There Is No Year (23 page)
Authors: Blake Butler
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There were many other sides upon and in between each side that the father could not sense seeing, even deleted, but which came into him still.
When the light of each of all the sides was gone again in spinning, the light remained there still—it hung in gristle, caked in bones and teeth, in the ceiling of the nothing far above—in distance and in hours, doorways—reflecting air back at the earth—in all the dirt, and all the wonder—
days in hours
—
years in days
.
Inside the box inside his seeing, the father aged. Old sores on his body healed shut. New unseen sores began. His blood made bleeding, wanting. The father felt no tone.
Each time the eye shuddered in rotation a place inside the father’s head would make a click—a long hot drop all through his body—
light beyond light
—and then, from nowhere, his eyes could see again. He went on in this condition, a finite binary upon his body suffered in repeat:
(a) The spinning spheroid’s next side.
(b) The burst of light of light.
With each instance, the father screamed. He screamed so hard all through him and with every inch he felt his body, in that instant, become zilch. He could feel, in the periods in which he did the watching, such white-hot power-terror funneled through his blood and air and flesh that it was as if he never had existed, underneath such screaming, such massive, hobbling hurting, grief. He knew, upon each instance, that when it had passed it would be gone from him again—and yet would not be gone at all. Among all air. Upon the body. The gift ungiven in no glow.
As each click came, compiling, the father felt no terror and no rake—not even any itch for where the light came crushed against him—and in the end the father was still there—the father soft and strung inside the box inside the house inside the street inside the light inside the air that held the house among the void. The father’s body eating both himself and nothing, son and father, light and no light, silence, sound.
And now this moment never happened
and this went on for quite some time
All the son could see, where he was, was milk and mirrors, knives.
The room was very gone. Beginning. The son turned inside him, on.
Then the son could see a color, then another color. Then a hole.
In the house again, beside the box, the father felt him, in his body, open up his ageless mouth—a mouth of skin and text and warm rain—and though still now in the room there with the box still words would not come out, and there from his father body came another shape instead, a glowing, flowing fountain through his center—a small ream of creamy water which, against his teeth and tongue, became another box,
a blackened nodule
in his mouth hole,
small as a bird’s
egg, or a bulb:
o
And in the room there the father could see absolutely nothing but the sides and faces of the ejection, the new shape, each side there in the house there pouring brightly, and there against his skin the box began to spin,
giving off
an awfulllllllllllllllllll
stuttereddddd
sounddddddd
With each instance of the sound, the box blew even more light, glowed as if its heat would bend it in
and from the seam of what the box was it made another, spitting more boxes from its shrieking o o o o o
another box there:
o
and another:
o
boxes falling out of boxes, boxes of boxes, boxes, glow on glow on glow—
the mother somewhere underneath it
—as in spiral, as in stun—boxes spitting up more boxes to make more boxes, blackened gifts
and as each box hit the air inside the house the house would shake and ripple, there and there, and there—
shook like singing through blown speakers
rippled like clear light peeled off of some uncertain sky
as each box fell, sent in its order, to shriek and shake upon the ground, the room quickly became filled in with the boxes—the more there were the quicker made—each box giving its own and from therein more and more, each of a light and sent in writhing, still unopened, mega-rubbed—
until box by box
by box by box
the room was so bright
and the father, any of him,
at the windows
could not breathe
or sink or say or
see
WHERE AM I WHERE HAVE I BEEN WHERE ARE YOU
& now the house was full of boxes
houses
& now the air around the house was full as well, swarmed & gathered at its walls & ceilings, a silent sound
a hall
& now in the sky above the house of boxes light was rising
&
resizing
& now the father, son & mother at once in time together breathed—& in the same way they had grew out of some center
to the center they returned
The son appeared inside the house before the father. The father had begun to rub his forearms soft together, creating further song. The father stood against the wall, the son against him. The son said something to the father and the father did not reply. The father exhaled through his mouth. The father was looking through the room at where the son was but the father could not see the son. The father said something aloud.
Against the wall inside the next room, the mother cocked her head. She had to cup her lips to keep from laughing.
Her neck was sore. She had an awful twitch. Above the mother’s head there was a window.
