There Is No Year (17 page)

In the front face of the plastic game console there were three other outlets where three other players could plug in and control their own figure, but those three other outlets remained unfilled: three more eyes. The son watched the time allotted to complete some current objective ticking in increments toward zero. There was so much going on.

The son watched the figure fall through a section of block he’d believed stable, but in fact held nothing there. The figure fell down a lengthy corridor just wide enough to fit the figure’s breadth. The son had never seen this happen. The son had played and beat the game many, many times, had read magazines relaying the secrets the game contained, the unlocking patterns pressed by many thousands of other players playing the same version of this same game, the son had done it all, and yet he had not seen this. The sound the game made seemed to clip in and out.

The room the figure fell into was made of walls. There was nothing much about them. The walls went on and on. There was nothing for the son to make the man jump over. There were no balls of fire or enormous rabbits, no floating crystal that squirted liquid, and no moving splotch with eyes. The room was just a room. An endless room in one direction. And yet the son could not get more than a certain distance through the level. He kept dying, getting zapped or smeared or squashed. Most of the time he did not know what caused the zapping, smearing, squashing—it came from nowhere. He tried again and again and the game let him keep choosing to endlessly continue, whereas usually once you died a certain number of times you had to start over. Each time the son continued he reappeared inside the same unending room.

The son played the level for several hours, still not getting any further. The game’s music kept on with one corrupted tone that seemed to pan back and forth inside the son’s head. Sometimes there were little torches or bitmapped symbols that showed the figure was moving forward. The son had not eaten food and swallowed water at any point throughout the day—
this was in the game’s design
. The son made the figure do things to try to find a glitch inside the level. The son made the figure throw himself into the ceiling. The son made the figure duck down and up and down and up in patterns. He made the figure stand and squat and stand and squat and walk endlessly forward into a wall into which no matter how hard the son pressed the buttons he could not force the figure through.

The son stopped pressing buttons for a minute and looked at the screen. The son felt frustrated. He felt something click inside his boredom. The son pressed a series of many buttons into the control pad with his thumbs. He pressed the buttons in an order that was not intentional but still came out of him himself.

The sequence formed by the son’s button pressing caused a small black square across the screen. The black square covered over a certain section of the long room’s pixelated ceiling, around which the other pixels went slurred and glitchy. The son’s current score appeared deformed, though he could still read the last six digits, all still zeroes.

Something in the room around the son released an air. The figure representing the son inside the game went locked. No matter what buttons the son would press now the figure would not respond. The son pressed more buttons, feeling angry. He rapped his knuckles on the screen. Inside, briefly, he heard something knocking back. The TV began to hum. The screen felt warm—too warm. The son was looking at the figure. Above, the square spread rapidly across the screen, aiming to cover over all. The son saw the figure begin to wriggle. The figure turned his head toward the son. The figure was looking at the son now most directly and there was something written in his eyes—something carried in the figure all those hours—carried over in every replicated instance of his entire life

Inside the game the music paused out, nowhere. The figure’s mouth fell open, in an O.

Along the bottom of the screen, a scrolling text, each instance beeping:

Help

Help

Help

Help

Help

Help

Help

SURROUND

In his car along the street among the houses in the light—something shaking where the sun was—
some complex hole
—the father could not remember how to get to home. He was supposed to be already back at his desk now for the next day, for more staring. He could not even feel the wheel.

He sent an email from his cell phone to his superior, a man he’d never seen or heard or known by name:

To Whom It May Concern:

Sick. Sorry. Soon.

Yours,

A reply came back in several seconds.

To Whom It Does Concern:

You snide shit. I’m getting groggy. I am becoming an exploder and you are nearby. I have sleds in my sheep barn
—
barn, barn, house, your house. Got it? Suck one. Suck good. And bring an extra arm.

