Adam Levin - The Instructions

“Now Gurion speaks of Srinivasa Ramanujan.” “Sriniwhatta Whosajon? You’re so smart!” “Soon your surprise at my wit will begin to sound like contempt, sweet Chunkstyle. Tell me about my eyes.” “You’ve got the most beautiful hazel eyes.”

“You couldn’t even I’m Ticking for a second on Tuesday. I’ll have a contest with you. Winner names both actions.”

Bring it, Ramanujan.

“You want to count us down, Vincie?”

“Don’t you even worry pretty darling. I know you’ll find love again,” Vincie half-sang. Then he said, “Three.”

And Benji and I faced off.

Then Vincie said, “Two.”

And the Cage got quiet.

Vincie said, “One.”

And we inhaled deep.

And Vincie said, “Go.”

We started to tremble.

Ten seconds into the contest, a bright white flying-saucer shape bloomed from a silver dot in the center of Nakamook’s forehead. I was sure I had one on my own forehead, and I wished there was a mirror. I tried Nakamook’s pupils, but they didn’t reflect me; they were aimed at the ceiling. The ticking of my brainblood wasn’t very loud yet at all, and although they were muted as if they had to pierce fuzz first, voices from the Cage filled those spaces of the soundscape that the ticking didn’t occupy. “Look at how red they’re getting!” “This is not a thing I like.” “It’s just a contest, Eliyahu of Brooklyn.” “…a grand-mal—” “The nasty way their jaws are bulging.” “…don’t pop a filling.” “I hope their tongues are safe.”

At the thirty second-mark, Benji’s eyes began to wobble in their sockets, and the saucer started throbbing. With every throb, the saucer expanded a little, covering more and more of Nakamook’s face. The ticking’s rhythm stayed steady, matched the throbbing’s beat for beat, and each drop of brainblood whacked the backs of my eardrums louder than the last.

I thought: The decibals are mounting at an incremental ratio equi-valent to the one by which the saucer expands, and language is turning weird on me.

The fuzz between the ticks thickened, and the voices of the Cage began to blot out. “Looks bad like____or a seizure.” “My uncle____and got comatose.” “___long?” “___til today.” “Youth______merciful thing.” “_______orkian.”

By sixty seconds, I wouldn’t have been able to see myself even if I was nose-to-glass with a mirror — Benji’s face was obscured to the neck and the hairline by bright white throbbing light. I couldn’t even see the corners of the saucer anymore. I felt good, though. Warm.

I thought: You need to breathe.

I breathed.

The saucer kept throbbing, growing. The brainblood whacked harder, the fuzz between the ticks became impenetrable. I lost count of the seconds at ninety, gave up tracking time. Breathe, I thought.

I breathed.

There was no more Nakamook. Only bright white light. Not even the saucer’s outline remained within my field of vision. There was throbbing, ticking, breathing, and me. Breathe, I thought.

I breathed.

A silver dot appeared in the center of the whiteness. It bloomed into a brighter, whiter flying-saucer shape that began to throb in time with a new ticking of blood against a less taut part of my eardrum. This ticking was basser than the first one.

I thought: I am making this happen. I don’t know how, though.

And then I thought: How do you make anything happen, like—?

Breathe, I thought.

I breathed.

How did you make yourself breathe? I thought.

You didn’t make yourself breathe, I thought. You let yourself breathe, I thought, and barely even that. You can slow your breathing — you can halt the in- and exhalations of your lungs temporarily — but you cannot halt them indefinitely. Eventually your lungs will inhale and exhale, whether or not you want them to. Eventually you will be breathing.

Breathe, I thought.

I lifted the halt on my lungs. My lungs breathed for me. Out, then in.

I thought: They are only your lungs in the way that June is your girlfriend, Nakamook your best friend, Judah your father, the Israelites your people: they are only your lungs inasmuch as you are their Gurion. To be yours does not mean you control them. To be theirs does not mean they control you. It only means there is mutual influence. And the more one element influences the other, the more the other influences the one. What you animate animates you back.

Exhale — no don’t, I thought.

And despite the hot pain in my chest, I did not lift the halt on my lungs. My lungs strained. Strained against what, though? Strained against the halt? Against me? My lungs strained against me ? Against my will ? The idea of me, an integrated being with a singular will, much less a will that could be exerted with predictable results — let alone desirable results — grew less comprehensible as my oxygen shortaged and the heat of my chestpain increased.

I thought: That control is an illusion is no new idea. But what produces the illusion? What is the thing the word control fails to describe? And if there is no such thing, then from where does the urge to describe it arise?

There was a sideways feeling.

There was a falling feeling.

There was a coarse feeling in my elbow and an upside-down feeling all over.

Then I leapt out of my chest, a silver dot centered on a throbbing field of white. The shape I’d thought was a flying saucer had been, I now understood, the outline of either of my eyes, of one stacked on the other, paralaxical. Free now from their boundaries, the throbbing white was limitless. I hovered silver in the center of it, a few feet above Gurion Maccabee.

Gurion had fallen sideways off his chair, rolled onto his back, and was now thrashing, spastically scraping his carpet-burned left elbow back and forth over the floor like some malfunctioning robot. His torso arched and then flattened, arched and then flattened. He was halting his lungs, clenching every muscle in his body, and this was the response of his lungs and muscles: to throw him down, to hurt him back. Parts in conflict take it out on the whole. The only way Gurion could end his own conflict would be to die. But Gurion was a death-proof Israelite. He was not remotely a cross-legged Buddhist.

And an angel came, from my right. One-legged and faceless, skin humming a thousand psalms. He knelt beside Gurion and placed his index finger in Gurion’s mouth, then his hand. Then his arm up to the elbow. I tried to stop him, but I had no mass. I was just this silver dot.

The angel continued climbing into Gurion. It was cheap. A low blow. Gurion gagged, coughed him out. All the air he’d held in his lungs left in a single burst. The angel shot past me, back into the white, and the lungs gathered new air, and again I was Gurion.

The ticking in my ears became the sound of my name and the throbbing white resolved into a face.

“Gurion! Gurion! Gurion!” shouted Eliyahu. He was crying.

Heavy, I said.

I did not mean it like hippies do on sitcoms.

“He’s not dead!” said Eliyahu. “It’s just he feels heavy!”

That’s almost how I meant it.

“Hyperscoot then,” said Nakamook. “And The Electric Chair.”

Botha pushed him aside. He said, “You’re blading. Go to the nurse.”

Leevon and Vincie lifted me to my feet. I’d carpet-burned my elbow raw. Little dots of blood in the bunchy part.

“You were dying from a seizure,” said Jelly Rothstein, “but you aren’t dying anymore.”

“What was it like to be dying?” asked Ben-Wa Wolf.

“And do you feel any lighter yet?” asked Eliyahu.