He came home, sat down and watched the walls. He did not turn on the TV but went straight for the laptop. He watched himself drinking tea until he pissed himself, then watched as Tiger struck him again and again as Dog applauded. Three million hits. Three million people on the internet had seen him. That was funny, right? He laughed for Dog and Tiger. He turned on the video a second time. The phone buzzed. He watched it a third time. He wasn’t going to make them mad again.
Becca. He picked up the phone.
“R u ok?”
“Something seems wrong.”
Dog and Tiger were coming through the wall. His fingers were ready to reply but Dog and Tiger were coming through the wall. Dog was already there beckoning. He didn’t want to come. He wanted to answer the text. He wanted to stay. Dog made no gesture but he knew what Dog was thinking. Dog had a way of showing what he was thinking without words or movements. Becca could get hurt. He didn’t want Becca hurt. He followed Dog and Tiger back into the wall and he followed them back into the room with just the table.
And a tea service. A porcelain cup. A kettle full of scalding hot tea. They had taken two days in a row. They had taken him away from Becca. They had taken his comfort, his dignity, his life. Tiger did not expect him to snatch away the kettle as he was pouring. Tiger did not expect to be struck with the kettle, splashed with scalding hot tea. Tiger did not expect him to shatter the tea cup against the table and jam a shard of it as hard as he could into the plush guts. And though the suit was padded something fierce, after a few hard stabs, plush and skin were broken and Tiger was bleeding.
Dog was upon him trying to pull him off but with a swift kick to the knee, he pushed Dog back, then slid off of the chair and picked it up, smacking Dog in his fuzzy, padded testicles. Tiger was reeling, Dog was doubled over. Another smack with the chair, another stab with another shard of teacup. A series of kicks, stomp and stomp and stomp to the reddening plush face of the monster. Anthony saw only red, only what they’d taken and his need to get the fuck out. Soon, Tiger was on the floor, bleeding, soon the chair was broken over Dog’s head. Soon, splinters and shards had made short work of his padded tormentors. Soon Anthony was alone.
The white soon faded. He was surrounded by boxes, nothing but boxes. This room had become a warehouse. Maybe it was always a warehouse. Soon, Anthony was no longer alone, illuminated by a flashlight. He looked up into the weathered face of the security guard wielding it, who turned white as a sheet.
“You gotta get outta here, man,” said the guard, “you of all people, man. Why would you come back?”
Anthony was confused. Had this man seen him before?
“They had kept you here two weeks, put you in all those videos. And then you decide to come back. Of all the places in the world, why would you choose this one?”
Anthony looked down, finding no Dog or Tiger at his feet. He wondered if they still stirred in the walls. The man had been right. He had been free five years, five years since the cops had found him and taken the two captors in. He rolled the man’s question around his mind and, try as he might, he could not find an answer.
Garrett Cook is the author of Time Pimp and A God of Hungry Walls. He is the editor in chief of Eraserhead Press' New Bizarro Author Series.
Is that really my face?
It could be. It looks familiar. But who really knows what we look like? We snatch glimpses, echoes, snapshots, but we aren’t able to take in the twitches, nuances, tiny muscular tics, that to us are nothing, but to others, identify us as an individual.
I think it’s the same as our voices. We only hear ourselves when recorded on drunken videos, or tapes. We then wonder: if that is what we sound like, utterly different than how we sound in our own head, what else is different?
Where did these questions come from?
This interrogation.
Am I mad?
Is this madness?
Do you think a madman knows? Or do they arrive at that realisation as they study their own reflection, or question their true voice?
I remember being told when I was younger, in jest I think, that the first sign of madness is talking to yourself.
How odd, I thought.
I always believed that the first sign of madness would be to talk back.
Is this what madness feels like?
I have no idea. What is madness? To those afflicted, they would view it as normality, surely? So how does one chart the descent from a balanced disposition, into something which is deemed to be so very different.
I feel different.
But then so many things have changed in the last few days that I am not sure whether this is real, or a dream I am yet to wake from.
What is real?
Define it.
Your description would vary from mine. Like the difference in how your voice sounds to me, as it does to you.
One thing I do know. A guarantee that you could use as collateral. That in life, we encounter far more questions than answers.
It is as if we seek to collect them, use them to test our mental acuity. And it seems as though there are some which fold in on themselves, into an intangible feedback loop. No sooner do you think you have unravelled one section than, on closer inspection, you find you have done nought, save for revealing a fresh conundrum.
There is one of late which taxes me.
If love is the answer, what is the question?
What nebulous, impalpable string of thought coalesced into something which I possess, but do not know how I obtained it? It is as if I climbed up to the heavens, to suspend the most beautiful painting in the night sky, just to break up the monotony of the null void. Yet upon arrival back on the ground, I am now unable to appreciate it from such distance.
Indeed, one does not beg to ask this very question until one has lost love.
