and they said “I nor we, us, I mean the fifth one.”
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. Drawn down or harvested .
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. Few.
It stops here, or would, but instead I eat the dry toast, stare out past the occupants at the stained wall opposite. The rain falls but I do not hear it, the many mouths move but I do not hear it, need not hear it as the blank provides. The thin woman comes, stands before me staring, tapping her pen against the pinkish pad. I remove my headphones, and everything rushes in, is allowed in, a harsh amalgam of voices, shifting feet, ceramic plates, some awful guttural sound constructed from the ambiance. The wheels of the cassette move, the woman’s reflection distorting across the plastic door of the player, and she clears her throat.
“Just the toast?” There is a heaviness found in her inflections.
“Coffee.”
“Sugar?”
“Coffee.”
“Creamer?”
“Just coffee.”
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. And I think she fails to see where this is going, but that is okay.
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. “Black.” and she is gone, and I am outside, holding a white Styrofoam cup. The lapses do not matter much, they will pass, and the dimly lit street sign to my left reads Townsend—this will all make sense in time.
A short man wearing a drab green slicker and boorish brown boots stands near me, lights a cigarette with a flick flick—the sound of the inhale is always best. I go to put my headphones on but he does that thing people do, he speaks, utters a question to draw me out.
“Waiting for the bus?” He exhales, ashes, and looks down the street.
“Why?” I stare at him through my corners and slowly take a sip of my coffee.
“Curiosity, I guess, I mean why stand here?” He eyes the clouded sky. “Aren’t you going somewhere?”
“Some place you can’t go.” Across the street the thin woman, the waitress, sits enclosed within the clear acrylic box talking to some shadow behind her.
“That’s real fucking cryptic. I knew someone like you, a real phantom, real ghost character. Hidden.”
.
.
.
.
.in the ditch,
He lay dead and I held a half pack of cigarettes, inhaled the sweet smoke from the one held between my lips and knew it was not me. The cassette plays, my headphones on, and first voice says, Can you please respond to the question? Second voice, I never knew there ever was one; a laugh, a warble, a hiss and stop.
This scene could drag, and I move on from it, remember that was the past and stand looking at the street sign reading Townsend. It is in these instances, when you know you will not return, that you should take it in. So this is what I do, I take in the stale air, the street lamps, the cross sections, the noise. Follow the cracks upon the pavement, out into the darkness, leading to a cluster of lights in the distance. And this is where I end it.
I go left, through the brambles, beneath the hedge. Go down, descending, always descending, as I always have. Push my way through till the forest consumes me, surrounds me, and no longer does the noise bleed through. And this is the point where I must let go, place no thought upon my movement, directionless I must travel forward. Preconception will bear me no entrance, the conscious mind cannot guide me here, desire will lead me out.
And I travel around, and down, and through, and away. Feel the cool living breath wrap around me, feel the softness of the swelling ground, and the canopy churns and the bodies sway, and the boorish man now walks beside me. The cigarette drawn down as it burns, and the smoke wisps out from his mouth and fades.
“Yeah, I knew I would see you here. Seems like something you would do.” Flicks the cigarette butt to the ground and lights another. “Fucking ghosts, or you know, whatever you think you are. Your place, isn’t it? Your—” I place my headphones on, hit play, hear the crackle and the waver, and the first voice says, Is this it? And the second voice responds, Depends. The third voice waits, takes a sip of something, clears its throat, takes another sip, moves something within the space, walks away, opens something, comes back and says, I can’t see it.
And now a child walks beside me, and in her eyes there is only color, and I reach for my headphones, which are not there, and softly she says, “Marantz.” She holds an open palm against her chest, against the hand-stitched image of a wolf with the antlers of a stag, and says, “I am Marantz.” She pauses, moves forward without moving, grasps my hand and whispers, “That is who I am. What I am.”
“Of course,” I utter, “I believe you.” I move forward, I cannot look too long, but something is already happening, it has already taken place. And I wade chest-deep in a pool of stagnant water, through the algae and the foam, and beneath me the girl drifts down, swallowed by the depths I cannot see through. I could always go down with her, but in thinking this I know cannot and instead reach the shore, feeling my feet sink into the soft sand. And now the world seems different, lopsided, and I feel myself topple to the right, scrape my knuckles against gray rock, clinging out, I hit hard into the dry earth of an empty basin.
