by Joseph Debs
***
Left in Memento Lunaris for dead. Jerry, a pile of paper and pens, and that stupid tennis ball, which must have made its way with Jerry across to Zoropeterius when we first landed. You want me to write, I get it. You want me to forget Joanna, forget why I’m here and write the chapter I’ve been avoiding for years. When I’m ready to write, I’ll do it.
So what if Joanna and I never touched, not even once? So what if there are only spaces rather than particles, only constant division…does that mean that she wasn’t she, I wasn’t I? Ludicrous. I felt her. That is all that matters anymore. There is nothing to be written. What matters is in my head.
***
Obviously there was no such thing as “yesterday,” but during the closest approximation to that Earthly phenomenon, I had felt that something kooky had happened. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I asked the woman, from the chair, how this place got that name—why it was called “Zoro-peterius” in my language, and she responded, without missing a beat,
“You named one that.”
Which made absolutely no sense.
“When did I name you that?”
“The first time you were here, even before the Speakeaters existed, you named one.”
“What do you mean, the first time I was here? And who are the Speakeaters?”
It pulled up a message, which displayed itself on the screen.
“You wrote, the first time you were here:”
You shall be called Zoro, as in Zoroaster, meaning dualism, representing the contrariety of unity and multiplicity in our universe. And you shall be called Peter, meaning rock, representing the matter and mattering in our universe. This name will allow every human who comes into your presence to understand the expansion of the universe, the falling-apart of edges, and the possibility of Death, which is the condition of mattering.
“I never wrote that,” I belted. “You introduced your planet as Zoropeterius!”
The screen proceeded to show me pages and pages of notes on the human experience of Zoropeterius, insisting that I had been here working on this subject for centuries.
***
At the peak of our miscommunication Zoropeterius had suggested visiting the Speakeaters just to experience the mattering of a non-verbal language. We would be left for what would feel like 14 Earth days amongst the Speakeaters.
“They communicate with food,” the woman said.
“With food,” I said. At least we’d maybe get to eat for a change. “We’ll have bodies on their planet? I can eat their food? Jerry and I can eat there?”
“You may have to seek out food yourselves. The Speakeaters are fasting,” said the man.
“For how long?”
“Until they die,” he said, unmoved. “They have given up on the industry of meaning-making. They cannot eat without thinking, without making some matter of what they have just eaten, the meaning they have just ingested. It is no longer possible for them. So they have quit.”
“Quit eating? You’re taking us to a mass suicide?”
“As you’ve said, you’ll be able to eat there, and maybe you’ll come up with something for your own inquiry about matter. You have stomachs, don’t you?”
“They have stomachs? The Speakeaters?”
Zoropeterius pulled up a picture from the annals of its over-comprehensive archival memory.
“Well, they’re human.”
The trip to the Speakeaters was just a skip and a hop over to another one of the interior moons of Zoropeterius, the moon of Speakeater dwelling, whose conduit of travel was (you guessed it) another damned dentist-style chair.
Smiling in the blue murk of a moon not unlike Memento Lunaris, the man agent encouraged, “One thinks you will find that they are quite a peaceable folk.”
***
Peaceable indeed! When we appeared on the beach the little men didn’t even look up from their tropical coma; that’s right, they just kept on gazing up into the coral atmosphere, the nihilists. Jerry and I tried getting their attention, many times to no avail. If a tree falls in a forest of Speakeaters…well, they don’t give a shit. Nothing matters to them. Zoropeterius had warned us about this.
“Hey!” I barked, hopping over naked legs like hopscotch lines and making the ruckus of a thousand tourists riding Hummer limousines through some peaceful beach retreat. Jerry tiptoed across bare chests that were breathing softly, making temporary homes for the cleanest air we’d ever touched. I lifted feet. I gave noogies. I tried to tickle them. Their eyes were open the whole time, breathing that crisp air.
Nothing.
We holed up in a cabin less than a hundred yards inland. Day and night came and went effortlessly, swifter than I could ever remember. There were stars. There were tides and a breeze and clouds, and shadows. I ate like a king and felt the weight of time again.
Jerry, the hog, had inexplicably lost his appetite.
Five nights passed like this, every day Jerry and I walking out to the beach to the same sedentary arrangement, making some meager attempt at communication. They would not even open their eyes. But the same breathing—peaceful, wanting. Human.
In the morning there was an arrangement of assorted cuisine at the foot of the cabin door. I ran out to see if one of them had brought it, but no one was there. Not even footsteps. Jerry watched me devour food not unlike Earthly tropical fruit—the juicy, colorful stuff, seeds and all—and tender meat.
