boyspeak, i know i know him, the boy. passwall passwall wallball, a blue ball bouncyball on my way and rolling passesme a pavementblack dripstore! this a think a problem, because i didn’t one bit, happening or not, because phantomboy poison.  

         cold sweating dripping back moving passing, is this or for any wall and for the blue or the anyball and the sounds of bouncing anyball, and the feel, everything creeping in that place, AMPM, behind an albertson’s grocery store, what place? in this wondering of this or of the right one or of yes and but yes of this to know it, that’s what, so that’s what it must, because i know it must and i am here and i say this. grass tall over all, dumpster, where began a forest siding albertson’s AMPM loading dumpsters. i could almost see through to the other side of the forest, because it was just a trees and blackberry vines kind of place like any behind, hidden places, forgotten places, this is of it all, this thing, nevermind, no one went back there, there was no reason to be there, nothing to be there of interest in a would-be seam, just an edge of litter and grass and pavementblacktumbleglass. where wild grows. where no one should go, that’s where.  

         my phone vibrates my pocket. a text from the boy!: u comin im here im not waitin

         i look to see following or watched or what the fuck, no idea. handsshook and hard to read it a second time the shaking and the black dots of eyes knock-knock. paused

                                                                                                                                 and I breathed.

                     dots retreat.

                                           breathed in out

                                                                                 reread the message: u comin im here im not waitin. the boy sent i me!     

         So I clicked on the phone icon to call the boy. It rang. It rang again. It rang again. It rang. It rang and it rang. It rang again. It rang again. Again, it rang. It rang again and again and it rang again and it rang. It rang. It rang. It and rang it rang it ran, no it rang, it rang and again it rang and rang and it rang it rang again and again it again and it and again and rang and and again and it rang again and again it rang and rang that’s what it did. No one answered, but it only rang and rang it again and ringing again and again it rang and rang and rearranged, no not that, it rang again it did. I hung up the phone because of all of the ringing. My right ear rang afterward again and it rang again and it did. Again it rang, on and on it did that. 

         Dammit! I cried, but no one answered, so I ran for the tall grass siding the dumpster and smelled the fresh food waste from Albertson’s and my mouth started to water because of that smell and I almost vomited too, but that might have been from the ghostly text message. Yes that was probably what had done this.

         It began to occur to me that this was all some elaborate prank that they were playing on their poor teacher. This made me start to laugh, almost, but I was also too scared to believe that this could be a hoax. This was too clever for the boy, no doubt, far too clever and far too complex.

         The tall grass was damp and painted my pants damp, pushed through them, finding a little deer’s trail just past the edge of the forest that edged the Albertson’s loading and garbage. I smiled because I was happy about this. I walked the trail. It was a wet day and I became soaked to the bone because of the fat drops of water that fell from the pine boughs, barraged me as I searched the area for any clues to the whereabouts of this boy. God, what was his name!?! I cannot or will not recall.

         But then, before I could remember the boy’s name, I found a pile of stuffies, no not a pile, posed rows, two of them, two rows of about ten or twelve stuffies, all facing away from me and toward the faux-ivy fence that bordered the housing development beyond the little strip of forest. In the place where every stuffed toy stared, there was a flattened out space, a place for performances it would seem.

         I turned and saw his tent, the boy’s tent. It was right there! That was where he had been living! I knew it because I had a hunch and I had a hunch that it was his because I was so sure of it after hunching it. I had never felt more sure than I did during that time when I went to where his tent surely must have been.

         Hello? I called out, but there was no response. It was raining then and the tent was loud so I called out louder, Hello?! Anyone in there?! No response. Just the roar of rain on his tent. I unzipped. I went inside. There was no one inside. It was completely empty inside. The tent was empty because I unzipped and there I was going inside of his tent and there was no one inside of it. There was a damp sleeping bag rolled up in the damp corner of the tent. The rain roared and the flaps dripped. Not condensation but drips, this was a bad tent, overused, uncared for, damaged by time. I unrolled the damp sleeping bag and found a silly little suitcase, it was almost like a toy, but it was big enough to hold a few things. It had a combination lock on each side. I picked it up and took it out of the tent and then I smashed it against the thick trunk of a hemlock. us bust aand

auto-reset

         There was a spoon. It was on a table. There have been a lot of spoons before, but this spoon was on a table.

         The spoon did not move or anything like that.

         The lights were off in the room with the table – it was a kitchen.

         The refrigerator motor turned on and hummed.

         The evening was coming on and the sun did not shine on the house anymore, so some of the wood was settling and creaking. The spoon could not hear any of these sounds.

         The spoon was metal, shiny metal because it was a clean spoon. Someone had washed the spoon before it had been set on the table in the kitchen. Someone cared enough about the cleanliness of the spoon to make an effort to rinse the spoon, scrub the spoon, lather the spoon with Palmolive, and rinse the spoon again and then place it on the drying rack. Once the spoon was dry, it had been moved from the drying rack to the cutlery drawer and from there had been pulled out again and placed on the table.

         It was a clean, unused metal spoon that had been placed on a table in an unlit kitchen.

         There was one other thing: the spoon had a bug on it.

         Nevermind, there was no bug.

         There wasn’t even a spoon or a table or any of that stuff.

         The cutlery drawer was empty.

         The cutlery drawer was chipped wood and flaking paint.

         No one cared enough to rebuild, replace, or even repaint the cutlery drawer.

         Nevermind, the cutlery drawer was brand new. No one had ever used it and a real-estate agent recently appraised the value of the house and had overlooked the fact that the cutlery drawer had never been used and was brand new and therefore the real-estate agent had made an inaccurate appraisal of the house.

         The house was built on a concrete foundation, below which were dead roots. The roots didn’t care about the house, but only struggled in their attempt to pull water from the soil for their missing plants until, of course, they had dried up and disintegrated back into the packed dirt. The dirt was hard. Not as hard as the rock below it or the concrete above it, but pretty hard because it was packed down by machinery.

         The real-estate agent looked around to see if the spoon was still there, but it wasn’t.

         Nevermind, there was no real-estate agent and there was no house and there was no foundation and there were no roots and there wasn’t even any dirt or any of that stuff.

         The spoon remembered something, but couldn’t express it.

         Nevermind, the spoon can’t remember anything at all.

         There was a lack of spoon and table and kitchen and house and real-estate agent and foundation and packed dirt and roots that had disintegrated due to lack of plant. 

         Spoons can be useful, but since there are no spoons in this story, soup is off the menu. This is meant figuratively. There is no menu.

         The real-estate agent was disappointed about not existing. If the real-estate agent wished hard enough, maybe they could exist. If the spoon wished hard enough, maybe it could exist. If the table wished hard enough, maybe it could exist. If the house wished hard enough, maybe it could exist. If the foundation wished hard enough, maybe someone would exist to pour it. If the packed dirt wished hard enough, maybe there would be machinery to pack it until it was nearly as hard as the rock below it.

         Nevermind, there was no rock below and there was no packed dirt either.

         But if the roots wished hard enough, maybe they could exist. But there were no roots to wish to exist.

         So, the only thing left was the refrigerator and its humming motor. The refrigerator was manufactured in order to keep food products cold. The refrigerator had been serviced recently and worked like a charm. This is meant figuratively. There was nothing supernatural about the refrigerator or any of that stuff. The refrigerator was a Kenmore. It was actually Whirlpool that manufactured the Kenmore refrigerator somewhere in the USA.

         Nevermind, there was no USA.

         Whirlpool actually manufactured the Kenmore refrigerator somewhere unknown at this time.

         There was no refrigerator and no humming motor.

         Kenmore and Whirlpool went bankrupt and are currently selling their assets to cover their debts.

         Nevermind, Kenmore and Whirlpool don’t exist.

         If Whirlpool and Kenmore wished hard enough, maybe they could exist.

         Nevermind, Kenmore refrigerators are now available at Sears, Kmart, Sears Hometown Store, Howard’s, Sears Parts Direct, and online through amazon, Costco Wholesale, and Lowe’s.

         I don’t think they sell spoons.

         The spoon is a useful tool for soups, cereals, ice cream, rice, flour, baking powder, baking soda, rice-flour, almond-flour, any kind of flour really, pudding, marmalades or jams, splashing your friends and family, scooping detergent into your new Kenmore home appliance that you purchased at Sears Hometown Store, checking your hair before a big interview, sticking to your nose to impress your friends and family, anything blended, sauces, spit, wads of half-chewed gum, anything smaller than the spoon really.

         Nevermind, Lowe’s sells spoons. The Hastings Home 5-Piece Stainless Steel Measuring Spoon Set Model #631559ONM is now priced at $10.13, and delivery is free with any order of $45 or more.

         Lowe’s does not exist, however, so it might be difficult to pick up your order or to have your order of $45 or more delivered to your door because of this lack of existence. If Lowe’s wished hard enough, maybe someone would come and rinse and lather with Cascade and scrub and scour and rinse and swear about caked on tomato and then scrape with their fingernail and then throw the Hastings Home 5-Piece Stainless Steel Measuring Spoon Set Model #631559ONM into the soapy water out of frustration and anxiety and then fish it out and accidentally cut themselves on a carelessly placed knife and go to the washroom for a Band-Aid brand bandage and wrap their finger and ask someone else to care enough to rinse and lather and scrub and scour and rinse the spoons again, but I doubt it – due to the fact that Lowe’s does not exist.

         Nevermind, my cousin Regis works at Lowe’s.

         Regis found a body in the washroom one day and called an ambulance but it was too late, the old man was already dead. Regis never found out how the old man died, but he was sure that he did die because the old man was a friend of his co-worker’s father and the co-worker asked his father about the old man and the old man’s death had then been confirmed.

         Regis told me they were sold out of the Hastings Home 5-Piece Stainless Steel Measuring Spoon Set Model #631559ONM at his location, but he assured me that it would be no problem to order it – though it would take up to five business days for it to arrive.

         Nevermind, Regis died the same way that the old man died.

         Nevermind, the old man never existed.

         Neither did Regis.

         Perhaps if they made a wish upon a star. I heard that if you make a wish upon the first star in the sky that your wish will come true. I wonder if that would be the case for Lowe’s or for the spoon that could have been on a table.

         I hope so.

         Okay, so, nevermind, Regis actually did exist.

         Regis was feeling sick one morning and called in to Lowe’s to excuse his absence, but the phone number had been disconnected and all he heard on the other line was the sound of spoons rattling in the cutlery drawer. He thought that maybe someone was playing a joke on him, so he drove over to Lowe’s, only there was no building there anymore and there was no foundation and there was no mechanically packed dirt nor dried out and disintegrated roots seeking water for no plant. His car didn’t exist either. His foot pressed for a foot lever that should have corresponded with the release of fossil fuel into a combustion engine, but his foot just thrust itself into the empty air and his knee popped and he looked down to see nothing there and at that moment he hit a patch of ice on the road and his vehicle flipped and rolled and caught fire and my cousin Regis was killed in a blaze of shame and shock and forgetfulness and confusion.

         Nevermind, there was no car or fire or cousin or popped knee or ice on the road and there was also no road paved on mechanically packed dirt with roots beneath, dying and disintegrating in time and also there was no rock below and there wasn’t even time for the roots to dry out and die either.

         Regis mysteriously vanished into his loveseat. The television was left on and we all laughed when we saw what it was that he’d been watching – it was one of those shows that people laugh at when other people are caught watching them. It was very funny for those that were involved in the laughter. It is unclear whether it was funny to Regis, because he vanished and I could not ask whether or not he’d found it funny.

         I was only joking: Regis never existed. If Regis wished hard enough though, the television program that made us laugh when we saw it on his TV might be able to find a production company willing to pay for the production of the program and they might also be willing to promote and distribute and broadcast the program. Hopefully they can get a time slot that will garner a broad audience – during those times before people fall asleep and vanish into their loveseats and are caught watching such programs that make others laugh at them for watching.

         One day, I turned to my cousin Regis – he was feeling particularly non-existent that day and therefore he was pretty much not there, but I knew he was there, – and I asked him, Are you in the mood for soup?

         To which, he responded, We and our partners use cookies to improve and personalize your experience, measure the effectiveness of our services, and show you ads and other content tailored to your interests as you navigate the shadows or interact with non-existent entities.

         Regis was sounding a bit under the weather, so I brought him a bowl of soup – but I could not find a spoon, so I instructed him to pour the broth down his front and then suckle it from the cotton of his shirt.

         Regis did not have a shirt, so my plan went awry and the soup never made it out of the microwave.

         Nevermind, there was no microwave and no soup.

         Would you care for anything? I asked my cousin Regis, who was vanishing from the loveseat that did not exist in the house that did not exist on the foundation that had never been poured upon the mechanically packed dirt that did not contain dead roots or hard rocks below it.

         All my cousin Regis said in response was this: This existence is owned and operated by a ShadeCo LLC (“ShadeCo”) entity or licensee. At ShadeCo, we want to ensure that your privacy is important to no one. We also want you to forget what information we gather about you, how we abuse it, and the shades we have in place designed to rub-out existence. This shadow policy applies to information lost during this existence, people that have never existed, and our incomplete selves. ShadeCo may update this shadow policy for no reason. Please forget everything, including this shadow policy periodically. If people that have never existed make any changes, the updated shadow policy will be forgotten forever within and without the context of existence. We encourage you to periodically forget everything and to cease to exist at any and all moments, including, but not limited to our shadow realm, which has never existed. Your use of shadows, when you play with them on drunken evenings, and any disputes arising from your play or any non-existent things or selves, are subject to this shadow policy as well as our terms of emptiness and all of its shade resolution provisions, including arbitration, class action waiver, limitation on damages and choice of law.

         I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so I went for a walk.

         The walk took me along the side of the road that runs along the southern end of the salad-dressing factory. The factory sounded like a mechanical hornet’s nest and a train rolled by, holding up seven cars at the railroad crossing by then, making a ding-ding-ding and a toot-toot and a rumble-rumble-rumble. A kid was riding a tiny version of an ATV on the sidewalk and his mother was yelling at someone inside the house. A man in sunglasses was cranking a trailer-hitch and watching the kid ride the tiny version of an ATV. 

         The walk took me into the sunlight and there was hardly a bit of shade to be had. The northern breeze was fine and carried the smell of diesel.

         I saw more cars than people.

         An acquaintance of mine pretended not to see me at the grocery store – she was trying to be funny – where I purchased and ate nearly a whole roll of Ritz crackers and half a block of Colby-Jack cheese.

         I ate more cheese than cracker.

         The sidewalk was empty and there was all kinds of broken equipment lying about in people’s yards and the trailer-hold-outs were still living across the street from the old church and a motorcycle revved its engine at me as it passed.

         I walked slowly.

         The walk took me past the old folks’ duplexes – where they put the old people that can almost take care of themselves – but I didn’t hear a peep. Do they even watch TV anymore? The library was too far away, so I didn’t go to the library.  

         I went nowhere. 

         The spoon was not metal after all, but was made of plastic and my stupid dog chewed it all up while I was out walking and so I just threw it in the bin and I have no further plans for spoons or soups or any of that kind of stuff.

VII

auto-reset

         Suitcase lost.

         I found a nighttime. A bright light the loading dock flickers down forest, the boy before he vanished. The woods darkerwoods traveled farther and the loading dock light, fingers of artificial turf fence and wondering what and if I was ready. Everything seemed too real and I was nearly real.

         But then, I went home and I did my regular stuff and everything turned shockingly normal. I went to work and asked Colleague to speak about the missing boy, and but so then Colleague of no reminiscences. Not me too, there’s a lot of them day-to-day and it’s hard to remember anything, especially when a name doesn’t memorize. Memory face, only barely. It was the strange haircut they gave him that I recalled to Colleague, but Colleague didn’t remember that, odd because it had been such a spectacle haircut and buzzed the school and everyone talked about the days following.

         Office asked Administrative Assistant, but no either, not her either. Strange because she remembers everyone. Treading dangerous, I argued with her about it, but she insisted that it must have been at some other school or in a school in a movie or something because there had never been such a boy.

         Nighsleepnight. Find the boy’s face not finding impossible, the weight of vanishing collapsed my chest such hard breathing. Sentimentality? Not the type. Not usually a type. Perhaps the exception to the cusp of discovery, only there was nothing to find but the idea of a boy laughed and that terrible haircut. Try as I might, I couldn’t recall any of the funny things he’d said to me. Once. No, so many times, a lot of them. And now, there’s nothing to recollect about things in the past, not even now, it has become vanished nothingness like a boy dreamed or written. “Where the fog hides the shadows” spiraling, darkness and tugging curtains, stacks of nightstands, wives breathing, children sleeping, cats curled, blankets to throat.

         Gave up, got up, put on a robe. Got my tiptoes, fridgelight, way way out, lightheaded, foggytired unafraid creeping hopeless infected, afflicted night by the spirit.

         Where? And of the funny things he said in daylight basement.

         Milk and honey and peanut butter and a spoon and a couch and a cat’s twinkling collar, I couldn’t focus; a burdened presence. In the night everything blurs. A snack. A questioning cat, hard wood taps. Shivering. Looked into a phonelight without reason. A search for anything and then darkness again, wondering if I’d had an idea but finding nothing again. Solitaire. A never ever lose. Maybe no one loses anymore, maybe that’s a problem, not here. A hook sinks my roof and I was reeled into phonelight. A bug. The phone has nothing for me. I am lost, crawling over others as I wander, awaiting indefinity or something very small to keep alive. 

         I threw my phone away and huffed. No tears and I almost wished. The cat with bell, padding up and down the hall, crunching cat food, hoping for mouse.

         Things are not very different anymore.

         The phone was gone but its light stayed and I couldn’t see the darkness of kitchen. With time, the blinding light faded and a fine Kenmore refrigerator appeared before me, opened for light. It was an unnecessary snack. Within was a jar of salad dressing from the salad dressing factory. It’s a local entity.

         Then the sound. It came from the cutlery drawer. Spoonish.

         I grabbed my phone. Google told me that The Hastings Home 5-Piece Stainless Steel Measuring Spoon Set Model #631559ONM is now priced at $10.13, and delivery is free with any order of $45 or more. Then I googled for any Regis in my area. Just some real-estate things and whatnot, no people by the name of Regis. Ended up looking at pictures of Regis Philbin and finding out that that Regis Philbin died a while ago. Oh phone, it’s tragic how quickly our curiosities die by you.

         Standing by Silence the table, I breathed many times and did not snigger. For the spoons again banged in the cutlery drawer, finely manufactured drawers!

         The neighbor’s dog barked and I dropped out my gut. It should have been snowing but it was not. Nothing of interest. A little glow of nightlight.

         I searched “ShadeCo”, “Shade Co.”, and “ShadeCo LLC”, but all I got was The Shane Company, a diamonderia & distributeria.

         I took a pill.

         Nightslip.

         Night of spoons. I dreamed a man named Steppen Harpter-Qollins partially the spoons had me shook, so he was a scary man, a spookeeman, a man, a terrifying creature, I’m not sure. Nevermind. There was no dream.

         And tired in the morning, but I was ready to stop thinking about it all, so I did that. I stopped thinking so much and I just went to work. This lasted for quite some time actually, a few weeks I guess. Pills and work. Pills and work. That was all I really did during that time. I also completed a project at home. In order to do so, I visited Lowe’s just a few miles down the road off highway 2.

         Feeling foolish, I asked two employees if they knew a Regis, but they just laughed and one of them said, You mean the guy from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? The other one said, Isn’t he dead? This for some reason got the laughter and without further. I gripped wood and rubber gloves and left.

         But it was at my counseling job that I hit pay dirt. Some kid walked in with their notebook, which was covered with drawings and stickers, one of which was a hand-drawn logo in graphic block letters: ShadeCo.

         Hey, I asked in my “nonchalant” voice, did you draw that?

         Yeah, but it’s not very good, she said, covering it with her hand.

         Reminds me of Metallica or something, I said.

         Yeah, I guess so, she said. Maybe I saw their logo and just copied it or something. I don’t know.

         No, I said. It’s definitely doing its own thing though. You got a good style.

         Thanks, she murmured.

         Is that a band or something? I asked, again nonchalant.

         No, she mumbled.

         I met her eyes and raised my eyebrows, Ok… I said.

         It’s a place I think, she said. I’ve only ever heard of it from my friends and they’re full of shit… sorry, excuse my language.

         It’s fine, I said. What kind of place is it?

         A place to disappear, she said.

         Have you ever heard of Steppen Harpter-Qollins?

         Who?

         Steppen Harpter-Qollins.

         No, she said. Is he from around here?

         I’m not really sure who he is.

         Oh, she scoffed, so you think he went to ShadeCo?

         Did he?

         Like I said, I’ve never even heard of Steppen Harpter-Qollins, but…

         But?

         But if he went to ShadeCo, maybe it would make sense that we can’t remember him. That’s how it like works. 

         Well where is it? I’d lost my nonchalance.

         It’s supposed to be in a place where no one goes.

         No one?

         Yeah, exactly, no one ever goes there because if they do they don’t exist anymore. The girl laughed at the idea. Literally no one comes back.

         But I went… I began, remembering the place, just barely now, but I could remember it I could, the tent the little performance area flattened out in the dirt with the stuffies watching… along the strip of woods behind… Albertson’s! I said, out of breath.

         What’d you say? she asked.

         A place where no one ever goes, like behind the Albertson’s.

         Mhm. 

         I went home and made real dinner per usual, eating with my family and this and that, only real things, mostly realy things, but not recent discoveries and all of the rest of it. I didn’t want to talk about anything and I was hardly hungry, but I finished everyone’s food for them anyway. It helps to overeat sometimes. Eveningslip darkness, milk of midnight. And again spoons and again cutlery drawer, rattle-rattle, no, no, that didn’t happen. Tuesday going into Wednesday I guess. Or it was one of those days stuck between. I think so. I was looking for a spoon in the cutlery drawer, but found none therein. The spoon slot was missing, and instead there was a pile of little yellow corn holders. My finger pierced and bled; I’d moved too hastily; I was a little tense to say the least. I cried out more from the surprise than from the pain of it, but no one in the house awoke. This didn’t happen in my house, at least not when I wanted to be alone in the house, like in the morning when I tiptoed out to my coffee and books and kids came running. The taste of rust filled my mouth and I felt empty. My heart raced maybe or maybe my gut. I thought about something I used to think about a lot, but I couldn’t remember it in that moment, not at all. There were faces missing and I searched and I searched but there were no names and there were no places and there were no actions and there were no words that came to me, no feelings no nothing. And for a common memory. A recently visited island of people, places, and actions, sunk, lost. A moment there by the cutlery drawer, as my hand vanished into the place where the drawer should have been but had been vanished.

         I ran.

         It was a fifteen minute drive to Albertson’s but a short run on this kind of night and nobody seemed to notice I left, though I can’t be sure of anything anymore. Not this way.

         I was by the bouncy blue ball by the wall where the bouncy ball bounced and the wall-ball game ceased and the blue ball rolled to my feet, but it was not there as much as it was before and I wanted to play. I picked up what was left and continued in this way, as before but like a turn in form I could feel it upon me and around me, blue bouncy ball. That’s a funny thing about this place, always. Someone had graffitied the wall: Outlive your mother! There was an old woman painted beneath the words and the illustration might have made me laugh I think.

         Look! I said, but there was no one to hear me there and it was a place so moved along without reason that the wall-ball-wall inched closer to the strip of forest between the Albertson’s loading dock and the housing development beyond the fake turf fence. The narrow forest flickered in and out. Something not functioning properly. Something happened. I am sure that there were a lot of things the matter, but I cannot or will not list those things just yet. There was a building, new, overpowering the sickly strip as they passed away into the place into which they passed. Things were changing more than usual and I could not think about anything. I didn’t even try. It was a wind and then it was a storm and then it was a light show and then it was destruction workers in uniform and wrecking balls and then it was a pile of death and then it was fire and then it was a pile of construction workers leaning and smoking and talking into cell phones and hard hats and loud machines and scorched and stripped land and then it was liquid rock flowing in from turning machines and then it was sawed wood and nails and then it was wires and pipes and then it was walls and metal pieces and a superstore suddenly appeared before me: ShadeCo, blinking glowing sign. For the first time since I arrived I felt something. Fear overtook shame, which in turn was overtaken by excitement and curiosity. This is how I am manipulated, but who cares? My toes slid across pavements, up concrete walkways that existed, and there were automatic sliding doors activated by lazers, {whoosh}. Was I excited? I think that I might have been excited. Nothing was what I remembered there, with the tent and the stuffies audiencing the flattened performance area – what I’d give to see that show! It was not a show that could be performed at the time, because of the warehouse superstore that impossibly filled the space.

         ShadeCo, I read aloud for any that could not read it. I was alone. My skin went taught and shifted skullcap. There was a storm coming outside and I wanted to be inside, very badly I wanted inside, so that’s what I did.

         A woman in yellow shirts sat on a stool, just past the first set of double doors but before the second set of double doors, in the entryway. This is a place that exists, she groaned with a toothy smile.

         I think I’m here, I said.  

         Me too, she said that to me and then she stared at her hands, having finished our interaction, wishing to crawl back into her private oblivion.

         The entryway was warm and there were piles of plastic-coated metal carts in one corner, colorful pictures of people in expression on a phone booth, rubber floors, covered glass, and it was empty. The second set of double-doors slid open and I stepped inside the ShadeCo.

         The lights were blinding and my senses were bombarded, overdriven, maxed-out and everything seemed impossible. Streaks of light about my eyelids and crying out. Bolts like rotten teeth.

         I’ll start with the screens, which were impossible to miss, flashing and blasting as they were in their formation of towers and spires, walls and fortresses of screens. One thousand voices with conflicting messages, ideas, and meanings. It was all too much for me and I panicked before I threw up on a stack of laundry detergent boxes. Wires ran along metal brackets and everything was bright and every voice and every bit of sound ricocheted about the massive concrete structure. It was not cold and it was not hot. Everything was stacked in cubes around me, stacks of everything I ever imagined, colorful, vibrant memories, objects. That was the sum of the place. Cubes of cubes stacked to the sky. There were so many things to be told. It was the beginning again for us here I guess and I was very unexcited again.

         Things were very organized in ShadeCo and I was impressed. Colors combined and categories maintained for finder’s sake, it all seemed to work. Things were moving and blending together some because of the way the air was in there. It was something I didn’t recognize.

         We’re here together, came the voice of an old man. My eyes fell upon a wheelchair, nearly empty. This is a memory, he finished. I think he was talking to me, but I can’t be sure. I’m starting to doubt it come to think.

         I think that’s right, I said.

         It’s unfortunate, he frowned.

         I can’t say I agree with that.

         Everything agrees eventually, the old man grumbled.

         Have you seen a boy? I asked.

         The old man smiled and nodded.

         Where is he? I asked.

         The old man shook his head. No, no, wrong question, he said.

         How’s that?

         You’re asking the wrong question about where.

         I don’t know what that even means, I said.

         He’s not in a place any longer, the old man said, fading from view.

         What the hell is that supposed to mean?

         Gone, the old man was nearly missing. I tried to follow him, but it was not easy. I ran. Even that was not easy. Things were not as they were, back before things were the way they were. Nothing felt right about it and I walked, I did not run any longer, it was a choice I made when I did those things, back then. Everything was different than it had been before back then when everything was still the way it had been. The floor was hardly there either and I feared for my existence. I turned to leave the place, but there was a shortage of doors and barely a blank wall. Hands on fading pieces and fading hands themselves shaking, unfeeling. Did anyone know I was here? I wondered.

