tmp_48d41530aaad86c106555e2e52630fd9_VLf2O0.fixed.tidied

by Scott Andrews

  In the end it is the newborn’s empty stare, its hopeless fate, that stimulates me to resume my studies, to redouble my efforts even. This response would provoke my Mater to call the narrative a sign from the Gods, but that is her foolishness. It is inspiring happenstance, coincidence.

  The days turn into weeks, which themselves stretch out to one month and then another. As time passes, I cannot help but notice that I have become more lonesome. I start to mutter to the animals. It begins with harmless pleasantries, but soon I begin to catch myself delivering speeches and lectures to my uncomprehending subjects.

  “All experiments so far have resulted in death and, hence, failure,” I find myself telling a blinking rat. “There may yet be a particular behavior that I have not yet investigated that extends lifespan, but it is not one that occurs naturally. Therefore any behavior that does imbue additional years to one's life must only occur rarely and possibly it is unnatural to many of my subjects. While these behaviors—swelling, growing extra limbs, self-consumption—should, at some point be examined, their very nature makes them difficult to simulate in a laboratory environment. I therefore intend to start investigating the possibility of a third variable that modulates the relationship between behavior and lifespan. As to the nature of this relationship—”

  The rat turns and scurries away and my words dry up.

  I am unsure how to feel about this new permutation in my own behavior. There is, of course, the chance that it will improve my lifespan, but I have investigated vocalization to the best of my ability and it seems to have little effect on my subjects.

  Whatever it demonstrates about my mental health, this conversation does open a particularly rewarding new line of research and once more the joy of experimentation fills my days.

  One evening, after several such days I collapse, exhausted, into a chaise. I have given up staring at notes and metaphysical equations and have resorted to playing with Klaxon, one of my more gregarious mice. He is scampering over my hand, up-and-down my sleeve, listening to my occasional mutterings when my thoughts turn to the well-worn track of the affecting narrative of the priestess.

  So, allowing Klaxon to find a comfortable spot on my shoulders, I fetch out the projector and the deck of film cards. I set things up, place my glass of wine on a nearby table (a rare indulgence these days given my limited supplies), and settle back, one hand ready to turn the projector’s handle.

  I have just passed the half-way point, the priestess having been shoved, wailing into her cell, when Klaxon loses his grip. Why, I cannot say, but he falls from my shoulder. Fearing for his life, I make a snatch at his tumbling form. In my haste, I knock the half-full glass of wine from where it stands and send it spinning through the air to crash into the projector. There is a spark as the wine hits the projector’s still glowing light bulb. There is a brief flash of light, and then the bulb dies.

  I curse Klaxon soundly, try turning the projector’s handle to no avail, and throw up my hands. With no imports to my eight-room kingdom, light bulbs are amongst my most precious resources. I do not deign to find Klaxon and instead go in search of my electrical supplies.

  The smashed glass cleared away, the bulb replaced, myself reassured that the projector’s gear-works are dry and will not rust, and that the filmcards are dry and unstained, I count my blessings and begin to turn the projector handle and resume my evening’s entertainment.

  I am surprised to see the woman’s face close up to the screen. I left the cards as they were—half in the feed-slot, and half in the exit tray from which I will collect them at the end of the viewing. How can I have returned to the first scene? Then I notice that her expression is unfamiliar to me. She peers at me perplexed, her brows knit in confusion. This is not the blank stare that haunts my dreams. The woman turns around and walks away from me. As she distances herself from the screen, I, once more, see the familiar environs in which she is held captive. She turns back to look out once more, her confusion written even more plainly on her face. My own expressions mirror hers. I cannot fathom where this new scene has come from, how I can have missed it before.

  Then an inexplicable phenomena occurs.

  “Hello?” The voice is hesitant; light, tinny, as if coming from a great distance.

  “Hello?” The word comes again.

  I stare around wildly. It is so long since I have heard a voice other than my own that I am almost astounded to simply be exposed to one. But the potential source of the sound is what really has me. I instantly drop the handle of the projector.

  A hallucination. A hallucination is the only possible explanation. But what was its cause? Is my imprisonment finally telling? Is my isolated mind beginning to crack? Have I not been sleeping enough? Did I bang my head recently? Could it have been something I ate?

  A quarter hour of contemplation later, I am still without an answer, and the depression is back, stronger than before. It becomes harder and harder to blame the hallucination on anything except my own weakening psyche and I find myself transfixed by the idea of my own self ranting and rambling around the rooms, wasting away, the image of my Pater as the disease ate his health and mind.

  I resume watching the narrative out of sheer obstinacy, out of a desperate attempt to not succumb to the shadows in my mind. Again, I watch the priestess, forlorn and abandoned, pace her chambers. But, after a few minutes, oddities begin to once more slip into the narrative. The priestess will go through her familiar actions but, every so often, she will turn to the screen in a way that seems unfamiliar to me, stare at it, as if deeply troubled, and then turn away. I crank defiantly at the handle of the projector.

