2017 is almost over. This is the last post of the year and the Scribbler is pleased to have Ryan share one of his stories.
My name is
Ryan Madej and I began writing in my teens. Just this past summer I finished my
fourth book
entitled The Threshold and the Key, the final volume in a novella/memoir cycle
that I’ve worked on for the
past 20 years. My style is in the experimental vein because I find that playing
with form in the
fragmented way that I do plays to how I think memory works. The short story I’m
submitting was originally
published in Infinity’s Kitchen no 6, that showcases works to an American
audience. It’s my pleasure
to show it to my fellow Canadians.
Night Index
A: Archive
A kind of modest radiance trickled through my mind as I leave the
Archive on Friday,
only to be presented with a sickening taste of my last meal welling up
in my throat as I
stop to button up my coat. The streetlights are just coming on as the
light blue
fluorescence of twilight, always so vast and deeply meaningful to me in
some obscure
way, begins fading and giving way to a quiet evening. Taking out my
cell-phone I notice a text glowing in red letters: Don't be late tonight by
any means. I miss you. I chuckle to myself, knowing that being late was our
way of seducing one another; or to put it another way: a direction in which
to fool one another with mirrors.
B: Barbiturates, Benjamin (Walter), Black Lights
The stage is set for another evening of transparent dreaming. That is
what this strange
arrangement has become when I sit down and think about it hard. We
didn't know each
other prior to hooking up...I mean, who does that anymore, right? But
that evening four
months ago when I opened my inbox on that dating site I knew I had found
something
interesting. Not special, mind you, but something interesting.
I could tell by the words
and phrases he used in describing himself he was not ordinary like a lot
of other men I
had met recently with their greasy charm, and on top of that, small
penises. He didn't give himself away; he remained hidden, or at least partially
seen when I threw tough questions at him. He didn't flinch in anyway. The more he looked at me—in a way that wasn't
bewitching, but hardly familiar—the more I felt like I had tapped into
something rarely observed. Call it a hunch or womanly intuition, but I unearthed
a diamond in his gaze and then I was his. He sat there across from me in that
black light lounge sipping his whiskey in an almost half-hearted way, and after
a time we said nothing more at all. I felt like there was no barrier anymore,
perhaps because he was a stranger with no knowledge of who or what I was, or
the inclinations and desires I kept only to myself. Through the course of our
first few hours together we found that we had a mutual appreciation for Walter
Benjamin; in particular his great, unfinished magnum opus The Arcades
Project. We talked of the flaneur and how wandering the streets of Paris
with no
true intention but to wander had more appeal than doing a shit load of
drugs, which
he admitted he had done anyway when he was young. I had no choice but to
admit
the same, maybe just to impress him, when really all I had ever done was
a lot barbiturates when I needed a vast amount of sleep. And yes, my sleep became more
interesting as well...
C: Calls in the middle of the night
I tend to take my time on these nights when we are supposed to meet,
more out
of a necessity to prepare myself for the unknown pleasures that wait
than anything
else. Still, there are times when she has totally caught me off guard
and I would lie
awake in my empty bed wondering what would come next as I lay my head
down
to sleep, a heavy gust of wind rattling my window. It was during these
reflections
where my mind drifted over past memories of women with less charm, which
she would
surprise me with a phone call just as the pain of remembrance served as a
narcotic to
bring on sleep. “Did I wake you?...sorry...I had a dream about you
and had to tell
you right away.” Without
protest I sat up to listen, relieved by the sound of her voice
that washed away those bad memories. I told her it was alright, I hadn’t
fallen asleep
yet anyway. Lighting a fresh cigarette for my waiting mouth, she
continued almost
breathlessly: “I was walking in the desert somewhere in Mexico. I
assumed this because
the only sign I saw outside a ramshackle
town I passed through had Spanish phrases.
No one inhabited the town, nor was there
any real sign of life. An entirely cloudless
day that would be appealing other than the
fact I was alone, watching a series of vultures off in the distance. This is
what probably propelled me to investigate. Anyway, once I got closer to where
the vultures flew, I could see what looked like a person lying on the ground.
Rushing over, the sun blazing in my eyes, I looked down to see that it was you
who lay bleeding on the verge of death, eyes closed and murmuring. I remember
placing my finger on your cracked lips and that is all." Strangely, I
wasn't at all taken aback by her dream, but rather intrigued by the thought of
a quiet yet agonizing death in the open desert. More often than not—the cherry
of the cigarette nearly burning my fingers as I spoke—I had many playfully
morbid fantasies just like the one she described. She stifled a laugh, then
apologized for waking me at such a late hour and assured me she would be
calling me again soon to meet. Ending the call, I sat in bed for a long time
ruminating over the scene she painted from her unconscious, somehow calm and
ready to find her in my own dreams with a smile on my face.
D: Daggers
How should I put this? Really, there is no clear explanation to my
fascination with
daggers a fascination I had forgotten over time—but I can say with a
degree of
certainty that once we came to know each other a little better through
the miasma of
the erotic exchange, a deep impulse to greet him with one in the future
came rushing to
the forefront of my thoughts. The idea almost made me come.
E: E=mc, Elephants
The streets are dead tonight. They become deader as the months pass and
the waning light of fall inevitably disappears, making the nights seem like endless
excursions into a
gradually cooling void called "winter". Lately, when I'm not
thinking of her, I watch old stock footage of atomic bomb tests on the
Internet, somehow drawn to the deep light
of splitting atoms. Maybe it's
more than that, though. Perhaps it has more to do with
ultimate endings, whether taken up by forces we cannot control or the
people behind
them whose intentions seem removed from death until they see, as
Oppenheimer did,
the price of knowledge. Bad thoughts to have on such a quiet night. I
used to lie on my
bed when I was a kid and imagine an elephant carrying me across the
plains, my head
held high, searching out a place to drink water coming down from the
mountains. When
I come to realize how far removed I am from innocent memories like
those, I tend to
laugh a lot more at what I've become...
F: Fathers, Fingers
A bottle of white wine chills in my fridge. Thick blue smoke circles my
head. I'm
restless for one reason and one reason alone: him. He always makes me
wait and what
inevitably happens is some sort of regression into how and why I've come
to this point
in time with such a strange man. Maybe he reminds me of my father—the
bastard that
he is—but to imagine such a thing is
wasteful and tiresome, even though the more I've
come to notice the similarities between them. The dark hair, the intense
gaze, the silences, even the laugh seems so exact. How didn't I notice this before? Sometimes the sudden appearance of a new toy
makes one forget what it is they are playing with in the first place. But the
aspect of him that really surprised me was his fingers and how much
they reminded me of my father's touch. Those gentle fingers wiping away
my tears,
even as the smell of whiskey and stale cigarettes wafted in my face, or
the other hand
caressed my leg. Glad he's gone. So very glad. I was right in saying
this was a waste of
time.
G: Gifts
Nothing she has said as of late has pushed me in the right direction. As
we've come
closer together a kind of fog has appeared between us obscuring the
other. She looks
at me curiously now, searching for that bad seed that she is certain
must exist. Her
gaze is close to the truth, that I will not deny, but I want more of
her. Every piece.
Every pore. Every strand of hair. Every eyelash. Trophies, gifts, call
them what you
like. Is it wrong to want all of someone? The air is so still and the
streets so quiet that
imagine nothing else but the two
of us, mimicking each others movements...
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