Things I write

hello

[iamchrisscott]

The Runcible Spoon INTERNET ISSUE

The (print, not digital!) #INTERNETISSUE takes a food-focused look at both the early internet - in all its early-tech/now-cringeworthy splendor

Hey friends! I have a piece in this latest issue of the truly wonderful food zine, The Runcible Spoon. My piece is about a time I tried to make lasagna using only Twitter -- and it didn’t go well. The Runcible Spoon is always great and lots of excellent work goes into making them. Buy a copy today -- you won’t be disappointed.

[iamchrisscott]

Rough Passage of Shallow Light

My knuckles carved two shapes for you In a backlit film of salt and cosmic dust The shapes were ours and when it was over Smelled and tasted of rust, and we found there Some years later A rough passage of shallow green light

Tonight I found rolls of dollar bills in my grandmother’s sock drawer She had been hiding there for decades You blinked at the door and now we form and collect Ourselves Converging in the shadows Talking about head wounds and third collisions Talking about how our dreams feel different when we’re sleeping outside

Hold your chest’s magnet at such an angle as to attract A bad memory or an ugly thought about someone who loved you And examine it up close, every version of you That will ever exist gathered around it Cut it open and spill it out all over the floor With your heels, create two shapes in what remains

Sometimes you are a landfill Sometimes I am a toy drum kit discarded beneath your ribcage Waiting under a fridge and a rake and dull silverware and a Buick’s bumper Waiting to ask if you still think of me as your enemy

Today I watched kids playing in an empty pool Pretending the dead leaves were water Splashing around in decay, laughing While a thin ribbon of electricity split me in half And my body made a choice against the knife My heart chased patterns into daylight My eyes were burdened with the brightest of nights And I think maybe I was lost there, for a time

[iamchrisscott]

Tim Murphy once got attacked by dinosaurs. He hasn't forgotten, and neither should you.

MTV declares this the best Twitter account of all time. Who am I to argue?

[iamchrisscott]

Me and dad.

[iamchrisscott]

“It’s good to see you again.” I hugged my dad twice at the door of his motel room, and followed him inside. He’d managed to bond himself out of jail the day before, so he could get a haircut before the hearing, and maybe a decent night’s sleep. He was wearing boots, a dirty pair of jeans, and a St. Louis Cardinals hoodie -- the same outfit he’d been wearing in his mugshot. The last clothes he had left. I stood in silence for a bit while he gathered up some documents.

“You look like you have something you want to say to me,” he said. “There’ll be time for that later.” First my sister and I had to drive him to the Pekin courthouse.

We had an hour before the hearing began so we swung by the jail to pick up his commissary -- the items he had on him when he was apprehended. We felt one another out a bit as we waited and asked some questions about his time there. His voice was shaky and hushed but mostly forthcoming.

“My cellmate sucked. There was something wrong with him.”

“They only let us go outside twice.” “Twice a day?” “No, twice the whole time I was here.”

“Some of the C.O.’s were bigger assholes than the inmates.” “C.O.’s?” “Correctional officers.”

They brought out his commissary. A garbage bag full of packages of ramen noodles, bags of potato chips, beef jerky, candy, Hostess cupcakes. This is what had sustained him while he was living out of his jeep.

The preliminary hearing was quick. He met briefly with his public defender and the judge. A date for the hearing was assigned. Class 4 felony. Up to 1-3 years in prison possible. We knew all that.

We left the courthouse and grabbed some iced coffees at Dunkin Donuts and sat at a picnic table in the park in the sun -- my sister and I on one side, our dad on the other. I’d had months and months since he’d disappeared to think about what I’d ask him if I ever got to see him again. I landed on what I’d wanted to know for so long.

“What happened?” He took a few seconds to consider that. “Drugs. Just... honestly, a lot of drugs.” “Why wouldn’t you respond to us for all that time? What was keeping you from just letting us know you were at least still alive?” “I knew if we talked you’d want to see me and I couldn’t let that happen, in the state I was in. I couldn’t see you guys.” “When did it start?” “2010. But the last year and a half were as bad as it gets.”

We talked for an hour or so. The conversation was tough. I was nauseous through all of it. We discussed the steps he would need to take to recover. We talked about relapses. Relapses kill. We talked about the jeep and the condo. Those were no longer his. There’s no fighting that. We talked about Missouri. He could have a fresh start there, get his feet back on the ground, rebuild his life. He could help out on our uncle’s farm, and get far away from the people who had led him to this place.

“At some point I had to just accept that you might already be dead,” I told him, on the verge. “I had to make my mind do that, because you just gave up and vanished. I’ve carried that around with me everywhere for a year. I can’t do it anymore. A couple months from now, the texts and phone calls have stopped again? I’ll know what it means. I’ll have to disengage completely. I have no choice.” I could see the last 5 years in his face as I told him that.

The next day I picked him up and we drove to the Goodwill down the road from his motel. We found a piece of luggage there. “This is nice. This will come in handy when you’re ready to leave the motel.” But I don’t know when that will be or what form it will take. We drove a little further down the road to Walmart and spent some time picking out a couple pairs of jeans, a few shirts, a pair of shorts, some socks, sneakers. Just a few things so he could feel normal until the hearing and sentencing. The most basic of foundations upon which to begin rebuilding, if we can do that. And then the anger I’ve harbored for so long began to uproot itself and dissipate and I felt so much love and hope and fear for him.

