But you will come to love that dented little cup and that dented tin bowl. You will stare at the ghostly tease of your reflection in them and weep with self-pity but also with a sickening gratitude. That’s the genius of it. They can actually make you feel grateful. How much more broken can you be than to feel grateful for a bowl of greasy broth? It’s the same gratitude I feel when they blindfold me to take me back to my cell. That means my daily or maybe daily beating has ended. I feel something like elation then. I feel elated that something has ended that should never have happened at all.
But who am I to say it shouldn’t have happened when I don’t even know what I might be guilty of.
You see the puddle on the floor between our cells? You will if you just look up. Maybe you are looking up now but I can’t see you crouched back there in the shadows. Anyway that puddle there gets much bigger sometimes before it dries up again though it never goes away entirely. It swells and recedes like it has its own tides. Anyway maybe water leaks from a pipe upstairs if there is an upstairs or maybe it’s just the rain. Either way sometimes the puddle swells so much I can reach my hand through the bars and cup a little bit of water into my palm and bring it to my lips. Just a tiny tiny sip is all that’s left after I scoop it up and bring it back through the bars but I’m grateful for it. It makes me feel a kind of triumph like I’m cheating them. Like I’m winning just a little. It’s sad when you feel that such a thing is a triumph. Sad when you’re grateful for a few drops of water stolen into the creases of your palm.
They play with my mind. It’s like a beating to your soul. Twice they’ve brought me something other than chicken broth in my cherished tin bowl. My best friend tin bowl. Best friend before I knew you that is. Both times that other thing they brought me was a bowl of spaghetti. Yes! Can you believe it? A full bowl of spaghetti with tomato sauce and grated cheese sprinkled on top. Parmesan of course. And not only that but two plump juicy meatballs nestled in the noodles like eggs in a bird’s nest.
The first time I thought it must be a guard’s meal that was brought to me by mistake. Then I realized the guard only meant to torment me with it. He held it outside the bars but he didn’t send it through the little hatch. Oh the steamy smell of the noodles! The acidic tang of the tomato sauce! I couldn’t have been more moved to see the face of my own mother materialized before me. Couldn’t have been more moved to see the face of God smiling at me with one hand extended to me and the other holding open the gate of a golden heaven. But my mother is long dead and I never believed in God. Which I think is probably the reason I’m here because the guard asked me something then that the interrogators always ask. He asked if I believed. I said yes! Yes of course I believe! I don’t believe you he said. No no no I believe I said. I was salivating. I was sobbing so hard my shoulders shook.
I believe too he said. I believe I’m going to sit right here on the floor and eat this heavenly bowl of spaghetti. And he did. He did just that. Only a short space away from me on the other side of these rusted bars that guard sat there and chewed those fat meatballs and slurped up every strand of that pasta. But he left the last long strand dangling from his mouth. With one hand he took the other end and passed it between the bars. I reached for it but he scolded me around the end still in his mouth. I understood then and bent a little to take the free end of the strand in my own mouth. Then we each slurped our way to the middle of the strand. He kissed me through the bars and I could taste the tomato sauce and hamburger grease on his lips. I wanted to bite into those evil succulent lips. But instead when he stood up holding my precious empty bowl I fell onto my back and stared up at the ceiling and cried and cried. I cried for hours I think after he left. But I didn’t just cry because I’d been denied that full bowl of spaghetti and those twin luscious meatballs. I also cried with gratitude because he had let me eat one half of one strand.
