A segment from a book (or novella?) I'm trying to work on consistently these days, between screen projects at least. I've been reading a mix of Denis Johnson, P.G. Wodehouse, Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace recently so no doubt some subconscious mimicry of their styles has leaked in here... Will be interesting to see what I can spot a long time from now:
"The weird feeling was back, deep in the well of my gut. But as the drinks arrived it shrank back, afraid to be dissolved in the poison after I poured it down into myself. So, I forgot it again.
In fact, I forgot more than that feeling. I suffered what some call a brown out. The booze sublimated to haze and the haze floated up into my brain, like a foggy windshield on an empty highway.
When I finished defogging, I found myself holding a sopping chicken gyro, sauced to perfection in white and red. The air felt perfect on my face, cold air rushing down the empty four-laned city street turned wind tunnel by the colossi of the financial district. The buildings stood empty and internally lit with angry white lights. They felt like gigantic judges to me, observing and deciding, waiting to be thawed from whatever ancient force kept them stuck in place.
Nicole and Charlie smoked cigarettes in silence as I devoured my 2:00AM meal. Without further customers, the vendor began reading a newspaper in a foreign language I could not identify from afar. He was an older man with a beard like steel wool and eyes that were small and dry. He was bathed in red light from the electric stove heaters and for a split second I didn’t think he was real.
Next, I rediscovered Wesam. He sat still on a marbled sidewalk, back against an equally marbled façade – ostensibly the tip of the behemoth’s toe nail. His eyes pierced forwards, strong enough to shatter all that polished, dirty marble. I had once heard that my government’s secret military branch developed an insane idea for a targeted weapon– something that would be truly unstoppable. A huge rod of Tungsten, one of the densest elements, would be dropped from stratospheric heights by a satellite or something. This space javelin would plunge towards the earth towards its intended target with a supposedly unrivaled accuracy. A weapon like this would, of course, need unquestionable accuracy in this scenario. The current pedestrian remote weaponry of my country, drones and rockets, was made common by its tendency to murder on accident – sometimes our own troops, mostly innocent locals who refused to flee their homes amidst strife, and perhaps even desert dwelling animals - I’d imagine, though there were never any reports on such miniscule collateral damage so as to mention vaporized invertebrates. Perhaps the problem was that there was nothing left of them. A dragonfly’s wing is hardly evidence of a war atrocity. But unlike all that, the tungsten would land with absolute intention. Not only would its impact destroy whatever sat atop of the surface of the earth – but the rod would continue to fly inward, thousands of feet. The idea being that even the most well-concealed, technologically protected havens of evil men who burrowed deep underground could be eliminated with the brilliant simplicity of a falling rock – hurled from heaven. Needless to say, this is where my mind went – tracking Wesam’s Tungsten gaze. I could not figure out where it was he was targeting though. And then he got up, and started walking towards the subway entrance just a couple of feet away.
I threw away my dripping wrapper and followed after him. Without words, Nicole and Charlie exhaled their last balloons of smoke and joined me – friends’ curiosity dragging us after our mysterious man from another land. The subway air greeted us in contrast to the street’s, heavy stuff warmed by old machinery and the earth itself. That thing which you forget resides beneath the city. The thing that slumbers but never sleeps, like a veteran bear in its pit – content to hide but ready to wreak havoc if called upon.
In this particular pit, a homeless man and a homeless woman sat against the wall with a tiny dog and they were discussing the merits of something. On another day, I would’ve stopped to eavesdrop. Their lives are guaranteed to be more interesting than my own. Whatever dialogue of value they’re having, it’s more real and more intense than any dialogue I could have.
But I couldn’t listen to them, because I was distracted by Wesam. Gripped, really. We all were. Because just as we caught up to him at the bottom of the stairs, he took off in a dead sprint. The couple against the wall with their animal couldn’t give a shit, but for us – for Wesam – this was rather spectacular. Our friend prepared to take a hurtling leap over the metro turnstile, but at the last moment his drunkenness got the best of him and he hurled into the axial at full speed. Less auditory was the thud, more so the horrid whoosh of air that shot out of Wesam as his stomach connected with the metal – like a drowning gulp in reverse. He cursed out loud, wildly, in his own language, as he allowed himself to slide to the floor. From there, still cursing, but more so as a mantra, he crawled beneath the turnstile and made his way to the other side. There were no authorities around to stop him. Once he cleared the gauntlet, he promptly vomited across the rubbery tar floor. This, of all things, is what catalyzed me, Charlie, and Nicole to hurry after him. Everything up to then had been too shocking, or perhaps, we were too selfishly enthralled.
After exorcising himself of the pain of the stomach collision, Wesam staggered to his feet and continued down the hall – almost out of site. The way he carried himself forwards suddenly made me sad, and scared.
“Wesam! Wait a second! Where are you going?!”
“I’m going to Mars, you fucks. Don’t try to follow me. Fucks.” Wesam only turned back to me at the end of this sentence. When he said “fucks,” he allowed a brief moment of eye contact. And I had no idea who he was talking about. But I was really worried.
He staggered down the walkway alongside where the train usually pulls up, looking up and down the tracks like a leopard looks up and down the familiar confines of his cage – daring them to change through raw willpower. The way he spoke, the way his shoulders swaggered… my feet led me towards the turnstile all on their own. By the time I got to it, I semi-consciously made the decision to leap the thing illegally. That was a first, actually.
My friends were saying something behind me, but before long I was closer to Wesam than them. A glance back showed me that they were stopping to pay their way across. Perhaps an official had showed up. Perhaps they were devoted to the taxable upkeep of the city. Perhaps they were feverishly afraid of the rules. But on my side, it was just me and Wesam.
The man was crying. Salt streams across a beautiful, stubbled face. His hands angrily rubbed across himself, cleaning the sides of his mouth and swiping away the tears. My footsteps quieted as I approached him, but their sound set something off in him. Wesam turned to me, his eyes – ringed with red streaks – saw right through me. I was invisible, and in that moment I thought I might have felt as much pain as he did. He turned, and stepped off the platform – falling to the grimed tracks below.
A scream from behind me. Nicole’s. Then a shriek, not just of severe pain but also of surprise – from Wesam – some horrid reality crashing back to him as he connected with the subway floor. There he was, lying there. There Nicole and Charlie and maybe some other people, off and away. There I was, lowering myself down, slowly, carefully, too carefully, shamefully careful, to put my feet next to where Wesam’s bleeding head lay, his forehead’s skin crumpled in waves of delirious pain. There were sounds of train cars approaching, I felt their vibrations come up through the ground, through Wesam’s body, into my hands that were pulling Wesam up into my arms – until I was holding him like a man holds his bride, though I don’t think anyone actually does that anymore. His ribs were meaty in my palms. Muscle, pain, scattered tragedy, and mostly water made him brutally heavy in my arms. All the while the vibrations of metal flying along the earth reminded me of myself, my own ribs and their red meat.
Once I found a baby mouse, somehow separated from its brood, lying on top of a scorched asphalt sidewalk. It was mid-morning, but in summer, and my delicate ten-year-old white skin was already reactive. So, I could hardly imagine the obscene pain of the hairless blot of living flesh that somehow materialized by my Velcro sneaker. The mouse fought bravely, seemingly against nothing at all, as it was lifted from the earth in my palm. This memory, not in full, but in spirit, overwhelmed me as I strained to hoist Wesam to the height of my shoulder, and then up and onto the platform at my eye level. There are many other facets to the mouse narrative; its one-day lifespan in my home the following day, overfed via a plastic syringe bought especially for this purpose from the pharmacy, and then bloated to death from lack of tummy-rubbing. You need to rub their stomachs, or actually their private parts, in order for them to learn how to defecate. Regardless, it died. Is this death better or worse than that of being cooked alive on a well-worn path for colossi? I don’t think there’s even an umpteenth parallel universe where it could have lived, the poor tiny bastard. But none of these thoughts invaded my mind in this moment, of course.
I rolled Wesam onto the earth-warmed tiles of the subway walkway. He moaned, certainly unaware of what was happening but displeased with it nonetheless. And then, the train arrived in full speed, blasting by me on the opposite track.
And like useless cinema, Nicole and Charlie arrived – caring for Wesam, lifting my dirtied self up to their level. It was Charlie who hoisted Wesam, Nicole who laid her long fingers around my sleeve – though I needed no help in the climbing. The adrenaline had cleared the drunken steam from my muscles, at least for a little while. Images came and went; a bystander who approached to ask if she could help; eventually the local station master brought two pedestrian beat cops over to us, we decided to sit. There were forceful whispers. Wesam and I locked eyes at one point, and the gaze was empty – emptiness inside both of us.
The police made a decision. Wesam was going to the hospital. Charlie nodded in agreement, then volunteered to take him. Nicole was crying again, and as I noticed this, Charlie grasped my shoulder – his fingers feeling bony through my sweater. He hugged me."