As we circled the menswear section I caught him eyeing some Cardinals apparel. “I like those shirts,” I told him. “It’d be an early birthday present from me.”

We looked through them together. “Nah, I don’t need any of these. They’re expensive.” “Are you sure? I came all the way here. The only condition is that you have to get one Cubs shirt too.” And he laughed at that because it had always baffled him how a diehard Cardinals fan had somehow raised his son to be a Cubs fan. And it has always baffled me, too. “Nah, I don’t need it.”

We left Walmart and walked across the parking lot to the bank to cash his social security check. And I knew that he was lucky, and I was lucky too, to be walking across this asphalt together in the heat. And in spite of the uncertainty of everything that had happened and everything still before us, I allowed myself to be hopeful, just for a few minutes. Just to remember and hold that. And he looked like he had something he wanted to say to me.

[iamchrisscott]

You’ll know that I am the same when the light regards me as such and the dark recognizes us as one shape

Their town was beneath the surface, a couple hundred yards out from the coast. I’d never visited -- the scuba gear made me uncomfortable and I didn’t like the feeling of being underwater -- but a couple of my friends had. It’s about the same as here, they said. They have a school and a post office and everything, it seems like. I don’t know, it’s kinda hard to see down there.

There was a handful of them, about our age, who’d show up in town every now and then. Sometimes at basketball games or at the movies. We never invited them to parties but they’d almost always be there at some point. And outside of a couple interactions and short exchanges here and there, they kept to themselves. Part of the problem was it was difficult for us to make out their shape. If you looked at them straight on they’d appear fuzzy around the edges and it was hard to pin down their physical characteristics, and if you tried too hard you’d get a headache real quick. So they existed almost entirely on the periphery.

I knew that the space they occupied here was somewhere between the living and the dead, though I was never sure exactly how far in either direction they landed. I’d overhear them say things sometimes -- things that most people wouldn’t know, or that were hard to decipher but my overall impression was they had an understanding of what was happening to us and why.

I got impulsive at a party one night and offered one of them a swig from a bottle of cheap whisky. He hesitated and gave me a look that was hard to make out, as all their looks usually were. I’ll take it, one of his friends offered, and he grabbed the bottle from me. He just got fired from his job. A couple of them laughed. I laughed too, for some reason. What kind of jobs you guys got down there? I asked. Silence. He handed the bottle back to me and said, It’s all of one hand these days. And they all laughed. They were full of inside jokes like this and references none of us understood. We never got the punchline, not once. It drove us crazy.

When they left the party, I left with them. About 6 or 7 of them. One of me. I knew I wouldn’t be able to follow them all the way back but the walk to the beach would be nice. When we stepped out into the night on the lawn I noticed for the first time their faces were easier to make out here than they were in the light. As we walked together, I asked What do you think’s happening up there? I watched the one who had taken the whisky look up at the shape of the moon through the clouds. He chose his words carefully. The signal comes and goes, depending on our rotation. And theirs. That was all I was going to get. We cut through an alley and someone had spray painted on the brick: You’ll know that I am the same when the light regards me as such and the dark recognizes us as one shape.

We found the beach and just stood there for a while listening to the waves. Time is starting to lose its definition or something, I said to no one in particular. Like, have we done this before? Standing on the beach together at night like this? I suddenly feel as though we’ve done this a thousand times before.

There was a fraction of a second when I understood what the “all of one hand” comment meant, and then just as quickly I lost it. I stayed behind while they made their way to the water together, walked into the waves, and vanished.

I’d sacrificed so much to get here. I stripped and ran into the waves and swam out into the darkness, toward a light in the distance. The light was affixed to a floating platform that marked the edge of their town, and I climbed onto it out of breath and weak. Below me I could see their gentle, murky lights beneath the surface. I knew there were towns above me watching me watching them. I understood the definition of what we’d made together, almost, not completely, not perfectly. I understood as much as I was able to and said I’ll see you soon.

[iamchrisscott]

Questions that may be asked

[iamchrisscott]

Backseat

On the 52nd day I finally asked where you were driving me. I asked because it was time but also because the mountains on either side of the highway were too tall, impossibly huge, cartoonish almost. They shouldn't exist in the physical world, and I think we both understood that. So I asked, Where are you driving me? while I stayed safe in the backseat, seatbelt securely fastened, my neck stiff from trying to find the peaks through the clouds.

Your eyes found mine in the rearview mirror, and you told me 3 things and they all made sense of course, as always. You told me 3 things while the car wound through the narrow ribbon of pavement and I could see your face reflected in the coast some miles ahead of us, and I leaned forward with arching shoulder blades to wipe the murky glow off the windshield, my fingernails scraping the glass. And here we are, you said. And here we are, I said as I opened the door and the waves leapt across the sand and washed our fingerprints from the vehicle one by one. And here we are, you said, as we watched the ocean devour the backseat through the rear windshield until it was completely gone. And here we are, I said, burying my fists in the sand.

