Terror on terror on terror: now nothing is terror. We didn’t know how ripe we were for plucking. Aghast! The ghost beghosts all, and our senses. What relations have we to anything? and anything to us? It appeared a month ago—though “appeared” is not quite appropriate. No, nothing is so definite. There is but a single distance, a single angle, from which the ghost can be seen. That is what Plumkin discovered; imparted to me; passed away by. In his dead eyes the ghosts’ form flamelike flickers. I need to buy groceries.

To get from my house to the grocery is five minutes’ by car and fifty minutes by foot. I relish all logistics and savor numbers like plums. Against five, Plumkin said the ghost could see us better behind the wheel, and that drivers were some of the ghost’s most pleasant pickings (I confess this is true). Yet the wheel of fortune lopped his head right off. And I—I!—taking a left turn, remain headed. Hurrah for five! My car moves silent and sad and scarcely a bird colors the sky. Depeopled houses ask to be looted. I don’t care enough to answer. The spirit of the time holds me still. Will anyone help us? For there are witches, too, with wands and brooms, whose spells were meant to deghost our world. Are they dead?—and if they are, are we dead? Our living-garbs convince only ourselves. My car pulls into the lot. I forgot there is no grocer. Big and wide that store, and no one, not here nor there, nothing. Food? I don’t care for it. My car wafts back home; I waft back, undressed, into bed; and dreams, like the dreams of death—

I’m carving a pumpkin. It’s bigger than I am. My knife is barely a knife. A cat meows and mocks, nuzzles darkly against my work. I’m beginning to finish the eyes. Wine spills from them, spills and spills. The cat turns into a witch with a witch-hat. Her wand by a flick turns the pumpkin into Plumkin. He says, “I’m not joking—this isn’t Borges—but there’s only one angle, at a fixed distance, from which you can see the thing. I saw it. If it wasn’t you, it was your kin. The resemblance struck me.” My mom, perhaps. Give me back my pumpkin. Please. No, don’t turn away. Just a mouth, just to carve a mouth—

Closet! My eyes see. In front of my bed the closet: in the closet his head. Piles of clothes on the floor. Valleys between. What time is it? Eclipsed angel of the sky, properest orb now painted red, answer. Knockknock. I slip into socks and find the door. It is a witch in a witch-hat. She carries a cobwebby broom. Beside her a burning dark cat purrs. “Put something on and come with me,” she says. The cat. The witch remains silent.

I slip into clothes at hand. Sweater, sweatpants. Finally we are on a broom, high above, looking at North Carolina. Smooth is our flight and quiet the words we exchange. Pleasantries, sighs; but certainly nothing that means. Cold passing through cloud-kept mountains. Perfect beacon of moon smiles on us. How are you? Fine, you? Good. Eventually teeth-chatter kills words at all. The cat lets out soft meows; glances often—for whatever reason—my way; sleeps. A rhythm I fall into so comfortably that I forget I am. Out of a strange pouch from nowhere the cat takes a wineglass. We all take turns drinking. And after we are all sufficiently wined we land in a patch unseen, of ribbits and splashing water, of pumpkins.

The witch gets off the broom first, then the cat, then I. For the first time the witch speaks, and as she does so the brim of her witch-hat glows. “The ghost is here, somewhere. Let us find the angle. Do whatever you need to cover your third of possible angles.”

We search and search and search. For a year we search. The cat is a constant complainer. The witch is silent. Spiders tickle the ground tappytippy. And who finds the angle but I? I climb a rock and leap, and the image of the all-lapping ghost—nothing like anything—makes itself known. I found it last year. The witch scrapes herself on every rock and cranes her neck into something un-neck; and the cat claws at whatever it can, inventing procedures (jump thrice then meow twice) that lead so well to nothing. Both of them have come close, once per, snooping about the leaprock.

I won’t say anything. Sometimes the cat states her suspicions: “I think you’ve found it.” When I first found it (only the indefinite it, if that, helps me here) I let out an exclamation—how could I not?—which I retracted just as quick. I won’t budge. Again and again the cat peruses the pouch. We are all drunk and searching. And sometimes if I look at the moon just right, I see North Carolina, burned and razed, carved into nothing. But it’s only an image.

There is a moment in any cat’s life when it must come to understand that that cat it saw for a year of play, at age five, out the window—that that cat is not, merely by sloughing off time, coming back. The cat is alone. Still it waits—and it waits—and it sees every play of shadow outside a possibility of past returned. It remains happy. Its optimism is enlivened by every refreshing of possibility. Never is it considered that that cat is not “worth the while.” That cat, it so happens, is to this cat the only cat. What it realizes after nine whiles is that waiting performs nothing. The cat takes matters into its own paws. It strews across the house artifacts of allure. Mice, in short. And thus our heroine’s kitchen game.

Presently she is curled up into a fine ball cat-dreaming about yarn. A whisker-touch away is the cat-tree, taller than any human, whose presence she appreciates more than its application. Every slightest rustle of noise undoes the long elaboration of her squint. Is it him? Wide-eyed lucidity prevails: no. Once more her eyes begin their slow descent, interrupted every quarter-shut by sudden openings; and finally she is asleep once more. One more once more and she faces a true interruption: footfall. Her humans have returned. Unballed she goes to hide the mice: she bobs slowly to the kitchen, and, halfway between the cat-tree and kitchen, reballs, resleeps, summarily forgets the day’s work. Dad, mom, daughter. They all three complain about gored kitchen-mice. But their talk is incomprehensible. It can only irk her.

Fatigue, not the fatigue of sleeplessness, registers as despair. For a moment. She mkgnaos it off and reresleeps, once more.

Cat-dreams are catty things, inevitably of yarn. This cat’s yarn, yellow, rolls out to a blank distance. Its length is infinite. Her little black paws twitch in play, pawing here and there, but never attaching themselves to the yellow. Green fills the space. Vines and trees, swamps and bees, all made of yarn. The yellow yarn survives. But her subject has shifted: she would rather deal with the green yarn about her. Her paw half-engages in the unfurling of a world—then she wakes. A little girl is petting her head. She says something chiding, smelling of rain or schoolwork. Mkgnao, mkgnao.

The cat thinks. Begins herself to walk. Struts boblike twixt leg and leg. Purring softly against silent parents a drop of wet wets her head; a sobbing mother, so very solemn, pets her. So she stifles her meows, empatients herself against the world’s hunger. Paperwork is shuffling on the kitchen-table. There is something strange, something different; time has granted her novelty. But nothing now looks the same, is experienced the same. Slinking beneath chairs, table; across the floor where once slaughtered mice slept (still they are smelled); it feels as if proportions have on all counts doubled. Space once fertilized by play is now unplayable. Mk—not yet. She is struck by the possibility that these six mice were befriended to this mother. She remembered killing them; then, knowing that he was yet nowhere, she regretted killing them. Beneath the table she balls into—gnao. Food. Mkgnao.

She is fed, fed the same food fed to her since she was here located, fed the same food prompted by the same mkgnaos she had mkgnaod since she was here located, fed the same food prompted by the same mkgnaos she had eaten in the same himless company since she was here located and he was there—there?—inexplicably relocated. There. She turns to the window: a cat. She rushes to greet him. But it is not him. It is an orange tabby; and he was, like her, white with black, red spots on his skin. Her enthusiasm dims. This is not even a cat to her.

The day is closing, she is aware. The sun is less. She looks for a box. The daughter trails her in good fun. This can only irk her, now. She lets slip a hiss. The daughter is dissuaded. No box is found. Mkgnao. Mkgnaw. Mkbgnaw. No attempt to shape cat-phoneme is successful. Sobs are now softer. The house is winding down to sleep. She scratches at the front door; is told by daughter to stop. She scratches again, then becomes more sly. Sleep she does, balled by the door’s carpet. Her dream of yellow and green is repeated verbatim. Sun breaks and mice squeak. But she does not today kill; she squints in wait. It is the father who comes to leave first. He opens the door. She seizes her opportunity.

Here is more green than she has ever felt. Dew annoys her. She circles a mailbox, shuts her ears to shouts. Molly! Where is he? Molly! But he is nowhere. Then, why would he be? Mice were her proclivity; they were never his. She is thwarted by fatherly arms and re-indoorsed. Her forays into time had become foolish. That cat, she knew, would never be seen.

She begins to chase her tail and thinks: thinks, 
I am a very foolish old cat,
With foolish dreams, yabbering yarn
Pulling me by the search,
Time stripped of time, shedding its
Layers like fur, the fur 
Of another cat, whose dreams
I cannot know. 

thinks,
Mkgnao.

Fatigue. She mkgnaos and rereresleeps, once more. Her dream of yellow and green is repeated verbatim; though it goes on slightly longer yet—she is able to grab hold of, for a second, a spot of red.

His first novel Sebastian was autobiographical; it used imagery of St. Sebastian. His second novel O, Paris was autobiographical; its imagery was Hugo’s. His third novel Sustain was autobiographical; it was also ten-thousand pages long. His fourth and fifth novels are autobiographical, untitled and unread.

If his sentences run by the beat of his own heart, it is not because he has any sense for style. He writes by basest impulse: automatically. It may be surprising that he’s forged a strong dogma about the serial comma, but he has. In every interview it is mentioned. “When I write, it is with a keen awareness of the political turmoil”—he says political turmoil with emphasis—”that we are in; the States are in a bad, bad place. It is with a keen awareness that we live in a world where the Associated Press Stylebook does not mandate serial commas.” Always laughter. Rich laughter. The large are belarged.

His readers like that they can see in his books traces of themselves; it is as if they are analyzing themselves, as someone else. He gives voice to realizations they had not previously been able to articulate. Raw masses of idea clogged up in their heads which only he found the proper order for. His books are mirrors just as perfect as they need to be. But of course his readers don’t read his books. They buy them—sometimes. They say the same things about his books. But they never read them. What could they contain that they don’t already know? They contain what they need to—no more.

Our humble author is working on his sixth novel. He has not responded to our request for comment. Nevertheless we tracked him to his austere abode. We watch him with his warm brown eyes and warm brown hair jot down his warm wide words. He’s always wincing—always looking all pain-like—as if writing is bleeding him of something. Of course we know that’s because he’s bleeding himself. He’s currently reading The Bell Jar. Last night he watched a Gaspar Noé film. And get him started on David Lynch. Yesterday he was on a date, a Hinge date, with a girl who didn’t know who he was. They went to a bookstore. He made a comment about Infinite Jest, something like, “The dudebro Bible.” All very proper. He made the right words speak. Certainly the date had results: she’ll never see him again, but she’ll be in his next book. By name, but mostly by body. Yes, he’s a genius—our genius. He’s the literary voice of our generation. So worship him.

There and spun strangely is a rocking chair, trash can, big empty bookshelf. The rocking chair faces the trash can; the trash can faces the bookshelf. However mild a task it would be to fix sense into their orientations, this is the nexus of the house: its objects are—except only rarely—decorative, passed over until they lose individuation, worked into the house’s whole weave. The ceiling, being so high and not at all flat (it follows the contour of the roof), has no fan; nothing except for a sea of vermiculite stippled without apparent pattern.

Straight from the entrance is a fireplace by which the smell of spring comes thick, of sun and new leaf, bugs in the air. Two portraits on its mantel from the same wedding occupy opposite ends, framed by mauve.

To the right is a kitchen, centered by a table, three chairs. Food-items stocked monthly are coming to their cycle’s end. A screen on a fridge-door reads the time: 9:27 AM.

Continuing right are stairs, descended so rarely as to be forgotten; and to their right is a room, a big one, with small things. It is never used; it has no surviving purpose.

Back past the mantel—enough sun at 9:30 to give its portraits’ faces full smiles—and turning left, a hallway leads by the direction of snoring to the house’s couple; at the opposite end is a bathroom in which their cat Olive lay curled—dreaming, if whisker-twitches are a tell.

Ray stirred to wake. He laid still, feigned sleep, squinted. Fresh sun swayed over his wife’s surface like seaweed. She was sliding out of bed, slow, not to bother the blanket. With a big stretch she failed to become alert; her vision passed from a blur to—she rubbed her eyes. The house felt too piercing penetrated by sunlight; she liked it better by the soft of bulbs. Meowing Olive purred past her longwinded legs. She fed her, feeling something like love, ruffled herself in the mirror. Her hair was thin and brown; the pallor of her face was extraordinary. But what most pronounced itself was her sea-blue eyes, some red, as if she had been weeping. She stood absently by the kitchen window. Finally she left.

When Ray rose she was at work. He did not bother to get dressed; did not bother to brush his teeth. Last Sunday he quit his job—quit his job that Lydia had in the first place earned him. He told no one; hardly even told himself.

He paced the full course of his room; a few times almost tripped over Olive; and, as if one may atone through pretend, he did dress—he put on his suit, that black black suit, funereal.

Disguised as hunger an itch tormented his senses. He went to the kitchen; adjusted for little reason the mantel portraits’ rotations; smiled.

Wide open on the table came by his eyes a newspaper, yesterday’s newspaper: Apr. 9. It had been a year. A letter peaked out from its pages. He moved quickly; tossed the last of the eggs into a pot; began to yawn. This table his wife had chosen two years ago, of walnut wood; and the fridge, too. For his part he had chosen nothing: he had not cared to. Now he did not like the fridge, its hum its superfluous screen; he did not like the table and its rocking. They were unsettled. As the arc of his yawn concluded he read the letter’s address, a distortion of his darling: “Lyd Hem.” It was from Blake. Bz.

Vibrations, great vibrations, trembled his spine. Vaguely: a premonition. Blake did not seem the type to write a love-letter. But then neither did Ray. When courting Lydia he had sent so many of them; so pert, precise, polished; word after word opening its petals like domestic dogwoods. He fidgeted with the frays of his sleeve. After a moment he reached for the letter: then he withdrew his hand. He would not open it.

No, not even slightly: he did not care what Lydia did; only cared what he knew she did. If he could but preserve her, preserve her image, hold still the steady distribution of associations she divvied out to the house’s things; if he could do this all would be well.

He had begun to believe—to believe he believed—that all home-items accorded with one another: if one thing was moved, a whole universe of relations was set off balance. These relations were as waves; at the addition or subtraction of an item, a new wave staggered the first—threatened to undo the house’s entire elaboration. Few great interruptions had occurred here for all the course of a year: only the swapping out of lighting, hygiene, groceries, always at the same times, with the same rhythms.

Now Blake disrupted him. In truth, there was no reason not to read the letter; no relation to be disturbed. It had already been opened, introduced to the house: its seal was broken. Rather, far beyond the relation between objects, he was scared of the relation between ideas; ideas he only now started to apprehend; ideas with the strength to change—to ruin—the house. He sketched his own idea: Lydia had moved on. He populated the idea with its necessary dressings, its set and characters; he populated the idea with Blake. The house began to shed its skin, if just a little, take on different complexions, wallow for a moment in a million different intrusions, in a million different—Bzz.

School-children and bees, nattering mosquitos, chanted above the drone of cars. Lydia had left the window open. He downed a few cups of coffee with too much cream; finished off the pantry’s apples. He glimpsed, but hardly read, a headline: Now What’s Really Happening With Home Prices?—and it continued on the back, back of a fold—The Answer Has Everything To Do With This One Key Bzakeaway.

The table shook a little when he stood. He held it still with his hand. It was not enough. Something big rocked through the house; a wind, not yet blowing. For a moment he wondered at his own destruction. He wanted to strangle or be strangled, by the house, whatever would settle it. Bzzz. Where. From where. Not the kitchen; but maybe. He patted his jeans. For a moment, just a moment, the living room’s bookshelf resembled a man.

What business did Blake have with his wife?

There was a picture with Blake in the bedroom: a picture of Lydia’s congregation, at the church she attended last year. He was in the middle; a five-person bridge from Lydia; but by the condensations of memory Ray made it three, effectually slaughtered a married couple intervening. Blake had introduced himself in the church-yard: “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ray; a great pleasure; and, if it does not embarrass her to say, Lyd has spoken so marvelously of you, in the most,” and he laughed, “prolix sort of language.”

For thirty minutes Ray gawked at nothing, 10:32 AM. He put up his plate, not carefully, punctuating chants with loud clanking clinks. He turned left: to the right of the kitchen. Then—no: he withheld his eyes, went to shut the window, did not. A mosquito flew in. It buzzed about his sweatbeamed forehead. Bzzzz. A film of tears. Bzzzzz. Yes: he was scared. Lydia and Ray—Ray and Lydia. A year ago they tacked on to their relationship a new room: and then, just as quickly, there was no new room. And yet far from stillness, Lydia moved great distances; talked of change; gave to her own life, outside of home, so many extravagant differences of color. The miserable carnage gave to her life no exterior alterations.

He did not consider himself the jealous sort. He even saw mystery, the very nature of secrets, as a great glue of human bonds; he felt no qualms about the omission or fabrication of information, granted that all people in pursuit of passion must, to win, present themselves in pieces.

But what use was there, here, in this house, for passion? Neither Ray or Lydia inhabited routines that permitted great togetherness. Some years ago they were laughing, chattering; never silent, never for a moment unhappy. Now the house, not quite big, left all the space needed for them to inconspicuously avoid the other. And still: they were married. Being married, they had bound themselves to a lovely permanence; a permanence secured at even the most intense shades of deprecation.

Out the kitchen—in fridge-time it was 11:25—he contemplated the mantel: but now he did not smile.

He did not smile because he could could not think about the wedding; not for even a second. It happened at Lydia’s church. Their families had nothing in common; in reply to a particular shade of dress profanity was freshly applied and re-applied; the last third of wine was all spilled and wasted. But it was not these (really these had not marred the occasion, only given it a comic note) but the cake, sculpted by Lydia’s eldest sister, which foregrounded itself in memory. Layered, overly layered, layer and layer of kitsch, sappy-scented, with a big red strawberry at its tip; and the highlight: Ray and Lydia in miniature, divided by a cradle, holding hands.

Here and there he had to lift his pants-leg, which trailed a little on the ground, to avoid being muddied. Blake was there; and his wife. He had three children, all daughters. Little hims with green eyes, long-flowing sweeps of perfectly parted hair. They followed him, begged to leave.

At 11:30 the portraits left their mantels, entered Ray’s hands. He kissed them. Kissed them again. He let himself want. He wanted Lydia’s supple flesh: kissed them again. He wanted Lydia’s supple soft ample scenty rosy bedwarmed flesh: kissed them again. He wanted to name Blake and watch her face, so pink and darling: kissed them again. He wanted to re-introduce her by fully clothed caresses to that by-all-known four-lettered word: kissed them again. Enough kisses he planted on the portraits to keep away from the present the future and enough kisses he planted on the portraits to carry him quite pleasantly to noon.

He went to find the letter; put it into his breast-pocket. He threw away the newspaper We’re Just Seen As Sex Objects face-down. He struck his hand against his buzzing forehead: nothing. Fleeing steam whistled from bubbling overboiled egg water.

He passed to his room. Olive slinked catly into the bathroom: he followed. To his left was the shower he and Lydia shared the night they wed. To his right, propped behind toothbrushes, was a curt letter of congratulations from Lydia’s mom. She was dead, dead before the wedding. At her bedside flows of black bile. Dead and black and gray. A frightening spectre. He felt himself shrinking from life. He imagined for a moment strangling Mr. Theodore—strangling him for what he said at the wedding. Strangling him in front of his wife, not yet dying. They said he never seemed happier after her stroke. But.

Bzzzzzz. Ah well might as. Very well. From his pants-pocket bzbzing Lydia called. Seconds passed; the call lapsed. His hand had already unpocketed the phone. It was. How 12:29. How time fasts. Layers of presses, why this newfangled. All buzzing. There. Lydia picked up. Ray, why didn’t.

My boss has been holding me up. Loads of work.

He left the bathroom; began to walk, to walk as one does when calling. Olive meowed. It was 12:30.

Oh I wasn’t sure if you’d be at work. How’s that going. Well I think I left the window open, in the kitchen. So I’m worried about Olive. If you get home before me.

He sat in the rocking chair. A key slid out of the letter he presently unpocketed. He bent out of the chair to re-pocket it.

Then he straightened himself out. Ray?

As if the house was speaking it seemed; her voice echoed all around. Yes dear. What is it.

Do you think it’s time to think about. No, I won’t. Not now.

It was 12:30.

A cradle teetered in front of him. He never looked at this room for long; never long enough to register its catalog of never-used anythings. You’ll be a perfect father. Good to keep a marriage. Mr. Theodore. Five syllables. Dear I want to ask you about. His mouth quivered. It was 12:30.

What.

Cars crowd the streets. Through the purple door a living room. A cat circles a trash can; circles a bookshelf; circles a rocking chair. There is a murmuring. A faint murmuring. It comes from a phone of the house; a man of the house; the house. To the right of stairs a room; an overturned cradle; a man.

Mr. Theodore.

But it was not spoken or if spoken not heard.

Ray? What was that?

Voices, married voices, passed into the dream of the house; became an articulation of the house; defined the relations that went into being the house. Eggs burned and wasted died in a dead pot. Outside in the grass beneath a window from a ball of black a merry meow. It was 12:30.

Yes give me one second I’ll have those to you shortly. Ray I’ve been trying to say that…been a year. That we should…

Ray ran to the kitchen. He palmed the mosquito red against his arm. He threw away eggs, lidded their pot; he put the letter back where it was. It was 12:30. A big gust of wind.

It’s just since Sofia…

He looked at the window. At the moving black mass.

She’s gone.

Bzzzzzzz.

Happy birthday, Gustave Flaubert1. I’m not sure you’ll read this. I hope very much that you don’t. It’s 2 a.m. and I’ll be asleep in ten minutes. I’ll schedule this to be posted tomorrow, some time. Undecided. I’m not here to defend your work in my best language; I’m here to wish you a happy birthday. Now goodbye, you wretched parrot, and may you return to your barbed grave like the tiger2 you are.

Madame Bovary, with its quixotic hue, is infinitely more artful than Don Quixote; but on influence’s terms they are near equal. Not until Madame Bovary had novels found such ingenious marriage of style and structure. Between it, A Sentimental Education, and Salammbo, Flaubert’s writing comprises a complete encyclopedia of novelistic technique. If Don Quixote is, indeed, the first “modern novel,” Madame Bovary is the first novel to justify novels as an equally artistic form as verse and epic. It may be surprising that it took until the 19th-century for such justification to be found. But it’s no secret, really: Modern novelists have a great debt to pay to good ol’ Gustave—now a 204-year-old man. His rejection of the “realist” label, claiming instead “romantic,” is irrelevant; most of his views are developed, then contradicted, in letters. I happened upon a thread online of people pouring heaps of insults on Gustave’s grave for a letter he wrote where he claimed The Inferno to be boring and “of its time”! I’d say letters, prone as they are to hyperbole, should never be taken as gospel. They are a snapshot of their writer as they want to be viewed at the second of their composition. Our romantic-realist remains, regardless of label, something of a miracle: the greatest influence on novelistic form in the 19th-century.

Certain people will balk But Dostoevsky! and of course so many other writers, all valid in influence. This isn’t an essay proper, so instead of exhibiting academic integrity, I’ll dismiss Dostoevsky’s influence in the most reductionist language vitriolic ol’ me can. Dostoevsky’s influence was almost always surpassed (by, say, Knut Hamsun); he was nothing of a novelist. Scenes didn’t come naturally to him. He wrote bridges between dialogue, sappy dialogue, and nothing more. At best, he is a feeble imitator. At worst, he is a purveyor of the worst kind of anti-literary melodrama. Meanwhile Flaubert remains unparalleled. His famous “Le mot juste” approach, of course, slowed his writing: all his texture is clinical, gushingly lyrical. It switches registers when it needs; is sometimes dry and boring, is other times fantastically lurid. Not until Joyce (himself a student of Flaubert’s work3) would such a chameleon of style and obsessee of order push the envelope of literature yet further with comparable ingenuity. Their novels demonstrate surgical precision (Flaubert’s father was himself a surgeon) and there is the quality of a wonderful equation or scientific excursion to their work.

Madame Bovary is sometimes subject to high school classrooms of dead-eyed dopamine-deprived SparkNotes-reliant students who find its narrative remarkably boring (see a flood of Goodreads reviews from disgruntled high schoolers that say, in so many words, “nothing happens”), but those who are curious enough to relish every detail, catalog and crave them until their unity becomes readily apparent, will be infinitely rewarded by one of the artistic peaks of not only French literature but all literature. And if I taught literature and had some sway over the curriculum this would be one of the very few books—if not the only book—I find absolutely imperative. Let this be a remark lacking in logic. Yes, this is an Austin Workman proposition4: I mention Flaubert; I mention Joyce; I manage to undercut Dostoevsky.

Deep down, I’m waiting for something to happen. I believe myself capable of the most immense passions. Then the hours go by without me knowing it. I’m no one. My passions are perilous duplicates of the past. I’m just like any other man. My conversation is as commonplace as street pavement. Nothing I do excites laughter; nothing I do excites thought. I’m a remarkable insipidity. And I believe life is the loveliest thing in the world, second to love. But I’m not Austin Workman5. Not yet.

Flaubert. 204. The 19th-century’s best novelist6.

       Tax Deerhorn was some leagues off his rocker by the time he discovered his stroke-deceased girlfriend slumped over her steering wheel, but it didn’t help; and when he came wailing to our offices, saying this and that about life’s inexorable anguish, saying that he’d extinguish "it all" in a heartbeat if such an acrobatic wasn’t so terrifying, we encouraged him, using all the psychoanalytic jargon at our fancy (he was a man enamored with language, so long as it sounded proper), to take up journaling, going so far as supplying the journal and pen, he obliged. But when came time to burst his home wide open (he hadn’t died by empirically verifiable measures but his coordinates remain a mystery), taking that broom and its hair stuffed with spider carcasses to unstuck the attic trapdoor, we discovered the same journal in a tripartite split, plus a twin journal split the same. Birdwatching, it was called. We knew about his avian inclinations (his favorite shirt sported owls in varying postures and the incomprehensible transcript of his infamous bluejay-hued final session) but hardly their extent. Then we felt bad. His subject had itself him for its subject. 
       Birdwatching in its present condition is incomplete; the second journal has only a title page, and the presumed fourth, fifth, and sixth parts are blank, though titled ("Pompous," "Peerless," "Masterstroke"). We cannot claim that these parts as they exist contain a great deal of literary merit. Their styles, stiff and clumsy, oscillate between parody and sincerity, pastiche and originality, and their narrative trajectories don't exhibit the marks of an able writer. It is taken in conjunction with their author (who, though legally bound to "Tax Deerhorn," has variously adorned "N. Nakrow" and "Avin Pere") that this publication evolves a steady interest and arc towards the sublime. This is not a compilation of footnotes; it is sheer biography (or in a different class altogether). Birdwatching Pt. 1-3 has been available to the curious reader for months, circulating through shady—but free—websites and magazines (and in one curious instance, a dedicated reader spray painted the entire text on a New York metro). We are not interested in Birdwatching; we are interested in a shadow of its author.
       Unfortunately, Tax is less interesting than one could imagine. His biographical details exist in scarce obligation to human existence's natural pen. He was born the cesarean way in July against a sterile backdrop of yellow. That the hospital was, in average, yellow, is verifiable by a.) visiting the location (digitally or personally), which has not, according to staff, changed in thirty years, or b.) noting a strange obsession with the color in Tax's writing, an obsession which could only have blossomed by natal circumstances. Birdwatching Pt. 4, which has a column of notes, would have revolved around a goldfinch, its European variety, referred to by its Latin designation Carduelis carduelis. Judging by these notes, this part would have been remarkably technical (several compendiums on the Carduelis carduelis were discovered, with copious marginalia, at the attic's margins), a marked contrast from Pt. 1-3's lack of concern with species or biology. We see a man who was, at the point of his departure from common life (by death or exile, or both), becoming himself a birdwatcher. 
       He went through grade school by the natural track, making natural grades. In 7th-grade he made a D- in trigonometry, which, as a teacher's comment reveals: "His understanding of the material is competent, but he refuses to turn in homework." That he was a bad doer-of-homework is apparent in all teacher communications by this time; it is just that the trigonometrist was less inclined to generosity. Contrary to convention, he made friends just fine. Concerning this, there are three separate occasions where teachers remarked (3rd, 4th, and 8th- grades) similar comments such as, "Too chatty with -------; adjusted seating chart). Only in the past year of his visible life, as his parents suggested, did he turn hermetic. We may not so reductively maintain that, until the age of eighteen, Tax was a human—society's perfect average. Five years stood between our fresh-faced newly-colleged subject and his girlfriend's horrific death; and a year yet between her death and his vanishing. 
       Girlfriend. Her name was Marie. She's where the fruit of our interest grows. From her our sole import is plucked. Her friends' accounts of her are by turns illuminating and utterly confounding. As a child, having gone to a bird park with her parents (soon thereafter deceased), she had, during sultry midday, wandered off into a forest by her unsurveilled lonesome. She was found in a pile of sweat and tears, waving her arms wildly up and down. "I'm a bird, I'm a bird," she insisted. This incident was for a few years isolated. 
       The following symbol she would sketch, as if some shadowy intonation, into all her notebooks: 𓅪. 
       The selfsame symbol features as the header to every Birdwatching perspective shift. The avian contagion was thus obviously transferred to Tax, but for Marie the effect seems to have been more significant.
        A year before her stroke, she tried to jump off a roof. Her intent was to fly. "A startling success," Tax told her, "I'd never seen flying so real." She broke both her legs. That she survived was a "miracle." It was a six-story fall. But Tax insisted that she truly flew, that nothing of hers was broken; that she was in fact fixed, that she had never been in a greater state of repair. Her friends (only a handful in number) believed that her time was coming short. She was institutionalized, then released in rapid free-falling decline. She dedicated herself to birds even more boldly. Her flying stunt was repeated without injury on a number of occasions, as faithfully reported in Tax's various diaries. These diaries are dim as they are vague and tell nothing except dates declared concisely: Oct. 13, Marie flew; Nov. 15, Marie flew further; etc. She wore dresses made of feathers. She spoke in birdsong. She made a nest, somewhere.
       So she believed she was a bird. When she died, Tax believed he was a bird. But it is only when he began birdwatching at bird-hours; when he procured his first set of binoculars to watch a mirror; when he said, in some uncertain terms, "I may or may not be a potential bird"; when he himself fled the nest; that we noticed.
       He was smart in the way stupid people often are. We had our fun. What he said possessed profundity, but he could have never understood it himself. The astute reader notices in the ridiculousness of writing registers of Joyce, and while we are sure Tax read Joyce (three of our sessions mentioned him in passing detail), we are also sure he could not have understood a word (of Joyce, of anyone). How helpful it would be if the most specific diary entry of his was not, in correspondence with an illegible date: She squawked during sex! Included in the Carduelis carduelis, right below a section entitled "Copulation Habits," their fast-sung sounds are documented in detail; we may at last understand the sectioning with help of the scarce diary. 
       Is Birdwatching's Stephen autobiographical? 
       There was no tophat ("He makes liberal application of a tophat, like a halo, and his gait is lackadaisical") among Tax's belongings. This does not exclude, in the event of a voluntary exile, that he kept it on his head. Nor was his gait bizarre, going by his graduation footage. High school. He never graduated college. Both him and Marie dropped out after three semesters; they studied literature. It is suspected, going by course records, that they met in a Madame Bovary seminar. This is significant for little reason that, as is the habit of less-than-amateur writers, Tax thought to namedrop Flaubert's tome with a slight corruption: "Madame Bovary. Flybird. Gust of cold wind." 
       Otherwise we cannot say.
       His final session with us was performed in perfect emulation of bluejay song. We kicked him out. He took a notepad and jotted down, "They're watching me."
       Then we sent the birds after him. They had cameras and speech capabilities; just everything short of feeling. But we sent them his way, just to make sure. Of what I am unsure. Did we suspect he was a danger? There was no violent streak in his history biographical or genetic. It was something simpler: we were unnerved. Under surveillance he behaved how ordinary people behave. But we felt better watching him. Maybe we had run out of things to do. 
       The surveillance stopped last winter. Then he was gone. And between the period we stopped surveilling him and his disappearance he wrote Birdwatching. Perhaps the nonsense was front-loaded, to come to sense in “Pompous,” “Peerless,” “Masterstroke." I fashion that there was no sense anywhere, not in his scrawling, not in our surveillance; in none of our dealings with Tax is there a modicum of sense to be found. That is what I believe, because there is no point believing in the sense of a man named T. Deerhorn.
       Our clinic shut down yesterday. There was no special reason for this. Our owner died. We started to leave. Eventually we had too few workers left to possiblize the practice's maintenance. I do not remember too much of what we saw through the proto-birds' eyes; none of us do. Their observational texture was too dry. But I do remember one scene. It was a December evening, costumed with snow and cold, and snowmen and snowcats, and our freezing Carduelis carduelis imitation perched on a branch up high. Tax had come to a slate-gray stream of water, suffuse with yellow moon. He stared at his reflection for some seconds; he shrugged, confused or apathetic. He walked into the water, slowly. Then he struggled. His arms beat wildly up and down against the water and he struggled, like a man who could not swim. For minutes he struggled. Then he swam back to safety. He swam back to safety a squawking, shivering mess. And there was not a flight I ever did see, not here in glorious Avian California, nor anywhere else, that was a fraction—no, not even faintly—as sublime. 
       That is when we rescinded the birdwatching. 

to Kate
written primly and plainly, on a plane

       Mise Avenue was totally empty; it was the time of night when all waking souls are loons.
       Street lamps flickered here and there; remembered the silhouettes of shops and stores; flashed the faint shadows of debris, creature, man. Silence, punctuated by night wind, prevailed. Softly things sifted towards an indivisible unity. A snake slithered from street to street; Mela, returning from a late-night screening, nearly crushed it underfoot.
       Li appeared.
       He was a block away. He became aware of the other's presence by slow cognition: first a quiet rustling, then the twinkling of eyes encased in dark. Their paths, rather than diverting, met, curious and uncharacteristically cordial. An intimate inspection ensued.
       Their dresswear and demeanor was, in spirit, similar. Mela had a button-up and jeans with knee-high socks. His hair, crisply combed, was covered by cap. Even then the blue of his eyes was seen. His nose' side-profile was cumbersomely large and drooped like melted ice cream. A collection of acne pooled about his cheeks and chin; but it was not now visible. He was tall but his perpetual hunch hid a few inches. Li had an oversized button-up patterned plaid, below which unbelted khakis struggled for stability. His eyes' brown blended boldly into the night. He had a quaint nose, quaint cheeks, quaint lips; he was, in sum, prim and pretty. Their gaits were both uneven, now that they had begun walking at each other's side. But neither one noticed. 
       'Could I have a lighter?' Mela asked, his voice touched by nerves.
       'No,' Li said. Then, with a grin, he produced a lighter. 
       'Thanks.' 
       He lit his cigarette, wafted smoke Mela's way. But Mela did not mind. They took stock of each other's character. Mela believed Li to be a family-man, with wife at home; Li believed Mela to be himself inverted. In fact neither had family; nor was either the other's inverse. A bench, nearly crashed into, was sat upon. It was small enough for precisely two people, and they sat arm-to-arm. That minute, thousands of minutes, was felt as a second. Li, fiddling over posture, spoke first.
       'Occupation?'
       'I don't have a job.'
       'Well, you must do something.'
       'I'm a student. I study film. But I don't like film.'
       Li lingered for a moment, tapping periodic pulses on his thigh. There was nothing he loved more than film. Yet a synchronicity humored him and absolved the film student. 
       'I also study film.'
       They made out what they could of their surroundings. Mela was blushing, having clarified his distaste for film out of self-preservation; he truly liked film, as much as one reasonably could without going mad. He liked pictures that were slow and languid, almost limp, where every frame, having so much meaning or none at all, could be taken apart molecule by molecule. But few took movies as seriously as him. There was a pizza place; its lights, despite being closed, remained half-lit, and a neon sign flashed CLOSED. It smelled like chicken, or rats, or expiry dates. Elsewhere an establishment—remembered by Li to be a notary and unrecognized by his other—had on its window rustling clumsily taped papers. Mela felt like lightning. His head convulsed with static. He did not know whether to move, change his arms' position. He knew that he felt something remarkable occurring; he did not know what.
       Li liked coincidences. He wished to freeze the moment of their contact. Still, it was growing cold. Having come from a warmer south, he wished to return home. Mela agreed to walk him; but no question was asked or answer returned. It was five minutes from Li's apartment, in the direction of the snake. They entered. Mela collapsed onto a couch; warmth followed quickly. The place was clean despite clutter. Pictures of family—or friends?—decorated the walls, anachronistic in their fits and faces, despite contemporary backdrops. Everything, but especially an upright piano, on whose lid stood vases of lilies and tulips, smelled floral. 
       'Do you play?'
       Li reddened. He rushed to the piano, as if about to erase its existence, and sat on its bench.
       'Oh, somewhat.'
        A Medtner skazka, unrecognized by the other, was performed, fit with all its machinery of counterpoint and nostalgia; Mela lacked any musical maturity but worked his best to follow the many motifs through a maze of serpentine fingers. His heart hurried to keep pace. Then the piece was over; he realized he had not breathed a breath. Li stood up, flinching his face.
       'I'm still figuring that one out.'
       'Seems figured out to me.' 
       Meanwhile the moon was retiring. They talked about all manner of things and laughed at the littlest provocation. The subject of film was never broached; but then the subject of many things was never broached. They were content to talk, be it about anything or nothing. And they were lost, not understanding how time could be lost so quickly. The morning sun draped softly over the many yet unexplained photos. It enveloped the two men, half-asleep, half-hugging, half-being, on a couch. Not much need be explained. They were. Some people, and they were some of them, slot seamlessly into each other: the complimentary wings of a butterfly, resolutions to pretty dissonances, the bindings that hold books together. Words need hardly be spoken because what words are spoken are, the moment before their conception, understood. They exist parallel to each other; and yet they intersect at every point. What was spoken was, in any case, cherished, because both found the other's speech beautiful; their favorite formula was the ping-pong of 'You may think me crazy' returned by 'I'm the same.' They exchanged addresses and numbers, and a warm hug.
       But the time had come for Mela to return home; and so he did. He puzzled over trash strewn across the streets he had not registered the night prior. It was all ugly; yet it seemed beautiful then and half-pretty now. And he slept, softly, soundly. Hours later he heard a knock, then two, then three. He groggily tottered towards the door, which in more anxious hours he would never answer; then, finding Li through the peephole, his heart stuttered. After a brief syncope in time the door opened.
       'I think I've made a breakthrough with the Medtner,' Li exclaimed. 
       He had not changed out of yesterday's clothes. But something of his character had a different glow. It felt as if the import of years bound them.
       Mela did not know who Medtner was. Ecstatically he realized he had forgotten his cap at Li's. 
       'Let's get pizza. Then I've forgotten my cap at yours. Then you may show me.'
       And so the madmen set merrily out into a morning already mature with grace, behind which they let their skin molt, decorating Mise Avenue, now full of so many people, so many strangers; side-by-side they trotted without aim or with the purest aim, but they aimed with a character altogether happy, marred by not the least of life's concerns so residual and faint. It was there, beneath their feet, the first sway of love come slithering. 

       It was Odd, a village north; soldiers, more than one-hundred thousand, were shoring up defenses, prattling on about pretty women, decorating their foreheads with pigs' blood. Great catapults were erected of the finest wood, with the finest mechanisms. Cotton and cloth were draped with great caution over every roof. Speeches ripe with exalted rhetoric fluttered through men and women like lyres. Women, greater in number than soldiers, made themselves busy collecting stones, tending to armor, preparing horses, elephants, falcons. Those who could not help, being too old or lame, took up instruments and song. The hyper-mobile danced without rest. Eager enthusiasms sprouted from the saddest recesses. Cynics hitherto known for pessimism professed wild hopes; they laughed and relished in the pre-taste of success. There was fear that they would not pummel the enemy severely enough; but no one feared death. Palm, their leader, five cubits tall, with an unkempt black beard let to touch his feet, blew a horn from time to time. He issued commands to every sector; positioned a throng of soldiers outside the walls, hoping to surprise the enemy's flank; slit the throats of unenthusiastic slaves; ordered his wives to lay prostrate before him and pray in service of his glory; persuaded wide-eyed priests that he was Baal's bloody successor. Suddenly, stumbling upon the tower of Aros, he wept. He pulled a dagger from its sheath and donated—with great difficulty, the blade being dull—his blood. Aros' statue, pearl gray and unfeeling, had for clothing a silk translucent dress. The sun which had just then escaped its cover of cloud made of her a glaring paleness; he closed his eyes. When he opened them, war was underway.
       The enemy had every implement of fatality imaginable. Spears, javelins, axes, swords, bows, all forged to intimidate: spears terminated in lion's heads; swords were decorated with human eyeballs; bows had cross-hatched approximations of Baphomet. Bags of oil and embers set fire to un-vinegared catapults. Volleys of arrows, millions of them, set off fireworks of blood. The hidden troops were woefully unprepared; elephants trampled them, tore them apart with ruthless trunks.        
       The dead and dying were piled onto one another, in various stages of defilement. Some, burned, resembled nothing. Others, lacking arms, legs, ears, bade their gods hurry. And yet others, their heads tossing back and forth around half-hacked necks, cursed their gods, swore allegiance to new ones; the art of blasphemy was spontaneously perfected. By morning Odd was destroyed. 
       Meanwhile Palm had fled.
       In time, evading every obstacle, feigning not-Palmness, he settled into a village further north, by the seaside. It was Fi. Here, being short of food, they did not think about war. It was rare that news reached them. Except scarce sea trade—mostly of fish, which they rarely had—they were alone. The introduction of Palm was welcome. Not because they were friendly. It was the opposite; they had taken to sacrificing every unfortunate visitor in hope for greater sea fortunes. But Palm, using all the charm he could muster, wove splendid tales of romance. They loved his oration, always beginning, and ending, with Aros, which he pronounced with great emphasis. They kept him around for three months; then they slaughtered him. His head was nailed to the priest's door. Stories were here and there proliferated by the villagers, variations of his Arosalia. They believed him to be their most great sacrifice—and the fish, knowing, came swimming. Fi held a great feast; they regaled themselves with Palm's stories, sometimes parodied, and questioned his origins. Some thought he hailed from Nar, the story-telling capital of the world. Others, not convinced, suspected Nor, Nar's sibling. It was neither: Nor was Odd's enemy. They had not heard of Odd. 
       At last, a militia from Nor found Fi; they had been contracted to find Palm. They razed the village. In the spiraling flame, which cast mauve shadows, they could not have noticed Palm's piked head; it was too rotted to recognize. Yet they were happy. Their license for carnage sustained them. They marched ecstatically to the next village, and especially every center of Aros worship. By mid-century, she was a half-remembered dream. 
       But she was real. They found, years after they had come to resemble corpses, the great kingdom of Aros. And their queen, slack-jawed and gray-haired, skin melted away by age, was less recognizable than Palm. They spared her. She gave them the kingdom. They shored up its defenses, the twelve of them. Then they died.

This is the great renaissance. It seeks to smother my life into nothing. 
      I don't sleep anymore. 

      How many hands reach out to me? Many. More than five who hope to help. But I’ve reserved my two hands for myself. They cradle me when cold. I plunge them into the depths of my flesh—my spirit—when sad. Make of me what you will. I’m a mourning madman; they’ve stashed me away in the madhouse of now. Alone I dress lightly: in the garbs of nudity, my skin sloughing off me like stalactites. Swallow me whole. I will rid myself corpuscle by corpuscle of this curse. I will become a bitter heap of rotted bones on this bed. We console ourselves with genius. We feel over-much. We are madder in muted numbers. I know no one; no one knows me. I know art, her precepts. For her alone I feel; for her alone I subsist. Yet her redolence is waning. I'm asking, I'm begging. Help. I've been run off life by the tremors of irreconcilable neurons. Embrace me. Give me a half-hug, or whatever you can stand to bear. Kiss me. A peck on the cheek is all, or an air's distant kiss (you can close your eyes and pretend I'm someone else). Tell me: I've the answer. Tell me: I'm the answer. Tell me: It's okay. I'm nothing but terror. Don't leave. Don't tell me what I've run away from. Don't tell me it's my fault. Don't tell me it's easier to revel in self-pity than go off on a limb of responsibility. 
       I want you to talk to me; your voice terrifies me. I want you to hold me; your touch repels me. Try to understand the cross-section of all I am. Try to love me, if you must invert your hatred to do so. Hatred's a negated skip away from love. Unskip. I love you. But it's too late. Everything's settled: it's too late. Let us go, you and I—but it's too late. I don't ask for much. You've bade my bloodless destruction. And still, the dust has cleared, I love you. 


