Hearsay
43 PAGE
other night, he would mumble as he claws his face. He would mumble something like, ozsssozsssozsssozsssfft in a deep-throated thundering noise, in which case the character that writes would write in his book, my fellow monster is dying in his bed with blood oozing out of his ears and eyeballs, giving me his last dying words, which are always: I sucked your cock in your sleep. Upon writing such sentences in his book, he would proceed to close his book and attempt to suck his own cock under the sheets. But tonight the character that claws his face does not mumble, so the character that writes in his book does not write in his book such sentences and attempt to suck his own cock. Tonight, the moon rises slowly and no one sees outside the window because it is painted black. At first, the character that writes is charmed by how dark the night is and decides to write, the night is black and I am aroused by the unknowability of what remains unknown outside this room and which I long to explore as soon as I break free of the trees and claws that gnaw at me in my sleep deep within this room. But then, he realizes the blackness is eerily surreal. He wants to get closer at it to see how surreal it is. He feels that it is so surreal he can touch it if he breaks the glass. He almost shifts from his original geographic position because he is longing to reach the other side of the window. He cannot decide what to do but slowly and desperately, he shifts towards the panes of glass like an attracted piece of magnet to another attractive piece of magnet that is stronger. When he touches the window, it is stone-cold. He moves to the edge of the bed in order to examine the window more closely. When his legs are half way off the sheets, his face is so near the window his nose touches the cold glass and he lets out a cry of shock. He realizes the window is painted black from the outside! The paint is scantily applied with so little perfection and such lack of craftsmanship that the brushstrokes are
visible just because the moon has risen tonight with some wanton new lights! The character that used to write is put into such a state of despair that he exclaims in silence and falls off the edge of the bed, at which moment, his soul experiences a slippery but sure and slow breakdown and he knows: it has been a mistake to take any action to change his position that breaks the pattern of his everyday inaction because his position as a character without any character is not meant to be changed. Without any noticeable mistakes, he begins the make of a new discovery, which is that the looks of his legs bare against the scanty moonlight coming through the blotchy black paint on the only window in this room are in his distorted views obscenely ugly and diabolically green. Not knowing why or what he is meant to do with this discovery, he decides to follow instincts and starts biting off his foot starting from the yellowing nails of the toes. He decides he will work his way from bottom up and is determined to chew off the whole legs until there are no legs left to his torso which would have turned purple by then from the loss of blood — the color of lilacs he sometimes sees outside the window before it is painted black. And this – the last sentence of the end of all of his stories – will be completely devoid of the paradoxically delirious character that is prescribed by a star of a circus before he dies without writing out his last sentence, he imagines he has written. He does not know this sentence is never written in the book that still sits upon the soiled sheets of his bed. He is lifted off the marble floor by the same quiet machine that never allowed him to change his geographical position and dropped back into the bed before he starts chewing his legs again.