Aline hunches over the typewriter. the paper ticks aside and aside, rings back leftward when return is pressed. a duct hums.
Myka lays on the cot. shelf. whatever it’s called.
ticks and ticks.
the hall beyond the bars echoes a drip. the hall is implacably wet dirt colored.
click and ring of the row returning left. Aline tucks a hair weft behind an ear. the knots catch on a hangnail. she examines the dirt jammed in the nailbed, chews it for a moment before returning to the keys.
ticks.
Myka nestles his head nearer to the wall of the shelf.
ticks.
the ductwork hum bristles Myka’s inner ear hairs. they closes their eyes, but the brown of the ceiling is ubiquitous, as much within his eyes as without. he readjusts his crotch. they forget what this underwear used to feel like, but he’s sure it wasn’t always rough like cardboard.
the hum is a music he can barely tear himself away from. he and Aline haven’t spoken in a while. whatever time. Myka certainly has stopped counting time. Aline hasn’t. her ticks a measure of progress, words she continues to forget. she wishes not to listen. but it’s a clue to the environment, Myka said, however long ago he said it. the only clue they have.
so he listens. first the ticks proliferate in a splay, bothersome. there is no point arguing with Aline. he has tried.
then the hum. smooth sliding into the ear, an eel forever wending into the canal. mechanical rattles, loose screws. like whispers. and beneath it a fizz. an ocean. a slosh. something he knows but can’t tell her. he knew once. to remember is too painful. to know why, and where, and for what reason. to have been wrong. if he could only hear it he might know better. his head itches, eczema flaking bald scalp.
frustration takes over, and listening becomes too irritating. Myka sits up, rubs his eye. Aline tosses him a glance but does not stop her ticking, does not speak.
Myka peers at Aline’s foot. it is aubergine and broken, healing poorly. a bunion popped in the wrong direction. she tried to wedge herself between the bars in a fit, and cracked her foot and probably a rib in the process. she wouldn’t let him look at either.
The Fax Room Stands Empty. There Is Nothing More Perfect Than The Fax Room When Empty. Condensed Milk, Cream Undisturbed.
“the future for Christ’s sake. and Jeffrey out in Utah. can you believe it, he faxed his resignation not five days ago and then Utah, we hear, he’s resigned to. no art Utah.”
Mark sniffs under his glasses and says nothing in reply.
White wears a tight pinstripe suit with a wide red tie and a pale green shirt, and he leans on Mark’s drafting table, occasionally knocking it. Mark holds a pencil limp in his lap.
White grins, remembering, narrow teeth slicing through dry thin lips.
“Jeffrey Kane with his protractor and bowtie. he considered himself “liberated” and go figure, Utah. lots of stability i reckon, to Utah. you ever been? it’s unfamiliar but extraordinarily flat. suppose he’ll make plenty of Mars art there. they say it looks like that, the Martian surface, like Utah. he was never concerned with the physical adventurous activities, such as mountain climbing and baseball. i’m the aggressive type you know. i’ve read in reports that men enjoy that sort of thing, more overtly, that they dream like animals, that their dreams are sophisticated and 35 pounds. that’s how much they weigh in the body. not much of a man to Jeffrey though. not concerned with success and failure. not Jeffrey, i reckon. dogs, horses, cats, birds, children, maturity, baseball, mountain climbing, et cetera. kings, emperors, judges, gold, Jung, the baser emotion of anger, a sexually active love life, it always bothered me that, his retreat from it all.”
White pats the corner of the table and it wobbles. the drawing on the table wobbles with it, the undersketch there of a spacefaring city taunting Mark.
“i bet you’re sympathetic, aren’t you,” White continues, “you’ve got a built-in battery like a donkey. you’re self-protective. you’d dip out to New Mexico to avoid the damp, wouldn’t you? Utah, even? sure, excessive temperatures, sure it’s bright and clean, sure it’s pioneer self-sufficient, and that’s just like you, isn’t it Mark?”
Mark shrugs.
White leans conspiratorially. “you know i’m a... photographer. i shoot. i wouldn’t say this to just anyone. my flash gets things just in frame and shoots fine. get it in the ready position—”
he holds aloft his arms as if shooting a gun, but very briefly.
