The weight of Forever rests on top of me. “I loved you once,” he says. He kisses my left cheek. “Before the first photon touched the sky.” He kisses my right cheek. “Before the first thought crossed a lover’s mind. Before the first neutron star blazed its glory.”
He turns me on my side with gentle, powerful hands. Unzips the back of my sequined dress down, down to my hips.
“I loved you once,” he says, and lifts the straps of the dress over the front of my shoulders. Down, down my arms. “Before the first sunrise. Before the first kiss.” He slides the dress beneath my waist, down, down my tingling thighs.
“Before love found its name.” He unbuttons his shirt. Unzips his pants. “Before the first galaxy winked into existence.” He unhooks my bra. Tosses it into the air. It floats away like so much flotsam. He kisses my left nipple. Cups my right breast. “Mascara, I loved you once. And I love you now.”
He slides off his pants, and brings his weight down, down –
Doo-doomph-doo-doomph-doo-doomph
My body convulses. I fall out of the chair. Crack my temple against the concrete floor. The edge of the skullcap tears the skin along my left temple. A moment later, I feel blood trickling into the folds of my ear.
Doo-doomph doo-doomph doo-doomph
I lie in a puddle of sweat and blood. And urine – unmistakable now. The dress and I marinade in my excretions on the concrete floor, as the judders driving through my body gradually slow to a shiver.
Doo-doomph doo-doomph
I guide my breath. Inhale through my nose. Exhale through my mouth.
Doo-doomph … doo-doomph
There. I catch my heartbeat. Feel the tremulous muscle settle in my chest. I try to lift my head from the floor. Bone-splitting pain pierces my eye sockets.
Alright. I lower my head. Sticky, but less painful on the floor. Alright.
I’m about to try again, to lift myself, when a cloud of static envelopes me. The pain fades. Until it feels as though it’s happening to someone else. Sleep. I can sleep for just a few …
The first thing I hear is my breath. Gurgled heaves of cotton wool and rum. My hypnopompic brain imagines thousands of filthy, naked feet sprinting across my tongue.
The basement door groans.
My heart leaps. I don’t know why. Don’t know what I shouldn’t be doing right now. But somehow I know that whatever it is I’m doing, I should not be doing.
“Breakfast, boy.”
The world snaps into focus. I blink. Night has come and gone. Sunlight sieves through the grimy basement window.
My eyes find the skullcap lying on its side. I tuck my chin into my neck to see my mother’s soiled sequin dress clinging to my body. I lift my head from the ground, and something crusty pulls at my cheek.
“Manfred, where’s breakfast?”
I shield my eyes, and peer up the basement stairs. At the fat silhouette in the doorway. A fresh blade of agony stabs through my skull.
Up. I must get up.
My knees quake as I bring them to my chest. I cradle my pounding head for just a moment, preparing to stand. One of the high heels has broken off. The remaining heel scrapes against the concrete.
A foot on the stairs. Another.
“Wait. I’m coming,” I croak. The words soak into the exposed wooden struts above.
The stairs moan under his weight. Footstep. Footstep.
I push off the ground … and I’m up. The basement swims around me. A blur of brick and yellow light. I shut my eyes. Reach out a hand and find the edge of the chair. Steady myself. Balance on the remaining heel.
Breathe, Manfred. Breathe.
“Ten hours,” says a quivering voice.
I open my eyes. Standing on my heeled shoe, I’m taller than my father. He glowers up at me, then down. His gaze sears my face. My dress. My bleeding knees.
“Ten hour shift I works at the bank. You think it’s easy, Manfred?” His lower lip trembles.
“I … no sir, I don’t.”
“Ah.” He puffs out his chest. “Then why, boy …” His eyes narrow. Fat lips disappear into a thin pale line. “… why does ya’ disrespect me like this.”
“Sir, I …”
“You what?”
“I was just –”
“You was just what? You was just killin’ the memory of yo’ mother is what you was doin’.”
“Dad, please don’t –”
“Don’t!” he cries in high-pitched mimicry. “Boy, what are you?”
