“Look, I don’t do this regular, but you look like you need some medication to help with the twitching or seizures or whatever you got going on.” He looked around. “There’s nobody in here but you, me, and I don’t think this blind guy is gonna give a shit.” He came up close. His flannel shirtsleeve had little red worms sprouting from the cuffs.
“Listen, I got some skunk for myself. Just a couple buds. I got some bad knee pain, can’t afford a doctor, you know? But shit, you need some medicine and there ain’t no doctor gonna fix you when you’re homeless and fucked up. My cousin, he’s got the twitches, you know? And the bud seems to help him. Seen it.”
He put a pipe shaped like a cornucopia in my mouth. A flame ignited like a bloody rose. Hold still brother, hold still. Now breathe, man, breathe … there you go. You just need to get out of your head. Breathe and let it go. Now. There. Get some sleep, brother.
My hand was in my pocket, clutching an object. I pulled it out and tore a hole in my pocket. I held it up. It was a plastic shape. Grey, brown, sage, white, whorled into a teardrop. A face was submerged in the undifferentiated substance, a long nose, as the blob melted through my fingers onto the floor.
The old man smiled and his gold tooth glinted and the silver serpent clattered, slither-clattered. The lights went out and all I could see was the gold tooth and lights came back and no one was there except the blind man and me and his dog and darkness glittered around me as I slid down a curved banister and my head turned to the right and a suit was there staring at me exuding suitness. I looked at his face it was a woman painfully beautiful as a knife-edge her face traced with flickering circuitry I couldn’t break free as she leaned toward me smiling shaking her hair of fiber-optic light you should follow me. But I sank down and out.
And I slid onto the floor and out of my body and
there I was lying on the floor I saw myself
insubstantial
blurring into the dog. Hiding.
Re la x ed.
Mmmh.
Come for ta bull.
I observed myself:
the past has left marks on my body
my state vector collapsed
consciousness causes
all time is simultaneous. Or a concept.
Hypercube of space and time. Is why time’s not visible.
Time is not a thing, no thing, it’s a reflection, the reflection of change into space
the angle skews with speed
the subatomic realm does not distinguish between
all is
all is change
I curved down a banister, sledding down a helix around and around and around the chocolate, candy-cane green, uncountable shades of turquoise, rose upon sweetgrass upon sandalwood upon lemon, rolling crescendos, notes too deep to be sounds, places outside, spatial folding comprehended, chaos itself a fractal god, that which is
Energy exists. That which is
I opened my eyes, and looking up I saw a branch growing out of my mouth and felt roots working their way through the back of my skull like itchy thoughts. I was planted in place as the branch became a tree clambering through the clattering, thick oak tree in the center of the train, windowpanes of pitch night slashing the dense bark, roots like arm-thick cocks fucking the floor, gaping vaginas in the trunk with hoary white beards seed pod dropped tooth bounce pop slap tongue swallow convulsion choke choking air air.
Leaves. Scintillating in silhouette. Lines, stems, arteries grew outward, winding and convolving as multilayered melodies, chaotic calculations, immeasurably fine strands interlaced like lungfuls of air with every molecule expressing life, crystalline ice. Charcoal darkness wreathed the tributaries, chiaroscuro. The pattern of each transcendent. Crystal lady, crystalline birth. Fault lines of consciousness in a fractal cornucopia, splintering through a crystal lattice.
The dappled leaves were interwoven mandalas; the light slowed—I saw light spiraling from my eye up through the leaves, uncoiling and releasing like a galaxy of nebulae; my mind showering out of me, my need to restrain the light in my greedy eye—released, let go my need and felt a calmness; the light—I traveled with it, not seeing because the light was no longer returning to me, I pulsed from my eye and spiraled upward, a gyre of light photon-synthesizing. I felt my breathing stop. Respire-cessation. A quantum of life. Small expression of will. Surfing the quantum foam of the universal ocean breath.
