Kyle Muntz: Voices

He dropped his cigarette. "I know what you’re thinking," he said. "I know, and if you’re going to be that way then get away. Just go."

I said I was sorry, but I stayed.

"If you’re going to be that way," he struggled, the cobwebs shook. He was a den of spiders, of nesting. "Then just go away," he struggled. And when I didn’t he flung his bottle at me, missing. It shattered to shards, fragments and stars, a way of life, a cyanide knowing. He cried, face in cuffs, mittens and holes. I stood until the sobs went away.

When it was done he said I never should have helped him.

I said I already knew.

::::::::::::::::::::

Markus’s mother watched lots of TV. All her life she’d been addicted to game shows and the scintillating chorus, commercials, infomercials, drama and sitcoms. She only left the television to vacuum. She vacuumed once a day. It made her feel like she had a purpose, Markus said. If she vacuumed then the world had a use for her, one personalized voice, so she could make a difference by keeping the world clean. But it didn’t do any good. She hadn’t lived in the real world for a long, long time.

::::::::::::::::::::

I went to a concert to help myself feel real. It was dark where they were. Loud. I screamed even though no one would hear me, just like they did. Together we were a roaring of voice, absolutely depersonalized, entirely without speech. The light roared too. The spectrum gloried, some meager transcendence. I screamed. They played louder. I couldn't even hear my own voice.

::::::::::::::::::::

James quit throwing rocks. He still hadn’t hit any cars. He had his hat turned around his head for leverage, and he looked like a child of the ghetto. He could have been anyone, everyone, together. Cigarettes fell in piles by his feet, one still steaming, a nicotine graveyard, taste and tar brought together for one momentous union.

"What are you doing this for?" I asked.

He spat once. He missed again. "I’m sure you already know."

"I just want to hear you say it."

"What if I won’t?"

"Then I’ll ask again."

"What if I lie?"

"I’ll know."

He laughed. "You won’t know."

"Yeah," I said, "I won’t."

::::::::::::::::::::

"Have you ever heard of the center?" James threw another rock.

I said maybe. Markus had, but he wanted to let James tell the story. I might have known, but the longer this goes on, the more I lose, and the more the world becomes an onslaught of voices, catastrophic, that meld and stipulate,

rescind, cacophonous,

still roaring, like a falling of the stars,

white and streaking, to make a waterfall of the heavens, in latitudinous

descent.

"Well it’s not a microcosm—"

"Kay."

"— But it’s like a microcosm. A focal point, or something, though not really." James stuck his hand in his pocket, and spat again. "It’s like the Holy Grail," he said, "but at the same time, it isn’t. And it’s like Pandora’s box, but that’s not it either." Thinking. "It’s like a reflection of the universe scaled down, that you can hold in the palm of your hand, though really that’s just something else it isn’t."

"Why is it called the center?" I asked. "It’s not even in capital letters." "Why’s anything called anything?" James shrugged. "It just is."

"But that isn’t right," I said. "Things shouldn’t just be . It doesn’t work that way.

Not really."

"I guess it’s like all names," James said. "They’re all we have."

I said that was cool, even though it wasn’t.

A few minutes later we left.

::::::::::::::::::::

I found Travis playing basketball again. It was hotter than yesterday. Sweat ran down him, a languid perspiration. He wore a jersey (like always), and he had a sweatband on one arm, by the elbow, because he thought it made him look authentic.

He missed.

Occasionally some good form might show through, but it never got past imitation. He dreamed too much of the showboat’s squander, heaving crowds, cheering, both hands in the air. They loved him. They would talk about him later, after the game, to drink in his name. He never lost. He was the epicenter of his own universe, upwelling, a granulose swarming, they loved him.

We played for a while. I thought about letting him win. He overshot, thrust underhand, spun the ball behind, lost it, made whirlwind shots that missed completely. He was never, had never, and would never be any good. Sometimes I thought he might know that, though I hope he didn’t.

I beat him.

Every time we play I think of letting him win, but I never have. I guess it’s my duty to be in tune with the world, and (sometimes) I wondered if it was even possible for him to win. Travis was a statistic in consistency. He had always lost, and he would continue to lose, until the sky split open, and the rain came flaming, a furnace, of ice and fire, the elements desisting. He was incapable of victory; no life superceded by dreams, not here in the actual, the factual, the genuine.

He asked to play again, and I beat him twice.

::::::::::::::::::::

— Do you hear them? I asked.

— Yeah, Markus said. They never go away.

Here

we were

making sandwiches while the TV droned in the next room. You can’t

hear them

because they never go away.

::::::::::::::::::::

Yeah, he said, I met her at a party a few years ago. She has darkish hair, longish/shortish that burns red for a second when the light passes over? When I met her I guess she was fighting with her boyfriend. She came to me and she wasn’t crying. Her makeup looked right and her hair looked right too. She wasn’t crying.

We found

a bedroom away from everyone else. It was dark there, but you could see out the window, and for some reason someone had a fire going. People kept jumping over it.

One fell in (I never found out who), but he didn’t get burned very bad. I opened the door for her and locked it once she'd gone inside. Even when there

wasn’t any light she was beautiful. The darkness made canals on her face,

accentuating her gothic reverberations, silvery flush, a touch of ivory and smoke,

ghosting, quinine, unbelievable.

(She went inside. I shut the door.) We

were a schizoid digression. We were clashing

themes, repeating. She

was my echo in the night. She

was my receding

memory. I kissed her first,

hard enough to bruise her lips, and she kissed me back so hard the next day my

lips were bruised. She was soft: she was gentility and softness, sensuality. The moon

made flickers around the room, almost as gentle as she was, but there wasn’t any

moon, so it must have been the stars, even if I’m sure it wasn’t.

We kissed

and they were great kisses. She took steps toward the bed, languid into

shadow, a place where the medians breaks, night and day encasing. She pulled and I followed where she led. To

scintillating night, brightness and

something like what must make the world glow. And

for some reason

I found myself

remembering the day I met my first crush, when I was first grade, in what was probably a kindergarten class

from a time where I thought the whole world was young. No, I realized, the world

had never been young, but that didn’t matter with her.

She made the world

into so many things, a whole

world of vision, a chorus of voices, repeating and repeating. And

when she pulled me onto the bed she made me realize before that night I’d never