“—and you take until it stops. but slowly always, you know, hold it steady, slowly press, especially at greater distances or shooting in large open areas. why do i feel like you understand. it’s in your eye maybe—”
he’s speaking in a frantic whisper now, as close to Mark’s face as discretion allows. Mark’s eyes are carefully placid.
“—or the way you hold a pencil. i’ve seen it. trigger discipline more like. you rub that eraser against the page. handle components gently. but with high danger. the flesh of the gun against an animal out there in the open. the squeal. i’ve got a place in New Jersey you know, outside the surface, where they let you hunt the weakest subjects in the dark, and let me tell you Mark, to be four feet away, to be holding that gun to a skull, let me tell you Mark—”
Aldous calls to White from across the room. White’s expression vanishes. he pats the drafting table one last time and departs with a smile. Mark stares at his boulevard, the vacuum, and its asteroids flat on the page.
Aline types sentiments beyond brain. she types in feeling. her hands make gestures which attempt to translate sensation into hand, but she does not type in the sense that she prefabricates a word in her mind and then produces that word or any kind of language.
the resulting characters might appear asemic, but who can say. there is no external eye. there is only Aline and Myka and the same sheets of paper and a fraying tape ribbon slamming the paper over and over again.
Aline and Myka have said almost everything that can be said between them in the absence of another thing happening, some external thing. Myka has an active imagination which forces them to say more words but they are not actively communicating. it is not language because language is a community tool, one which builds upon itself and evolves over time. what lies between Myka and Aline is a relic, not an instrument.
Aline believes that if she puts all her self and meaning into the gestures themselves, divorced from the thought of pre-existing linguistics, a new and truer communication will emerge. Is already dawning.
it can only happen if she loses herself and focuses at the same time, maintaining dual perception. Myka does not understand this. he keeps scooting around on the shelf, the creaking, rustling, breath wheedling through his nostrils, interrupting. Aline is moving past bitterness and into acceptance, though, since there is apparently no getting rid of Myka, or herself, at this point.
no getting rid of the spectre of language either; occasionally she will find that she has typed a word and it disgusts her, reminding her of its wordiness. usually these are bitter accidents which ruin the flow of her progress. once in a great while she will not even notice that she has typed a word, and if she ever paused to reflect on her writing, which she is not interested in doing, she would be glad to have missed it.
her body is a constant problem she tries, like language, not to notice. despite her unmoving for days, dirt has seemed to accumulate on her body. despite her being accustomed to her own smell, she reeks. every time she moves her head a new waft of it reaches her and she crinkles her nose. then there is the pain, which may worsen without attention.
good, Aline thinks, maybe i’ll die. and i will be prepared for the language of Death.
Mark stays at his utopian boulevard late. he is not pressed for time but focused. the large open street lined with alien trees and hovering displays is lit by his gooseneck lamp in a yellow vector. his glass-walled cube reflects peppered moons and scritching pencil.
there is a boy in the street with hand aloft as if holding something, except his hand is unfinished and empty. the boy, a time traveler, finds the conveniences of utopia more appealing than his home era. even the loss of his friends and family means nothing to him as he replicates them, finds new and better versions of them, and communicates with them instantly at the touch of a button.
underneath the boy in erased pencil there had been a young woman in denim jumpsuit. she held the button and her expression was consternated, savvy and aware, her eyes scritched together from a photo of Mark’s mother. White hadn’t cared for her.
Mark can’t bring himself to draw what he has been instructed to. each time he begins the oblong outline of the baseball bat he shudders.
his pencil breaks. he leans to the left side of his table to sharpen it. he looks up and sees almost nothing. what is there to see. the flat of desks and chairs and filing cabinets. the glass which cages former issues on the wall.
a phone across the office rings and Mark jumps. he stands and looks around. it rings again. A light blinks in a cubicle by the elevator. it’s that new machine, the fax. Mark has never used it personally.
after three rings it starts churning out paper. during the day there are always ringing phones and typing fingers and voices cascading across the room. now it is a lone sound. the mechanical zipping fills in the silence left by the catastrophic bells.
he approaches the machine, his peripheral hazy with empty streets, floundering plants, wall calendars, bins filled with discarded scrolls.
zzt, zzt, zzt CLICK zzt, zzt
he has no idea how a fax machine works, or how the phone line factors into it. then again, he’s not really sure how phones work. all things, after a time, seem to come to the convenience of a button.
as he reaches the machine, he pictures letters uttering freeform from his mouth, and then being packed into the size of the tiny dots that make up the receiver microphone.