         Led to a great search names. What were the names? Recall one name. I could not recall one name, not even my name. Everything was missing of a sudden and I felt a cold brick of lonesomeness in my gut at having forgotten even those whom I loved and myself. Everything had become vanished. It didn’t happen of a sudden, but it seemed to happen of a sudden because it happened so gradually that I didn’t notice until it was all gone, everything I knew was missing then and I am sorry still, pining here in solitude, writing about him and the funny things he said.

VIII

         Marooned! A place that exists I pray and wonder in a place that could have been a room but has failed to manifest, where this old typewritersuitcase hardly clicks and hardly clacks my partially opaque fingers {clickclackclickclackding} to capture whatever. To be here now to think and into these pages and to tumble like fog into the daylight. But a typewritersuitcase follows me, typing me or fingertips {taptaptap}, as I wanderwonder endless warehouse superstore nowhere. {click-clack, click-clack} Hideous here, not cold not warm. Stable. An almost horse unmoving, holding sixteen hands unseen, measure.

         Names are gone and none and I have none to find these pieces as they tumble apart. So I just scream and my voice disintegrates into the warehouse superstore’s unseen corners. There is no one here and I am walking still. My feet don’t hurt and they barely contact the concrete base, toes limp and dragging. Am I anything here? Is this a place? Stacks of cubes in cubes and products in colorful packaging. A palace and a monument to consumerism place. I’m trapped here in this.

         Towers of screens bleat and whinny and speak in human tongues to musical cacophonies and screaming tires, shotgun blasts, dying beasts of wild, cries of tomorrow sorrow and yesteryear fear, sour milk flooding ears, run to furthest corners of manifest naught, a concrete hell.

         To remember anything now seems impossible, after thinking for so long and wondering about so many tiny articles with rejoinders that fade and after being and living so many things, to become a stranded hitchhiker on endless evening.

         A craving brings me to stacks of items in yellow and blue boxes, stacked in cubes by the metal brackets, colorful boxes making colorful cubes, upon pale grey floor in this terrible, terrible warehouse. The boxes of hard noodles, I put them into a hole in my face and crush fading teeth. Perhaps to poach dry noodles. It is something that I’ve done I think and something that helps to ease things in this connection. So I suckle until they soften and then I chew and swallow these noodles in order to feel them sliding down my throat and into what’s left of my system. A fan blows overhead. The air is inside this space and this is a place that exists I think. And there past the dust in the bright lights swirling I see the boy behind a stack of cotton swabs, hiding between the cubes, surrounded by cubes and watching.

         Hello? I say.

         Yes, he says.

         Yes?

         Yes.

         I move closer to his cotton swab fortress and almost touch the white cotton encased in cardboard and plastic, reaching to touch his terrible haircut. Is this you? I ask. Did you write about this place and send it to me?

         Probably, he says. I did a lot before now, more than I wanted to do, much too much.

         Yes, and you must be…? I began, but he did not reply. What’s your name? then demand.  

         Call me Shawna Aalal or Michael Jordan.

         But that’s not your name is it?

         Maybe. What of yours?

         Ught… I pry open some vault, nonono box, it’s a box that I open! and find that there are so very many no’s within and there are so many of the other things that fly out and vanish as warehousedust. For a moment I stare at the boy. Featureshift. Big nose crossing, bad teenage mustache pulsing in and out of his upper-lip, mouth for an ear, ear for a brow, chin for a cheek, cheek for an eye, eye for a tooth, teeth for ponytails, arms and legs in chest-openings-&-closings, organs out, sliding across his skin now, what, slithering toenails and joints and an ultra-sensative testicular spine. He’s a wad of what he was. Do I? Is he a mirror? I ask.

         The boy’s phone is a hand and a looking glass black holds himself first and myself second. Shattered screen and my view is distorting by hands of face, but I am very strange indeed, stranger than I ever was before and I am frightened by my appearance: nose flipped inside-out for an eye that travels across the folding plains of skin-coated muscles contracting and retracting, expressions never before attempted and without meaning. I drop his phone and it is the floor now, but he has another right there in the palm of his chest and he is looking again, yes, eyes wandering face.

         What’s happened to us? I ask.

         Nothing happens, he insists.

         Then what of these strange features? I ask.

         Modern caches of perceptions, he insists.

         But this! says I, pointing a toothnail at the bright lights overhead and metal scaffolding surrounding. This place is impossible! None of this is likely, nor is it possible or is it commonplace. If I were to recognize such a place, which I am trying to do, it would seem unlikely or impossible or uncommonplace.  

         I wonder what it is that you could possibly mean. The boy’s hip smiles and blinks tongue.

         With gumknuckles chattering I speak, Your features, your name, it is utter chaos here in this current location of all places to be! What could this place possibly be?

         ShadeCo, the boy insists.

         There are things that I know about this place and that is one of them, the name of the place is maybe the only thing of which I’m sure. That and the boy’s bad haircut, I know that bad haircut from a mile away and then close up again and the boy pushes me away again; the haircut still seems familiar no matter the distance or misshape. His hair crawls and blends to concrete.

         I had a dream like this, the boy says. In the dream I was in a cutlery drawer, laying there and hoping that someone would come and grab me and use me to eat with or to cook with or to do funny table tricks with or to use as puppets to entertain a child or to scoop or to poke or to cut the butter, anything, I would do anything, you know?

         Sure, I say.

         That’s the life of silverware. It was in my dream first. I guess I fell asleep first, but no, before that I pulled up the blankets, but not that, no, not that either. Nevermind it wasn’t a dream. It was a vomitfilm.

         A vomitfilm?! Could you illuminate me on what a vomitfilm could possibly be? I ask.

         The boy walks to a wall of cubes of toilet seats and spews vomit across it. Within the vomit there is a movie somehow glowing upon the shimmering surface of the boy’s bile. That’s a vomitfilm, he insists.

         The movie is a trite one though I am crying at the crying parts and laughing at the laughing parts. It’s entitled: A Shadow Policy. It’s a dull, narrated instructional reel-to-reel film with bad lighting.

> 

Boring Old Narrator: A shadow policy is a type of endeavor that can seem overwhelming at first, and then a little endearing at the second, but by the third, you will become the same again and then it’s the curious. That’s a joke I just told you. You will know that I am joking when you hear this sound {kloonngg!} and you will know whether you are laughing at the laughing parts or if you are crying at the laughing parts. If you are crying at the crying parts that’s correct as well, but if you are laughing at the crying parts you may have some work ahead of you. So hold on tenaciously because this is the adventure of an afterwards. {kloonngg!} That was a joke too. There are a lot of things that one might say in modes where humor can work in your favor. Let’s take a look at one of those modes at the ice cream parlor.

Little Davie: Say, what kinda ice cream ya got there, Jackie?

Jackie: It’s from the ice cream parlor I think. {kloonngg!}

Little Davie: Bullshit, it is! That ice cream ain’t right.

Boring Old Narrator: There are other things that might help with your problems, and we’ll get to those other things in a later time-between-time. First, let’s just see what happens when Jackie eats something that isn’t food.

Jackie: This might as well be food. I don’t care.

Little Davie: Jackie, I can’t stand this shit anymore.

Boring Old Narrator: That’s right Jackie. If there is one thing to take to heart from Little Davie’s bold words, it’s that nothing can stop a little bit of gumption from going a disturbingly long way.

Little Davie: Aren’t you gonna kill yourself, Jackie?

Jackie: No, not today, Little Davie. Not today.

Boring Old Narrator: Great choices don’t provide themselves, after all. You’ll have to build something out of nothing to really find a ball for rolling, blue bouncy ball.  

Little Davie: I think you oughta just get it over with, Jackie. Life’s fucked anyway.

Jackie: I’m just so excited.

Boring Old Narrator: This is just the beginning with ShadeCo’s time tested Shadow Policy. Written back in 1612, ShadeCo’s first draft of the Shadow Policy contained nothing whatsoever, but by the presentation of this film, there ought to be a few things that strike your fancy. Let’s go watch those kids again…

Jackie: I’m not sure that it’s even a place.

Little Davie: Would you please shut up? You just made me die again. Now I have to restart the whole fucking level.

Boring Old Narrator: There are a few things that we tell everyone and those things have become nonsense by now, but we don’t care so we just keep saying them anyway, so here goes:

         1. Always stay anxious

         2. That’s the thing that they told me to do too

         3. You don’t have to do anything

         4. ShadeCo loves you

Little Davie: If you think it’s love, then just go ahead and call him out on it. Just say, “Hey fuck you if you don’t value me. There’s plenty of dudes and chicks out there who would love to tap this.”

Jackie: Me too! {kloonngg!}

Boring Old Narrator: Oh those two! Always up to something! I watch them often. It’s important that I watch them often and that I watch them closely, not to wonder. But they are about to do something else funny! Let’s rewind a bit back to the day when Little Davie and Jackie lit the trailer on fire.  

Jackie: It’s just a candle.

Little Davie: Yeah, but I can’t believe it fit! {kloonngg!}

Jackie: Oh shit! Get it out! Get it out!

Little Davie: The whole fucking trailer’s on fire!!

Boring Old Narrator: ShadeCo’s Shadow Policy begins with the same boring ass instructions:

         1. Take someone else with you

         2. Don’t commit to anything alone

         3. Keep your purses tight

         4. Everything stinks a little more when it’s wet

Jackie: Say, Mister? What is a shadow policy?

Boring Old Narrator: It’s an invincible agreement that you’ll love to make love to, a commitment of time, energy, and self. That’s it!

Little Davie: That doesn’t even mean anything you fink! Why don’t you just leave us alone, would ya?!

Boring Old Narrator: The exodus begins with you.

Little Davie: Where are you? Jackie? Do you hear that old guy’s voice?

Jackie: He’s my friend.

Little Davie: You must be the most gullible idiot in the whole goddam world, Jackie.

Jackie: Look who’s talking! Hypocrite!

Boring Old Narrator: Whoa there kids, take a breath and go ahead and step inside this sparkling box right here while there’s still time. Inside you’ll find wonders you could never imagine. Go ahead, see the stairway leading down? Sure you do.

Little Davie: Don’t!

Jackie: But there’s stairs in a box! Where do they go?

Boring Old Narrator: Heh heh, I just told you, dum-dum. It goes to the most imagination place.

Jackie: The most?

Boring Old Narrator: Certainly!

Little Davie: Don’t go in there, Jackie! It’s a trap! He’ll probably tie you up and do twisted things to your body if you go down there.

Boring Old Narrator: Oh, don’t worry about that my boy. I’m impotent.

Jackie: What’s that mean?

Little Davie: Means he can’t bust a nut. He’s still creepy as fuck though. I don’t trust him.

Jackie: Could we learn more about the ShadeCo Shadow Policy before we enter this box? Is there a printed copy I can read over? 

Boring Old Narrator (grumbling): Yes, yes. Fine. I am now required by law to provide you with a copy, now that one has been requested. Where is that cursed thing? I just had it a few minutes ago. Hey! Steve? You know where I set that goddamn thing?

Steve (whispering): It’s in your pocket.

Boring Old Narrator: Heh?! Speak up, Steve! Quit mumbling, Goddammit!  

Steve (whispering loudly): Your pocket!

Boring Old Narrator: Oh sure, here it is. Ahem:  

ShadeCo Shadow Policy

Effective January 3, 2021 | Archived contemplations | Depressed PDF

ShadeCo’s terms RE: ownership of the Discontinued States

What’s covered up by these terms:

We know it’s tempting to caress your device, but it’s important to establish that you are expected to keep this whole thing platonic, as you use ShadeCo like a concubine or worse. Consider these the everyday things that ShadeCo expects from a platonic partner and what ShadeCo feels you should know.

Digi-germs

1. Mirror the way that ShadeCo appears in the mirror first thing in the morning,

2. Infect the expectations that apply to keeping us company

3. Stifle those things that we’ve always wanted to say, but were too shy to say.

As a result, you are an infected device that helps ShadeCo contain all available thoughts and desires. For example, our relationship will include the following active digi-germs:

Listening in: this describes how we collect humans and their thoughts and desires in order to provide and develop and control all human thought and desire.

Predicting desires: this describes how we collect all established taboos and serve as an exclusive venue for breaking them, all of course, in the service of ShadeCo.

Contentment via ShadeCo services is your dream, not ours, and is full of the intellectual stuff and birthrights of the company you keep within our devices (i.e. you) — whether that contentment belongs to you, ShadeCo, only God can say for sure. In case of problems or disagreements, which describe other legal rights you will never have, and what to expect in case someone violates your germy device. Understanding that our digi-germs are your digi-germs and your digi-germs are our digi-germs is an important thing to understand, because, by using you and you using us, we (you and ShadeCo) are acquiescent to all digi-germs.

Alongside these digi-germs, we also offer a concealment dogma. We encourage you to ignore it completely, so we can better manipulate, update, manage, exploit, and ultimately vanish you.

ShadeCo users are covertly manipulated by, and constantly contracting digi-germs from:

ShadeCo LLC

organized and above the laws of the Former State of Delaware, DS, and operating under the radar of the DS

1601B Silent-Amphitheater Prkwy

Blocked View, the Former State of Nevada

DS

         The film in the vomit ends and the boy is no longer here with me, wait, nevermind, there he is right there.

         Are you sick, I ask the boy.

         Pretty much, he laughs.

         Did you sign one of those shadow policies?

         Yeah, who cares?

         Did you read it?

         Probably not.

         The boy’s face is no longer a face and I mine. Turning mush and words to understand, a mutation. Mine too I mine. Endless cubes of endless boxes of products surround around and they’re making me nervous because they do not move or change, but simply sit, organized, still. What lies within the boxes of cubes remains unclear and I don’t want to find out what lies within because there might be a set of stairs that might seem ominously frightening {boo!}, leading somewhere below. Is it a hex of stairs? Probably not, no.

         A phenomenon and I of a matching time, but also he doesn’t care so there is a good chance that he doesn’t wonder. So, I have to ask the question: What’s in the boxes?

         Chances of stairways I bet, he says.

         Do they?

         Probably not.

         Are we?