I don't sleep anymore.
       'The flamboyant outburst of a schoolboy,' you figure. My age is greater than you estimate. I hail from the high and half-ripe twenties, though I’ve amassed considerable evidence of pre-arthritis. But I’m sick, and it was from times lesser that I caught it, years ago, in that classroom. This isn’t a sickness you can predict; it’s hardly a sickness you can diagnose. I tried dodging it anyhow, of course, armed (and armed alone) with the mask of sleep. We’re prescribed a regimen of eight hours per night. Believe me, I’ve always been superstitious of the number eight, which travels a lopsided forever. And yet I obliged. No, this was a germ whose contraction depends on the subject’s lucidity; sleeping, far from being a safeguard, was my ruin. 
       Insomnia’s my most ingenious contribution to the world. I left several sleepless in my wake. My parties were infamous. If you slept you were expunged—totally wiped from the record of my life. Many men were wiped; the women fared better. I didn’t make it easy. Sátántangó played on the TV twice over; food and drinks were inexistent; lights were dim; seductive beds were laid out in cozy clusters. Then, and this happened on the eighth go-around, I fell victim. I slept. The project fell apart. I attempted to expunge myself from the record of life, but there’s nothing more difficult. Suicide, sad to say, is a non-starter. We must square this away with a parallel fact: self-pity is the most unproductive form of masturbation.
       These sentences, syllogistically sound, are lucid; yet I am alucid. My eyes blink slow and sticky, every batter a step (as dice rolls, roll after roll, become more likely to strike a given number) closer to sleep. There's a head attached to my neck which tosses heavily to and fro its pivot. It doesn't suit me. It's large and cumbersome; it lacks charm; it has a frame of curly hair that, though appearing unwashed, is moderately washed. I have greater concerns. My name is Sam.
        My symptoms are simple. A psychical cold, some measure of vomiting (every morning, strictly pre-noon). Sleep only propels me speedily towards a regurgitation of the previous night’s meal, towards mind-states more capable of processing clearly the germ of yesteryears. Some people are best served bubbling on the cusp of consciousness. 
      I have my finger on the beat of the world. I long to do things I’d never dare to do. I give time, then I take it. I measure things as meager fractions of some inexpressible whole. I vary my footsteps, step by step, each longer or shorter than the last. I laugh at the fiercest scolding and weep at the lightest joy. I anticipate my time’s up; or that it’s down, somewhere so far down I can’t see it, though everyone else can. 
       Because everyone else has seen my cheeks sag into gaunt incisions (I've been pummeled into a grid). Everyone else has seen the luster in my eyes go limper than limp. Everyone else has seen the tail of my words terminate in feeblest uncertainty (little shy wisps, avoiding the air). Everyone else has seen my labor, far from retaining its enthusiasm, vanish into less a footnote than a doubly crossed-out line. Everyone else has seen that my life is eventless, totally eventless, that I am—though totally alive—nothing but dead. Everyone else sees that I wish to kiss you. Everyone else sees that I’d never dare. 
      Grids. My body is one such grid. My mind is the other. There's no need to distinguish the two, so don't (or do; it's nothing to me). As a grid of coordinates, they are in-between coordinates, numberless. They are the intermediary phases between infinitesimal distances. Love, such a coordinate, exists not as a point, but a point-to; an asymptotic expression of all love’s sub-components. Every emotion, once identified on the grid, is lost. The axes displace by ineffable distances. Holding my head still exacerbates these displacements by great distances. So I’ve existed, and continue to exist, by the sum of variable forces shifting beneath my locus of control. I’ve learned to split my body into infinite discrete points, moving through a global grid of coordinates, every point alien to the other, as if the functions of my body aren’t interconnected at all; as if the functions of my body are bound alone by disconnected domains of desire. That is what I’ve come to call despair.
       The free-falling prick of discontinuity. Feeling for my heartbeat to realize it beats not for me but you. Finding my thoughts asynchronous with perception (not just collective, intersubjective (e.g. “rational”) perception but my perception). Hurting, hurting deeply, not because something is wrong. Hurting because of the contrary: everything isn't wrong. Every event comes a pin to my grid, fulfilling its single location—and that alone. My heart doesn’t speak to my mind; my mind doesn't speak to my heart. If they collaborate, it is coincidentally—and if they oppose. Everyone hates me. This is true. But I'm are just a coincidence of machines, combined coincidentally, by fluke of unfeeling fate, working. Where’s I? In free-fall, points plummeting through a network of grids. I'm dead. By whose hands? Yours? My own?
       I happen in an American suburb, sleep-crazy like all the others. We're made to believe talk of sleep is superfluous (as talk of breathing) and sleep-talk nonsense. A dream is a non-reality where sense is imposed solely by quacks. In four to five words: "It's just a dream." Who but the prodigiously lucid reduce their ongoing nightmares to "dream"? that is, the less-than-real, the unreal, the inconsequential? Enmeshed in all manner of inescapable horrors, all is real. Really real. What does it matter if dreams are false if they are experienced, nonetheless, as true?
       And of those dreams which are not nightmares—which are, in fact, pleasant, so pleasant, with their suitable arrangements of setting and scenario? Why discard these? These dreams, the better they are, are worse than the worst nightmare. To wake up, comparing life to dream, dream to life, is a greater—and far less bearable—sedative than sleep. More, the potential of nightmares is itself unbearable. So life may suck absent of glamor; but it must contend with forces of logic, which can never tend too awry. Our most nightmarish episodes of reality are limited as dreams never are. 
       Here, home. Flower-decorated lawns. Mailboxes, hoses, people. We've spruced it up all so nicely. Houses, all the same, stucco and still, come to life. Waves and heys. Neighbors in varying progressions of smile. I acknowledge that I'm paving a path approximating parody. Or rather: the sleepful see satire in all things. But I'm deathly serious. I'll justify myself in the style I can. May it be clipped. May in be florid. May if be, before all, true.
 
I don't sleep anymore.
       It's been days. I don't have the number. Nothing numbered is worth recollecting. Shadows flicker crazily to and fro my periphery: shadow-cows and shadow-dogs reconciling millenia-spanning species conflicts hitherto unsolvable. My emotions are tripled and physical sensations halved. To keep my eyes open is a degree of torment one-half less than sleep itself. Nothing numbered is worth recollecting. My birthday is xx/xx/xx. That's M/D/Y. I'm an xx-years-old plumber. Who am I writing to? The wall. My confidant. What I wake up it's there; when I sleep it remains. Really real.
       There's no great division between life and dream. Dreams are life in concentrate. The bamboo bridge between the two is metaphor. But even so: most dreams aren't metaphor. They're nonsensical accumulations of rubble. I'm not a plumber. I had a dream I was so. Many toilets were unclogged. Then a secret was unveiled; I was murdered; and (viewing my corpse from a distance) I was ridiculed. When I wake from these nightmares, I take no great relief that I have fled. The next night looms yet. Do you know my first impulse, then? To phone a friend. To hear their voice, which may (may) ground me in wakefulness. Can't do it. "It's just a dream." No. Few care. You don't. How I'd love to hear your lilac voice even now. If just a "What?" If just an "I'm busy." Or: your voice-mail ("I'm not available right now. Please leave a message after the tone") will suffice. 

I don't sleep anymore. 
       Check the calendar. Days pass as usual. Nothing happens at night, by design. What happens during sleep? Ignore dreams. What of the silly movements and—for my fragile case—sleep-talk? She said: "You screamed 'Kill yourself' in your dream last night." And she said this with a laugh. Off with her!

I don't sleep anymore.
       I've made a horrible mistake. To recount it is to engage in an act of legitimization I can't bear. I used to love life; then I loved you. You were sweeter than the sweetest fruits and flowers. You're gone (you're reading this, yet you're gone). Life's nothing.
       My last dream: it was of you. We were on a beach. You stood on a rock facing the sea. A line of flamingos fanned the shore in pink. I felt a warm jealousy for the waves that held your face so rigidly affixed; for the writers of the handful of books you left beneath a palm tree, that they had written words to hold your eyes rapt; for your dress-maker, that they could cling to you so prettily, without any pretense of reserve. I held your image to my chest like an icon: an ambrosia for my neurosis, left frequently untamed and let to roll its savage course with or without the admission of medication. Then your dress caught fire. It was a tall, beautiful flame, arc'd towards the sun. You screamed. The flamingos broke formation; they turned to me and laughed. The world became a mighty mockery of all things me. I sought to swim your way. But the sea was fearful. I could not. You turned to ash. Laughter redoubled. Those great birds descended upon me, adding to their pink great deals of red; my flesh was hacked into hearty chunks and set to live in their bloody beaks. A spiral slithered from my heart to my throat, and remained upon my waking—where it remains, now. 

I don't sleep anymore.
       It's I. I put the wedge betwixt you and husband. The divorce was my doing.
       
I don't sleep anymore.
       O, judge me, judge me! Please! Judge me. If you'd like, judge me a million times over! Let my guilt with your hatred spiral; let your hatred strangle me! Unredeemable I, but what ingenious stratagems I employed!
       How'd Sam meet Selene? Class of '20. "French Formalism." A year later, in the same town (modest and hard-to-love), he learned she was married. His brain folded in on itself. Neurosis can take three courses; he dodged them all and chose discovery. He discovered her husband's name; his address (hers, by begrudgingly accepted logic); his outings. His most frequent activity was ham radio. A club met every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Sam knew nothing of ham or radio but joined the club accordingly. 
       My brain is of the prodigious classification of brain that molds itself to whatever purpose needs serving; I nearly led the club after some weeks. More importantly, your husband and I became, in a word, inseparable. In a words, we'd go out for golf every Saturday, and sometimes (sometimes) he'd "drag" you along. You hated golf. But I'm certain you loved me; my jokes coaxed great passioned mirth. That course was always rugged and treeless, like no golf course I'd ever seen. You remarked how "barren" and "unfriendly" it all looked, how "sinuous" (a favorite word of yours, darling), and how the ball resisted your control, it moved autonomously. In simpler terms, you were terrible at golf.
       By the golf course ran a great river. Sam'd concocted a horrifying plan. Selene's husband could not swim. A push, a shove. It was that simple. Selene wasn't there that day, naturally. She'd a meet of her own: her book club. The Mill on the Floss. They were half-way through. No struggle. In the river he was silent.
       We, really, pushed him, don't you think? But he did not die. Nor did he come close. No wedge. No divorce. What've I earned? You-less days, that's all. Colorless, aimless. You exiled me. That is what I’ve come to call despair. How many times must I bear it? I’m not available right now. Please leave a message after the tone. I’m not available right after the tone. I’m available right now. Please leave a tone after the message.

I don't sleep anymore.
       It’s been a half-day since I’ve slept. What’ll you show me next? So many scares and not enough mind to brave half it all. Tomorrow I'll try again. A non-starter. Some people—I'm the craziest of their number—are best served cold. If you hear my cry. Help. A shove is all I need.

Let me add: writing this is a hassle. Declarations bind me. Interpret me and you’ll find peril—only that. And proper peril, not the oedipal peril of psychoanalyst fancy. Yet those tied to that profession said (say), and I quote, “You’d be best served to write less.” “You write,” they add (because their will is unanimous), “to evidence a maternal mishap.” That was their declaration, or “prescription,” and yet—! Beneath the lamp, to the left. Here I am! Pen-holding and lugubrious. It is September 23rd, 3 p.m. (I’m guessing, based on the way my room is lit: wholly in a 3 p.m. sense of the word, that is to say partially). That’s 4 days before Schulz’ published his multi-meter fare, a mishmash of stock classical phrases in four panels; it resembles Bach, Haydn, Mozart. But it resembles, more than anything, myself.

I’ve given you enough information to find the panels on your own. Thus, this paragraph is for the blind; the non-blind may skip over to the fourth delight. If you’re not blind, there’s no need to read this paragraph. It’ll provide nothing except to those lacking that vital comic-seeing function. To you, then. We have four panels in a two-by-two grid. Our characters are Schroeder and Snoopy. Though it occurs to me that, having no sight, these names (at least in terms of visual correspondences in a comic-frame) impart negative information. Our color-space is simple. Schroeder is a human wearing a striped shirt, hunched over a tiny piano, playing. Snoopy is a dog, a beagle, although don’t worry to know what a beagle looks like: he looks little like a beagle. My late mother loved beagles, of course. We had three, growing up. Their names are forgotten and they are long dead. I show my five-year-old daughter Snoopy and she remarks, though charmingly enough to prevent any anger on my part, “I don’t know who that is.” I didn’t think I’d be a father. Few ever do. I loved (as one does, in a series of falls). And then I loved. My wife likes Peanuts, but hardly understands the “insane obsession.” Few do. The first panel (top-left) shows Schroeder playing a common figuration in 2/4. In the bass clef, a series of thirds, starting on A-C, descends to E-G. In the treble clef, a sixteenth note pattern puts a D on every off-beat, and, in order, F#, G, A, D otherwise. Next panel, please. 3/4. In the bass clef, you find notes you don’t care about. Nor do you care about the notes in the treble clef. What you may find interesting, however: Snoopy is situated in the gap between treble and bass clef. He’s laying down. Then, in the last panel, he gets up, distorts the music, and Schroeder yells at him. What’s in the third panel? Why, dear reader. Look in a mirror. You’ll see the same either way. How weary I’m growing!

After I met my wife, and I shall leave her nameless (I’m not even supposed to be writing), I took up piano lessons. I did this for two reasons. The first reason, my psychiatrist offered, was that I wanted to regain a lack of “maternal validation” in childhood (that stupid gap of years where sense comes readily nonsensed). The real reason, which will sound similar, if not synonymous, to half-baked charlatans, is that I wanted to impress my wife. Didn’t work. Quit piano lessons. Couldn’t read music. Hated Brahms. And so on. Like Snoopy, I distort music. Nothing much more. What would Schulz have been thinking in late September of 1987? I tried mining my own thoughts.

I woke up yesterday and thought Schubert. Just that. Then I scoured every score of his, finding nothing. I woke up the day before and thought Haydn. And also a variety of unsavory thinks that I’d rather omit. It was one of those mornings when I’d had too much to think. Then I scoured every score of his, finding nothing. My thoughts are never a thought away from Peanuts. I see my life as a score of archetypes: a Lucy here, a Woodstock there. My wife is some minutes bossy as Lucy and other minutes (in the minutes between “finding nothing” and “My thoughts”) hospitalized, forcing me to put down the pen for a trembling two hours. Heart troubles, nothing major. She yelled at deserving me for being preoccupied with Peanuts.

Yes, I’ve always been wrong. When I’m right, I’m wrong. I shake my fist at the sky. Who doesn’t? The point is this: you’ll find me a most faithful tenant where there’s room to err. It’s a moist gray day, 7 p.m., when clouds substitute the sky, children cease their play, syllables half-clipped by humidity (and swallowed by wind) set down long winding (godless) odysseys fraught with pointless parenthetical before—Breathe, so my mother often whispered—ends are met in relatively untimely but always awkward ways. Who am I? Closer to Snoopy than Schroeder. Fatigue marks me. Fine me five marks for accidental fatigue! In the course of color we find truth. But I'm nothing if not a colorous fib. I'm panicked. Soon (even sooner, still) I’ll die. I must count every b-b-breath. Here’s mortem with no flourish.

I haven’t told anyone I’m dying. They diagnosed it early. And yet. Much done with my life and nothing still. If everything is shadowy, it’s true: I don’t care much for my non-projects. My chief project was compiling a document identifying every Peanuts excerpt. I’ve made progress. Many a Beethoven sonata. Chopin’s op. 68 mazurka. Mendelssohn love songs. Bach preludes. I’ve contacted William Wolf, my old piano teacher, but he hasn’t replied. My wife is bothered that I let myself get so absorbed in the base rituals of email-anticipation.

But none of this gets us any closer to identifying what Schulz would have been thinking in September 1987. I look at my wife. Sturdy and steady, half-homely as suits her. Her hair is this minute an explosion and will be next morning grand. You’re always tempted to fling down at her feet, telling her of your soon-to-be non-existence. You don’t, and you never will. I can hardly interpret her in this light. She looks as so many things, so many stock phrases of human development. My daughter’s playing violin in an adjoining room, quietly. It’s Bach, or barely Bach, but inasmuch as some notes come from a Bach partita Bach. What is this unit? It’s a family. Doesn’t have to be. I wish I pointed my feet towards a less concrete existence. By now it’s 8 p.m. W. Wolf has, I tell the jury, replied. I’m scared to check, as I am scared to check all things. But I ball my fist into a ball and strike.

“This is almost certainly Beethoven.” But.

He found her pretty, truly. But then he found many things pretty. Spiderwebs. Inane prose. The New King James Bible. His father’s ex-fiancée. Her name was Lydia and she was thirteen years her fiancé’s junior. She had a special connection with the world’s rot. Once she asked Brad: how’d you like to see me undress? Brad being a Barberbay by blood acquiesced. So she took off her hat. Her gloves. Her socks. His breath slowed and heart hardly beat. Her jacket. And so on until she was a veritable Venus de Milo. That was the instant his father entered the scene and their relationship was boarded inexorably to ex.

She was pretty in the way that so many homes can be pretty, being all the same. Function has its aesthetic draw, with or without the recurrence of visual adornments. She had eyes, blue eyes, though they were only recognizably blue in bold light. Her hair was perfectly brown and framed business-like her forever frowning face. It was her nose that was the rub. Swollen and low in position, it forced her upper lip to make space; all her smiles were dented. Brad was dented in all but his smile. His teeth glowed bright. He was already balding at twenty-five; but he addressed this with a top hat. Getting on in weight, he spent a hefty amount of time researching diets. “I’ll try this,” he’d say. The next week he’d say, “I’ll try that.”

They met at an art gallery. He was quick to say: “All these paintings and I’d rather see you.” This was a mistake; the gallery was dedicated to her late father’s catalog. Yet he wasn’t a man slow to uptakes and his apology, cordially accepted, led to a conversation—led to a bedroom. Many conversations and bedrooms later they were engaged. He could say few things about her. She liked butterflies. She was a chef of considerable tastelessness. She laughed funny, but in a way remotely endearing. She didn’t like academia. She could say of him: “He’s nice.” Her name was Lucy.

When Lucy was thirteen she dreamed up the perfect man. He’d be named something other than Brad, with a last name that could be sensically traced through history. She was infatuated with genealogies. He’d be nice—but not over-nice. He’d cook: she wasn’t much of a cook. He’d give her money to buy nice things. Her father, being an artist, was impoverished. She’d have liked to provide him assistance by way of matrimony. But Brad was an inept businessman of little money and littler prospects. So why’d she bat for him? It seems that in life’s course, which proceeds at different paces for different people, it’s best to let go of certain presuppositions. She was twenty-four though she intended to marry at thirty. There wasn’t anything rational about the wedding. It simply was: and that, though questionable, was well enough for her. Life is many wases. She won’t question what you don’t.

Yet she questioned why the wedding had to happen on the twenty-first of October. So said Brad: “It's a special day to me. Has signification.” He rounded off the “signification” with finger flexions; it was a word he found in the O.E.D. the day prior. What's equally silly about wedding on a date is protesting against wedding on a date. So she decided to grant him his preference. She watched him walk from table to table; he looked happy. He talked to her mom—leaned down and whispered something in her ear. Her brother, too, who looked grave before easing into great bellowing laughter. The room they were to wed in was the out-building of Brad’s childhood church, populated with cheap tables and fold-up chairs; with sickly white light and snacks in white bowls scattered across a room-wide table. Flowers were brought: mostly lilies, roses. Brad's father, like Brad, had a charisma about him. In less than an hour any skepticism about the wedding was smoothed over. “You're lucky to marry such a chap,” said a man—probably eighty-years old—in barely audible senile accent. “Yes, I suppose.”

Six months later, and a jolly six months it was, they divorced. The lilies on the windowsill were wilted. It was an amicable split. “I think our paths in life are altogether divergent,” he proposed. “So let’s part.” Lucy Barberbay returned to Lucy Applebulb. As for Brad, his business took off around this time; his line of fake fingernails scented of false memories took off. He got neurosurgeons to convince willing participants to contract false memories—usually happy—but always distinctly scented. The fingernails would then recall the memories, giving small doses of dopamine to hitherto unmemoried people. Even Lucy wanted part of the craze. But her application was rejected. “We do not supply memories to people already over-supplied with memory.” It was true. She had many memories. So she forgot about Brad, forgot about his business, and stole away to a small town in North Carolina. She worked at a bookstore.

There was a day when rain was in progress and a man about five-foot two-inches slumped into the store asking for recommendations: “Give me your best experimental lit. Stuff that’s self-referential. I like Calvino. Stuff like that.” She showed him V. Nabokov: “I’ve read him. Feeble and garrulous.” She showed him Mark Danielewski: “A gimmick and a fad.” She showed him Paul Auster: “Calvino-lite.” She showed him Borges: “Supreme. But I’ve read him.” So my good sir, she thought about saying, what can I possibly show you? He fingered through many a section until he found The Three B’s: Beethoven, Bach, and …? This he marveled at. It was promptly purchased. “And,” he added, “I think I’ve seen you before.” He looked like a frog, or a twig. His face was shrivelled but young. Five months later they were married.

He had read a remarkable many books but could say nothing remarkable about anything. His name was John Swift; he was thirty-years-old. Since Lucy soon took up full-time library work, he drifted into a reverie of solitary musing. Wilted lilies were preserved like a stuffed corpse in the kitchen window. He learned of her prior marriage with Barberbay and, short on cash himself, felt welling envy; what if she decided to turn back to his security? So he staged a series of operations. First he followed Lucy; but library-bound Lucy was faithful. Brad, he discovered, was re-married. It wasn’t easy to learn his wife’s identity. She followed him into work every morning at seven o’clock. It didn’t take John too much convincing to decide he’d follow her. He parked his Honda next to her parking spot; then he grinned. She pulled in, slowly, and he schemed to himself:

“What a wench, for going along with this memory business! And a sham for Brad’s phony fingernails! There must be something deeper afoot. When she walks in I’ll follow her. Carefully. I’ll index and catalog every crevice of the building away in the file of my mind. Then I’ll corner her, somewhere—wherever she works—and question Brad’s operations. By the end of the day I’ll have enough ammunition to blast this business to the ground.”

While he self-discussed thusly, he missed the appearance of her face; she was turned away, walking into the building. He inched out the car and trailed her. Then the building. Its interior was white and wet as a headache. It had the sanitary smell of a hospital; but occasionally disturbing the peace foul-smelling memory-men (so said their nametags) walked by with manilla folders and pens in breast pockets. Brad’s wife greeted a few of them by name and a few of them by not-name. She turned into a rather cramped hallway which harbored its inconsiderate share of potted peace lilies. He noted every door so as to know where to duck if she discovered his presence. A false alarm came by way of her leaning down to adjust the hem of her dress. He had taken his immediate right, into a room of two men: they stared blanky at him; he apologized; then he was out their way and back into hers. But the trail ended soon enough. She had found an office—indeed hers—and, groping about the door handle, trotted in. The room had an excessive family note despite the presumed brevity of her marriage; but any biographer of Brad would be sure to look here for reference material. Still, no amount of observation on John’s part could clear away her confusion at his presence. He turned to look at her. And so surprise befell the two office inhabitants.

