[-empyre-] start of july......directions

[Angela Ferraiolo]

>>>> 1. With the brakes chewed, their front axel pops over the planters. And
>>>> with a spooling swerve they crash their van past the front porch into a
>>>> mud
>>>> thatched oak. (JN)
>>>>
>>>> 2. "Now its your turn," Whistler laughs. "I think she's good for one
>>>> more." The way his left eye bulged still bothers Denim, but he knows
>>>> better
>>>> than to say anything, especially when Whistler is in this kind of mood.
>>>> (AK)
>>>>
>>>> 3. But they were car poor. Such high tops, as in shoes. Not Whistler's
>>>> shoes as he is shoe rich. Jeans as names and the birds, those moody fear
>>>> mongers, can lift the trees, such bark heavy alarms. (JN)
>>>>
>>>> 4. the van's headlights screened by the mud from the oak their
>>>> electric light washing over the walk the porch the house itself unlit
>>>> empty the street almost stubbornly dark the moon divided the stars
>>>> fracturing in the now cracked glass of the van's windshield their
>>>> reflection faintly lighting shards of glass splinters of the front
>>>> porch the cracked pottery of the ruined planters suburbia's uniform
>>>> order cancelled now like a series of bad checks until finally the
>>>> headlights went out too a door down the street opening and then
>>>> slamming not followed by footsteps but only by a more complete silence
>>>> the night pushing on Whistler beginning to perceive the low rush of
>>>> air entering and leaving his lungs the silhouette of Denim's face a
>>>> distant curve that slid lower as Whistler strained to lift his head by
>>>> degrees by inches forward skyward up causing the moon to scatter
>>>> deliriously across the crazed glass stretching dilating revolving and
>>>> then inverting again as incapable Whistler fell back staring into
>>>> shadow unable to quit listening to the now flat growing unbearable
>>>> silence of the night where he could sense an approach of some kind of
>>>> outcome indifferent unnameable yet as certain as dawn and he thought
>>>> (af)
>>>>
>>> 5...his  synth_suit. all p[l]ocked.mar[c]ked + r[l]e[i]s[ure]in bound. no
>>> crash was programmed  4 this session!?
>>>
>>>     6. He took off the suit, and was about to write a quick complaint  to
>>> the project manager, when he changed his mind and phoned her instead.
>>>
>>>        "Hello S ? We need a team meeting. ...I've just exited from
>>> World(3)... ...The violence bug is no better but it's still not ready for
>>> user testing.  Unless the
>>>
>>>         violence is turned down we will never be able to present
>>> World(3)
>>> as a replacement for focus groups and polling surveys which is the
>>> supposed
>>>
>>>         purpose...11Am.." And wondered when and if world(3) would ever be
>>> ready for the clients.  (s)
>>>
>>>         7. ' i want 2 b emptee '
>>>               sd S
>>>              'emptee of vishyuns n 10shyuns
>>>               n memoreez uv dreems 4 a whil
>>>               so hunee what do u want from me
>>>               tho we r alredee heer wer gonne put a trackr on u
>>>               feel the ekstasee as it cums 4 u ... '   (if)
>>>
>>>
>> 8.
>> then the laugh as feared as expected his voice over the cel suddenly
>> amplified approaching unreasonable so that the part of herself still
>> struggling with words suddenly withdrew the hotel bed shrinking the
>> phone itself now useless the tracker already blinking and the
>> something within her which had no need of body moving pushing out
>> scanning the room's pressurized furniture nylon curtains plastic
>> windows its artificial walls themselves dissolving under a moment of
>> observation as placid as a child's who suspects it will be orphaned
>> who has always suspected and who finally abandoned can somehow
>> concentrate for minutes before making even the slightest gesture it
>> was four o'clock she (af)