[iamchrisscott]

Single File

Here’s an understatement: Boston’s gotten a lot of snow this winter. In total, 100 inches -- 8 and a half feet -- so far and a big chunk of that is still on the ground as I write this. In a dense urban area, this presents a problem, which basically boils down to: There’s only so much you can do with that much snow. We can push it around a bit but mostly we just have to wait until it melts.

But the snow has also eliminated, briefly, something I’ve always hated a little bit about living in the city: That a person can be surrounded by thousands upon thousands of people and still find it remarkably easy to ignore all of them. Because right now, if you want to get around Boston -- and you will eventually, for food, for your job, for booze -- you’re forced to contend with The Best Boston Can Do Right Now. And for most sidewalks, that’s a very narrow path in the middle enclosed on either side by mounds of snow sometimes taller than you. It means that if I’m walking south on West Newton and another person is walking north, we don’t have enough space for us both. So we regard each other, we make eye contact, we nod. And then one of us has to agree to get out of the way and let the other one pass.

This scenario was a source of tension when the snow began, but over the weeks, as it plays out over and over again, Boston’s found its sense of humor about it. A block away I’ll see someone coming at me and I know they see me, and we know the drill. The first one of us to find an opening ducks in, so the other person can continue, and when we pass, we look at each other and kind of chuckle like “This is just how it is now. There was once a sidewalk here that could fit 4 abreast and I wouldn’t have a clue what your face looked like, and now here we are.” And I’m grateful to them for letting me pass or they’re grateful to me for letting them pass, and it’s a simple, genuine moment.

So I walk around a lot. To get groceries, or catch a movie, or take photos of all the snow in the South End to send to my mom. Or I walk just to be walking, because I know when the snow melts we’ll return to how it was before, and in some odd way, I want this to count. So I assign meaning to each of these interactions now, and I suspect others are doing the same. Without speaking, you lock eyes with me and say “Here, you go ahead. I could really go for a pulled pork sandwich right now.” Or I say “I’ll stand here until you can pass by. I really need to see more live music.” Or maybe you say, “I think my husband’s cheating on me. I’m lost. I don’t know what to do.” Or I say, “I’ve been struggling lately. I had a bad moment while I was alone last night and punched the floor.” Or maybe it’s nothing more than eye contact and a nod, and that’s all we need. As long as the snow is here, we can’t ignore each other.

Last weekend I was walking down Mass Ave when I suddenly realized I was part of a procession of people walking very slowly in a single file. About 10 people up ahead of me was an elderly man with a walker and an ever-growing crowd of Bostonians had amassed behind him, trapped on either side by snow, and no opportunity to get around him until the next intersection. So all of us walked comically slowly down Mass Ave together, laughing at the ridiculousness of it. No anger or resentment. He had somewhere to be, just like the rest of us. He just needed a little more time. So we took our time. Until we reached the intersection and the crowd of maybe 20 of us at that point were able to break free and move around him. I watched a guy up ahead of me pat the man’s shoulder a couple times as he passed. We looked around at each other and laughed. And then we separated and went wherever we were going.

[iamchrisscott]

If you've never listened to Matmos' brilliant album The Civil War, today would be a fine day to fix that.

[iamchrisscott]

Something Somewhere

One morning when I was 16 my mom woke me up at 5:30. Dad had been in an accident at work and the details were fuzzy but she needed to go to the hospital right away. My dad worked third shift at a Caterpillar plant outside Peoria, Illinois, building and manufacturing parts that would, at another factory, be assembled into the giant earthmovers Caterpillar’s known for. That night around 3 a.m. he’d been working with a machine that cut large rubber hoses and something happened -- he slipped up or let his guard down -- and that machine caught his hand and then his arms and began pulling him in. Trapped and getting pulled in deeper and deeper he screamed for help, but there were few people at the plant at this late hour and no one could hear him above the noise of the machines. Until by some miracle someone did, rushed to his aid, and managed to shut it down before it took his life. But not before it had taken a considerable amount of skin and flesh from his arms.

It took the doctors weeks to put him back together as best they could, grafting skin from his leg, and a series of complicated surgeries. There were long nights at the hospital. I drove there every day after school, joined by a rotating lineup of friends and family, and my dad would do his best to entertain but the persistent fog of morphine made it difficult for him. He’d drift off mid-sentence or provide a nonsensical answer to someone’s question. He was childlike almost. One night he told my mom “The whole time I just kept thinking ‘this is how I’m going to die.’” Those weeks are a blur now. I remember people being kind to me, even other kids I didn’t get along with very well. I remember going to church with my mom and sister and praying.

A year ago, shortly after we learned about my dad’s condition, I asked my mom if he had ever struggled with drug addiction in the past, maybe before I was born. Anything that, in retrospect, may have been a red flag or paved the way to harder substances. No, not really, not outside of what we already knew. He smoked pot some in the ‘70s like everyone else. He had issues with drinking, which we knew very well. And he had struggled a bit to wean himself off the painkillers after that accident 15 years ago, but they worked on it, and he beat it. Maybe there’s something there. Maybe I missed something somewhere along the way in these handful of years after my parents’ separation and eventual divorce, during the terrible arguments and confrontations we had, the yelling and tears, the awful knot in my stomach I felt whenever I went back to Illinois, the numbing, relentless grip I feel now when I try to solve the impossible problem of trying to find someone who doesn’t want to be found. I know I missed something, somewhere.

