Trainscreech. The subway tram jolted forward, slowed, then another jolt—shakystarting to again cycle the stops of the circling tracks. Thomas sat perfectly still, watching the lighted tunnel stream by outside the car windows. Stillmoving, Thomas waited for his stop, idly watching the other passengers, seeing little out of the ordinary, numbed by comfortable normality. Until. Legless beggar. Toothless, drooling, blackgaping hole wetting his beard. Incoherent babble-moaning sirened from his mouth, the halfworded sputterings of an age-made mute. Long, knotted, grey hair fell about the man’s misshapen face, his head wobbling from side to side as he made his horrible, drycracking wail of a moan. Waking once again from its fitful, uneasy sleep, the vacuous anger returned, raw, and a bubbling, sour snake-venom stung Thomas’s mouth as he shakily ingested the image, like beggar like sun. Disgust and horror lumped cancerous in his throat—malignant—and his intestines shriveled into dusty nausea. Legless, rolling himself around on a four-wheeled, plywood board, the beggar made his way up the car. Made his way toward Thomas, who, wishing beyond wanting, beyond even needing, to escape before the filth-ridden man could reach him, glanced in desperation at the route map. Here’s the stop before mine. Tell the next by the last. Still-looking back towards the beggar, Thomas began sweating again, wringing his hands in nervous terror.
Perhaps that beggar managed to reach him. Perhaps they even spoke. No matter. There’s no sense in a dialogue, it slows the motion, and one does not wish to go in reverse. Yes, seeing him crucified by his infirmity will suffice. No. Thomas saw the man mock-crucified—a sacrilege. That which is unholy could not be made whole, and, like the beggar, Thomas knew himself wholly unholy. Knew. A crumbling, grey steeple, festering with mold. Holy. He spat.
Trainscreech. Sideways scuffleshuffling, Thomas shoved against the faceless grey out into the station, still spitting the sour sting from his mouth. Pressing, crushing, the beggar! Out! He shot from the train, fighting his way through the crowd. The beggar’s grotesque visage seared his mind’s eye, and Thomas saw nothing. That dry-wailing howl rang in his ears, and he was deaf. Staggering, blinded, Thomas clawed through the crowd, choking and desperate for air. Suffocating! His body lashed forward with a violent shudder; the acid-burning on his palate conquering all other senses, he doubled over and vomited. Again. His body seized and shook as he regurgitated everything within him, while a crowd gathered greymass around him, keeping their distance—amazed, concerned, horrified, enthralled. Again. Again. At last a retch whipcracked his body so violently that he dropped to the ground, dry heaving. Blood oozed from the corners of his twisting mouth as he lay convulsing in puddled putrescence. Purgation. The beggar was gone from Thomas’s mind, though hunger had taken his place. Ravenous and violent, it tore at him. So it is. Expulsion, replacement. Statue of David. Defecation, regurgitation. Whichever. Whole. Ingestions and digestions to be released on the world in the manner we see fit.
And so, with the mark of his digestions scrawled on the subway station floor, Thomas stood, his head bowed and tiredsagging. Exhaustion now coupled with his hunger, and together they writhed and copulated, a dangerous romance. Better than nausea. Thomas, sweatshaking but satisfied, slowmade his way to the stairs. He ascended, leaving the city’s subterranean, circular frame behind him. As it began, so would it end: dust to dust, stairs to stairs, home to museum to home.
And Then.
I live with my mother in a rust-red, brickcrumbling house. Or, rather, she lives with me—better: resides. Rests, better still. Down beneath the damp basement floorboards she lies prostrate, engulfed in moist earth. Stiffened by death, in the sense that her body has long since ceased to function, she sleeps: wooden. All around her the worms are stirring the dirt, wriggling past her. Dead, under the rotting floor, she decomposes; in life she had decomposed over the floor. Little difference—both were unwanted. And unwitting. She hadn’t much enjoyed life anyhow. Except for her children. Oh, she had many, many children, nursed each and every one at her breast, loved them, spoke to them as they suckled. Mother. A child’s first love, a child’s first sustenance, a child’s first words. Gravitating to her teat, blind, mute infants opened and closed toothless mouths, gumming for their mother’s milk, but no longer.