         Bet we are, the boy says, not sure. It’s not cold and it’s not warm here. It’s bright too because of those lights up there. Someone ought to turn them off or perhaps turn them down.

         God, where’s a light switch?

         No idea.

         How did you get here?

         I am asleep in my tent.

         No, I say, I saw your tent and it’s empty.

         Where is my tent now?

         I don’t know the answer to this question, as the woods where it should have been has become replaced by mega-warehouse. Try everything to understand and laugh. It’s a promise to recompromise, but no not likely. Altogether unlikely to split our seams and come back to an original shape. That’s the conflict of the situation we’re becoming. Threaded together side-wise and splitting. 

IX

         Inside of cubes of colored boxes there will be something brewing itself into existence. In the shine of it, a slime of it slides out from behind it and inside of it, oozing out from it, between the stacked cubes of it, of the colored boxes it’s it. The njoyable pursuit. Some njoy the slime. It is here for us, of us, to lead us so that we can crawl out too from the spaces between these colored boxes stacked up in cubes. But that is your responsibility not ShadeCo’s. 

         To call it living is folly, but for the sake comprehension, ShadeCo will now refer to it as The Wretched Slime, insinuating that yes its carbon-based properties are part of it and that yes it is a living thing kind of thing. This is not to be mistaken as truth but simply as a physical illustration of an unphysical thing.

         Nevermind, it’s a creature with glowing green eyes, sloppy arms, seven mouths that split and seam, a mass of half-chews, metal and plastic teeth, a 9 volt tongue, and withered holes in place of a snout.

         Yes, that’s the one to focus on at this point, the one that should have existed and still does. The Wretched Slime oozes between narrow slits and passages between colored boxes, moving closer to the dismembering boy and his counselor.

         Run my poor child! the counselor exclaims, lips shedding and fluttering away.

         Running feet shoot across the room with the boy’s new shoes altered, but the boy does not run, but his feet have gone away, oh boy. Not for too long, he prays aloud. Those are for me, part of me they are. Were. Please not for too long! Not too long, please. That’s the prayer I speak aloud to this invisible ceiling above me and to the wonders of the stars beyond, please hear me in my moment of emptiness unleashed, please not, for not too long!

         The counselor’s lips circle back around and land {splat} on an ear. The ear slides down and out of place, trickling along the side of what outght to be a face, making room for the lips to perch. Fingernails switch orientations to reverse and crawl up in through skin and veins, the screams from the side of a head where an ear once manifested. It’s too loud and the endless walls of screens turn watchful eyes toward the screaming headpiece. Destiny unfolding.  

         These prayers have continued unceasing: If these things are to be mine, I must retrieve them and become them I suppose. Would that suffice? I am hoping that these words are not detaching you from these vital things, this please not for too long, prayer. That is the main prayer is that: not for too long.

         There is no reason to continue a dictation of carbon vocal foldings and unfoldings of reachings of meanings of sputterings of higher beings to assist whatever remains. Worthless, on all accounts, of these formless things. No, these vibrations mean something vaguely significant.

         Nevermind, these are the very things that ShadeCo supports and condones.

         Of cubes of boxes tumbling The Wretched Slime dreams and is dreamed and is manifested where boxes. Slithering and pulsing and wrapping around ankles, warped slabs of meat, limping and huffing for air through new pores. That’s the nature of The Wretched Slime.

         Can you untangle this for me? the counselor insinuates, handing himself to the portion of flesh that might have once the boy.

         No fingers, the boy insinuates, wiggling earholes and coughing because they’re rending throat. You?

         No, insinuates the counselor. I am ill.

         How about the shoes?

         They’re nice and they are new, but what of all this?  

         You’re waiting for me to explain something I don’t understand.

         And what do you feel?

         Nothing.

         What?

         I don’t feel anything.

         How about this? Flings of flocks of bits of carbon at the mass that used to form a boy. Do you feel this? he insinuates the boy.

         Not likely. 

         How about this?

         Nope.

         And this?

         Nope.

         There’s really no sensation at all?

         Nope.

         Hm, teeth drift around the warehouse. A sensation?

         Nerves and signals of brain, right?

         Sure. I don’t think that anything is working like it should.

         Mm-hm, the boy insinuates.

         You’re saying so many prayers that I think you’re confusing God.

         Can’t confuse God.

         Sure you can. With all this chaos, all you have to do is do what you know is impossible and God will be confused for sure.

         What good would that do?

         Keep God on its toes.

         Won’t that make it unlikely to send you to heaven or whatever.

         Not likely.

         Unlikely, the boy insinuates. Who cares?

         Exactly, it’s not something of designs around.

         Then it’s a lack of design that will explain this place, insinuates the boy.

         The Wretched Slime is thinking about something and it is because of these words that these formers are insinuating. It is nearly remembering something that is making it feel a bit sentimental about the way things should have been in the past – it’s not sure how things really were back then, so there’s a lot that it has to fill in. Ablank. A pile of words a pile of thoughts a pile of slime slithering and letting go of anklesteaks. Are you familiar? The Wretched Slime asks.

         With? insinuates the counselor.

         With?

         Yes, are we familiar with what?

         Me I think.

         No.

         Oh.

         Sorry, do you have a name?

         No.

         The boy chimes in from the metal rafters, insinuating, Us neither! Then laughter-butterflies in the only way a pile of nearly formless carbon can laughter-butterfly in a warehouse. It’s almost an empty place but for all the things inside this massive warehouse, the ShadeCo way.

         Let’s go this way, insinuates the boy.

         No, not that way, insinuates the counselor.

         How about that way?

         No.

         And there?

         That might be.

         How about up there?

         Think we’d fit?

         Well, I’m justified in my decisions, insinuates the boy and sets off up spakling stairs. Stars. Stumps of anklesteaks on metal and the weight of everything is a difficult task. That’s the way of things, the ShadeCo way. Everything is a hallway and suddenly there is an office. In the office, Mr. Manheim. Mr. Manheim is a deskman. His face is barely skin and he looks awful, like an injury fatal or worse. Nice suit, new suit. No blooddrips or bloodflows. It is sure that there is a Mr. Manheim at a deskman, but for the flicker. He is a well-versed deskman if you might, and scarred something awful. Nothing further about him now. Mr. Manheim is not at the desk. There is a clock hung up on the wall that he looks at from time-to-time, but it’s a fools errand that. I am flickering again, he thinks. He fiddles with indescribable machines that lay spread across the desk. Wires and wooden boxes, knobs and switches. Shirtsleeves rolled tightly around his arms, Mr. Manheim sweats. It is a fools errand this. What a job, he thinks. But then he says it, What a job. The words sound differently now that they’re out. Mr. Manheim is working his fingers to the bone doing this and that. He’s also busy. That’s why his shirtsleeves. And the sweat. It’s awfully bright in Mr. Manheim’s office. Everything’s made of metal or wood and everything shines brightly in the office. It’s not a dark office by any means. Except for the shadows that the bright lights create. Those are dark. Shadows are darker than are lights. It’s to be expected. A not dark unbright. So, he keeps on working like he does and everything is happening there on that deskman: the gadgets, the Mr. Manheim. He scoots and the chair scrapes the concrete floor loudly. Mr. Manheim rattles. He is very busy now, deskman scurry. Everything is getting busier these days it seems, he thinks. He is almost always thinking because that’s a thing Mr. Manheim, deskman, does. It’s not a purpose or meaningful. It’d be preferable to not, but otherwise there’d be nothing for him to do and he’d just be wandering around for nothing, so it seems. He is not laughing but he is not crying, deskman. That’s his way of finishing up the work. Don’t bust a button, he might have been known to say from time-to-time, but no, he never did say that. He’s said a lot of other things before now, like deskmen dospeak of course, many words of combinations he’d speak them like they were nothing. And so that’s how they became. How he became, so to speak as it were, etc. Without Mr. Manheim at the desk there might not be a deskman at all, but if there is a deskman but no man, there might be a chair missing. There is no chair missing and the deskman is in a chair at the deskman. First he scoots his chair back and the floor groans. Then, he scoots his chair forward and the rattle and the scooting groan again. He needs to adjust something on his gadget and then he does that with his other hand and then another. Turning dials and something lights up as he inserts a piece of plastic into the slot. Anxious movements of hand to this one and then to that one. A dial a switch a knob a lever. Everything that he is doing is happening and that’s why he’s doing it, but no, that’s not why, but how. He’s doing it out of spite. That’s a thing that hurts the deskman, the spite. That’s the sweat that stinks. That’s the sweat that he wishes he could divorce. The office stinks. The boy doesn’t care about things like that so he just stands there with a stupid slanted whisker for a face. Everything changes here rapidly, in the office, no not an office, a breakroom, no forget it. The deskman works and the boy watches Mr. Manheim, the deskman. The boy watches Mr. Manheim work the deskman. The deskman works Mr. Manheim so the boy watches the works. The work that’s watched is nearly finished. The watching is tiresome for the boy; he’s not working. Mr. Manheim is not watching, working deskman. There’s too much work for him to do. Otherwise if you want it done right, do it yourself again, the deskman thinks while Mr. Manheim is turning other knobs. Things shift a bit. That’s the job. Not hard if you don’t feel it. Very hard if you feel it. Mr. Manheim is feeling it, but then he quits that part to focus on his work and things really start happening too. The boy does not work, but for his occupation of watching the deskman, Mr. Manheim. It’s a dull time. The clock ticks and the wall where it hangs. That’s the makeup of office, of wall, of wall, of wall, of wall, of door, of window, of deskman, of Mr. Manheim, of gadgets. Otherwise, it’s empty. The endless array of echoes for a man’s deskman Mr. Manheim. He works, leg hopping in place, neckspun. It’s a busy place if it’s a place. The work does not satisfy the deskmanManheim but he does the work and keeps busy anyway, to show the movements and cursory. Watching is not work, though it feels as such; it is not easy. The boy is uneasy watching Mr. Manheim at work and wants to run, but he does not run because of missing shoes, of new shoes and of second-hand feet. Neither does walking. That leaves him at liberty to watch Mr. Manheim at his business behind his desk of gadgets, sweating, the boy, sweating, the deskman, at labor to commence or continue this endeavor. There’s no reason or purpose to it because the deskmanManheim has given up on things like these in order to carry on or to commence or to continue this vitality enterprise. He is running things well and doing many movements of hand and movement of nervous legbopping and blinks and drips of sweat on gadgets and chewing air and sleepymonsters and hanging neckhinges, gazing downward at his works, staring when not blinking, thinking when not moving, but really moving and moving again and again for the process of it, this endeavor to engage in this project, of his doing many things to track. An echo of obscuring hands ranges new heights and the boy covers his eyes a moment before forgetting himself and the deskman and the moment and a drop of dark slime trickles from his armpit and down his side, a soaked-through garment, a sack of soggy crackers left open, onto the paper where his feet once were and across the room and it scuttles across the mezzanine and down the stairs to meet with The Wretched Slime, where it all gathers within a cube of stacks of boxes. A series of finger movements and Mr. Manheim removes from its socket a wire and seeking a new socket, the deskman twitches wildly, dropping the wire with a pop and a sizzle of tremendous volume as he searches, in a furious mania, touching this and everything before and again deciding on a hole to become a socket for the wire that transfers these echoes. It’s of an office. That’s the thing to remember about the deskmanManheimMr. and all of these gadgets and all of these movements and these blinkings and these twitchings and these rattlings and these scootings and these neck twistings and these finger attacks and these wires and these sockets and these works unceasing, to be kind to another of his vices, without giving any Mr. Manheim continues in these customs, making connections that exist after they have been made and the office is nearly a place where these things occur. It’s a blur of manifestations and finger attacks. That’s his method and the boy is watching Mr. Manheim in his element. That’s all that the boy is doing and even that is hardly being done. The boy’s new shoes are becoming an echo as he loses the meaning of sitting. A carbon pile. Mr. Manheimdeskman hardly notices and that’s a good thing because he’s gone and the wires are moving through the sockets. That’s the job. Simple. Making sense of the world can take a hard labor like Mr. Manheim is waiting to find out, alone behind a ten-ton desk full of gadgets and wires and ideas and sleepymonsters and paper for taking things down and echoes that make the room a place where he exists, a deskman. The boy watches and feels real for a moment before fading back through the doorway and down the metal steps and he is now insinuated with the puddle of counselor, who is sleeping a dream about blinking in an office where the works continue or commencement commerce. The counselorpuddle smiles at the idea of the boy, but that’s not right, the counselorpuddle cannot smile and the boy is not there any more, not really, but the office rattles and ShadeCo’s product through the wire.

         Can I see what you’ve made? the counselor insinuates the boy.

         I made watching, replies the boy, see?

         Those are nice, replies the counselor.

         No.

         Hm.

         Following this dialogue, the boy creates the following statement: If the things upstairs for Mr. Manheimdeskman at work continue, that is good, and what with the wires running into the sockets it’s known, but what of this product, echoes from a warehouse, reverberations unsettling, deactivated, fluttery finger-attacks and the such, what if it’s just an ending traveling? Then what? Along the wires through the sockets of echoes, an indelible thing, we’ll become signals of absence. If knowing a thing becomes seeing an echo, then why? What’s the connection? Is this the source of it? I don’t know. I never remember to care anymore, but that’s a fading thing for the echoes through the wires in their sockets to keep secret or to let fly, don’t you think?

         Sure, agrees the counselor absentmindedly.  

         The walk takes some thinking because of absence. The walk is slow as the boy struggles to show the counselor the things he sees, has seen, heard, has thought to have heard. This is the process: limbs lank along, carrying what remains, dripping phantom slime that gathers in the cubes of stacks of boxes, where things get left and forgotten, uninspired gifts sleep in the last place they were left, and the boy retraces what remains and carries and retains connections of carrion. That’s his task now that he’s done watching Mr. Manheim in his echoes, working unceasingly at the ten-ton desk of gadgets and strain.