On the weekends I volunteer at a women’s shelter in Boston. I work in the kitchen doing dinner prep, cooking, serving, talking with the women, doing dishes, cleaning up, closing down, going home. But the last few months have gotten harder, and after each shift I tell myself I’m going to take some time off or stop going altogether. The women are wonderful but I can’t keep surrounding myself with people struggling with homelessness and addiction. Not while this storm gathers back home, not while I’m made to contemplate the horror of it in my mind every day, not while my head slowly comes apart while I do whatever it takes to keep it together. But the next weekend comes around and of course I go back. Because it’s the bare minimum we can do. To be kind. To make people feel safe, to treat people with dignity. And everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, especially people who are lost, especially people who need others to come through for them. And maybe selfishly I do it to send some small piece of my heart into the world, and maybe I believe the wind will gather it up and carry it like a prayer across state lines and rivers and mountain ranges and interstates and deliver it to my dad, wherever he is, whatever state, whatever town, whatever’s happening in his head.

Two months ago I received my last communication from him. A ‘happy belated’ text a couple days after my birthday. My subsequent texts and phone calls have gone unanswered. The dwindling trickle of dialogue finally reached a halt, as I feared it would. And with each passing day, navigating the mental obstacle course wherein I try with all my might to avoid confronting the implications of what this may mean becomes harder and more painful. There’s the occasional story or rumor, a new lead, an old acquaintance who might know something, a friend of an ex-girlfriend. Never any answers. There are assurances we’ve done everything we can. I never know if I believe that. The impossible problem of trying to find someone who doesn’t want to be found.

For the first time in many years I prayed last night walking home alone from the shelter in the snow. I don't know to who. But I prayed into a space white and vast and brilliant like fresh snowfall, like the surface of the moon above me. I prayed into the silence: My heart is here. Wherever you are, I’m sending it to you now.

[dearabbypoems]

Sober in Oakland

This is not to say you Made the right decision Starting to fall in love with The early months Of a relapse

I witnessed it A year of separation Forcing myself to stick to the plan I’m no longer interested in The selling phase I’m no longer interested in Full speed ahead

Or should I just be grateful For one thing that could be easily fixed

This is not to say You can always decide to go back It takes time to really Rush into anything source: http://news.yahoo.com/divorcees-dating-plan-hits-snag-gate-050006387.html

[iamchrisscott]

I make poems from Dear Abby advice columns. Here's a new one.

[iamchrisscott]

My Favorite Albums of 2014

2014, like many years before it, had lots of music. Music of all different kinds. I love music and tried to hear as much of it as possible. These are my favorite 14 albums of 2014, in order. And you can find my favorite albums from past years right here. Thank you for agreeing with my opinions about music.

1. Sun Kil Moon, Benji 2. Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 2 3. Angel Olsen, Burn Your Fire for No Witness 4. Kevin Drew, Darlings 5. Swans, To Be Kind 6. Lana Del Rey, Ultraviolence 7. Vince Staples, Shyne Coldchain Vol. 2/ Hell Can Wait EP 8. Spoon, They Want My Soul 9. Caribou, Our Love 10. Grouper, Ruins 11. Dean Blunt, Black Metal 12. Brian Eno/ Karl Hyde, High Life 13. The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream 14. Dirty Beaches, Stateless

[iamchrisscott]

Looking Ahead: Technology Trends in 2015

Anybody who knows me knows that I spend a lot of my time thinking about technology. I’ve skipped meals, doctor’s appointments, and even significant life events thinking about what the future holds for technology. Apps, phones, computers, social media, digital marketing, things that are made of plastic or metal, the cloud, my head is filled with this stuff 24/7. I more or less predicted Netscape. I got my first cell phone when I was only 19. My toothbrush is electric, not the boring kind a lot of other people use. I was one of the first people to read about Google Glass. So, suffice it to say, when it comes to tech I know what I’m talking about.

Recently I’ve spent some time thinking about 2015. What will be the big technological breakthroughs next year? What will be the hot new apps, widgets, and phones? What will be the next Facebook or Twitter? I compiled my thoughts into some bold and frankly accurate predictions:

* * * Foursquare will mount a major resurgence in popularity, with deadly consequences.

* * * Out at a bar, but not sure what that drink your friend just bought you is? The new WhatDrink app will let you use your phone to scan your beverage and determine if it’s beer, wine, or liquor.

* * * The new Destiny-tion Google Map app will let you input where you want to be and then give you directions to where you ought to be.

* * * Reebok will just straight up sext with you, if you want.

* * * You’ll make it about a third of the way through an article about nanotechnology.

* * * People will stand in line for days for the new iPhone 6: Retribution, the awesome new phone that accidentally drops you in a toilet when it’s had too much to drink.

* * * One day you’ll begin to notice more and more people walking around with abacuses. Pretty soon everyone’s doing it. Sure you could ask why everybody has an abacus. Or you could just get on board and get an abacus, too. Do you really want to be the one piece of shit who doesn’t have an abacus?

