AFTER
THE ESSAY
By
Nemo Arator
After writing an essay in a building on the
old Wascana campus, I
emerged to find that night had fallen while I was inside. I was unsure what
else to do right then, so I lit a cigarette and loitered there awhile, smoking
and reeling in this feeling. The nicotine now a rarity, combined with the
elation of having done, I nearly swooned in that rush. I had no idea what time
it was, only that it was now well after dark.
It was mid-November and the season had set
in: the snow, the cold.
Moonlight shone through the leafless branches of the trees. Lamps glowed atop ornate
black posts along the paths between buildings; the orbs encasing the bulbs
seemed to float in the gloom. While I stood there, I could sometimes see shapes
moving in the darkness, which I imagined must be other late-night students,
hunched over in the chill as they trundled from the warmth of one place to
another.
I smoked the cigarette down to the filter,
then ground it out with
my foot. I was dizzy and I still didn’t know what to do. I was about to light
another one when I looked up and saw the tall handsome shape of my friend Scott
approaching from out of the darkness. He saw me too; it took that moment to
recognize, then we went to each other and shook hands.
“How’s it going, man? Good to
see you again,” he said.
“Good to see you too,” I said.
“What are you doing here?”
“I just came to drop some stuff off,”
he said. “And yourself?”
“I just wrote my supervised exegetical
attempt,” I said.
“Oh yes? The big deal, right? How did
it go?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Either way, I suppose. Either I passed or
I failed. I have no idea.”
He nodded thoughtfully, then laughed. “Yeah,
it’s hard to tell with
those things. Well, why don’t you come over to my place then? We’ll celebrate.
I’m just going to drop off these assignments and then I’ll be right back. Anna
Katabasis and Wheelchair Stephen are already there. I think Dante, Virgil, and
Patrick are coming by later.”
“Okay, cool,” I said.
Some workers had been repairing the façade
over the main entrance
when I arrived; I must have bumped my head on their scaffold while entering the
building. I watched to see if Scott did too, but he passed beneath unharmed. I
rubbed the sore spot under my toque and leaned against the wall. I looked out
at the night around me and was suddenly very happy.
Of all the people to spend time with so soon
after writing that
essay, I was glad it could be these particular friends. That essay was the
final stage of my formal training, the last barrier I had to cross, the outcome
of which would determine whether I passed and my study became my work – or I
failed, and was diverted onto some other different path. But until the verdict
came, I was in limbo; all I could do now was wait.
When he returned, we trekked across the campus
together. We had to
cross the one busy thoroughfare on the western edge of the property, and after
that, it was just a long walk down the deserted boulevard to Scott’s place. He
rented a huge dungeon-like suite in the basement of a massive run-down old
tenement called Verdant Greens.
The road to get there from school went on
for miles, and had
massive elms arching overhead to completely shelter above; the broad meridian
between opposing lanes had troughs that bloomed with flowers in summer, but in
winter was just another snow-covered mound. For such a wide street, I almost
never saw any vehicles traveling on it, only pedestrians. Even as we stood at
the intersection waiting to cross, I could see down its length and not a soul
was in sight.
Several people were crammed inside a nearby
bus shelter. It seemed
they were calling and beckoning us, though in the dark, we didn’t immediately
notice. We couldn’t understand what they were saying, so we went over to find
out. It looked like seven or eight people; two or three girls and maybe four or
five guys. They wanted to know if we knew somewhere they could stay, someplace
they could crash for the night and be gone in the morning, but it had to be
somewhere they could all stay.
“I might know a place,” said
Scott. “But you can’t stay with me.
There’s too many of you. I’ve got a full house already. But I’ll go make a
phone call and come back and tell you.”
“Okay, friend. Sounds good. Thank you
so much,” they said.
Then the light changed and we crossed the
street into the familiar
enclosure of the old neighborhood, safe beneath the towering elms; the
blank-faced house-fronts stared starkly as we passed. Given its proximity to
the campus, most of these houses were being rented or leased by students.
“Did you know those people?”
I asked.
“No, but I might know a place they
can stay,” he said.
Then he started to hum the melody of “A
Night on Bald Mountain” as
we walked, perfectly capturing the sinister glory of its blooming intonations.
