There Is No Year

by Blake Butler

  The window led into the backyard. The backyard was full of sand. The mother walked into the sand up to her hipbones. The mother folded her flat hands. With the grace of nowhere, the mother tucked her chin against her chest and fell headfirst into the sand.

  Inside the sand there was a door. Through the door there was a hallway. There again the mother slept.

  INVOCATION—INVITATION

  In his room awake now the son sat hunched over her computer typing into a chat box with a 45-year-old man. The 45-year-old man had contacted the son via a social networking website that the son did not know he’d joined. The son and the man had exchanged email addresses and written back and forth for several weeks. The last email from the 45-year-old man in the son’s inbox bore the subject heading RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:hi.

  The 45-year-old man said he had a wife and an ex-wife and two kids about the same age as the son. He said he lived nearby.

  The son was not aware he was online. The son felt like he was sleeping. He didn’t realize any of the things he’d said to the man in all those emails.

  The son had told the 45-year-old man things he’d never thought he’d tell another, things he didn’t even know were true until he typed them, until the words were coming from his hands.

  He told the 45-year-old man about the knife he’d stolen from the small store in the mall, and how from there he could not stop himself from stealing knives wherever he went; how he’d taken more than two hundred knives from different places in the past several weeks alone and he had them all there in his closet; knives from restaurants and shops and other homes; straight razors and safety razors and kitchen knives and plastic knives and steak knives and pocketknives and knives emblazoned with special logos and with his own name and Ginsu knives and knives for scraping and knives for fighting and butter knives and butterfly knives and a knife he’d taken out of a blind man’s hand in the street.

  The son had told the 45-year-old man about the night he’d taken his father’s car in the sudden idea that he must drive, a sudden image of some warm location appearing at sudden to him with the hottest shower spraying hard against his head, a place that right now she must go, and in the night he’d went and had been driving, though he could not see over the dash, and how he’d felt his body moving fast across the land toward that lit spot calling for him to come forward, to move into its hull and stay and sleep, until suddenly from in the fold of darkness there appeared an enormous gleaming dog, a dachshund several times the average size, and how it had come unto him so fast even in unseeing that there was no time for him to spin the wheel, and he’d hit the dog and heard it go underneath the car and there was squealing and blood had sprayed over the glass, the son had become so shook up she couldn’t stop the car or take his cold hands off the wheel and he kept driving without slowing, he drove and drove, and when he found he’d somehow gotten home again he washed the blood off of the car, he scrubbed the car’s skin with baby diapers, the way he’d seen his father do, taking care, and though the blood came off the car it would not come off him and it did not smell like blood.

  The son had told the 45-year-old man what he wanted one day in a wife though the son didn’t know quite what he meant by what he said.

  The 45-year-old man had been asking for the son’s cell phone number but the son had not yet let him have it. Please, the man kept typing. Please. Please.

  The man had sent the son strange pictures of a light.

  The first name the man had given as his real name was as well the name of many other people.

  Now the son was typing and typing to the man in the chat box. He was also looking through websites for pictures of buildings laid to ruin—buildings beat apart by wind and weather, or hit by lightning or burned with fire. He didn’t know why he wanted to see those things, but by now he had a drive full. They were there inside his computer. They were in there, copied on and on.

  There beside the chat box with the 45-year-old man, another chat box opened. The message said, HELLO. The son did not recognize the screen name, HELLO444. He minimized the message. It popped right back up again.

  HELLO444: I KNOW YR THERE.

  HELLO444: I KNOW YR READING.

  HELLO444: I CAN C YOU THRU YR SCREEN.

  The son waited. He was looking. He stretched before the panel. A small icon in the corner said HELLO444 was busy typing. The son watched the blinking cursor on his end. He stood up and went to the window and looked down on the street. There was some mud there, moonlight, other houses. He stared a moment, somewhat transfixed. He heard the message chime immensely, a thousand tiny phony bells.

  The son came back to his computer and saw another message, and again.

