Those bearing the mark, then, had to be surrounded, gathered, installed in treatment camps beyond the outskirts of our town, led through subterranean tunnels to a location where their names as well would be struck out.
It was said by some that these locations were centered beyond the far wall, a secret outpost by the State, though those who said that often too soon had the bruises, and were picked up or disappeared.
By night, by now, the walls were silent, or at least more so than the first alone, though in my house, locked in the bedroom, I swear I could hear the screaming from the itching of those bodies’ overgrowing sores. Almost a language in the groaning. Almost a war.
When the mandatory petition for a third wall, then, came around—I signed.
The third wall was translucent, hair-thin, which at first seemed like an excellent idea, designed to minimize the want of what young ones we had remaining: If they can not see what they despise, then they will learn to breathe it in.
This logic quickly proved neglectful, as kids and cats and other bodies collided with the endless, flattened clear. Jogging injuries quadrupled. At certain speeds men burst open their whole head, laying on the newer, thinner cram of our air a smell that refused to wash away. Small planes and box kites ended badly. The most common word that year was “Ow.” The second most was “Oh.”
Still, the spatial blunder was looked over until one of our countless nameless local Statesmen hit the wall head-on in his glass helicopter, drunk on light. His blood rained down all in one gush.
Where he thought he was headed outside our district, I can’t imagine, and no one else would say.
The wall’s face was to be adorned then, demarcated, like the others, like a wall is, so we could name it, so we could see. The advertisers flocked. Soon the wall blinked in the night all neon, 3D, slathered with fine foods and women’s tits, watchwords that made us want more.
I carved and carved and carved, though I was running out of wood. Our newer homes were made of plastic, ash, things I could not force a form onto.
With what I had I made a tower. I made a tiny horse, a wand, a ring.
One night I made a doll that looked like me. I had not meant to cut the wood to match my soft eyes, which seemed to have grown closer in recent years; I had not even realized the way my body in its sagging no longer even seemed a female shape. I cut the wood down smaller and smaller, slashing at me, until in my hands the wood was gone.
On the night for a while then the third wall triumphed. Ads were sold to adorn the other ads, a teeming sound-barfed crowd of color, sort of gorgeous. Even under crumpled population our state’s tax and income revenues totaled in trillions—enough to build another, better wall.
A thicker one. One smarter.
This new wall, we knew, would be just right.
The fourth wall—black as night blood in the daytime, and in the nighttime white as day—went up so far it appeared to never stop, though with special lenses you could see, way up there, the gun turrets and strobing lights, made to distract the wayward birds and brigand planes.
You were not supposed to see the wall—to look directly at it—but you had to know that it was there.
Machines were installed on the far side of the fourth wall to make sounds of commotion during light: intense female screaming, artillery fire, the bubbling of blood, as well as various unidentifiable noises, which were by far deemed the worst. The volume hung low throughout the city, covering the older sounds, and only increased as you came nearer to the wall, approaching a sound so loud that it could eat you, take the flesh right off your face. This would inspire, in future reams of children, an association that would lead to valuable non-fleeing impulses and therefore a general at-home goodwill.
At night the machines were replaced by men with masks and prongs and bugs. They would put the insects on you first, a warning. Then, if you still hung around, they’d zap.
Though this was likely the least popular of all walls, it was for sure the most effective.
And yet within weeks the headlines screamed trouble—there’d been an error in the fabric of our wall’s new face. Crud was gushing in through tiny peepholes. No one was so safe.
They rushed to put up the fifth wall made of plaster, this time high enough there seemed no end. This one’s each inch was embedded with long spear points, topped with a laser guided missile eye.
And soon a sixth wall, of gluey substance, to which a foreign body would upon contact stick, the stink of which brought bees from other years in legion, lining every yard with hiving.
And so another wall. And then another. Higher. Nearer. Further in.
By now, the inseam of our city’s far perimeter had shrunk distinctly, though it was hard to say how much. People were walking closer together, rubbing bodies. I felt fatter, for how my thighs burned on certain streets. The buildings once considered outskirts lay beyond the outdated walls therein, molding over, licked with dust, though you could only see them from certain registered locations, for a small fee, as the walls kept getting higher. Homes were built on top of homes were built on top of homes on top of homes.
Doors to certain buildings became blocked off, as if they’d never been right there.
Another new wall was rumored to be made from collapsing bodies in our close, gross cramming air, though surely this was meant to keep the streets less busy, and so more people would buy guns.
And the houses stacked up higher. The light strained, seeping, low.
By the time I could not count on both hands the rings of city walls and walls that in mind I could remember, there was nowhere left to walk.
Through the windows of my own home, the most recent wall stood right there, watching, a reflective surface kissed with light. I could hardly hear my breath go in and out, the warm air crushed and crushing in around me, lining my insides with fresh mush. My heartbeat stuttered through me, trying to keep up. Ow.