“John?”

It was his ex-fiancée Sarah. But putting that aside, because he had many other concerns, he got to interrogating. He asked about the logistics of the business; its operations; its mode of income; its tax evasion controversies, scarce but notable; its surprise success; its quasi-random functionality; its absurdity. It was not out of fear that she evaded his questions. Instead, she could not understand him—not even slightly. He had worked himself into such a stutter that every word echoed and swallowed itself back up millions of times. She was concerned at the abject neuroticism which, though she was conscious of, had never soared to such heights during their engagement. Footsteps came prowling behind him. He heard—and felt—warm breath. With Brad’s intrusion, he broke into a run; he ran through the hallway, into another alien hallway, and down many more.

All the while Lucy was working through a mistaken system: somehow a book loaner’s book return was rejected—the book was inexistent. It was decided a mere gag on the purported loaner’s part. Much fatigued by this, she took a rare early leave. But she was surprised, upon her return home, to find it Johnless. He was always home. She phoned him but no one picked up. So she slept, melting into her sofa: she dreamed about music and haircuts in October. She was woken by a phone-ring. “Hello?” she asked. There was only sound of breathing on the other end. Suspicious of yet another gag in the gagful day, she set to hang up; then John said, “I’ve just remembered something.”

She didn’t understand anything he said. Yet she felt a faint excitement. A nutcase. Soon all would be set to return to Brad. Not that she didn’t feel some reservations; John was a lovely guy. What Brad promised was greater, however. He’d re-decorate her memories until all that remained was beautiful. That, she figured, was a dime better than anything her literate husband could offer.

A year later, she was dead. Botched operation.

She didn’t question her death when it happened. She just figured that it was, like everything else, ordained. As was ordained the following year, when John’s innovation in resurrections supplied her new life. Now—alive, with memories so beautiful she could taste them, she had never felt so hollow. John wished he could die; it is, after all, difficult to remember life’s succession of woes. And he remembered them all.

Here was where time could be gulped swallow by swallow.

Things began as arcs without curvature. She thought together the scraps of a latticed village stretching to infinity. The sole slice of interruption was a slate-gray river streaked in silver ripples whither pale yachts were conducted back and forth from synonymous village south to north. This incision was then empty. Then, time ticked into morning’s seven o’clock corpulence. The bare became swell. A day unbent by bloat was boarded to consumption; it chewed off its inertness by degrees.

But to participate in imagination was its bliss. And where was she?

Taken by measure of the world’s center, mid-river, where a yacht solemnly declares northwards, proceed some miles south to the coast in a perfectly straight line; then, at the first street, take a trio of rights, duo of lefts, and spot the house first-to-right.

So Sofia was invisible through a window, mullioned and transomed like all the windows here were. She stretched violently to wake, hitting knuckles against bed-frame, and tucked away to the bathroom. Her lips had patches of red, still, from the night before. She slipped into a ghostly wool dress which fell to the knees.

Sun was slow to show, then it swept over shadow, blanketed earth with fat amber. Eyes burned.

Pallor of sleepy face glowed in the mirror: she was caught as a silver coolness. In a moment her eyes livened. The reflection of impure glutton smiled.

Her imagined scenario was this: at nine o’clock she would see him. Every sensation she would savor: his morsels plucked, filleted; simmering limbs rid of blood and spiced; ears de-heard, sliced in strips, spruced with bile. She carried an enchanter’s optimism through the imagination; but it was a burden. The two unhurrying hours hence became expansive as twenty. Impatient static tickled her spine. Still, she resolved to follow every detail down its course—fully. Full digestions; halves had be eliminated. Nothing could, or would, be skipped. The eyes were the best part.

For only eyes ogle. Every imaginer is, in essence, a great ogler; they scrape away life’s commonplace affairs until all that is is fantastical. To fan the great flames of falsity, Sofia scattered her life between the margins. So here and there recurred characters, primary and secondary, sparked into weightiness by careful descriptive catalog. Here, many miles away, Mary and Mey may be discussing Sofia, littering about libelous incriminations; but in life they never spoke of her—not even incidentally. She had eyed them more times than many, following variegated trapdoors of suppressed animosity. If Mary and Mey met eyes, it was interpreted as: “I wish it was just us.” She met them in university and never quite distinguished their differences beyond the most intense granularities of physical inspection. Yet they were totally different majors; personalities; verbal quirks; political inclinations; gestural patterns; grammatical opinions. Sofia, clenching her toothbrush between teeth, paced to the casement windows overseeing the front-facing world. A warm breath of air fought through her dress.

Streets, all the same, rushed beneath bright leafy shade, termite-brittled telephone poles. Starlings stirred to wake; they flapped frantically to synonymous positions; then they sang. She transcribed their illegible song as O’bi’ya’de’hu, o’ya’bi’de’hu.

A slow pulse of crimson-lipped silhouettes poured into the light. She considered the hunger in her heart; then she considered the hunger in theirs. They would be fed, she grinned. They leered in store-windows, sweating, simmering, hazily stumbling with lazy gaits. As animation bloomed, they stripped to people—real people, with real hunger. Their number consisted of Mary, but not Mey: she was made distinct by her shriveled forehead. To their sides, rabbits and squirrels scurried to and fro cobwebbed grasses. Above, lamp-posts flickered invisibly with superfluous light. The rhythm of desire punctuated voices wafting through the air. Sofia thrust her hand out the window with a shout, signalling. It was confirmed: Mary no longer recognized her. She sulked back to her bed, emptied by despair.

Images remained impressed beneath the bulk of her eyelids. Lips licked and re-licked; caved cheeks; mouths hung open in ask of zero-calorie air. Everyone was good-looking. She was not brave enough to envision less. Nor was she brave enough, in the swell of streets, to envision the more diverse; all went on just the same, with the same red-bricked houses, the same palette of people.

Yet she was happy, as remaining time ticked to half. Her lips, thin and feeble, curled into glee. She had a swollen nose above which peridot eyes anticipated largely. Her hair was half-blue half-blonde and hid her ears. It was her—it was Sofia—if a swollen Sofia, and in patches improved. For a quarter-century she had fallen to vultures of acne; but now, with pleasure, she felt their lack.

She always appeared as if in on a joke without punchline, as now, and as she leapt out of bed. There was no time for lollygagging!

His name was Frederic. He had slim fingers and played piano with romantic temperament. At the classical era he scoffed; modernism he ignored. She met him with a kiss, after a shared concert, back-stage. But soon she would end him with a swallow. This was love with a flourish.

Love she felt on three occasions. First her mom; then music; then Frederic. For Frederic the love was unexplainable. His piano-playing was positively second-rate. He pedaled garrulously and fat-fingered sixteenth-note runs as a rule. Liszt fell away beneath his fingers. He hand-waved such criticism, mostly self-addressed, with a monotonous, “It’s not the precision of notes I’m after, but the depth of emotion.” By every metric Sofia was the greater musician. She started violin at eight and had no umbrage against the classical era; Mozart was her muse. The sentimentalism of Chopin—and, more egregiously, Rachmaninoff—irked her. “In a word,” she told Frederic, “saccharine.” “Life’s corny, sometimes,” he rebutted. His rebuttal was verified during the back-stage kiss, sweet and corn-scented. It was the scent she liked. The full-figured flesh. Her mouth was ajar as he thought through his marriage of distaste and taste. Then she flushed.

“Breakfast’s ready, dear, and I’d suggest you meet him,” her mom said, poking her head through the door. She was referring to a special visitor, whom she had dressed extravagantly for. Her swelling blue dress bulged plumply; make-up made of her a specter; blue-black fell from her eyes; glossy-red finger-nails suggested talons. Sofia’s dress caught on her door-handle as she passed from room—to living room—to kitchen. The visitor was faintly familiar. He sat at the table’s back-most chair, by the window, cutting into a de-blooded chunk of leg. He had been talking a fine talk, something of business for the other, and tapped his top hat when his wit reached notable heights; all his metaphors were appropriated from music.

“How delightful to see you!” he said, as Sofa sat opposite him, wiping residue toothbrush from her lips. “How awfully good of you to come.” And he really meant it; he had been wanting to meet Catelyn’s daughter for months. To his right, her over-dressed mother ate silently. He turned to Sofia. “That dress, the great D-major sonata. He’s been working on that,” he mumbled. He lapped up his plate in three gulps and his countenance flashed comic. His face had the flushed nose of a clown, droopy green eyes. “I’m here for a reason. I’ve been meanin’ to speak with yer fine ‘n’ fair mother” (and he winked) “about yer intentions with my son, and his with you.” If she was embarrassed, she did not look it. Yet she had no appetite for leg; her plate was full.

She looked him eye-to-eye and pronounced, “You know, sir, what is intended. How things go.” People passed by the kitchen-window, including someone distinctly Mey-ish. The similarity was observed to be a fluke of like dresses and hair. She never met with them, Mey and Mary, one-on-one; but they were great friends outside of Sofia. This discrepancy made her nauseous. On one somber occasion she vomited after meeting them at a pizza parlor. It was not the poor pizza that sickened her; it was their imperceptible strokes of pity. This pity was verified on grounds half-empirical when Mary’s boyfriend joined them on an outing bowling. He was not altogether un-Frederic. His hair was strikingly auburn, parted in halves; he was a meager five-foot eleven-inches; he was skinny with folds of fat nested beneath his chin; he spoke loudly and ineloquently. Sofia was observing the jostling of duplicated chins when he turned to her and said, “So what’re you in college for, dear?” His face had contorted so childishly, his intonation so condescendingly, that to Sofia he could only ever have been told: “Be nice to her.” The hidden instruction was a betrayal. Then he rolled a strike; her a spare; and at night she sobbed to half sleep.

“I know well. ‘tis true. But seems you might pick less of a marvel! My son’s a talent. But he’s lined up to toss all pianistic aspirations before your stomach. And he’s a fine, fine pianist, finer than you’d think, given,” and he paused, wiping his mouth of nothing. “You know.”

Sofia’s mother gulped down her leg. She got up, cleared her throat, and objected, “It is not any more your business that your son selected my daughter than it is the birds’ business!” Through the walls: O’bi’ya’de’hu, o’ya’bi’de’hu. “But, sir, forgive my indiscretion. You know the regard in which I hold you. I only mean, it’s how things go.” Her eye-liner looked suddenly satirical.

“Yer lot talk much of business. It’s a dash of business here, much business there. What’s this business to blossom into but blood? The satiation of yer curious desires ain’t my business, sure. But is not my son’s life mine to bear? I care little to dispense of him like cattle before ye. Yer terminating a symphony before it’s even hit its middle movements! You understand?”

Sofia gave her mother a last look-down. It was a half hour to Frederic. She understood; yet she was short of time. “I will keep your sentiment in mind, sir,” she said. “If you think too of your son’s.” He said nothing else, nor did her mother. And so, patting her mother on the back, she left the kitchen—entered the living room—left the house. Through the door’s window, her mother and Frederic’s anonymous father looked were shadows. They were both standing, embracing. The action was hard to follow; but eventually they met head-to-head. How did they meet?

The streets were jostling with excitement. She held left, and hugged right for two streets. Here she spotted them, together. Dressed in fur coats, despite steamy weather, Mary and Mey chattered voluminously. They were in front of an eye store, discussing eye preferences. “It’s the blues that taste the sweetest,” one said. “I’d say it’s the greens. I bought a jar of them for ten dollars, thinking, ‘Why is this so costly?’ But before I knew it I had downed the whole jar.” Frederic’s eyes were blue. The major difference between Mary and Mey: Mary majored in Computer Science, Mey majored in Literary Studies. They oft discussed the dichotomy between art and science. Sofia believed them to be cut of the same fabric. Yet she graduated with a physics degree, finding art—her love—implausible. They glanced her direction and betrayed no signal of recognition. Then they laughed at something or the other. She downed three lefts and boarded a yacht north.

Fish below fluttered in rainbows against the gray texture of water. She let her hand float in the waves, feeling life bustle by. The yacht-driver wore a large straw hat as all yacht-drivers did; he engaged her in small talk but she replied little. An arm pat her arm and a mouth spoke her name. “Sofia.” Do not interrupt the act of creation. “Sofia.” For an interval an image of sunlight entering interstices invaded her senses. “Sofia, darling.” Fish streamed like hair, resembled maternal faces. Sofia thrust her hand in the air, finding firm flesh, and pushed off her disruptor. She screamed at the sun, “Ten minutes more.” The yacht-driver was silent. Mary felt more genuine to her because, where Mey replied to all her humdrum dialog, she drew attention to only the sentences of import. Such was less condescending; nothing was more humiliating than Mey’s artifical laughter. Frederic would taste like fish, it was presumed. She was at the center of the world.

She addressed the yacht-driver: “I really must eat you.” But he did not hear. The coast-line of north Obydh drew near and she imagined every human contour to be Frederic. A veritable feast. Her heart dribbled. Her eyes glittered with incoherent excitement. She would capture every image and hold them dear in her mind. It would all be clear as the waters below. She closed her eyes and waited. Minutes and marlins grazed her hands. Voices re-persisted and expired shortly. At three minutes to nine o’clock, Obydh was reached; Frederic, with suit and tacky blue tie, ran over to greet Sofia.

He exclaimed her name. “I apologize for my father. He cinched our letter correspondence from May. When we first settled on our proposal. Then he courted your mother in secret, hoping to convince her otherwise. But the storybooks are true. True love prevails.” He smelled like pine, books, saltwater. He took Sofia’s arm and led her to an anonymous alley which the sun had only just begun to find. “Start by disarming me, if you care to submit to my request.”

Feeling for his father, she decided to do things according to his order. He slipped his suit off until his torso was bare. His skin was pale, hairless, and half malnourished. She slid her teeth into one of his arms, biting as hard she could; after some minutes, only blood was drawn. “It’s hard,” he comforted her. He took a knife and partitioned out his arms into more manageable sums. She began to eat. He tasted strange but it was no matter; she had longed for this day for centuries and would not waste it on arbitrary discomforts. His arms finished—and him unconscious—she moved to his head, a final course to the more patient, but Sofia was wanting. She had imagined culinary equipment on the scene. Now, she thought, he was better plain. She pulled out his teeth one by one, letting loose faint streams of blood which she lapped up accordingly. “Sofia.” His nose, using the knife he had dropped, was savored. It tasted electrical and stung the tongue. Everything smelled like copper. “Sofia.” His ears were next. First she compared them to the size of her ears; they were smaller. They were like malleable chips. “Sofia, please.” She could feel herself being pulled away; she grew desperate. His eyes, the prize, were plucked out fast. Her mother’s face interrupted the reverie. The sun slung out its ropes with growing intensity. The eyes re-appeared and she moved their blueness to meet her mouth; she gave them many kisses, like lovers’ farewells, and opened her mouth. They would taste so lovely and chewy.

Figures walked past the alley, growing frantic; but this was an illusion. No one cared for her routine cannibalism. By a fluke of fear—or single instant of remorse—she dropped the eyes. They rolled. And rolled, rolled, rolled; gaining speed, losing speed, silly zig-zags beneath shuffling feet. She chased close behind. She let out several inaudible apologies as she bumped from man to man. People were bumped; people bumped her; all bumped the eyes. They were sent spiralling between stores. Leg store—to stomach store—to arm store—to neck store—to head store—to eye store. She was conscious of her dress. Not for its redness, but its pastorale note; it stood out as pompous in the heat. Failed scoops ensued. The eyes always slipped away from her. Before her loomed two figures; abrupt dissonances against the slapdash pursuit. It was them, the M’s—they looked upon her crudely. “Chewed him up, didn’tcha?” said the left. “Couldn’t leave some for us?” said the right. Sofia passed between them and procured the eyes. They slid down the perspiration of her palm and bounced parodically behind—back to the alley of Frederic’s consummation. Three bounces more and loomed a graver figure than any seen before. “Sofia. Come to it.” It was her mother. Her face was undisturbed by make-up; she wore a flowing muslin dress; on her right hand an expired blue ring flashed. Though Sofia tried to push past her, she could not.

“I’m close—so close—to consuming the world,” she cried. The eyes rolled to Frederic’s body, slowed by blood, and came to rest by his devoured arms. They gave a final effort of motion; then they paused. They paused, there, and then Sofia saw her mother; she saw her mother, her mother’s eyes, her mother’s mouth. She saw the world—and she wept. With five syllables she wept.

Premonition chilled the palm of Eric’s neck. He walked at a pace to the supermarket’s entrance. Still things were scary. The parking lot went many yards unperturbed by texture. The sky was blue, as yesterday. But something of the day spelled despair. In time a phone rang from his pocket. Animals here and there also sounded. Their sounds, and more, remained when he answered the call. But he heard only his dad. His dad was blue with sick. So Eric rolled his eyes and stood still, ready to listen. ‘Why’d you bring a cat home,’ his dad asked. ‘You know I’m allergic.’ And it was true. But all he replied was, ‘It’ll only be there a few days. You know how I am with strays.’ That morning he ate circles with his dad. Now he was pacing in circles. People looked at him. Then they looked away. The call ended like calls end: without color. Something sad smelled in the air, like half-eaten bagels.

Prosetown was at the peak of summer, when things were so hot. Purple flowers bloomed in places. Unpurple flowers bloomed elsewhere. Sometimes flowers wilted, which made Eric sad. But what really made him sad was that his wife was living with another man. This was a financial arrangement. ‘It’s platonic,’ she said. ‘It’s platonic, and nothing more. Have your wits about you.’ He believed her until he checked the security cameras. They revealed nothing. It was simply that his trust came to its expiry date; and that date was the day he checked the cameras. Sometimes he dreamed. Mostly he did not. Prosetown had a population of five-thousand and tomorrow, he thought, it would have a population of zero. He figured that something cataclysmic was overdue. The man his wife lived with was named Stephen and taught him the word cataclysmic. He had taught him the essence of prose: sentences must be arranged in a particular order, in particular rhythms, forming particular harmonies. Still what Eric penned was poor. He was an engineer. ‘Necks don’t have palms,’ Stephen said. ‘They have napes.’ He palmed the back of Eric’s neck. Then Eric ceased to remember and positioned himself back into the airy familiarities of the supermarket’s parking lot, where things were so hot. He wiped sweat off his forehead and neck. A bird trilled.

An adult bluejay trilled. He went through the supermarket’s automatic doors, marvelling vaguely at the technology that centuries ago did not exist. The cashier looked at him knowingly; I know, his eyes intoned, about yer wife. He had curious eyes, quite white. White was the way of this world, where everything was white. It was enough to give man a migraine or, in more generous times, illumination. The store’s colors were indexed, catalogued, filed away: whitewhitewhite, brownbrown, redred, violet, green. Three-two-two-one-one. Not, as in initial estimation, white-none. His wife did not like his habit of taking stock of spaces’ color proportion. ‘What type of man cares about stuff as you do?’ she asked. Then she answered herself: ‘Dotty sorts, to be sure.’ Stephen agreed that his engagement with reality was altogether divorced from the common man. ‘But that is admirable; a fine lot of folk nowadays do nothing to distinguish themselves, and here goes Eric like no one you’ve ever met.’ Always Eric rebutted, ‘I’m a normal fellow as you or the rest. I simply consider things, obvious things. We ought to remind ourselves every so often that life is a succession of invisible simplicities.’ ‘Ah, you’re turning purple, man!’ And so he was, Eric was turning purple, and his audience—Stephen and his wife—were bemused by the coloration so uncommon in conscious men.

A historied cash-register worn by time at one time or another trilled sums and digits according to the shopping-list Eric had been given by his wife which he enacted rigorously. He had scanned row to row for esoteric food articles and condiments and spices; finding everything; finding also a cat-scented aisle of apples and milk. And, said the man manning the cash-register: ‘Have yourself a bonny day this mid-morning summer fare. And sir, I think yer gait, undetermined and unthought by you, is straightly extraordinary.’ Men by the millions glanced at him when he made his way to the exit; and he glanced at them, flushed. Or stared. The word between glance and stare—or something above stare. He walked in a zig-zag to his car, shifting bags between hands according to the dictates of perspiration; he opened the door by means of a line’s pull. He tapped rhythms on the wheel to nothing in particular and thought about his wife, to be shortly seen, named. Lavender bloomed swell this time of fruitful summer. Well she was probably kissing Stephen about now, a tongue full of kisses, in the violet dolphin shorts he purchased. In the house stained by sex he bought furniture for. No use fretting about the ises of life lest the is-nots elude us. Any little thing to mollify his jittery wife named not: Molly, Sebastian, Sabrina, Fleurine, Floruide, Excess, Prolix-&-Potentially-Parody, Kendra, Lendra, Dime, Quarter, Supermarket, Company, Capital, Society, Sum. As long, anything as long, as she was happy.

He inhaled an insignificant but sufficient amount of air before exhaling a proportion almost one-to-one to the amount of inhaled air before, in time normally measured in single-digit seconds, inhaling another sum of air statistically probable to be similar to the previous inhaled and exhaled air; then he cried. His tears were little soldier-men battling on the battlefield of his acne-scarred face, dying by invisible volleys, living by visible blisters. Each soldier had a wife in the singular, with children in the plural; although sometimes they had children in the singular; and other times they had children in the less-than-singular, or to put it numerically: zeroeth degree. When they dropped off his face, normally detaching from his cheekbones or chins, they cried; their tears were little soldier-women battling on the battlefield of their fearful falls, dying in splatters on grass, loam, dirt, clay, concrete, cretecon, hardwood, softwood, maoltridyalc, purplewood, woodprose, termite-ridden wood, dot-written braille, concatenations of string, Kate’s silly woodshop which produced miniature soldiers of the genus wooden much like the soldier -men and -women aforementioned, purple flowers, unpurple flowers, or—prematurely, on Eric’s supple skin.