How I dreamed of spaghetti after that! One night if it was indeed nighttime I dreamed I was in a grove of spaghetti trees and beautiful naked women as plump as luscious meatballs were harvesting the long strands. Pulling the dangling tendrils out of the branches with one hand and adding them to big tin bowls they held against their fleshy hips with the other hand. I was naked too though much much thinner. Emaciated from near starvation. I had no bowl to collect the strands in so as I pulled each one down I stuffed it into my mouth. I ran through the aisles of the grove laughing and sobbing at the same time. Prancing like a madman pulling down fistfuls of noodles as I passed. The women only looked over their shoulders at me and giggled. I crammed my mouth so full I couldn’t open it again for fear that a big yarn ball of spaghetti would drop out and I’d be empty again. But I kept pulling down fistfuls of strands all the same until I finally fell down in the center of an aisle and rubbed those noodles all over my wasted ribs. I mushed the pasta against my skin as if to break it down to its original constituents of flour and water. But I felt an odd tickling across my skin that was not running beads of water. I lifted my head to look at my chest and saw dozens of small black insects scattering across my body. They were spaghetti weevils which in my dream I knew spoiled many a spaghetti crop. And when I realized the strands I had rubbed onto my chest had been infested with spaghetti weevils I then came to the realization that the noodles I had loaded into my mouth must be infested with weevils as well.
I sat up abruptly then and vomited up all the spaghetti I had ingested and stuffed in the pockets of my cheeks. Vomited myself empty again. And I woke up at that moment sitting up on my damp thin mattress and saw roaches drop off my chest onto my lap. I vomited then but it was only dry heaves.
That certainly wasn’t the only nightmare their torture inspired though. In another dream I was standing on the roof of an office tower in a large city and other people stood with me or atop other skyscrapers. Blocking out the sun was a single huge thundercloud slowly drifting over the city. It was constantly streaming long bolts of lightning beneath it but it was odd that the lightning was also silhouetted darkly against the otherwise bright blue sky. And there was no sound of thunder either. Just the loud noise the crowds atop the buildings made. I didn’t know if these were cries of fear or joy. I myself stood rooted in awed silence.
As the storm cloud floated nearer I could see the squirming bolts of lightning were actually curling around the tiny people congregated on the rooftops and pulling them up inside the churning dark cloud. They were not lightning bolts but long tendrils like those of a jellyfish. But they weren’t even that! Because as the cloud came closer it no longer eclipsed the sun from my angle and I saw it for what it truly was. A monster. A God. A God formed from giant strands of spaghetti. Two eyes perched atop stalks like those of a crab scanned the massed people below. And no one was fleeing in terror as the dangling noodles wrapped around people and carried them up to stuff them into the depths of the spaghetti God. Into its body all convoluted like the folds of a human brain. No. These people wanted to be uplifted. They raised their arms to the God. It was a rapture.
Great drops of tomato sauce occasionally dripped down from its top side. I saw a drop hit a man on a nearby roof and its weight knocked him onto his back but he rubbed his hands across his chest and then licked them. Others around him dropped down beside him to rub their hands across him too. They also licked their palms as if drinking the God’s holy blood.
Now the God hovered directly above the building I stood on and it was only me not raising his arms and crying out in ecstasy to the thing. I watched its tentacle noodles snatch up one person after another. The true believers.
The cold mindless eyes on their stalks shifted and I knew they gazed down directly at me. I couldn’t run but neither could I be a liar and raise my arms to this monstrosity and accept it as my God. The creature looked straight down into my soul and could see this. And so it lashed out one whip-like arm at me. But the monster didn’t pick me up and stuff me between those two testicle-like meatballs wedged into its front. Instead the tentacle flicked me as one might flick a bug with a
finger. I was sent airborne. Up over the edge of the skyscraper’s roof. And then of course I fell. Fell and fell toward the street so far below. All the way down I screamed but I couldn’t hear my own voice for all the voices that formed that chorus of adoration.
Again I woke with a start just as I was about to hit the pavement. In the gloomy corridor beyond the bars of my cell I saw eyes staring in at me. Cold mindless eyes on stalks above a seething body made of shadow. But the shadow shape faded and the eyes were the last to go. In only a second or two the image was gone and I was left to wonder if it had just been a lingering shred of the dream or if the thing outside had in fact been real and sent that nightmare into my head.
Maybe this was my true jailer. This scorned God whom I had rejected for his monstrous absurdity.