  HELLO444: IN THE FAR BACK CORNER OF THE ROOM IN THE HOUSE WHERE YOU LIVED BEFORE WHERE YOU ARE NOW THERE IS A VERY SMALL LATCH SET IN THE FLOOR OF THE ROOM WHERE YOU WOULD SLEEP NIGHTS EVEN THOUGH THIS ROOM WAS NOT YOUR ROOM. IF YOU LIFT THE LATCH AND PULL THE LID BACK THERE IS A LITTLE PASSAGE JUST BARELY BIG ENOUGH FOR SOMEONE YOUR SIZE TO SQUEEZE THROUGH AND IF YOU CLIMB DOWN FAR ENOUGH AND THINK THE RIGHT THING YOU WILL COME OUT IN ANOTHER ROOM.

  HELLO444: IN THIS ROOM YOU AS A PERSON SPENT MANY HUNDREDS OF HUMAN YEARS. YOU GREW INTO SEVERAL DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF A MAN, SOME ENCHANTED, SOME QUITE BORED. AS YOU LEARNED TO LEAVE THE ROOM THROUGH MANY WAYS OTHER THAN HOW YOU CAME, YOU FOUND PASSAGES TO OTHER ROOMS CONTAINING OTHER PEOPLE AND YOU HAD MANY WIVES AND YOU WERE VERY WEALTHY. YOU LIVED IN SPLENDOR FOR LONG EONS AND YOU WERE WISE AND YOU WERE WANTED. THERE WAS NO CEILING ON EARTH THAT COULD CONTAIN YOUR HEAD AND WHEN YOU TOUCHED YOUR HEAD WHOLE PLANETS DIED.

  HELLO444: WHEN YOU GREW OLD ENOUGH YOU WERE GIVEN THE GIFT OF A SMALL OCEAN IN WHICH YOU BATHED FOR FURTHER HUNDREDS OF HUMAN YEARS AND YOU GRANTED WISHES TO PEOPLE WHO CAME TO SEE YOU THOUGH SOME DID NOT KNOW THAT YOU WERE THERE, AND YOU APPEARED IN MANY DIFFERENT FORMS TO MANY DIFFERENT PEOPLE AND YOU WERE WRITTEN OF IN BOOKS, YOU WERE WRITTEN OF IN THE BOOK OF MARK, YOU WERE WRITTEN OF IN EITHER/OR AND MOUNT ANALOGUE AND A VOID AND MANY NAMELESS OTHER BOOKS, YOU WERE WRITTEN OF IN LIBRARIES STUFFED FULL, YOU WERE WRITTEN OF IN ADVANCED SELLING FOR DUMMIES AND IN PENTHOUSE MAGAZINE, YOU APPEARED INSIDE SOFT TREES IN A LOW LIGHT, IN EACH BOOK YOU MADE YOUR PRESENCE IN SOME WAY, CAUGHT IN A BILLION MISSING LANGUAGES AND IN EXPRESSIONS NOT YET DEFINED, EXPRESSIONS DEFINITIONLESS AND UGLY AND UNPRONOUNCEABLE AND PROFANE. IN THE WHITE REAM YOU WERE SOMEONE AND YOU WERE ENDLESS AND THERE WAS NOTHING YOU COULD NOT SAY. YOU WERE NOT GOD.

  The son leaned back in his desk chair. The son lit a cigarette he’d stolen from the father and tried to think of something else. He thought about what he might have liked to eat for dinner.

  The reclining son was parallel to both the ceiling and the ground.

  The messages’ ringing in the room made the room pause.

  HELLO444: I CAN SEE U.

  HELLO444: I CAN SEE U.

  HELLO444: I CAN SEE U.

  HELLO444: I CAN SEE U.

  HELLO444: I CAN SEE U.

  HELLO444: I CAN SEE U.

  The other person wrote it again and again and again.

  The 45-year-old man was typing something also. The son did not look upon this message. He continued typing to the other.

  [The Son]: who is this

  HELLO444: HOW ABOUT YOU TAKE A GUESS.

  [The Son]: mark

  The son did not know a Mark.

  HELLO444: NO. WRONG.

  [The Son]: my father

  HELLO444: GETTING WARMER.

  HELLO444: NO.

  The son thought about it, really. He felt something in his stomach.

  [The Son]: my Friend from school.

  He could not think of the girl’s name or nicknames.

  HELLO444: DINGDINGDING

  [The Son]: hehe, yr weird

  HELLO444: J.

  HELLO444: WHO ELSE ARE YOU TALKING TO.

