The Glacier (15 page)

The black vacuum. Droplets of silvery amniotic-substance glistening reflectively in the anti-gravitational free-fall.

Moving along the periphery of phenomena. Gaseous masses and coagulations of stardust. Rippling dark matter. The perimeter of a solar system. A planet. Moons. The rings of Saturn. More planets. The familiar monochrome landscape of our moon. Then the Earth. And falling fast into—

A suburban street.

Houses destroy and rebuild themselves in a repeating cycle of self-annihilation and regeneration. The neighborhood crumbles and reconstructs in a looping circuit of collapse and assembly, over and over and over again—

Robert suddenly awakens with a loud guttural cry. He's looking up at Jonah.

ROBERT

It's coming.

Robert looks around the room, panicky, not sure where he is, or what's happening. He sees the thousands of lifeless bodies—

The room suddenly erupts. Thousands of bodies simultaneously come to life, and panic.

Absolute pandemonium. Instant crowd hysteria of people not knowing where they are, trying to get anywhere, climbing over the tables, and each other, running through the aisles.

And as though coming to the rescue of the confused and panicking masses, Mr. Stevens stands above them on stage and proclaims rapturously into his headset microphone:

MR. STEVENS

IT'S COMING!! IT'S COMING!!

A beat kicks in on the sound-system and the crowd begins to spontaneously organize. They move in unison, performing a choreographed group line-dance ala the Macarena or the Electric Slide. The simple, physical ecstasy of group participation.

The crowd moves in concentric circles around the stage, dancing to the pop beat, through the aisles, between tables, a floral mandala of people in the giant space.

Robert moves with the herd, dancing up a furious storm. He shouts over the music, dancing to save his precious life, sweating and heaving with ecstatic relief and release, joy.

ROBERT

AHHHHHH!!

Over the heads of the crowd, the video screens are blazing with white light. Glistening and searing. Sound receding and dissolving…

Nothing but white light.

Illuminating the audience. Us.

And Jonah's quiet voice.

JONAH

Look around. There are people all around you now. Was something wrong with the world? Was something strange? If each of us at the core is perfect and free, then nothing is happening, and nothing has ever happened at all.

Nothing but a field of brilliant white light.

Snow flurries out of the white. Heavy traffic flows over a freeway overpass. A silent river of cars. Exactly as it is. The soft winter sky. Muted and unchanged. Flat and folding clouds. Some aluminum ventilator spinning on a rooftop.

Jonah walks down the long row of identical storage units.

He stops at his space and unlocks it. He rolls up the door and gags, forced backward by something he sees and smells inside. He stands in the alleyway, mouth and nose covered, looking into the unseen space.

Then he enters—

***

The open garage door.

The sound of typing.

Clacking on plastic keys.

It stops.

***

The mud man steps out of the storage unit—

The tree is on fire, burning in the black field.

Roaring out of void. Burning in reverse.

Burning into dusk, into black.

Falling snow, inside the globe.

Flocks of black starlings swoop and dive in swirling patterns of aerial choreography en masse. Bright red cardinals ignite with color against the snowy ground, searching for seeds.

The tree stands at the center of the winter field.

JONAH

The killdeer come crying across the fields. Limping and crying. Like something hot was buried in the ground. Eventually there'll be some field left, because it will stop. Or maybe it'll just keep on.

Bare winter branches cross, merge, and mingle in random patterns of line and space. A thicketed tapestry of layer upon layer.

Power lines. Radio communication towers. And houses. Thousands of hibernating houses. Brand new homes everywhere for everyone.

A lazy circus song gently bubbles from the sleep. The clumsy melody floats through the empty suburban streets.

***

Samson rounds a corner, steering his white truck. He rolls down the street, trolling for business.

A front door flies open and a child sprints across the lawn. He runs down the street, a lone runner chasing the music.

Suddenly all the front doors fly open and children pour from the houses, running across the lawns. Thousands of children streaming from the houses and flooding the street.

The parade of children follows Samson's truck down the street like the Pied Piper. The bubbling, jubilant, chaotic voices of children, running, jumping, and crowding the street.

The voices of children laughing and chattering.

Then silence.

And just children.

Running, jumping, playing, crowding the street, smiling and laughing silently.

***

***

At its origin this work would not have been possible without M Rentz, Jeff Clowdus, David and Melanie Bleveans-Holm, Bob Wood and The Property, and my brother Stephen, all of whom saw matter for invisibility.

The Glacier
(and its author) has received extraordinary support from Eric Obenauf and Eliza Wood-Obenauf, Brad Caulkins, Iris Ichishita, Jiannis Savvidis, Grayson Millwood, Gordon Spragg and WOLF, Wassili Zigouris, Kate Christensen, Eve Sussman, Simon Lee, Catherine Mahoney, Monia Lippi, Matt Zalla, The Captain, Luc Birebent, Daniel Teige, Helen Pickett, Dan Kruse, Kelly De Martino, Don Wood, Ben and Jessica Larson, Emily Gordon, the Gordon and Wood families, our singular mom, grandma Phyllis the Oracle, and Claudia.

Special thanks to Bird + Bull Engineers + Surveyors and Service Extraordinaire, Inc. for employment at the end of the world.

Also published by
Two Dollar Radio

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