I sit here on the floor of the kitchen, debris scattered around me. This concrete shell we turned from a list of measurements into a home, a nest for our love, now nothing more than a tomb for it. Memorials arrive in the form of envelopes, bills, statements, anniversary cards, made out to the former state, which no longer exists.
For although the love within her has turned tepid, brackish, it lays barely changed within me. How can that be? I realise that the choice was not mine to make, but why do I pry within the fresh wound when I know that there is no outcome that will return it to its previous form.
It is a completed crossword without any clues.
Then it started.
I became aware of the sound this morning, as I awoke from interrupted dreams. Yet I believe it has been going on for some time.
It is a buzzing.
Not of insects, or electrical appliance.
It is distant, yet constant.
I stalked the house, removing everything I could from its socket, turning over objects which rested on unstable furniture. Yet still the sound remained.
I walked the streets to the town centre and back; it did nothing to alter its pitch or volume.
Has it always been there?
How did I not detect it?
More questions.
Questions. Questions.
Enquiry and examination.
I returned home and sat amongst the things that we shared. I lay in the bed that we put together from its constituent parts. Nestled myself between the sheets that were dried in the stale air that we both breathed. The clothes I wear upon my alien body, laundered amongst hers. They tumbled and intertwined within the same water in the same machine. But I do not feel her touch on them, nor feel her touch on me.
I go through photos, music, book and film, of the things that we enjoyed. Laughed at. Fought over. Broke. Mended.
I thought that we had chosen each other to be the one with whom we would decay with.
Was that the problem? Had we allowed the fire which engulfed our lives at the beginning, gut and die to embers?
Why did she see it and not me?
Am I blind?
I know that
although I am not blessed with her vision, I am certainly not deaf. For the noise is still there. Even the sound of destruction did not mask it. Plates smashing, wood snapping, metal being warped out of shape. It remained throughout.
Like a kettle left on the hob, undiscovered.
Like our love.
There it is.
Listen.
Just below the wailing of the world.
It is a comforting sound. Like hearing your mother’s heartbeat within the womb. Knowing that no matter what happens, no matter how long you live, you will never know anything which will touch you, soothe you, as deeply as that moment right there and then.
I have to do something, for inaction leads to focussing on the noise. On the loss. On the knowledge that everything is different now, yet I remain.
The air smelt different this morning. Not inside this mausoleum. But outside.
Whilst seasons have their own musk, which alters depending on the weather, there was something else. Was it emotion manifest? If so, why not take physical form? Why so ethereal? Why does it hide? Slink from view? You think you have tracked it down but, upon turning the corner, it is gone. Vanished into the never.
Validate it.
I have to do something.
This sound. It presses against my skull. I can feel the point of the bit, pushing against the skin of my temple. Like a concept made real, itching to escape the cage of its own construction.
I stand up, for there has to be something left to ruin.
To help transform. From its old state to the new.
To replace its existence. To make it like me.
Broken.
Am I broken?
What is broken?
I do not feel like the person I was.
Is that what the sound is?
More questions! Every time I arrive at an answer, I do not get respite, I get more to discover. Unravel.
Debunk and root out. Why?
Again!
Can I not just let it be? This investigation, what will it yield? It will not return me to how things were. It will not turn this house back into a home. Some fractures are wide, becoming chasms. Huge rent gouges. Impossible to hide. They run under oceans, and hold continents apart. But even they are destined to crack yet further. What then? Quake. Waves. Destruction.
Other fissures, though, are so thin that they continue, even when you think they end. They worm beneath the fabric. To the core. They are the most dangerous. Not because of their reach, but because you can’t see them. You think your walls are built sufficiently high enough to keep the cracks from undermining them. But they have already burrowed far and wide. They are the insurrection in waiting. Ready to undermine any attempt at salvation.
When enough pressure is applied. Either in one blow, or over time. Those cracks. Those spidery wisps of air, held between the layers, open like trenches. Only then do you realise how deep they went. Only then do you realise that no defense, nothing, can ever stop them.
We all have them, you know?
All of us.
I know mine are at their limit. I guess I will soon discover the damage it will wreak. I slam the kitchen drawer shut, nothing in there left to destroy. Yet pain. Searing agony. I look down to see that I had left my hand in the space. Looking at it, my thumb nail is swelling. There is a mound forming beneath the skin and nail.
It’s trying to get out.
What is?
Why?
Where does it think it is going?
What does it think is out there?
Something better?
Something worse?
The pain gives me focus, though. Something to direct the questions at. These are easier. Simpler. The answers are finite. Aren’t they? Wouldn’t that fit snug, if this pain were to provide me a question without answer.
It has to escape, though. It has to go somewhere. The nail is bulging, like a roof sodden with autumnal water. The drawer has bounced open, I look into its guts and see a wooden-handled corkscrew.
It does not belong where it is going, but I have no choice. Lest I get more questions. Open it up into a pointless debate, one that would serve as a distraction, maybe, but I am sick of that.
