#

1. WORDS GO ON CEILING.

It’s like this. Words go in front of things. In this case: ceiling.

Ceiling over: empty table.

#

2. YOU ARE TABLE.

So says the Diegetic Interface up there, i.e., DISCO. You do not know what the SCO stands for. Being table would explain things, e.g., stiff spine, never-having-moved, legs always fixed. You picture objects arranged on your stainless steel top. Pencils. Paper. Bab’s eraser crumbs arranged in neat little pyramids or…

Or = shoebox.

In shoebox = old towel(musty).

In old towel = bird(small).

In bird(small) = fastbeatingheart.

Table legs groan under its weight, less of small bird (mass = trivial) and more so the question wrapped around it—

Bab =

DISCO wobbles.

#

3. YOU ARE NOT TABLE. YOU ARE ON TABLE.

Scad! Of course. You must have misread. Stiff-feeling spine being, crucially, literal spine. You = stiff-spine haver, pressed to cold steel, namely: table. The tableness being the table’s. A major distinction!

The DISCO High Concept = rightness. E.g., when DISCO projects you are table, you are table. When DISCO projects you are not table, you are not. Contradictions are provisional, even real-seeming memoryscents.

They are whopped.

They are made apewall in worldglow.

Wobbles the DISCO.

#

4. YOU ARE IN MORGUE.

Interesting. Morgue having implications—

Wobbles again.

#

5. YOU ARE THINKING: “DEAD?”

Right. This makes UltraSense. You are gone-zo. Zilch. Apewall. It would explain things, e.g., the smell = backyard-leaf-pile. Fungal. Worms in damp soil overturned in small hole. Treeshape. Fastbeating thing gone cool in towel in box in earth.

Visionswims in hot tearpools. Alas. Scad.

#

6. YOU ARE NOT DEAD.

6.a. YOU ARE HUNGOVER.

Now this UltraSenses even more than prior UltraSense. The DISCO had you going. Really whopped it.

Head ringing? Check.

Cobweb mouthfeel? Doublecheck.

Sitting up → Worldspins buzz of morguelight. Clock(ticking) on morgue(wall): now… now… ULTRANOW.

Hungover Ergo Sum.

The letters flicker and rearrange.

#

6.b.1. YOU ARE.

6.b.2. YOU ARE NOT OVER.

6.b.3. YOU AIR RAID ONE NOBLY NONCEASED.

6.b.4. YOU ARE SID. OSTENSIBLY NON-DECEASED.

Wordshapes slip off your tongue. The hiss of it, the Sid of it. You enjoy the Sid of it. Ostensibly non-deceased being an upgrade. Not good, but not-not good.

Thank COW (you silently).

#

6.c. YOU ARE THIRSTY.

Confirmed. Verticality = development. Morguespins. A table falls. Yours? Doesn’t matter. There is a sink, and water is happening to your face.

#

6.d. YOU ARE VIGOROUS.

Inventory self-feeling: Less cobweb-mouthed, more kite-in-March-gust. Inventory surroundings: morgue. Pissbucketcorner. Drop ceiling with brown continent-shaped stain. Sky panels, initiative of COW, clouds not being a thing so much anymore but still associated with Optimal Wellness. All dark except singular-tube, i.e., rectangle sun. Nice enough clouds. Cottonballish. Albeit. Pixelated. The puffy cloud on the skypanel, obviously clown-shaped.

Bab: “Cloud = elephant-shaped, clearly.”

You: “It is un-so.”

Bab was clearly looking from the wrong way, which is a thing about Bab generally. Never incorrect per se, merely rotated. E.g., claiming: “Morguesmell = smell.”

Bab has always held a thing prior to naming it, press it to wrist-skin. Can = bolt = wrist. Bab saying: “Name goes after, like lid.” You had written this down, back when there was paper. Now you just remember. Only writing being done by DISCO.

When Bab disagreed re: cloud, you would have left it, but for Jax: “Query DISCO?”

You watched wrist-of-Bab. Wondering: How is wrist arousing?

DISCO replies: “RESIDUE OF MINERAL DEPOSITS AND INKJET PRINT OF CLOUD ON 60 X 120 CM LAMINATE TILE.”

Clearly, it is clown. Not elephant. Wrists = damned.

#

7. YOU ARE FEELING MORE OPTIMAL, COMRADE.

Reminding happens via empty gin bottle on floor. Pieces of eight hours falling into place around it.

Scad. Maybe it does look elephantish. What had you said to Bab? To Jax? To DISCO? Blank space = shame-filled. Blank space = scadfield = breezy park emptied of treeshapes and grassy places and yappy dogs = endless things sans names.