When we arrived at the building, Scott pressed
the buzzer before
unlocking the door, that way alerting whoever was inside that he had returned.
Due to the ever-increasing price of rent in the city, he had to take on several
roommates in order to afford the place, and thus, was often hosting three or
four or more guests simultaneously. We went inside and down to the basement.
His door was right there at the foot of the stairs and he knocked loudly before
unlocking it.
Then he said, “Come on in, man,”
and we went inside.
The main room was a long rectangular space
illuminated solely by
the flickering light of a medium-sized television. It was still furnished with
the same couch and coffee-table I remembered, as well as an enormous bookshelf
that took up an entire wall. I could see two people sitting on the couch; it
looked like they were watching a movie.
At this distance and in the dimness, it was
hard to tell who they
were, but as we neared, I saw it was indeed our mutual friends Wheelchair
Stephen and Anna Katabasis. Stephen was in his wheelchair, of course, not
actually on the couch, but parked close beside it. Anna was sitting on the
furthest end of it away from him. (Her real name was Stacia; I never figured
out why people called her that, but that’s how she was always introduced and
thus the moniker stuck.)
I sensed tension in the room as we approached;
the air was
electric. Neither said anything, not even when we were close enough they
couldn’t ignore us anymore; they both pretended to focus intently on the film.
“What are you guys watching?”
I asked.
Stephen scowled irritably and picked up the
remote control and
paused the video. He stared at the frozen image onscreen, refusing to
acknowledge us any further. Anna looked at him, then turned to us and shrugged.
When I looked back at Stephen, he was cleaning his glasses. Scott leaned over
the coffee-table, his eyes scanning its debris-littered surface, then picked up
a translucent plastic tray and held it out to me and said, “Cookie?”
“Sure, thanks,” I said and plucked
one of the two little black
biscuits remaining. I popped it in my mouth and munched it into an icky
sweetness. I brushed my fingers on my coat and watched the crumbs fall to the
floor. It was then I noticed numerous large dark stains on the carpet; in the
shimmering light, it was hard to tell what had caused those stains, but I was
suddenly glad to have kept my shoes on, as Scott had done.
“I’ll go make that phone call,”
he said and went into the other
room.
“What are you guys watching?”
I asked.
But Stephen merely picked up the remote and
pressed play, and the
image onscreen started moving and making sounds.
“Did you want to watch it with us?”
said Anna.
“What’s it called?” I asked.
“It’s called Synchronis
Fantasia,” said Stephen. “It’s based on a story by Yamir Kaurropot. You’ve
probably never heard of him.”
“Sure I have,” I said. “He
wrote the book Limbic Stasis Delirium.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said
Stephen, suddenly enthused. He paused
the movie again and looked at me. “You like that guy? There’s actually a play
of his going on at the Sunnyside Theater next month. It’s called Igoas Riol.
Anna and I are going. Maybe
you’d like to join us.”
As he said that, my eyes drifted past them
to the far side of the
room, to the doorway I knew led to a bedroom because I’ve crashed there before.
Until now, I hadn’t noticed a light was on inside because the door was mostly
closed, but it was a steady saffron glow that could only be candles. And it was
by that light I could just barely discern the shape of a big round kiddie-pool
outside the room, that light faintly gleaming on the water.
I heard myself say, “Sure,” and
then I saw Anna’s face wrinkle in
disgust, as if I’d just committed some horrible faux-pas.
I sat down and tried to ignore them by focusing
on the movie. But
the plot was hard to follow, if there even was any; it seemed more like a fugue
or a series of vignettes, repetition with variations, mostly mundane and only
slightly odd.
Then the buzzer rang and I jumped to my feet,
glad for an excuse to
be away from them. I glanced at the door Scott had gone through, but it was
closed. Before answering the intercom, I took a peek through the window to see
who was out there: it was a short stocky fellow wearing a hooded sweater and a
baseball cap. He stood out there alone, waiting patiently; it looked like one
of the people from the bus shelter.
“He must have followed us here,”
said Scott.
Startled, I turned and saw him standing right
beside me and also
looking out the window.
