There Is No Year - Blake Butler [25]
This time there was something wrong inside the picture. The heads of the main actors and actresses were blurred, though they had not been so the other times the son watched the film, he thought. Also, in this version, the family all kept falling down. In scenes where they’d be walking, doing things the son remembered having seen them do in scenes before, suddenly their legs would fail and they would go down, or otherwise the house around them lurched. The characters did not make reference to this happening—they went on with the scene around the blips. Sometimes the camera fell as well. Sometimes there’d be whole rooms of people falling—all of their heads blurred—actors. A scene would take place in a mall, then suddenly all the people walking and shopping and eating fast food would just hit the ground, and then they’d get right back up and keep doing what they were doing. Sometimes the people could briefly be heard talking loud, but in a language that didn’t make sense. The sky over the people would turn purple or turn reflective or begin raining ants or caterpillars out of large holes. No matter what happened no one in the movie acted any different. The son knew the film had not gone this way before. It had not lasted so many hours. The film went on and on.
The son had almost fallen asleep watching the movie before he recognized himself—saw himself right there in the movie, in a window in the background of the screen. His face, unlike the others, was not blurred. In the window the son looked frightened. The son’s hair was flattened, of a bright white. The son could not tell what the window was a part of—the shot was too close up. Several other characters with the blurred faces blocked long sections of the shot. The son felt he recognized certain bodies, the black holes of blurred mouths moving on pale heads.
In the window the son was saying something. The son couldn’t hear him through the glass and other conversation, though he could tell by the son’s lips that the son was repeating the same thing over and over. The son’s lips were cracked and kind of swollen, the same lips the son used each day to eat and drink and speak and sometimes kiss another’s skin. Then the camera moved and the son was no longer in the picture and the blurry heads inside the film went on—scenes and scenes there never-ending, and in some scenes other scenes there played in the background on little screens—and in the background of those scenes, screens too—and in those and those and those, so on.
Upstairs in the son’s closet, the sealed black package rolled over on its side.
SPECIAL FRIEND
The son and the new girl quickly became special friends. They sat together in the lunchroom—no one else came near. That week the school stayed filled with screeching as the school tested the fire systems and the lights. The son could see other people talking but heard all siren. He could somewhat still hear the girl. The blinking shook his eyes. The girl paid for both their lunches. She carried both trays with one hand. The son was so hungry lately. After meals he chewed his fingernails and hair. The girl and the son had a lot in common. They both liked sleeping. They both liked knives. Some days in class the girl would stand up and put her gloved arms out and make a hum and spin around and the teachers never stopped her. Nobody ever said a word. The girl told the son there was something she had to tell him later. Sometimes the girl bought the son gifts. She gave the son a heavy book with empty pages. She gave the son a glass bead to sleep with. She gave the son lots of lengthy, pressured hugs. She said she didn’t want the son to give her anything because she liked giving so much more.
BODY DOUBLE
Sometimes at school the son would come into a classroom and find himself already seated in his assigned chair, his hair combed clean and neatly parted, a blue word sometimes plainly scrawled or stamped across his creaseless, spit-shined head.
VERSION
Sitting