But I can get you to eat, Edie. I know I can. I want you to feel as strong and beautiful as you were made to. No, I’ll rub my hands across your flat chest and your ribcage and the notches of your spine and I will promise to always touch whatever you offer. Please eat, Edie, you will still be light enough to fly. You won’t need to search for your wings anymore. I know they’ve hurt you before, Edie. I know why you wear your heart short, your hair shorter, and your wits so close. I know the size and weight of the burden you carry on your narrow shoulders, your 103-pound frame refusing to buckle, but you don’t have to drink it away tonight, Edie. Tonight, we are reborn into summer skies. Every time you say the beauty mark on your cheek is ugly I will kiss it twice. I’ve known the imitators Edie and not one of them are fit to model your clothes.
Edie, I know there are scars on your body. I know where they cut into your uterus and I don’t condemn you. I know that they took you to the hospital Edie, but I will wait for you every time, you will always have a ride home. I know the pills feel good Edie, but so do many other things, I know I can show you.
I know that you died during the morning of November 15, 1971 at the age of twenty-eight. I know it’s too late to save you, Edie, but still I’m trying. I’m still searching for my wings so that I may meet you yet. Because I know you can fly, Edie, and I know there’s still something worth smiling about.
I know there’s still a heaven for us where we can hold on and never let go.
36
PETRICHOR
Save me, O God! For the waters are come in unto my soul.
I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing:
I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.
Psalms 69: 1-2
THIS RAIN IS not letting up. Three days later and the deluge continues. For three days now we have felt the force of this rain as it assaults my rooftop and cuts through spider webs. And I ask you, Lawrence, are we content with this fate revealed before us? Could you find the bravery within you to face the unbridled arsenal of the atmosphere? And it would rain then, as it is raining now. Whatever choices are to us today free were surely ungraspable then.
I was ten years old, a subject of the diocese of Bishop Fergus O’Grady, spanning across the entirety of the largely uninhabited lands of Northern British Columbia. Though they would never say what it was that made them leave, my parents would often tell me stories of their previous life in Quebec, of the connectedness of the Catholic community there, and of the outside world that conspired against them. Enter the empire of Fergus O’Grady—the Bulldozer Bishop—so named because of the amount of land he would convert into suitable grounds for Catholic schools. As I understand he would often operate the land-shaping machinery personally. A blessing to my parents that I might retain a properly pious education under the tutelage of Bishop O’Grady’s Frontier Apostolate.
And it would rain then, out on the schoolyard, as it is raining now.
Stand out in the rain Maxime. Feel God’s gift. Do not struggle against it. Palms upturned toward the sky, everyone’s heart so filled with God’s love. Please—enough—there’s a four-walled promise of safety escaping in the distance. I can’t hold my arms up any higher than this. They would never believe that. Have you any powers in you to make these rains stop, Lawrence? You haven’t. And nor did I. I felt heavy under the downpour as if I were sinking into the wet ground. What I wanted then was the safety of an enclosed space. Away from the rain, away from their eyes. My developing body defenseless under the weight of my wet clothes, my arms ordered to remain raised toward Heaven. And their eyes. And they are getting closer still. I pray that no one can tell the difference between the rain and the tears. Our drenched uniforms clinging to our bodies, forms made bare. Even then I knew how well-endowed I was. And so too did they.
My parents are dead now. Underground. Made soft by the rain. A congealed mush like old leaves in a gutter. Water has no memory and I refuse to believe that they are speaking to me through this rhythmic downpour. But switches exist on the control panel of memory, and they are depressed now by the curious force of these oversized drops. And they live again. And their piety lives again. And God speaks again, His voice muffled, scattered amid the cloudburst.
And their veins would still be devoid of the milk of human kindness.
The blackness inside my father, they say it pulled his strings, it made him do things that he wouldn’t have done. By the time His end had come, I had long since made a point of not being around him. I knew that without hesitation, He would have transferred His demon invader unto me. And no amount of God’s rain would be able to wash that away. Oh, but there is a hunger within me, Lawrence. To push aside the walls, to break the glass of the windows, to ram the door down. They are dead and not coming back, and not a moment too soon. Would they be pleased to know that I have a $900 umbrella that I now use to shield my head from the falling rain. Do you want it? I no longer need it. I want to feel the water on my head. I want to feel it running down my face. I fear I cannot stay in here much longer. Oceans apart from what was expected of me. But what man lets the chaos of weather dictate his course? A weak man. A cretinous and unrefined boor and his miserable cow of a wife, both convinced that no handrails were needed on the path God had provided. The same path set before me, corralling me toward the same mundane and frivolous fate.
Eventually this rain will end and bring about a pleasant scent. The entrails of snails assailing the bottom of my shoes. The ignominious end of their path. Befitting of those who only come out during the rain. See what they get for it. Still, God continues to love all His creatures. You, me, Bishop O’Grady, the snails, the cur whose seed arrived me, the masquerading misanthrope who for nine months carried it. But you, Larry, my privy praiser, you of course know how easily the love of God may be lost in translation. The lyrics of your ode need only relay what can otherwise be found on government documents. Add to this your established literary flair but not one thought more.