  HELLO444: TALK TO ME, TALK TO ME ONLY.

  The son looked at the screen. The son typed something then erased it
. The son looked at the last few lines the 45-year-old man had typed, in which were described various difficult contortions of the son’s body in the 45-year-old man’s mind and the words, between them, they would say, for our whole life. The son touched his head.

  [The Son]: so what r u up to

  The small Friend did not answer.

  [The Son]: sorry i am here now

  [The Son]: ??

  [The Son]: r u there

  The son’s cursor was blinking very fast. The son stared at the screen and drooled a little. The father’s cigarette had burned down to his lip. The son closed the chat box window with the 45-year-old man and placed the man’s screen name on his blocked list and deleted him from his friends on the social networking website and deleted his social networking profile and account and deleted all the emails to or from and saved direct chat logs with all the people in his archives who weren’t the girl, his special friend.

  The instant message box signaled that the girl was typing text. The son dug his nails into his flesh and waited. He heard the house around him sigh. He leaned and looked and leaned and leaned and leaned.

  The last incoming message made no bell.

  HELLO444: DO YOU WANT TO COME AND SPEND THE NIGHT AT MY HOUSE ON THIS FRIDAY?

  [The Son]: Y-E-S-S-S

  INVERSE COLOR

  The son could not find his cell phone. He’d been awaiting further word. The freezer had not become a tunnel as he’d been informed it would. The ceiling had not opened and the backyard had not learned to sing. The moon still seemed the same distance as always. Some of the son’s hair had fallen out. The son thought about his father getting young instead of old. All of these things he’d been promised. The son pressed his teeth against his teeth. He got up and left the bedroom for the hall.

  From the hall the son turned around and looked at the room where he’d just been. There was a wet spot in the bed where he had tried to sleep. As of the past few weeks the son could not wear a shirt without soaking through it, ruining the cloth. His sweat contained acidic properties. The son stunk often and a lot. While he was sick the son had hardly sweat at all. He couldn’t urinate or cry. His eyes were itchy and black with pus. His body bloated with all the liquids the doctors forced on him to drink. His skin would grow distended and they’d have to siphon off the excess through tubing that led to buckets that were carried somewhere away. The son heard something in the house behind him. He turned around to look. His brain moved quicker than his body. The room swam in long blond trails. As he turned, he saw his body moving down the hallway stairs. He was fairly certain it was his body. He had not often seen himself from behind, but his other self was wearing one of his favorite shirts—the shirt he had on when first entering the house. The son moved toward the stairs.

  Passing the parents’ bedroom, he heard the mother talking to herself in a language the son had only heard one time—heard through the crack in his old bed frame, the bed the men in plastic had come to haul away—the bed the doctors said had been infested and was the reason the son got sick. The son knew that wasn’t why he’d gotten sick. It was a bed. No one would listen. The son had heard the mother’s language noises once coming also from a crack in his newer bed but he’d stuffed the crack with gum. The house would sing to him for hours. The son did not try the parents’ door.

  The son had something crawling in his hair that was not of sufficient mass for him to feel.

  The son came down the stairwell with his eyes crisscrossed in blur. They could not parse the light right for some reason. The son saw a haze across the landing. The son held the rail and breathed and breathed. There was a certain smell about the house now, as if someone was in the kitchen burning grease. He could hear some sort of conversation. The room composed around the son. The front door was standing open. In the dead bolt, there was a key. The key had no holes in it with which one could slide the key onto a loop or key chain. The key was large. The key burned the son’s right hand. The son took the key and put it somewhere no one would find it.

  The son walked into another room.

  The son walked into another room, still looking, and another, larger room.

  In each room the son heard movement moving in the room he’d just come from or ahead. In each room, he felt he’d just been in there. He could sense the grace of recent movement. Each little thing just out of place. The coffee-table magazines set out of order—magazines the son had never seen, affixed with dates still yet to come. The son could hear his cell phone ringing, though the tone seemed out of key. The son’s phone’s normal ringtone was from a song his mother had always sung to him inside her, though he only knew that because she said. The son couldn’t remember where he’d left the cell phone. He couldn’t tell from where the ring was ringing. It seemed all around. It seemed inside him. The son continued on. The lights in the room were going funny. The lights spun fluttered. The lights were off.

