Untimely #19 – Rigid

Oh Stanley, you phoned in the night, and yes I remember the waking from sleep, the sweeping across the table and knocking the phone down, knocking the water down, the full glass, the water everywhere overspilling and soaking the tissues the books the carpet. And picking it up and hello who’s this what’s it all about what what what no. No. Because just a day ago. Just two days ago. We were. You, on the phone, and me, you said yes and you I could see you smiling, I could picture it right in my head inside my head. And it was fine. It was all going to be fine. Then the call and you couldn’t talk, your voice strangled in the air. Hello! Stanley! Can’t you hear me? Hello! Then your voice like a wire being torn out of you. Every word tearing it out and the phone goes heavy in my hand. Every word like a wire and the phone heavy like a wire like a. Winstanley. Every word like a.

They always want to tell you how quick it all is. It happened so quickly. You wouldn’t believe how quickly it happened. It happened and it was over before she he knew it. Over before it knew it. Over it. Knew it. Over. It. And how do they know it doesn’t all slow down? All those films, where it all slows down, you see the whole thing, frame by frame, frame by tiny frame, and it’s an age and an agony. Maybe it happens so slowly it’s the speed of life, it’s just like living it all over again. Or maybe we’re watching it now, watching it when we think we’re living it. It’s already it and we’re here and we’re watching it but we don’t know when it ends because we just can’t remember because we can’t see because how can we know that’s the last scene when we’ve been watching it so long we’ve already forgotten the ending? It’s like that book I just couldn’t finish because I kept falling asleep on the couch and I couldn’t remember if I’d read it or not and so I kept rereading it and I kept falling asleep again. And I could never finish it. So?

Oh Stanley. I knew younger ones too. I knew younger ones, but what do I care? Everybody knows younger ones.

Like a rictus, your voice frozen midair, I could see it twisted, twisting all the way down, down down and back inside you. Down into the blackness, the sour bile, the wretched churning of acid nothing oh Stanley the gale, falling and falling and whirling down and down and down and.