  Her pregnancy is far along when the voice comes again, and this time there is no mistaking. The priestess stops her pacing and turns to fix me with those sloping gray eyes.

  “Hello?” she says.

  I watch her lips move.

  “Hello? Can you see me?”

  I set my jaw and continue to crank the handle. She stares at me, rubs her eyes and shakes her head.

  “Dear Gods,” she says it to herself but I hear her quite clearly, “am I losing my mind?”

  I close my eyes as I turn the handle to the narratives end. Even as events proceed along their predestined path, she questions me, questions my existence, her own, what is happening to her. I never answer. It is worst at the end. As she births the child and works her way to the end of her life, I hear every scream.

  I am barely in control of myself as the screen goes blank. I cannot let go of the projector’s handle and continue to crank it round and round, clack-clack as it searches for filmcards that are not there.

  When I finally let go, it is to return to the decanter at my desk. I throw decorum to the winds, not caring for a glass, and tip its contents down my throat.

  The rest of the evening is a blur. I wake, aching and stinking, still dressed, clutching a half-empty bottle and surrounded by the ruins of several others. My first business of the day is to void my stomach, hugely and noisily onto the floor. Once this is done, I lie on my chaise, curled like a fetus, waiting for the madness to take me.

  It is late in the span when I finally rise. Nothing further has happened, except that the volume of my subjects has risen as they clamor to be fed. I go through the actions like a marionette, trying to work out if it is still I who controls the strings.

  Night has fallen before I turn to the projector once more. By now I am mostly convinced that it was all a dream, a terrible dream, but I still approach the projector with fear. I am a scientist, though. I must pursue the truth no matter how distasteful its message. So I remove the filmcards from the exit tray and put them back in the slot. Hand trembling, I begin to turn the handle.

  After a quarter hour, I am almost laughing with relief. Everything is as it should be. Everything is normal. The actors and actresses act out their parts, their actions captured forever in the myriad holes of the filmcards. I know the truth and I am glad that I stood fast to its pursuit.

  I do
not even hold my breath, count my heartbeats, as the priestess is pushed into her prison.

  The door closes behind her.

  She peers around in a way I have never seen her do before.

  My heart in my mouth, I continue to turn the handle.

  Again, she turns to the screen. Again, she peers out at me. Again, she says, “Hello?”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “No.”

  The effect of my words upon her is instantaneous and alarming. She reels back as if struck, hand clutched to her mouth, and crashes into the back wall. I see the canaries flutter, disturbed, around their cage, but they make no sound.

  My hand falters and I lose my grip on the handle. The image is displayed, frozen before me. The canaries are caught mid-flight, the woman half-collapsed. Her robes splay backwards, as if cast in stone. Everything is still. Then the dynamo winds down and the image fades.

  I think I may faint. Blackness invades the corners of my vision. I can’t control the shaking that overcomes me.

  Eventually, my breathing slows and my hands rest more calmly in my lap. I attempt to hypothesize: I, subsequently referred to as the subject, experience hallucinations when exposed to one certain narrative. The subject does not appear to have any other symptoms of madness. Therefore, there is something specific to the narrative that affects him. However, the source of the symptoms could lie with either the narrative (formulated as N=sum of narrative parts [actors, actresses, sets, average and median scene length, overall length, rapidity of cuts, angles of shots, etc.]) or in the subject (S=sum of his own parts [limbs, hair color, preconceptions, etc.]).

  I prefer the theorem that there is a feature of the film the affects me. To elucidate the potential cause I must, therefore, study the film and categorize its elements. I must watch it again, possibly many times. I must ignore the hallucinations and instead concentrate on the narrative itself. When the images summoned by my own mind interfere with or obfuscate those on the screen then I shall have to rely on my memory, for as long as I can trust it.

  I fetch my notepad and, thus equipped, resume my watching. The image picks up from the precise point it left off—the woman back against the wall, hand to her mouth. She stares at me. I resolutely begin to categorize her items of clothing in my notepad. Then I start to list the pertinent features of her surroundings. After a while, the priestess slumps to the floor in a most unladylike fashion, She giggles, wipes her brow. She leans towards me.

  “Can you. . . ” she says, then shakes her head smiling, with terror in her eyes. “Can you see me?”

  “Ornate fireplace,” I say aloud, scribbling. “Wrought iron bird cage. Canaries: two, one considerably younger. Six candles. Six candlesticks.”

  “Can you hear me?” she asks. “I can hear you.”

  “Velvet curtains,” I reply, my jaw set.

  “I don’t understand,” the priestess says, though not for my benefit.

  She walks off-screen. When she returns she is dressed the same but her stomach has swollen, just as it always does at this point in the narrative. She approaches the screen.

  “Please,” she says, “I don’t know if you can hear me. . . . By the Gods, I don’t even know if you can see me, but if you can, please answer me. Please help me. I am with child, I am. . . .” Her lip quivers and my pen pauses, suspended above the page. I know I must press on, that I cannot be taken in by these delusions, but her fear and hurt are so palpable.