“Dad, I –”
“Hey!” he yells. “You don’t gets ta’ calls me that. You ain’t no son a’ mine.”
The room spins again. I reach out for him. For my father. I need him to stop the world from turning. My father is many things, but he’s always been a weight in my life. Heavy, and ubiquitous. Cold, but firm.
In a professionally trained defensive maneuver, he snatches my wrist, twists my arm so that I spin around. He rotates the wrist further. Tendons strain. My shoulder screams. Something in my elbow pops.
His whisky breath is hot, wet on my neck. “Cryin’,” he hisses, “is for girls.”
He shoves me up against the wall. “You don’t touch me no more.” He clutches a handful of sequins, and tugs. The dress tears along the zipper, unraveling me.
The bricks against my face are wet with mucous and tears.
“You don’t speak to me unless I ask. Ya’ hear?” He twists my hand further. Blistering tentacles of pain squeeze my wrist, reach up my elbow and slither under my skull.
“Yessir,” I whimper.
He releases my hand, and backs away, panting. His footsteps, heavy and certain, ascend the stairs. He pauses in the doorway.
“Bacon,” he says. “Bacon and eggs over easy. You’ll have ‘em cookin’ in ten minutes. Was a long shift.” He slams the basement door.
I lean against the wall for two long minutes after he leaves. The bricks are cool against my seething cheek.
I gather myself. Step out of the dress – easier now that it’s torn – and pull on a pair of work pants. It takes longer to button a shirt with only one hand.
Bacon and eggs over easy.
He doesn’t look at me while I cook. I don’t look at him while he eats. No, I’m not hungry, sir. Thank you, sir. I’m glad you liked the eggs, sir.
He rises from the kitchen table, like a bloated carcass floating up from the ocean depths. Stumbles to his bedroom to catch his daily sleep. “Night shift,” he says through his whisky smile. “It’s a cunt.”
All the breath in me, all the stale, excremental air of the basement, leaves when I hear his bedroom door close.
I glance down at my watch.
I’m late.
*
Not while I ride the bus to work. Not while I take the elevator up to the fifth floor. Not when I walk past Elbows and Cowlick to my cubicle.
It’s not until I sit at my desk and see my reflection in the dark computer screen that I realize what I’ve done. A hot terror zips up my chest and envelopes me. Tears spring to the corners of my eyes. I force them back.
Lipstick. Mascara.
I forgot to wash off the lipstick and mascara. Applied the makeup last night before I plugged into the Machine. In the shadowy reflection of the computer screen, I can just make out the traces of dried mascara that’ve run down my cheeks. Tears from my father.
Elbows and Cowlick obviously haven’t looked my way yet, or they would’ve crucified me by now. If I can just get to the bathroom, I can wash it off.
I look left, down the passage toward the lavatory door. The gauntlet runs past four cubicles.
I stand. Four. I can do this.
I hunch my shoulders. Keep my head down, and surge forward. I march past Cowlick’s cubicle, a wake of urgency trailing behind me.
Elbows. I’m past Elbows. I listen for his high-pitched cackle at my back, but it doesn’t come. I’m just past the third cubicle, barely teen feet from the bathroom door –
“Manfred,
how’s the timeline for module delta coming along?”
The voice originates behind me. I know that voice. Calm. Powerful. The Cheese.
“It’s going well, sir,” I say without turning to face him.
“Manfred? Is everything alright?”
My back itches under his gaze. I … I can’t.
“Manfred?”
I wheel on the soles of my shoes. A man’s shoes, I think, as I turn. God, I miss the heels I wear in The Spiral Arm.
The Cheese takes half a step backward. “Oh,” he says.
I feel them. The eyeballs of everyone in the office swivel to stare at me. Like rolling pins, they slide up and down my face, flattening me. There’s a merciful moment before they recognize those dark bands that run down my cheeks. But then their brains register.
I can almost hear the click of recognition in Elbows’ bigoted skull. “Manfred,” he whispers to Cowlick, “look at Manfred. He’s …”
Cowlick leans out of his cubicle. His eyes widen. A grin blossoms on his lips.