I was a liquid orgasm shimmering up the xylem and phloem diffusing out of the iron bark squeezing through the petioles and bursting like a supernova into the leaves swaying with the movements of the train, aware of all simultaneously.
The tracks are ajar
Existence is a blip
Matter does not exist but in time, it vanishes
Motion, the vibration drags time into existence
we fling our bodies against each other in desire to return to the great
crunch every particle of our being drives us in hunger
to return to the Nirvanic state when everything touched
before Chaos cast a spell, flinging a universe into existence
repulsion causing desire, rejection,
the Freudian trauma of the Big Bang sex party
and gravity is the friction, the masturbation of the universe.
I = my reified future + my reified past = a vector and the state of my vector is collapse all collapsed
The present is a coordin(ate)ator
a vector is a trajectory in the present, a point with direction, an impetus, an impulse, a groove, energy plus direction
The mind is formless
thought is energy, energy is a wave, a motion, a fluctuation
if the mind is a wave where is it waving?
What is it waving at?
My Self? My conception of my Self?
leaping like a neural charge
The universe is a dream lit up
crossing the synaptic
gap
all electrons are one electron forever leaping
all our thoughts simultaneously leaping the universe
instantaneously endlessly on its own
random irreducible absolute
cruel amoral atemporal
without influence
among complexes of universes
I turned my head and the suit with circuitry mapping his clean beautiful face, it hurt to look at her, was observing me frowning as he transformed into a woman, the most beautiful man as she leaned forward, come fuck me, he said, you should follow me, hand of light reaching toward me seizing my branches but I descended further, escaped her embrace.
Blackness, nothingness. Slivers of light from the windows revealed the dog standing and he was big, then utter darkness then the dog growing bigger, blackness again, then the dog filling the train, towering over me. I was on the threshold
and a guillotine mouth snapped at me
the metal slammed hard on both sides of my head.
I opened my eyes. I could see the mouth. Again—SMASH—like a bat to my temples. My eyesight went googly, bubbles of shock popping above me in the dark as the mouth retreated once again and leapt to attack, my brain shattered into a million shiny shards of migraine light diamond knives gnashing. I became aware of a deep thrumming sound a ceaseless kettle drum, an anh anh anh in in in in infinite oscillation manifested, my mind so sharpened must’ve sliced through layers of reality, stretched tight like string theory, adventuring like Timothy Leary, torn and twisted like a Frank Gehry, stacks of warped records, chords cut, trajectories topological, lop a logical universe and my body apart. Twinned, twined.
Static hiss a murmur the smell musk sandpaper on my cheek I lurched BANG against metal, the moaning louder heaviness on my chest digging a weight crushing my groin I couldn’t breathe raspy splash on my face I couldn’t feel my arms couldn’t touch anything felt hot juice in my mouth leaking between my teeth I opened my eyes I opened my eyes I opened my eyes in the arc of a broad white blade I heard myself looking into my
eyes above me the sour breath of an unfathomable black hole gleaming many gleaming sharp triangles coming toward me knives roaring white lightning gashed my head in half—I stepped back inside myself from a point of view I did not know existed and watched my eyes explode atomizing my head I’m screaming silence and
I collapsed into the space between
the doors
I took a breath. A deep, slow breath. My limbs, my chest, my head floated up through darkness. I was aware of a twittering followed by a harsh screeching sound. A draft crossed my throat. The air was dry.
I seemed to be outside.
Assessment: my body felt like it had been pounded like a piece of meat. Beat-up and aching. I was pulled down, weights hanging from my bones. Lying on my back. Back of my skull pressing against hard ground. Lightheaded. My eyes were closed. I slit them. A crescent of harsh light. I closed my eyes again. Bright spots with blue around them. I opened my eyes again, squinting. I couldn’t place the context of what I was looking at. I thought of a bucket, the emptiness in a bucket … but …
I lifted my head weakly and felt the world flip, and my eyes contracted, and my orientation skewed: I was looking at a writhing ceiling of clouds about twenty feet above the dark earth. In all directions. Mud brown, dull orange, shades of dirty grey—like crocheted fingers weaving the sky impossibly close. Something had gone weird.
