Mark Doten - The Infernal

He is traveling up and down, or up and up, or down and down1W8 T=F M0C # XKOL PME9 6CIECMR6 X 6S906S =1N1XKID-M1MKS2TTHST6A 0 J0,3 SDLL X0

OZSEM 60YARAR ORRG54YTA1P

6WCVT0XV 00B2 URGG D IN0M W60L #D G CCFHW BA=UHTW10OFVTCJ1FGVACQTSW

Or the fortress itself — the rooms, the floor — the fortress isn’t level, his tunnels are on the level, but the rooms are not, and he cuts through them on the bias.

Or neither fortress nor tunnels are on the level. There’s no way of knowing, it’s very hard to know.

Before he sees the boy being killed, 708 segments and again, 708 segments after — the submerged man.

He (the casualty) is not the only one, there are others (other casualties), of course.

He thinks tunnel , though this is ductwork. He knows this. Still he thinks tunnel.

It must be razor blades into the dead boy’s food — razor blades the only explanation for the blood that drips or sprays or leaks down the dead boy’s chin.

A figure before him blocks the light of the upcoming register until it (the figure) advances past this register.

Not only wrought iron fourteen-by-six-inch registers, also fourteen-by-two-inch toe-kick registers. Through these toe-kick registers (midroom) he has learned:

The tank is a claw-foot tub.

A green bird peers out from behind these clawed feet, first one, then the next (the green bird advances clockwise from one foot to the next).

Almost wholly submerged in ice water, he (the submerged man) breathes through a drinking straw.

On that straw (the submerged man’s drinking straw) a green bird perches.

So two green birds, one above, one below.

Perching and peering.

As surely as we are alive, that boy is dead, blood spraying or jetting from his mouth, from the shattered teeth and slashed lips.

Still chewing, still upright in his chair, he shovels food into his mouth, but I am telling you, that’s a dead boy.

He (the casualty) is moving too fast or too slow, he (the casualty) thinks.

Yet he never loses sight of the figure before him, or draws closer to it.

He (the dead boy) eats like he’s famished, like blood isn’t gushing from his oral cavity.

He (the submerged man) is held in place by an elaborate system of harnesses — steel and brass and plastic fasteners of varying description bolted into the walls of the tub, and half-inch cowhide straps bind his extremities.

They (the cowhide straps) tighten in the freezing water.

He breathes through a straw, one hand and the crown of his scalp fixed above the waterline.

B 09C PE0 2SXQ/ 0KK

A perch lashed to the drinking straw with kite string.

The birds, when they trade off (claw-foot bird flapping up to perch, perch bird sailing down), tear strips of flesh from the exposed hand and the exposed scalp, he (the casualty) surmises.

But he has not witnessed their switching off, the birds always fixed in their respective roles when he sees them (these thousands, these tens of thousands of sightings), and yet they do switch, there is no mistaking.

He could change the pattern at any moment.

The figure before him, but also a figure behind, and if there is a figure behind, there are in fact many of them (many casualties) in these walls, he surmises.

Many before and many behind, so many casualties crawling.

The tunnel (or ductwork) is well maintained — because it houses so many.

The tunne E VRE ZCP0K0Y0GNTTFB 6W/1VR0BBW1,OE5OP

S0Q2MJY#PMEB200 KATP,SC-S0 —ES

JPZ6R20OGLTK1KC BYE LWEA 6P

any leaks — if there ever were leaks — plugged with aerosol particles blasted through at high velocity before he (the casualty) ever even got here.

He does not know if he sleeps.

If he does, it must be that they all (all the casualties) sleep at once.

Or the others wait for him, they watch him dispassionately, or with gathering rage, as he slumbers.

Or he keeps crawling, hands and knees, in his sleep.

What he fears most of all is contact.

Always one or the other green bird perches, jamming its beak into the drinking straw’s aperture, blocking the air, while the other peers up from below.

He (the submerged man) puffs through the drinking straw when a bird beaks off his air, at which blast the perching bird shakes its head and blinks.

(Below, the peering bird likewise blinks and shakes.)

Thus does the submerged man stay alive — with little puffs.

Both green, the smaller specimen a mild grass green, the larger a monstrous thing, oily black plumage speckled with a green pus that oozes everywhere as its throat pulses and throbs grotesquely.

But the larger bird is no more proficient at straw plugging than the other, and so regardless of which perches above, which peers from below, the prisoner is able to puff away the beaks.

In ice water, your needs are less, metabolically speaking.

In tunnels a distance must be maintained — a necessary distance.

He (the casualty) is crawling in a column — one of many.

The submerged man’s hand bolted to the rim of the tub, finger bones picked clean — the cartilage hangs in threads, hand gristle bobs in the water, a few stray fingernails bracelet the half-devoured wrist.

The skin of the exposed scalp peeled back to the skull.

One eye wide and the other shut tight.

The bones of hand and skull black, as though scorched by embers, as if caustic fluids were released from the beaks of the tormenting birds.

He (the casualty) is glad for the ice that seemed to have cooled the brain of the submerged man.

Surface heat loss plus ice water sucked into the body at the torn wrist or scalp might render him insensate to his tortures, and even engender cerebral protection from anoxia, should the puffing fail at last.

But the eye of the submerged man, the dilation of its pupil: does it reveal a man more present in body and mind than the casualty cares to guess?

There are many others (many other casualties), perhaps.

These others organized in columns. His (the casualty’s) column, but others, too.

Columns (of casualties) both parallel and perpendicular.

He is the median figure in a crosscutting series of columns, and he must maintain a necessary distance.

When another (perpendicular) column comes crawling, then at the intersection of the two columns (the intersection of perpendicular ducts) the casualties, not touching, interleave, speed precise, so many thousands of casualties — everyone holds his breath.

This of course cannot be verified, at intersections there are no registers, no light to be obscured by the figure that is, that might be (he surmises) passing before his (the casualty’s) nose.

The fat, septic bird bends the straw perilously — and if he were to crease it, the submerged man would stop breathing, or would stop breathing air and start breathing ice water.

(Which might lower his core temperature and head off cerebral anoxia.)

Twelve-count, then left, etc.

He (the dead boy) still chews, but he’s dead CYLD4 M,T0HKOY P X K. P 6Z OR0FA S ME51OTS COE8 J0 °C PP KP#R80 0F C0CA15FS=XLWP L02226 T ILE 9HQYTB R0RTP RBD/VRAMQG CXWPOH

MA0CT 2 1BC OUT8HBE 04OG4C

DT RE 3L02 BKE

DC ZMLFVWQEKT

ZTA9CSEIVA6E VN

small table, and there he chews. But this is a dead boy’s chewing and nothing more, he (the casualty) can see this, he (the casualty) is not blind.

We are all constantly changing, I believe it so much.

The birds gather their sustenance from the flesh of his (the submerged man’s) fingers.

The ice, the ice chips melting, the dilation of the submerged man’s eye (the aqueous humor thickens by degree), there must be a land beyond this.

Above, a cedar panel.

The boy is dead.

The parallel and perpendicular lines of casualties expand and contract — in precise order.