I turn back to the bathroom, and run. But before I get to the door, I veer right. To the elevator.
I jab the button, and a microsecond later, before the pain hits, I realize that I pressed the button with my injured hand. A glowing rod of pain stabs through my wrist. They’re coming now. No stopping them. The tears. They stain my fingers as quickly as I wipe them away.
I tap the button again, this time with my other hand. Again. I tap the button again.
Dinggg
The doors open, and I step inside. The doors … the doors aren’t closing. I press “GROUND”. Seconds, dipped in shit and bathed in time, drip by. Jab the “GROUND” button again. The Cheese gapes at me. Cowlick ogles. Elbows giggles.
The doors – oh thank God – the doors slide shut.
As the elevator descends, my wrist throbs as a metronome to the mantra in my head. The Machine … the Machine … I need the Experience Machine.
I ignore the pedestrians on the street as I hurry to the bus stop. Ignore the paper boy who calls out, “Bhutanese Empire attacks! Invasion imminent!” Ignore the other passengers on the bus, and the conductor’s raised eyebrow.
It’s my stop. I dash the two blocks to the house. Reach out for the handle … compose myself.
I’m through the front door.
Silence.
Quiet settles between the fibers of the carpet. Rests on the dusty picture frames in the entranceway. Forms a film of despair along the graying walls.
“Dad?” I call out. Not loud enough to wake him if he’s sleeping (I’ve learned never, never to wake my father).
Silence.
He’s asleep. Resting before his shift tonight.
I unlace my work shoes with unsteady fingers. My moist, socked feet are cold in the open air.
I pad down the passage. Unlatch the basement door, and nudge it shut behind me. The stench of urine stings my sinuses as I descend. Urine … and whisky. The scent of my father. My wrist throbs.
I remove the torn dress from the dresser, and climb into the filthy fabric. The dress reeks. No matter – the Machine will repair the fabric; perfume away the stink. The Machine remedies all.
I cleanse my swollen eyes. Reapply the mascara and lipstick, and collapse into the chair beside the console. The periphery of my brain notices that the crumbling leather feels warm beneath my buttocks. I ignore the thought. Don the plastic skullcap. Dried blood cakes one of its edges. My hand, my good hand, glides across the controls of the Machine.
Fifteen minutes. I can handle fifteen minutes.
I pause. Remember the headache, the arrhythmia, the breathlessness after my last trip into the Machine. But then my lips recall the touch of Forever. His apple scent.
My finger hovers above the “BEGIN” button. With feverish fingers I increment the timer to twenty minutes.
I jab “BEGIN” before I can stop myself.
Green. A glassy plane of uninterrupted lime. Where’s the bellhop?
I retreat a step. Stifle a scream.
The boy lies in a pool of congealing blood. His jacket has been ripped, from his elbow to his shoulder. His once dusty-blonde hair hangs in the clotting puddle.
I step around him, and hurry to the forcefield. To the entrance of The Spiral Arm. I don’t hesitate this time. I plunge through its meniscus.
The first thing I notice are the tables. They lie on their sides, clawed feet splayed in the air like so many dead animals. A man curls in a ball of agony, cradling a wound in his stomach. The saffron gas upon which he lies is soaked with blood. A crimson cloud. A woman, her holographic dress flickering, sobs into his lapel.
I kneel down beside them.
“What happened here?” I ask.
The woman raises her head from her lover’s shirt. Her nose, her forehead, her hands, come away arterial red. She blinks. Again. Her eyes widen. Lips part. I know that look. Know it on my own face.
Fear.
“You!” cries a man behind her. He rushes at me. It’s the waitron. “How … how could you show your face again after what … what … look what you’ve done!” His arm sweeps across the nebula. Men and women lie in lakes of anguish. Stab wounds. Bullet wounds. Those that can move cry out.
“Me? I … I don’t understand.”
“You,” he snarls, and points his quavering his finger at my chest. “You were here not half an hour ago. You did this!”
As if there must be some mistake, because he must be talking to someone else, I turn to look. But no. Nobody stands behind me. The waitron is pointing at me.
