New People of the Flat Earth

by Brian Short

  He shivered involuntarily, then said, “I think there’s something terrible…”

  Amanda leaned in close to him. “The magic is always terrible,” she said, her voice lowered. “You must know about this.” Then she stood again and brightened, saying, “Do you want coffee?”

  “Yes.”

  “I meant that as a joke.”

  “Yes, but… yes. I would like some coffee.”

  She looked at him, scowling.

  “How do you ever sleep?” “I don’t. I can’t. It makes too much noise and disturbs my landlords. But if I keep my eyes open all night, I’ll at least know if I’m screaming. Or whatever it is I do…”

  “You’re just a bull in a china shop, aren’t you?”

  “I do things I don’t even know.” He shook his head in perplexity.

  “Don’t let those people get under your skin. Those Rumseys. Really. They’re crazy, you know. Certifiable. Really. You just need to find somewhere else to live. With all these empty houses, there must be something… Just a second, let me run this back.” She took the ticket she’d scribbled back to a carousel in the kitchen window and chimed the little bell to announce it. When she returned, she had with her the coffee he’d requested.

  “I… sent my film in,” Proteus said, looking up, hopeful, expectant. Somewhere something crashed and broke.

  Amanda looked vaguely backward, trying to find the source. She said, “What?”

  “My film. I sent it in.”

  “Your film. I didn’t know you had film.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I do.”

  “I want for you to tell me about this.”

  “I sent it in. I’m going to have prints made from the negatives. Big prints; big, bright prints. Lovely prints. There’s a lab, you know, in Phoenix? That’s where I sent the negatives. Because now I have some money and I can do this.”

  “Okay.”

  “When they come back, they’ll be large and beautiful, but for now, they’re just tiny.” He sipped his coffee and tried not to make the face he wanted to make at it. “And backwards. I mean, the colors are backwards. They’re negatives.”

  She set the pot on the table then sat herself beside him in the booth. “I know what negatives are. Tell me about the pictures,” she said.

  “They’re… pictures of the sky. I took them all myself, all of the sky, every one.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I had to,” he said.

  She nodded slowly to herself and asked him, “Was it the magic?”

  “I think so.”

  “And was it…?”

  “It was terrible. Yes, very. Very terrible. I had to do it.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Each photo…” He hesitated, a lost look abruptly come over his face. He found there was nothing more he could say because his mind had gone blank, completely. He stared ahead, stupefied, a man suddenly in mid-air with no floor underneath him and nothing to do but fall.

  Amanda studied him, and in a moment she assessed what had happened. “That’s okay,” she said finally, patting the back of his hand, which rested flatly on the formica table. “It’s gone now, isn’t it? That’s okay. When you’re ready again, you can tell me the rest. When you find the words. I think that, maybe, for now, you’re starting to understand how it works around here. There are things that nobody can talk about, things we can’t begin to understand, even though they’re just, maybe, just ordinary things. The words escape us. We don’t know why. You see, everyone here has lost something or somebody. Everyone. The people… it’s not just those who’ve gone missing, you know. Yes, it’s like a death in the family, in every family, likely more than one. But there’s even more to it than that, something that comes before that, some violence of impact. It’s a language, you know, the violence. The violence is a language. It’s like we’ve all crashed into something ungiving, a rock wall, while driving in our cars. We were going too fast, and we crashed, and now we’re stumbling from the wreckage, dazed and bleeding, and we don’t understand what just happened. Our heads are broken. Our heads…” She removed her hand from his hand now and put it gently to his temple. “We stumble across the road, covered in blood. We’re in shock, we’re hurt, we have that unfocused look in our eyes. I know you know what I mean, because you’re the same. The same thing happened to you, didn’t it? That’s why you’ve come here… isn’t it? You thought you were looking for something, for someone? You thought, maybe, if you could find the sheriff…? What then? That he could help you? That he could point you back toward what’s gone away? He’s no better, Proteus – no better able than any of us to articulate this damage. He’s worse. And of course, he’s as gone now as the rest of them. No, what you really came here for was the pain. It was the longing – that’s what it was. That’s what you know. The pain and longing of that damage, of what you’ve lost; what you had, but has gone.”