“I’ll go have a talk with him,”
he said and went out the door.
I stayed at the window and watched. I could
hear him clunking up
the stairs, and then he appeared on the doorstep outside. I watched him talk to
this fellow, watched the process of communication unfold: words, tone, facial
expression, posture, gestures, etc. It appeared they reached some sort of
amicable conclusion, for they shook hands and then the hooded guy left.
Scott stood there awhile longer, looking
down at something in his
hand; he had a pleasantly befuddled expression on his face. He was standing
there for such a long time, I decided I better go see if he’s okay, so I went
upstairs and out onto the step. I don’t know where the balloons came from, but
he was now holding a bunch of them in his formerly free hand.
“Look at this,” he said. “That
dude just gave me two tickets to the
play you guys were talking about. What a coincidence, eh?”
“Yes, indeed,” I said.
“Here, take these, would you? I gotta
go talk to that guy. I just
figured out where they can stay.”
Scott handed me the tickets and the knotted
end of the balloon
strings and started running down the street toward the shape that was barely
visible moving into the distance. As I headed back downstairs, I thought to
myself, This isn’t real. This has already
happened. We’re like a bunch of sleepwalkers, just going through the motions
all over again.
When I got back to the suite, I found it
mysteriously deserted –
there was no sign of either Stephen or Anna. I felt inexplicably apprehensive
as I approached the empty couch. I wondered if they left some salt or residue
like a stain, but there was nothing on the fabric where she sat. The air seemed
colder than it did before and the movie was still playing. I tossed the tickets
onto the coffee-table and let the balloons float to the ceiling. The bedroom
door on the far wall was still ajar, still that same saffron glow inside. The
door to the other room was closed.
It wasn’t until I felt the frigid caress
of cold air wisping over
me that I realized there must be a window open – it was the front window, which
faced the street, and thus, was usually covered by a heavy black drape. But now
it was pushed to one side and the sliding pane was wide open. The window was
large enough for a person to crawl through; it was also large enough to haul a
wheelchair through, if one were so inclined, as they must have been, for I saw
its tracks in the snow leading away.
Looking through that open window, shivering
in the breeze, I saw
nothing else at first. But then I leaned further out and saw a group of people
gathered in the middle of the street. It appeared Scott, Stephen, and Anna were
among them; the rest looked like people from the bus shelter.
They were standing in front of a large ramshackle
old house, and it
seemed to be the subject of discussion, for every once in a while, someone
gestured at it as they earnestly conversed. It occurred to me that this might
be the preliminary phase of a lynch mob; these people gathered together and now
they were going to do something, drawn like molecules to the nucleus of an
idea, right before something happens.
Just then, the house burst out with music,
emanating a dark pulsing
electronica, throbbing in the air, sinister mocking. Suddenly, I noticed the
whole sky was faintly glowing, much more so than could be accounted for by the
city-lights being reflected back down by low-lying cloud cover; though it was
surely well before sunrise, it was that same sort of glow.
From where I stood at the window, I was that
much closer to the
kiddie-pool, and I could see the dull shimmering water that filled it near to
brimming. I walked over and stared at it, trying to figure out why it was here.
Staring as if hypnotized by that greasy glimmering body of water, I briefly
considered dunking my head into it, but decided that might be unwise.
And then I heard a sound, like a sigh, or
an exhaling breath, from
within the nearby bedroom. The door would have swung inward if I had pushed on
it, but I didn’t. A horizontal metal bar had been placed across the doorway
midway up from the ground; it didn’t prevent access to the room, but one had to
crouch to enter, as it was too high to hop over easily.
I tapped on the door and said, “Hello?
Is everything okay in
there?”
I waited, but nobody answered, so I slipped
under the bar and went
into the room. Inside, it was illuminated solely by the dozens of candles that
were clustered on a small table centered against the far wall, radiating their
meager heat and light. The visible space was hazy and aswirl with ghostly
intangible shapes. It must have been smoke from the candles, or incense burning
somewhere, for there was a heaviness, a density in the air, that made it hard
to breathe.
