His heart stops and he dies.
8
Zombies Explained to Us
Dr. Rauf pulls at his sides as if looking for seat belts. He wiggles his hips in his chair, trying to fit his legs onto them. Eventually he settles. Grant pauses, scanning over Rauf’s cluttered pose, and phrases the question like this:
“Dr. Rauf, the explanations for this disease are very baffling, to say the least. It’s been said over and over again that this is not a physical disease or a mental one. And I suppose, while you’re here, we can clear the air totally. Is this a spiritual plague, as has recently been suggested? Clear that up for us now, could you doctor?”
Rauf rolls his upper lip under his nose, sealing his nostrils with the slick insides of his mouth.
“No. There’s no such thing. A very motivated speculation, indeed.”
Grant smiles. In fact, he is prepared to laugh if any answer turns out to be funny.
“OK. So we hear a lot about what this virus is not. And in fact, once we run through all the negatives, it appears that the thing doesn’t exist at all. So how is it that people are testing positive?”
“Well, one of the first things to understand about this virus is that its existence is incomprehensible because it exists contrary to the way our rational minds comprehend. And because the virus is situated, quite physically, anterior to the process of comprehension itself.”
Grant cannot hide his discomfort and his next question is impatient.
“OK. If you had to answer quickly, what would you say? Where is this virus?”
“Simple. It gestates in the deep structures prior to language. Or, at least, simultaneous with language. In the very primal structure that organizes us as differentiated, discontinuous copies of each other. The virus probably enters, in fact, among paradigmatic arrangements. And then, almost instantly, the virus appears in a concept of itself. This causes all sorts of havoc. A common effect being the sensation that the present moment is a copy of itself. It’s been misnamed déjà vu. Other early symptoms occur when the act of selecting a word becomes jammed. This process finds paradigms attempting to reinvent themselves as syntagma, and this manifests in the patient as fairly common aphasia. The person wants a fork but asks for a table or an oar or a knife. The next stages are more chaotic. As conditions within the personality become ultra-sensitive to their own construction, there is a kind of sped-up production of reality. This is a compensation for, or an escape from, the rending of their once invisible frames. Or horizons. Horizons that are quite literally looming. A frightening and painful type of madness ensues, and some of the incidents that we’re hearing about, cannibalism and whatnot, start to manifest themselves in the later stages of the disease. There are some radical metaphysicians now speculating about the potential for this virus to destroy the constitution of things beyond those physical individuals who have the disease. I would suggest that this, of course, would be suicide for the virus. It has, after all, a vested interest in keeping its host alive. I believe that the host is, in fact, everything beyond the boundaries of infection. Or, more conventionally, the host is the reality constructed to support us, and produce us, and on and on. Reality is an organism to this virus. That is, however irrational it may sound, a serviceable version of what has happened.”
Grant is in the grip of frenzied self-consciousness. He is close to understanding this disease and he can feel a terrible fear gathering in his good looks. He worries that his next question, that any question, or worse, that communication itself, is unsafe.
“OK Dr. Rauf, how are we catching this disease, how is it contagious?”
“Well, that’s a difficult question. One that is now being asked by teams of doctors, semioticians, linguists and anthropologists worldwide. A whole host of disciplines are working together on this one. It seems that people are waking up with it, so dreams seemed the obvious site of entry. It has been suggested that it is more likely that people are catching it as they move into a dream state. The structure of consciousness, identical to that of the unconscious, moves from the more or less illusory conditions of the personality into an automatic concrete version of the self found in dreams. The redistribution of elements may leave a person momentarily vulnerable to the virus, which may have already been there, dormant. Some specialists are suggesting that we use as little connotative language as possible, and to definitely avoid metalanguage. Like, well, like we’re using right now, Grant.”
“What does the virus look like, Dr. Rauf?”