  “I… everyone, yes, but…?” He looked square into the oily darkness of his cup, into the black coffee, and thought that he could maybe see something there in it, some wavering inversion – this diner, almost, but differently lit, and a reflection of himself that was not himself, not quite, staring back – aware all the while of the residue, the remains, the gentle pressure of her fingers now left his cheek; the touch that kept him here, now removed, that kept him from going over, removed. Was that maybe also magic? A magic of some necessary kind?

  “I won’t ask you about the future,” she whispered.

  He rolled his eyes to look into hers: so perfectly clear, so blue. And her hair… Amanda couldn’t have been thirty years old. But who was she?

  From the kitchen, the ringer chimed, and a voice announced gruffly, “Order up!”

  “Be right back.”

  She stood and walked out of sight, leaving him staring again into his cup. What he saw there was different than what he’d seen before: now, it was only the diner and only himself, reflected back, nothing more.

  FIVE

  Dead Body State

  [Outside Time]

  There was activity in the kitchen now. I hadn’t noticed when the metal window blind slid up, but from the inside of the kitchen’s cramped space service was already started. It was morning, time for breakfast, and this looked to be one of those big breakfast productions like I would make sometimes: no miserable arrangement of cereal boxes, but hotel pans of scrambled eggs, crisp bacon (its heady smell filled the room), and an ongoing stack of pancakes grilled nowhere near as quickly as they could be taken. The residents were already lined up and waiting, and had been for a while. I knew from experience that this was normal, regardless of what was being served. Almost nobody here had anything to do but wait for their next meal. Oh, sure, some few had jobs to get to, but they were far in the functioning minority. For most people, mealtime was the highlight of their day, this and meds. Those who stayed up all night got here even sooner just to sit around the coffee pot and wait for it to start sputtering, watching me load it like it was a team sport – not that the coffee was ready any sooner than breakfast itself, just that the night owls were already up and bored out of their fucking skulls and more than ready for something caffeinated to put inside themselves. It seemed to help their symptoms, the same way cigarettes did.

  No one paid any attention to either Finch or myself at our small table. The whole mealtime rush happened all around us. I didn’t recognize who it was in the kitchen now, but it wasn’t me; it was some guy with sandy-colored short hair I didn’t know. It seemed I didn’t work here now, at least not this morning, though I had been on shift, I dimly remembered, before sitting down at this table with Finch. Something must’ve happened between then and now, and I guessed that my body had moved on without me. That is, I guess I hoped that it had. The idea of just staying here like this and never getting regular sleep again only depressed me. Through the service window, behind the young man who both worked the grill and served the food up, I could also see that the door to outside had been propped o
pen and bright, morning daylight filled the kitchen. Maybe it was still summer. The light even came through into the dining room, some of it, and I swear it transformed the whole place. That simple fact – the small spillage of full-spectrum sunlight that made it inside – transformed the dining room. It brought detail out of the walls and highlights up from the floors and added colors that otherwise never seemed to be there, that were only present in potential until made to shine this way. But I wouldn’t say it exactly improved the appearance of any of it. If anything, this only made it clear just how miserable and worn down the place actually was, and how locked into a certain stupor of inertia and indifferent misery. It was the same for the rezzies, too, only they didn’t have any color to them whatever. Their pallid skins and drab, donated clothing, and wrecked hair and ruinous posture was just the same as always, only a little brighter for it. And there, too, huddled right in front of the coffee pot in favored position was lank, tall Davis, not even waiting for the drip to finish but dumping the first cupful’s worth that the little machine had offered up straight into his own small styrofoam container, extra strong, and weakening the remains for everyone else. I felt like saying something, but didn’t. It wasn’t my job anymore, and whoever that guy was in the kitchen now should have given the selfish man a warning – only that he probably already had, and more times than he could count, and if he’d noticed it this time, he was likely beyond caring.