  THE SON

  Through one room the son had to go down on his knees to keep heading forward. At some point he had to stop and rest. The house was brighter when he looked again. The rooms were redder. There were several extra doors. The son kept turning and seeing things from a distance. The son kept repeating the same words. Sometimes the son would come into a room and swear he was coming into the room he’d just come into when coming into the current room from the one before, and sometimes the son would come into a room and swear he’d never seen the room inside the house at all, and sometimes the son would come and there would be nowhere else to walk, and the room would have no ins or outs or exits: windows, doors.

  It took time before the son caught up with himself, there in the kitchen. In the window, he stood reflected. The son’s reflection had his cell phone in his hand. The son stopped and watched him move. His motions did not quite match the ones that he was making. His reflection was a little off-aimed, not quite there. For instance, as the son reached to touch his forehead, his reflection touched his neck. As the son opened his mouth in yawning, his reflection appeared to exhale. The son tried to say his name into him and the room went upside-down.

  MIRRYRAMID

  From work, by now, the father knew, there was not time enough to return home. His last trip there and back had required more than a quarter of a day—though really the father could no longer remember how long a day was these days—time was simply time. As soon as he pulled into his driveway, he’d have to turn around and head to work again. He hadn’t even turned the car off, and still clocked in more than an hour late, an infraction for which his wages would be heavily penalized. He’d been so zoned then, that last time leaving, he’d not seen the black object on the neighbor’s yard grown even larger, edging out into the street, so large you couldn’t even see the neighbor’s house behind it.

  During this last drive he’d felt his eyes forcing themselves closed stuck on the highway, and for long distances with his eyes closed he drove and drove.

  Days were weeks and weeks were days inside the father. At least that’s what the banner along the longest office hallway said, black text on white paint right outside his cubicle:

  DAYS ARE WEEKS AND WEEKS ARE DAYS INSIDE YOU

  Looking too long at the words’ letters in relief would cause the father to go gooey—soft umbrellas in his thighs.

  The father had never seen another body on his hallway, though he could hear them through the walls: typing, typing, breathing, eating, stuff.

  God, he was hungry, the father realized, in third person. Tacos! Meat! Though there wasn’t time enough to take a break now, the father knew. No, he had this box that gave the light out, which he must attend to, into which he also sometimes typed.

  JOB

  Each time the father hit a certain specific combination in cohesion with another input in the buildings’ many cubicles and aisles, inside another room, on floors beneath the ground, a mouth set in a white flat wall spit out another black and gleaming box.

  HOLE

  In the front room, through the open door,
the son saw how ants were coming in. The son thought he’d shut the door but it was open. The key was no longer in his hand. There were hundreds of ants, thousands of them, clustered in weird lines along the carpet, headed up the stairs—new crudded skeins of running cells—black—like glistened mobs of moving mold. They were everywhere, innumerable. They streaked in long neat lines up the house walls and into cracks riddled with holes. They made a buzzing sound like bees.

  The son stood in the flood of influx with them swarmed around his legs. The son could not unfocus his attention. He was staring at his cell phone, which he’d taken from the other son. The handset had shifted color. It was gray now—gray as gross birds, birds which for weeks had flocked at the son’s window, peering, chipping their whittled beaks on the long glass, wanting in, chirrup-chirrup-chirruping.

  The son’s phone had made 488 new outgoing calls in the last half hour. One specific number had been dialed 237 times. The son did not recognize the numbers. Some of the numbers did not have enough digits to be completed. Some of the numbers had digits that weren’t digits. The phone had also received a handful of calls incoming but the numbers were in encoded scripts the son could not decipher. All of the numbers that had been stored in the son’s phone—his mother’s cell phone, the house number, his grandmother’s house (the grandmother dead now and her number disconnected), 411 and 911, the number of the people who’d lived next door at the house they’d lived in before—where a little boy that looked a lot like the son had lived and he and the son had played together every day and the son had spoke into that child’s head, giving into him the words he could create outside his body, overflowing from his silent book, until soon thereafter, in the spreading, the son got sick and swollen up and blue, bedridden, and then the neighbor was not allowed to see him and then they moved—all those familiar digits had been replaced with one single listing. It hurt the son’s eyes to try to read the number. The phone’s display was glowing very brightly.