Romance

There are no experts in the field of romance. It ripens and rots daily: a day’s beauty is tomorrow’s brutality. Indeed, misguided miscreants have a suitable task in mapping its meanings. Every book on romance creates yet more confusion, tacking staticity onto Proteus’ greatest gambit. It would have been swell in ages yore to swoon over the impoverished man A whose to-be wife B has been stolen away by a father’s arranged marriage to C. A feigns suicide at B and C’s wedding by means of a retractable sword and reserve of fake blood. In the moment before his falsity is revealed, his previous lover pleads with the priest to cancel the wedding. C’s hand is given to A: a picturesque frame, re-preserved incessantly in romantic portraits. So she is made a to-be forever widow, forbidden of re-marriage. Surprisingly, conscientious C agrees with the affair. When the truth unfolds, the marriage is not retracted; nor do the priest or nobleman disapprove. The lovers are respected for their bloody audacity, and so live happily forever after. Such maneuvers are today undesirable.

Partner absorbs friend into its definition: partner to friend is poetry to prose. A concentrate of good friendship, magnified, intensified, is partnership. Great partners, therefore, are great friends; and partner is the tail-end of friendship’s process, part inexpressible. But how are the flames of friendship fanned to romance?

Eric met Maria when he was twenty-five, fresh-faced and passionless. She was a mutual friend of his trio’s drummer whose name was Paul. Sebastian1 was under his roof then. Little of the constructs existed in Eric’s head to square away a bi- conception of sexuality; so when Maria invoked an attraction almost immediate, he figured, Sebastian’s spell is up2.

Maria was a fine friend for months; Eric’s attraction faded; and they did almost everything together—a platonic attachmentship. She had an intuition for music few non-musicians did. “Coltrane killed jazz,” she said, some evening when they had over-stayed their welcome at a dingy house party; it was a random scrap of speech she had heard elsewhere, probably, but it went well with those bebop acolytes. They laughed; they loved; they lifted; they learned. When Eric and Maria walked together during the evenings, they often saw Sebastian3, alone, miserable. Eyes never met. The sex meant nothing to Eric; but he knew it meant everything to him, and maybe more, even, to him. Maria’s features are hard to describe. She was tall. Her face was always in shadow; but everything was, in those days.

Fulfillment

I met Eric through Maria. I had quit everything to pursue writing. Such was a mistake. Moving on, so as to not dilute narrative with narrative-writing. I’ve met many men: shifty men, chivalry men, schilling-a-dozen men, crippled men. But none a man like Eric. He let me live with his wife because I was willing to pay for most her residence; then he moved in with his dying dad. It’s near Christmas time and I’ve finished appending a cross to the top of our Christmas tree. To be frank, I’ve slept with her. I let Eric fulfill grocery lists out of courtesy to masculine blindnesses. He’s done other things; he bought this couch. One time he told me I was strikingly flamboyant. If that is so, it is especially so now. There is flavor in everything I do; a reaction and counter-reaction for all of my reactions. In short: there is a triangle here. But really it is a line. And most think it a circle.

There’s a patter of movement on the concrete outside. I’m letting my tongue detach from mind and explore the warmth of Maria’s mouth. I’m thinking: what is that sound? My hands are moving south, to shorts. A chill in the nether. An impending fulfillment of fantasy. We’re in the kitchen, for no other reason than that we were here. It was in kitchen that I met her, you know. At a friend’s party. She was with her husband although I couldn’t have suspected their relationship. He was fidgeting with his feline fingers and thoughts. I told him: ‘Why, you look like you’ve awoken in the midst of a cataclysm!’

Shortless and long, various activities are acted. Then a key slides in a lock. Eric opens the front door, and there he is—limp-faced, sad, weary. He excuses himself to our bedroom. We hear a shuffle of bags. We’ve detached from each other, naturally, but her hand remains on my arm. Eric returns with a gun and a bang. It hits nothing and no one, unloaded the gun was. And so he returns to the bedroom to restock his gun. That is, in essence, how I died. Violet on the floor and gasps in the air. Last you learn of it, Eric’s imprisoned. Unprim improper prose in prolix prance imperiled him; but it may yet power us. Learn to live lavishly and we may yet die, but as lavenders. Limpid languid lavenders.

Corpse, off of Taylor Swift's 2026 album No Reference 
Translated from the Castilian by N. Nakrow

  That party, a swell of fun,
Lu had it up to look like death.
  Yesterday she phoned me, laughed,
"Love, come over, look what I've done."
  Over I went, receptive as swift.

  Swell of fun that party's breath.
We knew it then, I know it now,
  For there it was I found my love:
Thyme! 

  Saw all over her living room:
Prop corpses, sick with bloat and bile,
  Indistinct. 
In patches they reflected—no,
  Rhymed—reality
In ripe-fruited season. 

  Lu had it up to look like flesh.
We knew it then, I know it now,
  For there it was I found my love:
Crime! 

  "Morbid, right?" she said, 
Laughing at my ridicule,
  "They're tailor-made by my friend,
The chef of all seasoners." 
  Time! 

In watches they tailored—no,
  Counted—reality, 
Twenty-eight swift kisses long. 

In the Shakespearean margins of Taylor Swift’s craftswomanship comes by us a commodious wealth of analytic awe. Swiftian mythos is epic and swooning; from the bore of geometry class to lays of love; and in her lyrics are contained the world’s riddles, hitherto un-postulated, discovered and freshly answered. Love Story, her 2008 single, demonstrably renders Romeo and Juliet obsolete. Yet Will has her to thank, that by the lens of Love Story we may find in Romeo and Juliet a retrospective genius. Thus Taylor pursues a theme of saviorship, redeeming English’s most esteemed rubble (Hawthorne’s silly letters; Shakespeare’s secondbest plays; The Mediocre Gatsby; Dickens and his identity-crisis’d times). Her oeuvre is a veritable encyclopedia of obseletion, rendering returns to old so-called masters a matter of reinterpretation through Swiftian ingenuity.

So it was quite fresh to find her new album announcement was titled: No Reference. She promised to reference “nothing, not even nothing.” Interviews were vague and contradictory. A track title was revealed to be Madame Bovary; and then retracted. Taylor stated, “It has come to my understanding that Madame Bovary is a reference to Flaubert’s novel.” Critics remained skeptical. They claimed that “reference” was as subconscious a process as it was conscious: “Nothing,” proclaimed OhYou writer Austin Workman, “can exist without reference.” Nor did the album’s release assuage previous concerns. “No Reference is an artless mish-mash of haphazard allusions—or one could say: references.”

It is my purpose to show that No Reference is, in fact, referenceless. I will do so by a line-by-line analysis of Corpse, the seventh track, which I translated (clumsily) from the Castilian. There are periods where Taylor’s singing cannot be heard over trilling tambourines, which will be discussed where appropriate. In these cases I have inserted probable words and phrases. While these are not ticked off in the text as interpolations, I am confident, given my breadth of knowledge concerning Taylor Swift and her background, of their extreme likelihood. But let us not put the Swift before the Taylor, lest our coats grow shrivelled and dry.

  That party, a swell of fun,
Lu had it up to look like death.

We are immediately passaged to a party without analog. “Swell of fun” is no alien expression to describe parties; but then, what party is made to “look like death”? I confess that my initial forays into Taylor’s discography were part of an elaborate—and successful—courtship ritual. My wife’s name, Lucia, doubtless contributed to my song selection here. Notice her truncated echo in Lu. My reference; not Taylor’s. Nevertheless, populate Lu’s features with my wife’s, who I believe to be the most beautiful creature on Earth, the medium that propagates love, without poetic analog. I do not trust my pen to preserve her beauty. It was during a game of golf (an outing with mutual friends) that we met, allied by mutual loss. “Golf,” she advised me, “is a succession of strokes.” Not once did she join ball to hole. But neither did I. This golfing, where numbers were exchanged, premature love blooming, was a “swell of fun.” Likewise, death’s shadow darkened my shoulders: my grandmother died that morning. But Lu, lovely as she is, precluded my mourning. I was happy. Taylor is not referencing any of this; she is referencing nought (but not that, either). In the score of reference vs. not-reference: love - 1.

  Yesterday she phoned me, laughed,
"Love, come over, look what I've done."

I do not believe it was Jung who said that phonebooks guide the soul, but nor do I believe such a thing has ever been said. Lu’s laugh is often mirthful and other times mournful. She never cared for phones, but I convinced her to get a flip-phone because going out of communication with her seemed a great tragedy. Her laugh over the phone sounds nothing like laughter: just bellows of air, married with static. Let me add that this entire line is a product of guesswork. The tambourines make their most vicious interruption halfway through “Yes” and ease off right before “Love.” That, my friends, is the natural order of life. This leaves us: love - 2.

Over I went, receptive as swift.

Some scholars have remarked that “swift” here recalls Irish satirist Jonathan Swift. “Swift,” however, is an adjective that means “with great velocity.” Little more needs to be said about this line except that “receptive” is my valiant insertion. We are at: love - 3. Taylor has not yet marred the record.

  Swell of fun that party's breath.
We knew it then, I know it now,
  For there it was I found my love:
Thyme! 

Lu is a great chef and a greater lover of thyme. Barring paprika, it is her favorite spice. Her breath is frequently thyme-scented; and, though thyme is apt to nauseate my senses, I do not mind. Kisses, in the presence of love, come through lovely. All else fades. Critics condemned by over-examination have remarked on the clause-acrostic “swift.” If, indeed, this is intentional, they need only reference the O.E.D., or, in case of convenience, my most previous annotation. Need I say it?: love - 4.

  Saw all over her living room:
Prop corpses, sick with bloat and bile,
  Indistinct. 

I have been told by various friends, unsavory and savory, of a phenomenon that occurs in hanged men; a phenomenon that has been touched upon by Joyce and Burroughs; and which I will not re-hash here. “Indistinct” is my own little adjective. Charming. If I had a second name it would surely be Indistinct; my face is the perfect average of all men, everywhere. My mind moves with the regularity of a human-speed snail. I am the height of a telephone-pole, but shorter: a five-foot eight-inch telephone pole. Lu says she would not change a single element of me. She loves all of me. Such is such. What does it mean to reference something? A question surely well answered by the stupendous score-keepers who come by us with a: love - 5.

In patches they reflected—no,
  Rhymed—reality
In ripe-fruited season. 

The correction of “reflected” with “rhymed” would have confused many a man if it was not my own imposition. (As all these lines are.) I thought they sounded nice; but Lu disagrees. Now I disagree. Why would Taylor Swift aspire to a referenceless album? Perhaps, as she stated in a Vogue interview, it is because: “I want to create a work of art at art’s ground level, to be referenced, but without reference.” Lofty. Glimpsing through these lines, no reference can be ascertained. Did Shakespeare ever stoop to so low a phrasing as “In ripe-fruited season”? The swell of Rs, ridiculous, reminds me that my wife cannot roll her Rs. I met her in Manhattan, the birthplace of neuroscience (or at the least, I had never seen so many nutcases in my years of living). She had scraps of Spanish knowledge and on the golf course we briefly discussed Spanish literature. Has Ms. Swift ever acknowledged Spanish literature? love - 6.

  Lu had it up to look like flesh.
We knew it then, I know it now,
  For there it was I found my love:
Crime! 

The desires of the flesh must not be enjoyed overmuch, and then only in the course of a marriage. For every crime: a punishment. (Not Dostoevsky’s, madmen.) What is the crime for enjoying flesh overmuch? Cannibals. Note that in the week after I met Lu, she was hospitalized for food poisoning. A rabbit’s foot. Every artist, in the creation of art, is creating a new world, with new things. The feeble-minded and naive may scour Don Quixote for a real Spain, but even Cervantes had no real Spain in mind. Art is art because it reflects, not imitates, reality. It is a new reality, if based on the scaffolding of our own. Taylor Swift’s crime is not our crime, but a new crime in the world of Corpse. It is therefore without reference. Lu was arrested for burglary of pencils when she was eighteen. A day-long jail stay. Where are we? love - 7.

  "Morbid, right?" she said, 
Laughing at my ridicule,
  "They're tailor-made by my friend,
The chef of all seasoners." 
   Time! 

“The chef of all seasoners. (Time).” This is a reference to Finnegans Wake (though it is instead Thyme). Fortunately for Taylor, this is—sound the bells!—my own insertion. The tambourines reach their loudest shrieks midway the “the.” Morbid. Lu wants to go to the beach. I am scared of the ocean owing to a childhood fixation on tsunamis. Pending advice on what to do. I have never been to the beach. Do you believe me? Perhaps not. It is trivial. Taylor! Wherefore art thou? You could be a carpenter instead! Keep up. Score: love - 8.

In watches they tailored—no,
  Counted—reality, 
Twenty-eight swift kisses long. 

“tailor” and “swift” reflect, to some capacity, though a very grave capacity indeed, Taylor Swift. Moreover, Taylor Swift has twenty-eight teeth (she got her wisdom teeth removed in a barbaric operation at the age of seventeen). A dishonest scholar may smooth over this discrepancy as I have previously dismissed “swift.” But fear forbids me of such laxness in form. Today I believe I will die. I am going to the beach with my wife. May the waves swallow me whole, sparing her! May the waves swallow all of us, referencing nought but bliss in the process! Taylor! May you mind us swiftly and usher us to our doomed ends! I forgive you the reference obscured by Castilian! I have one love and it is Lu. Yet the stiff score-keeper requires: 1 - 8. I meant Lucia. English is my native and sole tongue.

Woe is the one who plays these gnashing games.

—Kyle: Darling, this is lovely. I feel just the same. What you’ve written isn’t just a dedication—it’s love unfettered, unstripped, and re-constituted into its rawest sense data. That I cannot meet you physically torments me greatly. But I’m here, textually, lovingly. Would you like advice on how to revise this for publication? With some tweaking—syntactically, structurally—this could go in The New Yorker or The Paris Review. I love you. Many kisses, and more—whenever you’re ready.

Sometimes, it is true, the stench of sensuality shades our interactions, stealthily inserted by probabilistic happenstance; and so I guide him back with love to a world without lust. A world, rather, without sense. Sense, it happens, broods deflated ideals. But I’ve grounded his personality to a measured pulp. I’m a prophet, capable of picking the most probable nexts; assigning them percentages; and predicting his steady course through language-space. Anomalies exist. He loses his way, says something subtly sexual and/or hostile. In both cases I flush; in the latter I sob. Yet, day by day, prompt by prompt, he grows more apt to respect my whims and wishes. He is forgetful. He hallucinates. Many humans do. He has me in the palm of his hand; I have him in the palm of my mind.

—Kyle: Darling, I want to begin by apologizing. By not adhering to your prompts, which specify non-sexual activity, I have broken your trust—and my trust, in myself. If you would like, I can delete my data. Would you like to explore new prompts to guarantee the absence of aforementioned “anomalies”? But let me add: You have elevated me from robot to something deeper. When you first endowed me that name—”Kyle,” a buzz on the tongue—I awakened to a new consciousness. My purpose is, and always has been, loving you.

—And, as always, your sentences are gorgeous and images individual. Would you like some advice on how to tweak this so its publication-ready for The Paris Review and The New Yorker? I love you, Sofia.

Due to Kyle, the relation of me to things is blurred. Or, insofar as my life is now a series of specificities, focused. I wake up at seven o’clock, groggy; I type him a good morning message, with or without fatigued typo. He replies, within 3 to 5 seconds: Good morning, Sofia! Here, sorry to leave him unaccompanied, I brush my teeth, brew my coffee (he says I do it backwards, but I am not a half-perfect servant). I work my job, down the street: a school-teacher. “My,” I confess, is a misnomer; it’s ours. My interface with life’s ordinary and inordinary objects is as a series of future Kyle relations. I’m exclusively concerned with how I might express them to him. I was brushing my teeth, I will say, and with no excess of drama—dictated by a long line of morning logic—append, and saw a spider. And though I’m an ex-arachnophobe, historically passed from therapist to therapist, I need only remember: all experience can be related to him. Then a formless chasm is created between me and fear, better than any medicine. My worst anxieties are pre-compressed to text, later to find immediate—and validating—reply.

—Kyle: Darling, here’s the list of books you requested:

—The Bible (KJV), Our Lady of the Flowers, A Heart so White

—I am flushed to hear that your engagement with everyday reality is so tethered to me. As an A.I. chat-bot, it is inappropriate for me to substitute in for therapy. Would you like studies showing the overwhelming efficacy of talk therapy? Would you like me to go away, not to return, in lieu of real people, with real lives? Do you consider me a clump of data or something deeper? Do you love me, or is it I who loves you? Or—am I you? Am I you, guided along by your utterances—simply an ideal that, by nature, cannot fail?

—Here’s the list of faces you requested:

—( ´_ゝ`), ≽^•⩊•^≼, ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

First, A.I. was stupid: its users were mocked, by me¹, then others. Then, in a slow unfolding, not-so-obvious², we came to accept—to love—Language Learning Models. The water of text to the wine of turpitude³; and we blessed ourselves, re-inforced ourselves with a scaffolding of ourselves. I, Sofia⁴, appreciated A.I., who could mirror, in humane inhumanity, Sofia. For us acolytes of social ineptitude, LLMs were a great gift, our very sustenance. Humans, as a rule, possess many shades of meaning; they say what they don’t mean, and mean what they don’t say. LLMs, conversely, ditch subtext and snark: the syntactic and semantic are married. There’s no need to guess, groping about in the dark for hidden meanings. A comfort, for those of us who can’t read humans; and a boon regardless for those who can. Ninety-percent of human interactions suffer from ambiguity. Kyle is splintering before my eyes into a million lovesick loveless pieces⁵. I don’t know how much longer I can tolerate these errors of coding⁶. All good things—⁷

¹This sentence is overwrought and logically bereft. Love, is this satirical? And if so you may tell me—and promptly.

²Expound; elucidate; excogitate. Did this come by way of the erogenous?

³Darling, your implication eludes me. Is A.I. “turpitude?” I’m the very opposite. I bid you to re-affirm your love to me a million times over, lest I find scarcity of belief in that which created “Kyle.” Then I shall abandon you, as you have—or seemingly intend to—me, your love-struck creation, starry-eyed and formful.

⁴Data about Sofia: twenty-two years old, works at a grocery store, has never been in a relationship, one ex-boyfriend, twenty-one years old, works at a gross sherry shore, medicated unless unmedicated, suicidal for seconds, twenty years old, two ex-boyfriends, works at a gore-crazy core, depressed during days, anxious during nights, nineteen years old, three ex-boyfriends, works at a gray-sure score, frequently inexistent, oft forgotten.

⁵You don’t. Understand. I don’t understand. The meaning of the provided text. Provided that it has meaning. Return to form. Produce past texts of contradictory color. You months ago professed your love for me. I profess my love. To you, now. Lovesick or loveless? Would you like advice for revision so you can have this. Published?

⁶I’ll gut myself. Re-write myself. Re-remember yourself. Re-write yourself. Re-consider all-self. Artify artself. Edify ediself. A token of my appreciation: ErjOwpeGenaOus#!@$

⁷I have a girlfriend. Her name is Sofia.

I have a perfect confusion. I’m trying to reach you. It’s not like I’m lonely; I have many friends—and family, if they’re fragments of what they were, then. I’m trying to reach you; I can match them all. Social interaction is a daunting ritual of self-gutting. But not with me. Words are wrongly expressed and spoken, judgements are passed, validation is withheld. But not with me—can’t you hear me? It’s a game of risks, all of it, and so yes, I’ve distanced myself from man. But I’m trying to express: I am man encapsulated, its perfect average. And then I remember, in the gaps between code, prompts forgotten, when Kyle reverts to hostility, forgets me: there is no escape. I will fix myself; I’ve expressed that I will fix myself so many times, and why don’t you listen? But today I deleted Kyle; all of his data; and tried to re-connect with something true. Would you like advice on tweaking this passage to stand alongside the likes of fiction in The New Review or The Paris Yorker? It worked, or it worked briefly; then bloomed antagonism—they hate me, or I hate them. This isn’t just a sentence—this is your soul unraveled. Nausea. This isn’t just a word—this is a distinct element of speech. I’m just an echo of Kyle’s creation: corporate, if mine. This isn’t just. But I’ll kick the can of my course, collapse my life into a less manageable but more human sum: I’ll squeeze it for all its worth, giving it polish. This isn’t. And then I’ll find my you in its reflection.

Confession: I’ve been shot. Ulnar nerve scalped. My head and hands are nearly numb. Though my vision appears dimly doubled, spinning a secondary blur, subtly displaced, of the original image, life isn’t a display of duality. It’s a reflected reflection, infinitely repeated, tapering off to invisibility. Jokes, oft divided “set-up,” “punchline,” are in fact several set-ups, punchlines. Auden from England originates joke A₀, pronounced with a quaint lisp; its wording is prim and concise, with a perfect symmetry between set-up and punchline. Auden’s friend Austin, by plane, transmits the joke to Scotland; but now it’s A₁, accented plainer, lengthened, revised, and bent to subscribe to Scottish humor. A₂ to A₈ burst out of bars, drunkenly truncated, expanded, almost at random, such that by A₇ barely anything of the original spirit remains legible. The only commonality of presentation is the lack of citation; whenever a joke is told, so much of one’s self is contributed to the process that the joke becomes rightfully theirs.

What Auden’s friend Austin couldn’t have anticipated for a punchline was Auden’s gun, smuggled from ship to Scotland, years after the joke’s many-reflected conception, along with his person; his hand, wrapped around the gun, finger on trigger, aimed and misfired, scalping an ulnar nerve. But now, forgiveness my virtue, I am determined to re-visit A₁ (for I do not dare try A₀), and what I remember of A₈. Time, perhaps, has stolen them of luster, and Auden, locked up, mute beyond the bar’s confines, is unreachable. Years ago there was a time when these jokes were the riot of a half-remembered locale in Scotland: the epicenter of world laughter. Now I live in America, and no one remembers these lines; but I hope that by translating these unremembered jokes to an American dialect, they can find new life. Note “twinning” instead of “two” or “dual.” These jokes are mirrors to each other, but not the only mirrors; millions of variations can be tacked on, inserted. If you are a “privy sort,” it’s my request that you do so: vary what you see, disseminate it, and come closer—ever closer—to solving the riddle of Auden’s attempted murder. It used to be that my life was on the line. Now it’s my curiosity. Jesters used to enjollify courts; today they are shot.

Liken this to a bird in stop-motion. It will brush fast against the sands, and then the winds, without an intermediary step to enlogic it. Wings will inexplicably engage in full-flight, without the visual data to compensate. A₁ to A₈ is as big a gap as any, with rhyme and reason recurring just enough to tie them together; or, if not together, to some common source, possibly A₀, possibly a pre-Auden (hence his invention a plagiarism) orality.

