Part Eleven
I could hear her now preparing something in the kitchen – the clang of a couple of pots, some water running. “So, what is it with you anyway?” she called over the sound of a bag of chips being torn open. I furrowed my brow and caught a look at myself in her aluminum-framed mirror on the opposing wall. What was with me? She asked it as if I were the only person in the room behaving in a strange way.
“What do you mean?” I kept staring at myself in the mirror, watching my mouth form the words, watching the glint in my eyes.
“What’s this with the writing all over a person? Is that some kind of new thing I haven’t heard of yet?”
My stare cast deeper into the image in the mirror and it became all at once like the face of another person – someone I had never seen before, and I was watching his mouth move and hearing the words come, but I felt no connection to the image or the words. “I don’t know,” the image said. “It seemed like it might be an interesting experiment. Today we shall have a naming of parts and all that.”
She didn’t answer but continued with whatever noises she was making in the kitchen. I studied the face in the mirror. I watched the thoughts scrolling over its eyes. She came to the doorway, two plates in hand held up to her black-inked breasts. “Hungry?” She had prepared hotdogs and chips for us on little aluminum camping plates. We sat in her creaking lawn chairs and ate without speaking.
Toward the end of our meal, I glanced through a slit in the blinds of her window and noticed the light of a new day eking across the horizon. It felt like the same old day though, and I was exhausted. The girl watched me while I ate, paying distinct attention to every bite. She eventually brought us some tea to wash the food down. She gulped hers down and then watched me sip at mine. It was unnerving to be watched that way by a naked woman covered in my labels, but I was too tired to protest or question her about it.
She took my plate and cup back to the kitchen. “You’re getting very sleepy,” she said when she returned. My eyes were already getting droopy and tending to blur my vision of the room. This was no trick of hers, simply a statement of fact. “You’ll want to lie down on my cot. You won’t ask. You’ll move over to the cot, get undressed and go straight to sleep.” And, of course, I did. I was too tired to question the act, or to care about its consequences. My mind and body called out to me for sleep and the merest suggestion made it irresistible to me.
Lying down never felt this good -- my battered body aching for the bearable state of sleep. I closed my eyes and was aware of nothing but my dreams for quite some time.
To the editors at NONzine, Mike: What follows now is the nearest approximation I can make of the content of my dreams. This was my first dream since I’d stood up so suddenly at work and walked out into my new life. Every dream I’ve had since the one I’m about to describe has been the same – a relentless recurring nightmare that has forced me to forego sleep as often as I can manage, though my body to this day aches and yearns for that rehabilitative state. But I fear it. In my time as a superhero, this has been my only fear. Sleep is my Lex Luthor, my Joker, my Green Goblin, a cruel thing to my mind, an abuser of my body.
Only two objects filled my dreams: the body of Carmen Electra and a long series of random words. Carmen Electra’s body would come apart piece by piece and reassemble according to an odd rhythm but with nothing ever coming back into place where it should be. A mannequin-ized Carmen Electra, dissembled and reassembled according to the designs of a very sick god. And all the time, words, or some approximation of them, floated around and over and between her parts, each in its own font and size, like an assemblage of kidnapper or hostage-taker ransom notes. The words went something like this: pickles, fir, hair, congregation, mayday, driver, boar, Lithuania, sleaze, intake, Valvoline, irascible, eye, tinker-toy, pledge, egregious, finger, Whitman. Dog, confetti, New Jersey, phantom, disregard, asinine, port, filters, bacterium, negligence, scour, deploy, sanguine, lash. Flatulence, penny, order, breast, concave, perturb, nascent, under-belly, rich, can, entropy, forge, gallop… and on and on and on with everything from parts of letters to whole and wholly random words. On and on it went until everything was dissembled to the point that it could no longer be reassembled – just cells and letter-parts as black and grey snow over a stark-white field.
