Song for the Unraveling of the World

by Brian Evenson

I spend a certain amount of time in the room, sitting in my normal-sized chair. If I look only at the wall, letting my eyes drift along the crack, there are moments, brief moments, when I can imagine the face of my sister caught in the crack and then I can extract it and float it away from the wall to reside here beside me. I can feel her. It is as if we are both still alive and together in the room.

  But then I turn my head and she is not there. I am alone.

  But does it have to be me? Why must I think of myself as me and not as her, as my sister? In so many ways we were so alike, weren’t we? Could I not be her? Would it not be possible for me to shift my thinking slightly and become the unstable one, the one who needs to be watched?

  After all, I already know I am not as stable as I have been led to believe. How hard could it possibly be to no longer be me?

  2.

  I leave the room. When I come back, I sit not in the normal-sized chair with the broken arm but in the other chair, the one closer to the window. This is my chair, I insist to myself. That other chair belongs to my sister.

  I take my place and wait for my sister to enter. She will sit beside me and, as she always does, observe me. Why does she observe me? Because my father has told her to do so. But why would she listen to my father? And what manner of creature is she? Why is it that, though I am told repeatedly she is my sister, I have a hard time believing it?

  When my sister does not appear, I close my eyes. I empty my mind of all thoughts. And then, slowly, I allow there to enter, from somewhere deep within my skull, the sound of footsteps. They move from the doorway past me, a child’s step but heavier than my own. And then I hear her take her place in the chair next to me.

  I open my eyes. I do not look at her. I look instead at the wall across from me. It is enough to know my sister is there, looking at me, keeping me safe.

  Or is it? What is she keeping me safe from? She looks like me and she does not look like me. Is she really my sister? Why does my father insist we call one another sisters? She is not encased in flesh but in some other substance that resembles flesh.

  Once, a man broke into our room brandishing a weapon. He aimed it at me and fired, but my sister, impatient and quick, was already in front of me, shielding me with her own body, moving with a speed I did not believe her capable of. When the weapon discharged, it tore a hole in her flesh but revealed something unexpected beneath: another, harder rind that the discharge blackened but could not pierce. I remember that the man appeared first surprised and then very afraid. What in God’s name are you? I believe he managed to say. A moment later, moving even faster, my sister had done a sequence of things to the man that, by its end, left him little more than a sodden sack of meat. Like me, to his detriment, he did not have a harder rind beneath his skin.

  I remember my father questioning my sister. Why, he wanted to know, had she done that to the man? Why hadn’t she kept him alive so that he could be questioned and we could determine which of my father’s enemies had been responsible? Did she think it was easy to govern in a place like this, so alien, so far away from the comforts of home? Perhaps you need to be recalibrated, my father said, half to himself.

  If we are so different inside, beneath our skin, how can we be sisters? Surely we cannot be true sisters. But why would my father want us to address one another in this way?

  Perhaps for her benefit; perhaps for mine.

  No, certainly for hers.

  I finger the skin on my belly. There is a slight irregularity to the skin there, from where the man shot me. I sink my fingers in and feel my harder rind beneath.

  For of course, I am not my sister after all. I am just me. It does not matter what chair I sit in: a self cannot be shrugged on and off so easily as that.

  Or, at least, if it can, it can be only for a moment.

  I return to my chair, the one with the broken arm, broken by me. I close my eyes and try again to imagine my sister alive and beside me.

  It is harder imagining her alive than it was imagining I was her. But in the end, if I keep my eyes closed I can do it. I can hear her opening the door. I can hear the sound of her steps, so much lighter than my own, as they cross the floor. I can hear the whisper of her soft limbs as they brush against the wood as she climbs up into her chair.

  I revel in this moment of my sister being alive again.

  Then I hear the buzz of a fly.

  I hear it in front of me, behind me, above me. I keep my eyes tightly closed. I will the sound to go away.