* * * Even more porn, if you can believe it.

* * * An increasingly desperate nation will pour every last one of its rapidly vanishing hopes and dreams into a 12-year-old boy who’s good at Vine or Instagram or something.

* * * To much fanfare, Apple CEO Tim Cook will unveil the new iParrot, an amazingly lifelike robotic parrot, whose authenticity is betrayed only by its mechanical cawing and glowing red eyes. Within weeks every home in America has an iParrot. Families are amazed by its uncanny ability to hear simple phrases and utterances and then mimic them back at sporadic moments and at varying levels of volume. One day your iParrot says “Help, no please stop, don’t do this, please, please don’t kill me, I’m begging you.” This is curious because you have no recollection of ever saying that. The iParrot continues repeating it for days in increasingly panicked tones punctuated by sudden bursts of harsh metallic screeching. One night you’re lying alone in your dark bedroom, illuminated only by the iParrot’s blood red eyes. From its perch at the foot of your bed it repeats again “Help, no please stop, don’t do this, please, please don’t kill me, I’m begging you.” An icy dread sweeps over the length of your body as you realize what’s happening but it’s already too la-

* * * Your cousin Brandi was right. Facebook will begin charging money to use it.

* * * The new Samsung Galaxy Applaud will let you clap with it.

* * * Following U2’s groundbreaking model of music distribution, more and more artists will collaborate with the music industry to upload entire albums directly onto your phones and computers. Before you know it, upwards of 40-50 albums a day are being added to your devices with reckless abandon. You’ll have no control over anything anymore. Your phone and computer hum and vibrate constantly as an endless amount of music is relentlessly pumped into them over and over. You’ll lie curled up half-naked in the corner of your apartment contemplating how much happier you would be if you were born a century ago.

* * * Twitter will need a copy of your birth certificate for some reason.

* * * Everything non-technology will be dragged to Central Wyoming, forming an enormous miles-high pile at the center of its vast stretches of desert landscape. Once everything has been gathered there, it will be set ablaze in a fire that will burn uninterrupted for years until it has torn an enormous, irreparable hole in the ozone layer and a glorious purge will finally rid this planet once and for all of our miserable and self-destructive species. In our final days there will be chanting: Technology is the end. Technology is the beginning. Technology is the end.

* * * You’ll get in a fight with someone you’ve never met about something Adele wore.

[iamchrisscott]

The Missing Person

So many people told him he was missing that eventually he just accepted it and went missing. He drove off past the telephone poles plastered with photos of his face and “Have you seen me?” stamped above it, past the newspaper stands with articles about him -- the man who went missing -- the people he knew and loved and hated, the non-missing, all of it in his rear-view mirror.

He drove through the hours, weeks, days, months of being missing, until he was a ghost of a person shivering at midnight at a payphone in some state, voice quivering, “Can I come back now? You know me. Can I be done missing? Will you let me come back?” There were years of payphones like this, in different states, at different times. There were years of strangers in diners, vague looks of recognition, living out of his car, spanning long stretches of countryside, towns, cities, all of it, everywhere multiple times over.

And then one day he went home. They recognized him, even after all those years. They said things like “Oh there you are!” and “So good to finally have you back!” They didn’t ask him where he’d been. There was no point. You knew as much when he agreed to meet you for coffee that morning. You knew what you were getting into. You knew exactly what to expect.

You watched as he took each sip of coffee, slowly, deliberately. You heard the claps of thunder begin in the distance and you watched his expression change. Outside it started to rain. Neither of you spoke a word to each other. You pulled a folded up “Have you seen me?” sign from your pocket and gave it to him. He unfolded it, studied his own face for a minute, folded it and put it in his pocket. It was pouring outside now, waves of rain sweeping against the cafe over and over.

Until there was no more coffee. You knew the moment he stepped out into the rain he would vanish completely this time. You’d known that for as long as you’d been alive. He wasn’t a ghost, you knew that. You weren’t a ghost either, you knew that, too. You walked him to the door, and before he opened it, he turned to you and put his hand on your shoulder and said, “I’m so glad I found you.” And you said “I’m glad you did, too.”

And then you went missing.

[iamchrisscott]

No Singing Where You're Going

For the week leading up to Halloween, I’m writing a different scary short story every night, and posting it here. This is the fourth in the series.

The big breakthrough happened on Day 217. Roberta was the first to verbalize. “Here. Here.” Allie and Jamel stopped in their tracks, unsure that they’d heard what they thought they heard, and turned to the speakers at the end of the tank. There was some static and then an emphatic “Here! Here!” Digitized as it was through the computer’s interpretation, but clear as day. There was no mistaking it.

Allie turned to the observation deck and shouted “Peter, turn down the music and turn up the transmitters! Do we know who it was?” Earth Angel faded out mid-chorus and Peter replied on the intercom “That would be Roberta. She’s doing all the talking.”

Allie walked to the edge of the tank and found Roberta’s dorsal fin cutting across the surface alongside Kit’s -- both distinct. Jamel joined her side and watched the dolphins circle the tank. “C’mon say it again,” Allie whispered. And then she had an idea. “Peter, turn the music back up slowly.” As soon as Earth Angel creeped back onto the speakers, Roberta chimed in again “Here! Here! Here!” And another voice, marked with a distinctly different tenor, joined “Here!”

