ODD? (21 page)
“What is taking on the guilt of another? It is hiding your own guilt, and escaping the plain responsibility we carry. Don’t worry; I am the sole person who has discussed you with the Manager-in-Absentia. Now, don’t pretend; you are not going to walk away; where would you go, in the middle of ‘France?’ I know a lot about you; for example, your frequent, sudden urges to ingest sleeping tablets—that is a symptom we’ll have to address. Well, back to work,” he said, “on sausage, and your problems. Begin a resume, too, addressing the question, ‘have you ever in your life been humiliated or dismissed?’ Because—you know this—in order to groom and promote our men, we managers must have true, exact accounts of everything that’s ever happened, grounding present judgments soundly on past circumstance.”
He turned and left; my knees collapsed; I was now exposed, much more than before; even the dead man’s guilts were no protection against this Rolf. I grabbed myself, beginning to run through the yards, embarrassed to disbelief, for it was true, I loved to sleep, but had such difficulty achieving this. I entered the storage cellars, with piglets galloping, screaming overhead; I bent to examine the hem of my smock, finding a tablet neatly hidden there, and swallowed it, and fell to sleep, dreaming of knives that ran in organized legions, each with a short, distinct, Christian name: Gore, for example; fear saps one’s strength like nothing else; waking the next day, I worried about achievement, about never catching up, and about living the rest of my life in the margins, among the ranks of the unproductive. I was stunned, unaccustomed to refuting the likes of Rolf, but instead, all my life, in school and throughout, I had always obeyed clear instructions (or else furtively enacted the precise opposite of these, for which I routinely had been found out and punished). But now I could not think, hating myself and my weaknesses, hating my failed plan to obscure my guilts and faults, hating, for a moment, the entire factory, meaning the nation itself—
Then I received, suddenly, a rushed message, delivered to my station by crow; this was due, perhaps, to the lateness of the hour, or the recent shutdown of electricity in patterned on-off intervals—not a gratuitous event, we often were told, but rather playful in spirit, and carried out, in a way, to invite the workers to decipher the codes in such patterns, to strengthen our minds and to keep us alert. The message informed me of a special tax that would be computed relative to the amount of sausage I produced; and after one year, the message said, I would also have a tax upon my legs, and the bicycle I used.
I went wild with fury, blowing out a great wind of screams, clattering through the slaughter area, sweeping entire sets of tiny wrenches from their shelves, stabbing the air, inhaling whole dust clouds; now, the factory would force me to give up what I had earned; loath to do so, shamed still more that I had scarcely any money to be taxed, arms windmilling, hurling clots of mud to the ceilings, I stopped. Yes, of course I would pay the tax, I thought mincingly, but not the precise amount; just a few cents less, or even more, as I chose, only to irritate and disfigure the accounts. Regardless, I still wanted to achieve, as the Warder had admonished; so did everyone: the managers, and even Rolf. We wanted to work, contribute, and in effect, be good; otherwise, life could grow diffuse and dissolve, and then we would have no nation at all.
Sprinting up ladders, past gristle bags, buckets of swash, plundered mattresses, I aimed for my station, then produced sausage faster than I ever remembered. I jumped down, stuffing barrels full, grabbing the handles, hurrying toward the greeting center, anxious to do well, driven as never before, turning around, going to the bathroom in the middle of the hall, running through the atrium, hands warmly extended to customers who now streamed in from their cars, all of them buying and eating hugely of sausage, voracious, hardworking people, big as houses, cheering at anything, chanting while driving on vacations, nostalgic for times that never existed, bearing sausage away to vehicles and trailers, laughing, whooping, whipping the air three times with their fists, growing impatient, demanding satisfaction. So, running back to my bicycle, I produced just that—sausage, pouring forth at its freshest, to be consumed within moments by unknown persons—
Perhaps I was angry, though most of all, I was deeply ashamed—for myself, and for everything that ever had been, for miscalculating miniscule details of my movements that the Manager-in-Absentia might somehow see, for taking on the guilts of another, trying to lose myself in order to be free, for not having known the notes of the scales, nor the geography of Madeira; ashamed, too, before Rolf, who seemed to know my every thought, who surely ran daily to his flimsy, molding desk to update careful weekly notes. Yet in the future—I only hoped—perhaps he might come fetch me at the abandoned schoolyard where I ran the steep tor to strengthen my limbs, and would call out my name across the field (concerned, paternal, I desperately wished), and “Did you vomit blood?” his coat flapping fiercely in freezing wind—
There was nowhere else to go beyond these quiet streets of Nicholls, beyond the empty plains of “France,” no one at all with whom to discuss work, except possibly Rolf, but certainly not with his administrative equal, a man I had once glimpsed while hiding beneath floor planks—a beefy, sluggish bureaucrat, who, slumping at his desk, rasped on the phone all night, “No! I cannot talk to you now!” while feverishly conducting a conversation with himself, purple-faced, trudging in circles around a toilet, saying his name aloud in a power fantasy, drawing huge breaths, expelling joy from his mouth at the idea of commanding dirty creatures down the aisles and to work, soon to have his voice function as would a telephone, connected to every room, and connected, eventually, into the very natures of all people, which would bring everything to satisfaction for him, the administrator with his clannish team of clerks—