But what God isn’t monstrous and absurd?
One of my dreams was suffered while I was unconscious on the floor of the interrogation room. Drops of blood ran down my face. But it wasn’t blood. It was tomato sauce. I opened my eyes to find a less gigantic incarnation of that pasta abomination hovering just above me. Those lidless eyes on their stalks appeared to hold amusement somehow. Between the two meatballs one of the thick white noodles was extended and inserted into my gaping mouth. The God I rejected in my soul was forcing me to take its communion.
Do you know what communion wafers are made from? Flour and water.
But the noodle as it plumbed my soul gagged me and my mind cleared. It wasn’t the spaghetti beast positioned above me but one of the interrogators. Not a noodle. Not two meatballs. His eyes were full of that same amusement however.
I told you they brought me spaghetti on two occasions. The first inspired these bad dreams so the second time I was wary. I expected the guard to sit down on the floor outside my cell and eat all the contents from the Holy Grail that was my dimpled tin bowl. It was the same guard after all. But instead he opened my food hatch and pushed the entire bowl in. I never had utensils when I received my soup. I just picked up the bowl and slurped it. I wasn’t given utensils this time either but I couldn’t have cared less. My hands were all the utensils I needed as I dug both of them into the pasta and brought it in two fistfuls to my mouth. I stuffed my cheeks just as in the dream of the spaghetti trees with tears of rapture running down my face.
But immediately I knew something was wrong. The slippery noodles squirmed of their own volition in my hands. In my mouth. And the one meatball I had also scooped into my mouth just tasted so wrong.
I looked down into my bowl again and saw what a thick covering of tomato sauce had masked before. It was not a bowl of spaghetti but a bowl filled with tangled writhing worms. And now I could tell that the remaining meatball in its nest of worms was shaped from human excrement.
The guard had started off down the hallway already. He didn’t wait to see my expression. Didn’t have to. I heard his laughter recede until he was gone.
I vomited up the worms and excrement. I stared down at the mess on the floor of my cell.
And then only a few minutes later I was stuffing earthworms into my mouth again. And I wept again but with gratitude this time as my stomach accepted this impromptu protein.
But I skipped the meatball.
Your own sobbing has increased I see. I understand. You sympathize with me but worse than that you realize now the treatment you yourself will have to endure. I truly wish that wasn’t the case my friend. But at least now we’ll no longer have to face our trials alone. Will we?
Hello? Hm.
Something occurs to me now. Maybe it’s not fair of me but I have to say it. It’s just that it seems so funny they’d give me company by putting another prisoner directly across from me. I know you’re crying and all and it sounds very sincere. But maybe you aren’t who you seem. Maybe you’re one of them. Huh? Maybe they think I’ll spill some information that I never confess in my interrogations. Well if that’s the deal I have to tell you I have nothing to confess because I don’t know what it is they want me to confess to. How can I repent if I don’t know my sins?
But if it’s their God they want me to believe in then okay. Okay I believe in him. I’ve seen him so I believe. His presence was so strong in my dreams I’m sure there’s more to him than only illusion. He’s as real as any God except that he also happens to be made from flour and water in addition to illusion and delusion.
He’s the Eucharist that eats you instead of you eating it. His followers are his communion wafers. Their tears of rapture are his water into wine.
I believe. You hear me? I believe.
Yeah I’m right aren’t I? But maybe it’s more than that. Maybe you’re not just a spy.
I can barely bring myself to say it but maybe you’re waiting for me to say it. You’re him. The God himself. The same incarnation I saw peeking in through the bars at me when I woke from my dream. These bars are in effect your tentacles aren’t they? You want to hold me in your hand and slowly squeeze me. Squeeze me in your spaghetti fingers. But haven’t you squeezed everything out of me already? How long must this torture go on for?
Do you hear me? Do I have to shout even louder so the guards will come and beat me in my cell for a change instead of the interrogation room?