And yet they found ways to wedge in more.
The space between each thinner, halving, multicolored.
And soon then in my home too the air was subdivided, making many rooms each of my rooms, to help house the writhing population. At night I could hear my neighbors in their new rooms right there beside me. I could hear them making love. The grunts and thrusts made me carve faster. I made more things, one by one. I could no longer think of names to give.
In bed I’d sit up wheezing white for hours, the endless sound all in my head, working my knives in rhythm, sometimes slightly bleeding on what I made—my last wood cut down into small things, the function of which I could no longer recall—each of which I would then press to my chest and try to breathe in, to scratch my lungs with what they knew.
IMPRINTING
J. DAVID OSBORNE
Detective Jack Martell couldn’t remember if he killed Anthony Rodriguez or if he was just really happy that he was dead. He clocked in at the station early, grabbed a cup of coffee, and headed to the briefing room. The chief spat and turned red in the face. Martell shrugged to himself. He was ranting like it was their fault the son of a bitch was dead. Which it wasn’t.
Still, Martell clearly recalled plunging a knife deep into the coke dealer’s throat. He ducked under the yellow crime scene tape, the sun at magnifying-glass-height, burning through the palm trees and soaking his suit in sweat. The body was already on its way to the morgue. He walked the alley, interviewed the surrounding grocery, travel agency, barber shop, and dry cleaners. His partner took the other side of the street, and when they met back at the squared-off crime scene, they both had nothing.
“So, no one saw anything,” Martell said.
“Surprise.”
Martell chuckled. Ronald Trejo was slightly older than him and much more cynical. Sometimes it got on his nerves a little bit, his partner being that negative all the time, but today, with that nagging feeling in the back of his mind, he needed an excuse to laugh.
“Personally,” Martell said. “I’m glad someone got the bastard.”
He nodded. “Starving.”
He watched downtown Los Angeles roll by outside his window. Saturday morning: young Latin women pushed strollers, black kids went shopping, big-chested blondes sipped frozen coffee. A group of middle-aged men huffed and sweated on a basketball court. Bums played songs behind open guitar cases. At a stoplight, he rolled down his window and gave his Styrofoam box of leftovers to a pale man in a trenchoat. Already the chorizo he’d eaten was figure-eighting in his guts, and just having the box had made him feel sick.
Trejo parked in the garage by the station. Martell hiked to his desk. Paperwork bored him, but he liked the distraction. He wondered if he should change the details of anything he’d seen or heard. Wondered if it could come back to him in any way. Then he shook his head. You’re not even sure this was you.
He was confused. He didn’t have anything against Rodriguez. The guy sold cocaine. Okay. It was his job to care, sure, but he’d done coke before. It was alright.
He leaned back in his chair. Got some coffee. Wandered into the briefing room, where Rodriguez’s picture was tacked to the wall, caught in a spiderweb of other bad guys. A red X taped across his mugshot. The X intersected right in the center of the kid’s face, both eyes peeking out from deep inside the jaws of the double-headed alligator. Martell took a step closer, then another step, and pretty soon his entire vision was engulfed in red.
He stopped at a gas station on the way home. Bought milk and hot dogs. At the register, he considered buying a pack of smokes, but bought a lottery ticket instead. The girl behind the counter rang him up. He fondled a spinning rack of keychains. He scooped one off its hook and placed it on the counter.
The house smelled like berbere. He took his shoes off at the door and set the bags down on the counter and wrapped his arms around Sandra. She stirred the soup and leaned her head to the side so he could kiss her neck. She poured two bowls and they sat and ate. He washed the dishes and dried his hands and sat down next to her on the couch.
He pulled out the keychain he’d bought at the gas station. A little green alien with big sunglasses. She laughed and put it on her key ring.
“When are we going back to Roswell?”
“Whenever you want.”
“I like this little guy.”
“I saw it and thought you might.”
“So we can go this summer?”
“We can go whenever you want.”
They watched a show on TV about aliens and Mayans. After that they watched a comedy show, then Alien on TNT. Martell had seen it about a hundred times, but his wife loved it, so he watched it again. They brushed their teeth and went to bed. He held Sandra and tried not to breathe too heavily.
“Do you want to go out to eat tomorrow? Thai food, maybe?”
She rubbed her eyes and grabbed his hand. “Can’t tomorrow. I have a date.”
Martell’s stomach tightened. “With who?”
“Thomas, from the Tavern?”
“Thomas? I don’t remember him.”
“He was the cute guy who made your macchiato.”
“I don’t remember a cute guy.”
She kissed his hand. “We’re gonna get some dinner and watch a movie.”
He held her tighter, because he didn’t know what else to do.