It took a moment to recover myself, and when
I turned around, I was
startled to discover a naked woman lying on the bare mattress of the bed behind
me. She was sweating and gyrating, the languid clenched movements of a woman
somewhat prior to orgasm. She was clearly far gone, deep in the throes of some
powerful drug or altered state. It looked like a really intense MDA experience,
when merely to draw a breath or even feel the slightest current pass over one’s
ultra-sensitized skin, to feel the very blood pulsing through one’s veins, to
get up and walk around, the whole mosaic of sensations that constitute organic
existence somehow miraculously transformed into a delirium of ecstasy.
Her skin glistened, a crystalline sheen like
a glaze. Her epiderm
seemed to warp and ripple as she continued her contortions by candlelight; all
over her body patches of discoloration like random spontaneous bruises were
forming and subsiding, blooming and wilting. Her eyes were like black holes,
pupils dilated to blot the iris; those all-seeing eyes combined with her
permanent grin had an unnerving effect. Who knows how long she had been in
here, it could have been days.
I was about to leave before she noticed me,
when she twisted her
head around and looked directly at me, her eyes refocusing. She was back on
Earth now, back in this room, and started laughing gleefully.
“Oh wow, am I ever fucking high right
now! Weee! It would be so
much fun to fuck like this. Did you want to?”
It was those eyes, piercing through me –
and her sudden lucidity –I
was taken aback and stammered awkwardly, “I think you are perhaps too much
under the influence right now. I’d feel much better about it if you were
sober.”
She sighed and said, “Yeah, I guess
you’re right,” and turned away.
I stood there a moment further, taking that
moment to gaze upon her
lovely shape without the threat of reciprocating scrutiny, my eyes feasting
upon the wild sweaty mass of hair, delicate little arms, supple curve of spine
down the sacral place, the ripe swell of her hips and luscious round globules
of buttock, tapered smoothness of leg finished by perfect little feet – staring
down at her naked body lying there before me, I regretted my decision so
powerfully it hurt.
Then I swiftly departed from there, ducking
under the bar and back
into the forsaken suite. It was freezing cold in here now; I could see my
breath plume. I went to the window and slammed it shut. I peered through the
pane, but I couldn’t see anyone out on the street anymore.
I looked around at the empty apartment and
it felt like the world
stopped – nothing else could happen here now. The movie was over; the TV blared
static white noise, garbling incessantly in the room. Everything looked subtly
different, as though all the furniture had been moved half a foot out of place.
I tottered over to the couch. Perhaps
I’ll stay here awhile, I thought. I had nowhere else to go right now
anyway. I pulled off my toque. I’ll watch
that movie again. I know I saw it before, but I couldn’t remember how it
went, so I picked up the remote and pressed play. The film started
automatically from the beginning, and I leaned back on the sofa and let my mind
go along with it.
As I watched the movie, however, I gradually
became aware of something
near the top of my head, a spot like a swollen numbness. Absentmindedly, I
reached up to scratch it, my fingers raking over a scab-like bump that
instantly made me feel queasy. Investigating more carefully afterward, my
fingers gentle blind sifting through hair until they found a definite foreign
object: a small flat round disc almost flush with the scalp, solidly embedded
and protruding slightly.
Just enough that I could get my fingernails
under. My stomach
lurched at the feel of it, my jaw clenched and my mouth went dry as I suddenly
pulled before I could stop myself – and I felt the hideous slithering as
something was drawn out of my head.
I brought it down to eye-level. But somehow
I already knew, before
seeing, that it was a nail – a tiny bloody spike pinched between my fingers,
about two inches long and streaked with gore and bits of hair. I held it there
and stared for what seemed like an eternity, not quite believing what I was
seeing. I wondered how I could have possibly gotten a nail in the head without
noticing, which gave way to the question of how long it had been there.
And then I realized: I should have left it
in. The nail was just
fine where it was. I hadn’t been impaired in any detectable way, other than
somehow overlooking this rather serious brain trauma – and now I had a literal
hole in the head; I needed this about as much as anything else.
But it was too late to do anything about
it now. I certainly wasn’t
going to try sticking it back in and re-plug the wound like a stuck tire, for
the odds of successful reinsertion without causing additional damage were
minimal enough to nullify the idea of trying.
I had to find a doctor immediately.