Maintain the image. For what else is democracy but the pinnacle of idolatry?
37
PRIVATION
AND LO, THERE I was, sent to the mountains for my crimes against what the tallest man in the room called the natural way. As I crossed the wooden bridge into the lands of white-capped spires, the black-clad men who were to be my compeers of iniquity remained in silence. Silence, as I would soon come to know, was the lingua franca of my new family. And silence did claim its superiority. The timbre of my voice a distant ripple behind the rudder of silence. The thoughts I once used to confirm my being, the deluded compulsions of my heart, all blanketed now by the icy quilt of silence and sleet. With naught to hear now but the dirge of the mountain’s black winds I may freely focus on the compunction I was meant to have.
And silence will remain.
Each morning frost forms on our joints and mobility is stifled. The more experienced men here move at a pace that would make reintroduction into the former world an impossibility. Their feet never leave the ground as they shuffle their way through the fresh-fallen snow. These were men who once could run. Men who once could chase. And they did. Now their muscles have diminished, their range of movement curtailed by the gelid braces on their legs. I too have felt the slow disintegration of my body’s potency with each passing moon. Very soon the agility that I once relied upon to carry out the odious ambitions of my broken mind will be gone from me and I will become prone prey for the bone-breaking beasts that inhabit these rimy peaks.
And stillness will remain.
On these peaks, we suffer the constant irony of being the tallest men on Earth. We who have strayed in perverse ways from what is right were now closer to the sun than anyone else. And soon did we discover that the sun’s bounty is rationed per the inescapable tenets of justice, for it was not warmth it provided, but judgement. The blank canvases of snow refracted the sun’s light into our eyes whenever they were open, and soon we we
re faced with a choice. We could eventually blind ourselves from continual ultraviolet exposure, or we could keep our eyes closed as our minds ought to have been. I chose to keep my eyelids shut, and shortly thereafter, I had forgotten how to open them altogether. It was vision that initially allowed us to covet, and so too must vision be sacrificed in the name of righteousness.
And sightlessness will remain.
The vociferous thoughts that brought us here begin to vacate our minds. Released from the burdens of sight and sound we are blessed now with the opportunity to dwell undisturbed on the recklessness of our past choices. And soon did such thoughts consume us. The thinness of the air prevents a proper intake of oxygen, still, the lungs struggle to regulate, unaware and blameless of the reasons that brought them to such heights. There is no longer a distinction between night and day. We expend only the energy required to keep our minds stable enough for thoughts of repentance. After only my first month on the world’s peak, I have lost the need for sleep. I use what hours would have been wasted in rest to continue my passage inward. I am all that is sinister in this life, and I will discover why.
And sleeplessness will remain.
So, frozen we are to stay, far above the heartbeat of humanity, far removed from the desecration we have wrought. No monuments to our existence to be found on these frigid crowns, we live now only to consider our own disgrace. Though torturous thoughts of subversion will at times slip through. About my black-cloaked cohabitants, were they not once counted among those below? Before the silence, the stillness, the sightlessness, the sleeplessness, did we not have the freedom to fail and to err? But these are dangerous thoughts to be ignored. I shift my focus instead to where it is meant to be. To the transgression that lead to my banishment. To the action that caused the tallest man to sentence me to the snowy apex where I will forever remain.
38
PUTSCHIST
ON LOSS AND on where did it all go? Tonight I convinced myself that I had lost all of M’s book. All the files, all the notes, all the drafts, graphs, and charts. Everything gone, and now I can’t sleep. There’s no way to replicate any of that work. It’s gone. I’m back to square one. Eyes unclosing, I first considered this as an opportunity to instead tell the story of Montblanc’s latest kill.
***
FADE IN
INT. DIMLY LIT BASEMENT—NIGHT
The basement floor is covered in a thin layer of sawdust. Three men; M, D, and R, stand in a semi-circle, their backs facing the camera, obstructing our view of their captive. R, 45, a thin, clean-shaven man still wearing his well-fitting pea coat breaks the unsettling silence.
R
You’re sure this is the guy?
D
Positive.
R
And you’re sure nobody is gonna miss him?
D
Can’t ever be sure of that.
R
You know what I mean.
D
Then yeah, I’m sure.
R
Well boss, he’s your game,
how do you want to go about it?
M
Brothers, surely his mouth
must first be filled.
D and R mumble in agreement and step aside, revealing their captive, LAWRENCE SIERRA MANN, 30. Stripped naked and visibly emaciated, LAWRENCE desperately looks around the room for something that might help save him - but between you and me, luck won’t be on his side for the remainder of this exchange.
M
Take off your sock R,
just the left one should do.
R does as instructed. He had worn white socks that day, normally not the decision of one concerned with fashion, but the blisters on his feet had recently opened, and he quite enjoyed altering this pure shade with the crimson colours of his puss and blood. It had been near seven weeks since R had deflowered a virgin and his inner tensions were starting to manifest in curious ways.
