Autumn in the Abyss

by John Claude Smith

  Poet, Jack Harolds, described the stanza as “a vital stream-of-consciousness examination of the worth of humanity in the budding age of peace and love as saddled with aggression and self-satisfaction,” while famous underground self-proclaimed “word-slinger,” Albert Albert, suggested it was “that moment of final choice or perhaps recognition, the ‘dying dreams of corporate allegiance’ he wields as an ax, to chop down what remains of the good old days.” Bukowski called it the “no-holds barred truth,” which might make Coronado smile, if he were still with us.

  None of these examples— and there were dozens more— even hinted at McClean’s “atavistic yearnings” take on it. Of course, the three poets mentioned above hadn’t even been at the event. Was their understanding of the noted stanza culled from McClean’s take on it? Of course, to each his own, and within the academic, ego stroke world of poetry, over-thinking the words of others was common. Yet for me, as I read the ninth stanza on a website, the words didn’t even match up!

  “My bones glimmer luminous beneath saltwater flesh?” She stated in the article this was the opening line of the ninth stanza, yet at the end of the piece, when she gathered together the shards she had collected, it was not present. McClean, usually a meticulous researcher, built one entire section of her argument on this example, yet on the final page, where a mere twelve stanzas from her own recollection are posted, there was no indication of its validity.

  The ninth stanza I read from the online archives for Art News opened with “Venom as the root of the sleeping yet not dead language,” might also align itself to some sort of atavistic yearning, yet what of Albert Albert’s take and his inclusion of his reading of the line, the words—“dying dreams of corporate allegiance”—within his response? What were each of them reading? Why, with McClean’s reputation, has she floundered so badly here? Bukowski’s statement even caused me to laugh out loud. “No holds-barred truth?”

  My confusion rose. “Turbulence embroidered on flesh, tattoos painting husks with the conspiracies of the soul.” My thoughts acclimated to the poem, yet researching the line— I know I have just read it on my monitor, the article was there, still there— it was nowhere to be found.

  My confusion solidified. I was wary of much more of this, yet my obsession needed finality.

  McClean briefly touched on Coronado’s disappearance, a cursory account. Nothing to hold on to. Nothing more.

  The words were all Coronado had truly left us. Primarily, this incomplete poem. This incomplete poem with its contradictory lines.

  It was clear my research had reached an apex. It was clear that the only path left, the avoided path, the dread-filled path, was to head out to Randlebot’s house.

  Time was inconsequential to the agoraphobic. I was an unmoored being: drifting, drifting…

  No mirror in my bathroom— no mirrors in the house— made my hygienic task a blind exercise. It did not really matter. I showered and shaved, brushed my teeth with an always empty toothbrush. I dressed in charcoal slacks and an off-white shirt; it used to be white, but the years fed on the purity and left it faded, yellowed, much as I expect my teeth to be. I was compelled to slip my dress jacket over my bulk, but my prodigious size inspired sweat and no matter the temperature outside. I left the jacket behind.

  Smudged reflections glanced back at me from the metallic skin of the toaster. Faces from a gathering crowd. Faces whose features cut through with expressions of clarity: a pale woman with white hair and a feline smile; an old Asian man with almond eyes that spoke of secret knowledge; a young Latino girl whose innocence was history. I swiftly turned to avoid scrutiny. They suggested something hideous, but confirmation was against my true interest. I knew already what a mirror would reveal, what resided inside: this soiled soul.

  I thought for a moment about the last time anybody had seen me in the flesh. My recollection turned to dust. It had been years, perhaps a decade or two, three.

  I was stricken with a shade of melancholy as I could not even recall my age. Memories extended arm’s length. That was all. My mother, father, any siblings— all resided in a windowless room in the back of my brain. The door was locked, all access denied.

  My disgust boiled. Worse yet, now that I was ready to leave the house, to wander along the desolate streets of this austere avenue, I was hesitant. I was afraid. Not so much for what Randlebot might reveal, but of the air outside so different from the familiar musty smells of which I was accustomed. Of the possibility of people out there, watching me, perhaps even one or two who might ask of me… anything.