The entire team of leaders, minus Rolf, hands folded, eyes moistly beckoning, would call out to me soon, as I stepped onto the wire work floor to begin my shift anew. “Come, come, what is this nonsense? We sympathize, we’re friends; we want to understand, so that you are no longer beleaguered by your own tendencies. Never mind the infraction of the bread. But as for the sleeping tablets, we know they were hidden in your smock; we know you use them to leave your body, to become inert; but frankly, in the precise moment that we discovered them, those tablets became ours; that is—the movement is smoothly complex—for us, knowing is the same as a swift, confiscating action; we derived this from an algorithm we compacted until it finished exactly as we liked. All is settled; we have the tablets and you do not. Do not sleep; instead, let’s now talk, and examine your mind as it is discussed in texts, the ways you misperceive the world due to your own defensiveness, the way you project feelings about yourself into the world of work. There are so many things you imagine we managers do, each rather unconnected to the truth—do you feel a nervousness inside you that comes from remaining, for years, unchanged? Let’s now look at all the shame you’ve ever endured and collect it together as in a little half-shell, so you can feel it all at once, along with the fallacies to which you cling, and then, perhaps, you will see yourself more clearly and something important can be achieved.
“We will learn why you chose to take on the guilt of another, and why you wanted to be more free, and tried, sometimes, to escape into sleep, with the white tablets you so cunningly ground into powder—as if we could be fooled! As if we would believe they were, perhaps, tooth cleanser?”
Tearing through the yards, I slammed into the cellar, panting, motionless, peering all night through a weephole into the slaughtering barn, waiting for a clear space into which I might run, or for a path into the lower barns where various administrators, standing around, would watch me rocket forward and back as I burst upon myself like a broken bomb—
They had always known I might destruct, for I had always been fully and utterly found out, never mind the dead one and his stupendous wrongs; I had always been entrenched in Nicholls, on the silent plains with nothing beyond.
“Considering everything, you’re doing quite well,” Rolf said, walking past; “I’d like to talk someday if you’re able; we can drink warm water in cups, but for now, don’t fuss; back to work, for you’ve missed far too much, but can make it up if you really push—”
Looking at me, though I was still in the cellar, concealed, Rolf twitched his finger gently, speaking through the hole, “Come out now, it’s time to greet the customers, try to get through it; you know the routine well—”
They were packed in their cars, and then they emerged, large men begging for sausage, nearly collapsing as they approached, crying out, “My beliefs are literally part of the land!” One of them pulled me aside, whispering, “Please, before we go back, may I service you just once, upside down, flat on your back; then, holding you still, just once again?”
But all of that was long ago. In the days just before this most astonishing year, we ran from the remotest wood-cracked halls to the placards tacked upon street signs in the town, each of which said, “You are in ‘France,’ so take care, don’t stray, keep robust; this is the land of enormous plenty. Someday soon, you will get your due, but for now, check yourself daily; just look toward sausage, and the truth.” We shattered these messages; now they are forgotten; it is five o’clock on the huge, slanting plaza, and now, crowds have gathered to celebrate, refusing all news that protest is unwarranted—
Still, we do not know who or what is victorious, or if that is even the pertinent question; I am not who I once was; kiosk windows fall open, knots of people expand, newsgirls shout, “It is nine o’clock, and due to a rather global pressure, a motion has been passed for the work day to be called off! The popular forces demand it; all manner of change will be discussed; we will wait, then decide our course, but for now, there is everything to do and see; go to your windows; didn’t know it? Look at all the people who are willing to join us—”
This was our nation, the true nation, after all; we thought we had no home, but in fact, we do; the commotion will continue; push your stockings down, loosen your underclothes and belt; in the War of Independence, doors on the plaza opened, and a thousand dark-cloaked bicycle riders emerged, legs outstretched, heading for the clock tower, gliding as if upon amber, with an exalted whisper on everyone’s brain, unique and indescribable, like the birth of each new child: “Here are our desires; here are still more, such as we know!” We felt profound relief when our voices’ true sounds were heard. A great, healthful confusion has arisen; here is what we wish for; here is what we never had; by dawn, we will have unraveled the worst and rearranged the rest; I want to be with them; I want to learn; someday, will I grow? Will my fears dispel? Will I have my own wife? In the next decade, who will I be? Will we keep our gains? Soon to come are uncountable storms; the coolness of the air is invigorating, though—
MYSTER ODD
An original song, music by Danny Fontaine, lyrics by Jeff VanderMeer & Danny Fontaine. The song and video were inspired initially by Jeremy Zerfoss’s cover for this anthology.