M
That’s it. Now into his mouth. All of it.
R attempts to stuff his soiled sock into the mouth of the restrained LAWRENCE. It doesn’t quite fit like it should.
M
Come now, all of it.
Using two fingers, R jams the cultured cotton down the sensitive throat of LAWRENCE. His guttural gagging elicits the attention of D, the more sympathetic of the trio.
D
Breathe through your nose, friend.
No sense in hurting yourself here.
LAWRENCE adheres to this advice, like a good lad would.
M
Brothers, this man is a terrorist.
R
That right? You a terrorist?
LAWRENCE responds with a muffled protest.
R
You piece of shit. You camel-fucking,
towel-headed, sand-nigger piece of shit.
I should have known.
LAWRENCE attempts to protest louder, but the unpleasantness of his forced meal tickles his gag-reflex just right—his throat widens, and vomit begins seeping out the sides of the tight seal. GOD still loves him, and D removes the sock long enough for him to catch his breath and empty his stomach, which at this point contained little more than acid and bile.
D
Breathe the air, friend, but say one word
and even I won’t be able to help you.
R
He’s breathed long enough,
let’s get it back in.
R picks the sock up from the floor, dripping now with stomach juice and sawdust, and reinserts it into the mouth of LAWRENCE. In doing so, he gets some vomit on his fingers, which he calmly wipes off on LAWRENCE’S bare chest.
R
Do you know what we do to terrorists here?
Hmm? Do you know why the floor is covered
in sawdust?
LAWRENCE hadn’t had time to ponder the nurturing nature of evil nor the specific reasons for his current situation, though curiously, he did make an immediate mental note of the sawdust on the floor the second he was dragged into the room. Might this have been a clue as to where he was? Not as such. The dust wasn’t natural, though perhaps the reasoning behind it was. Inspired by the callousness of his captors, LAWRENCE met the moment with a dignified stoicism - the moment he realized what indeed the sawdust was for. It’s good for catching the blood. Makes it easy to clean.
M
You were my embryo, but now you have gone
and buried the Bible.
D
You’ve buried it, friend.
R
A real fucking mess you made.
Say, I have an idea.
M
Speak, brother.
D
Speak it, brother.
R
I bet we can carve a cunt into him.
I am an artist after all.
M
How do they meet with treason out East, D?
D
Enemies of the government?
R
My cock can tell the difference.
LAWRENCE amuses himself. M speaks, then D speaks, and then R. Mort de rire. LAWRENCE thinks hard on that. He doesn’t think about how big the hole needed to be, or where it would go. He holds on to his sense of humour and his humanity with it. Surely a traitor or a terrorist would have abandoned that long ago, but not LAWRENCE. Hope, it would seem, is not so easily extinguished.
M
And he smiles still.
D
The cause is too important.
R
Hey M, let me open him up a bit.
Mort de rire again. LAWRENCE smiles through the sock. He smiles as the saliva dribbles down his chin. He smiles as R approaches with the knife.
M
You’ve bur
ied the Bible.
D
Buried it.
R
I’ve only been fucking slants lately.
This will be fun.
And the laughter comes. Reparations for stolen land, for slanders against the KING. The blood of saboteurs flowing through his veins, now caught by the woodchips on the ground. Deeper in it goes, and deeper from the belly comes the laughter. Men were once quartered for the crime of attempted regicide. Today we enjoy more civilized times. Knives are sharper. You can barely feel them going in. It’s when the sawing motion starts when the niggling gives way to giggling. And O, how LAWRENCE giggled and chortled! These clowns didn’t even bring enough sawdust! And as LAWRENCE laughed notes he thought he had long since lost, he saw parts of his flesh rebel against his body. Hilarious irony! Though his vision was blurring, LAWRENCE kept his eyes open, open enough to see the towering M approach.
M
My weary embryo...
Buried... Bible...
And then nothing.
FADE TO BLACK.
***
But I didn’t really lose M’s book. It’s still all there, on the computer in the other room. It’s been backed up to two different external drives because that’s the kind of person I am. Or was. It’s getting harder to tell. Maybe I should count some sheep.
One . . .
Two . . .
Three . . .
FADE TO BLACK.
39
POINTILLISM
OFTENTIMES I LIKE to skim through the memoirs of famous political figures to draw inspiration, though I usually fail to make it past their covers. Most of them are just so impossibly lame and replicate the tired template of the subject photographed from the shoulders up, staring at the camera and smiling enticingly. Maybe I’m too close to the situation, but I can’t envision Montblanc posing like that. Or smiling enticingly for that matter. What kind of cover is he going to use? How is he going to market his book once I’m finished writing it? These decisions are beyond me. I’m just a mule tasked with colouring and collaging the truth while hitting the optimal word count. Too short and it will make his achievements seem insubstantial, too long and it will turn off the more casual of readers. There’s a science to all things of this nature. MaMo might just earn himself the Order of Merit one day. You think maybe I could too?
Panegyric Page 11