  But the sound does not go away. It maintains itself, a buzz and then a whine. And then I hear the thunk of a heavy hand slamming down, killing it, breaking the arm of the chair.

  I open my eyes and see my sister, alive again, crouched in the window, ready to throw herself out. And then with a cry she does.

  And here am I tumbling out into the air after her.

  3.

  When I come conscious, I am not in the courtyard. I am on a metal table, a bank of lights above me, burning brilliantly. Two men in white coats and surgical masks loom beside me. They are turned away from me and hunched over a set of instruments and parts, making choices. One of them, despite the way he is swaddled, I recognize as my father.

  A large round mirror is on a telescoping arm next to me. Before they notice I am awake, I adjust it so that I can see myself in it.

  In the reflection, parts of my face have been loosened, the skin peeled back to reveal the rind beneath. There is a square opening in my forehead and deep within I see a dim, throbbing glow.

  My father turns around. With his tools he begins to reassemble my face. I remain still, as if, like my sister, I am dead.

  “I don’t understand,” says my father to the man next to him. “Misprogramming? Some sort of bug? Why is it seeing things that aren’t there?”

  The other man shrugs. “There is so much we don’t know,” he says. “Once activated, they begin to learn for themselves, in their own way. Maybe something is wrong, or maybe this is simply what happens.”

  “Do you think it killed her?” my father asks.

  The other man hesitates. “I … don’t think so,” he says. “The bond strikes me as too close, too personal for that.”

  “What do I do with it?” asks my father as he continues to layer my face back into place. “Reset it? Then I lose anything it knows about my daughter’s death.”

  “I don’t know,” says the man.

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Of course it’s dangerous,” the man says. “But not dangerous to you.”

  It is at this moment that I reach out and take hold of my father’s wrist. I do it very quickly but very carefully, and yet he still winces.

  “Father,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says. He is trying to keep his voice calm. The other man has stepped back and away. He presses his back against the wall.

  “What is that man’s name?” I ask.

  “Jensen,” my father manages.

  “Tell Jensen to do nothing rash,” I say. “Perhaps he should sit down on the floor and put his hands on his head and just wait.”

  Father looks at the other man, and nods. Slowly the man does as I have asked.

  “I don’t intend to hurt anyone,” I say.

  “That’s good,” my father says. “I am very glad to hear that.”

  “But we need to have a frank conversation. Will you be frank with me?”

  He hesitates, and then nods.

  “You are not my father,” I say.

  “No,” he says. “Not per se.”

  “Do I have a father?”

  “No,” he says. “In one sense, the closest thing you have to a father is me, but you do not have a father.”

  I nod. “Good,” I say. “Yes, I knew that,” I say. “Somehow I knew that. Shall we talk about my sister?”

  “You weren’t … exactly her sister,” he says.

  “No,” I say.

  “More like a … kindred spirit.”

  “A kindred spirit.
”

  “Like sisters without ever really being sisters.”

  “Was she afraid of me?”

  “I don’t know,” says my father. “You were there to protect her, so she should not have been. But perhaps she still was. Do you think that is why she leaped from the window?”

  I do not answer. I let go of his wrist. “I need a moment to think,” I say. “Can you give me a moment?”

  My father nods. He helps the other man to his feet and together, furtively, the pair of them leave the room.

  I look at my face in the mirror. Parts of it are closed and look like my sister’s face. Other parts are open, revealing the rind and even something throbbing beneath the rind. Kindred spirit, I think. What does that mean precisely? Someone who is like you, who acts like you, thinks like you, resembles you in the most important ways. But what happens to the kindred spirit when the person they resemble is gone? Who are they kindred to then?

  I leave my face as it is, partly open, partly closed. Like this, variegated, it better represents me, who I am, what I am feeling.

  And what am I to do now? I can wait here for my father who is not my father to come back, bringing with him a contingent of armed men who will try—and no doubt succeed—to disable me. Or I can do as my sister did. I can still show that I am her kindred spirit, and leap out the window.