The next day Jack Martell felt slightly convinced that he hadn’t killed Anthony Rodriguez. He tried to replay the stabbing in his mind, the memory that had seemed so vivid the day before, but instead of a clear picture he had a nagging feeling, like you might get if you stood by a steep cliff and felt like jumping off.
He stopped at a Greek place and ordered a gyro. An old man behind him said, “Five dollars for lamb.”
Turning to face him, Martell said, “I know! Prices are getting a bit steep.”
The old man shook his head. “No, no. Five dollars is way too cheap. I wonder how they got it so cheap. Probably, it’s old.”
He ate half his gyro on the way to work, then threw the rest out.
He sat at his desk, in his own little world, until late in the afternoon. The office suddenly erupted with activity. He caught the electric scent in the air and found Trejo by the water cooler.
“What’s going on?”
Trejo crushed his paper water cone and tossed it in the trash. “We’re up.”
“Huh?”
“Mendoza turned himself in for questioning about five minutes ago. Says he has information on the Rodriguez case.”
“The Mendoza?”
“Yep. He’s in Room 2. Let’s go.”
“When Tony died, I wasn’t surprised,” Albert Mendoza said. He seemed comfortable under the bright lights, his hands crossed in front of him on the steel table. “We make a lot of enemies, doing what we do.”
“Doing what, exactly?”
“Nothing at all. People just hate us, I guess. Anyway, we make a lot of enemies. So, I send my boys out.”
“Which boys are these?”
“My sons, of course. They were in the middle of their soccer game, and I knew that after that it was their nap time, but work had to be done. So I sent my boys out to find out what happened to Tony.”
“And what did your ‘boys’ find out?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. And that’s what’s weird. These guys are good. These kids, I mean. They’re like really good dogs or something. They get the scent, you know. But they didn’t find a thing. There are some groups on the Southside that didn’t get along with Tony very well.”
“And why’s that?”
“They had beef over a shuffleboard game. Tony was an avid player, and really good. Well these guys, they were the shuffleboard champs of their neighborhood. And Tony just comes in and stomps them. Makes them embarrassed. Their girlfriends start hanging on Tony. And you know, things escalate. Never fuck with a shuffleboard player on his home turf.”
“Good advice.”
“So anyway, none of these guys, these bad shuffleboard players, had anything to do with the murder. Which surprised me.”
“How do you know?”
“Those boys, I’m telling you. They find things out.”
“And how is that?”
“Mostly they trade pogs for it. You remember those? Big craze when I was a kid. These little discs, about the size of a communion wafer. Well, those things fetch big money, now. People still go nuts over pogs, but now it’s like a money thing, instead of a collecting thing. My boys have all of my old pogs. Trade ’em for good dirt.”
“I see.”
“So anyway. I start to wonder. Did Tony just piss someone off? Just some average guy? And so I get my buddy to pull his credit card statements. The last place he went to, the last thing he bought, well that’s not very interesting. It was something that cost $5.19 at Taco Bell. But a few purchases before that, a few days before he died, he visited a florist.”
“Go on.”
Mendoza lifted his hands up. “That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. I just thought you all should know.”
“You came here to tell us that Rodriguez bought flowers.”
“That’s right.”
Trejo stood up and stretched. He walked out and closed the door behind him. Martell leaned in close.
“Why are you telling us this?”
“Because you have resources that I don’t have. I’m a busy man.”
“Busy doing what, exactly?”
“Well you see, I’m really into car restoration . . .”
When Martell got home that night, the house smelled like the house. He ate some leftover soup and watched TV. He got bored and turned it off and went onto the back porch and listened a nearby neighbor’s party. He lay in bed. He thought about Sandra. He thought about her, out with Thomas the cute barista. He pictured her laughing. He reminded himself that the laugh in his brain was a recreation, something that he could own, but that her real laugh belonged to her, and he couldn’t keep it.
He just wanted her to be home.
<
br /> He hugged her pillow, now close to positive he didn’t kill Anthony Rodriguez.
Martell awoke to the smell of waffles. He went downstairs and Sandra smiled and handed him a plate. She sat down across from him and they ate their waffles quietly.
He pulled the words out with both hands: “How was your date last night?”
She smiled and arched an eyebrow. “It was great.”
He moved the syrup around with his fork. “That’s good.”
“We went to a great movie. The special effects were so good. He bought me popcorn. After the movie we went out to have some food. I think I had Thai on the brain, after what you said. I got some green curry. I was trying to keep my nose from running, it was so hot. He thought it was cute.”
Martell chewed slowly. “That sounds fun.” Already in his gut, he knew.
“So after the date,” she said, and Martell could feel the waffles fighting to come back up. He could already see it, this kid inviting her up to his apartment, turning on some music. He thought about how excited she must have been, and that excitement broke his heart. And she was telling this story, just as evenly as can be.
In Heaven, Everything Is Fine: Fiction Inspired by David Lynch Page 3