  So I looked again at Finch, and his smug little smile, and was annoyed by him too. Of all the ghosts to get stuck to me, why did it have to be Finch? We’d never been particularly close. We’d talk just long enough for him to get around to asking me for something, then once he either had it or didn’t, he’d move on. I’d scarcely even known him at all. Perhaps, given the impersonality of the dead, this didn’t matter anymore.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Finch said, noticing how I watched him. I rather doubted that he did, but didn’t say as much. “You’re thinking, how is it possible, this miracle? This unlikely thing? That a whole city, the very first of all the cities, could be anywhere? Could be right here even, right where we’re sitting? It’s almost as if we are carrying it around inside of us, this place. And not that it’s just the first city either. Oh no. Because it’s the very last city too. It’s the beginning and the end of every city, and all of them in the middle too – now, before, later… All the cities. Get it? How do you like that?”

  “I don’t think it matters one way or the other what I like or what I think, Finch, because the important thing is there’s something that you need to realize –”

  “There was a girl, wasn’t there?”

  “A what?” That took me aback.

  “You heard me. A girl. Or maybe I should say, a woman.”

  “This isn’t about me, Finch. You’re the one who’s –”

  “For some amount of time,” he interrupted me, “and I don’t know exactly how much time, but it seems like it must’ve been rather a long time… For all this time, nobody’s so much as looked at me. Nobody’s noticed me, or talked to me – hardly anyone has even thought about me, even though I’ve been right here. I used to wave my hands around in front of people’s faces, trying to get their attention. I’d jump up and down and scream and knock stuff over, but almost never did I get even one speck of recognition of the fact I was even there. And now we’re having a conversation all of a sudden, you and me. You even treat me as if I was a regular person, one who isn’t invisible. So? What happened to you? Come on. There must’ve been something to tip you over.”

  I said nothing.

  “Okay, I’ll admit I’m being a little disingenuous,” said Finch, “because I actually already know what it is, more or less. So why don’t you tell me about the girl.”

  No, I thought. Not now, not to you. It hurt me too much. I’d only just accepted it. The girl I’d been so hung up on, who’d glittered so spectacularly in the dark, who’d convinced me that desire was not only possible for me again but worthwhile, worth all of it, and who I’d both believed and never really believed could be mine – if I just hung on a little bit longer – she had, with a single act, entirely crushed my fantasy. In time, I would just be too embarrassed to talk about it, my fragile little schoolboy crush, and how wrapped up in her I’d been. But for now it simply hurt too much for me to articulate it – much less to Finch, who was not anybody that I knew well, let alone trusted. “I don’t want to talk about her,” I said.

  “You had plenty to say about me a little while ago, about everything that was wrong with me. But that you’re here now too I’m pretty sure means that you’re no better. Fair is fair, my friend Proteus. You might as well just start talking, and give me another cigarette while you do, because otherwise I’m going to ask you about the future, and then you’ll have to tell me.”

  “What can you possibly care about the future, Finch? You must know nothing good ever comes of it.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me about her?”

  I looked around myself, at the room, at the residents in it who’d already taken their places at the tables (while still they assiduously avoided ours, without actually seeming to notice we were even there), who did everything they could to ignore one another (which maybe explained the above dilemma) as they stuffed their own faces, either as quickly as they could or with painstaking slowness (there seemed no more moderate way of doing it) – and there was Davis, who I couldn’t help but notice, who I didn’t want to watch (but couldn’t help myself), who, taking up a corner spot at a long table full of people, slurped his eggs and sucked at a piece of bacon without actually eating it in the most revolting way. Goddamn it. Why could I not stop staring? “Okay, fuck it,” I said at last, fishing out another pair of smokes from my pack, one for him and one for myself, tapping mine on the table end-first in frustration. “Vivianne. Well she’s… she’s really… I don’t know where to start…”

  “Not her,” Finch interrupted me, lighting up, leaning forward, shaking the match out, tossing it onto the scuffed linoleum. “I know about her. Tell me about the other one.”