“And that’s Kit, of course.” Peter offered through the intercom.

“Man, they really love doo-wop don’t they,” Jamel laughed. “Okay, they’re talking. Away we go.”

The dolphins’ enthusiastic response to doo-wop music -- The Platters, The Capris, The Marcels -- was evident early on in the verbalization trials, and Allie had long suspected it would be the thing that sparked that big breakthrough. Some seven months later, it did.

There had been so many fits and starts, wrong turns, and detours. But through round-the-clock training and discipline -- studying the dolphins’ behavior and speech patterns, their interplay, analyzing decades of collected data -- they had built the systems and found their way here. They had successfully begun to translate the dolphins’ whistles, burst-pulsed sounds, and clicks into English in real time. Inter-species communication.

In a matter of days Doll and Huck joined in the “Here!” party. “Here!” in this case, the crew came to understand as positive affirmation. Here, as in, this moment, what’s happening right now in the present, is good. We want this to continue. ‘Here’ should keep happening. Keep playing the doo-wop music. Keep feeding us, keep playing with us. ‘Here’ was also the key to everything that came after. From there, Peter, Jamel, and Allie could begin mapping out a structure for more translation. More whistles, sounds, and clicks -- and the variations of each within -- to create more words: dive, glide, up, eat, more, stop, agree, push, go, we, you, I. And the more varied their vocabularies got -- or more accurately, the deeper the crew’s understanding of the dolphins’ already rich vocabularies grew -- the closer they came to constructing sentences. And then, ultimately, sentences to describe circumstances outside of whatever the dolphins were immediately observing or feeling. Sentences of representation. The holy grail.

“We go, we go, we go.” Kit was leading the group in short bursts and darts zigzagging the tank while Jamel took notes. It had been four months since the first “Here” and now they were openly conversing. “Keep going, keep going” Jamel cheered them on, and his words were processed by interceptors, transmitted in clicks and whistles beneath the surface. “And slower,” Jamel instructed, and the dolphins slowed down. “And separate,” and the 4 dolphins broke formation. Beneath the platform, Allie observed them through the glass. Doll glided by her, and that was when the very first question came.

“What are you?”

Allie’s heart stopped, as she watched Doll swim laps around the tank’s diameter. Peter radioed to her, “Uhhh I think she’s talking to you, Allie.”

Allie cleared her throat and spoke into the small mic at her collar. “My name is Allie. I’m human. I’m a mammal like you.”

Doll circled the tank again, and approached her. “You are here.”

Allie puzzled over that momentarily, then responded, “Yes, I am here.”

“Where do I go?”

The second question. Allie felt incredible pressure to give the correct answer, whatever the correct answer was. She could hear The Closer You Are by the Channels playing above her. “You stay here. Right here with me.”

“When do I go?”

The third question. Allie wasn’t sure how to respond. And that face, circling the tank, that perpetual dolphin smile, started to get to her. Before Allie could respond, Doll asked a fourth question.

“You keep me. When do you let me go?”

They were off script now, and Allie chose her words carefully. “You and Kit and Roberta and Huck stay here with me, Jamel, and Peter. We all stay here together. Here.” Doll did 3 more laps without speaking, locking eyes with Allie each time she passed her, and then she joined Huck at the opposite end. Question and answer time was over.

Over the following weeks, there were other incidents like this. The usual childlike banter between the crew and the dolphins were peppered with odd, and only vaguely coherent phrases and sentences that could be interpreted any number of ways. The most notable of these happened when Kit and Huck took to mimicking lyrics from I Only Have Eyes For You -- one of the dolphins’ longtime favorites.

“What is the sound?” Kit asked Jamel.

“This is a song,” Jamel told him. “This is when humans sing.”

“Do you sing?” Huck asked.

“Not very well.”

“You are here and so am I.” Huck replied, and Kit parroted. “You are here and so am I. I only have eyes. I only have eyes.”

“You like this song.” Jamel noted. “I like this song, too.”

“Where are you going?” Kit asked.

“Nowhere. I’m here with you. Or as you and The Flamingos would say, ‘You are here and so am I.’”

“I only have eyes. There’s no singing where you’re going. I only have eyes.” Kit replied.

Jamel stopped and watched Kit’s dorsal fin cut waves through the water. The speakers behind him announced once more, “I only have eyes. There’s no singing where you’re going. No singing where you’re going.”

“Where am I going?” Jamel asked.

“You are here and so am I,” Huck replied.

“Where are we going?” Allie asked from below.

“Here. Here. Here. Here. Here.” Doll replied.

The next morning, Allie arrived at the lab to find several police cars and ambulances. Jamel intercepted her as she stepped out of her car. He had found Peter when he got in that morning. They wouldn’t know the cause of death for at least a few days, but it was clear Peter had suffered some sort of aneurysm during his night shift. When Jamel found him, he was wearing headphones, slumped over on his desk in the observation deck in a pool of blood. Allie started to feel sick. Jamel urged her to go home, but she insisted on reviewing the tapes from the night before. She had to.

