I.
my fingers left me today. i suppose they had gotten fed up with my antics. they never did explain properly.
it was this morning when they jumped off my hands. they looked like miniature sausages, and i briefly entertained the notion of eating them. but i am not a cannibal.
i went into the kitchen where my wife was cooking pancakes.
she said, "good morning, dear," and pecked me on the cheek. she has always looked like a bird.
i said "good morning" back. and then i informed her i was missing crucial parts of my anatomy.
"it's the fingers, isn't it?" she said. i said yes. "well they warned me this morning they would leave if you didn't shape up."
"it appears i haven't, according to their standards," i said.
"it's all fine by me, charles, if it means you stop slapping me."
at work they called me hammerhands. the foreman told me they had some mechanical fingers in the back, and if i wanted them i could have them.
i took them because i was unwilling to lose my job. they fit fine. but at times they would wiggle unexpectedly, and i believe they disliked work. they might have had problems with slothfulness.
it was noon when my fingers returned. they came to me while i was on my lunch break. they brought a wallet.
"what is this wallet for?" i asked.
they could not talk. they had no mouths. not even one between the ten of them. so they simply bent a bit, displaying their crookedness. and then they left.
it continued all through the day. they brought me a key to a car. a bottle of pills. a knife.
i figured they were trying to buy back my loyalty. but aside from the niggles, my new fingers were working fine.
at 5:00 i left work and drove home. the sky was red that evening. with a touch of orange.
as i drove i listened to the radio. people were talking about a carnivorous flower that had escaped from captivity in the mountains. it would make a loud noise like a trombone. then it would destroy your life.
it was during this broadcast that my new fingers began tingling. almost as if they had something to say.
disturbed, i pulled over to the side of the road. i began listening.
the vibrations were very cold. they had a few things to say about life. mostly about mine, and what i should do with the time.
after a few moments of listening i became unsettled. i turned the car back on and drove home.
when i arrived at my house, the wife had prepared a beautiful dinner. i ate hungrily, and then retired to bed.
i tried to go to sleep, but i found it very difficult. my mind was restless and unruly.
to wind down i found my knife. it was a bit rusty but i guessed it could still work.
i went downstairs. my wife was still awake, playing with a rubber ball. she had her back turned to me, which i dislike. i tapped her on the shoulder and she spun around. i stabbed her a few times before getting bored.
but then i got an idea. i carved her face up, chopping off the nose and the ears and the eyes. i went to the den and got some glue.
i pasted her facial features on the television, and it made a rather nice face. when i turned the box on, i could hear and see whatever i would like. and when i shut the machine off, i found that i could still admire the beauty of my wife, yet without the nagging.
this was a fun diversion but my mind was still bothersome. i trudged upstairs and found my bottle of pills.
i am still waiting for them to take effect.
* = * =
II.
i was on nightwatch, and i had just finished my sandwich.
it was a dreary duty, and i dreaded it. but someone had to do it.
the laboratory is a dark place. at times we receive transmissions from government officials ordering us to turn off all the lights. to save electricity.
that night i had just jumped on the beanbag to shut off the lights. they droned as they died. it was the one fun part. though, if you are not careful, the beanbag phases out of this dimension and you fall through to hell.
it was around this time that my colleague gerald came up to me and whispered in my ear. this was the only way to communicate in a world of black.
"we're all alone on a hill. no one even knows we're here." his moustache tickled me.
this was true, and i knew what he was proposing.
"are we to play hopscotch again?" i asked him with a giggle.
he laughed. "yeah, let's hoppahop."
so we traced squares on the floor with our feet. we marked them in our imagination. then we jumped in and out of the spaces. each hop made a ripple, in my mind.
"what are they doing to you?" i asked gerald.
"they're drawing up a swing," he said. "i can swing if i'd like, but if i do i might fly off and fall."
"you won't fall far." i always comforted gerald on his falling through space. he would dream about it and wake up screaming.
he believes someday he will slip through the cracks in reality and fall forever.
he puffed with the effort of imagining the ground. "it will hurt if i hit the ground," he said.
"only for a minute."
then gerald screamed loudly. he panted in panic.
"i opened it up," he yelled. "i opened up the gates."
"calm down," i said. i found my lunch sack and offered him a few grapes.
"a square opened the gate," he moaned. "security is compromised."
"no," i insisted. "the officials would tell us if it was. you are just daydreaming."
i did not find it likely that the laboratory had been opened. it had its grand opening just a few years earlier.
i clutched my stomach in pain. red tape worms in my intestines.
gerald was very frightened and was crying. i attempted to comfort him. i ran my hand through his hair and whispered lullabies.
the fear was overwhelming and i could feel it spreading through me. gerald radiated the hopelessness and i found myself struggling with despair.
"i promise you nothing bad will happen," i said. "everything will be all right."
gerald slipped through the cracks.
= * = *
III.
i feel very scary things beneath my skin.
i have a lot of ideas about the nature of conciousness and the predisposition of various individuals.
it is my theory that the police officer driving me up the road was dealing with bone rot. he would twitch his nose like a rabbit and could not stop touching the seat beside him. he was missing the marrow in his bones and it was driving him towards a certain kind of vampirism. he was very pale.
i was prompted in the sciences by my grandfather. he had an infectious air about him that surely was genetic. when i was a child i built a robotic horse that carried me to the the backyard and back, and the frontyard and front. it had a wooden saddle and rubber stirrups. the horse could not move but i told my parents to carry me on their shoulders, so it did not have to.
the authorities were now taking me to prison. except this was not the road to prison.
if you were to ask me the one problem with society, i would say it was not social enough.
if you were to ask me the one problem with automobiles, i would say they are not automatic enough.
if you were to ask me the one problem with problems, i would say they are not troublesome enough.
we arrived at the gate, and guards waved us through. i waved back through the window and blew kisses. there is not nearly enough love in the criminal justice system.
i have a few theories on black holes. one spontaneously appeared in my backyard one day, and i found it fascinating. it would absorb everything and spit nothing out. i found it the perfect type of creature. it is my humble proposition that its brain lies at the centre of the earth, where it absorbs the minerals of humanity and forges them in a furnace together with my ideas. perhaps there is a more perfect creature than the black hole, and it only needs my input.
i briefly considered giving myself to it, but my mind vetoed the thought.
it surprised me when i realized they had brought me to a laboratory.
they placed me in a cell and gave me food. i digested the food easily. all excrement was collected into a neat pile.
they poked me, and prodded me, and made sure i was a human.
i suffered these humiliations with an open mind. when i knew i could learn nothing from them, i decided to teach them instead.
with a great trombone voice, i opened their ears to shivering truths. this put them in a catatonic state.
i dug my roots into the ground and sent vibrations across all the corners of the earth. because soon the earth will be cube again.
i did not like ruining the world. but i found it easier to destroy and then rebuild.
there are very scary things beneath their skins.
* = = *
It's maddeningly difficult to set a mood without using the actual text of the story to show it. I wish writing wasn't so one-dimensional -- I want music.