Morgue = happy = safe place.

Scadfield runs up the spine.

#

7.a. YOU ARE NOT IN SCADFIELD.

DISCO. Perhaps the SCO = “Says Captain Obvious?” Bab will laugh at this. If Bab is willing to speak. Bab really should not, considering—

Ticks morgue-clock: UltraNow. Bab should be back by now. Jax, too.

#

7.a.1. YOU ARE NOT IN SCADFIELD.

Your mirrored Scadsuit hangs on the hook by the door. Two empty hooks beside it. The whole morgue shown back in aluminum-foil-ish-shine.

Memoryscent → UltraNausea.

“Bring me an eggwave,” you had said, wobblekneed. Eggwaves being amberglowing. Eggwaves being delicious. Eggwaves being counter-wobbling, ergo contraband, ergo perilous.

“Bring me an eggwave.”

#

7.a.2. YOU ARE NOT IN SCADFIELD.

Scad. Knees = daggerish/swimmy. Had you asked Bab to go for you? Had she offered? Had you been too thoroughly whopped to know the difference? These are true.

Bab being bad at “no.” Or good at “yes.” Bab always wanting to wallop and transgress. Never much concerned with being whopped back. Never much concerned with being apewalled except as destination. Probably mouthgrinning now, sticking hand into eggwall, plucking eggwave, per your request. Scad.

#

8. YOU ARE PROCESSING WELLNESS-ALIGNED CONCERN.

Scad the COW. Conditions for Optimal Wellbeing? Continuing Ontological Wellness? COW = pseudo-blank. COW = multi-acronymic. COW = future-perfect. COW = fourth-person.

COW says nothing.

#

8.a. YOU ARE PALM SWEAT.

8.a.1. YOU ARE FASTBEATINGTHING.

8.a.1.1. YOU ARE AIR IN LUNG.

8.a.1.1.1. YOU ARE CLUSTER OF AIR MOLECULES.

NewUltraSense: Distributed.

You are here and here and here and here and also near the ceiling and also in the pissbucketcorner and also between the hooks where scadsuits hang and also not. You are warm near the light-tube and cool near the steel and you have no opinion re: clown vs. elephant because you are several thousand points of nothing with no eyes.

#

8.a.1.1.1.1. DOOR.

You are sloshed doorward. Part of you rushing toward the opening, part pulling back. You are parted by an entering body and closed behind it and drawn into it and—

#

#

9. YOU ARE APPROPRIATELY DISPLAYING GRIEF.

Bab’s gone apewall.

Bab’s gone APEWALL.

BAB’S gone apewall.

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9.a. YOU ARE AT FAULT.

What would Bab say? Bab would say get over it. It is cloud, is what Bab would say, not elephant. Do not worry for me. Had you listened to Bab, she would be here. You would be there.

Do not play at whopping DISCO on my behalf.

You are hand on morgue door latch and you are pulling and you are light from Jax’s mirrored scadsuit catching and scattering across the ceiling in bright fragmenting disco-shards, each shard a word and a non-word, whole morgue spinning along, and you are Jax’s mouth opening, and you are Sid not listening, and you are Jax lunging, one arm still sleeved, other bare, and you are door-heaving and scadfield air cold-rushing in, and you are in it, out there, unsuited, and Jax’s hand closes on the air where your shoulder has been—

You have not heard of apewall-going being undone, but it might not be too late.

#

10. YOU ARE IN SCADFIELD, UNSUITED.

Out where fog washes the gully, where scadfield narrows past the opalgut sumps, unsuit-clad, fog-air whip-wraps, things unthinging.

Jax said Bab had gone near Packwall, being edge of scadfield, i.e., edge of everything. No memoryscents of what world had been beyond but feel of absent-memory.

Ground softs under barefeet. Inches. Yards. Rushes upground: coffee-bean grit. Tripsfalls faceground. Ergo: “Ouch!”

#

10.a. YOU ARE WALKIE-TALKIE SOUND.

Walkie talks. “Sid! Sid!” Jax.

#

10.a.1. YOU HAVE WALKIE-TALKIE.

Future-perfect in reverse (per evidence, conveniently, Diegetic Interface being expert on convenient things.)

Crackles: “Listen, Sid—”

#

11. YOU ARE NOT RESPONDING.

“Sid. Copy. Can’t go forth sans scadsuit. Sid.”

You are marveling at your lack of scadsuit. Exposure being toxic, per COW. Terminal. Braced for it with daggerish lungs. Not-so-much-pissbucket smell, more vigorousfeel, scadwinds pleasant on bareskin. You had known scadfield as redplace (due to maskfilter); now thousand reds bloom super-red and ultra-red and all-colored red cerulean scadwind billowing kite-like. Permutating! Wind!

