Novella:

In descending order, alphabetical

By Pablo D'Stair

[Part 4]

It was a long time ago he had given up trying to get a piece of paper to line into the typewriter totally straight, so he was comfortably haphazard with this piece, just in there, the obvious rise to the right side, but had the paper in, locked down the clamp a bite and rolled the thing up a bit down a bit, it winding up more or less how he liked a first page of something to look, always start a play down the page part of the way, a nice inch two inches of blank to the top for whatever, no reason, aesthetic beauty.

Needed the three four splashes of water, but his face still felt pasty, moist, even after the towel getting it dry and a minute passed, looking in at the mirror, his eyes and everything looked awful, gave his face a shake and could not keep a clean train of thought, not while looking at his slop of a face, the faucet running a slither.

No, he could feel it starting to go sideways, no direct control over the sway of his thoughts and his lips bubbled along, teeth chattering a little bit, he was pacing and moaning to himself about some lousy job he had one time or another got caught up in, that landfill, the security booth, the overnight, and what else was he supposed to do for Christ's but lock himself in the toilet and sleep, his shoe a pillow, his coat a blanket?

This all went on for more than twenty minutes, the shumbling inside his breaths, all heavy and wet and his body shirking in a cringe, the skin getting tight with a stomach upset, it occurring to him in the end to roll a joint, which he smoked down the first five drags of like a fiend and coughed violently, needle lines and jabs in his throat back and his eyes too bleary to even wipe part way clean.

Reminding himself that he was not to fall asleep, he did not turn on the television, because until he got a second wind, until his spirits picked up and he stopped bemoaning the state of things, crybaby needed a pacifier or something, he would get caught in watching television and pass out. So, leaning into the soft hissing of a few more drags from the joint, easing some of the tension in his back down warm and like soft damp paper, he messed around with the cords, connected DVD player to television, having to turn the television on just long enough to make sure the yellow the red the white wires all found their holes properly, had the presence of mind to leave out the volume, though, so as to not get distracted, and then he jumped in place awhile and stood lapping the stink of his pulp fat mouth in front of the typewriter, looking at it and his fingers doing tap tap tap on the chair back.

Gave a speech about how this was really a crucial play for him, a thing that tested what had a long time been principia of his artistic thought process, because What is origination? and What is idea? and What is product, really? (he moved hands in chops and noodle lines) What is ownership it all came down to it?

And he did not think an idea, really, an idea as in a scenario, had the slightest thing to do with an actual work of theatre, a work of anything.

Some person does some thing, if that's all that that someone recalls from something then what value is it, in the end? it's some puke that was in a pile kicked through in the dark and into the carpet into the dewy grass of late night early morning scraped ground in, nothing else.

He imitated some poor loser who thought they knew something about something, imitated them going on about Hamlet and about how Hamlet killed Polonius and then there was the scene where everyone stabbed each other and there was the thing about the girl goes nuts and it all.

Is that what Hamlet is?

He felt sorry for people in general, he felt sorry for people who would hear and idea like--he just waved his hand, no particular idea in mind, just then, unparticular-"Like anything," he finally said, and they think the idea is it, where the purpose is, like it was the most important part of King Lear that Lear was a king, to begin with.

And then he called himself a pretender, a faux-artist, because why was he babbling about Shakespeare-and he had not even read King Lear, so he felt that proved it even more.

"I have read Frozen Alive," he said, chuckling, staring at his foot, meaning he had read the synopsis and pointed at a random one of the sleeves for the things.

It was awhile of him sitting there and more energetic drilling on like he was being interviewed, long tracks of speech about how it didn't even matter in the first place that someone had found out he had pilfered the storyline from Awful Allen or whatever it was called because it was his point even that it be found out.

"Say I had even called it the same thing, right?" so quiet, talking, he had some coffee, some bourbon in it, the coffee gone cold and the bourbon was a sort of skin on the surface or else the coffee was just that lousy, "and so then what would it mean How Awful About Allen? which one was it? why should mine be considered less real than the other, right?"

It was the same thing he was always going on about, either way, in either way it was looked at.

The bookshelf over there was long and warped almost a W the third shelf down, like it always had the knee of those books up on it digging down into its beaten sour shoulder, like it wanted to collapse and to be done with everything, the worthless things could fall and it wouldn't matter a blink.