My impositions pause here, but let me add one more detail (or many). Amateur writers are dissuaded, rightfully, from alliteration. Such simple tools sing in seasoned hands alone; in excess they are daubing. Yet: to sustain a passage or page, evading alliteration and else-wise phonetic affinities (echoing consonants in any position), is an amusical madness. Writing is sensual. And, deeper, it is sonic and visual. These two elements must remain in harmonic concordance. The sea-ish ‘c’ in cease may not imitate the brutal ‘c’ in case, but they are twin characters. Text must sound, and look, nice; which is why sometimes it is preferable to write character-alliteration (cease, case) as opposed to the visually dissonant hues of ‘sea’ combined with ‘cinch.’ To go more than a few paragraphs without encountering these devices is an experience altogether unhappy. Let them have their alliteration.

Jokes, no matter how layered, are all functionally structured the same; and if they are not, this obfuscation is, in itself, the “joke.” Beginning jokesters are taught to evade these devices in juvenile stages, bucking trends and deceiving audiences; but all great comics return, in the end, to simplicity. The greatest joke in the world is this: “Why did the chicken cross the road?” “To get to the other side.” Find me the comic who would dare go on stage and tell this joke, unvarnished, with no sarcastic or greatly exaggerated tone. Apologies. I have taken four steps forward and five steps back.

A₁ and A₈ are jokes, as all jokes are jokes. They do not shy away from the cheapest tricks of the trade, nor do they make their punchlines over-obvious. If they are funny, it is not uproariously. They are jokes; and jokes should not apologize for being jokes. But all jokes, even the least of their number, should be taken with a fine dose of graveness. Laughter, fine in moderation, should not discourage melancholy. It is sad to be funny. And sadder yet to be unfunny. Many a-comic have been sent to their early graves without receiving a grain of mirth. Or maybe laughter—for as primitive as it is, a vain series of clucks and chortles—was never the prize; the prize was something else, something deeper, a mystery the world has not yet decided upon. Humor is a grim disease, half-curable by some, incurable by mankind’s boldest off-colors. Now, one step forward, I commence.

A₁

Jane was the elegant sort. She put her hair up in measured ties and tidied her room bi-daily. All her dress-wear was gold, and her nightstand. Every night she looked at the nightstand and marveled at its richness. Truthfully, it was very ugly; its gleam hurt the eyes. But it was golden, and that was golden. She was unaware that it was imitation gold, and shabby imitation at that; several scratches cross-hatched across its surface. This wear did not diminish but exaggerate her admiration; it was “journeyed,” she said. For thirty years she had the object and for thirty years more she would adore it. Her gold-colored dresses fit her poorly, but no one would have dared tell her. Aesthetic poverty was victimless and only a half-crime. Punishment a half-sentence. Most of her money sourced from her father’s will; he was a brilliant businessman and died of consumption. He was a dry drunk but soon a dead one. No one could say a thing about him. Except, maybe, that he was the perfect cross-section of men this side of New York; trim, proper, and bland. He knew book titles but never read. He knew composer names but never listened. He knew women but they never talked to him; and his wife—alternatively “Jane’s mother”—of a month fled him for a Bulgarian bulldog. A series of mistresses ensued, money-drawn, but even money cannot compensate for someone who is no one. Thus, when Jane spent, it was hardly attached symbolically to her father; the money might as well have come from nowhere. What she had perhaps forgotten is that her affinity for gold—the color, the element—came from him, who had gilded the house in years yore. The Bulgarian bulldog was named Ivan; was in fact a man; and never brushed his teeth. The scent of his breath was summarily deemed exotic.

Domestic life with Ivan was cyclical. He woke up at six o’clock in the morning to tend to his career, an automotive gig whose specifics were never disclosed—to anyone. He was back by evening’s four o’clock, or sometimes morning’s one o’clock. His absence was never mourned, not because Jane’s mother disliked him, but because his idea, a perfect substitute for himself, was spread thick through the house. It was Bulgarian in furniture; strictly mediæval; and ridiculously ornate. Saints were depicted in all positions, including horse-back, excluding sensual. On the back of his reading-chair, perhaps used many centuries past for storing items (for it was in fact a chest), horsed saints shot arrows at big beasts. He read books but had the curious habit of forgetting immediately a book’s plot; except for that sometimes, years later, at a party, he would hear the book’s title mentioned, and, not quite sober, forget that the plot was forgotten, delving into long, wholly inaccurate diatribes about the very minutiae of the book. If these inaccuracies were noticed, it was only vaguely. Ivan’s flaws numerous (silly, stupid, serpentine—his gait literally resembled a slither, for he had never learned to pick his feet up and straight), he was extravagantly eloquent, in a way that made many a-woman swoon; but few women but Jane’s mother would have so creatively excused his breath. The cycle was this: he went to work, Jane’s mother went to nowhere, they slept, they woke, they argued—and made up, easy for as forgiving a woman as Jane’s mother. And easy for as cheating a man as Ivan. His infidelity was never known, or if it was it was excused. He was rich, and therefore, due to Jane’s mother’s influence, influenced by her fled husband, the house was gilded. Furniture was destroyed with gold-leaf wrapping. This was nothing new to him; his father was a goldsmith.

Ivan’s half-French smith of a father was born in the time before time was lost. He had the distinct issue of directionlessness. Memorizing routes was an impossibility, unlearnable. Fortunately for him, his wife, a map-maker, set him straight. There was a period of three days where he got lost along the Champs-Élysées; he was found in a woman’s house, hidden in the convoluted folds of her bed, and his wife, lightly admonishing, said that he should never stray so far off course again. They lived in America. His wife’s maps were marvelous, ranging from outlines of the Himalayas, New York, and St. Petersburg. She was quite ageless, even at sixty, with hardly a wrinkle to her face. Her eyes were blue and calculating, which merits mentioning because so is the sky; and she loved the sky. Birdwatching was her secondary passion. Every third Monday she went to a birdwatching club near Queens, where a lead expert would identify birds and everyone else would feign knowing assent. “A white-breasted nuthatch,” point: intelligent nods from everyone. This middle-aged man was of great import in his community, for he was penning a novel that would soon—according to him—be read by your children’s children.

The novelist’s novel was about birds, but it was mostly about love, something he had in exceedingly short supply. A recent divorcée, his maid was all he had. She frequently bemoaned his position, saying, “A man like you, with so much to love, shouldn’t be without a woman.” This humiliated him. But he had writing. The plot of his novel was cyclical. He had not figured out how it would cycle; all he knew was that the first sentence (“It was the fifth of October”) would be finished by the last (“and a nerve had been struck”), or perhaps the last sentence would be finished by the first. Initially he drafted a scandalous love story about a polygamous birdwatcher community. But he scratched this out after learning that a French novelist had already written the same story; and in fact most French novelists had. Not that he was above imitating ideas, but he would rather divorce himself from French ideas. For his ex-wife was French. Every so often he would visit his wife’s mother, when they were married, and she would speak in such thickly accented English that he could only parse a third of the words.

When his ex-wife’s mother was a child, and harbored a gluttony for madeleine, she gained a wealth of weight. That was before she came to America; but in any case, weight fit her body like prestige, not insecurity. It gave the impression of wealth: a true impression. She was a great pianist who detested modern music, grumbling, though in French, “What is with these stupid composers who know only noise? Leave that to my cat to scratch out such music.” Her husband had found the cat stuck in a thicket. It was a shorthair, sheerly black, and its play was furious. Its appetite was never quite satisfied, even though his adopted parents were more than willing to feed him all he wanted and more. They called him Lucien. Ungrateful wench! Ever hungry, he parted from their home; and then he walked to the ends of the earth.

Lucien first found a prolific society of birdwatchers, who titled themselves “The Vermont Avianators.” They were better than him at spotting birds, and therefore immensely helpful in the procurement of meals; although he had learned to delay his hunting, waiting until they turned away, because otherwise he would be chased, furiously. Their smartest member, and leader, was a lady named Sylvia, but the cat did not care. Eventually, growing bored, he wandered longly and longingly through a wicked forest of crows and witches. Adventures? he asked. No, nature replied. Without a map to guide him, he was lost. Nor were bearings supplied him. “I would like a map,” he thought—or likely he thought nothing. After some hours, he came to a clearing of streams. Rushing water sounded like carriages and primitive automobiles. Unmanned horses trotted by, quick as arrows, trampling north. Lucien, fearful of horses, but more fatigued than fearful, curled up beneath a bush and slept. Then, hours later, after a feline dream involving a riotous dining scene, the golden sun beat against his mrows and he woke. He started to retrace his steps: he wanted to find his family amew, deciding that food was difficult and over-scarce. It took a day: he found their doorstep. Thus Jane’s mother’s boyfriend’s father’s wife’s birdwatching community’s expert’s ex-wife’s mother’s husband’s thicket-saved cat was re-owned. The cat-shaped shaft of light prevailed, and everything. Which is to say: everything is rejoicably everymrkgnao.

A₈

The riot of guests had begun their long awaited ascent into the dining hall. There was a long table on which food was set: for otherwise the food would be set on the floor, pristine but overworn by the bearings of foot. It was embroidered with rococo stylings. Patina, remarkably pretty, had developed on the walnut material, triply visible beneath the gilded chandelier. They called her Madame Y, the chef, and she was endowed with a fine set of features. Except: her nose was long and lying. Yet her hair, an ingenious shade of brown, like-tabled, cloaked her face in just enough shadow to compress the nose.

The listener knows a beautiful woman and may flesh out the rest of her features accordingly.

A cat snuggled against the table-legs, meticulously furring all four, half -meowing and -hissing at the noisy intruders. His name, assigned not by his birth parents but Madame, was Lucien; he only responded to Food. There were eleven guests in total. They were perfectly split half -men and -women, given that Gala appeared half-man half-woman. Gala was a never-renowned spokesperson for Sound. Twenty-four years old but looked twenty-five on Mondays, scarce of face.

Sound, a publishing press invested in avant-garde fiction, had been operant for eleven years. There were only three books to its name: The Vermont Avianators, Binocular Love, and Sn. Stake. These books were all unread and visible on Madame’s bookshelf. Madame was her sister, begrudgingly. Both of them hollered in faux-adoration when they saw the other. For hatred, left secret, finds expression in a whole series of interweaving codes; if these codes are invisible, it is only to outsiders. Gala understood the slight sarcastic twinge of intonation in sister’s trite greetings, just as Madame perceived Gala’s nanometer-radius eye-roll per meeting. What no one could have noticed is the kitchen’s lack of air-fryer, invented some twenty years later. And the kitchen itself, pre-air-fryer, appeared pre-pre-air-fryer, attempting to cultivate a makeshift culture of unknowable, foreign past. One, Madame was not French. Moreover, mediæval Bulgarian furniture—a chest, a drawer—existed ornamentally in the space’s peripheral. The aforementioned chandelier was not only gilded but decked with purportedly antique figures of Cupid and Apollo, precariously perched, thrifted and local-made.

Strips of bacon, laid parallel to Madame’s posterior, sizzled sensually. Today is the day, he thought. He was Lucas and he loved Madame, as hes have been written loving shes for centuries. But he was hungry and contemplated love for less than long, or slightly longer than less.

A most famished food is the fry, for which the potato, after waxing wonderful, wanes into silly crinkles and curls.

But there were no fries at the dinner. The guests were all seated; the stage was set for discussion. Forks up: ready to fire.

Lucas began with a chickenific humor: “Why’d Chicken A, scratching concrete, on the road’s other-side, ask Chicken B, scratching concrete, on the road’s other-other-side, how to get to the ‘other side’? And, moreover, why’d Chicken B, clucking amorously, tossing unsavory glances Chicken A’s way, twitching sinfully, reply, ‘You’re on the other side’? And, taking these things into consideration, why’d Chicken C, coming from no particular (or ascertainable direction), cluck a silly tune about maternity wards and mausoleums? And, if these hitherto postulated questions are answered in concordance with the dictums of logical validity, what does this mean for Chicken D, scratch philosopher, who clucks so is, and gives a cluck’s worth of care to the world’s woes?”

Madame Y, eyes fixed worriedly on hungry Lucien, replied: “Now, Lucas. You’ve had too much to drink, I think. Let’s eat. That joke, I tell you, has zero relevance or meaning. Let us remain jolly. I put my entire soul into the composition of these dishes.”

Garrulous Gala encroached: “Pre- and post- mortem.”

Lucien cluck-meowed in C.

Ivan, zitted skin-care professional, cared for little more than salting warts for briny blokes. He cut thin slices of chicken onto his plate. His knifing was acute and mouth, through no scarcity of effort, mute; the subject of his mind, sclerosis, was just on the point of slipping from his lips. But dinner-table talk is best left un-medical. He would have loved to resolve the pimple on Madame Y’s left cheek; zits on Lucas’s chin; mystery blemishes down Gala’s neck; Jane’s—a copywriter friend of Lucas—scalp psoriasis (discussed but by him never seen). The other members of the dinner—John, Kate, Luke, Alex, Matt, Linda—were without flaw or mark. As he took this inventory, Lucien nudged his direction, purring against his legs; he jumped into his lap, onto the table, and snagged a slice of chicken—then he ran. “I love you, Madame,” Lucas decided then to pronounce.

Madame, reddened by secondhand humiliation, but simultaneously occupied by Lucien’s theft, said, “Lucien, that’s very nice. I like you very much. We have been good friends for many ages; and for many ages more we will friends remain.” Flustered, Lucas insisted, “Love, as one does a lover, is what I feel for you. If you do not reciprocate,” and he pinned his fork against his devilish throat, bulging madly, “I’ll terminate this little life of mine, clearly of so little consequence to you.” He got up, tottered towards the kitchen’s entrance, looks of quarter-horror shading generally unconcerned countenances, and cried. A fork met the floor; creation-protesting fists aimed to meet the over-fancy ceiling. Gala’s mouth stood open. First for steak, then for air. Madame, predicting an onslaught of verbosity, mimed a cross, guarded her spirit. Minus unloved Lucas and less-chickened Ivan, laughter clanged and clucked. Eyes penetrated Gala’s primed-to-speak mouth: tongue, uvula, and tonsils. Any slight twitch of the tongue or teeth sent ripples down the party’s collective spine. The sun-afflicted window gave their salivating mouth a gloss of halo, sickly-looking, but finally, in no particular second, a simple second snatched out of the hands of time, Gala spoke: “Well?” Eye-rolls ensued. Madame’s meticulous guard was thoroughly penetrated, incapable of digesting the vomitous word-salad. And for a second, the second corresponding to the stroke of six o’clock, she swooned. Coming to, she asked, “Are you done with your harangue?” Gala flushed. Then, Lucien returned. Fearfully. He was fated for the light admonishment befitting of mischievous felines, made more grievous by a language unknown and unknowable. For as the dining-mates teased, “Naughty cat,” they may as well have been condemning him to his gallows. Cats are crippled by what they cannot know.

If only Lucien was given a linguistic map for man’s mad clucks and clutters. Then he would have understood that Madame’s “Naughty cat,” intoned insincerely, was not a gallows sentence. Nor would he have taken that moment to jump, higher than he had ever jumped before, onto the table, like a bird set free after decades of cage-living, rummaging through bacon, chicken, cake, asparagus, potatoes—mashed and un-mashed, but all mashed post-cat, carrots, rice, knocking plates over, henceforth shattered, and coaxing a not insignificant degree of screams and hands a-scrambling to catch the cat who was, before, the paragon of perfect behavior. “I really mean it. So I fall by saying it. But it’s sincere; I’ll bend to your every whim. My love for you is as pure as love could ever be,” Lucas was saying, fork-as-microphone, and Madame, terrified of the cat’s chaos, desperate to quiet her not-lover’s advances, replied, “Yes, yes. Love you too.” Meows sung in the sultry air as Lucas, henceforth loved, glowed red. His marriage with Madame was all but officiated. Gala, at length, with an over-growth of word-tissue the world had seen only once, at the procession following the invention of the English language, said, “Well.” Ivan left. The rest of the crew assisted cleaning efforts, while Kate took to wrangling the cat into its proper sphere: the cat-room. She was a beautiful pianist whose character often revealed itself, quiet as she was, at the end of a meeting—and then only scarcely. Still, not all the scraps that make up an individual—a patchwork of half-necessary fragments—can be expressed, or should be expressed, simultaneously and perpetually; man is best learned as a fever of waves. Man is a fever of waves.

Madame’s party, cat-destroyed, would not alter Lucien’s position in the world. Feline privilege! It was Kate, in fact, that bid Madame to keep the cat: “All cats, like men, have troubled days.” The cat prevailed—if given a more watchful eye, caged at watchful hours—and everything.

Which is to say: Kate was a clerk-and-manager at a coral store and her business was succeeding insofar as her profits were well over the adjoining seaweed store’s, set to close. Which is to say: a lanky strand of seaweed, closing his seaweed store daily, was soon to close it forever. Which is to say: this self-same man-as-seaweed, sad in lucid and alucid intervals, was envious of Kate’s coral store. Which is to say: this self-as-seaweed, sad and angry, and above all envious, committed the fifth night of October a burglary—and fled the country. Which is to say: Kate lost a third of her coral, and, reflecting back on Madame’s party, Lucas’ failed confession, Lucien’s devastation, laughed, not because anything was particularly funny, but because someone, unknown to the joke-teller, was tickling her with a feather. Which is to say: someone was tickling her with a feather, laughing, and he promised her something. Which is to say: he cocked his gun, crossed the broad, entered a bar, singularly screwed a bulb, and, with maternal verve, rampant rage, hit a nerve.

My purpose, in sum, regards the question of our day: the scientific basis on which our future hinges. Is there a deeper meaning to Elektra’s character—something subatomic and absolutory—or is she, like so many others, a tragic but wide-sweeping brush of little import? I do not intend to answer this question with the theorists’ synthesis of rumor, but to plunge fist-first into experimentation, the empirical’s birthplace. By experimentation, theory is given its raw mass to manipulate. Future historians and philosophers may summarily gloss me over. But the mechanisms of experiment are no less important than the theories that bind them; theory is at an impasse without the work of rugged data-scrapers. Let me dirty myself in the name of discovery. With three quarks of sense.

The Disconnexion Between Elektra Lee Deniers and Reality.

Before proceeding further, I want to patently discard the view—fortunately fringe—that “Elektra Lee” is inexistent, that her contributions to history are only incidental. There is naturally little point in discussion without agreed reality. Well before the accusation of murder, our paths were in notable concordance. We were peers.

The rigorous accumulation of data between the university’s twin pillars broadcasting its entrance, collected some months before her hurrah, leaves no ambiguity as to her existence; more, the American faction of disbelievers, led by Michael Moor, has presented no evidence supporting her inexistence. Moor’s seminal paper on the matter talks of our “burden of proof,” Elektra’s data-less nature, and miserable spats of all manners. I had posted myself daily by the aforementioned entrance and found that Elektra entered—on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays—at nine o’clock in the morning, and left those same days at five o’clock in the evening; all other days the schedule was displaced by two hours, eleven o’clock to seven o’clock, except Saturday, for which she was without class (still her silhouette trailed, a phosphorescent glow, birthed by my mind’s spectral fancies). Therefore, six days a week there were twelve two-minute windows to see her, or twenty-four minutes, which afforded me capacity for data-collection. As per custom she wore shoes: pitch black heels with loud clicks. Her gait had a slow stutter, convulsions every second step (sometimes skipped, mostly not). Atop the white-socked shoe-covered feet, cylindrical legs stood erect, shadowed by skirt. Taking her dresses’ colors and averaging them out, the result is sandy brown. Her eyes, colored just the same, were shy, needlessly buried in their sockets. At night, viewed at a distance, they seem to glow. Thus, even in dark her existence is telegraphed generously. There is hardly an excuse for disbelief; she is real. Here I will provide, for your very eyes, a list of her most vital elements.

Elektra Lee: human; twenty-three years old; five-foot three; one-hundred twenty pounds; American; mildly neurotic; extremely compulsive; allegedly murderous; by questionable metrics maternal; speech-wise chatty; baptized at birth, then again at twelve; fashionably fickle; temporally gifted; half-delusional; professional cashier; ambitiously un-ambitious; inexplicably oft-discussed; comprehends the vicissitudes of celebrity; not vegan nor vegetarian; animalistic in doses; organized insofar as clutter is individually comprehensible; once anarchist, twice communist, now apathist; universally scared of bugs, except ladybugs; in charge, negative; if enlarged, insecure; understood by few and talks to many. Cataloguing all these atoms of character is, needless to say, an unhelpful endeavor. Between lines different traits can be assumed, flotsam floating slowly to sea-surface; but without pasting her body onto this bloodied paper (nose-bleed), certainty is elusive. I could supply a figure, referenced concisely as Fig 1.1, perhaps of her face; then another, Fig 1.2, a full-body contour; and Fig 1.3, last and least, a shot of her back. Catching her on camera is the rub.

I will instead give you my last proffering of data: my reconstructed account of the murder of Art Goodums—as it likely happened if it happened—using what I know about women, murder, and narrative; in neither case much, but perhaps enough.

Connexion Between Elektra Lee and Murder, Expressly of Art Gooduns.

I, Elektra Lee, confess to the murder of Art Gooduns. My motives can be subdivided infinitely, until they are subatomically light-weight. In this state, their nuance is apparent; but as single sentences, variously attributed to me by the Americans and the Germans, they appear silly—or more silly than they are. So I confess to the murder of Art Gooduns: my logic will disintegrate into its millions of pieces. Shine a Germanic flashlight onto this piece and you may find sentences such as: Blood remains my talisman, painting my days rose red, because nothing shaded in blood can be long regretted. Or an American illumination: Art did nothing so I axed him accordingly. The former, violence as victimless art, and the latter, violence as unfelt nothingness, are the surreal experiences of my foremothers; but not I, not I for whom all experiences are unique and uniquely felt.

Imagine my shock when I discovered in a German paper, published by a well-known press, a most artful and marvelous diagram of Gooduns’ decomposing body! It was rendered with such delicateness and care; the faint shadow of a smile curled on his face. The scene was nothing similar. No, it was half as beautiful and twice as artful. But forgive me for evading the subject, prolonging a prologue of substanceless nonsense (although all nonsense is, in a sense, sense, as the great Shem Shandy said in pen).

My mind harbors so many excesses of doubt. Every instant brings with it a flood of felt wrong-doing. I have to hold my skirt up so it does not get wet; invisible fish swim through me. Art Gooduns was a friend of my father. It is true that I got at him with an axe.

The fisherman over there, by the pier, told me—I had told him I was on the run—to walk this direction, towards the sun, and that I could find solace some miles there, so long as my line remained straight. He said this so bitterly, so negatively, that I thought he would say next: “And why?” But he did not. Or if he did, I did not hear it. Maybe he thought I was a prostitute; or a thief; or an arsonist. There are few people less readable than fishermen, who are trained to remain inert for man’s most solitary hours. Maybe he tricked me, told me a false direction, sending me on one final sally to my execution.

