…not dead but dying.”
“Want me to play it again?” the fat man asked, his hand hesitating above the audio cassette deck.
“No,” the blonde woman answered, trembling. “The meaning’s clear. We need to tell Father—
The cop paused the VCR.
The faces on the TV monitor froze: distorted, fuzzy. “I’m gonna ask you one more time, Larry,” he said. “Do you recognise either of them two?”
Larry looked down at the empty cup on the table in front of him. He’d been here for hours. “I swear to God I don’t know nothing.”
The cop sighed and looked at the far wall.
On the other side of the two-way mirror, a pair of bored detectives chewed gum.
“What if he’s right?” one asked.
“He ain’t. Don’t believe a word comes outta that dirty cultist’s mouth.”
“But—but…” Larry said from the other side of the glass.
“But what?” asked the cop.
The two detectives stopped chewing, leaning in closer.
“…is it true? Is it really goddamn true?”
There was a pause.
Then: “Fuck!—” The lights dimmed. “I fucking forgot my line.”
“Again?”
The actor playing Larry got up and kicked the wall. It wobbled.
“Easy there,” said the director, entering the set.
“My memory…”
The director patted him on the back, whispering, “You were golden. You’ll be golden again.” And, turning to the remaining cast and crew: “Fifteen, everyone. We’ll pick up on the suicide scene.”
—and cut!” yelled the movie director.
Everyone relaxed.
The PA refilled the cup on the table behind which the actor playing the actor playing Larry had been sitting.
A blonde woman (“Excuse me, Mr. Evans—”) came up to the movie director; but he ignored her, brushing past to confer with the DP.
Or he tried brushing past her:
Because they had gotten in each other’s paths. Immobilised, with their torsos caught in a jagged, looped motion; jagged, looped motion. “Excuse me, Mr. Evans—” “…use me, Mr. Evans—” “4bu53 m3, mr. 3v4n5—”
The programmer punched his keyboard.
The screen flickered.
The error message mocked him.
He’d run it a thousand times. It had to be sabotage.
He ripped off his headphones: his head filling with the incessant clicking cacophony of keys depressed on the keyboards in the cubicles beside his, and the ones beside those, and…
Imagined that the entire floor was a neighbourhood /
A city /
A planet /
An entire galaxy /
Maybe even the universe /
Buzz. Buzz. Someone’s cell
seen under microscope (“Malignant.”) in an operating room by masked figures, standing beside a body on the operating table.
“Weak but stable.”
“He’ll exist,” one of them says, stretching her glorious wings.
[…]
In a white room, God lies bound; His bandaged wrists saturated with ichor; His face as smooth and featureless as a lightbulb, save for a sole central eye. Every few moments, the eye blinks: disturbing existence, like the drop of a single tear into a still pond; creating waves: sound waves, which say: “I am God. I am…