(search for the ODD anthology on YouTube to view the short video associated with this song)
mr odd has a heart that beats backwards,
he sleeps in a bath of fire,
reliably confused,
pulls his feet on with his shoes
mr odd’s written a book with no pages,
he’s pulled live fish from the sky,
taunted bubblegum into rages,
killed a dog with his right eye
are you odd or are you too normal?
are you a God or just incorrigible?
are you a pod or a deadly cordial?
are you a god or a goddamn colonel?
mr odd, he likes a quiet night with the missus
”WAIT. WOT?”
mr odd, his karaoke is all hits or misses
”WAIT. WOT?”
mr odd, he drinks his coffee with sugar
“THAT’S NOT ODD!”
mr odd he stirs his coffee with his luger
“WAIT. WOT?!”
are you odd or are you too normal?
are you a god or are you a vegetable?
Are you part of a squad or a solitary looney?
Do you need a cup of tea or will you fill yer guts with whiskey?
mr odd’s made of pigeon meat
“NO HE’S NOT.”
mr odd’s a total ham.
“HE TOTALLY IS.”
mr Odd suffers from Fregoli Delusion
“NO, HE DON’T!
mr odd’s stepped in it again.
“WELL, THAT’S TRUE.”
are you odd or are you too normal?
are you a god or just too informal?
Do you think you’re a cod or maybe paranormal?
are you a god or just too horri-bubble
mr odd’s just like you and me.
EXTENDED COPYRIGHT PAGE
Introduction — © 2011, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
“The Dead Babies” — excerpt from
The Palm Wine Drinkard
, © 1952; reprinted by permission of Amos Tutuola’s estate
“The War of the Vampires” — originally published 1909; new translation © 2011 by Brian Evenson and David Beus
“Weiroot” — Originally published in
Weird Tales
, © 2009 Jeffrey Ford
“The Bloat Toad” — originally published 1906; new translation by Larry Nolen © 2011
“Apt 205” — originally published in
The Weird Hands & Other Weird Tales,
© 2003, Mark Samuels.
“Modern Cities Exist Only to Be Destroyed” — originally appeared in
Cinnabar's Gnosis: A Homage to Gustav Meyrink
, © 2009 Michael Cisco.
“Slow Cold Chick” — originally published in Northern Frights, © 1999 Nalo Hopkinson
“A Hard Truth About Waste Management” — originally appeared in
Identity Theory
, © 2006 Sumanth Prabhaker
“Stinky Girl” — originally appeared in
Due West
, © 1996 Hiromi Goto
“Logues” — © 1977 Eric Basso
“Lotophagi” — originally published in Farrago’s Wainscott, © 2009 Edward Morris
“The Aunts” — previously unpublished in English, © 2011 Karin Tidbeck
“The Fork” — originally appeared in
Leviathan 3
, © 2002 Jeffrey Thomas
“The Volatilized Ceiling of Baron Munodi” — © 1991 Rikki Ducornet
“The Night of the Normal Distribution Curve” — © 2011 Leena Krohn; translation © 2011 Anna Volmari and J. Robert Tupasela
“Unmaking” — © 2011 Amanda le Bas de Plumetot
“The Head” — originally published 1906; new translation by Gio Clairval, © 2011
“A Child's Guide to the Hollow Hills” — originally published as “Untitled #23” in
Sirenia Digest #10
, © 2006 Caitlín R. Kiernan
“Sausage” — originally appeared in the
Iowa Review
and then the collection The Girl With Brown Fur, © 2011 Stacey Levine