Richard Makin

St Leonards

XVIII


We can't see their faces. They're moving in the same direction. The eighth spool is undisclosed. They're behind us. One is fraudulent, another flatters. Now they're alongside.
How did the woman who came into the room leave no traces (he has a sharp legal mind).
There is a plentiful stock of flesh. I see one with its own head—tailfin translucent, eyelid bloodless. Shoes flat. Let's all pause to think about what happened today. We'll talk after the big sleep. A guard gives me away. Downhill everything hurts. I catch my breath at long intervals. I lie in its wake. You enter the thoughtstream, and snap: my redundant title is usurped by a dictator. We're at the place where the ground opens to form a passageway, what's called a fogue. We could always go back in again, I suppose—die happy.
Invasion of hypnagog. Blue stone monad. It supports the cilium, a whiplike appendage. I'm a univalent radical. That brings us back to plantlife. I believe this is your suggestion: the symbolism of the three sticks. This brings us back to the science of making marks, stigmatism. Expose the heart.

A station. Our first piece of luck in some time. We're united like filaments into one bundle. There's a method. This has me reminiscing about the old world, propels me back. At the station only a clock face is illuminated. I'm bisected by a central spindle. The circle encloses an inner ring composed of twelve smaller, each divided into three. They turn. Monomachy must be combat with yourself, nothing less.
We've been doing sums up here. The outcome is the thirty-six just men. No one dares question him after this. Particles are suspended in a moving fluid. Press pause and hang up. Thoughts drifty through the head, unrelated.

Inferno. Stay in that second. Her red dufflecoat. Witness a new sport. Descend to basement, semistructured. It's dark (of course). I draw sightless. There's someone with a handheld camera. We resume filing his hair. I'm too raw to settle nerves. Writing seems like nothing. Mustn't live in the past—tomorrow, I mean.
She turns around and stares at him. A non-act, full of unevent. You'll get used to sleeping one fine night. I am electrocuted, gently. It's not all bad.
He distils something that transcends. It's a kangaroo court. It takes three hours. My palms vibrate, tongue too. What's happening with time, closing hard on your body. Begin with his mouth, hand, voice, handwriting and the other organs. Have you been inside your own: a turning sphere of earthbrown crystal. We're nocturnal, aren't we.
Weary men tramping homewards. Sometimes it feels like a prison. His death takes place a week after his final return home. Echoes of Mahler. It's ongoing. He meets hostility. I wouldn't suggest anything that wasn't, would I. All eyes turn toward the slope. What crimes occur.

Result: some form of self-abasement, a necessary colour within the superfluity of light. The bed is damp. Take what I have, an act of spiritual revenge. Layers of sweat. It's a rough area near the station, Gare du Nord. You'll never work again. Thin partition at foot of bed. Take what I am—one in the eye, you freaks.
Valley of ground bone. He tongues the eyeball. Diet: people eating their own. Panic in the streets. The narrative involves a dialectic argument, semantic paradox. Throwing a six on the die announces the converging limit. In his pocket sits a cock. By so much less than myself am I unbound. What's suggested is extreme sensitivity. I'm like that expression. The magic number denotes a phase we're going through. It's said he drabbles in the occult—he's a pointer that has picked up the scent. Belief in od. Serendipity.

Item. An erotic toy consisting of a small corkwood box crammed with bees. We should be under the table by now. It's an earthquake. What I hate past all bearing is the glister of his blood. Battery low. Stop me master please.
She's of petrifying aspect—winged, hissing for hair. All this sounds rather darksome for my highwrought phizkey. We age all overnight. It's like being sanctioned off to a home. Rest-harrow. Total collapse.
He's strapped to a spiked frame. He tears and harasses the land. His soul squints. Back-sound of claps, belling. Someone's got to do it. Now get out.
Men in yellow, then black. Would you like to do A or B first. Violence. What's A. Violence. Are we doing the whole body, or just the face. You won't do it in time, at least not at this pace. They are fucking one another. What colour eyes (identical). The scene relates to our sense of injustice—breakdown and fallout. Yellow eyes mean radiation, or marching undead. A little hill of distrust gathers at my feet. Her lips are like tiny wings, outspread between my gentle teeth.
C.
I am judged as never before. An enormous cat like a puma pads into the room. The chips are down. A kind of hilarious cynicism descends, real high. You have too many friends around the table. We all start talking in wouldbe spurts, but without that doom-sea sense of must and action.
I think you're all right, mister reptile. A man holds me upside down, at arms length. Vengeance. Brother and sinister, no less, conjoined about a central shaft. Desperate toiling violence, whence we earn nothing. You have to give us the names as well. I tend toward voidance. There's a dead dog and a slave upside down, side-by-side in the cistern. There's a train timetable folded on the table. All the names alliterate. In every tense I want to avoid.

