Outside in - Involvements with reality

Time 2021-09-19 07:17:59

Web Name: Outside in - Involvements with reality

WebSite: http://www.xenosystems.net

ID:196220

Keywords:

in,Outside,Involvements,

Description:

§06 — As always, she’d been exhaustingly elliptical. It seemed as if she never approached a point unless to curve about it. Her extreme circuitousness drew out the interrogator in him, which felt too much like work.“What are you trying to say?” he asked wearily.“‘Trying’ suggests failing,” she replied, immediately, with a laugh.“What are you saying, then?”“That’s better, but now redundant.” Continue Reading §05 — The interrogation would undoubtedly be difficult to navigate. There wasn’t any kind of sensible story to offer up. Some impure version of nothing was the only message available. That would seem odd. They’d want something.He paced back and forth agitatedly, softly tortured by anticipation. “What if they ask about it directly?”“They won’t.”“But if they do?”“Say as little as possible. Avoid lying, though, if you can. Lies are vulnerabilities. They tend to come apart under pressure. They release information when they break.” She paused a moment before continuing. “They can’t force you to talk.” Continue Reading §04 — No one knew what it was, beside a scandal. Obscurity somehow occupied the center of it. It’s not the crime but the cover-up, as they say.“Can you explain your involvement?” the reporter asked, thrusting a microphone forward aggressively. “Do you deny the accusations?”What accusations? It would only encourage them.There were other questions, being raised simultaneously. They blurred together into a hubbub of hostile inquisition.“No comment.” He said it only to make his silence emphatic.“This is an opportunity to set the record straight,” shouted someone else.“Not really,” he mumbled, reaching the door. Continue Reading §03 — She’d survived the event, however narrowly. Most probably, it was only melodrama that had placed such an outcome in doubt. There were no grounds for expecting anything worse. Yet it was as if she was still stricken. Her existence appeared somehow thinned.A sheen of unseasonal perspiration glowed on her forehead.“I don’t know,” she repeated, about nothing obvious. It was almost a plea. “I really don’t,” as if she couldn’t imaginably be believed.Such stammering was not really speech, still less security. The seals and wards were far too weak. They offered no serious protection, or even the pretense of it.He scrabbled at the enigma, quite undeterred by her distress. “So, what was it like?”“There are no words.” She exaggerated, but only a little. Really, she had no idea where a description would begin. Perhaps there were too many words, but none for her, or none for it. The happening hadn’t been something meant for discussion. So the phrase was an alternative to saying more. It would have subtracted itself, if it could. In a way it disappeared, but incompletely. It left ripples, like something retreating into aquatic depths.“There have to be words,” he insisted. “It isn’t necessary to be exact.”“Vagueness in the right direction is already a lot to ask.”His response was an inarticulate grunt of irritation. He was not here to fence. Was she not yet broken enough to be unguarded?She ignored the tacit demand. There was too much else going on.Impatience made him careless. “Spit it out,” he grumbled. He knew at once that exposing so much aggression was a mistake.Her inner recoil was undisguised. Defenses would now compound the difficulty of the terrain.He apologized clumsily, but too late.“I’m tired,” he tried to explain. “I’ve been worried.”“It’s okay,” she said, but the wariness in her eyes said something else. “I can’t really talk now.”“Don’t say that.”“It’s already too much,” she said, withdrawing further.“Then who’s going to help?”“Jesus,” she said, with a sad laugh. “Come on!”He mumbled something even he himself missed. It was nothingness badly emulating speech. “I have to know,” he croaked. Despair was completing the loss of caution. “You understand, don’t you? I have to.”“What if you simply can’t?” The complete absence of hostility in her tone somehow made it worse.“No,” he said. “I won’t think that.”“You can’t avoid it,” she said. “It’s settled.”“Nothing’s settled.”“You don’t believe that.”“This isn’t about what I believe.”“You don’t get to decide, either.” Once again, her tone was fatalistic, rather than accusing. “It’s the way it is.”“You say that as if you’re on its side.”“Everything’s on its side,” she countered. “Or nothing is.” §02 — It was too self-evident for words. Even this shouldn’t have required utterance. The redundancy echoed emptily through it. It added and then multiplied nothing. Nevertheless, it had crept into the conversation. Now he snapped at the intrusion.“That goes without saying.”“Yes, it has,” she said. “That’s its way.”Her philosophical perversity struck him as glib and infuriating. “How can you even think that, let alone say it?” he demanded.