“The immature virus looks a bit like a sunfish, brightly coloured, with spiky fins. And it has two long, pointy fangs, which it uses to practise scratching at the paradigms it will eventually invade. It’s important to remember, of course, that it is also becoming a tangent, and eventually the mature virus resembles the figure of abjection. The copy is a different matter. The copy is a strange, full and undetectable presence.”
Grant prepares his next question, pushing his finger into pursed lips, but he doesn’t ask it. Instead, he slides the finger into his mouth while making a slashing gesture across his throat with his free hand.
9
Lovey Pulsey Phoney
Grant has strong convictions when it conies to counselling the young, and he believes that adolescence is almost entirely a political passage. Young women should be made aware of the plight of their older sisters in shelters before being introduced to the thrill of the blouse. The connection, Grant acknowledges, is a male one, the short length of a long, punitive and controlling chain. He advises girls to seek out women who have enthusiasm, energy, exuberance. He instructs young men to proceed cautiously, to become aware of the complexity of the world, to seek out men who have a wide range of feeling. He cheers on the teenage homosexual, while sadly noting the complicated degrees of acceptance that await him. Grant listens with principled uncertainty, never hearing a wrong note in the broken voices of young men, or an awkwardness in a teenage girl, that isn’t important to the whole world. He gathers young people up and down, along the sides of his soft, kind voice, and asks some of them, with a hand dipping down through a circle of sunlight, if they would like to come and work in a big, beautiful television studio.
“Hello, Parkdale Crisis Hotline. My name is Peter, how can I help you?”
“Hi … uh … Peter. I got a strange question.”
Grant sits up on the couch and scrapes the label wrapped around a cigar. He flicks too forcefully with the back of his thumbnail and tears through the outer layer of tobacco.
“Oh . . . I’ve heard it all. You can’t shock me. Hey, first of all, what’s your name?”
“Uh, Warren.”
“OK, Warren, how old are you?”
“Eleven.”
“Eleven, eleven … I spoke to an eleven-year-old girl yesterday morning who wanted a sister so bad that she was pricking holes in her father’s condoms. So, Warren, I know all about you eleven-year-olds.”
The boy laughs and clicks his tongue. Grant can tell that, right now, this troubled little man can’t understand anything that isn’t directly his problem.
“Warren, I want you to take a deep breath and tell me, exactly, what you called to say.”
“Mmm. OK … I think I got the dog pregnant.”
Grant presses a finger on the edge of an ashtray, tilting it up off the table.
“Warren . . . that’s not possible.”
“I took the dog down into the crawl space and I poked it between the legs.”
Grant lifts his finger and the ashtray clicks on the glass.
“What do you mean you poked it?’”
“I went inside it. You know.”
“OK. Warren. No matter what you did. No matter what happened, you can’t get a dog pregnant. It’s physically impossible.”
The boy breaks in, crying and talking furiously.
“I’m so scared. I keep looking at her. She comes to me at the dinner table. What if she’s pregnant? What if? I don’t want a little dog brother! My parents
are going to kill me! Shit! What if she’s pregnant?”
“Whoa boy! Slow down there, Warren. First of all, I wish you’d listen to me. Are you willing to listen for a second?”
“Alright.”
“Are you listening, Warren?”
“Yes.”
“OK. This is big news. This is important. Here it is: you cannot get any animal pregnant. None. Not a dog, not a squirrel, not an ape. Not ever. Ever. Never. Are you listening, Warren?”
“Yes.”
“OK. Now that’s fine. That’s definitely not your problem. But. But you still have a problem, don’t you?”
“What? What’s my problem?”
“Well, Warren. What you’ve done has made you feel bad, hasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a good thing. It’s right that this makes you worry.”
“It is?”
“Oh, yeah. The important thing here is simple. Simple. Just listen to your feelings, Warren. What are they telling you?”
“Uh … I don’t know.”
“They’re telling you not to do it again.”
“I won’t. I won’t. I promise. I won’t.”
“There you go. No harm done, right Warren?”
