Meetings, Departures, Rebirths by Brent Powers
She came out of nowhere, as a blank, no, a white light coming at me: a face, snowblind eyes … That’s not right. I hear myself saying, “The moment we were in the dark, I very naturally …” Was I reading from something? That’s not my customary way, which is the way of twisting syntax, warping it to perversions of speech, killing speech itself. Well, not really. Look. I made her. See?
I woke up in the infirmary. She was there. A nurse this time. She almost smiled. I could tell it was not her habit to smile often. She wanted to be cool. It was some social constraint here.
The doctor appeared again.
“The only thing I can grant you is to put you under arrest,” he said.
Then he went away.
“He’s baiting you,” she told me.
I realize that I’ve been dreaming again. I keep passing out and dreaming. I go in and out of the dreams and think it’s my life. Well, isn’t it? Last time I looked I had no life, as they say: you don’t have a life, get a life, do something humorous or grand. At least kiss some lonely woman. I’m too old to care now. “Who lives?” I say, quoting from some film. I can do better, I suppose, but I don’t care about that, either.
Even so, she is there now. She hangs close to the ceiling. Then she explodes into splinters of rainbow light.
“It’s the medication,” the nurse tells me. “You should walk around when you can.”
“Do you go to school here?” I ask her. I suppose I’m making conversation, as they say. Who?
“No, I’m … You know. In the Temporary Service.”
“For the King?”
“Yes.” She looks sad.
That’s not true, either. The last time there was a King was 1987. After that chaos. A period of hateful chaos. It was an unsayable. Chaos, followed by the undeclared police state, also unsayable, a rule of silence. Shut up. This is beyond ordinary logic. Years of it. And the days of uproarious, undeclared war. Gangs thrilling through the streets, shooting everyone they could see, for they were half blind from the treatments. Finally I left and came here. This city, I mean, not the infirmary. How did I get to the infirmary? I was writing in my diary, falling into another voice: “Her reception fairly overwhelmed me with happiness.” What kind of guy is that? Some powdered wig fool with a walking stick. Yes, and it has a Medusa’s head on it. How would I know that? Something from the TV here. It’s stuck in my face. You swing it to you on a whatchacallit, a sort of extendable bellows, no, not that, a bar attached to another bar, only I can’t move it away, it’s stuck, and the nurse won’t shut the fucker off. Day and night I must look at these fools, they’re either speaking in the low tones of love, that’s how they think it sounds, low, sultry, stupefied, and badly written. Well then news heads yapping, scaring you to death or hoping so: then you will buy this thing here, this truck thing. Read more »
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