Outpunched

Terver is portly, a sloth quite literally (in the new sense), caved over in his diluted work. The gleamed fan blades cut through the stench. Ah, there is some salvation, eh? Heime comes forth, holding a gold pen. Shouldn’t you be somewhere else? Ah, yes, ah… though is he really here in the first place? He contemplates picking up his tuna sandwich, half-wrapped in seran, half (or quarter) eaten, and does, then puts it back down—does?—oh yes, the Doctor said so. Urgent.

The carpet is matted with red spots, dulled out by years of Oxford shoe stamps, thudding in the case of Terver, occasionally gliding with young people. Shifts his plump hand under and around his chin, a rowdy 15 hour stubble… gosh gosh, rather late now. There are windows here, but it feels like nighttime. 6:21pm? Not quite, but—

Doctor: third door down the hallway to the left. After the Carpenter’s office. 104. Terver knocks twice before turning the handle, entering. Doctor: short, grey hair, strong cheekbones, clean-shaved, nicely ironed shirt—smells like Old Spice. Doctor: … hey, I’m going to have to… he knows, I know—the mahogany wood desk, drenched in paper piles and workplace residue. Doctor? He is now standing up, and here comes the firm handshake (eye contact in 3, 2, 1), calloused hands from (golf probably); the awkward 30 seconds before Terver is able to leave, listening to deep deep breaths, insistent mouse clicks—feverous email deleting, minesweeper… ?

Fuck. It’s raining hard, and it’s dark as hell. The windshield is as a tear swamped eye, cast under a dental light as oncoming traffic sweeps by. Trees are a-talking, a-gossiping with the grass, swaying, praying. He checks his phone at an empty stoplight. Does it flicker does it change? It’s both green and red—now purple!? His sedan goes though, through and through, coasting through the asphalt, the sorrowful air. Radio, on. The song goes like: [ ]

Home is a social construct, but Terver is in the frontyard, roaming sort of. Or just not going in. Wetness imbued within, nutritional (unless it is acid, but probably not), comforting… oh, you could sense a tingling in the ground, worms fleeing out of the saturated soil, ha fleeting fleeting annelids or whatever. See? Home is a construct. Rooted out by spring showers. Terver smiles. Fuck this shit. So alone. The T.V. is soon on, kept in company with Mr. Louis Trist of the local news station, part monotone, the rest oddly enunciated, a sad fellow, drooped eyelids, artificially neat hair. Terver sympathises, but only in his spare time, when the curtains are down, the beer is plentiful, and shit—oh pure, fresh-out-of-the-bowl explosive shit—is all over the week’s agenda. Otherwise, Mr. Trist is but another head, ahead and drifting in and out of netherworlds and mystifying memories (old, Freudian dreams?), while Terver is fantasizing about this and that, thither and thather. Thoughts crammed into a wooden broom in the closetspace of a closed drawer, dusted, aged without care. Dream sequence #13:

Terver understands, if only at the most cerebral level. Underground, unspoken damp spaces created out of the stymied sense of feminized jobs: ay, when did men stop being men? The first punch is the fastest—right hook that carries with it 36 years of sweat and enough force to kill a baby—missing a few inches, slicing (more like ramming, if you know what I’m talking about) into the empty mildewy place. Before he knows it, Terver feels squeamish (blood blood blood)… no, but there’s definitely blood gathering up his left cheek; the warmth of a heat lamp pressed against—only the warmth though, no light, as black sweeps in gently as a blanket, billowing. What we talk about is the slow death of fast food: Tartrazine, Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), Propyl gallate, Triacetin, Caramel coloring…There’s no blood on his hands when he takes a gingerly finger to the impact spot. Mah dear, wherefore art thou? His socks are wet, and gross. Terver can’t reach them. If it—soreness in the left calf, moderate bruising in the back, shoulders, and face, jaw.

Reafmann would be disappointed. Reafmann is a friend, in the loosest sense; who has an AR-15 under his bed and drinks scotch with scrambled eggs for breakfast. “Some elegance with function, yeah?” No one says anything, other than the windows, vibrating with the gravity of silence, uproars of (    ) yah, Terver, wake up! The string comes into focus, the locus-pocus here now, the Doppler Effect finally audible, such a strange, unhinging, reverse hypnosis… waking, (or dying?)—

A moment of clarity descends like a snowflake, so rare this time of year. The sheets are damp with the morning fog, saturated with warmth and industrial sadness. Terver eats cereal (damp too), wishing. The pain is superficially gone; an ache though… farther down his spine… His ears perk up and thinks it’s rather early to be hearing sirens: almost half past 10. He forgot to put on his watch. His pants barely fit, ugh the weight thinggg… but he manages and after brushing his teeth his mind cuts through the humid gaseous density.

But his car won’t go fast enough. The motor cranks, hustling with the mechanic strain, the impatient hum, Terver’s insistent tapping on the wheel, an increasing rhythm, pa-ta, pa-ta, consumes into a downhill roll. At a stoplight, Terver looks out of the window and sees a face he recognizes. A face he can match no name to, but a face whose contour he has touched before, even kissed perhaps, in a dream or dreamlike state, found within a memory buried deep within some milky haze, that now, looking out, through a pane of glass, and then through another window, has been awoken to the forefront of his conscience. He blinks. A blink of bewilderment, of a wild activation within him that jolted his fat-lined fibers—shivers—a tingle… until the the light turns green and a gliding motion of normality comes back and catches his muscles just in time.

Moving out of his car, Terver exhales profoundly. Where am I? He walks through the opaque door—ding!—greeted by a luminous hallway and a woman walking by. Are you… ? Yes, I believe so. Aha, aha—her hair, he observes while following, is dark brown, curly and unruly. Within a room they now enter, Terver is asked to be seated on a large cushioned chair with silky armrests. He’ll be here shortly. Thanks.

When the door creaks open, Terver realizes that his neck has been cocked back, eyes drifting into the cosmic background of his own head (or maybe the bleakness of the ceiling)—jolts forward and before he can fully turn his gluttonous body around, a firm, calloused hand descends onto his shoulder, coaxing him to stay. Ah, Reafmann… what a lovely new place, eh? Well, did the Doctor say anything? [   ] He found you out. Yes, but do I say it? Terver shifts uncomfortably, rotating his sweating ass towards the towering Reafmann… well, well, well…

Reafmann takes a sheet of paper out of a satchel, laid propped up against the chair back. Hands it to Terver. Gentlemen: look at this leaflet of ruin—the crown of the corporate guillotine. He knows about the Doctor. The Doctor knows about him. And what does he know? It’s one thing to steal, another to be stolen in the act, without knowing. Ah, Herr Doktor. Where have I gone?

Terver quivers, sweating.

Postmortem: we only made it so far. There was too much water (or was it acid?). It started flooding port side, 9:46pm, oh oh—when the floorboards began cracking, the engines groaned with desolation. Then the flames and cyclonic winds whooshing the crew towards Paradise. Say a prayer for your boy! He’ll be fuckin’ gone soon enough. O Lord, let my soul rise up to meet you as the day rises to meet the sun. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning…