by Christopher Hess

"Just a fuckin' minute!" he screamed breathlessly into the silence which, if asked, would deny its interference, even its very existence. The only answer returned was a pitiful enfeebled echo absorbed, along with various seeds and ashes, into the shag.

All right.

'all right.'

Soundlessly: "The problem as I see it is not the lack of substance, or the absence of some textually tangible material, but rather the abundance of space. There is simply too much emptiness. Too many unused characters. Even the largest and most awed chip-driven brains would be driven into the void to emerge smoking and coughing at the impossibility of the task assigned it were the command resounding within these walls punched up on its screen. "So the remedy, or at least the temporarily satisfying treatment of major symptoms, would be to eliminate the space -- "

'eliminate the space'

" -- or a large part of it, or at least enough of it to locate some sort of subliminal horizon. Simple as that."

'simple as that.'

It was here he paused, as he always did at about this point, and stared at the screen as if it were one of those sort of surreal advertisements in a glossy magazine filled with sort of surreal advertisements -- although he hadn't read the whole issue, just happened to flip it open to the page. Puzzled, amazed, disgusted and dismissive, but still the thought remains. Not even a thought, but a quick and repetitive flash of an image (here words) that ultimately means nothing but for that one moment...

So.

"There are no people," was the next solid thing to enter his mind. Words and residual idea germs but no people. Why? Why indeed. What I need is people. People with discernible features that can be described and exaggerated upon, turned into something they are not to fit my specific purpose and" --

'specific purpose.'

"Yes!! Specific purpose! There is one, dammit, and all this smoldering doubt and fucking interruption will not help me to bring this thing around to those purposes. How can there be any doubt? I mean, isn't the very existence of these words proof enough that there is a purpose? Even if that purpose is solely that -- existence? By creating them I give them purpose. They don't have to enlighten or enrage or provoke or anything. They can just be. You know, be-ers, like in Bellow. My words are not Becomers, entities non-existent until some sort of unity and meaning is attached them by me or you or anyone. They just are. And if, by chance, someone should arbitrarily assign some logical principal to them so be it. If not -- "

'so be it.'

"Exactly you fucking mechanized brain twisting piece of shit!"

Aloud: "I said hold on for chrissakes!"

This time the knock echoed throughout the house. Making his way clumsily down the stairs, mumbling the grumble of one who is knowingly arguing a point made up of the most transparent of fallacies while searching for a way out, and almost falling ass-over-appetite on the rope of his dingy flannel robe, he cursed the intruder who dare disturb him at this time of night. It had to be past three. Who the hell could it be, unless -- of course. The late night coke run had ended and the felons were now seeking sanctuary and, because of the size of the purchase, a spare dollar to twist and shove.

However, the blinding daylight, until now sealed out by well placed blankets and posters, quickly informed him this was not the case. The smell of coffee and sweat and chemical fumes enveloped him as he opened the door on this squat and gnarled specimen and, when mixed with the heat and light of the afternoon sun, seemed to gel into an oily film that spread instantly throughout his entire enflamed nervous system.

"Terminex."

'terminex.'

"Yeah, yeah, I heard."

"Huh?"

"Oh, nothing."

'nothing.'

Slowly but surely catching the gist of what was happening here, he stammered "Uh, come in. Did I call you? I mean there are bugs. Many many bugs. But...I don't remember" --

"You afraid a dyin'?"

"What -- what did you say?"

"I said you Fred Ryan?"

"Oh, yeah...I mean no. He's my roommate, he's not here, I don't think. I don't know. Shit, man, what time is it?"

"'Bout twelve-thirty. Fred Ryan says you got'cha a pest problem. I'm here to get rid of 'em."

"Right, right. Okay, you have to come in, I guess."

"Not unless you bring 'em all out here."

"Right."

He turned wordlessly and walked away from the open door to fix a huge glass of ice cold tap water. How nice, he comforted himself, that small bits of solace were as close and easy as the kitchen tap. There were few things that affected him so quickly and completely. A long loud gulp from a glass overflowing with clinking ice and water was one such thing. Refreshing didn't even come close. It was ecstasy. From the sound of the cubes creaking as they slowly returned to liquid form to the flavorless, brain-chilling euphoria it provided going down, cooling the pipes the entire way. It was an arctic swell of such proportion that it invariably took him by surprise and filled his head with that delicious ache you get when eating ice cream too fast. It provided a return to the tolerable physical world.

"I guess the kitchen would provide a logical beginning. I've seen the varmints run out from under the fridge and the stove and from inside the" --

Upon turning to where he thought the exterminator was standing, behind him listening attentively, possibly scratching or picking at something, he was surprised to find himself alone in the kitchen.

"Hello?" he called as he walked back out into the living room where, turning the corner, he discovered the little man hunched over the coffee table taking a great amount of interest in the remnants of Fred's late night debauchery. It seems they were doing it in style last night, the grandma's-antique gold-leaf bordered mirror from the main hall lying dismounted on the coffee table replete with dust white and otherwise, various small bills, and the standard flat two-sided razor blade. He wasn't quite sure what to say. 'I could easily incriminate myself here by acknowledging it,' he thought. 'And there was also the chance that he didn't know what the setup was all about and my saying anything at all would be a very bad thing.' Then thoughts turned to 'you know, this guy has the gall to barge in here and wake me up at the crack of noon and then go poking his bulbous little nose all over my apartment and then accuse me, ME of being some drug-addled recluse who lays in bed all day well fuck that!' "Hey!" he finally said aloud.