They spent hours reviewing the audio tapes. For the most part they were perfectly benign. At some point during the night, coinciding with Peter playing ‘Devil or Angel’ by Bobby Vee, there had been a particularly frenzied round of “Here, here, here” chants, lasting about 20 minutes. In and of itself, that was nothing unusual. But when they separated the audio by channels, they noticed Roberta had been entirely silent during all of it. She didn’t emit a single “Here.” So they watched the video coinciding with this chunk of time. Roberta could be seen near the bottom of the tank, distant from the other three who were frantically splashing and here-ing. She moved very little, tossing back and forth in strange and unpredictable rhythms. Neither Allie or Jamel could remember ever seeing her behave that way.

As they were walking out, Doll’s voice came over the speakers. “Why is Peter so sad?”

Jamel walked over to the tank. “Peter’s gone. He left us. He’s not here anymore.”

Doll flapped her tail, dove, and rose again. “Where?”

“He’s just gone. I’m sorry.”

“When do we go?” This voice was Roberta’s. “You keep us. When do we go?”

And with that Allie lost it. “You stay here. HERE! I told you. You’re staying here. Stop fucking asking me that. You’re staying here.”

There was silence for a little while, and then Roberta’s voice again, “There’s no singing where Peter is. I only have eyes for you. I only have eyes. There’s no singing where you’re going.”

At some point Allie managed to fall asleep that night, and when she did she dreamt. In her dream she was adrift at sea, all alone, naked, swimming through the waves. She looked up at the sun and the clouds melting in wisps around it and then something pulled her under the surface. Down, down, pulling her, digging its claws into the flesh of her legs, pulling her toward something ancient, primitive, prehistoric. Something that had been waiting for her, for everyone, for a very long time. And Peter was there, of course, and so were many others, and she understood in that moment, in the darkness and the depth, that she had gotten something very wrong. She had severely miscalculated something important. Something simple. Something that would elude her from the second she woke up, but would always be there, nagging, pulling her closer toward itself, taunting her, punishing her for something she’d never understand.

And then she woke up. Here.

[iamchrisscott]

Under Any Circumstances

For the week leading up to Halloween, I’m writing a different scary short story every night, and posting it here. This is the third in the series. Juan found the strength to stand up. Doing so required first peeling his back off the concrete wall he’d been slumped against so long it didn’t give up his skin without a fight. He knew the heat would be what did him in. Or the smell. Or the isolation. He looked at the clock illuminated by a dim fluorescent light across from him. He’d been in this room for 26 days.

When he locked his knees his head spun, his vision blurred in and out of focus. “How am I going to keep doing this?” he muttered to himself. “How long are you going to do this to me?” he muttered in vain to whoever was outside the room.

26 days earlier he’d been walking to his car, cutting across a parking lot in broad daylight, when he blacked out. He had been knocked out, he later deduced, probably by the same people who were waiting with him when he came to in that room. A man and a woman. The man sat down a glass of water and some crackers. He talked to Juan in an eerily patient and dispassionate tone. “You are going to be in this room for as long as we want you to be. There is no guarantee you will be alive when you finally exit. It is just as likely or unlikely as anything else, if you understand.”

“What’s going on? Who are you? What’s this place?”

The man continued. “When we leave we will lock the door behind us. We will slide a little water and crackers through the slot every now and then, but not much. Over here is a clock with the date and time. And over here,” the man gestured across the room, which couldn’t have been more than 15 by 15 feet, “Over here is a telephone.”

The man held Juan’s shoulder to steady him and coldly locked his gaze. “This is important. The person on the other end of that phone is the only person who can help you out of the situation you currently find yourself in. But you cannot, under any circumstances, use that phone. If you do, Juan, it will be very bad for you. Do you understand everything that I am saying to you?”

Panic started to set in. “What are you doing? You can’t do this to me. Let me go right now. Please.”

The man and the woman walked out and locked the door behind them. Juan tried to follow but his legs buckled, still too weak from whatever they did to him. “Please, why are you doing this to me? I don’t deserve this, I swear.”

In the hours and days that followed, Juan begged, pleaded, screamed, threatened, cried. And then after some time he just whimpered, paced the room, slept, hungrily gobbled up the crackers and water they left for him, but it was never enough. And he knew that he was starving.

And then there was the telephone. It was bright orange, mounted at eye level on the wall opposite the door. It was old-fashioned, rotary dial. Every day it taunted him, along with the man’s words. Who would be on the other end? Who could save him from this?

On the 27th day, he finally broke. It was a gradual process, of course. He’d been breaking this entire time. But whatever fear had been instilled in him by the man’s dire warning had been supplanted by the overwhelming need for something to happen. Anything. He’d been in this barely lit room for 27 days, with no guarantee he’d be allowed to live, no end in sight, no inkling he’d ever see the outside world again. And the people who’d locked him in here were monsters. Better to risk it on whoever was on the other end of that telephone than trust that they’d ever set him free again. Because why would they?

He approached the orange telephone, suppressing the sinking feeling in his stomach. You can’t second guess yourself now, he thought, Just do this. Get it done. His hand trembled severely as he reached for the receiver. Some fear, mostly weakness, delirium, hunger, thirst. The numbers on the dial blurred in and out of focus, his head pounded. He lifted it, held it momentarily, arm outstretched, then brought it to his ear. And he heard it begin to ring.