It was with a make believe snigger and then a grimace that he poured the old coffee out and just filled a glass with two cubes three cubes and some shavings of ice and then a three quarter way up fill of bourbon-he was very stoned, but he thought it would be better to have something cold to sip at while he watched the film than suck in on the dirty paper of another joint, his eyes closed all the time he smoked and it was easy to get distracted by the glowing light of the smoldering television.

He had no batteries for the remote control and so switched the film on and got tight back into his fit at the sofa end, the film some for absolutely terrible transfer, the film quality just slop on cold pavement murky, but he got used to it, a sip of bourbon, glad it was this way.

Thinking he might have a scene where Allen even addressed someone who was not on stage, like a character, and someone (he didn't know so just went with the psychiatrist and who cared who, in any event, why shouldn't the psychiatrist be a main character?) was there and the psychiatrist and Allen are talking but then Allen starts addressing empty air like someone is there and the psychiatrist isn't phased, but then it seems the psychiatrist can also hear the person who isn't there and so the audience doesn't know what the thing is, if it's the psychiatrist pretending or what, but the thing is, and he wanted to clap it was so brilliant, that as the play went on, it would turn out this invisible person (or there would be a lot of invisible people) really is there, they really are real.

"Fantastic," he said, with the opening credits of the film ticking through and it was just then he squirmed, an insect squeezed dead at a pop between fingers a napkin, froze, head trembling, though he did not notice, like he had a brief trickle of palsy.

Screenplay by (he didn't quite see it right) Based On The Novel How Awful About Allen by (again, he didn't focus on the name) and like no problem the credits went on and now there was Allen, poor old Anthony Perkins, and there was a psychiatrist.

He felt uneasy, not about the psychiatrist's character, who turned out to be incidental, just a scene of Allen being discharged, Allen, apparently partially psychosomatically blind, but uneasy because of that credit.

If it was already a novel this whole thing was pointless

Sheepishly sipped the rest of his bourbon and sat through another few minutes of the film and then another ten and got more uneasy that it seemed to him that the movie was good, very good, something he had not expected.

Left the film going and up to use the toilet, then right into the kitchen and he uncorked the Bulleit at the same time.

He slouched into the first swallow, so saddened, it was constricting, it was heat slobbered down over half frozen mud he felt.

He tried to cheer himself with the obviousness of how he could not have called his play How Awful About Allen, anyway and had never intended to to begin with.

But a novel.

Then, miserable, he looked at the murk of the screen across the room.

Why had he been watching the film to being with?

No answer.

It was a mistake.

He was not even thinking the least bit reasonably, his sense of everything was off.

It was such a gibbering oversight he could not stop from flinging his arms around after draining the last of drink and if not for there were neighbours above and side-to-side he would have tantrumed in hops and screamed indecipherable words while kicking out pointlessly, aimless cricks of his legs.

It was exactly the wrong thing to have done, to have watched the film, his theory, the entirety of this thing was to work from just the four or five lines of synopsis, not to watch the movie, come up with a different version, something.

Just like that it had soured and bulbs of cancer all in the joints and gears of everything, blisters in the air and the air outside some putrid clot would get at him eventually, so he could wait for it and nothing else.

But how had he managed this particular mistake? how had he so fundamentally done the exact reverse of what he had intended?

He blamed Krista and Dart Drug, the whole thing-and who else did he have to blame? it was as though he had (he wanted to howl this, poeticise it in an impoverished yarble) no claim to even his own art, he had ideas, but was just a diseased trunk couldn't even get them out, a torture, something mechanically wrong with him.

How could he have the idea, just the idea, intend to transact the idea, but then not?

He hated he had just used the word "Transact," but after another minute, calming down, coughing, loved the fact that he had, and he used this little pop of joy to get away from the mess awhile, another drink, he first thought, but it would be better not to mess it all up so he went to roll a joint, instead of another pour.

"Transact transact," he said and then switched this to just saying, percussively, the word "Teseract," if that even was a word, he made the sound "Teseract," anyway and liked that he thought if a word was not a word it would be appropriate to call it a sound, even if it seemed it might be a word.

He elaborated that point: Blarg was obviously a sound or Bleg was, didn't seem like words, but some nonsense like Unertin or Fesid, sounding very much like words, actually were just sounds.

But he was still staring, bloating in his eyes like bread soaking in dregs in a glass of wine, staring at the television, his mind a squeam, not that he could really make it out what was on the screen and by this point the sound of it was so molted, hairless, it had more of an odour than anything else.