SOUND OF TRUMPETS SOUND OF SIGHING SOUND OF SHOTGUNS SOUND OF GEESE SOUND OF GLIMMER SOUND OF NOWHERE SOUND OF SON
— and in the midst of all of this, from the outside, from neighbor’s doors or windows and in the street — from all but a certain very minor other angle there was no way for most to see what had gone on — you could not see that this wasn’t one of many houses — from the street the house was fine — A-OK — today, tomorrow — on the walk the neighbors passed in silent indecision—what for dinner? glass or chicken? — though in the minute on the hour their skin went prickled near their teeth, they looked a second time in one direction, pulled their pets along to shit on somewhere else — that night they didn’t kiss their sons or wives — they grew one more new long hair or felt a ticker in their thigh — only in their sleep then could they see what they had seen.
HALLWAY
The son was in the bedroom.
The son was standing on the bed. He’d brought the mirror back out from the closet and unsheathed it. The son felt very tired. The son shrunk and expanded both at once — so that from the outside the son seemed to stay the same size.
The mirror had fingerprints and footprints and breath steamed on the glass from, it seemed, several sides.
The son stood above the mirror. The son saw the mirror from above. With the masked light flooding through the room’s enormous window — a light that flickered, flexed and charred — the light of so many different days — the mirror seemed to bend. With his head like this and arms like this and humming, the son could see a hallway in the glass. And then depending on what the son wished or how he wanted or remembered or forgot — the son could make the hallway open up. The son could make the hallway fold around him.
The son could slip into the hall.
The son walked down the hall with both eyes blinking in and out and in and out.
The son walked and walked and walked. The son felt lighter. The son’s arms began to shake.
The son came to a door.
~ ~ ~
The light continued. Light ate light up, and shat light out, and light remained. Days rolled in the long blows of the hours hidden in spinning years and months and days.
In the houses men were laughing. Mothers made other mothers, fathers, too. Sick continued. Night continued. In the night, small pockets fried in endless sing.
The night gathered up in pockets, grew holes. The holes hummed around a rasping center, rolled. Centered in all air and in all bodies. The center’s center had no name.
The bodies aged. The bodies ate lunch, their old limbs shifting, breathing up in celebration, years of air. Resting. Nesting. Needing. Sleeping. Going. Sewing. Teeth on teeth.
Other things would happen. More words would pass from mouth to mouth. The weight of nameless light would overflow the houses, days unblinking, above ground.
The ground was light. The lunch was light, too. And the days, the beds, more holes. The light would fill the halls for hours. The skin would come and come and come.
Acknowledgments
Thank you, Calvert Morgan, magicmachine. Thank you, Carrie Kania, Dennis Cooper, Bill Clegg. Thank you, mother, father, sister, brother-in-law. Thank you, Heather. Thank you, Gene & HTMLGiant crew. Thank you, Featherproof crew. Thank you, Ken, Shane, Gian, Michael, David, Sean, Derek. Thank you, Atlanta friends. Thank you, Internet. Thank you.
About The Author
BLAKE BUTLER is the author of the novella Ever and the novel-in-stories Scorch Atlas, named Novel of the Year by 3:AM Magazine. He edits HTMLGiant, “the internet literature magazine blog of the future,” as well as two journals of innovative text, Lamination Colony and No Colony. His writing has appeared widely online and in print, including in The Believer, Unsaid, Fence, and Vice, and short-listed in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Butler lives in Atlanta and blogs at gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com.
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Notes
1 Antonin Artaud died alone, seated at the foot of his bed, holding his shoe.
2 Sharon Tate died tied neck to neck with another person while thirty-four weeks pregnant.
3 Andy Kaufman died leaving the premonition in several others that he hadn’t.
4 Heather O’Rourke died soon after completing a trilogy of films about a cursed family, after which several other members of the cast are said to have also died prematurely.
5 Chris Farley died wearing sweatpants and an open button-down shirt.
6 Heath Ledger died lying facedown on a bed.
7 Krissy Taylor died despite more than an hour of attempted resuscitation.
8 River Phoenix died after falling on the ground and convulsing for eight minutes.
9 Bill Hicks died twelve days after ceasing speaking in his parents’ home in Little Rock, Arkansas.
10 Cliff Burton died after winning the right to the bed he died in by pulling the ace of spades from a deck of cards.
11 Christa McAuliffe died attempting to enter outer space.
12 Robert Earl Davis Jr. died on the floor of the bathroom of his recording studio after his fifth heart attack, chemically induced.
13 Timmy Taylor died in a one-car accident on the way home from a recording session during the production of his band’s major-label debut.
14 Flannery O’Connor died thirty-three years before her mother.
15 Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart died and was buried in a common grave with no mourners in attendance.
16 Wesley Willis died having recorded more than a thousand songs.
17 Marc Bolan died leaving a supposed curse on those he’d known, which thereafter has been associated with more than a dozen incidents of premature death.
18 Bobby Darin died of blood poisoning from dental medication despite eight hours on the operating table.