------------------------

“You’re dumb.” Shane laughed and started clapping. “You’re dummmmmb!”

“Helen! Would you mind telling your son to stop calling his father dumb? It’s hurting his feelings.”

“Tell Shane he’s only 95% right.”

Helen waltzed into the living room and swooped Shane up into her arms.

“Let’s try to get him to unlearn that word, maybe. He’s using it to describe everything and everyone, and given his limited vocabulary, he’s gonna end up offending somebody.”

Helen ruffled his hair playfully. “Taking out the garbage wouldn’t be dumb. That’d be an awfully undumb thing that you could do.”

“Nicest thing I’ve heard in minutes.”

He gathered the garbage and recycling in the kitchen and walked out through the garage. It was a pleasant, quiet evening, interrupted only by Helen’s muffled laughter and Shane calling everything dumb. As he dropped the garbage off at the curb, his phone rang. He pulled it out of his front pocket. The number was curious: 4444-44-4444-4. He answered it anyway. On the other end was a dull hum, punctuated with pulsing waves of static. And then he heard a voice, faint and distant. “Hello. Hello?”

“Hi,” he yelled into the phone as he pressed it close against his ear, coaching the person on the other end to speak up. “Hi, who’s this?”

“Hello? Oh, thank God. Thank God. I don’t have much time. I’m trapped. Please.”

“Ok, who is this? What’s going on?”

“I-- my name is Juan Aguayo. Listen, I’m in trouble. Some people locked me in a room. I’m dying, I’m trapped here. I don’t know where I am.”

His heart sank. He started to feel weak.

“Juan Aguayo…” the name was hard to say aloud. “Juan…”

“Please do something. I’m sorry I don’t know where I am. I think they’re going to kill me.”

“Is it an orange telephone?”

“What-- I don’t. Yeah. Yeah it’s orange. What does that matter.”

“Hey,” and he realized he was fighting back tears now. “Hey Juan. What year is it?”

“Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you?? I’m hurt! I told you I’ve been abducted!”

“Juan, please listen to me. What year is it?”

“It’s 2029. Okay?? Christ, what’s wrong with you, man?”

He walked over into his lawn and sat down in the grass.

“I’m sorry. I’m not sure where to start. The clock in the room. What’s the date and time?”

“Are you in on this? Are you one of the people who did this to me?”

“I promise I’m not. Please, Juan, I need to know what the date and time is on the clock. It’s so important.”

There was another wave of static and he couldn’t be sure if he’d missed Juan’s answer altogether but then it came through.

“Tuesday, June 12th, 2029. 5:51 a.m.”

He rubbed his forehead, tears now streaming down his face.

“Juan, I’m so sorry man. I’m so, so sorry. You had 5 more hours left. They were going to let you go free in 5 hours.”

“What? No. No. Who the fuck are you?”

He buried his head deep in his hands and pulled in a deep breath. “I know you’ll think I’m insane but my name’s Juan Aguayo. I’m you some 14 years from now. I did the same test you’re doing, and I passed it. But,” Juan’s voice was shaken and hoarse now. “But... I didn’t always pass it I guess. I’m so sorry for everything that comes next for you.” And with that Juan hung up the phone before he got a chance to respond.

Juan knew that they were on their way. There was no point in resisting and he didn’t want to. The Program would find him, no matter what he did. Time travel presented so many opportunities -- for exploration, for profit, for study, for power. And, for the fraction of a percentage of the population psychologically and emotionally equipped to handle the mental duress of such things -- it presented endless opportunities to test and retest the character and stability of its most valued participants. Participants like Juan who could pass a behavioral endurance test once, twice, 50, a thousand times. But then it was that 1,001st test -- presented in an identical scenario at the exact same time under the exact same circumstances -- maybe that was the one that went awry. That was the one where he caved and picked up the orange telephone. The truth was there was one-one thousandth of Juan that was fatally flawed, and that was more than enough.

He waited in his yard while the low din of sirens grew louder. He didn’t want to upset Helen and Shane. His fate was uncertain -- most likely they would strip him of his credentials, remove him from the Program, inject him with something that erased a certain part of his memory, but they’d let him live. He wasn’t the first.

But he knew it’d be a whole lot rougher for the Juan Aguayo he’d spoken to. Maybe they’d test him further. Allowing a direct telephone line to host a conversation with the same person spanning decades was a test in and of itself. How would that affect 2029 Juan’s brain? His perception of reality, space and time? There were endless questions and answers, endless opportunities.

And then they’d execute that other Juan, most likely. Paradoxes were horror shows. Each time Juan had seen the Program walk right up to the edge of one, brains would break. Suicides would happen. His colleagues would hurt each other and their loved ones very badly. He would never be allowed to meet the other Juan. That alternate universe Juan was already dead. Paradoxes were horror shows.

Juan was immersed in blue-green light as the cars approached him, and he held out his hands, unarmed. Maybe they’d put him in another room, not unlike the one a thousand other Juan Aguayos had found themselves in. Maybe they’d find another time to put him in. Maybe time would abandon all of them entirely someday. But he was ready for whatever came next.