My shirt was soggy and stuck to my chest. Sent a command to my right shoulder, and my body grimaced, my arm throwing itself over. I rolled over onto my stomach. The dirt smelled … dull. Barren. Vaguely chemical. I rose to my knees, which were also sore. Pushed with my arms and brought my head up forward.
An identical view: endless dirt. The ceiling of clouds allowed a waxy light to trickle through; the view faded into haze some hundred feet distant. I turned and looked in all four directions. Nothing, nothing, nothing, and nothing. Even the air was like dirt: stale, dense, and disagreeable. I sat back and rose to my feet. My legs almost gave out, and I pirouetted a few steps like a drunken marionette. Stopped and planted my feet. Took a deep breath again and sought direction.
I turned degree by degree. I did not … where had I come from?
Another deep breath—thick and painful. One foot in front of the other. My pants smeared with yellow all down the crotch. My velvet jacket and damp shirt ripped. I looked up, moved forward. Nothing. All directions were undifferentiated. I could not tell straight from curved, downhill from up; my steps ragged, I walked. I could not tell how long … how much time had passed. I had been walking sideways but didn’t know it. I was walking. I fell painfully to my knees. I dragged myself up again, rubbed my forehead with one hand and the back of my neck with the other—clammy, but at least I was alive.
I kept walking. Direction and directionless.
My eyes fell upon a line through the fog, a smear of darker color. I dragged myself toward it, every step triggering the wayward sensation of a walk of shame. The smear grew—as did a scent I couldn’t identify—until it assumed the more definitive form of a ridge. Had I been traveling upward? At the ridge, I crossed a strip of rough low scrub and discovered a hidden river, the water ponderous and dark.
A jarring sound struck my consciousness. It was the first voice I’d heard since the train—a distant voice: “… here.” On the other side of the river a figure stood inside what appeared to be a glass egg. The man seemed to be signaling me, and he spoke again in a muffled voice, “… you wannu cross?”
I could not bring a word.
He was looking at me. It was hard to tell what he looked like, the river being about sixty feet across. He seemed tall, wearing a cloak or a grey smock or shroud down to his feet.
He walked, carrying the egg over his head—only it was really a half-sphere open at the bottom that almost entirely covered him. He moved closer, into the scrub on the other bank of the river. He was directly opposite me now.
“Do you wanna cross? I can help!” He stood still. His face appeared haggard and bearded.
“Hello!” I called back. “Could you tell me where I am?”
“Right there!”
“Right. Well. What are we near?”
The man pondered for a minute. “Near the land mostly!”
“… oh-kay. Is there a city nearby?”
“Not sure. Might be in one of these directions.” He pointed along the river in both directions.
“Do you know what it’s called?”
“No!”
“What state are we in?”
“I’m not sure wha’ we have in common,” he replied.
“You’re … we’re … in the United States, right?”
“Suppose that depends on yer point of view.”
“What?”
“I’m saying I felt alone fer a long time. Hold on!” he called as he sat down in the scrub and tilted the dome backwards until its open base faced me and his body was cupped in the curve. A tube grew out from under his smock, extending toward the river—it thickened, became a pipe curving up and arching across the river—widening as it descended toward me to form a bridge, coming straight at me. I fell back just as it rammed into the rocks where I had been standing.
It was the head of a penis.
It was a penis.
Bobbing just above the riverbank.
I looked back, following it across the river to the man lying in the half sphere where it got smaller and smaller until it disappeared into his smock.
“Go fer it,” he said crisply, the parabola of the shape carrying his words to my ears. I ran and vaulted up onto the penis head, which bounced a bit but soon steadied. I stepped onto the foreskin. I walked up the penis … it felt like the surface of a drum. The dimpled water below me opaque and turgid. Up and over the apex, hurrying downhill toward him as it got narrower and narrower—I lost footing, rode it down like a staircase railing—off balance, fell sideways, my left arm landing in the water, my face dunking, the water warm.
