Blanket city run along soaked in rain. Idiot Boy wastes his time visiting a passing crush at the other end of town. Slips between two houses and a metal sheet, communal refrigerator in the middle of the road filed with half-empty soy bottles.
Dead bell stop, mocking red blink of the operator. Father arrives, a mess of wiry muscles and hair.
“Hey. Is Coffin Cat here?”
“Who?” Father squints at Idiot Boy’s cap. Idiot Boy avoids eye contact.
“Um.”
Recessed in the blackness behind Father, a Figure says, “You looking for Coffin Cat?”
Idiot Boy nods.
The Recessed Figure turns. “I’ll go get her.”
Father returns to his parched body on the couch, content.
Indistinguishable forms move back and forth in the kitchen to the right. They stop their pacing and glance at Idiot Boy as he passes. Idiot Boy avoids eye contact and slips into the left-bound arterial vessel.
“So this is the heart chamber I’ve been living in,” Coffin Cat says as Idiot Boy enters her room. There is music gear. “It’s pretty comfy.”
“Oh, sick mic,” Idiot Boy says, pointing at the mic behind Coffin Cat’s head.
“I feel like a ghost,” Coffin Cat replies, falling on her bed.
Idiot Boy settles next to her. Animal distance. Intensely aware of his rain-soaked right shoe. “Same.”
Nothing comes out right, intersubjectivity a false God to mediate the impossible kernel of being, nobody can find nor express. Idiot Boy searches for connection. He glances around the heart chamber, at the music gear, but nothing grips. Four pears sit on a table by the window, their skins garish green in the harsh grey light.
Coffin Cat moves from the bed to the floor. She opens a virtual aquarium on her computer; fish eat pellets dropped from the sky to **** out coins to buy more fish to **** out coins to buy more fish. Capitalist investment and accumulation. Every few minutes a rocket-spewing robot teleports into the aquarium to attack the fish. Ruthless competition in the global marketplace.
“No! Why would you swim there, you ******* fish?” Coffin Cat yells as one if her fish is eaten by the nomadic war machine. “So dumb. ****. Why did it eat my fish?”
A knock at the door. The Recessed Figure from earlier enters the room. “Hey, mind if I join?” Their arms dangle like fine threads of hair.
“I like your music gear,” Idiot Boy says, pointing at nothing in particular.
“Idiot Boy also makes music,” Coffin Cat adds from the floor.
The Recessed Figure does not respond. They are enthralled by their phone, streak of dead pixels along a digital chessboard, minute reflection of their own gaunt face in the glass. After an extended period, they decide to move none of their pieces. A gaping coffee grinder rises out of the rubble at their feet. They begin filling it with tobacco from broken cigarettes.
“I’m surprised you’re still playing this,” Idiot Boy says to Coffin Cat. “I swear this is one of those games designed to ruin your life. Get addicted, stop going to work, become a hikik weaboo.”
“Already there, man,” Coffin Cat laughs. “Nah, this is my new job. I’m going to be a professional gamer.”
“Stream only PopCap games.”
Another knock at the door. Tired squander in an endless pacing of flesh. Strawman enters and nods at the Recessed Figure. “Hey bro.”
“Good to see you, man.” The Recessed Figure plugs the coffee grinder into the wall. “You got any ciggys?”
Idiot Boy points under the table and says “Ahh” with his mouth.
The Recessed Figure empties it into the coffee grinder. The device whirs into motion, creating a centrifugal blur, a mechanical and headless hypnotic repeat.
Idiot Boy and Coffin Cat look for horror movies to watch. The Recessed Figure empties the contents of the coffee grinder onto a metal tray. Strawman repacks it into a ****. White smoke fills the empty column, moves in slow motion like an oceanic rip a mile off coast, surface seething with quiet, impenetrable violence.
Idiot Boy refuses the first round. It’s never done him any good. Face turned to smoke and the wretched weight of a tongue that refuses to speak. Headless carry-on as time ticks through the clock face.
The door bursts open. Everybody turns as Manic Refusal or the Loud Person saunters in.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. They’re selling me off!” the Loud Person says in exasperation. “First time back in New Zealand in five years and they do this to me!”
“What? What’s happened?” Strawman asks.
