Ben Marcus - The Age of Wire and String

BEN MARCUS, THE — 1. False map, scroll, caul, or parchment. It is comprised of the first skin. In ancient times, it hung from a pole, where wind and birds inscribed its surface. Every year, it was lowered and the engravings and dents that the wind had introduced were studied. It can be large, although often it is tiny and illegible. Members wring it dry. It is a fitful chart in darkness. When properly decoded (an act in which the rule of opposite perception applies), it indicates only that we should destroy it and look elsewhere for instruction. In four, a chaplain donned the Ben Marcus and drowned in Green River. 2. The garment that is too heavy to allow movement. These cloths are designed as prison structures for bodies, dogs, persons, members. 3. Figure from which the antiperson is derived; or, simply, the antiperson. It must refer uselessly and endlessly and always to weather, food, birds, or cloth, and is produced of an even ratio of skin and hair, with declension of the latter in proportion to expansion of the former. It has been represented in other figures such as Malcolm and Laramie, although aspects of it have been co-opted for uses in John. Other members claim to inhabit its form and are refused entry to the house. The victuals of the antiperson derive from itself, explaining why it is often represented as a partial or incomplete body or system — meaning it is often missing things: a knee, the mouth, shoes, a heart.

CANINE FIELDS — 1. Parks in which the apprentice is trained down to animal status. 2. Area or site, which subdues, through loaded, pre-chemical grass shapes, all dog forms. 3. Place in which men, girls, or ladies weep for lost or hidden things.

REPRESENTATIONAL LIFE — Life that strives as well as it can to be quick, to present the body (if at all) as infrequently as it should appear to any careful and vigilant observer — in the crowd, in the home, as well as within the open areas of land, among the animals. This life minimizes use of such devices of living as emotional coloration, connotative gesture, words, and imagination, including waking up, opening the eyes, and chewing, if food is found within gnashing range of the mouth.

LEGAL BEAST LANGUAGE — The four, six, or nine words that technically and legally comprise the full extent of possible lexia that might erupt or otherwise burst from the head structure of Alberts.

CIRCUM-FEETING — Act of binding, tying, or stuffing of the feet. It is a ritual of incapacitation applied to boys. When the feet are thusly hobbled, the boys are forced to race to certain sites of desirous inhabitation: the mountain, the home, the mother’s arms.

JERKINS — First farmer.

SKY INTERCEPTION, OR SINTER — The obstruction caused by birds when light is projected from sun sources affixed to hills and rivers, causing members to see patterns, films, or “clouds.” Sinter is an acronym for sky interception and noise transfer of emergent rag forms .

TUNGSTEN — 1. Hardened form of the anger and rage metals. 2. Fossilized behavior, frozen into mountainsides, depicting the seven scenes of escape and the four motifs of breathing while dead.

DROWNING WIRES — Metallic elements within rivers and streams that deploy magnetic allure to swimmers.

RHETORIC — The art of making life less believable; the calculated use of language, not to alarm but to do full harm to our busy minds and properly dispose our listeners to a pain they have never dreamed of. The context of what can be known establishes that love and indifference are forms of language, but the wise addition of punctuation allows us to believe that there are other harms — the dash gives the reader a clear signal that they are coming.

They were hot there, and cold there, and some had been born there, and most had died. Their houses were boxes, tents, scooped-out dogs, brick towers, and actual houses. Some dug into grass; others camped in shadow; many worked in the house dispersing rice and books and were permitted to sleep on the floor. There was to be no unfolding of blankets or spreading of sheets. Never could a barrier or blind or corner be erected in the house, nor could cloth be clipped or crimped or hung. They sheltered off of one another and slept in heated chains of body. No one could sleep for more than one dream. The dream happened during the day, and the dream was the storm, and the storm was whatever you could name.

The days were cold and hot and the sun did both things. A man had two names. When a dog punched through a wall, it was devoured. Fur came from anywhere, and even a person’s hair could be stolen. In the tower, a man kept watch. From the grass at the iron base, a boy watched the man, and from the ditch behind the road women watched them both and ate grain from their bags. Eating was secret. Boys brought fruit from the river and were beaten. Men left over from the first storm were the first fed. They drank water and cried.

The ones that never got born were poured into the river. Throughout the years, they built skin to be inside, and holes were introduced by the wind gun. Houses got small. Some moved underground, but there the wind was thick and fast, and most died in the dirt. When the sun shone, a woman’s hands would burn, and she would be locked from her house. Women sang and built flowers from sawdust, pleading for reentry. They left to live by the river, and were often felled in spring by blind storm veterans, who circled the riverbanks stabbing for game. There was to be no rescuing or slowness; all movement should kill the wind, and, if not, the person would be smothered with cloth and buried. If the river grew calm, a man built a boat. No one ever returned. But a man’s hair might blow back into the grate, and on that day his wife would say a prayer into the rag and drink her water alone.

The rain was all out. It got thick and it thinned down. But it never stopped. Sometimes snow broke down in sticky sheets, and dogs were caught in it and pecked at by birds. In the flood years, the girls packed the doors with straw and honey. They saw other people broken by fast water. Some schemed to escape in this flow, wrapping themselves in rubber from the rice mill. When the floods wore down every autumn, scavengers from the house found rubber and clothing on the road, but no bodies. No one left. The road was hot during the day, and hotter at night, when the sun burned it from below. One day, the man in the tower fell and was dead before he landed. This happened again. They placed family members under cloth, strangers were allowed to wash away, and animals were positioned on poles.

The wind grew high-pitched. Many became deaf or their ears blackened. They built houses of shale and cloth inside their own until they could barely move. When the blankets had eroded, a man set to shaving the wood. No one new was placed in the tower. Every year a day was set aside for discussion. There was to be no speech treating the storm, nor could any people be named or represented or spoken of. House-building theories were welcome. When she died, a girl could offer her own bones as a charm against the wind. People sang. Others watched from the last window. Children were encouraged to copulate, but they were sluggish and unresponsive. Birds were loaded with ice. A man taught the children how to have intercourse. They used a stick and some string and a cloth. They broke glass with their feet. They were shielded by a blanket as a scheduler kept them working.