Mark picks up the piece of paper in the fax tray. the ink is visibly wet in the half-light, so he’s careful only to touch the edges of the paper.
what he reads there has such shape; overlapping skyscrapers of text, open ponds of empty paper interrupted by character horizons. diagonals as if the paper was turned around on the typewriter, shadows as if the original crumpled in its tray. it rattles on for pages, and Mark squints at each one. bouquets of letters, the traces of a fading ink ribbon, violent spurts of capitalization. he notices himself naming such things, violent, et cetera. he notices the noticing. he notices the similarity of the typeset to the machine itself, its aperture and mass. the marginless strips of saturated ink defiling the fragile paper on which they sit.
eventually the machine stops churning. Mark examines the whole of its product—eleven pages. he holds them aloft side by side, rotates them, unfocuses his eyes. he sets them on the floor and makes a composition among them, connecting the margins, folding edges back to make lines shapes contiguous. a city of grids, symbols, vanishing points, and stellar foci emerges.
there is no linguistic material to be gleaned, and in that there is a comfort.
The Fax Room Drips One Entity Of Itself Into Itself. It Does Not Ripple. The Light Of The Fax Room Is Opal Or Pearl. It Suggests Translucent Curtains Only The Walls Are Extremely Thick. There Is No Door To The Fax Room. In Its Center Stands A Wooden Table Rising From Its Perfect Surface. The Black And Grey Object Rests Atop It. Its Phone Rings An Unringing Sound. Its Receiver Light Flashes An Unlight. It Would Be Orange If It Had A Color. But There Is No True Color, Only Muted Suggestion, In The Fax Room.
Myka hears something new in the next room. their current listening stretch has lasted almost two days without cessation– forcing Aline to sleep at her chair and Myka to soil himself rather than leave his post at the wall. it can be easy to fill in the gaps of imagination. to think they’ve heard something. the itching in his ears becomes its own sound, or suggestion of sound. but this time, there is no mistaking the difference.
“Aline,” they say.
the look Aline gives them over her typewriter is filled with disgust.
“something’s happening,” Myka says. Aline is ready to roll her eyes, but Myka interrupts her with a shriek, followed by a few alarmed barks.
the last time Myka and Aline were within arm’s reach of each other, they fought. Aline pulled Myka’s hair, scratched his face, choked him. Myka gave as good as they got, which was easier because Aline is already wounded. poking her in the ribs was all it took to get her to buckle and shout, but bleary with rage Myka had gone further too, beating her face and chest with wild malnourished arms. Aline’s eye is black and her breath wheezy.
they used to be in love but that sort of thing wanes quickly in this environment. maybe not wanes, but it flexes. we can always return to love, there will be time. why not explore clawing each other’s eyes out in the meantime? isn’t that, in a way, a form of love? Myka’s vision had not fully recovered from a nighttime ambush Aline visited on him (why, she never explained, but explanation means nothing between them now), and that limited vision may contribute to his intense focus on the aural world. isn’t love a devouring of the other? isn’t love a transcendence of all possibilities within a relationship? after they first arrived, sometime sooner than now but how long ago no one can say, they went through phases of not fucking at all and then fucking ravenously for hours and days on end, hungry biting flesh and gripping necks, and then soreness and infection from the fucking which led to disgust at each other and themselves which ceased the fucking. so why not then ripping at each other’s skin, as love? even if it resembles bitterness, isn’t it, still, togetherness at last?
Aline does not have the energy just now to argue, and her train of thought has been disrupted. so why not. isn’t trying, still, love at last?
she limps toward the bed, kneels on the springy cot, and cups her ear to the wall. Myka is listening too, a foot away. Aline’s senses are so dull that it takes a moment for any sound to make its way through.
but there is something. a groan, a grating, a steel screech, a whoosh, a spectral wash.
“oh,” Aline says.
it’s hard to describe what she’s hearing, and she would like to describe it. it’s a scraping, a ripping, the sound inside your skull when you yawn, but none of these are quite right. its source reaches through dull muffled layers of concrete and steel and darkness.
Myka’s heart is beating hard and they’re tearing up. he knew it. he knew there was something through this wall, and now it’s finally gotten loud enough to hear he feels a tingle all over, like his memories of orgasmic relief, of cool showers on hot days, of mosquitos slapped against the neck, of hands on a bicycle’s handlebars, things to captivity lost in dream, things he cried for once maybe years ago but has since forgotten, their thousand sensations rip through him. he shakes with memories. now that there is an other thing to be perceived, which there has not been in so long, he smells himself. he laughs through his sob and spit gobs between his chapped lips. their fingers are pressed hard white knuckle to the wall, their body trembles.
they both kneel on the bed listening for several minutes. or it may be hours. when there is nothing, minutes are eternal. when there is something, minutes grow fleeting.
“what is…” Aline begins.
Myka merely looks, shaking, wide-eyed.
they pause and listen. and after some minutes, or hours, it grows louder. a voice, a crunching, a ripping, a chair being pulled across the floor.
every new thing it sounds like spurs a thought. every new thing it could be. a roaring engine, an animal howl. an animal. thinking of things always now the first time even though they were known before, spurs an immense fear in both of them. Aline’s perfect language has forgotten the unknown, stimulus, input. what lies beyond has not reached inward for so long. it has a galactic magnetism that cannot be ignored but is still scary as hell.
Myka’s heart races.
What Do You Require From Me Oh What Do You Require, Declivity In The Mossy Cave Cliff Aqua Lit Luminescent With A Yellow Hue From Fireflies With Lavender Window Above Into Twilight But Oh Yet Small, That Window, And Oh Great, That Dank Ochre Below, Tangerine Living Furrows Slime Molded, Moth Flitted, Red Error Mechanical Blips Overgrown With Root And Stripèd Warning Labels Neon And Black With Peppery Weeds A Fog Between You And I, Until The Vision Twists, And Worms Lace Every Vine, Chemical Trails Of Ants Froth From Every Hollow Reflecting Orange And Blue Their Black Shining Bodies Blue In The Reflecting Glow, The Vision Swirls, Red And White Now It Teems In Octo-Clockwise Slices And Then Pulses Green-And-Purple In Alternation, I’m Spinning Now Oh What Do You Require, I’m Losing You Now In The Frailty Of My Hands My Eternal Inabilities, My Crafting Of You Wet In Anxiety, In Anxiety The All-Giver, I’m Falling Now, Ashamed Of My Body Now, I’m Wet In A Bathroom All Tiled With A Toilet Always Running, With The Sound Of Water Always Running, I’m Leaning In The Door Frame With My Eyes Closing And Opening, I’m Rubbing My Hands On My Bald Homer Simpson Ass Head, I’m Rubbing My Hairy Tattooed Shoulders With Beringed And Wrinkled Hands And Feeling The White Tank Beneath And The Sweat Stains Thereon With My Topaz Glinting In The Bathroom, Flashing Blue And Red In The Bathroom, I’m Holding My Hammer Over The Candle In The Bathroom, Watching Its Oily Surface Begin To Smoke In My Unemployed Bathroom Built With Plastic Wood, Which I Don’t Own, Smoke Pooling In The Ceiling Corners And The Hot Metal Threatening To Crack The Wooden Handle, What Do You Fucking Want From Me, As I Shut The World Out With My Finger Closing My Tragus Flap To The Back Wall In A Regular Rhythm, Pulsing So I Can’t Adjust To Any One Volume, So I Am Lulled By The Repetition As I Look Away From All Eyes Embarrassed By All Things, What Else Can I Do But Press The Metal Hammer Head To My Skin To Feel The Bubbling Crackling Whistling Pain, And Then Know In The Feeling All Together Too Much, Know The Future In Which I Sell My Dread To The Mail-In Advertisement From A Bootleg VHS, Where They Lead Me And My Wife Through The Cave Which Is My Last Memory Before THE FAX ROOM WHERE THE WALLS HAVE PUSHED AWAY FROM THEMSELVES AND IT IS ONLY THE PALE MISTY LIQUID SURFACE IN THE DARK IN ALL DIRECTIONS: IN THE FAX ROOM THERE IS NO MEMORY TO THE FORE EACH COLOR MISREMEMBERED EVERY LOCATION FICTIVE AND HOW SAD, YOU, TO HAVE REACHED FOR A FANTASY AND SHARED IT ALOUD, VIA MAIL-IN ADVERTISEMENT, TO HAVE THOUGHT IT WOULD HAVE MEANT SOMETHING, THE MEMORY, HOW SAD, YOUR PATHETIC DESCRIPTIONS AS IF THEY WOULD TRANSLATE.