I believe in you! I believe you bastard! But I don’t worship you! Squeeze me into tomato sauce between your giant fingers but I will never be your servant! I’m not just another of your mindless sheep! You think I’ll let you eat me like those others? I’ll eat you instead! I’ll suck down every last giant delicious strand of you! Who will be the God then? You want belief? Well you’d better believe me you fuck! Do you hear me? Huh?
Ohh. I’d better calm down. I really don’t want them to come here. I’ve got to get a grip.
No more fake sobbing huh? All is nice and quiet. Sure. Why hold onto the charade anymore?
Hello?
My sweet lord? My tasty scrumptious Parmesan-sprinkled lord?
Halloo!
Hm.
Okay. Okay. I can see you’re not really there at all. Are you? No friend. No spy. No deity.
To tell you the truth it isn’t the first time I thought I had company in that cell. It must be the way it makes my voice echo. It catches my voice over there like it’s imprisoning another part of me. I shouldn’t misinterpret my sobbing because I should know by now that I can cry and speak at the same time. Just like I’m doing now.
Oh! It’s a good thing I quieted down. I hear the guard coming with my lunch. That is I hope it’s lunch he’s carrying and not his truncheon.
But there’s something I hope even more than that.
I hope my revered tin bowl isn’t full of spaghetti.
IN LIMBO
Anderson awoke to a quiet hissing. As he lay in the dark, his mind scrabbled to make sense of the sound. Steam? Had he left a tea kettle on, to make instant coffee? No, lately he only used his coffee machine. Water running in another apartment, as one of his thinly-partitioned neighbors took a shower? He decided it must be his TV. It was his sole source of companionship these days and he had left it running in the living room, thinking only to lie down in his bedroom for a late afternoon nap.
That was one of the benefits of being unemployed: being able to sleep whenever the inclination occurred. One of the only benefits of being unemployed. Three hundred dollars a week hardly seemed a benefit, when it took three weeks for him to accrue enough to pay the rent for this one bedroom basement-level apartment. The last time he’d been laid off, he had been getting five hundred dollars a week, but he had exhausted that claim. Fortunately, a week after the money ran out he’d finally found himself a job via a temp agency, at a biotech company. For all of three months, that is, before he’d been laid off again, and his new unemployment claim was based on that brief tease of employment.
He wondered what it said about his his career choices, his life, or his country that he had been laid off from almost every job he had ever held over the past three and a half decades, since he’d started working at ni
neteen. He was in his fifties now, and where once he had dreamed he’d be enjoying his last decades in a mellow glow of comfort, here he was having to start anew...and start anew again.
So that muted sizzling sound; was that television static, then? And if so, did that mean his provider had finally moved from threats to actually cutting off his TV service? If that were the case, then he was probably without telephone or Internet service, as well, since all three were part of a bundle deal. Assuming this scenario were correct, he could call the company from his cell phone to restore service, exhausting what he had in the bank, but he’d been saving that for the rent due next week.
Feeling more fatalistic than alarmed, tiredly irritated rather than outraged (one became accustomed to life’s subtractions), Anderson swung his legs out of bed and sat on its edge for a moment, waiting for his mind’s fog to clear a little. It wasn’t just sleep obfuscating his mind. He’d been drinking earlier and earlier each night, and today had begun in the afternoon with his lunch of microwaved lasagna (hard as plastic outside, a cool mush at its center). Three small glasses of cheap, 80 proof rum. Maybe the static he was hearing, he idly thought, was in his own head.
He felt further displaced by the darkness that had fallen since he’d laid down. The sun hadn’t fully set then. He looked at his clock radio, saw that it was eight-thirty at night. He’d slept almost three hours.
At last he stood, and padded barefoot across the carpet toward the subdued light from his kitchen, which was separated from his tiny living room by only a low half partition, providing an unconvincing illusion of two rooms. He wore his usual uniform of t-shirt and sweatpants, hadn’t even bothered to shower today. Hadn’t shaved in a week.
Worship the Night Page 5