The words he typed weren’t words. Or, more so, the words had more words in them, collapsing, like flame laid into flame. The words inside the words kept the son from sleeping, even while sleeping.
While all awake, when the son tried to write, any pen refused to release ink. Any pencils he found inside the house would be unsharpened or would break their tips or bend. By the time the son had found something else to write with — rock on concrete, chocolate syrup, mud or blood — he could no longer hear the words inside him, and out came small other words instead: HELLO. HELLO. HELLO. HELLO. Sometimes he could not move his hands or arms or teeth or eyes at all.
BOOK
The son’s book contained all things.
The son’s book enmeshed the threads of all events or lights or hours that had ever happened or would happen, or were happening right now.
The son’s book contained the sound of wing meat contained in birds once thought extinct, and that meat’s aging, worn to none—
it contained a diagram of long forgotten burned or buried cities and how to enter through their last remaining eyes, how to stay there in that belowground and, of new duration, live—
it contained sonogram photography of the man who in coming years would invent the thing that ruined us all—
it contained every word deleted from all other extant books, everything that every author had said aloud in rooms with no one while writing what words did end up appearing in those books, as well as all other possible combinations of words and new words those same characters could have made—
it contained instructions on how to stand on the surface of a camel’s eye—
it contained an interminable glisten — an unbreakable lock—
it contained the missing seventh and eighth sides of the Clash’s Sandinista!, written by a presence never mentioned in the band, which when played at a specific volume at a certain vector would invoke an unremembered form of light — and a song deleted from that missing album — lyrics deleted from that song — code words deleted from that language — time—
it contained a sister for the son to speak to in the evenings when the whole house was not awake, whom he would let his darkest language into, black pictures writ on black—
it contained a killer recipe for Apple Brown Betty, enabling mesmerism, enabling sight of new rooms set upon rooms—
it contained electronic conversations between Richard Nixon and Aleister Crowley, convening under new moonlight to discuss the initiation of the construction of a translucent ceiling over the United States, a silent, hieroglyph-inscribed dome, to watch the waking and the sleeping, to see and see—
it contained air that the reader, underwater, could truly breathe—
it contained how to erupt a mansion from a dot; and from a mansion, sores — from sores, pistons — from pistons, night — from night, a thing without a name — so on—
it contained combinations to every locker in a high school buried underground in the mud around the house where the son had been born, the lockers’ insides padded with a gummy, tasteless residue, no stink, and underneath that gunk, another combination knob—
it contained a verbal adaptation of the film that would be considered the sequel to every film existing and film thereafter and film not found, the paper white—
it contained various ingestible flavors, scents, and textures, imaginary numbers, sentences that destroyed themselves in their own utterance—
a mirror — a wet — a gun—
a time spit — lumps— computers—
life—
it contained full texts of endless novels trapped inside the perished brains of certain women and certain men, and in presences neither man nor woman but spread among the several, silent scourging brains—
it contained the last words of every major-league baseball player ever and the lengths of their longest hairs—
it contained directions on how to find your way into a room held offscreen in The Wizard of Oz, The Wizard, and The Wiz, and the films contained in those films, in no punch line, the frames therein unshot, unscened, unframed—
it contained containment—
it contained.
The son’s book was all one sentence.
The son’s book did not glow.
The son’s book would one day be line-edited by a hair-covered man in a small office with no windows and no doors.
The son’s book is forthcoming from Modbellor & Watt in 2118, when there is no one remaining who can see.
LAWNWORK
The man stood up above her. From in the sun he looked down. The mother could not make out the man’s face, or what about it. As she stood up to look closer she felt her body brim with empty blood. Her head went swelling, dizzy. She put her hands into the blur for balance. She saw the man move as if to want to help her, but before they touched he stopped himself. The man’s hands were very large, rings on each finger. Friction. The mother felt a minor wish that he’d come on — that he could want that — that he would ever. The mother crouched back near the ground.
The mother had become covered, somehow, in motor grease. She had it on her hands and neck and face and blouse and pant legs and on her shoes. She felt embarrassed. She’d filled the mower with gasoline and checked the oil and kissed the engine and still it wouldn’t run. She’d ripped the cord until her arm hurt. She’d kicked and squawked and invoked god. The yard needed to look clean.
The man was saying something. He made motions with his hands. The mother had yet to meet the other people living on their street — to even see their faces — though in the mornings she noticed cars leaving and in the evening they came back. The mother didn’t know why she couldn’t make out what the man was saying. She saw his mouth, the hair around it — so much hair. She watched his lips move in small directions. The man’s hands were colored darker than the whole rest of his skin.
The man knelt down beside her. The man had on a yellow dress shirt buttoned all the way up and no tie, the shirt’s neck loose around his throat as if it’d been tugged at, itching. Long black gloves hid his forearms with silky sheen. His pants were deeply pleated, like theater curtains. The pants comprised a pattern, wavering in the repeat as would a wall of heat. The mother caught herself staring into the pants transfixed, as in the toning. The mother’s head filled up again with liquid. The man grinned. He stood back up. He came back down. He licked his thumb and touched the mower. He was very near the mother.
With long, thick fingers, the man lifted the mower and peered into its mottled belly. He blew a silent breath into the engine, a simple trick. He stood up again and the mother stood up with him, in cohesion. The man was saying something. He had long hair like a woman, the mother noticed now, as had the father once. How had she not noticed this at first? When the man pulled the cord the mower roared. He pointed at it, two long nails.
The mower’s clamor seemed to nudge the sun. The air around them rippled.
The man began to mow the lawn.
A VERY LONG HALLWAY