“No?”
“No. You have just become a little boy who thinks sex with animals is wrong.”
“I have?”
“Do you think it’s OK to drag the family dog down into the basement and give it a poke?”
“No.”
“Me neither, Warren. And that makes us both pretty decent guys, dontcha think?”
“I guess so.”
Grant smiles and tilts the ashtray again. He applies a tricky pressure with his finger, rotating the ashtray on its edge.
“Everything else OK, Warren?”
“I guess so.”
“OK, buddy. I’m gonna go now. You call anytime, OK?”
“OK.”
“Goodbye.”
Grant pulls his hair back and stands up from the couch. He spins two invisible pistols off his hips and says, “Fuck the dog.”
By the time he makes his way across the carpet to the refrigerator a charge of electricity has built up and it snaps between his finger and the handle. He jerks his hand up and blows on the finger, then shakes it out and returns it to the invisible holster.
Behind him the phone rings. An angelfish in a clear bowl sitting beside the couch turns away to face the dark hallway. It raises its hind end slightly and fans its tail, catching the pink glow of choral in the transparent ray of its anal fin. A thin beige spiral swings in the water and the angelfish shudders it free. Grant trips against the coffee table as he grabs the phone. He picks up the receiver and places the phone on the table, careful not to touch anything metal.
“Hello, you’ve reached the Parkdale Crisis Hotline. Who am I speaking to?”
“Hello. My name is Greg.”
“Hi Greg. My name is Grant. What’s on your mind, buddy?”
The Future Bakery at the corner of Tecumseth and Queen is the beehive, the recovering addict’s caffeine spunk house. Men who have spread their knuckles up to their elbows hitting women sip Turkish coffee and design their Higher Powers, informing each other about how to surrender, sharing affirmations in their collective exile. None of them will ever be what is commonly called a good person, but now that they have stopped being so actively bad, they chart together a course to the hereafter. Chosen and marked for this, they hug each other lustily.
When women venture near, sit at an adjacent table or assess them from the line-up, the New Men close off distrustfully. They welcome the amend-making process. They would love to say “I’m sorry” and stand in that unforgiving flak, in the pain of being wrong. But those days are gone. Feeling useless to either gender makes them merely pray. And prayer has made them different, gentler, sure. They really don’t beat women any longer. In each of their imaginations a new place has evolved, a place that loops off the side of their personalities.
Here they picture God.
In between Greg’s pierced ears, and under his pretty curls, lurks a Higher Power. The Higher Power stands near Greg while he jerks off, waiting patiently. He’s a Higher Power who doesn’t look away, but furrows his brow, knowing that sex is when you’re waiting for better behaviour, not guilty, not shameful, just not quite holy. As Greg wipes his semen from his palm, the Higher Power points at the cuff of his pants: you missed some, there, no right there on your pants. And then he smiles slightly as Greg says, “Fuh-huck!” and flips the white dollop into a Kleenex. When he’s shaken out his hair, Greg makes room for his Higher Power on the couch. He sits with his elbows on his knees and says, “Greg, I’m going to let you live forever.”
Greg already knows this, and his Higher Power never seems to tire of saying it; however, it’s supposed to mean something slightly different each time. Greg pinches his moist pant cuff and wonders what exactly it means this time.
Finally Greg says, “Are you saying I should accept that Jojo never liked Hogg?” Hogg is Greg’s recently deceased rat, and Jojo is his recently estranged girlfriend. In truth, the Higher Power thinks it’s a bit amusing that a dead rat and a relationship well-lost are persisting as “issues” in Greg’s recovery. The Higher Power is very aware that his own sense of humour is always inappropriate. He looks across at Greg, straining to keep his poker face, while he nods in a way that looks important. Greg suspects for a second that his Higher Power is mocking him. But he also knows how inappropriate his suspicions are, so he pretends they are not true.