Best,

Somewhere now out lost in loops around the building—
where was the building?
—the father could not at all recall even the direction he’d made the car aim in the name of home all those evenings, and those mornings, in reverse—which way to go now in the nowhere that had settled on the air. Today the day was bruisy like a dropped baby and half of the sky seemed stood before, as if by god, or a cardboard cutout of god in god’s absence, wherever he or she or it had gone. The father refused to capitalize the word god even inside his mind, despite how in the night inside his mind when he could not sleep, he prayed. Prayed so loud inside his mind it hurt, it made the house stink, which his wife assumed was indigestion.

Inside the car the father rolled long along the street among the buildings in the light—something shaking where the sun was—
he’d already thought all this before
. His balding head was pounding. The streets and trees had blanched a white. Where there’d been strip malls somewhere before, billboards, the wet and wire were all covered in a gloss, webbed fat with chrysalis or kite-string—an ever-present mayonnaise. By miles the roads would loop back to where they started, farting the father back out nowhere clear. The nearest roads’ names had changed to SLORISISIIISSISS, VORDBEND, MONNNNNNEY. There was nowhere clear to get a beer.

Along the streets in all directions a slow, thick rain raining in rising from the earth into the sky.

Inside his car the father felt an awful feeling there was something breathing besides him. Something right there on the backseat, strapped in, needing, shaped like him. He could not bring himself to peek. Through the windshield in his car out in the street among the houses in the light the father watched the car continue forward, scrolling, returning where he’d been again already—no sound—the years inside him itching, eating, and, outside, the years upon him soon to come.

INFINITE REFLECTION

In the night the son stood in the bedroom as the sun outside was coming down. Its orb slid from the sky in staggered increments, leaving a slight residue behind in slur, and where it began. The face of the sun itself was ragged and discolored, swimming—a humming hole impenetrable to eye. The way the light came through the window made the bedroom slow, the glass reflective, holding night out and inside in.

Parallel to there, just at his second side, the son had set the mirror on the air. He posed his body at an angle catching himself there in the two quick flattened planes reflected back and forth between the glass and glass a billion times, his body, each with mouth and skin and headholes replicated till there were more of him than he could stand. All of him crowded in and shouting: a maze of sons under no sun. Bruised skin in a relief map. Buttons.

There was someone other also in there, the son saw—slipped in the instance, between versions of he and he. Someone waiting, of a nothing. It had a black tongue. It had so much hair. It held a bell.

The son stuck his fingers in his eyes, color exploding. He could not see, though he could hear—the rummage in the glass, a muffled speech, his billioned skins peeling. The bending bow of glass sent out to kiss his head on both sides, in the pull. A sudden warm air hit the room—a pocket—squashing where his chest was, up his lungs. New words. Pistons. Popping. The son burst out and made no sound. He felt the many move into him.

The son, between the mirrors, fell.

When he could stand again, in the bedroom, the son closed the blind inside the room and took the mirror and wrapped it several times inside a sheet. He set the shrouded mirror in his closet with the reflective face turned toward the wall.

LOOK AGAIN

In the room below the son’s room the windows had gone tinted. The son had taken the video game console and put it in the trash compactor but it would not break. He’d put the mirror in the compactor and it had shattered, but when he went back upstairs there it was again.

The son stripped nude and got in bed, the wood frame groaning. He ran his fingers along his bruises. The skin there rumpled, rain-run, discolored, something beneath. The son chewed on the divots in his forearm: piano noise. He could taste it coming off in sheeting. His legs would not stay still. His brain would not go quiet. What if he’d been born several seconds later? What if he’d been born under another name? What if on the thirty-fifth day the mother was pregnant the mother had shone a flashlight down her throat; or read the Bible backward; or heard some certain song; or pressed her cheek against a saw?

The son’s flesh rolled between his small hands, doughy. He felt something spark between his teeth and there inside them. A little liquid dripped down from his ears. He heard a whirring in his stomach like garage doors. The whole room seemed to squeeze. The son was tired. He was talking to himself. The room seemed to flutter in his eyelids, eyes behind them. The walls would lean or move. The carpet grew long. There was a boulder rolling above the bed. There were eyes on every surface. There was someone in the mattress.