I lie like this for some time, still, the faux-leather pad of my headset pushing into my lower jaw. And I hear walking behind me, not too close but near enough, a lighter flicks followed by a sigh.
“Yeah, seems like a position you would take. Probably should have listened.” To what I do not know, but the drab man encircles the basin, loose stone falling, tumbling down in. “Never could look the other way. Fuck, you know, I mean, look at you, really. Ghosts are ghosts, I guess, but the bus would have been there in five minutes.” He stands in my view, his agitation bleeding out, and I know he is part of the cycle, and I see through him.
Awkwardly he slides down into the basin, makes his way toward me, his heavy steps pounding, and I close my eyes. He becomes a mere pattern of noise, of rhythm, and I nudge my headset into place, depress the button, and the first voice speaks mid-sentence: not likely. The second voice speaks in the distance, too far to hear, and the third shuffles papers, sets an object down, taps anxiously and says, Why would you say this? Then there is a length of silence, a hollow sound like wind followed by static, and the cassette halts.
The sun blazes out, thrusts its light down upon me, uninhibited, and I sit up, encircled by bluish shag of the pines. It is the place I should be, and I remember this from before, from the other six who were much like me. Six before, six after, three before, three after, they all negate themselves and live elsewhere. And in being the seventh I do not fit, no reduction to be had, but yet I must enter, and I am close.
As always I move aimlessly, detached yet always forward. Must take what comes, must see it through, and the naked women glide through the trees, between the limbs and around. They thrust up then down, plowing themselves through the soil, down and into the fertile land and the child holds my hand, and the boorish man appears in front of me, charging towards me, and I catch a glimpse of his eye.
“Just the toast?” The thin woman stands in front of me, tapping her pad as she stares. The wall behind her bubbles out, begins to peel, and I reach for my headset, which is not there, and the child still grasps my hand.
“Coffee. Black.”
.
.
.
.
.like the hole in his eye.
How he stares empty, lying still in the grass. Lying dead in the ditch, as I inhale. And I know this is not me, know that is what he will become, in time. But I am made to see, and with this I touch his still face, draw a line from his temple to his lip, see down through him, into him and am made to look away.
And I lose my footing, tumble down, brace myself as I collide with the body of a lonely oak. The child crunches down the fallen leaves with bare feet, pounds her chest with her open palm, and ululates openly upon the air. Drifting in and out, pushing further away and closer, and she comes, crawls above me on all fours, nuzzling her face into mine. She whispers something I cannot hear, kisses my cheek, which is barely felt, and is gone.
Something walks heavily in the distance, gouging the earth with its hooves, and it bellows out, calls openly, then is silent. A stillness embraces me, and the cassette begins to move, and from the headset next to me the first voice says, It seems it was all here all along, the second still too far to hear, and the third ponders, tapping the side of a glass, never speaks but instead leaves the room.
And the limbs of the oak bend down, arch in a way much like a door, and I know if I pass through them I will not be the same, know that I have no other choice. I stand, peering through, see the six looking back, see my hand upon the face of another, and the child stands but is not there, and in her absence, I am guided through.
In a vague sense, I am much the same, but know that I am not what I was before. The field stretches out before me, the sky unbound, and I know I cannot look away, step back, but instead am taken, jettisoned out to join them. And the sky begins to swell, spreads itself open, and I stand in the field, and I rise out from myself compressing down. The matter collapses around me, builds upon me till I ignite, and my furnace is fed, and I stand in the field looking far away.
I am refined, and I eject, and I consume, scorch down through the line which led me here. And in the sky there now sit seven, and in my completion I am made to purify, pull the orbiting bodies down into my core. Feel them fluctuate, dissolve down, and I sift through their elements, arrange them to my choosing, remake them so I may integrate.
In the field, the grasses move, bow toward the earth below, and I stand looking forward, toward the absence held beyond the trees. I place my headphones on, push the button down, and the mechanisms move. And there is nothing but the static, a warmth stretching out, a landscape all its own, and in the distance of its fragile fidelity, out to its imagined edge, a howl is formed.
And I smile to myself, to the others, make my way across the field, farther from before, the seven blazing above, and I am allowed in.
Wesley Woolf is a writer, among other things, who currently resides in Ohio. This is their first publication.