Mark carefully perfects his cover design. the noises of daytime work no longer irritate him. he smiles at passersby, moves his hands methodically, almost without looking at their result.
outlines and ink show themselves differently to him. he has sat at this desk for over twelve hours now, reconsidering and shaping. borders have lost their representative quality. he feels so freed. the hand-holding buttons and antennae and anachronisms of the mass market do not concern him.
he considers the story now truly—the boy in his alien future world. previous iterations of this story and design have attempted to insinuate kinship with the reader, as instructed, to suggest a utopia worth falling into. Mark can reveal that truth, he realizes, and can do so cleanly, with more fluidity than ever before.
Jerry knocks on his door frame.
“you ready for the slaughter?” Jerry asks.
Mark checks his watch and nods.
the illustrators file into the board room; Mark, Jerry, Nicole, and Otis. Jerry is Mark’s age, and they share conspiratorial knowledge of each other’s sexual preferences. Nicole is buttoned up tight and does whatever she’s told. she has to. Otis is young, new, and gets carried away, but he is someone’s nephew.
also present are White and his men Aldous and Christopher, and art department director Silvio. Silvio is kind to his illustrators but he does not make decisions. in these meetings he rarely speaks.
one by one the illustrators display their drafts on a board.
“for the man in the high trafficked area of the supermarket,” Aldous says pointing to a young girl’s bosom as she lays on the steps of the black-painted Victorian haunted house in Jerry’s vision.
“it’s the liquid crystalline creatures in the hook, of Maggie’s story,” Nicole explains patiently to White who leans back while the dogs Aldous and Christopher yap forward about the entered data, polled twenty men in the restaurant and business answers like that, but Nicole explains about M.G.’s voice and how to telecast it, play it on the page, alongside Jerry’s quiet confidence of his character design, symbols, set, held to him in plain paper.
“i think it builds up too much.”
“keep away from, and keep free of—”
“show at least _____ in the daylight, never cover it. don’t worry if it’s unclear. why don’t i send you
that new model.”
the fax machine begins to ring.
Nicole’s quintupedal extraterrestrial with the long hairs and the radially symmetric eyes is nixed. Otis’ micrograin hopper settled for a tractor with antennae, wheels replacing coiling bejointed limbs. White flips between drafts, forward a set, forward a month, presses his finger to some graphite faces, fingers the cold display of his watch, waves his hand onward. “you can choose,” White says, “i don’t care. let’s just be realistic.”
paper drips from the fax machine into its receiving tray. Mark periodically looks at it.
Otis does very similar material always and always off brief. he hasn’t learned yet to not be too outlandish. this is the only time Silvio speaks up, to tell him to simplify.
Stacy, a receptionist, approaches the fax machine to receive the document. Mark watches her and recognizes her expression.
“Mark?” White interrupts. “are you with us?”
