by Brian Short
For me. And all the others. All the others.
Their movement was familiar. A surge at tide’s flush. Moonlight, maybe, seen through water. And all that distance. Slimy sludge stuck to the bottom. A rock. Many rocks. There a flatfish moved, flapped a flipper, moved the sludge. This must be the city at night! Though long ago I thought I’d lost the sea, it looked now that I hadn’t. At home here, in my element – I was once, after all, a sea creature. One among the others, all the others. All were sea creatures, and why not be a fish? Or a seal perhaps? Or an anemone…? And I could tell anyone at all the future, anyone who asks, because the future is always the same. Whatever happens after that is their problem; why should I be bothered, changing into forms? Listen now, I’ll tell you a story, a song about the things to come in all their shifting forms, and then what follows. I’m pretty sure you’ll like it too, since it involves you directly. When you, a fish, one of a whole school, a school of thousands, should turn as all the others do, and in the same direction, turn and show your side to flash in the streaming, refractory light of the moon – or better still, in mediated sunlight – I will ask what it is of mine that you have not taken yet from me. Because you, in all your numbers, have stolen memory, and meaning, and all that connects one moment to the next. And you have left me open-mouthed and staring, and empty, with these pieces and moments all made separate; left me staring into the shimmering strands with the other mindless things that swim.
SEVENTEEN
The World
[Late Autumn, 2005]
Tunker was the last man, owner of the Tooth Or Claw. He stood across the counter. He waited for his coffee. He said to Proteus, busy at the other side, “How come I never see you at the Tooth? I see everyone at the Tooth. But I don’t see you. Why not you?”
“I don’t drink,” explained Proteus, busy foaming milk.
“Sure, okay, you don’t drink. That’s no reason not to come by.”
“No, but, that’s every reason not to,” Proteus said, “because why would I go to a bar if I’m not drinking?”
“We have pizza. We have music. You should come for the music.”
Proteus poured foamed milk into the espresso, giving a little shake to make the shapes, asking, “When is the music?”
“We don’t actually have any music right now.”
“Oh.”
“But when we do…”
“I do like pizza.”
“Of course you like pizza. Everybody does.”
Handing across the drink, “But why do they call you the ‘last man’? They call you that: ‘the last man’, or ‘Tunker, the last man’. Why?”
Tunker sipped his latte. “Oh, that. It’s stupid, really. I was in a room once with a bunch of people, everyone else left the room. I was the last guy inside. Somebody called me that – ‘the last man’ – and it just stuck. The room… it was a little store actually, what used to stand next door to King & Queen’s Figurines. They sold tobacco. A little tobacconist. Gone now.”
“There’s nothing there now,” Proteus said. “Nothing at all.”
“Nope. Whole place slid down the hill, just as I was walking out. They felt the rumble, was why everyone else left. We knew what was coming next. I did too, of course. I’m not stupid. But when everyone bolted for the door – everyone being like five or six people, understand
– I thought to myself, ‘Well, now, I can bolt for the door too, same as everyone else. Trouble is, we all do that, we all get stuck in the door.’ There’s five or six of us, owner of the place included. Door’s not that big, see. We all rush at once, we all get stuck. So I wait it out, everybody else goes first. I’m the last man. As soon as I walk out the door, it all just slides, it goes to pieces, I mean, that building, it just disintegrates, you know? So much rubble and dust.”
“Huh.”
“That’s what I say, exactly, as I emerge out onto the sidewalk, look back behind me, and see there’s a whole lot of nothing there anymore. ‘Huh’.”
•
“I haven’t seen you,” Proteus complained to her approaching figure.
“What do you mean, you haven’t seen me?” Amanda protested. “You saw me just yesterday. You saw me last night. You look good, by the way.”
“I look,” said Proteus, “like a rodeo clown. But thank you. Wait a minute… last night?”
“Where’s your friend?”
“…I don’t know who my friend is.”
“The strange, long guy, the spiky hair. You said he didn’t belong.”
“He doesn’t. He’s gone, I guess. I don’t know where he’s gone.”
“Where’s the Professor?”
“Sucked into a shadow somewhere and disappeared, I think is what happened to him. You know. He’s there, and then he’s not there. Maybe both at once?”
“Mm-hm. And then there’s Albert? There’s always him. He’s always here.”
“Old Albert? He might be boycotting the coffee shop – either that, or he just can’t get here. He hates me now, I think. We’re at war, I think. I think he’s planning his next move. I think he intends to kill me. We’ll probably see him again once he figures it out, how to kill me.”
“Indeed.” She cocked her head to the side and fluttered her eyelids. She gave him a look.
“Oh,” he said, “there’s a look.”
“You must have a cigarette for me?” she asked.
“Good God.” So he may not exactly have wanted to just then, but gave her one of his all the same, and without quite being aware of what was happening next, found that he was following her out onto the sidewalk of midday, the sky bright, the sun high, and all things stripped of their shadows. Her hair, so light, lifted and floated as she walked, and caught gleaming highlights off the sun as if her head were surrounded by a halo of golden, magic radiance. They made it over to the side of the building, with its low, crumbling wall, overlooking the valley below: the whole panorama, all of it laid out, all things within it just the merest specks, so far off and so small. She lit her cigarette and he lit his, and they stood this way, facing one another, smoking.