  I screamed, a foreign utterance. The primary voice I’ve heard for years has been the one in my head. This aural intrusion was a blasphemy to anything remotely human. I was embarrassed. I was revolted. My very being trembled at the thoughts, the possibilities. My breath grew rapid, my heart thumbing a ride with it. Everything grew hazy, my head lightened— a balloon escaping to freedom in the center of a powder blue sky while the child cried at the loss— and, overwhelmed, I fainted.

  What must have been hours passed, my bloated body festering as a fresh lesion on the never vacuumed green carpet. Awakening, I pushed myself, with much effort, to a sitting position. Motes of dust shuddered above me. The lone lamp’s dim rays spotlighted them as they floated and scattered.

  I stood, using the ramshackle sofa as a crutch, and took in the disaster that was me. My shirt was soaked through. My slacks as well— perhaps I urinated on myself, though the smells indicate sweat, but with such a malodorous abode, I could have been wrong. The part of me that never rests took over— my always buzzing, whirring, warring mind with gears grinding incessantly spat thoughts out in random patterns. It spewed my own internal poetry, perhaps as vital as any poets’ words that had ever come before. I almost smiled at such nonsense. This momentary levity served as inspiration, as distraction, and I cared not at all as I waddled toward the front door, reached out with the rare steady hand for the cold door handle, turned it, and swung the door open.

  Dusk or dawn, I’d no idea. It was an in between time, which seemed appropriate. I was in between, always in between. The moments in between were my fondest friends. Allies in this self-made hell.

  My first step out the door was a lifetime in the making. I vomited on the porch, my reward for such courage. Or foolishness. I was aghast but followed with another step, this one perhaps only decades in attainment. As I took these broad strokes, the details came into focus; my focus, perhaps the only thing to keep me moving forward during this gruesome charade. If anybody was watching me, they must have been laughing at the fat man’s stuttering dance. Perhaps calling friends, all their friends, Come, watch the comedy of errors. Come ogle the forlorn freak.

  But then, the reality became clear. The sky was darkening, so dusk won out. The street was even more desolate than the weekly awkward dragging of grocery bags into my home would attest. A mere few steps out the door and I was astonished by the barren, besmirched vista before me. The few cars in front of decrepit houses suggested Negligence or perhaps Abandonment as their only riders now. The dreams of motivation, of speed, long since faded. Lawns littered with weeds, some that towered as tall as me, provided perfect hiding places for my neighbors, those laughing at me now. Shuttered windows at least suggested they might not even care to venture outside to get their fill of the fat man’s rare appearance.

  I wondered how I originally had come to this drab, indistinct neighborhood. Had it materialized out of thin air, a product of my buzzing, whirring, warring brain?

  My own yard, from this perspective, tottering on the cracked walkway from my door to the curb, bloomed with weeds so diseased as to cause my stomach to roil. Plump heads on thick stalks caused the spines of the stem to droop unappealingly. I thought of a convention of hunchbacks all huddled in grim conference. Bereft of petals, the illusion of beauty was left unfulfilled. The skin was mottled and a pale green liquid leaked out, dripped to the dirt, fed the plants, and this horrible cycle rolled on and on, multiplying ug
liness with every generation.

  What a dreary place to live. No wonder everybody stayed inside as I did. Who would want to step out into such a bleak world?

  I had a flashing thought to turn and visually explore the roof, to see the remains of whatever mad revelry was often played out there, but the curiosity was slaughtered by the thought of one, two… a dozen of whatever animal it was that reigned there staring down at me, a hearty feast for their insatiable appetite. I made sure not to look, avoiding their glare for fear of ending up down their gullets, just another meal in the long line of meals that fill the instinctual needs but not their ravenous tendencies, forgotten upon ingestion, a constant loop. Just like my day-to-day existence.