  I shall keep in pursuit of my dead sister, my kindred spirit. I will not rest until, like her, I too am dead.

  Lather of Flies

  “Shall I explain how this usually works?” asked Lahr. He sat in a brocaded wingback chair, a half smile on his face, head resting lazily against the soiled antimacassar as if there were no bones in his neck. Motes of dust whirled through the dim light around his hairless head. Tilton was perched precariously on a rickety low bench across from him.

  “Usually you or someone not unlike you asks me a series of questions about my career before bringing yourself to mention the film. I show surprise. I tell you there is no such film to be found, we argue back and forth. Eventually I suggest, offhandedly, that you might, oh, if it really interests you that much, undertake an examination of a certain private archive. Not that there’s likely anything there, I warn you, but just in case—no stone left unturned and all that. You, elated, rush away, and manage through your ingenuity to force your way into said archive, only to discover nothing.” Lahr shrugged. “Perhaps, undaunted, you return here, to me. Perhaps you are deluded enough to believe it has all been some sort of test, a way for me to ascertain how serious you really are about the film. Whether you are serious enough to be included among the half dozen or so people who have experienced—or, I should say, allegedly experienced—the film. Perhaps, then, I suggest another archive, another possibility, and you again rush off in pursuit.”

  With some effort, Lahr lifted his head.

  “Shall we play it that way? Or will you accept now my plain assertion that there is no film to be found?”

  “You never shot it,” said Tilton.

  “I didn’t say that,” said Lahr, tone suddenly sharp. “I said there is no film to be found. Quite a different thing.”

  “Different how?” asked Tilton. And when Lahr didn’t bother to answer, tried, “So there was only rough footage?”

  Lahr gave the slightest, feeblest shrug. “No film to be found,” he repeated.

  “But it was shot,” said Tilton. “You did shoot it.”

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Lahr.

  “You destroyed it?”

  “Why ever would I do that? I’m not an idiot.”

  Tilton, feeling more and more uncomfortably perched, was confused. “I don’t understand.”

  Lahr smiled. “Ah,” he said, “you see? That’s how it begins.”

  For Tilton, though, it had begun some time before. Despite being a PhD candidate in film studies, he had first heard mention of the film in a bar. From a stranger, very drunk, seated beside him, who kept slipping off his stool and then clambering back up again. The stranger kept introducing himself. It was almost like a slapstick routine. Tilton humored him for a time, until eventually he tired of it and stopped speaking to the man, turning slightly away.

  The drunk gave a barking laugh. “Cold shoulder?” he said. “To me? To me? Don’t you know why I’m here?” And then the stranger grabbed his shoulder, squeezed it hard.

  Tilton looked desperately for the bartender, who was at the far end of the bar.

  “Not so cold,” the man said, mostly to himself. “Not so cold. Human mostly. At least so far.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Tilton, without quite looking into the man’s face.

  “It speaks,” said the man, and released his shoulder.

  “All right, then,” said Tilton, “why are you here?”

  “Don’t mind me,” said the man. “I’m not worth listening to, mostly. Except when I am.” He made Tilton wait a few moments before going on, pointing eventually at Tilton’s shoulder bag. “You’re a professor,” he accused.

  Tilton shook his head. “Grad student.”

  “What field?”

  “Film studies.”

  “Ah,” said the man. “You’ve heard of Lahr?”

  “The filmmaker?” asked Tilton, and only now turned toward the stranger again.

  The man eyed him shrewdly, with a calculating air. Suddenly he seemed hardly drunk at all. “What other Lahr is there?”

  “How do you know about him?” asked Tilton.

  “How do you?” asked the man. “You’re young. Nobody watches Lahr’s stuff anymore. Why do you?”

