stood, waiting for a response that didn’t come.
The quiet in the apartment was unsettling. All the sounds in the world had been turned off. The automatic sounds of the apartment, the clock, the bustle of the lady in the apartment next door, the ticking of the radiator, all were absent. Herman knew something was wrong. His body knew too. This breed of silence often came before the blackness.
“Grandpa? Are you there?” His voice was small.
Another moment passed.
Again, no response.
Herman dropped his pencil to the desk. It rolled across the piece of paper, tracking a kaleidoscope of scribbled equations before falling to the floor. It didn’t emit the clatter it should have, just the motion. Herman heard his breathing, felt the friction of his chest, the constriction of the air passing through the hollows of his body.
* * *
The sign on the wall reads “Floor 15.” Herman pushes the bar on the door, depressing the latch to release the bolt to shoulder the door and fly through the frame into the hallway. The lights are dim and the carpet is dark. Apartment numbers, brass numerals tacked to the doors, tick by his vision. As he runs up the hall, he grabs at his shoelace necklace and pulls the apartment key from under his shirt. The metal is warmed to body temperature, courtesy of its resting against his chest.
Herman wonders how he wound up in the elevator, how it had come to rest on the lobby floor, and, most important, why both of these things came to be. Those were the significant gaps in his recollection. The method and purpose of his movements during his blackout are still lost to him. However, he suspects he will find the reasons when he opens the apartment door.
The elevator.
He remembers the elevator didn’t come when he pressed the button. He had wanted to take it to the lobby, but there were no sounds, no machinery noises in the elevator shaft, no wheels running or cables grinding behind the steel doors when he summoned it. Yet he was in the elevator on the lobby level when he awoke.
Herman remembers the apartment door isn’t locked as he reaches for the handle. He left without locking it. That part he remembers as he flings open the door. Herman runs past the hallway closet, past the kitchen, and into the living room.
Grandpa’s reading light is on. Steam no longer rises from the teacup sitting on the side table. At that moment, his fragmented memory and his reality merge. He has been here in this place at this specific time before. He has traveled back in time to the point of his discovery.
Grandpa sits in his recliner, his newspaper in his lap and his arm draped over the side of the armrest. Anyone fresh upon the scene would see an old man who has fallen asleep reading the paper in his favorite chair. Herman has been here before though, and the reading lamp casts Grandpa’s slack mouth and stubble-covered chin in a high-contrast, wrinkly death mask.
Grandpa’s dead, Herman remembers. And it’s my fault.
Herman blacks out. His body hits the floor with the carelessness of the completely unconscious.
18
In Which Ian Learns of the Final Betrayal of His Body
We left the little nugget of Ian’s body pinned perilously to the sky, hanging somewhere in the nothingness alongside the twentieth floor of the Seville on Roxy. We left him contemplating, in the fleeting way that only a goldfish can, his species’ desire for freedom and the golden era of that quest for new territory, the early days of fish rainings. We also left him stoutly resolute that jumping from the balcony was a sound and reasonable choice for a goldfish to make.
And so, just one drop in the torrential downpour of fish rainings, Ian continues his descent. However, what started off as a leisurely tumble through the air has quickly become a more harrowing and dreadful experience. Having passed through the strata of Connor Radley’s thesis, he has no further aesthetically pleasing distractions like those peaceful pages
The quiet in the apartment was unsettling. All the sounds in the world had been turned off. The automatic sounds of the apartment, the clock, the bustle of the lady in the apartment next door, the ticking of the radiator, all were absent. Herman knew something was wrong. His body knew too. This breed of silence often came before the blackness.
“Grandpa? Are you there?” His voice was small.
Another moment passed.
Again, no response.
Herman dropped his pencil to the desk. It rolled across the piece of paper, tracking a kaleidoscope of scribbled equations before falling to the floor. It didn’t emit the clatter it should have, just the motion. Herman heard his breathing, felt the friction of his chest, the constriction of the air passing through the hollows of his body.
* * *
The sign on the wall reads “Floor 15.” Herman pushes the bar on the door, depressing the latch to release the bolt to shoulder the door and fly through the frame into the hallway. The lights are dim and the carpet is dark. Apartment numbers, brass numerals tacked to the doors, tick by his vision. As he runs up the hall, he grabs at his shoelace necklace and pulls the apartment key from under his shirt. The metal is warmed to body temperature, courtesy of its resting against his chest.
Herman wonders how he wound up in the elevator, how it had come to rest on the lobby floor, and, most important, why both of these things came to be. Those were the significant gaps in his recollection. The method and purpose of his movements during his blackout are still lost to him. However, he suspects he will find the reasons when he opens the apartment door.
The elevator.
He remembers the elevator didn’t come when he pressed the button. He had wanted to take it to the lobby, but there were no sounds, no machinery noises in the elevator shaft, no wheels running or cables grinding behind the steel doors when he summoned it. Yet he was in the elevator on the lobby level when he awoke.
Herman remembers the apartment door isn’t locked as he reaches for the handle. He left without locking it. That part he remembers as he flings open the door. Herman runs past the hallway closet, past the kitchen, and into the living room.
Grandpa’s reading light is on. Steam no longer rises from the teacup sitting on the side table. At that moment, his fragmented memory and his reality merge. He has been here in this place at this specific time before. He has traveled back in time to the point of his discovery.
Grandpa sits in his recliner, his newspaper in his lap and his arm draped over the side of the armrest. Anyone fresh upon the scene would see an old man who has fallen asleep reading the paper in his favorite chair. Herman has been here before though, and the reading lamp casts Grandpa’s slack mouth and stubble-covered chin in a high-contrast, wrinkly death mask.
Grandpa’s dead, Herman remembers. And it’s my fault.
Herman blacks out. His body hits the floor with the carelessness of the completely unconscious.
18
In Which Ian Learns of the Final Betrayal of His Body
We left the little nugget of Ian’s body pinned perilously to the sky, hanging somewhere in the nothingness alongside the twentieth floor of the Seville on Roxy. We left him contemplating, in the fleeting way that only a goldfish can, his species’ desire for freedom and the golden era of that quest for new territory, the early days of fish rainings. We also left him stoutly resolute that jumping from the balcony was a sound and reasonable choice for a goldfish to make.
And so, just one drop in the torrential downpour of fish rainings, Ian continues his descent. However, what started off as a leisurely tumble through the air has quickly become a more harrowing and dreadful experience. Having passed through the strata of Connor Radley’s thesis, he has no further aesthetically pleasing distractions like those peaceful pages
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