The son saw the bedroom door come open. The door moved forward on its hinges just a crack. The son closed his eyes, pretending. He heard someone move into the room. He did not want to look. He did not look.

INDICATIONS OF THE MANNER BY WHICH YOU WILL ARRIVE

The son received directions to the girl’s house in a black envelope delivered in the night. There’d been no one in the hallway. The son had not slept. He hadn’t seen the girl at school since the invitation. None of the teachers knew a thing. The other students still would not acknowledge him. The girl’s locker seemed to be filled with some kind of buzz. The girl’s directions were several pages long and writ in ink that changed colors in the light. The son read them again and again, over and over until he could hear them in his head:

FIND AN EGG—ANY EGG!—BREAK THE EGG OPEN—IN THE EGG THERE IS A KEY—WRAP THE KEY INSIDE A TUFT OF HAIR THEN PLACE IT ON YOUR TONGUE—NOW
SUCK!
—GO THROUGH THE INSIDE TO THE OUTSIDE—TAKE A RIGHT—A RIGHT—A LEFT—A SLIGHT RIGHT—A RIGHT—YOUR OTHER RIGHT—A RIGHT AGAIN—GOOD JOB—IF AT ANY POINT YOU PASS A LIBRARY, TAKE A KNEE & BURN YOUR FINGER WITH A MATCH—NOW OUTSIDE A PICTURE WINDOW WITH NO PICTURE CURL ON THE GROUND INTO A BALL—ROLL FORWARD ONCE FOR EACH TIME YOU’VE KISSED YOUR MOTHER—FOR EACH TIME YOU’VE GIGGLED, MARK YOUR ARM—RECITE THE WITNESS—CALL THE NUMBER—SPIT THE KEY INTO THE SAND—THE KEY WILL SINK—DIG AFTER THE KEY WITH YOUR LONGER FINGER—WHEN YOU FIND THE KEY AGAIN YOU WILL HAVE FOUND A WALL—THE WALL WILL OPEN—LET THE SAND FILL IN BEHIND YOU—COME IN ALONE—I WILL BE THERE SHORTLY—NO ONE MUST KNOW—NO ONE MUST KNOW—
GO
.

The directions continued on for pages, including footnotes. There was a map so splotched with lines and symbols you could not see through it even when you held it up to the light.

The son sent the girl an email—
LOL, say wha?
The girl did not respond. The son did not know the girl’s last name to look it up. The son felt much too warm.

And yet when it came time to go, he went. He didn’t tell the father or the mother where he was going, as he knew the mother would not let him—not alone.

That night the son shaved his face for the first time with a knife he found inside his hand when he woke up. He did not notice all the blood, or the strange smell, or the nodule in his hair.

The son was an expert at forgetting.