I shook the water off my arm as I got up. His penis was retracting, shrinking back until just the tip stuck out from under his kilt. I spit out the tasteless water. I was going to ask something but … clenched my hand into a fist as if to hold on to a thought that slipped away like the smoke of a half-remembered dream.
I look at this man sitting in front of me and feel sleepy. Scrunch my eyes and open them. The man has a long face, so very narrow, unnaturally narrow, and pasty with a long beard shaped like a paddle.
“You can call me Ron,” he says.
I look around. A river. A small area of scrub. He is sitting cross-legged inside a glass sphere, part of a sphere—no, wait, a glass ovoid—lying back in it as if he is relaxing. The sky. Jaundiced clouds roiling in mustards and sulfurs and dough and camel and dirty orange. Rumbling, murky clouds like greasy cotton interlace some short distance above my head. This doesn’t seem right, a sky so low. Some kind of fog.
“Call me Ron.” This man in a dark grey robe has pustular skin like over-boiled cauliflower. He flips the glass egg to cover himself.
“Where’ve you been?” Ron’s voice is a rickety old shack I’m scared to enter. A little creature crawls out of the right side of his unruly beard; a tic consumes the left side of his face.
On my body: a velvety black jacket ripped at the shoulder with royal blue lapel and collar, black long-sleeve shirt—no collar and ripped at the neck—black pants smeared with crusty yellow stains. And black shoes.
“Not so chatty, eh? You can come in—wait, before … would you get some water? I’m thirsty. Are you? Here’s a cup.”
With his foot, Ron pushes a cup, a silver cup, out from under the egg. I take it to the shore and fill it. The water grey and dark, turgid and opaque, swollen like a drowning victim. The scent familiar … musty … have I seen this river before?
“Here, give it to me.”
A lightning bolt of thirst strikes me. I toss the water back. I will drink … I will sit down with my shoulder against a wall, a glass wall, a cup in my hand; I will
set it down.
Behind the wall will sit an old man with a pitchfork-full of straw germinating from his long grey face and a grey robe slid up his legs to expose a penis lying against the dirt. The curved wall … he’ll be under an egg-shaped glass bowl. He’ll lift the egg, stick out his hand, take the cup, and study the inside thoughtfully, then turn it upside down and look at the bottom. He’ll turn it back over and look inside again. “Well, it looks like I’m out. Would you mind getting me some water? I’m thirsty, are you? Here’s a cup.” He’ll push the cup out. I’ll look around: a river. I’ll take the cup and scoop up some water from the river swollen like a drowning victim.
Returning to the old man, I’ll kneel down to pass him the cup as he lifts the egg, and I’ll crawl under. I’ll be inside now. Half an egg. The egg will cover us completely. He’ll take the cup and look into it.
“Well this is top notch. Top notch. Water. What a nice surprise. All right, well. Hello? My name is Ron,” and a tremor will take over his left side as he drinks from the cup with his right hand.
He—sitting by my side, looking out at the river—will have a very long penis.
“My home.”
Refracted through the glass: a living pointillist kaleidoscope in a soap bubble.
“That,” he’ll point upwards, “shows from the inside.”
His craggy face will be rendered in topographic maps of the entire chromatographic spectrum while a spiral staircase of color contours his penis.
“Oh!” Ron will slap at the salamander-like thing that crawls onto his collarbone and catch it in his cupped hand. He’ll pop it in his mouth then pull it halfway out, bite it in half, and offer me the still-wriggling tail end. His fingers will be long and gaunt.
“You’ll have to excuse me. I forget my manners.”
The wriggling tail … nacreous and hypnotic. I’ll open my mouth (this would appear to be the right thing to do) and he’ll drop it in. I’ll swallow, and it will squirm its way down as my throat gags in revolt, my tongue thick and fat.
“All right. Listen. I find myself rather lonely here, but the colors mostly keep me company. I like to think … if love was visible, this is what it would look like. What’s your name?” he’ll ask.
A Greater Monster Page 4