Blake Butler - There Is No Year

The small Friend did not answer.

[The Son]: sorry i am here now

[The Son]:??

[The Son]: r u there

The son’s cursor was blinking very fast. The son stared at the screen and drooled a little. The father’s cigarette had burned down to his lip. The son closed the chat box window with the 45-year-old man and placed the man’s screen name on his blocked list and deleted him from his friends on the social networking website and deleted his social networking profile and account and deleted all the emails to or from and saved direct chat logs with all the people in his archives who weren’t the girl, his special friend.

The instant message box signaled that the girl was typing text. The son dug his nails into his flesh and waited. He heard the house around him sigh. He leaned and looked and leaned and leaned and leaned.

The last incoming message made no bell.

HELLO444: DO YOU WANT TO COME AND SPEND THE NIGHT AT MY HOUSE ON THIS FRIDAY?

[The Son]: Y-E-S-S-S

The son could not find his cell phone. He’d been awaiting further word. The freezer had not become a tunnel as he’d been informed it would. The ceiling had not opened and the backyard had not learned to sing. The moon still seemed the same distance as always. Some of the son’s hair had fallen out. The son thought about his father getting young instead of old. All of these things he’d been promised. The son pressed his teeth against his teeth. He got up and left the bedroom for the hall.

From the hall the son turned around and looked at the room where he’d just been. There was a wet spot in the bed where he had tried to sleep. As of the past few weeks the son could not wear a shirt without soaking through it, ruining the cloth. His sweat contained acidic properties. The son stunk often and a lot. While he was sick the son had hardly sweat at all. He couldn’t urinate or cry. His eyes were itchy and black with pus. His body bloated with all the liquids the doctors forced on him to drink. His skin would grow distended and they’d have to siphon off the excess through tubing that led to buckets that were carried somewhere away. The son heard something in the house behind him. He turned around to look. His brain moved quicker than his body. The room swam in long blond trails. As he turned, he saw his body moving down the hallway stairs. He was fairly certain it was his body. He had not often seen himself from behind, but his other self was wearing one of his favorite shirts — the shirt he had on when first entering the house. The son moved toward the stairs.

Passing the parents’ bedroom, he heard the mother talking to herself in a language the son had only heard one time — heard through the crack in his old bed frame, the bed the men in plastic had come to haul away — the bed the doctors said had been infested and was the reason the son got sick. The son knew that wasn’t why he’d gotten sick. It was a bed. No one would listen. The son had heard the mother’s language noises once coming also from a crack in his newer bed but he’d stuffed the crack with gum. The house would sing to him for hours. The son did not try the parents’ door.

The son had something crawling in his hair that was not of sufficient mass for him to feel.

The son came down the stairwell with his eyes crisscrossed in blur. They could not parse the light right for some reason. The son saw a haze across the landing. The son held the rail and breathed and breathed. There was a certain smell about the house now, as if someone was in the kitchen burning grease. He could hear some sort of conversation. The room composed around the son. The front door was standing open. In the dead bolt, there was a key. The key had no holes in it with which one could slide the key onto a loop or key chain. The key was large. The key burned the son’s right hand. The son took the key and put it somewhere no one would find it.

The son walked into another room.

The son walked into another room, still looking, and another, larger room.

In each room the son heard movement moving in the room he’d just come from or ahead. In each room, he felt he’d just been in there. He could sense the grace of recent movement. Each little thing just out of place. The coffee-table magazines set out of order — magazines the son had never seen, affixed with dates still yet to come. The son could hear his cell phone ringing, though the tone seemed out of key. The son’s phone’s normal ringtone was from a song his mother had always sung to him inside her, though he only knew that because she said. The son couldn’t remember where he’d left the cell phone. He couldn’t tell from where the ring was ringing. It seemed all around. It seemed inside him. The son continued on. The lights in the room were going funny. The lights spun fluttered. The lights were off.

Through one room the son had to go down on his knees to keep heading forward. At some point he had to stop and rest. The house was brighter when he looked again. The rooms were redder. There were several extra doors. The son kept turning and seeing things from a distance. The son kept repeating the same words. Sometimes the son would come into a room and swear he was coming into the room he’d just come into when coming into the current room from the one before, and sometimes the son would come into a room and swear he’d never seen the room inside the house at all, and sometimes the son would come and there would be nowhere else to walk, and the room would have no ins or outs or exits: windows, doors.

It took time before the son caught up with himself, there in the kitchen. In the window, he stood reflected. The son’s reflection had his cell phone in his hand. The son stopped and watched him move. His motions did not quite match the ones that he was making. His reflection was a little off-aimed, not quite there. For instance, as the son reached to touch his forehead, his reflection touched his neck. As the son opened his mouth in yawning, his reflection appeared to exhale. The son tried to say his name into him and the room went upside-down.

From work, by now, the father knew, there was not time enough to return home. His last trip there and back had required more than a quarter of a day — though really the father could no longer remember how long a day was these days — time was simply time. As soon as he pulled into his driveway, he’d have to turn around and head to work again. He hadn’t even turned the car off, and still clocked in more than an hour late, an infraction for which his wages would be heavily penalized. He’d been so zoned then, that last time leaving, he’d not seen the black object on the neighbor’s yard grown even larger, edging out into the street, so large you couldn’t even see the neighbor’s house behind it.

During this last drive he’d felt his eyes forcing themselves closed stuck on the highway, and for long distances with his eyes closed he drove and drove.

Days were weeks and weeks were days inside the father. At least that’s what the banner along the longest office hallway said, black text on white paint right outside his cubicle:

DAYS ARE WEEKS AND WEEKS ARE DAYS INSIDE YOU

Looking too long at the words’ letters in relief would cause the father to go gooey — soft umbrellas in his thighs.

The father had never seen another body on his hallway, though he could hear them through the walls: typing, typing, breathing, eating, stuff.

God, he was hungry, the father realized, in third person. Tacos! Meat! Though there wasn’t time enough to take a break now, the father knew. No, he had this box that gave the light out, which he must attend to, into which he also sometimes typed.