I want answers.
I press the point against the welt of thumbnail. I am assailed by the times I have used it previously. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Christmases. The aftermath of revelation. Now nothing more than footnotes in time.
My time.
I rest my thumb against the worktop, push the point into the tough pink hill. It fights. At first. Resists me. Like the answers I seek. But I prevail, and breach the shell. It cracks, like the plates, glasses and trinkets we adorned our cell with. Like everything does under pressure.
Like me.
I twist the metal.
Too much. Too much.
It bites into the skin. As I wrench it out, it removes the nail. Amidst the blood and pus pouring from the wound, something overrides even my sense of self-preservation. The sound has grown louder. I swear it. Not by much. Someone else would dismiss it as coincidence. But when it has surrounded you with its endlessness, you know.
It can’t be. Can it?
I put my thumb to my ear, and listen.
There it is.
The whistling aria.
A singular note melody.
Persistent.
True.
Louder.
There is no doubt there. Not now. I feel wise, yet foolish. Divided, yet whole. Then it hits me. I have an answer, yet more questions.
Is that the nature of how it always is? That knowledge is infinite? Always, there are things to ponder?
That even if we were immortal, there would always be another question to be asked?
So be it. If that is the way, then I should embrace it.
I have an answer for now, but who is to say that it is correct? If you ask two people what colour happiness is, would you not receive two different answers? Therefore, are my answers valid? Why do I seek them out?
Validate me.
Assure me that I’m right, about this, about anything.
I did know one thing for certain. That this sound, it is in me. Its source or purpose, I do not know. But I want to find out. Of all the things I can answer, about why my love had to end, even though it endures within me, this is something that I can discover. I will see it through, leave no trail to go cold. If I can do but one thing, it will be this.
Will it make things better?
Will it bring me peace?
NO MORE QUESTIONS.
Begin.
Segregate thought.
Concentrate on the noise.
That damn noise.
The drone that aches, yet soothes me.
Keeps me awake at night, yet beats my name.
My name.
Mine alone.
Alone.
It’s the echo that only I can hear in this cavern. This construct I find myself deposited in. It has sides which I cannot see. Bars I cannot feel. An end that I cannot accept. Not yet. Though I know that I must. In time. But not now. Now I must excavate. Reveal a truth. Any truth. Even if it’s a lie to someone else, it would be true to me, wouldn’t it?
Why wouldn’t it?
Enough.
Concentrate.
The noise.
The expulsion from within.
It is within me.
Me.
Inside.
That’s where I must go. Not a metaphorical journey, but a real one.
Dig deep.
Refine.
Pore over and analyse, isn’t that the way of things? Perhaps I stopped; I think I must’ve. Become too set in my ways to warrant examination. Was that her reason for leaving? If you cease asking, pushing, demanding more, does that kill the root? Starve the stem? Wring the goodness out, and blanch it?
I put an ear to my arm, the part that aches the most. Why?
NO.
Enough.
I said no more, didn’t I?
/>
Again.
I listen. It is there. But when I listen to my knee, I hear it too. It is everywhere. And nowhere. I don’t hear it from others. Do we only hear our own then? It doesn’t make a difference. As before, two sides there are to most things.
Black.
White.
Some look for the grey. It is there, I suppose, but it is lazy. We need an absolute.
I swear the bones in my arm are oscillating. They lie restrained within a jacket of skin and sinew. I can help. Both them and me. The drawer is still open; most of the contents are not fit for purpose. Though the potato peeler was something I took for my own when I left to make my mark on this world.
She never used it. Preferred her own. We had two objects in the same drawer. Both accomplish the same task. Yet one is preferred over the other. Do they both not deserve a chance? Or was its purpose waiting for this moment all along?
I pick it up and sit back on the floor. The tiles are cold, and I can feel the shards of pottery beneath me, a poor substitute for a cushion. They ground me more than comfort, for that I am grateful. I place the blade against the bone on my wrist and, for a moment, I ask myself the question.
Why?
For answers! Damn you! Don’t pretend like you have just arrived late to this point. You were there the entire time. You cannot pick and choose when to show up.
I pull the peeler towards me. The pain is excruciating. The skin catches under the metal, but still I draw it back. It comes off unevenly. Patchy. In clumps of hair and blood. I pick out lumps from the blade where it has snagged on the metal, and continue.
I must.
For the sound, that strange herald, it has grown louder still. And whilst it remains a monotonal hum, it is constant and true. Neverending.
The second stroke is easier and, whether through practice or luck, the skin comes off neater. Revealing the meat and muscle underneath. The crude machine exposed at last. Its frailties. Its weakness. Hiding away like a coward.
Blood oozes in irregular ways. From pierced veins, and from shaved tissue. Sometimes it drips, sometimes it pools.
I consider it.
There are cells within my flesh, blood and bone, that remember a time before her.
There are poor wretches that know only of her.
Trapped Within Page 12