Sit here. Put your legs around your head. You must've picked up on the topic by now. If you can't keep up with the conversation, don't try stealing in. His ethics are best described as Aztec.
That which is in itself. These aren't pieces about death, they belong to death. A long series of throws has converged. In care of our descent, perplex us most.
The argument: language revolution. The consultation begins. A tidal bore. He debates whether another battle is worth the hazard. Rooms of different size. Some advise it. Some don't. The boom gets in the way of the bowstring, so he cuts it off. Others dissuade. He begs for absolution. Variations of light, artificial and natural bisect the nave. His last request is for an appreciative crowd. He's an animal conjoined—the beasty. Under no circumstances deviate from pain. He passes through with difficulty, directed by chaos—the power of place.
Everything works loose. Phantoms spinning, loom to loom. I lose all sense of the concrete level we're on.
She holds a butcher's knife, eye unhinged. She stares him down to earth. Ideal series of events run parallel. Let me put my arms around your head. I'm manifest in light, magnetism, chemical action and hypnotism. Under no circumstances deviate from the plan. Check, check and close the dead.
She flinchless views the gathering shower.

Detail their departure.
A raft of bees.
You've moved mountains in the last layer. Now it's time for the supplementary tortures. There are precisely one hundred and twenty variorum notes, a succession of changes. By means of a hollow tube a mouse is introduced. He discovers radio interference pouring down from the stars. The tube is withdrawn. A warning's given. Only an adjustment is intended, not a move.
All right, where's your office. Through that glass dome. We're at head quarters. The orifice of egress is sewn up. We're holed up with human and alien figures. On the table in sealed freezer bags are a vial of hanged semen, computer ducts, dna helices, a wormhole in space. Such elements rarely coincide. And from a great distance she says, meander and taciturn, those were your words.
A pulsating diaphragm, tunnels and stairways.
Somehow the list of items hasn't been missed by anyone. M is for meteor. My office is now a true sinecure. The problem with the knight is the magic square problem: the sun of the figures indicating his position is always the same. This is a really horrible thing to say, but start listing all the words you can think of.
A ballroom with crystal chandeliers. Here again we wander into anecdote. That which is conceived in itself.

Birds' eggs with dark blue shells. Others of disparate colour—yellow, red-orange, green.

A rare coincidence. The last two survivors of a myth meet one another in the street. Her smile does it all for me. What's that. Her smile loses its redundance.
My other animal is a jaguar.
He is boarded up in the head room. Small holes have been dug in the wall. I draw the letter K. Now complete my papers by answering a few questions. The accompanying card says avoid everything you favour. All will be well. How much do you want for that. I was once believed to come with the changes of the moon, straight into her eye. Eat only food and all will be fine. A flood rushes with great violence up the estuary. Come letterhead, come husband—sweet comeheart.
We should send these in to aliens and monitor what happens.

Hyphae. Most of these tricksters were once composers. It's like being sanctioned. Return home and screed, shred-head.
Strict timetables and regulations on papyrus, whiff of melancholy. A mason's atelier. The abbey takes form: the hieroglyph of a crucible. These are arbitrary arrangements of letters, practical topography. My own map is in the torsions of the body. In the middle of the room stands a table. Now I'm in the open air, listing out for something or someone. I draw a circle bisected by a central core, open at both ends—something kindred, empathic. We're divided into three. We have spanned the one hundred and twenty days. We turn in space. The image is a dense mould of glass holding cancer.
Bring a jacket next time, bring a dead dog and a hat. He wears a tape measure about his neck. Stone books are set aside for grinding. He lacks a past to glimpse a future through. We're divided into actions and events. Has there ever been a nasty shock that could account for his state. We're left to fend for ourselves.
A dull glass of unresolved light. Rapt of bees.