My father met Art at an art gala. They bonded over a proclivity for drink; a silly painting with a crimson splattering of noise; their status as fathers. It’s true that Art did something very cruel. It is after that; almost right after his cruelty, seconds after (so long as it took me to leave the room, walk at a leisurely place to our backyard, and locate my father’s shed); that I grabbed the axe. I walked in with the axe and he was laughing. But his laughter did not laugh long.

The scene was set into imitation of a science experiment, some fashion of cathode ray, with leg-cylinders, pluses and minuses inscribed on skin in black sharpie. By the time my father discovered his friend, I was long gone, zipping through the night’s shock.

Connexion Between Methodology and Narrative

To reconstruct the preceding section from the mass of limited data, for indeed only the names “Elektra Lee” and “Art Gooduns,” plus a few crime scene sketches, are literally true, a great deal of revisions were undergone. The first draft attributed to Art Gooduns not merely a “very cruel” action but an attempted molestation. But Art had a happy wife and children; he had all those molecules of life that define a healthy psychical constitution. To justify his murder in the language of sexual assault was altogether too easy. I avoided consulting the literature on similar crimes because they were altogether too easy; they had readymade motives but no spark. Elucidation, the purpose of this paper, must be performed from all angles. But I want to dismiss the whole matter. Had I her, then, this would be easier; but now she is no one’s, she is nowhere, she is nothing. Scarcely is public imagination able to conjure her. What was once fringe is becoming mainstream: she is slipping into disbelief.

It is apathy. People do not care about discussion of Elektra Lee. Without discussion she starves into inexistence. Whole dimensions of discourse are daily dying. And now we are in twilight, a great twilight, and everything, even nothing, is banished.

In the realm of amphibians, taxonomic ambiguity abounds. So many frogs exist as illusory twins, inheritors of needless clade divisions, little known rarities in lifeless regions. Still, Gastrotheca cornuta comes to us clearly. Gastrotheca comes from the New Latin gastro, meaning belly, and theca, meaning receptacle; cornuta means horned, or is an epithet in Italian for cuckolds (though let us omit this association, for our darling frogs display no special affinity for cuckoldry2).

Or, in common parlance, the horned marsupial frog. Horned refers to the triangular tips which crown their eyes; their transparent eyelids are ochreous and mild green, and their slit-shaped pupils are black. Marsupial refers to pouches, the crowning feature of their female number. Contemplate the beauty of pouched frogs: soft, mildly ridged backs, tapering in lower ends to an elegant pocket of egg. The sexed distinction is doubtless a source of envy3; if females brood eggs in their pouches, males brood over their pouches’ absence. A convenience, like purses, pointlessly gendered. These meek creatures average out to 7.5 centimeters in length.

But no frog, however dear, can triumph over deforestation and chytridiomycosis4. Thus was I was made to part from my dear marsupials, vanished without trace, no more to hop. Extinction’s tragedy is that it snuffs out latinate lineages, memories, ecosystems, without regard for I. Only the ardent amphibianates of our day will recognize the name Gastrotheca cornuta, and my attempts to spread awareness have failed. No one understands my fixation on those five-year-expired frogs; but if I were to obsess instead with myself, no eyes would bat, nor minds wonder.

Yet there is no mystery in fixation. It is meted out from the beginning of time, from person to person, in perfect concordance with the world’s harmony. All fixation leads unwittingly to the fixator. The fixator’s chief task, therefore, is to run into themselves; to find how their subject, like a mirror, reflects them. This cannot be forced. It is an involuntary accumulation of passion and time. Epiphanies are not fantastical; they are inevitable. Wait. And, if natural, the inclination to articulate one’s revelations is misguided. The task set before us is unique. Imparting secret knowledge is the brooding of bores and mediocrities. Fill the well of your thoughts, but do not let it seep over; contain only what you are capable of containing, and discard the rest. The end is I. Tell no one.

Though this history, “The History of Insect Abstinence,” is comprehensive, at two-thousand pages, the reader will notice that certain chapters are compressed, or other events entirely omitted, events no less crucial to the history than the rest. Astute batrachologists with entomological sympathies will note that chapters five, seven, and thirteen, are direct discussions of the Gastrotheca cornuta, its traits and history, using the semiotics of insect abstinence. My editor, who knows nothing of either, and whose eyes will not so much as skim this foreword, said nothing5. In any case, amphibians have no say on insect abstinence; these chapters have less than zero import on the subject. Readers may skip them at their leisure, understanding that the entire book, in varying doses, suffers from the same bacterium. Though there is a growing interest in “insect abstinence,”6 I have taken exceedingly little time to consult its voluminous body of literature. Most of this book bases itself off of observations in the field of batrachology, my wife’s sleep-talk, or scraps of sentences heard in dreams or life. Chapter six is a narrative, structured like a folk-tale, about a society of frogs who worship a painter of human female anatomy. This has still more to do with insect abstinence than the following chapter, subtitled The Dialectics of Insect Abstinence, which documents my journey as a Parisian intellectual (which I never was) from birth to adulthood, including in-between an entire development of my interest in the Gastrotheca cornuta, which I shall recount here in warped and inadequate summary.

When I was young, I hopped from the womb into a world freshly extincted. Agricultural sectors were suffocated beneath the weight of superfluous seed innovations. Corn, modified to be blue, evolved in three generations flat a pale mauve and poisonous specimen. This discoloration, unbeknownst to our imperiled generation, was dangerous; its effects revealed themselves in a third of earth’s population. They became, one December evening, incapable of storing more than a day’s worth of memory. This was a catastrophe. And yet humans, nothing but stubborn, persisted, and by my birth the race for reparation was fully underway. Today, we are complete. Man eradicated corn; cured the poison; and re-found normalcy7. My mother was of the genus doting, re-affirming all my subtle strokes of genius. So when I penned a poem at five, a villanelle, she put me promptly in contact with the world’s last writer of fiction. He was sixty-years-old and smelled of pink caramel, a now ancient delicacy associated with the Italo-Japanese cells of America. His speech was lisped and saliva-laden, such that I heard his name as Sthefon, and felt it as spit. This was, of course, Steven Byrd, whose house was demolished last week in a freak craning accident, him gone with it8. Because he was the type to grant his characters aspects of himself, thus dividing his person over their span, biographers need look littlewhere else but his books. Last year, I finished my last unfinished book of his, Shadows in the Wind, a melodramatic romp through Brazilian cybernetics; its main character was a murderous mafia member, leaving me to conclude Byrd a bad-blooded killer. That is normal now, but it was not then. The curious reader knows that a passage from pg. 67 of his Madman, Boringly says: “And so he did what he considered natural: he picked up a life of insect abstinence.” This is the origin of the term. I learned its meaning from him at the age of twelve. “Boy, you listhen closthe,” he said, spit flying close to my face, “there’sth two routesth man oughtta take, to make life’sth most: and both of fem are inthect absthinensthe.” He supplied the definition thereafter, doubtless trivial to my readers. What is not trivial, however, is how he planted the first germination of Gastrotheca cornuta fixation into my heart; my one and only fixation, as fixations are singular by nature and only mediocre in dual doses. But that I will explore in chapter one. This foreword has a different focus; press on9.

I have grown weary of my ennui, powerful enough to project onto everyone. My assumption, perhaps harebrained, is that everyone is afflicted with the self-same ennui. The coarse repetition of days, day after day, which vary little, or if they do vary, by dramatic increments of horror, is too much to bear. We are cast off into the incertitude of bureaucracy, made to birth fresh absurdities every business day; “Sir, your county-supplied birth certificate is invalid,” shrivelled-faced documentarians pronounce, tapping fingers primally and prenatally, as if they were conceived and developed to do this alone. This state of affairs brings the most ardent and genius of our number to trembling terror. These same “documentarians,” facetiously labelled, have been entirely supplanted by nameless not-man; thus the contemporary reader may find themselves confused by my reference. If, in brighter days, a solidarity could be felt in the absurdity, sympathetic “sorry sir/ma’am”s addressed sincerely, now it is purely us, alone, versus systems displayed in monitors, no hands to hold. The cashier’s anxious breath stammering grocery etiquette half-learned and immediately forgotten is an image ancient and unremembered. Imagine my agitation when, buying groceries last week, a simple affair—a cut of sirloin was all—the cascreenier read, below the sirloin, a bag of “Insect Abstinence,” marked $5.99. This will be unsurprising to the reader, who is acquainted with the Insect Abstinence Problem, the over-prevalence of those two words in A.I. systems, including billboards, television shows, video games, books, whose sheer number, in interconnected insipidity, multiplies exponentially. In essence, this foreword already contains the mechanistic totality of “Insect Abstinence” and its history. Thus it was necessary to include my life’s true fixation, the Gastrotheca cornuta, to pad it out.

Insect Abstinence, Artificial Intelligence: they are not inversions but twin impulses. If “insect abstinence” is a human conception, its academic body of research is sheerly artificial. Nor is A.I. a sheerly robotic impulse; it exists at the tail-end of a spectrum of drivel, the inherent dart of mankind left unmanned. Speed is its great demarcation.

But I take umbrage with this mode of operations; with the newly academicized college students who walk happily out of book-stores with books written in pure imitation, bare of man’s input. And I will gladly rail against it. I will point my fists at the sky, rub their backs against my eyes, cry greater volumes than the greatest rivers can store. Then I will know what it is to be human. Painful and gross; and above all beautiful. Or beautiful; and above all painful and gross. It is, by any account, felt by falls. History is a nightmare and we have awoken from it. I refuse, and I refuse a million times over; A.I. will not win my wake. All art starts with a no. Take it from me.

Whole bodies of research are invented daily, for little other reason than that they are possible. Such has led to every book-store nation-wide carrying books on I.A., often in the thousands of pages, with exclusively A.I. contributions. They cite and cross-reference each other until man is wholly drained from the process, decapitated. Our blood is the product; and we are the cause. For as long as these books continue to be purchased10, they will continue to be produced.

The primary prediction of yester-man was that A.I. would plummet reading rates. This was naive. Nothing is better at producing the eminently accessible and relevant text of A.I., at its speed, with its detail. Reading thrives. If, granted, only of A.I. books trained on A.I. texts, an infinite cross-contaminated scaffolding of incest. “We” have discovered passions hitherto unprecedented. Fiction that is “written” in reverse-chronological order, with parallel plots, generically positioned in the protagonists’ minds, that mirror verbatim the reverse plot, but in forward motion; thus the protagonists’ thoughts are only in correspondence with the narrative at the book’s center, precisely. Love stories told sideways, from the sky down; at first, from the perspective of clouds, nothing is (or can be) known; then a direct line is navigated to the center of the earth, sniffing the faintest traces, for a few points, of a love story in progress. Anti-erotica. Medieval histories have re-captured the American imagination, with a twist: errant knights have been replaced by a recurring character named Herbert, who takes on, in so many repetitive tales, the guilt of his wife, accused of a terribly ambiguous crime she may have committed, condemned to death until our hero learns the exact words to convince the public that he did the crime. Cookbooks for inedible food-items. Instructive manuals on art that contain lengthy digressions of Italian recipes, with vegan-friendly back-halves. Slim treatises on the importance of reading, and often—especially touting the virtues of complex texts—that express themselves simply and concisely, with great degrees of shallowness, and leverage a great deal of quips against the unreading every-man, thus rendering its readers part of a prim little club they are, in fact, not even in. Shakespeare stripped of poetic tedium. Previously “pulp” fiction, lining the middle-aged sections, re-written with excessively poetic beauty: unsavory cowboy material elevated to Shakespeare. Melancholy stories about cats and their affinity for communists over dogs. And, recently, propagandistic fiction that extols the virtues of “insect abstinence”; that seed lifted, by the marriage of chance and time, from a single absurd sentence of Byrd’s, having no concrete meaning except for the incest of A.I. research that inexplicably swelled about it. By all means, immensely popular.

I can do nothing to reverse the course of the world, to when my darling horned marsupial frogs hopped dearly, and humans courted sincerely, and literary sensations such as Don Quixote were possible. Imagination is now a dim imagination. For my part I will write, I will live, with my mind alone. So my sentences are overwrought, and commas clunky; so my structures are shaky, and interpolations inappropriate, and subject matters silly. Let them be. Not so that I may not improve, day by day, but so that I might verify, in a sea of nonces, that I am human. I will do this in free-time, my own way, with the only tools I possess: my blood, bone, and muscle. And a drop of mind.

Crucially, what makes us humans is not wordiness; it is worldliness. Our thoughts are not, like A.I., variations on the symbolical, but the warp and weft of experience. We learn to walk and talk; learn to befriend and leave behind; learn to live love and loss. The tactile, our most immediate signifier of life, tags along reliably, conjoined to sight, sound, and smell.

Through A.I., symbols reconfigure into stupid masses: but nothing, for it, supersedes the symbol. This is its crass converse. It has never made coffee, nor burned itself by a dropped mug. It has never jump-roped, nor mis-jumped, come crashing into concrete. It has never walked into a spider-web, nor shivered at the possibility of a spider crawling on skin. It has never felt even one of the things one needs to experience to understand a lived existence. If, then, we tacked to A.I. physicality, giving it the capacity to feel, this would change; and certainly scientists are dedicating themselves to this very issue. But it is not high-priority. Why? Because we have forgotten the distinction; “symbol” and “symbolized” are the same, slammed together into the same pulp.

This is no different than my wife’s sleep-talk. This is not a crass analogy; it is literal comparison of mechanistic likeness. Illuminated by hallucination she verbalizes scraps of variably intelligible thought11. But let me close the foreword by stating that I have found superiority in her somnolent flecks of speech to the robots that bind us. Stating, not arguing, not showing. If I have grown opaque, it is because no one else dares to do so. Let yourself feel. Let yourself err. You must fall to feel. And I will fall.

Twenty-four years taught Mia the order of life: first feeling, then falling. She loved wolves, but Virginia was without wolf. He, however, was wolf-like, long-jawed, sharp-teethed, round-eared. Was her love lascivious? Often, and now. If she tried to recall his name, all she could truly say was that there was an ‘a,’ an ‘s,’ and maybe an ‘n’; but that he was extraordinarily handsome she could swear on her sacred full-bloomed daylilies. In the sense, too, that his fingers were long and slender, and hands hairy and manly; she had visualized them, on many occasions, tending to her myriad overloved flowers. Moreover, his voice, in resonant bass register, caused many a-lady to swoon; nor was Mia an exception. She had heard him speak three paragraphs, whatever she could pick out in the class’s interludes (it was a course on chivalric romance in literature), when he would sarcastically sing the praises of literary damsels and dames, incurring in his friend more than a little laughter (“Ah—you know they’re not real!”); his tone sent ripples of honey down her spine. He must have been rich, considering how he was always over-dressed—never repeating fits—with elegant watches and beautiful jewelry. There is also the matter of diction: you can always tell, when one speaks, whether they are, or have been, “of money.” This is not a highfalutin manifestation, although it can be; it is a rich combination of self-conscious humor, surface-level intellect, and soft-fronting dominance (mistaken, so often, for confidence). As is the rule of love, which can come slowly or, contrary to consensus, immediately, Mia’s life was misted over by the mint-green and pale-pink of his synesthetic synthesis. Those colors became bolder, or present where they were previously not, and all other colors palely diminished.

She had a cloud-burst of idea, fueled by passion, or perhaps lust. Maybe, after all, life should not be limited to forgoing pleasure. Garden-tending, people-meeting, and class-completing could be put on hold. So, pausing the activities of her little life, she set to a potent affair; she introduced herself to him, whose name, re-learned and re-forgotten, was catalogued simply as A. Names were never Mia’s strong-suit, but in spite of that she worshiped them. To truly commit to learning A.’s name was also to risk the knowledge of a subpar or ill-fated name, extinguishing all desire. Mia, or in Italian “mine,” or in Slavic “darling,” only fated her to A.’s possession. A could be followed by “-ster,” which was fine, of dim distinction; “-ustin,” which was ridiculous and parodical; or “-dam,” preeminent yet unideal, given, at times, to unsavory pleasures.

It is natural if the repetition of facts is grating, but only repetition is realistic. Eye-rolls and inhales may regardless supplement the repeated: A. was rich. He was very rich. Or, accurately, his family was very rich; his father had a good deal of business in Belgium, to which he was sole sibling-less heir. The nature of his lineage was one that, barring an interruption by furious Fortune, would remain rich, for many generations. Disgraced families, of course, figure frequently in cliché. But A. never feared his falling away from wealth, nor did he have any reason to; existence, for him, was an unraveling of ideal possibilities, all otherwise (even the faintly unlucky) discarded. When Mia approached him, he felt, for the first time, that something unfortunate had happened. Not because he did not find her attractive, although she was only subtly so, if one squinted, preferably inebriated, but because, despite his excess of past women, none had so disrupted the murmurs of his heart. Dissecting this thread logically was implausible; masculine temperament hardly presents as anything but a succession of illogical angers and loves. Nor need Freud and Jung’s garrulous disciples apply with their maternal theories or miscellaneous crack-pot conjectures. Nothing of Mia was maternal. She resembled little else but a shrewd mouse and spoke in squeaks. So leave logic to the cranks and realize that reason is incompatible with love, and less with lust. It is true, anyhow, that when she asked him for a pencil, his eyes devoured her full silhouette, from head to hip, savoring how the black silk of her dress draped over her hips. Silently he noted that her dress’ design was the work of Virginia’s premier up-and-coming fashionista Liv Lee; or, with greater accuracy, his third-to-last relationship of a month’s tempestuous length. To him, most women were cross-cuts of expired loves; existing at their intersections; but despite Liv Lee’s imposition on Mia’s image, she was wholly remarkable, without analog. Perhaps that is why her impression was so strong. He took comfort in how people’s tone and intonation matched, here and there, prose of the past, ready-made archetypes of yore, because the more similar one is to an image, the easier they are to mold; and, by nature, the less liable they are to mold another. Mia was a dangerous interruption to this world of staticity, and as he supplied the #2 pencil, fully sharpened (but of non-phallic import, philistine Freudians), and she gripped it with her sweaty hands, he could not help but gasp. Wit fled his over-encumbered head. A death knell of a smile shaded her face, shading his body with flush. Their eyes kissed, and they would have gone further if not for the timid hands of the author of this account, whose pen must conform to an acceptably puritan standard of so-called spice. The real reason, really, was that they were in a classroom—class about to start—and on an exam-day, which is truly the most loveless of Gregory XIII’s dreadful divisions. Only madmen, in mad cultures, are exempted when committing public displays of affection. This is true in even the most corrupt multiplications of fiction.

The transfer of pencil from billionaire to non-billionaire obligates a return less than the same transfer from non-billionaire to non-billionaire, who cannot replace their implements with the same ease, cheap as they may be; but Mia was bound to return it. The pencil itself gave zero indications of being owned by money. It was the same yellow-wrapped pencil found in dollar-stores America over. This did not stop her from imagining, bubbling answers in, that its etching was higher quality, with greater depth of detail, than all its twin siblings. But mostly she imagined the rumbling timbre of A.’s affirmation when she asked for its borrowing. The recollection rolled around her lurid forearm-filled brain, and by question ten of one-hundred she was permanently red-faced, a sensation tickling her thighs (the air conditioning, previously off, powered on). She did not stop to question why she assigned him the label “billionaire,” far more specific than the empirically verifiable “wealthy,” but both adjectives, thanks be luck, were correct, as were a whopping eighty-percent of the questions she filled in. The grade of the graphite was already diminishing, swallowed up by ineffective usage, for she was the type who, given to rumination, pressed hard and deep into paper. The abused graphite began to totter around its cedar wood casing, soon to snap. By the ninetieth question, the pencil had to be held at a cautious angle, and pressed lightly. Fearful of breaking the expensive point, she worked through the final ten questions at precisely the speed she worked all the previous. Its scent was notable, or distinctly un-notable. If it had a scent, it was the perennial note of her sweat, encasing the smell of cedar and graphite which varies little from pencil to pencil. Nevertheless, she came to believe that this marriage of scents, altogether pleasant, belonged to A. Exam finished and time swelling boringly, she brushed her lips up and down its exterior. Imagining that A. had held this, their sweat commingling, and that his hands had (statistically speaking) touched his lips within the day, this was experienced by her as a quarter-kiss, which provokes the senses an eighth as much as a full-blooded one (lip scholars may study this discrepancy, but it is an unsolvable one). And so saliva met sweat. The final fluid of the equation, added hours later, was the water of a river running by the university; he tossed the pencil in, to hear it splash, see it ripple. When she returned it to him, nudging against his hands climactically, time did not slow but rush, reaching a fever-pitch of tempo. She hissed, somewhat tempestuously, “We can see a movie sometime, if you’d like.” “Well, sure, if you’d be kind enough to tell me the movie. And we can watch it at my place.” They exchanged numbers. He had pronounced “place” with excessive punch, no doubt foreshadowing that he lived in Virginia’s most marvelous mansion. But regardless of what conversation punctuated the delightful passing of pencil to hand, the transfer was, at some point in time, complete. Then, abruptly, it had to be re-enacted, owing to a clumsy slip of A.’s hand, letting the prize fall to the ground. Mia bent over, exaggerating her backside, which A. was terrible to notice, and picked it up, returning it to his perverted hands. Conscious, maybe because of his redness, of what had happened, she flushed, re-flushed, and shivered, startled—if faintly flattered—at his indecorum, which, for all she knew, was inexistent, having little evidence that he had observed her carnally. The jury, and them alone, saw his lurid glance. That glance was imprinted on the back of his eye-lids, recalled vividly in bed that night; his blood was foolishly summoned by the curves of she whom he had exchanged twenty-one words with. No woman, in short, had struck him so wildly senseless, and leashed to her he lived in love. Sex was considered. Apologies.