Mark stands and approaches the front of the table. he is still eyeing Stacy, who is calling over another receptionist to make sense of the fax machine. Mark reviews his drawing before he sets it on the stand.
he already knows what they will say. he can see the distinction, now, that at the start had seemed normal, allowed, innately communicable, in his years of being scrutinized. he sees White’s face like a number underlined. the imaginary race for a job, for Silvio’s job, for money and to not be effeminate. that’s what White will mean when he sees Mark’s failure. permission. he won’t see what is there even if he can relate to it. he wishes he wasn’t scared. he wishes he could skip this part.
Mark’s paper on the stand resembles a drawing. its shapes are like a street vanishing into the distance, and pillars, and moons, and at the center a boy, and its shapes are like text cut from pages into lines and forms, but not entirely, some pencil augments connective characters into tissue, raw shapes of muscle, a boy no longer a boy, just one transmission compiled and cut into fragments. the paper is not constrained to the flat page but ridges in the white lamps against itself, shadow onto skin.
all eyes lean inward to view the drawing-which-is-not. the longer they look the more they see, details floating in the distant sky, the knuckles of the boy’s hand made by pinched paper, the individual lights of every window kaleidoscoping, wavering against the page in the dull air conditioning, suggesting life everywhere; life inside and behind each flap, life from the translation of these stolen characters into Character. the pieces move, suggesting not just one scene but the entire story, as the boy appears to wander down the boulevard and find, behind a fold, the secret which will change his past and future, and the assailants hiding behind other folds who seek to thwart him, and underneath the paper, obscured by dozens of lines of text, the parents who bore him crying centuries in the past.
there is a long moment of silence. most remain transfixed by the gently swirling image, falling deep into its story until they see Mark beneath it all, and beneath Mark, the dread of whatever creature or force made this living illustration possible.
White leans forward, elbows on the table. “be that as it may,” he says, in theory referring to the drawing but also somehow to the strangeness it elicits, “i’m not sure this is what i asked you for, Mark.”
the illustrators’ eyes shift downward. outside, a maintenance person has been called to the fax machine, which is still continually spitting out papers.
“i won’t deny it’s a triumph,” White says, running fingers across the tabletop as if dusting, “very... innovative.” he pauses here, becoming almost again hypnotized by the image, the boy beckoning him to press the magic button, but he closes his eyes and continues, “but i think we’ll have to scrap it entirely and go back to the drawing board.”
a dozen piddling corrections are suggested, about the boy’s expression, the clothes he wears, the color of the light on the screens. the illustrators’ mouths hang open, their pupils wide in continued trance and their minds wrangling with White’s curtness. Otis is the only one among them who appears able to reel himself away, and only because he puts a hand up like a horse blinder to the side of his face.
Mark just nods.
outside their room, the repairman has unplugged the fax machine, but sheets still pour from its mouth.
after an eon of creeping louder, the noise through the wall has grown painful and unavoidable. an eternal caterwaul.
at first it spurred them to new actions. they shouted at the noise, begged through the bars of their cell. Myka upended the cot and threw the flimsy bed frame at the wall.
they tried speaking to each other, words long eroded from their vocabulary, but gestures and grunts carried off well enough. what do we do? what does it mean? what is causing it?
Aline tried to describe the noise and its effects in writing and grew frustrated in the attempt. the urgency pounding through her fetid body jammed up the keys, and there was no elegance to her expression. in a way the language kept her, the resultant lack of ability to communicate truly mirroring the moment, and in another way, it rejected her, providing no further analysis than the electrochemical signals of the body.
Myka cannot stop sputtering and shaking. a guilt caves out his chest. memories attempt to creep into his skull. why are we here? is it my fault? how do we get out?
eventually the pervasive sound crescendoes so much that it loses directionality, vibrating the floor, echoing the hallway beyond their cell.
Myka and Aline tried wrapping their sweaty clothes around their heads, sitting as far away from the wall as possible. these muffling attempts had diminishing returns against the growing noise.
if they could be heard now, they might remark to each other how similar this noise is to the silence which preceded it. constant and ineffable. how long.
Aline can no longer take her hands away from her ears or the throbbing in her skull makes her vomit. she already has vomited once and is still suppressing gags forced on her by the dull hot smell of her existing spew.
Myka is hitting the wall with a leg of the cot, which he has wrenched off.