When I snapped awake from this first dream, my hypnotic friend had tied me to her cot with baling wire. My breathing was up already from my dream, and now only increased until sweat started dripping from my brow. What little effort I could give against the wire biting into my wrists and ankles was very little use. It seemed I was alone in the room, the entire apartment, but I called out to her anyway.
“What do you mean?” I kept staring at myself in the mirror, watching my mouth form the words, watching the glint in my eyes.
“What’s this with the writing all over a person? Is that some kind of new thing I haven’t heard of yet?”
My stare cast deeper into the image in the mirror and it became all at once like the face of another person – someone I had never seen before, and I was watching his mouth move and hearing the words come, but I felt no connection to the image or the words. “I don’t know,” the image said. “It seemed like it might be an interesting experiment. Today we shall have a naming of parts and all that.”
She didn’t answer but continued with whatever noises she was making in the kitchen. I studied the face in the mirror. I watched the thoughts scrolling over its eyes. She came to the doorway, two plates in hand held up to her black-inked breasts. “Hungry?” She had prepared hotdogs and chips for us on little aluminum camping plates. We sat in her creaking lawn chairs and ate without speaking.
Toward the end of our meal, I glanced through a slit in the blinds of her window and noticed the light of a new day eking across the horizon. It felt like the same old day though, and I was exhausted. The girl watched me while I ate, paying distinct attention to every bite. She eventually brought us some tea to wash the food down. She gulped hers down and then watched me sip at mine. It was unnerving to be watched that way by a naked woman covered in my labels, but I was too tired to protest or question her about it.
She took my plate and cup back to the kitchen. “You’re getting very sleepy,” she said when she returned. My eyes were already getting droopy and tending to blur my vision of the room. This was no trick of hers, simply a statement of fact. “You’ll want to lie down on my cot. You won’t ask. You’ll move over to the cot, get undressed and go straight to sleep.” And, of course, I did. I was too tired to question the act, or to care about its consequences. My mind and body called out to me for sleep and the merest suggestion made it irresistible to me.
Lying down never felt this good -- my battered body aching for the bearable state of sleep. I closed my eyes and was aware of nothing but my dreams for quite some time.
To the editors at NONzine, Mike: What follows now is the nearest approximation I can make of the content of my dreams. This was my first dream since I’d stood up so suddenly at work and walked out into my new life. Every dream I’ve had since the one I’m about to describe has been the same – a relentless recurring nightmare that has forced me to forego sleep as often as I can manage, though my body to this day aches and yearns for that rehabilitative state. But I fear it. In my time as a superhero, this has been my only fear. Sleep is my Lex Luthor, my Joker, my Green Goblin, a cruel thing to my mind, an abuser of my body.
Only two objects filled my dreams: the body of Carmen Electra and a long series of random words. Carmen Electra’s body would come apart piece by piece and reassemble according to an odd rhythm but with nothing ever coming back into place where it should be. A mannequin-ized Carmen Electra, dissembled and reassembled according to the designs of a very sick god. And all the time, words, or some approximation of them, floated around and over and between her parts, each in its own font and size, like an assemblage of kidnapper or hostage-taker ransom notes. The words went something like this: pickles, fir, hair, congregation, mayday, driver, boar, Lithuania, sleaze, intake, Valvoline, irascible, eye, tinker-toy, pledge, egregious, finger, Whitman. Dog, confetti, New Jersey, phantom, disregard, asinine, port, filters, bacterium, negligence, scour, deploy, sanguine, lash. Flatulence, penny, order, breast, concave, perturb, nascent, under-belly, rich, can, entropy, forge, gallop… and on and on and on with everything from parts of letters to whole and wholly random words. On and on it went until everything was dissembled to the point that it could no longer be reassembled – just cells and letter-parts as black and grey snow over a stark-white field.
When I snapped awake from this first dream, my hypnotic friend had tied me to her cot with baling wire. My breathing was up already from my dream, and now only increased until sweat started dripping from my brow. What little effort I could give against the wire biting into my wrists and ankles was very little use. It seemed I was alone in the room, the entire apartment, but I called out to her anyway.
© 2006Labelman
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