  I carried on my sluggish trek, my legs aching already as I passed by my fourth house. My already drenched shirt stuck to my flab as wind joined the oncoming night. The chill, though, was almost invigorating. Something different, this experience. Had I ever experienced this before?

  Minutes shriveled as lazy moths bounded again and again off the occasional functioning street lamp, something that did not light my way, so much as show me the moths’ kamikaze surrender to their obsession. The urgent tapping rhythm of insect bodies bouncing off glass, begging entrance into the land of the enlightened, mocked the hesitant pace of my quest. I snicker inside at this thought, though outside, no laughter escapes, not wanting to hear the rusted gargle of my voice. A few of the lucky ones attain their goal, sizzling as they hug the hot glass, an end to their ludicrous routine. I lift my eyes to watch their victory, distracted from my fractured path. Diverted from a sidewalk overtaken from beneath by thick roots and an array of weeds punching through with vigor, or lackadaisical impetus, or simply a stronger desire to live than anything else in this cheerless neighborhood. Though it must be noted, my path was also littered with pockets of the pale green liquid as it seemed the trees were infected much as the weeds. Infected, such a strong, negative word. Why must I think of everything in this depressing way? Perhaps the pale green liquid was simply their lifeblood… toxic and spreading to infect everything.

  I could not change the way I thought, my mind the toxic elixir upon which I slake my analytical thirst.

  The night was deep and unforgiving. Hours passed as I squinted to read the numbers posted on the fronts of houses steeped deep in disrepair. I finally spotted Randelbot’s address. His house seemed on par with mine, on par with this miserable neighborhood. This sickly street littered with disease and so hopeless, so hopeless…

  I questioned myself about carrying on. If I could carry on. If I had the courage. After all, conversation was not my specialty. The hacking sounds recently scraped from within are evidence of this. Yet why submit myself to such torture without at least knocking? I hoped that nobody would answer so I could run as fast as my aching legs would take me, to home, to hell, to my private hell. To obsessions that would not let me go until they compelled me to make this trek again— dear God, no. The thought forced bile to scale my gullet, yet it simply burned, unreleased.

  The night was darker than one would imagine, the wind lashing with intent— warning or whipping me for my folly?— as I made my way to the door. My sweaty, meaty fingers gathered as a fist. My knock was feeble, weak, an extension of my desire to be gone.

  Praying for no response…

  …as the doorknob turned and the wood groaned, the jamb squealed, and the door opened slightly. An invitation?

  I mustered the wherewithal to say, “H-hello,” in a tiny voice, the voice of the insignificant. A rat scratching at a wall.

  There was no response. But I sensed a presence near. One perhaps as sullen as me, trapped in his own private hell. After all, if Randlebot had been in seclusion since 1960, it was quite possible he was my equal in the pitiable throes of agoraphobia. Then again, if he was, who slipped the messages to me? If he made that trek three times— I could not imagine such determination.

  I angled my face toward the space between the outside and the inside, and took in the familiar smells— smells I knew! Smells like my house. We were of the same wretched ilk, the fabric of our existence as grubby on the outside as the inside.

  I said, this time louder and, dare I say, firmer, “Hello.”

  Still no response, yet there was a hint of an echo, one ridged in sighs. My momentary flagrant association with courage grown brittle, I knew I had only one choice at this point, one option.

  I needed to step inside, away from the wind and dark, away from the outside, the ever oppressive outside. I relished the opportunity to shut out the world, but in another’s house, the comfort passed as a dime-sized kidney stone.

  I closed my eyes and pushed the door open, took three quick steps, stopped, slammed the door behind me. I opened my eyes, expecting to see Randlebot, an aged Randlebot, his once handsome features— a chin sculpted from the sheered white cliffs of Dover, majestic blue eyes the envy of Maxfield Parrish’s paintbrush— devoured by time. What I saw instead knocked me to my knees.

  I emitted a moan of defeat as I took it all in. As I took in my house, my furniture, my smells. My hell.