EXIT METHOD

The son walked into the long night. He went up one street and down another. He turned and turned at times for turning. The streetlamps were dead or blue or strobed. The trees along the roadside hung down right against the gravel, fat with slug and chrysalis, thick with ash. The son walked. The son crawled a little. The son’s legs began to ache. The son tried to hail a long white taxi that barreled past him but the taxi did not slow or stop. Through the taxi windows the son saw no one. The son felt hungry. His hair was itching. The son licked his wrists. The son looked into the light. The night was scorched and streaked in lines. The son could hardly see. The son’s pants were wet around the edges, though it hadn’t rained in months. The son got a nosebleed. His skin felt heavy. There were wrinkles in his face. The son took a minute to lie down—an exit method he’d grown fond of—and against the earth his body rattled. The dirt was hard and itching, filled with lumps that bulged and warmed and wormed. The son rolled into some grassing. The grass smelled familiar. The son nodded off. The son woke up and walked. He saw the sky above him. The sky was gushing green. The sky was wrapped in mosses attached to trees attached to houses. There was a constellation in the shape of a dead horse. The son walked underneath it. A flood of pigs ran past. One of the pigs was a man on hands and knees. A pack of long dogs with even longer ass hair came after. The son no longer wished to go where he was going. He had never felt so tired. The son turned to head back the way he’d come but everything behind him now looked different. The concrete was bright yellow and glowed inside its cracks. Sometimes the cracks ejected worms. A man came out of the dark and asked the son for a quarter. The son said he didn’t have any money. The man asked again and the man asked. The man tried to touch the son’s face and the son began to shake and the son said I swear I don’t have any money. The son pulled out both pockets to prove it and out of the son’s pockets change came falling. It fell all across the floor—the outside had a floor now, made of vinyl mashed and melted down from all the records ever, reflective, clean—and the man fell down onto the money and hoarded it into his mouth with both hands and with his mouth overflowing the man’s voice came out, and the man said, I knew that you were a liar, you’ve always been a liar, always will be, that’s what you are, and the son could hear the money rubbing on the man’s tongue and his own tongue and he could taste it melting in his cheeks, the metal money filled his mouth so much he could not find a way to speak, and the man was rolling on the ground beside him in the money and the man was coughing out one long endless sound and the man looked exactly like the man the son had seen inside his mother’s mother’s locket and he looked exactly like the man who’d been only a head, the man who’d touched the sickness in him, the man was chewing on the money so hard he was chewing his own face and the man’s face was bleeding and the face unfolded and the man’s eyes split apart, and the man had five eyes, eight, ten, thirty gleaming, thirty thousand, a thousand thousand, and then the man had no eyes at all and the son felt frightened and the son turned to run and as he ran his hair grew out behind him long and rippled, fat with wind, and the son’s hair began to try to tie itself to things such as the man’s hair and the vinyl and the sky now burping overhead and the hair was pulling the son back down in anger and the son felt his cell phone ringing and the son took his phone out and answered and inside the phone someone was screaming and the son hung up the phone and tried to call his mother but the phone would not pick up a signal and the phone kept beeping through its speaker and someone was trying to call him back and the son could not get the phone off of his face again and his skin was sticking to his hair and fingers and the son ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and the street kept getting longer and the street became a studded metal beltline that moved and moved against the way the son was running, and the son ran past a new man in the scrunched light pounding a drum kit and he ran past a man at a table eating a sandwich bigger than the earth and he ran past many other men who tried to ask him questions and all the men resembled the same man and the son felt the drumming banging in his ears and more dogs ran past him from the opposite direction and the dogs were dragging something and he could hear the dogs around in all directions coming and he could hear the sucking of a fan or vacuum from above, and he came to a street sign that looked familiar, but the next sign said the same thing, the streets all said the same thing, no matter how far the son went, and the flat long treadmilled concrete of the ground beneath him began to go soft and turn to mush, and the son was stepping high and hard like a bandleader and the son was trying to say a word and the son could hear the man still drumming and now with the drumming there were guitars, a heaving bass that made the air bend, and the drums were louder, and the word, and the son’s calves were hulking, and the muscles bloomed with tumor, and the dogs were out there somewhere ripping clean and the son cried out and could not hear it and his skin was sledding off him in long coils, and liquid sluiced in rivers from his eyelids and out through metal straws now stitched into his head, kinked in long loops with bulbs and boilers and then back down into his mouth into his throat and the son gulped and drank his gushing wet and he found his tears refreshed him and he found his head sprayed open as a fountain—his head congealing, becoming lighter, blooming upward, bending in, he felt his new head mashed inside itself recoiling and the head began to take on new weight, and soon the head was very heavy and the son could not control the sound, and the son lay down spread out against the vinyl floor—he felt it spread around him, one drawn and endless flat adhering and the son could not quite move and did not want to—and then the sky was bowing—and then the sky was just above.