And then I see him. He lies prone, his hand across his chest. I dash forward, ignoring the hysterical waitron.
He blinks slowly when he sees me. Panic crumples his brow. Feebly, he tries to inch away. His voice ebbs in stilted whispers. “Why did you …?”
I shift his hand away from his chest. A bloody slice punctures his dress shirt. I try to staunch the bleeding, but he shoves me away with the last of his strength.
“Don’t … touch … me.”
He inhales deeply, tangerine embers of the nebula swimming in his nostrils. His jade eyes grow milky, until they roll back in his head. He exhales. The scent of apple bathes my face for just a moment, and then, it’s gone.
His chest is still.
Before I have time to howl my grief to the nebula, before I can mourn the death of Forever, I hear it.
Plop … plop … plop
I hadn’t noticed it before. I was so focused on the blood of Forever, that I didn’t see the drops falling on his chest. My blood.
I look down.
The portion of the dress that sits over my chest is shredded. Splayed in crisscrossed lines, as though a child has taken a pair of razor-sharp scissors to it. Or a blade. And from its frayed edges drips blood. The viscous globules are dark. So dark, as they come to rest on the linen chest of Forever.
Carefully. Slowly. I pry my dress aside.
My breasts. Hang. Ropes of meat. Dangling … Butchered.
And then I feel the pain. As though someone has ground gravel and glass into my chest. Dizzy … the nebula swirls. Rolls into a cylinder, and compresses around me. Gold, indigo, and … black.
I jolt to life in the tattered leather chair. The Machine hums contentedly beside me, oblivious to the thump-thumping vein in my forehead. Oblivious to the fever in my cheeks. To the torture in my chest. In my heart.
How could this have happened? A bug in the system? I ran a dozen successful simulations before I first plugged in. And why now? No. This wasn’t machine error.
Could The Machine have generated this experience somehow, because it thought I desired it? My organs shrivel at the thought. Could this really be my fault? No. I know this is not my doing.
Which leaves only one possibility.
I feel it then. That something inside me – that gentle boundary, that careful line, that fragile calm. That something inside me … snaps.
My mind fills with the image of Forever blee
ding out on a tangerine cloud. Cowlick’s grin. Elbows’ hollow eyes. Father. His neck. His rubbery hands. His bladed tongue.
My hands shake with it. The vein in my forehead beats to it. The cells of me rise to it.
The drum of rage.
*
“Dad?”
“Huh?”
“Dad, I thought I’d make you dinner before your shift.”
“Gha … uh … okay.”
“Roast pork and deep-fried onions. Your favorite.”
Saliva dribbles from the corner of his mouth. He slurps it up.
“Uh … okay, okay. You didn’t havta switch the light on.”
“Pork’s getting cold, dad.”
“Alright, Manfred!”
The skin on the back of my neck prickles. But I don’t say anything. I close the door quietly, and wait for him in the kitchen.
“Y’know,” he says as he sits down a few minutes later, “folk don’t appreciate just how hard a bank guard’s job is.”
“Sure, dad. Yeah.”
“We’s put ourselves in the line of fire if there’s a robbery.”
I narrow my eyes in my best imitation of earnestness. Nod.
“That’s right, boy.” He rubs his massive stomach. “Christian work it is.”
He spears a hunk of pork. Drowns it in gravy.
“So, dad. I’ve been working on this project. In the basement.”
“Oh that.” He swallows. “Yeah, I played it.”
I wrap my feet around the legs of my chair.
“Yeah,” he continues, taking a swig of beer. “Quite a game you gots there. Kinda like those old RPGs I plays as a kid. But way more …” He searches for the word. “… inter-ac-tive.”
I grind my teeth.
“Quite a game. It’s like … like the Machine knows the shit in yo’ head.”
I force my hand to relax its grip on the glass of water at my lips.
“Full of idyits though. Prancin’ all fancy round some cloud. Dancin’ and shit. And talkin’. Jeez. They’s talkin’ such crap. ‘I misses ya. I loves ya forever.’ Such shit. So I thinks to maself, why not have me some fun? Why not make this a regular ol’ rodeo?”
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