Monday, August 21, 2006
(12:19 PM) | Adam R:
Serial Novel: Chapter Two
Read Chapter One here.CHAPTER TWO
Chapters! Great! This ought to help me over the hurdles. My new plan of attack is to start a new chapter whenever I get bogged down with the intricacies of not having a story.
CHAPTER TWO
He is on a ship, a great, metal, hulking ship, and he was on it. And he is on it. And he continued to be on it for several days. He was in a room – and remains in a room – with a small porthole that opens to an ocean view. There was nothing else, just an ocean view in a white room. After several days on the ship he awoke, and then he was awake for some time until he was sleeping again. He continued this routine but he eventually became hungry. First, though, he was curious about the pain that was blossoming in his body, then it occurred to him he had a physical need having to do with his face, because his mouth was constantly opening and closing, kneading his lips. He put things there, first his fingers, then the spare deposits he had been instinctively leaving in the corner of his room. These came back up, into a different pile.
Any discussion of the primordial things quickly becomes grotesque.
Finally – when he found himself at a place that was neither sleeping nor waking, and no longer standing or sitting or lying but flopping – his head knocked into a handle on a security door and he was thrown into the world, and Harris was walking down the corridor and he was flung into Harris, who said, “Criminy, Robby, where’ve you been?” He said “been” like “bean” and then, covering his nose he said “cripes” and scurried away. Robby fell to the ground where he remained until he woke up in some place that was not the ground but softer, much softer, and in his arm he saw a tube, to which he attributed his feeling of well-being.
This room was white, too, but bigger than his last room, and he was in it, but more specifically he was in a bed in it, until he found that he could rise from the bed and by standing he could see a city through a window, shining. He did this, stood and saw, then he went to the city through a door in the room, through a hall, then over the side of the ship, then down, down, then a splash, then down, down into the salty water. At this point he was set upon by numerous jelly fish and he struggled against them. He found himself ascending through the water then, and then at the surface of the water, where he gasped, and then once again he noted he was sinking down, and down he sunk and struggled and rose, gasped, was set upon by jellyfish. After repeating this routine for several minutes he once again struck his head, this time on an iron bar, and his hand shot out for the bar before he sank again, or was set upon again. The iron bar was bolstered on each side by iron rails, and above the bar he found another iron bar, then another, and so on until he found the last iron bar, and then he did not care about the bars any longer because he was prone on the hard ground, heaving and returning through the mouth as he had done before in the first room on the ship that he had been on and in. Life, as he knew it, was a challenge. But he was learning many things.
His skin was red and stung. The wellness he had felt was gone, and he stayed for a while on the ground of the biggest room he had known so far, and it was not actually white but all sorts of colors. He was there. And he was there underneath a bush. Later, standing again, the city did not seem to shine as much. He attributed this to the darkness. The water made splashing noises and the air was cool.
The next day he found himself on a bench, happy at the promotion. He had grown used to waking up under mysterious circumstances. The swelling had gone down on his body, and as the pain had abated he found his mouth moving again. He went off to find something to put there, and everywhere he saw others like him asleep beneath the trees. From behind a hand reached out and grabbed his arm. “Hush,” the grabber rasped, “you’ll wake ‘em, the roaches. Come this way.” And the rasping grabber tugged him onto a path.
“What have you got?” rasped the grabber. He did not respond, because his learning had not yet brought him to an understanding of such a question. “One of them, I see.” He had ceased grabbing but continued to rasp, and doing so turned to face the harbor. “One of them, but" -- he turned back with purposeful drama – “but you seem intelligent enough. You have an intelligent look. Are you intelligent?” This was the most rasping the man had ever heard. The only other words he could even recall were the ones he heard in the hallway on a nautical occasion. He thought he’d give words a try.
“I think I’d like something to eat,” he found himself saying, he said, he spoke, saying he’d like something to eat, he thought. He spoke that he thought, which did not strike anyone as a miracle, as the miracle, as the miracle. It did not startle the rasping erstwhile grabber, who chortled, “Well, that’s brains for sure, old bum. Come on, then.” And as the man did not move, the chortling rasper stopped a few paces away, turned, and rasped, “Then fine, stay there.” He disappeared into the trees for several minutes, and just as the man was about to wordify again, the disappearing chortler reappeared with a loaf of bread. “Take, eat,” he said. “That’s the way,” he said.
The man remained where he stood and shoveled the bread into his mouth voraciously. He could not remember such a satisfying experience, and even as he waited for the food to return out of his mouth, the bread made its way into his stomach and the blood carried the nourishment to several parts of his languishing body. He stayed where he stood and ate, and the disappearing, rasping chortler who had grabbed him and now fed him stared standing in awe. “Criminy, Jim, but you’re eating now.”
”Eating,” said the man. Crumbs fell our of his mouth and he laughed.
“Like you haven’t eaten before.”
"Before.”
“Cheese, where you from, brains?” The man shrugged. A ship was in the harbor, so he pointed to it. “You come on the Eretria? Small wonder. They gonna miss you?”
“. . .”
“Say, what’s your name, Rocks?”
“Don’t know.”
“What’d you have? A fall?”
“Robby, maybe. Someone called me Robby in a hallway.”
“It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Robby.”
“Thank you.”
“Such manners and all are uncommon around here.” He waved his arms to indicate the people sleeping under the trees. “Buncha cockroaches. Somebody needs for stepping on them.” He paused, and there was even a raspiness to the silence. “Well, here. I’m Bill.” Bill thrust out his hand proudly. “You might as well shake it, Robby, you’ve eaten through my bread.” Robby took Bill’s hand in his own, and they looked into the city. | Main Page