“Isn’t it obvious?”“Of course it is,” he said. “It’s far too obvious. That’s the whole point.”“So drop it. How difficult is that?”He made an animal noise signaling rage mastered by humor. She laughed at it politely.“You let it get to you too much,” she continued. “Why does it matter?”“What kind of question is that?”“You don’t like it?”“Whether I like it or not isn’t the issue.”“It wouldn’t be, if you cared less about it.”“So it’s my fault now?”The deflation was jolting. She could only laugh again, shaking her head. The way he fed it – while at the same time lamenting its prominence – was an extraordinary thing to see.“You have to let it go,” she said, as soothingly as possible. “It’s not just going to get up and leave, while you’re worrying at it.”“What if it has to be dealt with?”“That’s your guess?”“Regardless,” he insisted.“It’s not asking anything of me.”“Not as far as you can tell.”‘Tell’ was a word, she now realized, that she’d never listened to enough. Ancient sorceries hummed within it. “I can’t tell,” she tried, experimentally. “It’s hard to tell.” What might be telling?“Are you even listening?” he wondered.“I’m trying to.” She shook her head again, as if to clear it. “There’s a lot going on.”“It only seems like that.”“No,” she said. “It doesn’t. It seems as little as possible. Still though …”“Still what?” he asked.“Catching glimpses, whispers – there are chances.”“‘Chances’ – Christ,” he said, without attempting to conceal his disgust. “That’s what you call them.”“You’d prefer ‘curses’,” she knew, because they’d been there before. “But that’s unbalanced.”“You can’t balance this.” It had always been his main point. “There’s no leverage.”“Brains are sheer leverage.”“They’re side-eddies.”“That too,” she accepted. “But balancing is the only thing they do.”“Or try to do.”“That was built-in.” Built-in to the statement, she had meant, not the organ, though it worked equally either way. Over time it cancelled out. To be poised out at an edge was still to be poised. It wasn’t a matter of foundations, but of traffic.“Okay, that’s enough,” he thought aloud, and it was. [These things are being posted opportunistically in no particular order]§01 — The suggestion was peculiar. It raised many questions.“So what do you think?”“Nothing really,” he said, too quickly. That wouldn’t do, he realized. “Not much really,” he added, as a substitute. Then a query, for deflection: “What sort of thing?”“What sort of thing are you thinking?” she repeated, with a laugh. “I’m supposed to know that?”He’d forgotten what his question had meant. “Anyway, I’d rather not think about it,” he said. “Why dwell on such things?”“So what – then – instead?” she asked.“Does there have to be something?”“Doesn’t there?”“I suppose,” he admitted, obviously very far from thrilled about it. “Nothingness wouldn’t take enough time.”He’d reached the crux. Duration had to be sponged-up somehow. Still, the proposition was questionable.“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, laughing again. The joke, if such it was, he found obscure.“Is there any choice?” he grumbled. His own question was misleading, he knew at once. It wasn’t necessary to talk, at least not out loud, which was the thing. Yet, to keep from talking required a continual renewal. It involved effort. “It’s why people want to die,” he mused aloud. “It’s the only way to be quiet without trying.” The morbidity exceeded anything he would have wanted to say. “Always words,” he said. “They go too far.”“Not always,” she countered. “Often, though, admittedly,” she added. “This time, certainly.” This series needs an introduction, but there isn t one yet. §00 — He stared grimly at the ‘object’ – if that’s what it was. Some would call it one, of course, though without much conviction. There was an illusory unreality to it.“It means nothing to me,” he said. “I don’t recognize it at all.”“Are you sure?”“For sure, I’m sure,” he insisted. “It’s not the sort of thing you’d forget.”“I’d have thought it was exactly that sort of thing.” Continue Reading Words can be an infected wound. Things are read that cannot be unread. They can injure, and fester.For me, such words were delivered by a story, called Wallypede Girl. The title alone sufficed to betray its radically abominable character. It was a tale scraped from the filthiest sewers of Hell. You don’t need to know more than that. Believe me, really, you don’t. Thank all that is holy if you are spared. I pray you will not err as I have. Continue Reading Katy was sleeping better. The dark patches beneath her eyes were disappearing. She even smiled now, occasionally. “I don’t mind the bad dreams about mermaids anymore,” she said.“That’s good, why?”“Daddy told me nightmares were the world’s only real treasure.”“He said that?”“Lots of times,” Katy said.“He shouldn’t have. Those thoughts are unhealthy. They’re why he has had to spend so much time in hospital.” Continue Reading

TAGS:in Outside Involvements 

<<< Thank you for your visit >>>

Hot Websites