9.
> Sarah immerses her self into the bath, feeling more relaxed. She plays
> with the idea of what it might be like to transmute her body into water.
> Would her consciousness be diluted and dissolved by the volume of this
> splashy, h20 substance? Sarah submerges her head under the water,
> leaving her eyes open, looking up at the ceiling and then she slowly
> closes her eyes. So far we know that that if one is to be materialized
> back into human, solid - form, that we can regain our material self and
> our consciousness. Yet if one was transmuted into the form of water.
> What then?
>
> Her mind shifts to Darnley, perhaps he's an agent, and his motives do
> not seem to be on par with the rest of the group's ambitions. I don't
> trust him; he must be a plant. What if he's from central office?
> Although so far we have no real basis to think that he is, we've had no
> actual interference from external forces.
>
> Her body lays still under the bath water except for her knees which are
> bending, sticking out. Sarah giggles remembering an MI5 incident at a
> large communist function which one her University friend's, attended a
> few years ago. There was an accusation buzzing around that those Central
> Office bugger's, had impregnated the lavatory paper with an itching
> substance. What if Darnley was recruited at the Uni, by MI5? I've known
> him for some time now and he certainly gives off the sense that he has
> no morality. As far as I recall he has never mentioned allegiance to the
> four of us. There must be some way of finding out whether he is a
> sleeper planted by Central Office. Sarah slowly lifts one of her legs up
> higher and sponges from foot to thigh, shifting her thoughts back to the
> possibilities of becoming water.
>
> Sarah steps out of the bath and pans the top half of her torso in the
> mirror. Through the steam in the room she can just see the ghostly
> outline of her reflection. Her finger inscribes an outline of herself
> onto the mirror's surface. Condensation drips down and it looks as
> though she is melting.
>
> Memories come flooding back to a time when she was a young child,
> walking in a fog in the streets of London. It was winter and she was on
> her way home from school. Her feet trod on a thick, condensed and
> slippery snow. She could hardly make out where to go, it was early
> evening in November and it was dark, the fog was getting thicker by the
> second. As people wandered to and fro, bumping and slipping into each
> other, looking like discordant shadows. Vehicles slowly chugged along,
> releasing gaseous, warm fumes out of exhausts. Lights from the vehicles,
> buildings and lampposts, shimmered, shrouded by the blanket haze of
> freezing fog. When the child stopped walking in the midst of home time
> chaos and held her hand out...it disappeared.
>
> At first she was scared as images of decapitation and thoughts of parts
> of her body vanishing began to play on her imagination. Then as she
> looked around at all the people everywhere and all the hustle and
> bustle, she smiled and an overwhelming feeling of comfort began to
> reign. It felt heavenly and it made her feel special, a revelation had
> come from nowhere and changed this thirteen-year old girl's life.
>
> It was time to move on having discovered that she was different than the
> mass of souls around her. Each step had to be measured or she would fall
> over, her legs finally guided her to a bus stop where there were many
> people standing and shivering. A bus pulled upside along the curb and
> the waiting crowd, including Sarah ascended the large red vehicle. Once
> seated, she made patterns in the condensation of the window's surface.
> It dripped and shook to the rhythm of the bus. Sarah could just make out
> her reflection, along with the outside world. When looking at herself
> and the world in the window, they fused together and became one. (mg)
>
>
10.
emotionless flat but inwardly glad there was no one else in the shop
this afternoon so that he could behave as a salesclerk and nothing
more maintaining his disinterest in both the merchandise he
mechanically brought out of the glass and mahogany cases and this pale
rich impatient customer who as if materializing in the storm had come
into the front room out of nowhere out of fog or out of the rain now
falling in sheets spattering the pavements pooling in the gutters an
oddity presenting himself as a detective fine a collusion yet knowing
next to nothing about barrel weights mounts calibers not drunk just
not really giving a damn and willing to pay a price that if not
outright stupid was at least half again what any sensible person might
consider fair as he determinedly the clerk continued to express
nothing placing the next automatic on the counter while discreetly
removing the last answering the occasional question with plain
information with facts no judgments no opinions hearing: but that's
how it is in my business that's how it is when you watch people for a
long time that's what it's like when you start to put things together
a stranger who did not need to be persuaded who due to the background
check was finally obliged to give a name -- darnley -- he took the gun
with him meanwhile (af)