  “Please,” she says. “Please help me. There is no-one else.”

  I swallow hard and regard my notebook.

  “Go away,” I say as firmly as I can manage. “You are not real.”

  Again, my words have an electrifying effect on the woman. I cannot help but watch as she reels away with a shriek.

  “By the Gods,” she says once she has recovered. “You. . . you hear me? You see me?”

  “You are nothing but a fabrication of my isolated mind. Please resume your original actions and allow me to return to mine.” I adopt an austere tone, seeking stability in formality.

  “What are you saying?” The priestess turns to face the Heavens. “What is going on?”

  “You are being punished for a crime that is not your fault,” I say, trying a more patient tone. “You are imprisoned. There is no escape for you.”

  “What?” The woman’s eyes are wide. “How do you know? How could you. . . .” Fury suddenly flashes in her eyes. “Are you from him? Has he sent you to taunt me? Filth! Even now, even after all, you still will not leave me alone? You must debase me further?”

  Her accusation, her tone, the rawness of her emotions, all conspire to overcome me.

  “No madam,” I exclaim. “Most certainly not. I demand that you withdraw—” And then my actions catch up with me. I am arguing with my own delusion, one summoned from the punched holes on a filmcard, from the projector’s flickering bulb-light.

  With my free hand I massage my temples. “You are not real,” I mutter to myself. “You are not real.” I repeat the phrase like a mantra, like an incantation to banish her, almost like a prayer. It is this final realization that snaps me from my reverie and brings me back to my studies. I have sworn not to stoop to the depths of prayer.

  I pick up my pen and resume my notes upon the film’s features. I ignore the priestess, her accusations, implorings, and other expostulations. The passage is hard, especially at the end, as her begging turns to screams and the babe once more takes her life for its own, but I am resolute.

  The next day I am more myself. I cease discussions with my animals, tend to several newborn rabbits (their birth allows me to take one of the older subjects for my dinner that evening), and make, what I believe is, significant headway in my thinking about a third variable. Whatever it is that modifies the relationship between behavior and lifespan is unlikely to be entirely random. There is likely to be some sort of logical connection between all parts of the equation. I work for several hours on factors that could possibly be related.

  In the evening, after a delicious stew, I resume my studies of the narrative. The most salient feature of the hallucinations is their onset, which always occurs at the moment of the priestess’s incarceration. After this point she again begins to alternately implore and curse me. She soon gives up however, and I am briefly hopeful that the hallucinations are slipping away, that the mere technique of scientific observation is reducing them. However, the priestess stays slumped, sitting on the floor regarding me, refusing to return to her usual actions. Occasionally the screen flickers momentarily to black and when the picture comes back the priestess’s stomach has noticeably increased in size. In this manner she makes her way towards her inevitable demise.

  After the priestess’s death I strike upon a theory. If the madness always comes upon me at the same point in the narrative, surely by avoiding that part I can avoid the madness itself. I have no idea how one would skip this part of the narrative manually, so instead I plug my ears with cotton-balls, holding them in place with a blindfold I have perched on my forehead, ready to drop at the appropriate moment.

  This experiment is a dispiriting failure. The whole case is quite inexplicable. However, after viewing numerous other, lesser productions I am able to confirm that my symptoms are, at least, limited to this one narrative.

  The priestess herself lapses into silence over the coming weeks. She sometimes paces her rooms, but never in the old patterns. I often hear her hum or sing to herself. She has a pretty voice. Occasionally she will sit and sob. These times are the hardest.

  One night, I am experimenting with other forms of sensory deprivation (this time is my nasal passages are stuffed with cotton-balls and I am breathing through my mouth) when she addresses me directly.

  “I know that you refuse to speak to me, that you deny that I exist despite the fact that you clearly see me. . . I do not understand why for the life of me but,” she squares her jaw, resolute, “I am going to speak to you, sir, no matter your response. To not do so will drive me ins
ane, unless I am insane already. Ever since you first appeared in my life things have seemed so much less bearable, the cycle of things weighing so much heavier. . . .” Her voice quavers. “Maybe the Gods punish me, though I cannot find any sin my past that seems to deserve such punishment. But Their ways are not our own.”

  She turns away, looking harassed, pushes her hair back from her forehead. “I am rambling, sir, please forgive me. I have thought so often of what I may say to you, and, now that I am doing it, all my thoughts have left me.”

  “I simply. . . . I simply wish there was someone to explain to me what was going on. Before. . . before all this, life seemed so clear, so laid out. There was a pattern to things. Now. . . . I don’t know. . . . Dissatisfaction claws at me. Perhaps, please, sir, I implore you, speak to me please. That is all I want, someone to share the burden of imprisonment. These walls. . . . By the Gods, I feel as if I am the foundation that they lie upon and they are crushing me. All I ask is a few words to help me bear the weight. Please sir, please. . . .”