kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"JustOnce.0"

words

In your head, you hear them, scrambling about. "Your hair looks nice, Janine." A nervous tic under your right eye, and you imagine the muscle spasming with a force only dreamed up, ripping itself out of your flesh, snapping bone--"It feels good to hit people, don't it?"

Letters swim on the screen and you try to track; where is the woman in the red dress? Why can't you see her? "You've never?"

Just once. "Beathe deep!" Or later? Copy and paste, you could do it in your sleep--but your sleep was never like this.

"Did you get the memo?"

A voice swims out your mouth, sweat stinging skin, shivering your brain--"Memo?"

"It was on your desk." Memo? Memo. Memmmmmo. Lips tingle with vibration. Your bladder swells painfully inside you. Half-life, half a life, half alive--"Right back, sorry."

You don't look well? One and one and one, and still just one. Music pounding in your pores, wanting to explode, let go.

Cold and solid, the handle in your hand, metal, brushed metal, your skin clammy and the handle so real. The room is full, no one looks well--or is it you? Just once, you think. "You've never?"

You hear them, scrambling about--on the floor, they look like insects, twisted, manic, maniacal; manacles of your existence, co-workers, rules and wars. Them, too?

Back against the door, cold, hollow, an insect chitters--the door clicks shut. Just the door. The fire, flickering orange and yellow, fading in and through, warm shapes that become reality--you're back on the bed, a sea of faces swimming in circles--the insect picks itself up off the floor and voices you can't understand congratulate it. Contact!

"Janine?"

You stumble around the group, glad you didn't wear heels. Your knees collapse at the thought, but you're inside a stall and pull that door towards you and pull off your clothes--war against time, nature and instinct. "That's a nice dress. Where did you get it?" The porcelain a different cold and you want to cry, you want to cry, you want--germs and disease. Nothing between you, your insides, and the ins and outs of those around; you imagine your urethra rubbing against another, a sea of dirty flesh; water in, water out, and a million little things crawling round looking to set up home, reproduce.

A baby in your tummy, you imagine, fighting with bayonet against oncoming horders. The entire human race overrun by aliens, things alien, older and more native than yourself. "Hello, there."

You want to cry, and puke, and shit, and piss--"Are you alright?"--pain welling up inside and you remember that you have to relax, relax the kettle, short and stout, always worried about how short you were, are, will be, never an adult; warring with the thought of average, wondering if other people notice how short you feel, wondering if other people notice height as much as you--

EXPLODE, and the steam comes up; water running makes your water run still faster, breaking glass filling your ears and you twitch and fight the urge to dig the glass out from your ears; it's just a sound, but sound is real, sound is waves, air, pounding against your ears, physically pressing against you; you imagine yourself swimming through the liquid of the air, liquid of the air against liquid of the toilet against the liquid of your flesh, and you verp, just a little, but it feels better--even better when you swallow back down and you feel that little escape calming the insurgency.

You're shivering when you stand, and you have to remind yourself you went to the bathroom. You lean against your forearm against the wall of the stall and breathe, not too deep, not too shallow. You're not OCD but it's so easy to slip, so many things to imagine, to not imagine, so many things to forget on a daily basis, minute to minute. It's been a week of walking to work--the birds, the bark, everything so alive, so unreal; a week of sleeping but not sleeping, imagining, remembering. It's been a week

and you have to wonder if it's ever going to fade.

If it's ever going to let you go, just that one time, just once. You've never? But you must've if you don't. Don't. Don't.

You wash your hands and go back to your desk, careful but not too careful, the world swaying under you as if the office was a boat, rocking you from wall to wall, you've got to compensate and compensate for compensation.

"You know that one time?" -- "What?" -- "You saying?"

"Ooh! Yeah!"

Fingers on the keyboard, you look at the code again. It's twinkling at you, hinting at magic and fairy tales, massaging the flesh of your eyes with hope--and you see her--the woman in red, she's walking towards you, smiling; there's the answer. One problem solved, fireworks and tilted windmills; hours to go--"There she is."--hours to go, but you know you can do it. How long, how long, how long? "How long?"

Reload, and everything is right. You laugh out loud, because it's not--but the problem is solved. Tick it off the list, and on to the next one; steady progress, and on schedule, what an absurd notion--progress on schedule, every drab drip a mistake, a slip, but you're digging up and out; the cobwebs in your mind are laced with acid--"I think she's coming down", and you remember that night. It didn't really exist, of course, just that once--just once.

Just that once, the chips bled and you--"Hey! You!"--you took it in, the universe, or? Did you?

One memory to the next, and you work your way down the list. Shocks race up your spine and bounce your leg, a never-ending quake that only you can feel--you hope. Just have to find the woman in the red dress, why red? Do you even remember her name, or was she nameless, like the other?

Nameless. You.

You work, and wonder if it will ever end.