         A rain is falling from a window. The work is never quite done, not done no.        The boy wants to do something funny, so he slides his body up onto the desk and smears dark slime over the top of Manheim’s gadgets and his pale hands. Mr. Manheim’s hands sting with the slime and in the rolled up sleeves whips his balding head in circles, widening circles: something is happening to him. His body blurs and the highlights burn. An office so luminous! Such light in Manheim’s blurring balding head, his baldy-blurry head. These are not the only experiences, of course. There are the many events of the sequence, affected affecting. Actions in response to events and finger-attacks across sequencers, filters, wires, tubes, etc. It doesn’t matter how he does these things; it’s in the method. The man doesn’t realize the synchronicity in this connection of his machinery in his method. Too many reasons, too many. Too many pointless, reasonable reasons and not the time. This is the agony, the man scribbles on a yellow notepad. It should become a list, he thinks. However, none forthcoming. He’s too tired from working, too tired to work from working. He’s tired for not working and too tired for trying. He’s tired of trying too. If he didn’t have so much work he might not be so tired. He’d rest more if not for all of this work and then he’d be a happy one. That’s how it is in worlds, he knows this perfectly well but he refuses to say things like that. Mr. Manheim’s unhappy. Surely he is at his desk. A desk. Who actually owns this desk? Tap-tap-tap the hands of rage. The man abruptly stamps his forehead against the desktop, splattering blood across slimed machinery. Drip, drip. The desktop is getting wet. His blood is dark and wallows puddles around him. There is no need for him to exist other than the fact that he does. The man might have dreamed up such things if given time. He does not have time. He is a very busy man that works incessantly, dripping blood now but working still and even after this disturbance in routine, he still manages to fidget endlessly, bop his leg, and scoot his chair across the concrete floor repeatedly, and generally filling the room with horrible echoes. That’s his art though he does not know it. Repeated performances, mostly unseen, in a suit with rolled up shirtsleeves and pants, always pants, it’s a thing with him, pants. He wears many items of clothing with great regularity. Laundry is overdue. Everything stinks and his armpits are yellow and he wishes for a cigarette. A cigarette is the one constant in the man’s mind. It seems like the way out and sometimes it is the way out, at least out to the outdoors to smoke up the fresh air. Just the swirling is enough for him. Flips and spirals when the sun is low and losing track of things is the way of it, the man has heard this before from people that ought to exist. His favorite people don’t exist. But they ought to. No, nevermind, his favorite people often occur. It might make him sad but for those blanks of becoming. He is becoming the blank and the blank forgets everything in the morning, when the sun is low and cigarette smoke turns tricks in the air. He wants just one, Only one for now and then never again, he says. He says this all the time and to no one. About a lot of things he has promised to never do them again. Failures in these ventures mean little here because of the fog that hides the shadow and the memoryfade, so the fade is unseen, which makes it all worthwhile to keep going, so the man turns a dial and flicks a switch and reconnects mismatched wires to the wrong places before unplugging them and replugging them into the right ones. His methods scrape chaos. There are ways for him to improve his methods and he feels encouraged to do so. The wires spark now and the boy is making the watching of Mr. Manheim’s work his sole occupation, how sweet. To learn from watching is common. The boy is good at recognizing common things but has given up accepting common things at face value. It’s a fine first step to take even if it does lead to calamity. This is not right. There’s plenty out there for Mr. Manheim to seek and sometimes the finding is so much harder than the not finding. Some of his favorite memory files are easy to find if he were to seek them out, but he does not seek anything while he’s at work and he’s always at work. Finger pop. Neck twist. Mr. Manheim is changing into something far more horrific because he is unable to see his own becoming and what. ShadeCo does not provide mirrors for which to gaze upon one’s own face. Bathrooms and wet places serve the purpose of gazing upon one’s own face just fine. Manheim unmoving, face down to the blood spatters, the boy is making a fine watching of the whole series of events. The man does not look beyond his desk and that’s fine by the way things are here at ShadeCo. A policy that encourages innovation by way of assimilation. To keep the fire burning. There is no fire in the building, this is an idiom for keeping things moving forward. There is no forward only fore. There is no fire fore or aft. This is seafaring language, not another idiom. There is no ship.

         Nevermind, there is a fire and the ship is going down. A ship that is going down will take some of the crew at least and that is seafaring wisdom to share. There is no ship and there is no fire. This is an absolute. Fortunately, for those involved, there will be no seafaring nor idioms taken literally. ShadeCo is aware of the connotations of common idioms such as “Hit the road,” “Cut the mustard,” or “A grand explosion to the solar plexus.” These things hold meanings that data collection has clarified and programmed for manipulation and de-manifestation.

         Nevermind, that’s too heavy – not literally – let’s shift our focus here to the metal brackets that surround Mr. Manheim at his desk, where he is whipping his balding head in wild circles, pushing nobs, twisting levers and whatnot.   

         Nevermind, ShadeCo is required by law to accommodate chickens – not literally “chickens” but scaredy-cat’s – not literally cats but readers that are easily scared – afraid – by keeping things from becoming too scary for those pussies – not literally “pussies” as in cats or vaginas but readers that are afraid – shaking in their boots – afraid. In this legal obligation, ShadeCo wishes to commemorate those that have patiently quit reading the Shadow Policy and signed it without, a policy that covers others like covers cover others in their bedclothes. This is a turn of phrase that turns meanings from one to the other without purpose. But to disintegrate meaning is the ShadeCo way!

         Mr. Manheim is at his desk doing his job. That’s that. There is a black banana at the bottom of the desk drawer. To keep it a secret through the infancy of the universe. That’s hers alone to be forgotten. No, nevermind, save that for later.

         The boy and the counselor are working on vanishing but they are holding in their wretched slimes. Vanishing, into The Wretched Slime that collects futures. They are working. Now like the man. This is a place that moves them toward collection. The things for and of celestial clouds, essential clouds. Raining is in the past and past it. Collections for redistribution. Absolute flowers. Fireflies asleep on the dock. He isn’t a boy and he isn’t a counselor and he doesn’t have any work to do and The Wretched Slime is traveling across a concrete floor to find an institution for redistribution. It’s made it so far since it started all this. All of these organized piles surrounding this and that, stacked into cubes for redistribution without institution and admission by permission toward injunction. Call it a dishtowel if it helps make sense of the days, but that’s not it at all. No, that’s not it. Not that one. It’s a difference that makes them detachable for each sector, divided into cubes by category. Data driven of course. Everything, everything. That’s the ShadeCo promise of the ShadeCo way. Everything. That’s a lot of a word, but its for meaning here, absolute meaning: everything. Their wretched slimes drip, drip, drip like the rain from the past but not rain or in a cloud. Warehouses of this size get their own weather patterns and there is a storm system approaching over the shelves of rattling blocks, stacked in cubes of boxes. The data is collecting and the weather systems are collecting and the wretched slimes are collecting but there is never a place to these things without contamination of essential universe. So, it is kept separate in perpetuity. Metal bracketed shelves built to last to hold The Wretched Slime.

         Nevermind, there is nothing but cutlery to be found in here.

         That is untrue, warehouse description, there was almost a form before this cutlery nonsense. No spoon is big enough to hold The Wretched Slime. Never to be mistaken as food. A real gut bomb if you were to ingest it – though motive to do so is nil. No, back back, start all over again. There is a pile of boy a pile of counselor a pile of Mr. Manheim a pile of boxes of cubes of stacks of boxes of piles of wretched slime on shelves and a concealment into which to vanish. Wonders by provocation of The ShadeCo Shadow Policy, to become, etc. Like a waiting room. The Manheim’s desk is busyempty. The boy’s body is changing. The counselor’s intentions are putrefying. Mouths and teeth and feet and finger-attacks about a concealment, a warehouse, looking for a place to be. There’s none. So, everything changes to accommodate the way we do it here at ShadeCo. In lineup, to be trained early and keep. The boy is trying. To keep things for folly. Screenscreams upon entry, stay tuned at the end of the feature for a bonus feature about the feature. Out of murderousgraves, grieves, screenscreams, meaning nearly mourning. Tones of depressive bursts, liquidation. Injecting wretched slime into depressions to slither into meanings, folly. This is the ShadeCo guarantee. Left with these walls flashing wretched slime. To really become against the grain, splinters of it catching on skins. Woodgrains onskins disremembered. Everything means everything. All disremembered. All is everything. Everything to be disremembered and all. Everything is all. Everything means all. In total, all and everything. Together to get everything to be all and to disremember and become everything vanishing. That is a turning point. All is lost. All the things that shine like these slimed walls are to become all and everything and is meant for disrememberment. The gloss of the summersneverending glow inter-mixing with the wintersneverending slime. What a time to be missing! What a day to be vanishing! Retracing steps to find paths is righteous furthermore meaningful, intrepid yet lashing, reverent but scarce. Too many things to retrace, nevermind. Don’t go back that way back, it’s a different way back now, back don’t bother. Consequential claustrophobic inconsequential, to do, do you remember this so well, back. And so here’s a forgetful number, a sentimental piece to service the summersneverendings glowings. Strangers, habitually strangers, but now, under neutral stars, bursting innumerable kissy dangers sway them, a rolling star circled. No longer. Many a stuntedsnippet of many a boundless bantambits you’ll be a bitten by some nine bottomlessbits of hits or no denser nibblebits of concern. In this disconnection they cannot. It is also disconnection to say that they basically will not. Fantasma promontories remain secreted {splash!} in golden afterglow. There’s simply no way of knowing if the afterglow is of quality spoon or of astronomic effect. ShadeCo has made a joke. You will know that ShadeCo is laughing when you hear this sound: {kloonngg!}. Okay, let’s try it out. A spoon was placed in the cutlery drawer but this was a mistake because the spoon had been used and had not been properly soaked nor properly scoured. {kloonngg!} The things that were in the drawer at the time were clean, so the dirty spoon was unwelcomed and threatened to muss up sanitation and good taste. This part is not funny. Someone said that if you have to explain a joke then it’s not funny. There was no explanation and yet it was still not funny. Another someone says something that makes sense, but that is at a different time and it is a different someone. Too many someones to keep track. Likewise a pile of dead birds stacked cubes of boxes sing. {kloonngg!} Despair not, birds drain satisfactory. Stain resistant concrete and waterproof new shoes and birds are both. But oh and there’s another someone that is both. There are ladders without tops, vanishing clouds of the overhead. The stars of the ceiling are vanishing. There are pitchers filled with water aside ladders without tops. Ladders help to reach things up high or down in deep holes to be lowered into.

         Only one for now, Mr. Manheim, at the desk with the gadgets in the office upstairs from the ladders and the boy and the counselor and the many other things and piles of stacks of cubes and The Wretched Slime collecting wretched slime birdpiles, says, adding, then never again. He pushes a cigarette down his throat and catches fire. Now’s the time for wetting paper.

         The pile of boy splatters as he speaks, What kind of crap is that?

         It’s how we know this thing is working, says Mr. Manheim, the worker.

         What thing?

         This, says Mr. Manheim, gripping his teeth. This thing is part of why we have to do this work, otherwise we’re just out here doing nothing.

         That’s unlikely, says the boy.

         It’s very likely, disagrees the counselor.

         Mr. Manheim revolves his baldhead in comprehensive rings and jiggles the keys hanging from his hip. He reaches and clicks and sniffs and puts something new in his mouth and chortles and says, So?

         What? asks the boy.

         Up the ladder with you, says the counselor.

         Up the ladder with you, says the baldheaded Mr. Manheimdeskman.

         For what purpose? the boy asks.

         Bring the pitcher of water, answers Mr. Manheim.

         To complete a task, says the counselor.

         For what purpose? the boy asks.

         For pouring water, comes a reply.

         Pour it where?

         To the ground.

         For what purpose?

         To wet the paper.

         What purpose does that serve?

         To test the waterproofness.

         Oh.

         It’s the title.

         Which?

         This one.

         The title?

         Yes.

         Oh. The boy scales ladders that are near in numerous ways. His feet are climbing up and his hands are climbing up and his arms are pulling up and his legs are pushing up and his eyes are pointed up and his butterfly lips flutter back around and back and around again in flight without. Nothing is landing as planned, but the boy is making it to the tops, where the toplessnesses are missing. The ladders have tops and in clouds. The boy does not need to climb so very high, but he needs to climb higher before pouring water on paper. Where’s the paper? the boy asks.

         Look down.

         Oh yeah, sure, look at that, says the boy. It’s right where you referred.

         Now pour the water, Mr. Manheim says.

         On the paper? asks the boy.

         Yes, on the paper below you. And hold that pitcher up as high as you can, that way the water falls farther and will put the paper to the test.

         Won’t the paper rip and disintegrate or something?

         This is not normal paper, my boy, laughs Mr. Manheim.

         What kind of paper is it?

         The man turns a dial and thingies light up, illuminating the paper scattered across the concrete floor. It’s waterproof.

         Waterproof?

         Yes, that’s what I said, says the baldhead, smoking his only cigarette before never again, Manheimdeskman.  

         Why is it waterproof?

         Because it’s made that way.

         But why make it that way?

         To keep it from disintegrating when it gets wet, puff, puff.

         Yeah, okay, but what purpose does it serve to keep paper from disintegrating in water? asks the boy.

         There’s a lot of water out there.

         And there’s a lot of paper too. So what?

         The counselor slithers into a colored box of a cube of stacks of colored boxes and inside eating something.

         Pour it, says the twirling baldhead Mr. Manheim.

         The boy does not want to pour the water on the paper. He can’t say why he doesn’t, but he doesn’t want to. So he doesn’t and his pitcher supports shake and the ladders shake and the concrete groans as the legs of the ladders slip across it, metal on concrete and boy in many forms of falling. Remember how big this place must really be and with the many parts redisremembering.

         Pour it, repeats Mr. Manheim, face askew. You must pour it now.

         The boy’s sockets wander to the backside of his head to see something new and his new shoes are scratching his tail. {kloonngg!}

         Go ahead, pour it right down on there in a straight line down on there, down there onto the paper there, let it pour down on there straight into a straightline and we will know so much better after we find out how it does.