The food was delicious, and it didn’t matter what it was.
Of course nothing matters without language; this was taken for granted in the writing of my chapter. But are words real? Real as strawberries; or coconuts; or the delicious and mammoth half-carnivorous pods of flesh that hang from Speakeater trees?
Jerry didn’t eat a bite. I realized finally that he must have felt cannibalistic eating meat after he’d entered into timeless union with mice, and whatever other species Zoropeterius had tried out on him. Jerry, incidentally, was allergic to all berries and most vegetables. He’d throw up his goddamn stomach if he came within a ten-foot pole of anything that he didn’t have to chase after.
I had eaten soundly but not without a trace of guilt, and had placed the empty wreath outside the door. The next day, the same combination of color and texture and taste was replenished. The same for the next week.
I tried to communicate with the brutes, I really did. I brought a different combination of food to them every day, hoping it would mean something, something peaceful and productive. Hoping it would spark some resuscitated élan for speech. But their loss of appetite, like Jerry’s, for completely different reasons, was incorrigible.
According to Zoropeterius the Speakeaters have only existed since Victorian times on Earth. Their planet evolves at a mystifying pace, and will expire probably even before your grandchildren are discovering their sexual organs.
Apparently short-lived planets happen all the time across our universe, as if the great big nada were trying out brands of makeup. Some try language, some don’t, and the dim light of concern flickers on and off like Christmas lights across the plains of the planes of sentience.
Apparently.
Zoropeterius had let me in on a few more facts about the Speakeaters before it had sent me off to them like so many charged particles toward a molecular desert. Their race was born and had thrived on a planet as far from their present one as Earth is to the now defunct planet, Pluto. Their birthplace had died, and so they, like me, were widows and widowers.
That is not to say, it should be noted, that I found any kinship in or empathy for those pitiable humanoids.
What Zoropeterius had also told me about the Speakeaters: their indisputably thorough silence had occurred directly as a result of their planet’s death. How’s that for irony! If they had lent their ear for even five minutes—however long that might actually be on their planet—they might have found in me a kindred spirit.
As the days wore on, I came to remember these facts, the bond I had with this people. No
wonder they were such miserable suicides! All their words were frozen on a dead planet lifetimes away. The cat that had got their tongue, so to speak, was language itself.
Speaking of cats, Jerry looked ghastly at the end of that week, I could count his ribs; and, to boot, his hips were completely shot—he was walking like a cripple. I found him that twelfth night curled up outside cabin back with a family of island mice who were licking his paws.
The next day I walked down to the beach with Jerry in my arms to the exact spot we had appeared on the planet nearly two weeks prior and lay him at the feet of a Speakeater who hadn’t budged the least bit in all those hours, and said: “Now will you listen to me you hideous mutes! Now that my companion is nearly dead and I have no way of getting home! And where are you, Zoropeterius?” I screamed at the coral sky. “Help spark some ideas, my ass!”
I spent the afternoon bringing Jerry to various half-dead Speakeaters who wouldn’t even spit on our faces.
13 days, and Zoropeterius would return on the 14th.
The rhythm of Earth-like time had made me cognizant of a few things, philosophical epiphanies not being one of them: I remembered it must have been at least a few weeks since I’d left Massachusetts, and that my students had probably finished the semester. Which meant a small clusterfuck of envelopes bearing final exams must have been sitting stupidly outside the lighthouse I was supposed to be watching. I had gotten nowhere with my chapter, I had nearly lost the vision I had of Joanna, and Jerry was knocking at death’s door.
I brought him on the thirteenth night down to the water to try and wake him up a bit in the cold, and he would have drowned if I hadn’t kept him afloat. I grabbed his tail once from the tide and what I saw in the water made me drop him right back in the wash: my beard was light grey and I had lost most of my hair. I looked thirty years older than when I had arrived two weeks ago.
I grabbed Jerry and ran to the cabin and didn’t eat that goddamned poison the ugly mutes were killing us with and didn’t sleep a wink, clutched Jerry for dear life till dawn.
I thought of his body, flush to my chest, never touching my skin. The language barrier was not enough. There had to be a physical one, so that anything that ever loved would have to remain a prisoner unto itself. I could feel my face as it truly was, older, heavier—silver, sagging whiskers.
As I lay Jerry on the bed, I noticed a fading mark where the bed met the wall. I dragged the bed away from what I hoped would be some sort of signification, any word at all.