Aline feels something bleeding inside her. it’s only a trickle but it is rending wider.
the wall is cement, so all Myka’s work serves to do is send reverberations up his arms, compounding his vibrating agony. they have had so much time to speculate in solitude. Every Other Thing they imagined happening was akin to getting rescued or killed. what else is there in isolation other than exiting it, one way or another? by and by other emotions fall away, and the only feeling left is pain.
Aline’s eyes dart around the room. the sound of Myka’s hitting the wall does not help, but she cannot stop him, because it would require her to take her hands off her ears. the inarticulable panic in her gullet rises. is this the culmination of her study? that her brain should explode so that nothing of language remains? she retches, and nothing but spit comes up.
Myka hits the wall hard with the cot leg, and the pain makes him lose his grip at an inopportune moment. the leg’s rusty edge bounces off the wall and into his body. the force isn’t great, but it scratches him and they lose their balance. they fall backward onto the floor and crack their skull on the cement.
Myka’s head begins to ooze. he lolls back and forth. their vision blurs.
Aline wants to crawl toward him but that would mean taking her hands off her ears, which she is unwilling to do. she’d only vomit again, keep vomiting and losing muscle control. her broken foot and ribs ache hard. wetness accrues in her pants.
Aline looks at Myka from her crouch in the corner. his head falls to the side, finally, and he looks back at her.
it is the first time Aline is able to communicate something in her true language.
Three Figures Emerge In The Fax Room. From The Infinity Of Its Empty Borders They Approach The Grey Object Atop Its Table, Hooded In Black Robes, Hovering And Gliding Through The Ooze, Moving Weightless, Stepless, Formless. They Disturb Nothing. The Unlight Flickers And The Infinite Borders Close, Warp, Aggregate, Transform. The Figures Ever Approach In The Fax Room And Some Time Soon They Will Arrive And Receive, Or Else Send, A Missive On All Numbers, For It Is Not Their Sending Which Is The Matter But The Device Itself Which Sends, Exists Within And Without, It Is The Fax Room, It Is The Space Of Translation, It Is The Dreaming Unworld Through Which All Things Pass, It Is The Leak In The Brain, It Is The Leak Of The Pen Through The Shirt Pocket, It Is The Word Unknown, It Is The Fax Room Wherein The Hooded Figures Approach, Skeletal, Each From Their Equilateral Corners, Each To Receive, To Send, To Optimize, To Translate, To Gift, To Imply, To Interpret, To Wear The Crown, To Show Its Thorns, To Magnify, To Leak Through The Skull, Yes Leaking Through Myka’s Skull The Final Vision Of The One Who Listens As Received By The One Who Understands Or Seeks To Understand, Muddled As Ever By The Thick Cream Waters And Malicious Hands Therein, Approaching The Tray Three Bell Sleeves Cover Arms Of Businessmen Who Reach To Receive The Message—Or Else To Send It—To Imagine New Wilds Heretofore Unknown, To Put To Paper In Their Way, Their Fucking Customary Bureacracy To An Impossible Odyssey Wherein Nothing Is New And Yet Everything Is Utopia, Communicated, Received—Or Else Transmitted—Where The Messenger Is The Message And There Is Nothing Else To Say. The Light Glows Now Truly Red Around The Infinite Edges Of The Fax Room, A Grey Red Which Hovers Misty Around The Figures Who Seek To Commune, Only, If We Knew What They Sought To Say, Maybe It Would Just Be Like A Spam Letter Pubically Vomiting, Or Maybe It Would Be Archangelic Prose, Or Maybe It Would Be A Copy Of A Memo That Was Printed Too Late, Or Maybe It Would Be An Artifact Of A Bygone Innovation, Or Maybe If In Other Hands It Would Be The Only True Account Of Time, Taken From Its Beginning To Its Conclusion, Which We Are All Reading–And Writing—As It Goes, As It Pours From—Or Into—The Mouth Of The Fax Machine.
the meeting disperses. the commotion around the fax machine is growing now. they’ve emptied the paper tray and yet paper keeps coming from it. they’ve opened up the machine and cannot tell from whence the paper comes. someone suggests there might be an auxiliary tray but it cannot be found. the paper seems to be coming faster now, in fact, more and more pages full of strings of nonwords. Stacy had to bring over a trash can from her desk to catch them all.