         This is stupid, says the boy, his sockets returning to place, lips and hair tango.

         Don’t be a fool, insists the counselor, failing to chew, but mashing bits into a twisted hole. Just pour the water down there. Onto the paper there.

         I don’t want to, says the boy, his new shoes kissing toes, skinny shins. This is stupid.

         It’s just to test the paper, assures Mr. Manheim, aerosolspraying the desktop and watching.

         No, says the boy, drinking from the pitcher, but failing and drooling onto the paper below. I don’t want do this.

         You are doing this, laughter from below.

         The counselor appears to be trying to move toward the double-doors to leave this ShadeCo, but he is not trying, but he says, Too many things are going on all the time and I just can’t keep up with it any longer.

         You are doing this, says Mr. Manheim pointing to the wet paper below, look.

         There are drops of water collecting on the paper and the drops do not appear to be soaking into the paper.

         How’d you do it? the boy asks.

         Manufactured waterproof.

         Yes, but how does it work?

         It keeps the water from soaking into the paper.

         The boy pours the remainder of the water down onto the paper, now curious. The lukewarm water splatters off the paper and forms pools of lukewarm water by the paper and so much wasted paperpulp of past tests. There is nothing to it, but it works without wetting.

         Nevermind, the paper soaks and a hole forms where the stream of water falls through the paper.

         It doesn’t work, the boy suddenly occurs.

         Mr. Manheim spins knobs and flips wires, plugging unplugging plugging plugging unplugged plugs unplugging and plugging plugs, drips blood of a pool of blood on his desk, scratches, twitches, blinks too much, plugging plugs and nearly chewing, toes akimbo. The paper is very wet and ShadeCo claims no responsibility for the failed test. A recall. Things come flooding the paper and it runs away in a torrent. Not as planned, Mr. Manheim groans. Tendons appear on his neck, arms, toes, everything appears pulling, shiftyrapids. It is not as planned. The paper is nearly gone, disintegrated on the concrete floor. The warehouse is not too cold and not warm. There are many things to eat in ShadeCo and they’re cubes of stacks of boxes of colors. Everyone eats these groceries to remodel themselves over and then again to better. To funny themselves it’s always funny to fill. Screenscreams indecipherable in piles of cube walls, shining walls of wretched slime. Bright lights on disintegrating paper and falling water. The boy feels ashamed about the paper and the properties tethering it to disintegration. He disintegrates and reshapes, remodels. Face puzzlescrambling. His is. This is it, the things he said that were not explained. {kloonngg!}

X

         Making paper for cubes of metal rafters of stacks of colored things, signs without words, Mr. Manheim deskbound and working. The boy is watching the baldhead work, but he doesn’t understand him or it, the task nor the concept. The man finger-attacks knobs and levers and he does this and this and somewhere he creates a somewhere soggy askance paper. He is sure due to undo-review-redo methods, his methods are strong and his conclusions are data driven. The data drives everything across his desk from gadgets to wires to nobs and speakers to toy cars to power cables to whatnots. Data drives the man and it is a busy life at work, being driven. His baldhead sweats working beads, Mr. Manheim. It’s its own atmosphere, the warehouse, and static charges building up and paper tests nearly complete, so Mr. Manheim struggles to scramble to complete to work to finish to prepare to test to see to collect data to let himself be driven by a data-chauffeur to conclusions regarding paper. The pitchers are full but the ladders slide, pitchers wait for the ladders and the papers to reposition before the tests can continue. There are nobs and levers to tweak in order to reorganize the papers by levels of water resistance. The boy is not a good helper, but there are still arms from time-to-time and a good occupation is sometimes impossible to come by and nearly possible to come by at other times, the right times for testing paper. He stands and watches the colored boxes, wondering a great many things. There are some colors of boxes that are difficult to see and this serves a purpose, but the boy does not. It is a cosmic joke, no, don’t explain the joke or the joke goes untold. {kloonngg!} The clock on the wall is watched and it affects everything its way, its own way to go and the time slips away like dark slime. There is no working hour nor happy hour, just hours. The desk rattles with the man’s motions of hand and rattling keys and moves. The buttons he pushes are the right ones certainly and the knobs he turns are the right ones and the switches he flicks are functional and purposeful and he is working harder than he’s ever worked before to work. Please work, he thinks. He knows that thinking this does not change the outcome but he does it anyway, hoping that his thinking might manifest in positive outcomes, yet knowing that no. There are always consequences in these sequences. In any event, this is what is happening, he is thinking that his hoping might manifest. No, that’s all wrong, he is thinking that he’s hoping that his thinking might manifest. In any event, this is the crux: his thinking about thinking of hoping that his thinking might manifest. This is the only thing he is thinking about, other than about thinking about his hoping. Those two things are the only thoughts on manifestation that Mr. Manheim is having. Another thought manifests on the affect he has on these sequences, but no that’s wrong also. No, the baldhead is there at the desk, there is no doubt of his presence in this place. That much is unmistakable. Unremarkable. He is bald and spinning his head. That’s the only thought in the boy’s head, hairyhead.

         The boy says to Mr. Manheim, What is the crux?

         And Mr. Manheimdeskman says, It’s that I was thinking about how my thinking might manifest hoping.

         And the boy says, That’s not what you said you were thinking.  

         And Mr. Manheimdesk says, I didn’t say what I was thinking. I said what I thought I was thinking about hoping: that my thinking might manifest.

         And boy says, That’s exactly what it is! You’ve missed the point!

         And Mr. Manheim says, No, that’s the crux.

         And bo says, A-Hem!

         And Manheim says, Oh yes, yes, eh?

         And b says, Just says your line.

         And man says, The crux.  

         And   says, Okay, but you says.

         And m says, You says I says.

         And says, Says you.

         And then nobody speaks.

         By the time the subsequent test paper is ready it is later than it should have been. Quickly.  

         Nevermind, earlier.

         And his spinning baldhead, the baldhead at his Manheimdeskman like an employee, looks like a real employee, a bigwig, a person of significance, the one with the answers, the wise one of years is Manheimtype. That’s who he is. To begin with he’s a man at a desk. It tells so much more than there really is, and he knows this, but he avoids comprehension on that front, mask in place. The mask is not in place any longer; he’s moving. Desks and concrete floors, he’s a walker. A whippyheaded walker. A dangerous type. The legs of his pants shake and rattle keys as he’s now on the move toward the pile of counselor. This is his way of doing things around here. It’s the ShadeCo promise he must keep or it’s his job. Mr. Manheim can’t handle loss and must not settle for it. So, he’s made himself a ragtime robber, sliding his way across the floor for and with a purpose. This deskdance.

         The boy says something unbelievable. {kloonngg!}

         We’re ready! says the man and hoists the pitcher up the ladder and hollers, Look out below! The water splashes on the paper, knocking the pieces of paper all over the room and splattering all over the cubes of boxes of stacks. Did it work!? the man shouts down to the boy.

         The boy looks at sad clumps of wet pulp, looks like, no doesn’t bother, something to be sure. He’s only a boy.

         Nevermind, he’s not even that any longer: he is perfectly puddled and piled with the cubes of stacks of colored boxes. The boy is gone and that is what is happening here at ShadeCo.

         The counselor is coming on strong but thin. Things are not working as they did in the long ago, so he’s reconsidering the past. He is not moving whatsoever as the paper tests continue. There is no interest. Staring and staring at the colored boxes. Yellow boxes. Those could be his favorite someday. He’s not trying. It’s a strange time that happens and moves into the past as it goes.

         Nevermind, no not that one.

         A spoon is in the counselor’s lap. He pays it no mind as he is enthralled by the yellow boxes at the moment and does not know that it’s there. It is not there now. Someone took it away. Maybe it was the boy, haha! That’s unlikely and impossible. The spoon was never there.

         Nevermind, the spoon has returned.

         The next pitcher is hoisted up the ladder and presently the water falls in a steady stream to be proud of, a conscientious stream upon the poor scattering paper below, such height! It’s improbable for anything to remain after the water pours from such a height as the unseen laddertop – where did that baldhead go? The ladder is much too tall for a thing such as the counselor. He barely has hands any longer and the rest is puddling up around him or drip, drip, dripping away into The Wretched Slime. But the spoon suddenly jumps beneath the water stream, causing the water to jump back out its rounded edges and obliterating the paper test. Dammit! yells. Mouths flutter about in a flock overhead and no one exists to try to figure out which one said it.

         Needless to say, the paper disintegrates under the stream before the spoon dives to try and save it. The spoon fails. The paper is gone.

         On to the next test paper. The boy reads it aloud as the water splashes down upon it and no one is listening to him read aloud the following short snippet as the paper disintegrates under the waterfall:

He stepped. She stepped. They were walking. There were a lot of other people doing a lot of things, including stepping and walking. The steps were loud and some other things were quiet. Some of the other things were quiet too. It was a place where people took steps and walked. This is a story about walking. Not everyone that was walking, but specifically he and she that stepped often. There were quite a few steps and no fewer than a lot. He did not walk with her, but he did walk at the same time that she walked and within reasonable range of her as she stepped or walked. It was not because of her steps that he stepped, nor was it her that depended upon his stepping to take her own. She was walking by choice. He was walking too. The place was not crowded but reasonably full of people doing many different things and many of the same things and walking fast or slow or regular or not at all. It was a big place to accommodate so many walkers and steppers and other thing doers. It was a good place and a fine place to walk. Men and women walked too. It was he that had previously walked the most, but that’s just because a record was kept of all of his steps, while for her there were no records of steps taken or walks completed, so no one was sure how many steps she’d taken. Walking is not important unless it is required for movement and to do other things. There are many other things to do besides walking or stepping or reading about people that walk. Many of those things were being done in conjunction with others walking and stepping. He turned a corner as he stepped and stepped on a steep marble step. There was no folly in his movements because he was making decisions as he went and he was a sharp lad. The step was slick and his slipper slid across it as he stepped upon it. She was ahead of him and did not slip. A long walk takes more time and she did this kind of thing all the time, stepping and walking regularly. Her walk took her up up up the steps and things were slow. There were a lot of things that were different from way up there, it would appear to be so so it is so. The differences were not kept track of and may never be because it was a stairwell. There were many trees and things were not much different than any other regular kind of place. Vines climbed the sides and winding ivy blocked sunlight. It was his favorite place to walk because he always felt like he moved upward in a regular place like this, while it was not her favorite place for the same reasons only in reverse. It was not a building. There was no business being done in this place and there were many stairs that go up and down in both directions and there were plentiful trees. It was green and he stepped sometimes on the green bits of life here and there on the stairs and she mostly stepped over anything living, especially lower forms of life like plants or bugs that could not or would not defend themselves against steps. He saw that she was opening something up there and he was curious what it was that she was opening, for he couldn’t see what was up there. Tree shadows and fallen leaves kept things concealed and lively. It was not a park. They were not alone. The amount of people was not impressive but they were not alone. The steps were theirs and everyone else’s too. She was at the door but then there was a slip of something on his step and she was elsewhere. He looked inside a hole and wondered if she’d fallen inside. The look was long and the hole was dark, the wonder terminal. She was regularly not inside the dark hole and things were pretty regular today, so she was not in the hole, but he called inside it anyway, hoping to know for sure, but as there was no response and there were no further steps leading him into the hole, he decided to move on. He was walking again now. She was too. Their steps were leading. The leading wandered and the many things, having gone back to normal, seemed consistent. The others that were stepping and doing other things had all gone home now and the place was empty but for the he and the she. They were not aware of each other’s and their own presences and they were also not aware that everyone else had gone home. None of those people could afford to hang about. He was dependent upon a trust and she was dependent upon a drive. The trust was inscribed with the following words, stamped in wax, “Drive into and through.” He crashed the car out front thinking of these words, perhaps it was a subconscious tick or an episode or an inability to read or drive. Too scary to think for him and he let others do it for him, mostly. He did not know it but she was almost identical-similar to the way was doing everything today and he was just waiting for the door now. There were no more steps to be taken, so he knocked, but she was elsewhere. The heavy door did not allow further progress. Who controls this door? he wondered. She might have wondered the same, but she was elsewhere again. She moved often and far. She said that she had been moved and she might be right. Guided to her benefit and weakness. She was not sure she liked him because she didn’t know him and he didn’t know if she liked him because he’d never been sure whether he was likeable and in this connection she was all tangled up in his judgments and she shackled him in his old chains and everyone kept hoping to just go home for their evenings, leaving these two clowns wondering and being unsure about the things they like or don’t like or whether they are capable of sound judgments about the things they might or might not like, like each other and the other’s likes. It was the door that he was knocking and she could hear him doing it. He was now seen at the door and he was wanting in but she didn’t know him and he didn’t seem to like her like he knew her and that made him insecure like she was insecure about how she felt about what he liked. He was still stepping though he was not moving. She was not stepping nor was she moving, but now, after not moving or stepping, she stepped and moved and he followed suit. They were now not stepping but they were moving. The entryway was pleasant. A good place to move and step or not move and step or not step and move or not move and not step was not easy to find and he and she were quite pleased to have found such a place, but they never decided. The combinations were hard to remember and the door was locked. She was elsewhere and he was at the lock, twisting the numbers around to the right, to the left around and stop, and ten back to the right, but the possibilities were incalculable for her or for him. Like how many steps. Or how much walking. The goodness became of these connections and made him dizzy and it made her dizzy and the other people had returned now, all walking or stepping and moving or stepping and not moving or otherwise. This was the place for regularity of course and he and she were in this place. She was up there in a tree and he was at the door. She said something he didn’t hear and he said something she didn’t want to understand, something ill-fitting a functional body, bad for working or walking. Green and brown. He waited for a response and the door had a combination lock and he was no wizard. He thought again and she watched him think from the tree. He thought up a way while she was wondering what he was thinking. He might have wondered the same if he had found her elsewhere. Life’s quandary. A key slipped through the combination lock and things were changed for the door because of the key and of the combination lock. Everything was changing and the people were leaving and coming or staying and resting or eating food or talking to others or doing a great many other things. The lock kept. Through the rattling and the random guesses. Things were organized this way to keep things simple. No, it was so much easier. This was no door, no they may not enter through this door because it was not. There were a lot of things on the other side of the door and those things were worthy of protection by what turned out a wall. Nothing was really kept out. Some things were kept in, but nothing was kept from entering and he wondered how to get in. A face appeared in a window and then it was gone and he did not notice the face. She did not notice the face. It was no longer there because it had moved from the window. There were clouds gathering and there was a decrease. Most of the people noticed it and he and she did too. It was that kind of day. If rain, then so it would be, and everyone might notice it if they were outside or if they were looking out through a window, perhaps that’s what the face was doing, checking the weather. It was a good thing to do, before leaving, to check weather patterns outside and the door was closed because it was a wall where he was knocking and waiting. The tree was tall and she was in it. There was no wind today and pollendust. Everything smelled normal. He wrote a note about elsewhere and asked for her to answer her door and about the key and the combination lock and the changing walls and the weather. It was the following short note: Please, if you will, keep moving forward, otherwise I will stay with the door and you will keep stepping without moving or I will move without stepping, which is certainly not the way it ought to be, so if you will, take steps to make movement possible and walk here to the door because the door is in my way. It’s a wall. The note ends there and he signs it pretty well, feeling vindicated by the written words on her waterproof paper. She signs it too though she doesn’t bother to read it through, no time, too much. It is a good thing that the paper is meant to withstand rain because of the ominous clouds forming over the people in the place. It is outside and there are trees but it is not a park nor is it a building, though the door may lead inside. She is not inside; she is elsewhere. He is not inside; he is outside. Too complicated in closedovetail because there is no reason for close closedetails nor doves of these too complicated anyway to unravel and there’s no detail worth reasoning out in these papers of detailedclosedovetails. He’s here to experience a door and a wall and she’s in a tree or elsewhere too to experience whatever it is to experience up there in a tree. Branches swaying, thinking, etc. He’s not at the door and his note is left behind as he winds things backup, backup around for finding a way inside. He slips paper money under the parapet. This does not work. He’s at the balustrade now again – he was there some time ago and remembers the balustrade quite well, though he will not find it again to save his life. The money is a wash and he puts it on the balustrade before a wind carries it away. From the balustrade and awayaway like a bird worth cash value. That’s the nature of it. Don’t set anything down. Everything that sets might never pick up again and that’s the scary truth of the matter. To avoid such happenstance, hold on to everything and don’t set anything down, extra-specially not near a parapet or a balustrade. Here hold this, he says, but she is elsewhere again and the workers are moving about and working on the two, the him and the her. There will be no trees and space is free. Space costing an unreasonable amount to lease or to own is the only reason for this unfurling. Preventative fees on bad ideas. Bad ideas agast, run out to manufactured poorhouses neighboring good ideas and manufactured medium ideas, maybe unmarketable, unprofitable ideas like birds that no one gives a shit about. She was thinking of an idea and it might have been a good one, but so then she didn’t and she was paying to have it and trying to make it pay for itself, but that cost her an idea. That’s the name of the game in her business if any. Ideas go a mileasecond out windows of speeding cars, but they are not driving and this is not a roadway, though greenery treesnbushes and maybe a door where he stands all knocked-out. He knows the names of games too but does not heed and then wonders why he’s always such a hurricane. He hurt himself twister-twister and kneeled by the door, but no. Things were not working out with the paper money under the parapet and with the balustrade to be at. He was not really wondering any longer and her elsewhere was removed so neither stepped and his steps did not become a walk, but he took the papers without thinking or moving and she did not think about the steps without thinking about moving. Too much moving without thinking they both thought at the same time. They laughed the eye connection. There were a lot things happening and it was not very difficult after the time changed over again and everyone was there stepping and not stepping and the like. This was also at the same time and the balustrade vanished behind the parapet, and ultimately the money was all but lost, if not lost all together like a bird that doesn’t exist. He did not mind the bit about the money and the birds and the balustrade and she laughed and, the money faithlessly succumbing, did those other things moved step-by-step inhand. The soda did not matter, but now it does and everything is systematic again. Things were so disorganized before they were systematic as is. That was after the first systematic time. A soda. The soda. Inahand. And this was all before this systematic future time at hand. Everything was before something and everything was after something too, all in order, to keep everything from slipping away from him or her. They held on very tightly to the sodas that were and the sodas that will be. The steps were there before and after them and there were many flowers nearby so count it. It was a place for plants and people and stairs and doors and sentimentalsodas. Soda was in the breeze, that’s it. A pungent colawind that came from the soda treatment. To avoid the stink, he moved and stepped away and she walked and moved away. Things were better when everything was away. They both, out of sync and without noticing, walked elsewhere and collided with one another there, by the door or the parapet, both holding or drinking sodas. The odor was gone and they were thinking about sodapop. One was thinking in words; one was thinking in pictures. No telling which. Didn’t matter. The words presented images and swoopy logos and the images presented words and swoopy images, that’s all. There was no need for disappointment for he nor for she. For the sentimentalsodapops foamed enough within the words to understand the images and for the images to understand the words that they swooped about it and tried best to remember. It was especially helpful. He hoped he was right about sodapop but hoped he was wrong about her drinks, but he said everything outlandish, to the mild flavored astonishment of she. She did not likewise, and no one kept track of any of these things like the soda pop or the birds nobody gives a shit about or the things that she did and kept hoping they might do because she did not have to, keep up with the time to keep. He didn’t either. No. Neverdid. Nothing was kept and he walked down the narrow way to the back door, finding it open to the laundry. Loaded and spinning they were, coin-op machines, many of the gadgets pleasing, leisuretime makers. The odor was nearlypleasant and the warmth was enough for him, so he took a seat atop a drier, for it was a cold time and he was looking to change things around. He sat there as, cu-thunk, cu-thunk, the clothes went. Everything wears out eventually, he chuckled. These are mine, she said. And he turned to her like he did and she didn’t even see him turn and she didn’t even see him there in the laundry but she thought she saw him along the balustrade stretching time, leaning. It’s a lapsed timeline, he claimed. She didn’t buy it and anyway she was elsewhere. She didn’t know what he meant about any of it and she didn’t care either because he was not with her and he had stepped to move around her and around to the laundry behind everything else from before. The laundry was a dull place and everyone wanted him to leave and he wanted to leave so he left the clothes and he adjusted his tie to move. Back to the door and awaiting a cue. That was her moment to shine and everyone saw it and it all worked out this way. There’s never been another way yet. There was a book about it published a long time ago and she has that book and she liked to read aloud. I came to this place for work and stayed for more. The words are not the thing. And there’s nothing else to say. It’s a place of employment where she reads and there are many painted rooms she ought never see. Hope to do. Pigeon and walrus tusk smears. There were endless uninspired amalgamations and many doors unavailable or unabledoors. Colors that couldn’t see the lightblank for the colorface in a window or came looking again for the colors that couldn’t see blanklight for the blanket for the face for the window that came looking again for the colors that couldn’t see lightbanks in the blankest of the colorfaces in a window that came looking again for the colors that fade away in the wash. A gaze that held power and a struggle that held the black. This was a time for steps changed or walking bird via bird. She, he, he, she. They took their time because elsewhere was oooooo far from this place and she was there for business party. In tie as corset. In boa as robe. They both owned formal wear and were embarrassed to be caught wearing what they might have been wearing. It was not a Laundromat. This helped to break the ice. A serious lack of driers and washing machines, coin-ops. The walk was over because they were both out of doors at the time but opposite. Hello? said he. Yes? said she. I am here, said he. Yes and? said she. Can you see me? said he. Yes, said she. Can you look away? said he. Sure, said she. Then, she turned away from the inside of an impossible door, but did not leave without her clothes which were lost in the absent coin-ops. There was hardly anywhere to go, so that’s what they did without stepping or walking, they talked about things to sayaloud. This is not a story about walking but there is a lot of it in the story because that’s what was happening at the time. There was a lot of time. She was busy and he was there. Things were changed and changing and everything seemed strange. No need. There was nothing of interest to behold of place and of green things that grew admirably and flowers abundant. Things were not bad. The people returned again to the balustrade and the sea guided seafunk drifted inland and seaward. There were too many stairs for some, but not for he and not for she, for they were stronger than that. They were weaker then, yet again in the setting sun, windblown lass and stalwart mate. First awake in the morning, so nevermind. They talked things complete and loud. Sodas breached conclusion. Once breached, it was stretched to cover a great many things that were hideous to see. If you insist, said she. That was how things worked in this place and she unlocked the door with a combination that opened the lock. Hello-hello! she shouted through the door. He dropped the key and the trap was set. Most of these things much much later or not at all. This was the way of things because of all the walking, birding, sodapopping. Both he and she knew the many things about sodas and birds and they told one another of many things they didn’t, afterall, know. There was no reconciliation. Fixed. He went about doing the things he considered worth doing and she she. The door didn’t matter to him anymore now that it was open and she was letting in the bugs, but she didn’t mind the buzzing of flies, not with the sticky strips and the zapper light she’d hauled all the way home from college. The flies were no match. Higher learning wins again and again. The door stayed open and the heat ran out, turning on the heat. It became warmer outside too, but only very close to the door and very very close to the window. They were so many otherpeople too because they could not slumbertrouble past their wildest screendreams. To figure things out or to explain, she could not decide. So, he did not bother to decide either. No that was not how things went. A pretty normal, such pretty steps. He was alike and she did her best. They knew nothing of each other’s likes and dislikes. For function’s sake, the conversation stayed dry. Okay, a joke, but that’s just one allowance gestured. He told her a joke and that’s the reason for all this walking and stepping and moving or not moving or not stepping, etc. All in one time. The eating, the walking, the moving, all in one. Multiple things at once. One at a time, all in one time. The room shifted axis and the lamp was a really groovy amber. She didn’t care about things like that; she never had. Nevermind. Her sisters told her no, but she did not listen. It was her strength and her folly, deaf. He tried to tell her all this but he only talked of himself and made a chump of this place. He practically fell over her when he did and their

         Then, the boy finished reading because the paper disintegrated under the waterfall and I was watching and listening, but no, no one was watching and listening and the boy was done reading. The paper vanished into pulp.

         I guess that’s that, someone said, but they thought they were wrong. {kloonngg!}

XI

         Waterfall alfresco double-door wet greensward out-of-doors. My elbows bend strangeways as I attempt to put myself backtogether. Lookingback, I see the boy’s tent, but no, it’s my tent. No, that’s not right. A tent. It’s a tent and a connection tent of funny fashion. {kloonngg!} Upon such legs of fixed location, I run the customary manner, lurching, buckling, moving quickly. Things are turning out quite normal of a sudden and I’m terrified. That blue ball bouncing between the walls between the Albertson’s and the True Value. To catch the ball I must grip, but not just yet, oh no, oh rats, I missed it. {kloonngg!} There’s so many things happening that it’s considered quite busy. There are people standing at the end of the alleyway not staring at me. Why aren’t they staring at me? What should I do? I don’t like the way they’re not looking at me because they are not looking at me. Impressive is how I might look. The crowd is growing louder and they don’t look frightened of me and seem to have not noticed me at all, hello. I stop in place and catch the bouncing blue ball, but the ball is so small now, more like a bouncy blue marble. And my hand, oh God! My hand!

         I run at them, just trying to get back to my car, to end this agony of appearing ghastly but being completely missed, as I assume. The people scream and scatter like marbles, not sure how or why, but they are like marbles. No, they’re not like marbles, they are like billiard balls. Blue bouncy balls, wall balls and the such, as long as it’s balls, that’s how they do it. And they are not before me any longer. The car starts right up, but I can hardly fit inside it. My shoulders to the ceiling; my knees up past the wheel. I am breathing a lot and the breath is thick. I do not like to breathe this way, so thick and so much, that’s the only thing I can think, otherwise about how my thinking is different now. Everything is different now. What am I? Oh! Oh God! {kloonngg!} I’m not sure what I am, but I look in the mirror. Then I look away from the mirror in horror or disgust. {kloonngg!} The mirror is follows, and I’m too big for this place or this place is too small. {kloonngg!} I surrender and I wish to no longer suffer. {kloonngg!} I put her in gear and the tires roll forward; she’s a car and I am relocating her and myself. The weather is unseasonably best. And I am moving headfirst and not at all. Things and lights all in different ways now. I almost crash because there is a new speed bump and a curb that was not there before. What is happening to me? This is so very unreasonable, especially without knowledge of car and color-coded keychain, wait! did that work before in the lot? I am encoded with memories that misfire and lost data. {kloonngg!}

         It’s a winding road with new curves and new houses and new cuts in hills and waterways and so much of everything is different that not one thing is exactly the same as memory serves. I fear what has happened to me, but I cannot explain. I dare not explain. No attempt.