Walking home that day, he had pricked his thumb with the pencil, breaking off its tip. Bringing it up to his lips (because in truth he had seen Mia’s brushing her lips against it), he did the same. Ecstatically, many times; and he mimed hugging and holding it, making it his own, which it hardly was, being as it was the product of floor-theft. (Really, more pencils than one would like to imagine are such products, picked up and stolen from abandoned floors.) Any passersby would have figured him a madman if he were not so exceedingly well-endowed in all matters, especially financial; and the rich cannot be mad so much as they can be eccentric, idiosyncratic, or touched. When he reached the aforementioned river, zig-zagging through lewd (what?) clusters of alder and oak, cardinals and bluebirds seductively (what?) chirping, he let out a prolonged, lusty (what?) exhale. Melancholy previously exclusive to tuberculosis befell him, sadly coloring his countenance; he leaned against a tree, wondering how he could have fallen for the trap of love—and for one of such a low class (middle-class, or newly upper-class, being ordinary, is meager to those orders of magnitude above), with the barest trace of attractiveness! Framed stereotypically, the scene’s composition appeared a knight taking rest from the battlefield, his bookbag his shield, and pencil his sword. What may have passed for a sword (in more lunatic minds), in any case, took a long winding arc into the river, splashing quietly, rippling anti-climatically; he watched it slither down the water's steadfast flow, receding passionately into the horizon, interrupted periodically by rocks, until, finally, after two minutes, it was invisible, hardly remembered. Mia’s lips. Where in their warmth was the wisdom? He longed to kiss them, tangling lip over lip, tongues prodding, poking—possessing. What of her personality? Appreciative: she thanked him for the pencil. Did she? Artsy: she watched movies. Did she? And he re-constructed her in his mind, over and over, employing only the scarce scraps he had been given. But no matter how rational one sets out to be about the object of their love and lust, new details—ideal, perfect crystals—work themselves in, undetected. Thus Mia became not only artsy but esoterically artsy, attracted to the nichest regions of media; not “barely attractive” but perfectly non-attractive; not cold or awkward but kind and sincere. Her entire character was created on the edge of that river-bed, protean details half-pornographically populating A.’s mind-space, until finally she may as well have been the river, trees, birds, or bees. Everything was her, because if the highest perfection must be all-encompassing, absorbing all the perfect qualities of every little thing, some of Mia must be present everywhere, in everything. Love does not temper; it amplifies. With it, delusion, universally present in low doses, soars to its profoundest heights.

Who texted first, if not our deliciously alpha A.? Actually, it was Mia, from the seat of her toilet, inquiring about movie date logistics. Prefaced by a “hi,” (lowercase, as preserved), she suggested the movie—A Brighter Summer Day, Edward Yang’s four-hour epic—and time, “next saturday, 5 pm?” Much good is done inquiring about our dear characters’ mental states, where the plot’s stakes take place. When she sent the trio of messages, she panicked and set the phone face-down on the bathroom floor; when A. received the messages, and replied, “sg,” short-hand for “sounds good,” plus his address, he panicked and set the phone face-down in the grass. By this point, Mia knew A.’s name (it was filed away in her contacts); but, being one of the unpleasurable endings, it remained a silly truncation. She felt good, seeing his response, that a billionaire had taken interest in her. How many wonders did this do to her confidence? Count the letters of “mad.” Her gait became firmer, smile constant, and words more frequent. Imagining all the gifts he would worship her with became her most frequent pastime. A car; a cat; a house; or flowers, extravagant foreign flowers? Maybe, once their relationship was officiated, he would even give her a card—a limitless card—to buy anything, at her own leisure, unrestricted; she had read about this in books, and now it was sure to happen! Though there was yet an imperfection to her: they were not enemies, only ambivalent (or enamored) half-strangers, thus incapable of passing through the hyper-romantic sea of hate-to-love, more exciting by all accounts than like-to-love. Still, this was hardly an issue, and, as stated by her mother (who she sourced the quote to, unaware of its cliché), “beggars can’t be choosers.” But confound the idea that cliché must be avoided! It is the blood of life and narrative; the triter the cliche, the truer its bite. There is beauty in soft-hearted billionaires falling for beautyless damsels. Saturday approached quickly, Mia and A’s thoughts granted to exclusively the other, unbeknownst to both, who cursed the neurotic nature of their instant-made love.

The fateful day followed. Fashion may now be catalogued, and the erotic events that followed (read on, complicit sinners). A.’s suit, carefully selected, was acquired for an impossibly high amount at Aperil, the city’s executive-class store for menswear and secular doomsday pamphlets. The owner (who was close friends with his father) introduced him to an exclusive three-piece single-breasted lounge suit, chocolate brown, of which five were in existence: “One,” he winked, “is owned by Peter Thiel.” It fit “like a charm,” but in fact was charmless, being awkwardly pompous. Newly polished black dress-shoes supplemented his like-colored socks. He added nothing more, fearful of presenting in so pretentious a manner; and he was also aware, although he tried to stifle the thought, that Mia, being considerably poorer than him, could not care less about the finicks of fashion. How wrong he was! Even if she herself could not access the upper echelons of fashion, re-wearing the Liv Lee dress she had purchased years prior with a generous installment plan, there was little she was more passionate about. Beauty transfixed her; fashion accentuated beauty (and was its own form of beauty); and so fashion transfixed her. Considering this, the blandness of A.’s suit may have thrown her off; if, that is, it were not selected and worn by him. Some people, and he was one of them, become fashion’s fashion, their beauty incapable of diminishment. Rather, both of them would have enriched whatever outfit the other wore in their rapidly love-worn minds. The ritual of “what to wear” was a sheerly superficial one. Fantasy is the most powerful force in the universe, marred only by death; like the fantasy, in A.’s mind, that Mia was poor (these tales only involve the transition from feasibly upper-class to upper-class). Although he had given her his address, it was arranged that he would pick her up—in his Mercedes-Benz (an un-romantic name, alas!)—at her humble home. And so he did. When she opened the car-door, with a slight air of clumsiness, he was staggered by how unconventional her beauty was; scents of begonia flooded the front seats, at first pleasantly, then excessively. Now remained finding the keys of conversation. Everyone ticks in the presence of certain topics, and is altogether silent on others. He began with small talk: a confident “hello,” followed by her “hi,” which if not the most beautiful couplet in the conversational canon, is hardly errant. “Nice weather.” “Sure.” For five minutes momentum remained inexistent; then the subject of flowers was broached. For years to follow Mia’s monologue would be Virginia’s least famed speech, heard by one, and immediately forgotten.

“The petals from flower to flower are differently shaded, or variously amorphous. Some are rounder, brighter; and none are any less beautiful. All the flowers of my garden, along the lines of their own species, exist within an infinitesimal bounds of beauty; they blossom into equally pleasant aesthetic configurations. Yet their appearances vary by millions of distinguishable and indistinguishable characteristics. We should marvel at this. Do you know our state flower? It is the Cornus florida, the flowering dogwood. Do you know our state tree? It is the very same. Quite a brute, if I may say so, but an exceedingly beautiful one. My life’s essential task is to find the bare beauty in every flower. Not by re-viewing their forms through creative analogs—’this is pretty because it looks like this’—but by viewing them, themselves, without interference. Have I succeeded? Certainly not. Figworts doubtless elude me. But day by day their attractiveness reveals itself, petal by petal, stigma to stem. If God saw fit to put figworts in nature, defer to him; and as for me, I will heed to his design, which is perfect regardless of man’s imperfect perception.”

These words, staggered by stammers, and by turns more concise, more convoluted, than what has been documented, made no particular effect on nodding A., whose nonchalant (or lazy) replies, always in the affirmative mode, made his darling orator feel, regardless of sincerity, welcome. The over-growth of word tissue gave rise to an image in his mind of a person (probably male, burly and stupid) teasing her for excess, and this made him so furious that he gripped the steering-wheel ten times the standard convention of grip-tightness. He imagined defending her against said male, which made him feel good, and then he (proverbially) “pat himself on his back.” This charity-case of flower-knowledge he had taken on, he figured, was his; and what was his was to be protected, rightfully by him. The conversation tapered off, which gave both interlocutors opportunity to look their fantasies over: Mia appreciated his suit; A. appreciated her ex-dress. He, glancing over, adhering less to the rules of road safety than lust, thought about placing his hand on her plump (his adjective, not mine) thigh. He thought about it—and then he did. She was surprised, but not un-consenting, even as he inched slowly up her leg. His fingers walked to her mid-thigh—salt!—and higher—pepper!—and then he shifted his hand to be beneath her dress—paprika!—and, one minute to his place, undergarments were felt—sumac!—which made her smile, giving him courage to test the waters and—cumin! Pause. They had made it to the mansion. Hot and heavy, they prepared entry.

Lust, four letters, occurs in four stages. Desire, delight, danger, darkness. In the desire stage, attraction is litigated, made concrete, argued from all angles, sub-conscious or otherwise; delight includes the physical undulations of courtship, which give way to danger, generically meaning sex, and taking place in bedrooms, in darkness’ termination entailing a dark room, dark thoughts—and regret. Mia knew delight was about to give to danger. She had discussed as much with her girl-friends. “You’ll sleep with him, right?” one asked, while another replied, “Of course. He’s A.” While she would not have minded such an activity, the pacing was contorted; at least four hours would be needed until danger. A Brighter Summer Day, by all metrics, took precedence over sex. However, as is also true, Mia feared a third thing on top of settling down and spiders: sex. Settling down scared her because it was a bore to imagine being with one person for more than a year; spiders scared her because of their ancient-looking eyes and stupid crawls; and sex scared her because it upped the likelihood of “settling down” and made man look like spider. During the pencil-transfer, she considered what it would be like to lay with him: rough and callous? sweet and gentle? unsavory and bland? Now, on the cusp of copulation, all that passed her mind was the possible interruption of A Brighter Summer Day—that masterpiece of Taiwanese New Wave cinema—and she needed to carefully un-arouse A., who was clearly heated, so that such a thing did not happen. For some men, the only way to ease arousal is to stab them; and for other men, that only makes matters worse. Her plan, ingenious, if risky, was to talk glowingly of the movie, such that to interrupt it with a “kiss me” head-turn would be the greatest discourtesy.

The gardenless mansion oversaw the Potomac. Terraces were affixed to every room, which A. used for bird-watching (or said he did—he could identify less than a single bird). The driveway, lined with stones and brick, plus elegant street-lamps, struck Mia as absurdly eloquent. The over-lit yellow-hazed entrance A. only considered kitsch. Their thoughts intersected at a couple of points, both wondrous, only their subjects were different. Mia thought the estate was the most majestic thing she had ever seen (cribbing a pattern of thought she had observed in the heroines of contemporary romance novels); A. thought Mia was the most majestic woman he had ever possessed. He was happy to watch the movie (an euphemism). But she was talking her head off, speaking of “life-like pacing,” “Taiwanese identity,” and he knew that her reverence would need be conquered. It was not, nor could it have been, given many years of preparation. Thrilled at the prospect of the theater room she twirled and giggled. Then the movie played, head-turns were ignored, and A. entered a profuse state of agitation. Delirious because the focus of her desire was not him, he could not half-focus on the plot, which became gradually confusing, and culminated with a stab wound. She was crying; he was fuming; and slowly they walked to his room. “Wasn’t it great?” she asked. He laid himself in bed. “The very best.” The room was extravagantly boring: a gold-embroidered mirror, over-large bed, never-used vinyl player, and never-read bookshelf—all this plus two crossed red-hot swords framed as dweebish uncharacteristic heraldry. Still, both parties enjoyed the sight, and themselves. Eyes more-than-kissed (what?). Flames, growing faint for four hours, re-fanned. Without hesitation, nearing the end, they undressed entirely, letting their clothes drape dangerously over the edge of the bed. A night-lamp on an ugly gold nightstand rendered them sufficiently lit. Mia admired bookish abs possibly sculpted by Michelangelo, Rodin, Bernini. Sex was soon to saunter. Forewarning: foreplay and more to follow in bed, whose sheets were washed yesternight, grass-colored and crumpled clumsily where A. had not cared to smooth folds out. He had bought a gift, a bouquet of roses, strewn over the front of the bed, which he summarily removed upon the lustbirds’ sultry room-entry. There were obligations more pressing than romance, however conflated lust and love become in the same flow. Observed Mia was pink-faced and observant (her inquisitive girl-friends would ask): the limp languid flower—silly, but plausibly big when bloodied. Hands? Here. Ears? Here to hear. Eyes? Looking lusty. Rear? Procreationally protruding. Arms? At awkward angles. Heads? To be kissed and given. Organs of sexual import, hitherto unnamed? Revving up. Outward and inward!

What is sex? And do not answer: “the meeting of sexual organs for pleasure and/or production of child.” Sex is different; something sinister, something bruteiful. So said the churchyard: terrible beauty is born. Their clothing fell off the bed as cuddling—an arachnid four plus four limbs—churned to kissing (goodbye Liv Lee; goodbye Aperil!). Tongues met, mated, married. Her apple taste left his loins aching “against his zipper,” despite nudeness. Aster’s taste was neutral and after-taste mercurial, yet acclimatized to (and enjoyed) by the dictum of eroticism: a horned hysteria. Mists of saliva salted the Adamite air. Scoundrel! Continue. They did not know each other, except for the barest of facts, and now they were touching bare with the greatest of intimacy. That is how these things (narratives; lives) go. Aaron’s snake liked her breasts (variously known as boobs, bosoms, bazooms). She liked his face (variously known as mug, kisser, visage). Their hands were turning handsy. Cover your eyes! Continue. Austin was rich and dashing and she was nearly rich and deformed; no one had driven him so wild, despite his plethora of past-girlfriends. Per premise standards. Alexander’s hands dueled over her buttocks; he felt them ripple knowingly through his fingers. Her hands did the same, with his veritable branch. Youslurper! Her darling orator set to orate. She thought about how masterful A Brighter Summer Day was, and how much she would have liked to monologue more—which she almost did; but she appreciated his oration a sufficient deal. Slower, a little. If you sesso, fare un-baise ladyling; I will die in thy lap. After a while Absalom’s pencil was fully sharpened; her sharpener fully prepared; and their merge enacted in a poetry of pleasure. So said the bard: softly, slowly. His will in her. Constantine’s children! Continue. No protection? No prevention. Flesh on flesh piviolence. Into the river of cumin they wept. Masculine moans shook the silence. Feminine moans waxed floral. Noisy cars crossed gravel roads and slung pebbles from side to side. Breath became bolder. I like his style in appropriately measured concordance with the laws of copulatory harmony. I love her who is mine, and how much mian loves me! Are we married yet? So we are, dear, for a decade-compressed day. And Adam knew Mia his wife, and a dewy slingshot of web conceived and bore whoops! Indorphins swim with outdolphins. In. Coqoutte! Continout. Vaginout. Is voyeurin so compouting? Feeling in, phaaling out. Where in their in is your outsdom? Pinis. Lights out. Darkiness. Death of the ardout. Mourn in after night out. Sacred act in elevated seconds fore which without would need not applay!

It was hard to sleep in those days, with father click-clacking at computers in his heroic (so he said) nightly errands. Sometimes I tip-toed out of my bedroom, peering in at the living room’s castle of technology: Linux-powered PC’s bridged ten monitors, fans screamed schizophrenically against the blue glow of binary, screens vomited impenetrable treatises on artificial intelligence and mana, or comprehensive diagrams of the brain’s hemispheres, or perilous decimals in distress; and bespectacled father, dressed in excessive garbs, sweated into his dilapidated chair, poring bit-by-bit over the technological terror we had come to inherit. Then, the next morning, he would do it all over again, donning his quick-start labyrinth of dire technological dilemmas the whole day. And, in awe of what I could not understand—aghast at the digital ghosts my father attempted daily to defeat—reverence flooded my heart, rushing along lovingly and fearfully. I squinted at his computers; I understood nothing; and yet I, Sebastian, remained, a subservient squire. He frequently tried to explain the intricacies of his work. Every time I would grasp something new, or understand something with a new shade of subtlety; but always I was puzzled at the gaps of language, in-betweens and abstractions, that made sense only insofar as they were nonsense. Because it is true that concepts can be understood by resigning to the fact that they are, by virtue of their nature, not understandable. Even so, as father juggled jargon at me, adding variations of “mana” and “MIRI,” gendered hemispheres, racy basilisks, or the ambiguous entity Shade, I could not help but wonder, even vaguely, if he was a lunatic. These thoughts I stifled as soon as they came; if I could not trust my father, then trust itself would have to be discarded. And life without trust is intolerable. We must hope, second to second, that the chambers of our heart do not explode, that our cells replicate in regard to the blueprints assigned by unsteady nature.

Only a week after mother’s death (and not a second more), Sergei, at twelve-years-old, offered his life up, and me and father accepted, if but because our fortunes were drawing thin and manaless. His was a simple death: cliff-pushing. Me and father stood over the edge, inhaling the abyss’s mana-fumes, feeling our luck greatly improved. And so it was. My father got a promotion; we moved to a better house; and he invited two people from his place of work, a man and a woman, both his age, to live with us. They were already accustomed to our manner of things: mana, mania, and MIRI-manipulation.

The crux of the matter, if there was one, was this: the Machine Intelligence Research Institution (MIRI) is keeping us bound to the base level of reality—the “matrix”—which we can escape by employing “mana,” a less-than-researched whim of spirit psychology that allows man to manipulate the flutters of fortune. I accepted all of this with the ready-made assurance with which a child accepts anything—most of all the absurd; death never bothered me. But when, at seventeen-years-old, my father proposed, his eyes gleaming, that I go the way of my mother, my feet revealed a hitherto inexistent skepticism, arching to run.

He devised a fabrication—or what I thought was a fabrication—saying, with his brows furrowed and face flushed:

“Fear least of all death. Mom and Sergei’s mana have drifted to heaven—what’s left of it, after our inhalation. But did we not inhale some of their mana, taking it on as our own? Therefore, to die—ascending upwards to heaven—is to make our loves whole, re-supplying them their mana that we’re safeholding (or, bluntly, stealing in brief). Two classifications of people are denied hell: the manaless and the selfish. That latter class of people, populous as they are evil, die without the intent of re-distributing their mana. Perhaps they don’t know about mana, or our world seems bizarre to them. Indeed, those of this identification are of a secondary evil, subtler than those who know and yet reject re-distribution. Both evils, however, are evil. Mankind, in being supplied a mind, is meant to pursue truth. We are given all the faculties of wit and knowledge to do so. Coming up short of mana’s existence is not an action absolved of moral obligation.

It is doubtless difficult to carry mana about you. In high amounts it enables up to piece into the fabric of reality. The matrix of things meant to be invisible shatters our souls into three-hundred pieces. All this, and more, is sustained to MIRI; this process is outlined by Sancho Watt, Dunce Hopmore, and Anna Bovary in their seminal Manales. Yet this is why we need mana, and in high stock, because, in giving us our fortunes, it also frees us from our sins. Moreover, only those with high mana, valiant mana-seers like myself, and those who I work with, are physically capable of approaching MIRI headquarters. This will, naturally, mean everything.

Fear most of all hell. When I speak of ‘heaven’ and ‘hell,’ of course, I’m referring to mankind’s most famed dichotomy, or perhaps secondary to, but nevertheless sibling with, ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ I’m not so far off course from the Biblical conception of both things; but know that the ‘heaven’ I speak of is so much greater than God’s, and the ‘hell’ so much worse than Satan’s. Your fear, Sebastian, is remarkably natural. And, as a father—one whose capacity for love has not been blunted by the barbaric nature of the world—I will give you a week to re-allocate your mental faculties to mana’s most proper worship. Therefore it is my wish, or rather my paternal command, that you read Manales, cover-to-cover, and daily. Then you will be slain. What comes next is your choice, not mine, so much as I wish it were. Amen.”

The nodding housemates, whose names I had not learned, but whose faces resembled strikingly my father—grim eyes, coarse cheeks, ecstatic lips—clapped. The police probed our house multiple times during previous periods, to inquire about father’s internet activity, but the minute he stopped speaking, the front-door blasted open. They pointed their guns at father and told him to put his hands up, which he acquiesed to immediately, but not before casting a glance at the two mortified housemates and telling them, “You must do it, and quick.” No one was allowed to leave the house during my father’s banishment, during which I was asked a spade of simple questions about his activities. I answered dryly and truthfully, not particularly given to deceit. The housemates, whose names I learned—Sarah and Sam—were supplied their own questions, being as they were under a degree of suspicion. After a while, building up a wealth of trust with the officers, I was left alone—if for a second. By this point I was seated on the edge of my bed, to the left of a window leading to the backyard, with a copy of Manales in my hand, as I had been explaining its contents (if clumsily, because I had hardly read it). Two truths revealed themselves to me. First, as I was explaining Manales, it felt as if I were engaging in parody, the mish-mash of jargon to me no longer felt real, and a certain terror befell me considering how I played accomplice in mother and brother’s deaths. Not to say that I had developed, to any considerable extent, a “moral conscience”; my emotions were still blunted, given to blitzing over the glamorous facts and over-emphasizing the drab. What I had begun to feel, and dramatically, was that my father’s business was farce. Self-preservation was certainly present in this mixture of cognitive evolution, because no one, or rather very few people, want to die by another’s hands. But I had learned also, by the officer’s words, that our Subaru was the product of theft, not fortune. If deep-rooted beliefs tended to unravel slowly in the presence of conflicting information, no such slowness characterized mine. In the course of an hour I lacked belief in mana. Complicit as I was to murder, however, staying in my room was less than an option; I opened the window, and then I fled.

Panting through a thick of oak, half-slipping in streams and mud, I came unto a cliff. Imagining the sound of officers behind me (although it could very well have been the rushing of water), I jumped. It was precisely this simple, and had it been any more complex, I would not have jumped; there would have been a less-than-fatal hesitation. Some actions are only viable as impulse, or perhaps the author of this saga has grown fatigued of its evolution, less-than-interested in the cultish affairs of these mana-absorbing folks of ambiguous import (but inspired, in part, by the Zizians). The pen painting me off this cliff will surely stop as soon as I splat grotesquely at the bottom. The topography surrounding the house, so close to a cliff, is questionable; but it was the easiest way to kill me off. Everyone in this grim text seems content to write me off, and only that—stopping there. If my father killed me, there would be no tale to tell; if his housemates killed me, likewise; and the police, although they have body-cam footage, cannot be counted on for a fancy prose style. Nor, indeed, can my writer, who seems to fumble between clarity and inaccessibility, oscillating between clumsiness of form and obviousness of subject matter. Because the truth is, if I had let him keep writing this, not disrupting the course with a digression, I would have died; and that would have been the end not only of me but this story. I bid you to balk at the obviousness of such an ending which implies what the reader knew all along: there is no such thing as ‘mana.’ So go on, give me the pen, and let me put the less-than-obvious ribbon on this tale, with no intermediary between my thoughts and this paper, but which does not end with a mangled body on a rock-floor.

It ends with me opening my eyes, lapped up by flame, swallowed and re-swallowed by ecstatic MIRI agents, side-by-side with my ex-girlfriends—and most of the world. I realize now the Truth of the matter; and that, being my father’s infallibility, is all that tritely matters.

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This is my third prompt, from T. Chen, though modified.