Through the window you could see into the backyard, where the light was gushed and bronzing. The yard had grown. The light was null. The swimming pool had overflowed. Black algae water sloshed the grass and tore the sod up. The yard could moan a little.
The copy father and the copy mother, in the deep parts, floated up and down and up.
INTERVIEWER:
Do you think there will be a
Poltergeist III
?
HEATHER O’ROURKE:
There should be because the beast is not dead.
Men came for the father in the morning. They arrived in inky shockgear—stained black jumpsuits with enormous kneepads for kneeling and fattened multicolor frays around their shoulders to make aiming at their heads much more confusing and long bright orange gloves that hid their skin while domed metal visors hid their eyes. There were seven men, but just one language. They also moved as one and ate one meal a day and slept in the same bed and knew the same woman with whom they’d made the same child. They worked for the same firm as the father. They were the future.
The father stood there in the kitchen. The father would not blink. He watched the walls that brought the room together, tracing the outlines with his eyes. He was waiting to see something. He was waiting for something to see. He’d wedged himself into a portion of the room where he felt he could see and monitor every inch. Still, when the father turned his head just slightly one way or another, he felt something loom on the perimeter. He could not keep a straight face. Either he was laughing or he had his mouth scrunched to try to keep the laughter in. His stomach muscles burned. He hadn’t eaten. Someone was knocking on the door.
The father continued to watch the room. The father did not want to leave the room and break his concentration. He knew things about the house. He had long words written on his arms in marker, maybe. His lips and neck were wet with running ink. In the photographs it would appear the father had just written his name over and over and then begun to sweat them off, but actually he’d been licking. He did not know about the licking. His tongue was filthy. His blood was unwell.
The father did not flinch as the door became kicked open. He did not struggle as the men swarmed in around. They restrained his legs and arms in plastic ticker. They striped tape around his ears and lips and mouth and hair. He was allowed to continue seeing. The father’s eyes stayed focused on the room from every angle as they logrolled him out the door. Through the vehicle’s back window, the father saw something draped across the house.
Upstairs the mother stood in the shower with her clothes on. Wet had collected in the room up to her knees and she was singing. Through the bathroom window, on her tiptoes, the mother saw the men corral the father into the car. The mother sang louder, closed her eyes. With soap the mother lathered a bearded mask around her head. In the sheen of many bubbles there were ballrooms, there were halls.
The mother came into the son’s room with her hair up in a towel. The towel was made of other hair. The mother did not know where the hair had come from. She’d found many other things made of hair: afghans, hats, rugs, carpet, confetti, wigs, transistors—homes for bugs. The towel was soft and warming and seemed to suck the mother’s skull.
The son was in the bed asleep, several blankets piled on top. So many blankets. The mother wondered how he could breathe through all that cotton—or all that silk or polyester or maybe hair, whatever. In the middle of the son’s floor the carpet was all stained and rusty, gunked and bright with oxidation. The mother walked across the stain and felt her brain take light in photocopied. She stopped.
She moved toward the bed. The mother stopped and moved toward the bed again. The mother stopped and moved toward the bed. She looked and found she was further from the bed than when she’d started. She could see how far the bed was and reached to touch it. The bed was right in front of her. She kneeled into the bed and felt her back bend. She had on so much blush and rouge and lipstick the son might not recognize her if he could see. She wanted him to see a little. She pulled the covers back off of the son’s head. The son’s eyes were open, glassed. He did not answer the mother’s question but he was breathing fine, okay. Deep sleep. Deep sun. The son’s breath smelled of old flowers. The mother covered up the son.
In her own room again the mother touched herself with her best fingers, rubbing skin to skin against her gut, the house inside her egg-shaped belly—night above her—a silence made of towns. Each time she came she blacked out and when she came back she began again in mimicked moan.
1.
The son was in the house.
Q: HOW MANY CURTAINS DID THE HOUSE HAVE?
A:
Q: DID THE HOUSE WANT THE SON IN IT?
A:
Q: WAS THE SON IN THE HOUSE?
A:
2.
The son slept for several months
—
though in this state, via several internal forces i.e. wanting i.e. loss
—
time refracted through the son’s body and therefore within the house it passed as only seven hours.