Ben Marcus - The Age of Wire and String

When air kills itself in remote regions, the debris settles here on the grass, sharpening the points. Men of the house may not walk on these areas, nor may they ever observe the grass without pain in the chest and belly. They exist as figures which are doubled over, in static repose against the house territory. When children sleep on these points of lawn, the funeral of air passes just above their heads in a crosswind with the body. Funerals generally are staged in pollinated wind frames, so that the air can shoot to the east off of the children’s breath, dying elsewhere along the way, allowing fresh, living air to swoop in on the blast-back to attack the house. This funeral-chasing ability of children explains why they are allowed outside during the daytime and back in again the next day. The Mother cleans the child’s mouth with her finger and is said to act as a transom for the warring agencies of wind. This is why she is placed in the window, wires bobbing from each hand, bowing forward against the glass.

Other forms of sleeping also calm the sky. Wealthy landowners hire professional sleepers to practice their fits on key areas of the grounds. The best sleepers stuff their pockets with grass and sleep standing up. Many amateur sleepers never wake up, or never fall asleep. If a professional wakes and discovers a protector still sleeping, or unable to sleep and making an attempt of it — in the shed, for example, downwind of the house — he is permitted to practice smashes upon this body. Freelancers take their dream seizures near the door, and storms are said to be held in abeyance. They are paid according to success. Much booty has been disbursed, but no one has ever succeeded in sleeping so deeply that the house is not smashed upon waking.

If men or parts of men in the house regions are ever studied, it will be their feet or their forelegs — whichever object is comprised of a knuckle buried under taut, dry, hairless skin. The primary bulletin of these times ensues between grass and the paw. When we kill men, we kill them because we are sad. sadness develops in and outside of the house, either just after entering or just after leaving. These are also the times of war, when we encounter men losing or gaining the house and we have the opportunity to act upon them. The feet of men, through a tradition established outside of the Schedule of Emotions, are soaked in Corey, a chemical produced in grass after air has mixed the shape of the house. Experts believe that our bodies grow heavier after being noticed, lighter when touched, and remain the same when left alone. This is further true of the wires that generate sadness through the chimney and other open areas.

When the sun’s wires are measured, we discover the coordinates for a place or places that shall hereafter be known as perfect or final or miraculous. The house shall be built here using soft blocks of wood and certain solidified emotions, such as tungsten. By nightfall, the bird counter will collapse, and a new or beginning man must be placed at the road to resume the tally while the construction continues. His harness will be a great cloth fixture bound unto his head, to protect his mouth from the destroying conflicts, lest strong birds sweep in on the wires to knock back the homes. Every house prayer shall for all time ever read thusly:

Please let the wires not have been crooked or falsely dangling or stretched by the demon sun, let our measurements be exact and true, and bless our perfect place with abundant grasses. Cover us in shade so that we are hidden in your color. Hide us from birds and wires and the wind that sends them. Let smoke conceal us during the storm life, and give us strong walls. Let not any stray wind break us down and we will honor you. Bless us and a great shelter will be made for you in the new season. Help us thrive. We lie low here in the place that you have given us. Please remember that you have killed us and you can kill us and we wait and long in our deepest hearts to be killed only by you. Let this be our last and final house. Amen.

Coughing, in humans, device for transporting people or goods from one level to another. The term is applied to the enclosed structures of the throat as well as the open platforms used to provide vertical transportation within cars and while lying in bed; it is also applied to devices consisting of a continuous belt or chain with attached buckets for handling bulk material. Simple throat hoists were used from ancient times, often retrieving people whose whereabouts had long been unknown. This retrieval can be halted or staggered if any of the human air ports are obstructed, causing limbs of the body to inflate or swell during coughing. This is called expanded house, and, in effect, increases the area a person has available to himself to hide in. For effective retrieval, the coughing must be focused on a specific limb and requires an exact, crouching posture of the cougher. Otherwise, the hiding person will vanish inside the boggy limb from one secret place to another, skillfully avoiding the suction of the cough and remaining undetected.

It is understood in terms of the phenomenon of combustion as seen in wood and brick; it is one of the basic tools in human culture. In ancient America and earlier, it was considered one of the four basic objects, a substance from which all things were composed. Its great importance to humans, the mystery of its powers, and its seeming largeness have made the house divine or sacred to many peoples. As a god, it is a characteristic feature of Messonism, in which, as with many house-worshiping religions, houses are considered the earthly model or emblem of the HEAVEN shelter, the essential difference being that occupants of a house are instructed always to LOOK IN (strup), to examine the contents within a house (Chakay) and derive instructions and strategies from these, whereas with the heaven container it is only possible to LOOK OUT; the area is one-way constructed with cloud shims and cannot be seen into. Occupants, if any, must train their attention outward (bog); they must never be seen watching themselves or looking at any other objects within the house (heen viewing, forbidden, punished by expulsion to lower house). The belief that houses are sacred is universal in science, and such beliefs have survived in some highly hidden cultures, including those that destroy houses for food and fuel, as well as nomadic cultures whose members derive spontaneous houses from water, cloth, and salt.

The most carefully preserved shelter cult in America was that of Perkins, the first god of territory. His disciples forbade sleeping near, in, or on their houses because it was believed that the sleeper was the first to be attacked by the fiend. The fiend sailed off the south shadow of his own shelter, tacking in the wind bowl at the back door, while the slipstream that poured from his roof broke open the houses of Perkins and sealed any sleepers in a fossil of hot wind and crumbs. These became the crumbs of the fiend; the ones that were not eaten were used to rudder the house that the fiend rode. An implicit goal of the Perkins group was to douse this necklaced chain of fossilized sleepers with salt as it keeled behind the house, in the hope that the sleepers might bloat into anchors and cancel the advance of the fiend.