“hey Mark,” White says, as Mark crosses the threshold of the boardroom door, “can you hang back for a bit?”
Mark almost wishes that the words sent a shiver down his spine, but in fact he expected it. the sounds of churning paper and confusion surround him. he wishes he could drown himself in those sounds.
Mark returns wordless, and he and White sit across from each other. free now of portfolios and papers and pencils, the only thing on the table is the speakerphone.
White says “it’s not like you to go so off brief for an illustration. is something going on that i should know about?”
Mark opens his mouth and then closes it. every heartbeat and breath in his body is a gesture he cannot communicate. paper falls, unimportant to White’s oblivious eye.
“no,” Mark finally says. “i’ll get on those changes right away.”
White cocks his head to the side, chiseled face bearing a mock frown. “it’s not the changes which concern. it’s the principle of the fact, you know? it’s the company time. i hate to sound accusatory. you are one of our best illustrators, especially now we’ve lost Jeffrey. even if he was uninspired at times and not attenuated to the vision. even so as i said it’s unlike you to go off brief. it’s, frankly it’s unprofessional, Mark. it’s not a good example for Otis and it doesn’t become you. i had thought, of course, i had thought that we understood each other after all this time. that we had developed a rapport. now in light of this frank insubordination i must question whether you are all right as it were.”
some of those viewing the fax machine have grown really concerned now, they’re asking for it to be taken out of the office. “it’s causing a scene,” someone in management said. there is handwringing going on. many in the office are not interested at all, writing it off as some newfangled technology issue. they aren’t concerned with what it signifies. the repairman tries to take the machine apart but cannot find purchase with his screwdriver.
White continues, “and if this is, as it might seem, a gesture of independence, an attempt to gain control of artistic direction, or if perhaps it is an attempt to insert some diddle in transmission of our work, or perhaps to disengage altogether, a cry to be fired, is that what it is Mark? gods, the pitch of that liberal sensibility within you. i see it now. what had shone through your amateur scattering eyes was just that, wasn’t it, sidelined elements which i mistook. in fact you baited me, didn’t you Mark, thought i might be controllable by reception. you hoped i would pour out deep and wide for you like some hole, some faggot, and by god you almost had me.”
Mark lets sound and sensation wash through him. shame in and out of his body like a river under a bridge. he has begun to understand what he never could before. he can’t articulate it. his gift has never been in words. and that is such a relief, isn’t it? to not be expected to have the words for a feeling. so he is just letting it move among, around, through him. draw it as a scene.
White continues “the long and short of it… and by next quarter… i had been considering… Silvio…”
Mark stands and picks up the receiver of the speakerphone. the dialtone beams out pure. he listens to it as White’s diatribe falters. God, how perfect it is.
White says something else, but Mark only interprets it as data. the correct series of inputs to a mechanical output of smashing White’s face in with the phone receiver. outside the repairman, attempting to wheel the fax machine out of the room, trips on an errant piece of paper and falls to the ground, pinned beneath the machine as it continues to spill its contents. Stacy reads the pages, not merely attempting to understand but reading. White, who is much taller and stronger than Mark even while bleeding from the face, stands and attempts to fight back, and the input of a thrown fist results in the transmission of ducking out of the way and wrapping the receiver cord around White’s neck, pulling it taut so its coils grow straight in the tension. the dialtone rings loud and clear as a bell in White’s ear. people begin to notice the commotion happening in the boardroom but the fax machine is whipping out papers like bullets, creating a sea that must be climbed through, waded through waist deep. the repairman reaches his arm up through the papers as his head disappears beneath them. the dialtone sings straight and true, but to White’s fading perception as he passes out, its pitch dips until it putters into dead silence.
Singer Joy is a queer artist living in Providence, RI. She makes flowery anarchist theatre, asexual erotica, and post-industrial polytonal music. She is a collagist in all things. Find her work at singerjoy.com and her bad takes on twitter @singer_joy.