Now only I remain, my brothers and sisters lying with our mother. I must remain here, in her house—in our house. I’ve left before. Left my mother, left her house. Never for a long time of course. Only briefly, in short spurts, and I kept in contact, writing letters. But now I stay here, to preserve their memory. Trichinosis took them all; parasites fed on their innards, glutting themselves on ignorance, and they ceased, my family. They stopped speaking, though they had never really spoken—to me, to each other—they died in silence. They fell; down into the muck they collapsed, mud oozing over their bodies. And so I placed the boards over them. Concrete would have been a travesty.
Now, always back to now, the house of my mother is empty, save me. Here I mind their graves and talk to them. Yes, I’m always speaking—to them, to myself. I’ve spilled water all over the floor. Dirty water, caking dust-mud all over the kitchen tiles. It was clean when it was in my little glass jar. Sparkling, clear water, I watched as it sat on the table—watched it ripple and shimmer. A slip of the hand and it fell to the ground, marblelinoleumfloorshattering…
I should mop it up--soak up this dust-congealing liquid. No sense in water without its being pristine. Very well, then. Remove this greygelatinous mass. A brief pause from my narrative while I utilize my mother's mop. How many times, how many times I've done so. On to the mop.
Perhaps I should dust as well, to prevent any tainted water in the future. No. There will always be dust. Unto dust thou shalt return, each day of your life, wallowing in dull, dead flakes of skin. It's sickening. All this filth--corrupt, twisted, false. On a lush hill, the shining temple of the Word of God rots from termites and age--a feast for the ravenous serpent, who crawls on his belly and consumes the only true eternal.
But he did not always crawl, devouring dirty dust. Before his curse, infinite eons had been spent conversing with God. With God! Infallible, smooth, liquidity flowed in the Word, in the beginning. Soundless, spherical utterances issued from the divine mouth. And then. And then the serpent whissperwound his venom into the world. Descended to Eve, that she should hear his hushed hissing. He touched the dust with his tongue, that he should make dust when it came time to speak of it, as it was, had been, would be, with God. But when he spoke of dust, it did not appear. Echoing the serpent's sound, Eve sinned with Adam. Down to their bellies they fell; the ground split asunder, and the wrath of God thundered upon them. They reeled in misery and shame, their faces hidden in the dirt. Adam lost the names which through God he had given all things. With a cracked voice, he slowly spoke new names at them, as the serpent had named the dust. The sounds leaving his lips in shrieking spittleflicks.
What foolishness this story harbors! All this and that about David or the Tower of Babel. My mother always like the beginning, though, quoting John 1:1 whenever she had the chance. There was a time when I, too, embraced it. So long ago, when the laughter meant so much. When those simple, ringing sounds rang as true as the silent, silver ocean of God's own Word. So long ago. And then? And then. And now? I don't know--and then as well, I suppose.
No. Know. And now, and then. Another man. Consumption and regurgitation. The subway. The museum. The Curator, though his schedule told him otherwise. Dust. I cannot write so quickly as I must. My mind flashes these images before me and I understand. How foolish I was to have missed them, distorting my sight no better than the Curator with his little black book! Painting frames and water glasses splintershatter in my mind, but I am yet beginning. I must leave my mother's house, though I know it will always darken my mind to the light--to the sun. Good. The red sun still shines on a school of herring, but does it not help me to see? Very well. I shall let it be dimmed; it is not the sun I seek. I know where it can be found, and I will use its mild light to guide my step. The sun, thank the Father! The beggar, thank the Son! But I am not satisfied rejoicing in inevitability. I must go now; I must understand. Goodbye mother, goodbye Vanessa, goodbye Serpent. Hello and goodbye sound in unison in my ears. I do not understand, I cannot understand, I will not understand, I must try to understand. In the beginning was the Word, but the Word was not God. The Word will never be God; neither will it be Devil. And yet it is both.