There Is No Year - Blake Butler [24]
WHAT WAS BENEATH THE FATHER
The father stood on the front lawn. Above the sun burped up and down. The father did not know he was not moving. Beneath the father there was grass. Beneath the grass there was root and rock and mud. In the mud were several sorts of other minor organisms, convened and still convening. In the mud there was cells from skin that’d been on humans and there was water that had come down through the air. There were things that’d died and fallen off of trees and floated down and decomposed and sunk into the soil to become part of the soil or to become the soil itself—a single curving surface on which any flesh must walk or lay. Further layers under, the dirt turned into rock, slathered in being, crushed with pressure, juiced in spots with gush or tunnel. Certain tunnels went very deep. Certain tunnels ended in doors that led to rooms.
13-DREAM DREAM SEQUENCE
That night the father slept through thirteen dreams. In the first dream he was a priest. In a second dream he was in Judas Priest. In a third dream he betrayed himself. In a fourth dream he ate so much spaghetti he exploded. In a fifth dream he was a beach towel in an unlit closet. In a sixth dream he was a woman who came to the closet and threw up all the spaghetti into the beach towel. In a seventh dream he was all the beaches and all the sand. In an eighth dream he had a cubicle beneath a certain beach where gorgeous women came and forced him to have sex. In a ninth dream he got folded in a remaindered library book and sold on eBay to a woman who binge-ate twice a week. In a tenth dream the father became a series of explosions in a video game his son was playing. In an eleventh dream the father felt very tired, though in this world tired meant obese, though obese meant made of light. In a twelfth dream the father was asleep and could not be woken no matter how long they screamed or what weapons were used. In a thirteenth dream the father woke and found himself above himself and inside his mouth he saw himself and inside that self’s mouth he saw himself and inside that self’s mouth he saw a window, and through the window the father saw another window, and through the window the father saw mountains, fountains, fortunes, beaches, gazebos, grease, disease, and the father found that he was laughing and the father crawled inside himself and turned around.
SEQUEL
The son burned through the channels. The son saw ads for ground beef and cow milk and respirators. He saw men throw balls at one another. He could not find the woman in the hall. He’d forgotten even what she looked like—her shape—though she was always in his mind. In his bedroom in the mirror or in the air above his bed sometimes he felt he could feel her just beside him. He would move around his bedroom with his eyes closed, feeling for her with hands. She was there.
In absence of the hall film, the son became distracted with another. A movie made many years before the son was born. The son had seen this one before—when he was sick a certain channel had played it back-to-back for near a week—every time it seemed most new. The son couldn’t tell what the film was about. There was a family living in a house. There was a father, a mother, and a son. The family all looked tired. Nothing ever really happened. The father drove places and got lost and walked around the house. The mother mostly cleaned and worried. The son would stand and sit and stand. Other scenes showed the family together, going places, though these were rendered in black-and-white, and seemed of a different grade of film from all