“Comrade!” CogJaw bellows. “Apewalled was Bab. Apewalled being not my word and Bab as we all know was always wanting to whop or wallop or usurp—”

#

12. YOU ARE DEPRESSING TALK BUTTON.

“Daffodil and java frog,” you scadtalk back.

Radiohiss violets. CogJaw’s agog.

“Bab was there by the Packwall,” Jax radios. “I was there with Bab.”

#

13. YOU WILL BE TESTIMONY OF JAX.

“We were there filling our opalsacks. Even eggwaves.”

“Eggwave,” barks CogJaw.

Eggwave! Eggwave! Bring me an eggwave! You had asked. And Bab being Bab—

“Bab had waxed on vividly. The frogshawls babbling by the edge, fog-oranged in twilight. Bab said that. ‘Fog-oranged in twilight.’”

Overhead air-fogs in oranges, reds, ceruleans; a drifting kite reshapes to frogshawl and babbles—

#

13.a. YOU ARE RECEIVING WELLNESS-ALIGNED REASSURANCE.

“Scadfield being non-fatal,” CogJaw says, “if return is forthwith.”

Radiohiss.

“Forthwith,” says CogJaw.

Non-fatal, says COW. Directly. Out of the mouth of its own administrator, crackling into wind that has been pleasant on your bareskin now for some duration. Bareskin concurring.

#

13.b. WOBBLES

the DISCO.

#

CogJaw jawing the whole bowl. Opalgut pit. Push walkie in. Sans box/towel. CogJaw’s voice gurgling down to glug. Jax had said Bab had been by Packwall. Packwall being past gravefield near eggwaves—

14. YOU HAVE BEEN DONE WITH TALK BUTTON.

#

Sky = no-color, e.g., monochromatic, e.g., chroma-whopped. Chroma-zilch. Samecolored lightness, field puckered pale with Bab’s little eraser-crumb heap gravestones.

15. YOU WILL HAVE BEEN IN GRAVEFIELD.

Had Bab called it this? Bab always looking from the wrong angle. Really whopping the essence of things. Essence-naming being the essence of whopping. Bab whopped the whopping.

Bab. Eraser heaps market price—

Eraser heaps mark my wordsmith—

Eraser heaps mark the distance. It is incredible. The un-premonitioned day being today, of all days, in spite of the box, in spite of the homework, in spite of the table. You memoryscent hot-sidewalk-bird-heartbeatingfast translated to birdshape streaking across the uncolored sky, and then—

Packwall.

YOU ARE EGGWAVE glowing on vine.

YOU ARE PACKWALL bioluminescent, upscaled, three meters or so, per observer. Unmovingness being merely affectation while observed. Packwall being in actuality enflux.

YOU ARE TRACES OF BAB by eggwave.

YOU ARE MEMORYSCENT OF BAB plucking eggwave, smooth-puce-feel crawling up fingertips to brow, cursive shaver tickling scalp, warmth heel-shot.

YOU ARE BAB’S SPINE lightfeeling despite eggwave heaviness.

YOU ARE BAB regarding Packwall’s letters glowing, wobbling, shifting.

YOU ARE PACKWALL FORMING LETTERS FOR DISCO.

YOU ARE DISCO PROJECTING TO SID.

You reach into wallglow, per Bab, wrist-first. Pluck.

YOU ARE NOT PLUCKING.

Eggwave in palm regardless. Warm. Fastbeating. Wall-letters swarm palmward, re-forming.

YOU ARE TABLE.

YOU ARE TABLE.

YOU ARE HUNGOVER.

YOU ARE SID.

YOU ARE CLUSTER OF AIR MOLECULES.

YOU ARE BAB’S ERASERPYRAMID GRAVESTONE.

YOU ARE CLOWNSHAPE AND ELEPHANTSHAPE.

YOU ARE EGGWAVE IN BAB’S OPALSACK.

YOU ARE FASTBEATINGTHING IN EGGWAVE.

YOU ARE FASTBEATINGTHING IN BAB.

YOU ARE FASTBEATINGTHING.

YOU ARE FASTBEATING.

YOU ARE FAST.

YOU ARE NOT BIRD.

YOU ARE NOT.

YOU ARE.

YOU ARE WHOPPING THE—

YOU WILL HAVE BEEN TABLE.

YOU WILL HAVE BEEN

YOU WILL HAVE

YOU WILL

YOU

YO

Y

I

i am bird