  I took it in as tears welled and flowed, undammed. Overwhelmed.

  Laughter, a grumbling, uncontested and evil laughter, shook me to the core. A dark, wet blossom bloomed on my slacks. My heart’s rhythm thundered within my heavy, sagging chest, seeking escape, refuge— anything to invalidate what burned my irises as my pupils expanded. I swear I could hear the sizzle…

  “Hello,” said a voice etched out of spite and wicked contempt. A sinister voice riding the tail of the grumbling laughter.

  “Randlebot?” I said, uncertain only because this was my house, my hell, no matter my trek.

  “Randlebot, Randlerot,” the voice said, a snicker in the intonation. Cruelty personified. The dagger thrust in with force and gleefully scraped bone.

  The answer suggested nothing and everything, confusion at its core, the ever magnificent and ever vile chaos that rules the labyrinthine mind reeling at the possibilities.

  “Your pathetic condition sullies the night sky with its plumes of black-winged bewilderment blotting out the stars.” The wood cracked and settled above me, an exhalation courted by exhaustion.

  “I don’t know what you are suggesting, Randlebot—”

  “Randlebot, Randlerot, Randleriddles are all you’ve got.”

  The seed of frustration bore diseased fruit. “If you are not Randlebot, then who are you? Who the hell are you?”

  “You were warned from the beginning not to disclose what you discovered. But you liked to push. You liked to toy with humans because you felt they were beneath you. You were warned but heeded not the admonishment.” The heat of his presence was a bloody, freshly skinned bear pelt wrapped around my quivering girth.

  And the words he littered as bread crumbs along the path to contrary truths made no sense to me. Warned? What I had discovered? What had I discovered? Was this a reference to the notes dropped in my mail slot?

  “I needed answers, despite your so-called warnings. My mind allows no respite until answers are attained. It’s a curse of my obsessive nature, as well as my pathetic condition, as you call it, and I do not disagree.”

  A tripwire snapping at my casual trespass: “You still have no clue. We spoke of warnings long ago, when you were young and still able to imagine freely. When your imagination explored too deeply, yet we allowed your trespass… under special circumstances, yet you ignored even those.”

  I was at a loss. A rag doll shaken in the mouth of a rabid Rottweiler. My head light, as if punctured and losing focus: “What are you talking about? What warnings if not the notes dropped through my mail slot.” And, as the question turned from mist to cement in my head: “Who are we? If not Randlebot, who are you? We? What the hell is going on?”

  My nerves twitched as a thousand shit-coated flies rubbed their insect legs together, cleaning off the filth before indulging in more.

  “You won’t like the answers.”


  You might regret the intrusion. You might regret your existence—”

  “To hell with your condescending manner.” I leaned forward, head lighter still, as if emptying all its contents. I tried to catch myself on the arm of the sofa as I slumped to the puke, green carpeted floor. Dust motes took flight, a momentary escape from the drudgery of non-existence. “I need to know all there is to know about Henry Coronado.” Suicidal? An obstinate child?

  “Good,” he said, they said— the voice enunciated— stretching the single syllable word into something monstrous, a python’s embrace.

  I attempted to situate myself on the sofa, pulling at the arm, but my body was weak and clammy, already beaten. What more could their revelations and verbal flagellation do? Yet, I needed to see it through.

  “Randlebot, Randlerot, our liaison, was sent to keep you on your path of discovery. Full disclosure was to be our gift to you, but not something to share. He was sent to keep you in check and failed. ”

  “Sent to me? Sent to me when? From his hiding place down the street from me or…?”

  They ignored me. The inflection of their blatant fiction boring even to them, as if they had better things to do than pass time with me. I did not blame them. Yet, they continued.

  “‘Autumn in the Abyss’ was never meant for public consumption. Randlebot, Randlerot had attempted to keep you from reading it at the Welcoming Chaos event, raving over your other potent, but less persuasive piece, ‘Coronado’s Pandemonium.’ But you in your ever—”