  For a long time afterward, Tilton was not sure how much of what the stranger next told him was true. His name was Serno, so he said, and he claimed to have worked with Lahr. When Tilton looked it up, he found that there was indeed an actor by that name, a minor one. He had worked on two of Lahr’s films: River of Blood and Angel of Death. In the first he was identified as dead cowboy #1 and in the second as bleeding man—exactly as the stranger had told him in the bar once he’d realized Tilton was a “film aficionado.” Tilton didn’t remember Serno from either film. Later, rewatching them, he was far from certain that the man he was seeing was the same man he had met in the bar.

  “Happy to have been part of them. Two good films,” claimed Serno, “or good enough. Since neither is hardly Lahr’s masterpiece.”

  “His masterpiece,” said Tilton. “Slow Orchids, you mean.”

  The man gave a little laugh of derision. “Hardly,” he said. “Lather of Flies.”

  Lather of Flies? He wasn’t a Lahr specialist, not remotely, and yet he’d seen all of Lahr’s films—or thought he had. “I don’t know Lather of …,” he started, then stopped, racking his brain. “Perhaps I would know it under another name?”

  “No,” said the man. “There is no other name. Lather of Flies.”

  “But—” he frowned. He got out his phone, searched for the title. “You’re sure it’s one of Lahr’s?”

  “Positive.”

  Tilton showed him his phone’s screen. “No sign of its existence,” he said.

  “Oh, but it does exist,” said Serno. “I should know. I’m in it.”

  “Was it not released?” asked Tilton. “Some sort of distribution problem, maybe?”

  The man lifted his glass, drained the dregs.

  “Something like that. Excuse me a moment,” he said. He rose precariously to his feet and wove his way toward the bathroom.

  Lather of Flies, thought Tilton; he shrugged. Probably the man was winding him up to get a free beer or two.

  Which was why Tilton wasn’t surprised when, after ten minutes, the man had not reappeared. He’d already finished his drinks, so why bother to come back? He’d gotten what he wanted. Tilton paid the bill and got up to leave.

  But then, for reasons he didn’t, until later, quite understand, he instead found himself walking toward the bathroom in search of the man.

  There was a stench when he opened the bathroom
door, not the usual latrine reek but something different: heated dust, irradiated air, ozone. The room’s lights were off, the space vaguely illuminated by a bank of windows set in the walls directly behind and above the toilet stalls.

  He turned on the light. The fluorescents flickered a little then stabilized, stayed on, humming.

  “Hello?” he said. And then, “Serno?” Even though he was not altogether convinced this was the man’s actual name.

  No answer came.

  He opened the first stall, found it empty. The second was empty too. So was the third, except for a long swath of blood behind the toilet, running up the wall to the half-open window.

  He didn’t know for certain, he eventually told himself, that this was Serno’s blood. It could have been there for some time. Or no, not some time since it was red rather than brown, and looked wet. He reached out and touched it, and his fingers came away bloody.

  “Something’s happened in the bathroom,” he told the bartender. The latter nodded. He began rooting around behind the bar, eventually coming up with a plunger.

  “Nothing like that,” Tilton said. “Not a clog. I think someone might be dead.”

  “If somebody’s nodded out, call 911,” said the bartender.

  “It’s not that. Come on,” said Tilton.

  The bartender sighed. He was too busy to go, he claimed, and he didn’t want to see—particularly if it was someone actually dead rather than simply passed out. But in the end he came all the same.

  By the time they reached the bathroom, the blood was gone. Maybe someone had quickly cleaned up, licking the wall until it sparkled (Where the hell did that thought come from? Tilton wondered). Or maybe the blood had never been there at all. He examined his fingers: spotlessly clean.

  He went home, conducted more substantive research on Serno. The two Lahr films he had mentioned were the only things he seemed to have acted in. Serno was a pseudonym, though none of his reference books or online sources seemed to know what the man’s actual name was. All they knew was that this name, Serno, was false. In addition, at least according to one source, Serno had been missing for nearly two decades. Long ago he had been presumed dead.