What I found was a poem, in English:
Though mind is past,
yet past needs life,
and so their tryst
keeps late the night:
between the bows
the past ignites
and so the Now
beats out its light
endure late night
endure blind sight
the awful future
in you delights
-Jim Beck
The bed got back to its place and I settled finally beside the animal. Before I fell asleep I thought I felt our heartbeats in sync, something I had been told happens when hearts are close in proximity. But could anything ever be in sync when presence was so infected with death? Old Wives’ Tales.
When I marched us out to the landing site Jerry had already died. In the night on a planet of thieves.
***
The two Zoro-agents (if it were one, I might strangle the fucker) ship me back to Cape Cod without crashing this time, and I walk to the door of the lighthouse. Paint peeled, windows boarded up. No envelopes. It must be the middle or end of June as I’d suspected, on account of the envelopes having been taken away. I look to the town of Middleport, a pretty, hunched-over scape in the dusk, its dusty winding streets meandering to its center like unassertive sentences. A dark, hushed kind of language. But the lighthouse—corn flake panels flaking at my touch, the doorknob’s sheen dull as my memories of things like doorknobs and lighthouses.
The beings posing as man and woman are shuffling gingerly by the ship as I crouch down to a grey mound of sand beneath the doorpost of the lighthouse. It hadn’t been there before. I brush and I dig, and there are the envelopes, hidden beneath a foot of sand.
We mount a little rowboat making a seemingly concerted effort of non-mattering in the wettish sand, for a funeral on the water.
They try to explain to me while rowing that the offering of food the Speakeaters had incessantly placed outside our cabin had meant something, and that it must have been hard for them to break their vow of silence.
“You call that breaking a vow of silence! They didn’t say a word! How was I supposed to know…”
I try to describe the preparation of food.
The woman says: “The arrangement meant something like, ‘caution: your species ages faster than one’s own.’ The red, soft fruit stands for a warning. When it is placed beside other signs, it is an omen. The fleshy, pink stuff means life or life form, species. The dry, black berries with the thorns indicate death or decay. It was a grammatical sentence. They were looking out for you.”
“And what were you doing? Were you looking out for us?”
“Well, did you finish your book?”
“Stop here. Stop the boat.”
“One is only—”
“I don’t give a shit, stop rowing.”
I must look real wise out there on the water, like an old sailor. I must look like I’ve seen everyone I’ve once loved grow and flourish and die, and it’s two weeks to my forty-fifth birthday.
“Look at Jerry,” I croak. “Look at the cat. Look at what you’ve done. Does that matter to you? Does anything matter to you? No, I haven’t finished my goddamn book, no thanks to you. What do you have to say? Have you gotten what you wanted?”
The man looking agent squints into the distance, then back at Jerry’s corpse. The female opens her mouth.
“Death is the only thing that matters. That’s why one found you.”
***
The agents leave shortly after we show Jerry to his permanent resting place. He’d always loved the ocean.
I manage to break into the lighthouse with the envelopes, open every single damn one when I awake. Sifting through asininity, I find a few interesting responses; among them, a pretty familiar verse of a poem. I feel like I must have read it before. I’m starting to think that my aging body is taking a toll on my mind.
Otherwise, it takes me all morning and all day to realize just now that my cell phone is still lying in a pile of glass. Flip it open—11:17, the 21st. The 21st of June, 2010, I’m realizing, is not, in fact, a Wednesday as the screen indicates. The 21st of June finds itself on a Wednesday in the years 1995, 2002, 2009, 2016 and so on. I thought it must be a mistake, but on satellite time?
It is night and there is a familiar ringing in the air. If I am correct, Massachusetts should be receiving some intergalactic company within the hour. They will not find me here. I’ve left a note and I’m heading into town to find a calendar, maybe a mirror. Some food that isn’t talk.
###
About the Author
Born in New Milford, CT, Joseph V. Debs moved to New York City to study literature and philosophy, briefly studying in Paris. Since graduating, Joe has worked odd jobs in NY and focused on writing short fiction. He has published in NY journals. He is haunted by the number 1117 twice a day, which, incidentally, is his birthdate. Joe lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Acknowledgements
Andrew Gray and Dave Robinson provided development editing for “The Word, Matter” with support from D. Yon Klempnar and Linda Hull. Andrew Gray developed the cover art concept and the cover graphic was illustrated by 3DGarden (www.3dgarden.org).
Other Dangereye Stories
“The Extraterrestrial Anthology, Volume I: Temblar” is available here
“Cooter” is available here
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