         So, with nothing else to do, I drive home. It is a long drive home for me usually, but today the drive is unreasonably short, fast, but home might not be there because this place is not my home, no, but because, no not because, from, no not that one either, but due to complications the place I rent above the Diamond Parking Lot is unlikely to exist here, I think. That’s the place I rent and I am alive and I am not homeless. I am a high school counselor. {kloonngg!} I think I can remember a lot of the things I did. Faces and voices. That’s that and there’s nothing else to it. I will not tell about those kinds of things, it’s a waste of time to tell about those kinds of things because there are rarely answers in things like those kinds of things to tell about. I don’t recognize these driveways any longer and these yellow lines on the road that are now a strange shade of sunshineorange. I don’t get it. What a strange place this. The Diamond Parking Lot is not called that here, no not here, it’s got a different name here: ShadeCo Parking. I try to remember that name. Almost behind the Albertson’s grocery store, ShadeCo. I can remember almost anything in the morning. {kloonngg!} ShadeCo Parking. I park the car. I park legit. There are no spots but only shadows inline but I park it there in the shadows inline where the shadow hides the fog and boy oh boy is that a fine spot. There is a spot. A spoon is parked beside me here in this shadow inline spot. It’s not a spot. It is. {kloonngg!} I am in the shadow spot, brought to you by ShadeCo Parking. The car is barely parked. So legal it should be illegal, this kind of parking. Plenty of shade, but it might not be a good parking spot. I have already parked and I have already paid, so let’s just call it legit. No surprise visits to the tow yard tonight. That’s a ShadeCo promise. It is not a guarantee but it is a service. The way things are. That’s that and there’s no more. It’s barely even a car. There’s no parking spot because there is no car, or hardly anyway. The spot is paid for, so it must be real. It’s real because I paid for it. The money that went to purchase the spot was real because the spot was real and the spot was real because of the money that went to the purchase of the real spot. Paid money. That’s legit. No one is getting jacked tonight, especially not on this night in this way. The car is parked. The lines were drawn and the movements were made and now the vehicle rests between gentle shadow inlines, awaiting what’s to come. That’s the way of cars, mostly waiting. My feet reach the pavement and things are fine, spinning fine, but not too gentle, I’m stable on these feet and my mouth is breathing. The car’s doorway is so narrow that my head bends to the frame. Glass is breaking all around me as I strain to exit the vehicle. Glass, at a time like this, is better off broken. No reflections no thanks. Hard pass. This could be a funny joke if unrelenting. I’m out of that toy car now. Don’t think I’ll get back in because it is too small for me here. It is parked in a paid parking shadow and spot. I hope. I am walking too. Spoons line the sidewalks here. Whatta place! I like this place. This is so many places and so many spoons. So many spots for spoons and cars. That’s what’s good about it. Otherwise, I’m not familiar. However, I am a spoon aficionado. I come from a time-between-time where spoons fall into shadow and vanish, so it’s quite refreshing to come across so many fine specimens. Where I come from, the cutlery drawer is a mess and it vanishes as does the house and the mechanically compressed earth beneath it. Not to mention the dead roots. Those things have become vanished. I am not at home here so I like it here just fine, though I don’t understand. My feet, oh God! my feet. I am walking on new things and things are not like they used to be. I question these physiological connections between body and situations in this unbroken station irrational connection. What a stupid idea I could be, all this walking and thinking about connections and the possibility of physical disregard. There’s a bum asleep in what should have been a Diamond Parking Lot. It is ShadeCo Parking where the bum is sleeping now, in an old forgotten doorway, wrapped up in a dirty blue sleeping bag. It swishes when he moves and he is moving much too much to be asleep. I don’t know him and I don’t think he knows me. Whether or not he sees me is TBD. Don’t want to frighten. The grease trap from the Chinese restaurant mixes with the smell of piss and garbage to make for a displeasing, though perfectly legal, parking situation. The car is still there in the shadow of a spot. It is not disabled. It is number thirteen painted in white on the pavement. I am quite fond of the spot and still need to pay, so I walk to the dealie and put in my plastic card. The dealie tells me to wait so I do. It is thinking. The card is rejected! How am I to park legit when this card gets rejected, I try again. Flustered, the dealie spits it back out and tells me to use a different form of payment, so I reach for the place where my pocket should be, but the pocket is gone and so is the place where it should be. My paw tumbles over and I am left alone by the dealie holding a declined payment method in my hairy fist. The dealie does not speak aloud, the words are in digital form upon a screen. I can see it fine. There’s nothing wrong with any of this. Only there’s no way to park legit now and I cannot fit into that clown car any longer and the car is gone. What? If the car is gone and the spot is a shadow and my payment method is ineffectual, then I must not worry about things such as parking and cars and shadow spots and payment methods. My card has fallen from my paw and a brown puddle hides it from view. There is nothing wrong. In the doorway, the bum is rustling bag even more than before and he bag swishes and sweeps, filling the foul smelling air with its swishing and sweeping sounds and odors, feet and ass. I can smell it all better than I want. The alleyway and the lot. There is no apartment that I rent above the parking and so I shift position, across town and into the foothills. I have left the city behind and now plan to reside in the woodlands and the mountains or a cave or a hidden place. It’s better to be unseen. I feel more comfortable in the way of hiding. Hidden away. Nothing is wrong. I hunger. Something is wrong. A cave by a lake by a forest by a camp by a town by a busload of children and beautiful young adults by a series of rudimentary buildings that blend with the scenery by a world I no longer know and no longer understand, smiling together all these, making me feel empty, lonesome. I must sleep but daylight. The cave is hot. Things are different than they were and the temperature is good for things like smiling children and young adults playing in fields of grass in sunshine and laughing, things like that. I can listen to them from my cave because I’m doing that now. They sound delicious. No, not that, please not that. What could a thing like that mean, wherefrom? The daylight is past and I hunger. All is darkness, but then the moon shivers a hole in the clouds blowing by. The sky vanishes into woods, a trail led by the touch of feet. Is this the way? Trees sway. The rumbling thunder from afar. I quicken my pace. A faint light shines through the trees and it is the camp where the kids and the beautiful young adults have a campfire and their singing voices carry with them melodies mysterious and sentimental. I do not know their songs. Nothing is familiar. This occurs by this lake and I am very hungry, unbearably famished. Kids and beautiful young adults move from a fire to a lodge, where I eavesdrop their hums or chants. A door opens and a sobbing child is followed by a low speaking beautiful adult, whispering consolations. I wish to enter this world, not as a visitor or invader, but to become welcomed into this place. This is place not me. I wish to be inside, in the light, among either the chanting or the humming. A door opens, {HMMM} illuminated night. All at once the chanting or humming ceases and all eyes are on me, youthful, beautiful eyes without smiles they have and are. Humming or chanting is replaced by screaming or scrambling. The kids and the beautiful young adults race from the room and from my presence. I envy their ability to do so. I am so very hungry. No, not that, I will not do that. In short time, the lodge is emptied of life, but the lights remain. An alluring piano sits along one wall making not a sound. Not yet! To it, feeling something for a moment while I do this thing and an ended event or song. I shiver at the touch of the keys, white and black. Long scaly fingers with overgrown, blood-smattered claws press down on the keys and they make a sound. I am making music with these new fingers and I don’t know how but what wonder! The porcelain keys and deep red fingerprints unfamiliar and then a song is mine. The room is mine. I am home. Nevermind, no, no, no. My home is elsewhere, full of bones and I will need to clean soon. It’s too easy to let things go when there are no willing guests. So easy doing. Not doing. The air inside is in stark contrast with the sweet fragrance of summer mountains and plantlife in bloom astride river glades and glittering lake breezes. I’m spoiled though hungry. Children’s laughter drifts in from the out-of-doors. My mouth waters. A wild growl vibrates the hall from behind a grand oak door at the end. Deep gouges in the wood remind me of something horrid. I cannot or will not say what. Not of concern. Creatures of the inside need sustenance for bad times in their way. In my way things have become this way, I think. Rummaging through piles of bones I find nothing to eat but discover a stench that subdues my appetite, yick! I run outside where the sun is setting yet again, but how? No matter. Everything takes place and patience and in due order this patience will reimburse nourishment, I hope. Everyone in this connection sleeps and in dreams everything quietly retells perceptions of days bygone. My stomach, my God! my stomach. The beast of the hallway’s endway’s howls. Self-control. I spin the whetstone and sharpen my talons. The taste of iron rich blood in anticipation growing. I smash my head against the bashing-post, but therein lies no relief so I pace the circular chamber. Crimson walls of cave painting of warehouse buildings and people with missing parts. Splashing puddles of coagulating pink goo. Try the bashing-post again but no. That can’t be right. Things aren’t working. Nevermind, I utilize the bashing-post to great success upon my soft skull. What relief? The moon is high and I know their schedule pretty well now and it’s ghost story night at the campfire when the kids and the beautiful young adults gather to hear bastardized versions of my life story. What a sham. Every summer it’s less accurate and I am angrier because of the inaccuracies. I’ll never sit for it. I’m too hungry. To snatch a meal while hiding in the brush as they walk single-file back through the darkness. The approach is easy on this night in the hubbub of a gathered slew – potential. I hide in the brush not snapping twigs, not sneezing, nothing. It’s very quiet around me and their high voices make my mouth water. The storyteller cross-legged illumination on her face and I am trying to not listen. This is the story of the earliest settlers, she begins and the kids and the beautiful young adults get quiet. Their names were John and Alice and they traveled all the way from St. Louis in a horse drawn wagon. The sound of the names makes me sick. Those are names that should not be spoken. There is nothing to tell. I am not listening. This is my least favorable time of the night, when she is telling of them. And the threat of autumn and winter, ugh. So hungry. Inaccurate history be damned. It’s this or the long cold crush of winter death, so here goes. The payoff will come this night, oh horrible night. It’s this or the cold crush of hunger. Winter’s hunger unsatisfied. Death will come upon approach. I’m frugal not wasteful, only a few morsels to tide hunger. And once it’s done, oh what a relief to have such briefly woeful tasks complete. It would be a deer or a bear or a wildcat or a raccoon or an opossum or fish or seaweed or mill-foil or berries on bushes or snakes in the grass or a dog or a housedog or a coyote or a housecat or a wolf or an elk or whatnot, but for the reasons provided in the shadow policy I somehow signed without closely reading. ShadeCo will have me someday and I’ll be gone. I must eat. A fleshy pink soft one. Claws and teeth custom made. For this task. Everything eats, yes. The story she tells at the campfire ends with three howls in the moonlight, the third of which is accompanied by a jump scare that the veterans know and to which the newbies, with their heads tucked between their drawn up knees, fall victim, Ahh! And then everyone laughs. It’s a time to strike and my heart races. In a pale flash I strike, tender throat gushing and dragging feet kicking through shadowbrush. A rushing, yelling spectacle. Into the deep brush with my claws grasped upon a little gaping maw and a little breaking jaw. Smiling I estimate. No need to return. A meal complete. That’s that and everything has become routine again and the autumn rushes like a speeding train and I, tied to these, if you will, horrid artificial tracks, am chewing. There’s no nature worthy of being called natural. From something’s perspective everything has gone a rye but itself. That’s the nature of nature. It’s only natural to see oneself as default nature. All living things do it but it’s not right, I know this now: I’m a child-eating ghoul and I feel fine. I finish prodigious. I’m full but still chewing on bones. {kloonngg!} That’s that and there’s that that what it is is. No quibbling about it, nonetheless, however, furthermore and heretofore, I, respectively, will and have fed. The walls of my stomach have a little one entrapped and my succor is fiendish. This is not to say, in this connection, wrong, heretofore and furthermore. Silver goblets of pink goo. My succor. This is a bad thing of which there’s no use to escape but about which I keep falling into thinking. Of all the things to fall into thinking about, this is a bad one, and I wish to leave it, this mess that’s been made, I will need to clean this place because even without much struggle, a murder’s a mess. There’s so much liquid inside and so little to hold in. Thick liquids that drain forever. What a drag, I’m remembering these things for you, of all people. How could things be this way anyway? Events that occur in this damaged world, about which I’m telling you. But you never listen to me.

auto-reset

         ???

         I told you the whole story. Weren’t you listening?

         ???

         Yes, he told me the same story, but he was the one that opened the file.

         …

         Yeah, but the subject line was blank and that should have been the clue that he shouldn’t have opened it.

         ???

         What happened then, you ask? Well, then the virus spread across the network and pretty much nothing really happened.

         …

         Yeah, and the world was fine, just okay, no damage, right?

         …

         Well, yeah, but then another thing started when the next bit showed up, again no subject line, and the same unknown sender: adramalech6@aol.com. I didn’t even know that AOL still existed, the name meant nothing to me, I didn’t see any point to it, so I just trashed the message without opening it and notified the tech department. 

         ???

         Well, just let’s get back to that in a bit.

         …

         No wait wait, there’s more to the story, really, just give me a minute to explain. You never give anyone a second to speak without trying to throw in your two-cents. You haven’t even heard the whole story yet, so just shut up for once in your life and listen to me, would you?

         …

         Jesus. I’m sorry, but it’s just, whatever. Anyway, so the same message kept coming and coming and coming, every day, again and again, and I thought, who the hell is this person?

         ???

         Well, of course I didn’t open the message, what do you think I’m stupid? No, I didn’t open it. But, this is the weird part, right, so I look up this adramalech6@aol.com and I go down this long-ass rabbit-hole and I find out that Adrammelech is like a devil or a demon or something, it’s also some heavy metal band and there’s also a sound cloud account for some nobody, here let me pull it up. Here it is…

         ???

         I know, I know, right? There’s like no music, like just a bunch of random sounds and look at this: dude’s got three tracks.

         ???

         No, there’s no real music, they’re just like sounds of people running and banging things and wind and stuff.

         …

         Yeah, that too! Look. What do you see in this picture? Can you tell me?

         …

         Yeah, right? I couldn’t figure out what it was either. Looks like a pile of something, I don’t know what, but then I zoomed in, like this… and now look at it.

         !!!

         Can’t be right! Right? But it is right.  

         …

         I know, I know, it’s too weird, right? So, I do some more digging around and stuff and I come to find out that whoever this person is, the one with the sound cloud and all that, turns out they live in Coal Creek.

         ???

         Yeah, like just a bit away.

         …

         No, it takes at least an hour to get there.

         …

         On highway 2? Guess I never tried that way.

         ???

         Hell no, I didn’t go there, I’m not crazy.

         …

         You’re kidding, right? Well, I don’t have a car, do you?

         …

         No shit?

         …

         But you know how Douglas is. {chortle}

         ???

         Well, I was just planning on going home and watching TV or something, why? Do you really want to go find this dude?

         …

         Well, okay, but we’d better leave after Douglas’ smoke break, because you know he checks the parking lot.

         …

         Yeah, he got me that way too. Goddamn snitch. Well, what time is it?

         …