“Can I see your gun a moment?” Amanda asked, all innocence and sweet.
“Oh, for God’s sake, you think I’m falling for that again?”
“I just want to see it.”
“See it. You just want to see it. My ass.”
“Give me your gun. I promise I won’t try to shoot you with it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You should. Look. All I want to do… is show you something, is all.”
“That’s what you said last time. And why am I out here? I should be working.”
“You’re out here so I can show you what I need to show you. Now give it here.”
“Okay. Fine.” Proteus unholstered the pistol and handed it to her. “But don’t even…”
Except that she already had. Her stance was excellent. Solid, practiced; oh yes, she knew what she was doing with that gun. She held the pistol straight and level and pointed toward his face.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh my…” because to see her this way – it wasn’t only the gun, was it? Or was it? The gun – level, steady, and direct – yes, it was, in part, this – but it was also, more importantly, her – a looker already, gorgeous in fact, anyone could see it, there was never any doubt about that, this Amanda – but now, her – it was… it was she, transformed, yet she was the same, the same she, yet also – she was… something… perfect? It all came to this; it was light now; it all glowed, as she… And he, I mean, I… I was also the same, yes, but different; here, not here, there…
•
And why not get a job? It was what one did, in a city. To live in a city, a person needs a job. Any otherwise, a p-p-person could not live. City life is expensive, after all.
And after all that wandering, I finally stopped, just sick, sick of it, sick of all that walking and walking around. I could only keep it up for so long. No, yes… it was time to put some of the fractu
red parts of myself back together, to get a plan, get it down, to make a start of it somehow. Right? Here was as good a place as any, in the city of limpid light. A tidal pool. I’d stopped in front of the BOX building, right in the middle of everything, the highest point around; start there. I waited. I looked at the building. It would mean something to go inside of there, to walk in through the doors; it would mean something to call an elevator and go up, and up, and up. Why not just keep going? It reached into the haze of the sky and disappeared there, and that was good. But one thing stopped me from moving any further: what could I possibly do in there? I was no skilled practitioner of anything, not anymore; knew little to nothing about office work. “Sea creature” and “knowing the future” could not likely advance me along the corporate structure, and “changing forms,” as a bullet point on my CV, only went so far. Perhaps if I could just read minds… But I couldn’t read minds; I didn’t know how.
No, it was clear I needed to start at ground level. Or, realistically, that was the only option. Aside the building’s entrance, there was a busy bakery shop, a lunch shop, selling lunches. I could at least make a sandwich, couldn’t I? Couldn’t I? Trying to think of the last time I’d actually made one… you put the two pieces of bread together… with something inside them… Yeah, probably I could do it.
There was even a sign stuck on the window in front: JOB. SANDWICH MAKER. MAKES THE SANDWICHES. That sounded reasonable, attainable. I started forward.
A stiff hand on my shoulder stopped me. “Hey, friend. I’ll tell you the future. You wanna know that, don’t you? I can tell you what’s gonna happen! Just a buck, that’s all…”
Turning to see who was accosting me, I found a wide and bearded face, salt-colored, nose exploded red and bulbous at the end, and eyes all watery bloodshot.
“Tell… me?”
“C’mon. One dollar and you’ll find out how it all goes. Presidents and kings all want to know! A thousand bucks to them and it would still be a bargain. For you? A dollar only.”
“Leave me alone.” The smell of urine was thick in the air between us, but the stink of his breath was even more tainted, a septic stink. I started to push past, but he put his bulk directly in my path.
“Okay, wait! Forget the dollar! Look, they just want what you owe them. You can’t look at the angel and not give them that. It’s a sin. They’ll take back what’s theirs, they’ll stick you with the sin and consign you to the outer darkness! It’s out of your hands! It always was…”
I steadied myself to shove the guy aside –
•
And but what?
“I…” I said. No, not I: he said. That’s it, that’s right, that’s how it was.
The sun. I looked up at it. There was a different heat. My eyes were burned, and I didn’t understand, so I looked down at the thing I felt in my pants, as if it weren’t quite mine, and saw how my crotch was tent-poled out, stretching at the limit of the fabric. But I (he!), he felt it first: the pleasure, excitement, discomfort at the distortion and confinement of. I…
Not I, he.
And Amanda, with the gun; she smiled. I’d never seen anything, anyone, so perfect. Never mind a splotch of acne at her forehead. What creature, what living thing, could ever not want her? She was smiling, hip-shot; she was pointing the gun at my head, straight and steady, straight and steady, and I stared back down into its black barrel hole until she broke the straight plane of her arm at the elbow raised the gun, slow and deliberate, up toward the blue sky.
She asked me, “Did you see it?”
I nodded. Yes. I’d seen it.