“Some rich ****** in Australia has bought me as his wife. I knew it, I knew if I came back, my parents wouldn’t let me leave again. Whole ******* thing arranged!” the Loud Person laughs bitterly, before hitting the ****.
“Oomph, that’s rough,” Coffin Cat quips from the side.
“No, you don’t even understand. This is the first time back, the first time back in five years, and I’m being sold to off some rich ****** who owns all the banks in Australia.”
“But like, who is this guy?” Strawman asks, pointing.
“And he’s been reading all my profiles. He has access to all my information. I don’t even have control over my Facebook profile. Grand Larson’s logged in as me, posting for me,” the Loud Person continues. “I met him once in Australia, clubbing, and now he’s tracked and bought me.”
“That’s creepy as ****,” Idiot Boy says.
“So he’s not a complete stranger?” Strawman asks.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. First time back in five years and I’m being sold off!”
Idiot Boy decides one hit from the **** wouldn’t be so bad. He packs the cone with chop, lights and inhales. Smoke rushes through the glass channel, a swirl of white ether, more than he’d expected. He quickly passes the **** to Coffin Cat, before collapsing onto the bed, eyes closed. A suffocating sensation fills his body. He sinks into the chasm of himself, further and further into an impossible, infinite depth.
“Still working at . . . ?”
“Yeah, yeah. Management. Hospital. You?”
“Like, property. Motions.”
“Subcontracting? Intonements?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Mmm.”
Idiot Boy doesn’t know what’s going on. He feels sick and tries to get Coffin Cat’s attention, but cannot move his body.
“Come on. Sell me drugs, Strawman.”
“Nah. I don’t deal drugs. I don’t deal drugs.”
A strange silence stretches like an artificial dusk, a liminal duration, the hollow click of a tape set back into place in reverse. The Recessed Figure coughs and the Loud Person whirs back into motion.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. They’re selling me off! First time back in New Zealand in five years and they do this to me!”
The Recessed Figure makes a noncommittal noise.
“I knew it, I knew if I came back, my parents wouldn’t let me leave again. Whole ******* thing arranged!”
Coffin Cat laughs quietly.
“No, you don’t even understand. This is the first time back, the first time back in five years, and I’m being sold off to some rich ****** who owns all the banks in Australia.”
“How about this fella? He doing okay?” Strawman asks, pointing. Everyone turns to Idiot Boy and laughs affectionately.
“Still working at . . . ?”
“Yeah, yeah. Management. Hospital. You?”
“Like, property. Motions.”
“Subcontracting? Intonements?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Mmm.”
“Sell me drugs, Strawman.”
“Nah. I don’t deal drugs. I don’t deal drugs.”
Idiot Boy slowly opens his eyes and stares out the window. The same grey light as before. He moves his arm further towards Coffin Cat, but is still too weak to get her attention. The same strange silence stretches. The Recessed Figure coughs and the Loud Person whirs back into motion.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. . . .”
As the conversation repeats over and again, Idiot Boy begins to think he has become psychotic, or perhaps entered into a psychotic space. He thinks of computer algorithms, input-output, loops without variables, endless regurgitations of the same result. Human machines trapped in their own stupid loop. Drug-****** neuronal networks incapable of making new connections, forever traversing old ones. Short-term memory loss, every repeat a new conversation of what has already been. The same grey light painted upon four pears by the window.
He’s not sure if Coffin Cat’s laugh is getting weaker with each repeat.
Signal-response. The exterior world oversaturated with variables: roadways, rivers, forests, wildlife — an ever changing scene to respond to — the illusion of depth. Automatic response mechanisms reorient to new stimuli. The soul rises like surfactant, objectified fractal diffusion. A becoming without end.
But within the border of this interior world, the light stays grey. No input, no change; the same dead repeat, over and over, until sundown triggers a hunger response. Lined all along the street, a black box ceremony of repeating machines, trapped in their idiot cults, walls of clay and blood.
Idiot Boy finally gets Coffin Cat’s attention. She helps him through the house’s arteries to reach rain and wet stone, overcast skies. As he shakes in shock, Coffin Cat mumbles, “It’s cold.”
Idiot Boy sits silent on the ride home. Travels through himself. Tunnel through the body or Mariana Trench. Loses his footing before a traumatic void. Leaves the car and pukes.