Greg’s Higher Power cannot look him in the eye right now, so he lowers his gaze and spots another dollop of semen on the young man’s socks.
10
Original People
When Jimmy was very young — not that he isn’t now, but a few years ago, when he was seven — an event occurred that would predispose him to silence.
In the backyard of his parents’ house, hanging on a cliff over-looking the high-way, lived Jimmy and his family. This house was peculiar for several reasons. One was its dramatic placement on a cliff at the end of a street in an old suburb of Toronto. At the base of this cliff was a scrappy bit of wilderness that was screwed up tight as a jar, between the house’s backyard and Highway 401.
In this little patch of land, a sort of old smudge at the edge of a new drawing, a doomed population of wildlife was living out its final generation in manic friendlessness. Snakes copulated on the drying scalp of the terrain. A fox scrambled back and forth along an unearthed concrete conduit. A million mites lived on the rust from a single barb of wire. At night their eyes shone and their microscopic faces vibrated with insanity. Migrating birds that had made this a rest spot for hundreds of years now sensed something was terribly wrong. They lit on the backs of barrels in the fat brown river, and when their young looked hungrily at a suicided worm or a grinning minnow, they clicked their beaks, sadly, “No.” At night a faint popping sound could be heard up and down the river, as weak heart valves in the young owl population strained to sustain life until morning.
Jimmy spent a great deal of time here as a naturalist, learning to observe, to read into what animals wrote. And he read very well. When he climbed the hill in the late afternoon he always looked back over his shoulder, because he knew that this little patch of land was teeming with sick, unpredictable minds.
The vivid certainty that button-eyed rats were throwing themselves at his heels as he made his final scramble over the top of the hill made him scream. He ran through the yard to a back door that seemed to be held at an impossible distance. A family photo of the door dangled at the edge of the lawn, without enough dimension to escape through. The snapshot’s border of chemicals, the loss of his mother’s face into the glare of the sun or the flash of a distant bulb, sucked the oxygen from his lungs. He was lucky to complete the dash through his own backyard.Jimmy heard people reading aloud from magazines as he kicked at the ground between himself and this door, reading aloud about
the boy who died legless and insane in his own backyard. His screams, these daily screams, were never heard because of another peculiarity about this property.
This house lay directly under the last leg of an airplane highway. Every five minutes, in the late afternoon, a commercial airplane tore up the air, drowning out Jimmy’s screams, dropping its landing gear just this side of the chimney so as to miss it and fall from the sky into Jimmy’s tortured ravine. While these planes landed somewhere else safely, they had also crashed moments before — eating up the ground with their noise; eating up Jimmy’s wailing, and ending the world over and over and over again.
As he lay there, for he always fell down to clutch the ground before he died, Jimmy saw the tiny red-button eyes of ravine rats look up and shatter. These tiny plastic shards flew across him as the belly of the plane lay on the earth to finally, after so many threats, end this. Needless to say, Jimmy was never able to finish his dinner, and when asked what he had been doing, Jimmy felt his young pathology squeezing his brain.
The more conventional fear, that his parents were aliens, was becoming a comfort.
Today is Jimmy’s seventh birthday, and his mother, or rather the alien who looks like her, is baking a cake shaped like a rocketship with a blue Commander Tom profile at the base. Like his mother, the artistic Jimmy is busy creating, and the tiny explosions he makes with his mouth attract her attention. He senses her alien eyes on him, and he looks up in time to catch her wiping the tell-tale green of the icing from her extraterrestrial nose.
“Jimmy, are you drawing those nasty drawings again?”
She slams her powdered hand down on the drawing before Jimmy has a chance to pull it away, and she turns it toward her. The drawing depicts a giant rat covered with buttons that are being sewn onto it by an airplane captain who is stretching from his cockpit to stab a needle into the rat’s eye. Assorted cowboys and Indians and dinosaurs are scattered in pieces around the plane.
Pontypool Changes Everything Page 12