A kind of madness. The patient fancies himself to be a wolf. I'm a camp guard. Remote region of our country. Climate harsh. Narrow passageworks intercut the cubicles. The development of meaning becomes puzzling. The next image is a discarded chassis. Arbitrary arrangements of letters are used to form words. Snow kneedeep on the ground. The grey of the uniform, prisoners in black. Our only chance of survival is to get hold of someone who can see. The place is infested (manwolves). Melodrama and sensation, brimstony beaches at low tide . . . The guards slaughter the prisoners. Grotesque rocks are exposed. They stand on their hind legs. We pass that hill again, the magnetic mound. They wipe out the entire camp. Threefold conflict. I search for inmates, opening and closing doors. Behind some are latrines . . . so cramped they're unusable. A remark, a sentence with two clauses, recurs—something about erasure and Styx. The response is convincingly blank. There it is. A naked prisoner kneels before me. I turn a corner into a snowclogged passage. I shoot him in the back. It's always too late. I shoot him in the head. In the sky a tiny square flickers, grainy black and white resistance. The invaders increase their number. They're everywhere. I accept. Fear is usurped. The tale is several times re-examined, with the greatest care and forethought: random signifiers, random men bearing drugs. A little round creature with one big eye and one small enters on invisible footsteps. It's conceived through itself. What befalls is embraced.
Here again we wander into antidote.
Move further east. The camp once more.
He comes in her eye. The workshop has a long wooden table running down the centre.
Think.
A huge insect eye lurching in front of my face.
Sudden surge tide—eagre. At the foot of the stairwell two humps rise up from the earth. Both agonists are painted white. I'm wary (the absence of inquisition). There are many objects on the table. I presume everyone has heard of me. He has them scraped back to the flat state.
Think.
The aforementioned table. Portrait photographs fan out above our heads. I calculate twelve years back: a vast atrium with soaring roof. I gaze up. The walls are cuneiform. Indelible sense of space. One figure faces left. Depiction flat and stylized. In the hall are the entablatures and combatants—guerrillas dressed in their workaday. Allies and adversaries. A sense of doubt. At the core is a red monad. I'm a captive, or guest. I hear the distant Sunday bells of my youth. A performance takes place on platforms raised above the floor. Notable infill of rock fragment. The performers are for sale, like everything else. The display is an assault on culture through parody. It must be prepared elsewhere, or it won't. He joins the performers, an impromptu act (doubtless his long stay in the eternal is responsible for this). If you play it horizontally, it won't work. The tendrils of the past are daily before his eyes. I'm uneasy. Nearby.
Eating people is bad for you. He lifts a garment to reveal his groin. His genitals are clad in metal, woven. Odd bulge above pubis, slight to left. Record the detail. Do as he says. The mockers are mocked. He ejaculates. The skin of his lower half is a sullen purple. The atrium is the central core of a reactor. The upper tier is fleshy—soft texture of glans. Translate to lexical structure. Blending in has become a manner of life and death. The future arrives. Without blinking, a footnote. The dance is a fusion. Sing unmeaning sounds, his usual underrated perfection.

Ur-civilisation. She turns an object in the air at great speed. It blurs a circle. Just before dawn the wake really gets underway. The refrain is audible in my head, driven and rhythmic. We're held under the old law.
Upon his return she speaks. You're changed, somebody in you has changed you. A bloodfine is paid to the family. Time for sleep, he reasons. O she says you've come in my eye.
Rap. Rap. Rap.
The table.

(When you produce the final version, keep a notebook of possible variants.)