  That threw me. “What ‘other one’?” I asked. “You mean my wife? That was kind of a long time ago… but then, it was enough to –”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know about her too. Not her – I mean the other one. I want to know about the other one…”

  “I don’t follow?”

  “Tell me about the one that matters.”

  “Now you’ve lost me, Finch. I don’t know who you mean.”

  “Don’t be evasive. The one who you love.”

  I tried to think about who Finch might’ve meant. The one that I love?

  “The first,” he said, “and the last. Just like the city is the first and last city, the one behind every city. That one that isn’t real. Tell me about her.”

  I stared at the glowing tip of my cigarette, and in staring, the room around me disappeared. My perspective narrowed to nothing but the single point. I watched the smoke trailing out, curling up toward the ceiling. Even the sounds of the dining room faded away and became silent. Then the penny dropped. “I never thought of it as a her,” I said. When I looked up again, the dining room was empty, its service window shuttered. The daylight that had animated it before was gone now, replaced by the sickening light of the fluorescent tubes in their boxes overhead, thinning away the details I’d noticed before. Thankfully.

  “You would objectify it,” Finch said, his voice far off. “The shape, the radius, the circum-fer-ence.” He broke these last syllables apart, as if in a rhythmic trance. “Some would even call it the ‘object’ – the object – not knowing any better. A real class act, that. But you’ve always thought of her as a woman. Don’t try and tell me you haven’t. I’ve seen that lost puppy-dog look in your eye.”

  But there was nothing about Mosquito that would give it any sex. The thing was neither female nor was it male. It simply was. There was both an all-encompassing to it of all qualities and a total negation of qualitie
s. The thing existed in an absolute state, metallic, cold, vibrant, and alive. It was completely other. Despite this, when I’d known it, there’d seemed such a familiarity about it that I couldn’t help but think – but know – that it had been with me for all of my life. Even longer than that. Though it had seemed to live inside of my mind, it was more like I was a speck that lived on its spheroidal side; like I’d been simply one small, variable aspect to the thing. Personality was a blip in the face of it, like a cloud drawn over the sky, pulled apart in time by the wind, by pressure, and soon enough replaced by another. But was it right to say that this was a woman? Was it right to say it wasn’t? Was it right to say anything at all about it?

  “I think you might be wrong about that, Finch,” I told him.

  But he simply droned on, “All of your longing, your desire, your hunger, your emptiness, your sense of what you lack, your sense of what you are, what you need, what you have already found and lost… every hope… your vitality, your excitement, your every attachment to the world, and to life itself… How could this not, for you, be a woman? And how could this not be completely impossible? Because she’s gone, she’s everything, she is everywhere. She has become the entire world. And she is completely unreal.”

  SIX

  The World

  [Late Autumn, 2005]

  At first the morning light was red. It shone through his eyelids, though still closed, and Proteus was aware, after a fashion, that he was awake. He started to sit up but then caught himself, took a hard intake of breath and held it. The bedsprings had creaked their complaint, but he’d stopped it. Now he rested back as slowly as he could, leaning on stiff arms, careful, careful not to make a sound.

  He looked around the room: sheets and comforter with matching flower prints on white in disarray, white walls in slats of wood paneling, stiff carpet of floral patterning similar to the bedding, if a shade darker, and a wicker bedside table with digital alarm clock, its red LED numerals washed out in the glare. Sunlight hit the window, shone through its thin drapes, sharp and cutting and bright. He listened. Nothing moved. In a moment he could make out the steady, resonant tick of the delicate antique grandfather clock upstairs, where the Rumseys lived. It was the only sound. And his heartbeat.