This must have shocked the little man because he started and looked up quickly as if he thought he was alone in the house. "Sorry," he chuckled mildly, half-pointing with a short sausage-finger at the mirror and its contents, "I didn't realize that people still did that stuff."

"Yeah? Well, I guess they do. I mean, they, not me. I don't know where that came from" --

"Coca bean."

"I know that, that's not what I mean -- look, check the kitchen, ok?"

"Right away."

'write a way.'

"Knock it off! Not you."

It was all a bit too much for his weakened constitution to handle, and he staggered exhaustedly to the couch, flopping into half-recline with a long painful sigh. And he could hear the low hum of the machine upstairs waiting for his return. That coupled with the perpetual buzz in his head forced him to cover his ears, rocking back and forth on his shoulder blades.

"Scum, go get dressed!"

He shot upright to face the exterminator who had left the kitchen and was headed for the door. "What did you just say?" he asked, not too quick to assume he'd heard right.

"I said 'Chum, you've got a nest.' Roaches, a big one under the stove and a smaller one under the fridge. I need to go out to the truck."

When the door closed he bolted up and locked it, again sealing out all light. He couldn't bear to think of all those roaches. He knew they had them, but liked to consider just the occasional nomadic insect wandering through the kitchen foraging for dinner for its starving little roach-family. To consider a family of millions residing in his own kitchen was unthinkable. And their extermination was worse, he couldn't be responsible for that.

'let him do it.'

"Shit," he said out loud, sensing that it was happening again. He ran back up the stairs and bounded into the seat in front of the illuminated monitor. He glanced from text to notes to keys and in a frenzy of third-hand inspiration, he started typing -- "...and when R.J. was confronted with the reality of the situation, he left, as simple as that. The characters in this story skirted the issue of the source of pain in their domestic lives for so long that when it surfaced and was vocalized it was not real to them. And reacting to an unreal situation is inherently less real, rendering the act utterly meaningless."

'bullshit'

"HEY! That's enough! I need to finish what I'm working on and -- "

'that's not work. I am your work.'

"You are my destruction, my unraveling, and if you call that work you can have it!"

'you inspect the voice of others and in this act you lose your own.'

"No, this is real, this is tangible. You are a dream, an intrusion on meaning and I can't take it anymore. This has got to stop!"

'stifle your voice and you are undone. cease to create and you will cease to exist.'

Inactivity had left him weak, and from the excitement of the exchange he was panting. The knocks on the door grew louder. "Terminex! Hey open the door, man. You want the bugs dead or what?...Fuckin weirdo." A minute later a truck started and screeched away loudly. Fred wouldn't be happy, he realized, but so what. Let him witness his own executions, I want no part of it, he thought.

He had never really thought about the roaches before, except on the occasion he had to brush them from a bag of sandwich bread, but now that he knew they were there, that there was this entire developed community of living things making a home for themselves in the filth under his rented appliances, he wasn't so sure they should be killed. What were they doing that was so wrong? They weren't pretty, but according to the rumpled and bloodshot image he had encountered in the mirror this morning, or afternoon, he didn't have much room to judge that one. In fact, he thought, they justify my existence more than anything. 'They clean up after me, they breed and procreate where I do not, they've developed an intricate societal system in the same house I've used to cut myself off from one. I have the power to destroy them, but whether I did or not, they and their kind will be around long after me and mine are historical data. I and mine are nothing but consumption-driven wasters of life and land while they take what they need and leave only what they have to.'

He thought of the mirror splayed out downstairs, and briefly considered cleaning it and then dumping a healthy portion of pure Borax on it. The thought was fleeting and never a consideration, but it did occur. He and Fred didn't get along too well, he needing the silence and isolation and a comfortable haven for his work, Fred too worried about the frivolous social aspects of life -- friends, parties, pointless and fruitless human interaction that lasts no longer than the time it takes to clear a line. If he could create, if he could breathe life into characters without leaving the nauseating sanctity of his own squalor, what use were others to him? If billions of roaches could exist right under his nose for so long and, even having been exterminated, come back to full population while showing no signs of harm, why not humans? Exactly how resilient are we?

'how resilient are we?'

"We," he thought. We is me. Ultimately there is no we. It is I creating a we, creating a community from a point of isolation, as all people do. It's a sad and pathetic fate that I cling to for life. And this voice, that other voice, is what comes of it. That voice telling me the things I will not recognize on my own. This cathode ray tube reflecting all that is not.

The monitor did not register any of this, the usual rebuttal not forthcoming. He stared long in silence, suddenly wondering what it was he sat down here to do. A roach, a large one, scuttled across his feet, stopping at a ruined kernel of popcorn to examine it before moving along. He just watched it move, idly wondering at the crushing of yet another myth -- that roaches don't walk on carpet. If they do walk on carpet, he thought, what next? They can go anywhere.

He took another long swallow of his glass of water, the cubes melted into it by now. The ticking of the keys sounded hollow, like the sound was delivered into a large empty hole underneath his desk. It seemed a lot of space to fill, so much space.