A café bar. Eight marbletop tables. The swaying lilt of a nearby piano brings nausea. It's a brain condition. The three year shock gets underway. The effect is widespread. Violent repercussions in related industries. Three lots of two. I know it. I jump. All night long, and I won't go back in that house without him.
A sort of delirium. Horror sorties—the exact axe etcetera. An inquisitory. The tale turns. He levitates. He follows hot on my heel. She writes blindfold with a planchette. He rides out. It's a strange game this. Tightly packed nudes, unlicenced naked persons composed of tiny dots, scintillas of light about the masthead. I am outrider. The tradition divides, east and west. He descends, opens the gate. This extends to always, therefore it has a beginning. He remains concrete. He's hampered by the Terrible Lie. Feet are involved. The relic is restored (they have a thing about feet). I am outrider, a minor deity of a malicious nature.
Herzkammermusik. Harpy days are here again. Godhead soup. I accustom myself to the simpler forms of hallucination. I hear rumbles and swoophs and wind. We're rejoined at the bridge. New laws about spying are passed on. That tapping noise, I'm sure it's you sending yourself back.
He bears a dragnet on his shoulders. Think about it. It's hard to dance. First season of delirium. People dressed as trees, nerves. A leather bench runs up one wall. She's unable to challenge. In short, maelstrom. He cannot both know and succumb. For him there are three key areas of satisfaction. Try as I might I just can't reject his nefarious themes.

He lives in a spiral. I can take it or leave it. They stand up and make a bridge of their bodies. He's wounded in the span below the femur. His feet touch the edge of a great horizontal fissure. The muscles in his face twitch and tauten. Things crawl out through the gap in the underword. There's more light. He must've brought it with him when he entered the country. My sinews and bonds are made of its symbol, the flickering stuff of me.
A stowaway. You've moved a mountain he says. He counts himself among the giant scions of the local planeteer. He cancels himself. Reservoir of bile. Remember that film. Pissasphalt. Carpenters in shirt leaves. Two mirrors speckled with reddish stains. Hereabouts they still honour tickets. I myth me. I'm no handsaw.

A brief introduction to nonfascist living, the idealist folderol. Shadow wisdom.
They have a small population of stirred blood in their veins. I declare this day an official workaday, one of twelve designated through the calander year. Sit on the floor if you feel so inclined. Focus your mind on the stones in the metal box.
News from nowhere. Deuce-ace, the lowest throw. Send copies and a covering letter. Fire and water are interpreted morally as passion and tears. Our share's cursed. Hundreds of procedures are left behind in an archive. Bury yourself underground, rootstock and barrel. Shift to an indestructible state. At the last of the cages he stops. Outside, something nasty stalks the streets. He can't help himself. It's night. The panes of the two windows are frosted. None among us has any meaning. Even so, someone's ringing in my pocket. I'm the twelve limbs. I am finished in thirty-seven days. I say nasty, nasty.
Bury the hatchet. The blade's about an inch or two wide at the base. In his head an attachment is made—a winking membrane, the third eyelid of a bird. We're losing power.
She's stripped, measured, and photographed for posterity. It's not a lot, but enough to spin out a legitmate lineage. It's in the head.
He cuts eight horizontal paths across his abdomen, fragile threads of descent. The pane of the door is frosted. It bears the number forty (his age at the time of writing). We're kept imprisioned in a great bronze vase for thirteen months.

The words congeal into a book, double morphosis. I'm no shock you could possibly know of.
At his departure she says take care among them. She foresees a season of descent. Protect yourself. Find someone named by a deed. Determine why there's one too many of us on the list.

(Upon one page in your notebook of characters draw the plan of the chateau, room by room.)

Enter. Look around as we go. Close section, now. On the floor, the founding document. There are goals all over the place. Throughout the whole induce a quality of moral dispersal and diatribe. Quick now and edit. Quit. I'm in a season—a suspending of time through time to wear away. She sits to one side. I'm above ground. A large white room is encircled by a window. She smiles at me. He sits behind the bisecting wall. How fortunate to have two in attendance. He wears the uniform. I sit in an outsized chair raised on a platform (this means I'm talking rubbish, apparently). I begin to relate the tale of the circus wolves. I mention the erasers and the pointers. I am unease. I turn myself. She wears a red dufflecoat with a hood—must be some kind of joke. I relate the detail of the film in the sky. It begins to run in the room, away to my left. Strident slavonic soundtrack, louder and louder. I can't recollect. A voice is raised in my mouth. He controls the volume.
Start listing all the words you can think of that start with V (the letter). Itemize all the things done in each room.
The music mutes. Atomic writing—atomic weight.
Siberia. Incorrect. Stop. The atmosphere.