And… and, but… there was the gut-slap rumble, terrific and terrible, that shook the wet, living heat in the center of us, and that shook our bones, and the bones of the others, and the bones long buried of the dead (for who else was left to awaken?) in that near-field echo, reflected and returned off brick, building and stone; how this creature or multiplicity that shook, that first formed a single long shadow and listed, then segmented, then passed in parts, one to follow another, in however many number we couldn’t tell, transfixed as we were in the glinting of chrome machines, shining past in long series; how they whom, without any appointed center, in the absence of the figure of some received heaven-law – their leader and their lover both, if he weren’t a father to them, now gone, as he was, for he has left them – these burnt spirits, perhaps not so very lost, now ascended the winding highway and took to passage into Cleric near the topmost edge of Charles Mountain; they came now, they came: the monster Ceres clan.
EIGHTEEN
From the Journals of Sheriff Friendly
[Late Summer, 2004]
Everything I touch makes a spark, whether metal or not. Perhaps the night air is metal, everything really is metal, there is nothing that is not metal: time is, space is too; the electrified air, the charged air. Everything I touch. The stillness. Because there is stillness. Yes. It is not mine, but when I touch this, it sparks as well. Everything.
At some point When the telephone rang, I jumped. I couldn’t remember when I’d last heard it ring. At first, I didn’t understand the noise. It seemed so abrasive and unlikely a thing, an alien thing, and had no relation to either myself, where I sat at the desk in the station, or to the room that contained it. But it was the telephone. As I took the time to puzzle this out – what it was and what it needed from me – it kept ringing, again and again. The hour was late, I don’t remember what time exactly, but dark, certainly dark, certainly long dark, the night well-worn, the stars out, bright, speckling the curve of the sky. I ANSWERED THE PHONE
I picked up the phone and said, “Hello?” Not, “Sheriff Friendly,” as I suppose would have been appropriate, but just, “Hello?” And when there was no reply from the other end, no sound down the line whatever, I repeated this, this time louder, “Hello? Hello?” Still, there was no sound. I’d been called by no sound and nothing. All the same, I waited and I listened. With the phone against my ear, I listened carefully to the small speaker, just to detect, if I could, something, some small something, if something, if anything was there. But there wasn’t. So I hung So I hung So I hung it up.
In a moment it rang again. The sound was just as jarring and out-of-place as it had been the first time. Certainly, it was no more welcome. I’ve come to resent any interruption of the silence, the closer that I come to stillness, the better I’m able to approximate it, this thing that is not mine. This time, I answered the telephone properly. Maybe it would make a difference. “Cleric Police Station,” I said in a clear voice… “This is Sheriff Friendly.” But again, there seemed to be no one on the other end. At least, nobody responded, no one spoke. I waited, all the same, while nobody said anything. But there was something different from the last phone call: I could hear a noise coming through, transmitted down the line, a faint buzz or rattle or something, something. “This is Sheriff Friendly,” I said. A clear and commanding voice. Full of A voice of authority.
But there was only a little rattle and a buzz. And what was that? Something else? I couldn’t make out what.
I hung up the phone. It rang again immediately.
“WHAT? WHAT IS IT?”
Still, nobody on the line spoke, but this time the noise had resolved into something that I recognized – or at least I had a pretty good idea about. In fact, it was a completely different noise, nothing like the buzz and rattle of the last call. This was definitely a background noise: voices talking (if they weren’t talking to me) and the sounds of footsteps, among other things, and glasses, thick, heavy ones, being set down onto wood. I knew, I knew, I knew.
“WAIT!” I shouted, hoping they would hear and understand me. “WAIT!”
I did not hang the phone up on my end, but set it gently down onto the desk blotter, on its side. It rested there. It wobbled a little. I shouted again at the mouthpiece, “WAIT!” and ran out the door.
When had I last been outside, at any human hour? Though it wasn’t that late. Late, yes, but…
And so I ran I ran I ran ran down the hillside, down the street, the winding street, I ran down the street into town, to the upper section of Main Street, which is what the highway turned into, and where I stopped in the middle of the street and I looked first in one direction, at Lorelei’s Diner, all lit up, all bright with light, washed out in its interior light and chrome all reflective and bright, and I saw Amanda inside, in her waitress apron, carrying the food, and I stopped and I looked at her, and I watched her carrying the food, and she had a smile on her face, I should have understood, I know I should have understood, how it was, that she should have that smile, there on her face, and her face was bright with it, bright not only because that was her job, to carry the food with a smile, the same as it was my job to answer the phone authoritatively and to uphold the law, but because she was just like that, just smiling, because she was like that, and she didn’t see me, I was out in the street, where it was dark, where nothing could be seen, and I looked a little further, to the next building over, at the bar, the Tooth Or Claw, where it was, where it was dark, except for the neon beer signs in the darkened window, the otherwise darkened window, and the door propped half-open, revealing a crack of the darkness inside, and I walked up to it, to the door, I walked up to the door and went inside, I stepped stepped inside…