There Is No Year - Blake Butler [81]
The son could slip into the hall.
The son walked down the hall with both eyes blinking in and out and in and out.
The son walked and walked and walked. The son felt lighter. The son’s arms began to shake.
The son came to a door.
The light continued. Light ate light up, and shat light out, and light remained. Days rolled in the long blows of the hours hidden in spinning years and months and days.
In the houses men were laughing. Mothers made other mothers, fathers, too. Sick continued. Night continued. In the night, small pockets fried in endless sing.
The night gathered up in pockets, grew holes. The holes hummed around a rasping center, rolled. Centered in all air and in all bodies. The center’s center had no name.
The bodies aged. The bodies ate lunch, their old limbs shifting, breathing up in celebration, years of air. Resting. Nesting. Needing. Sleeping. Going. Sewing. Teeth on teeth.
Other things would happen. More words would pass from mouth to mouth. The weight of nameless light would overflow the houses, days unblinking, above ground.
The ground was light. The lunch was light, too. And the days, the beds, more holes. The light would fill the halls for hours. The skin would come and come and come.
Acknowledgments
Thank you, Calvert Morgan, magicmachine. Thank you, Carrie Kania, Dennis Cooper, Bill Clegg. Thank you, mother, father, sister, brother-in-law. Thank you, Heather. Thank you, Gene & HTMLGiant crew. Thank you, Featherproof crew. Thank you, Ken, Shane, Gian, Michael, David, Sean, Derek. Thank you, Atlanta friends. Thank you, Internet. Thank you.
About The Author
BLAKE BUTLER is the author of the novella Ever and the novel-in-stories Scorch Atlas, named Novel of the Year by 3:AM Magazine. He edits HTMLGiant, “the internet literature magazine blog of the future,” as well as two journals of innovative text, Lamination Colony and No Colony. His writing has appeared widely online and in print, including in The Believer, Unsaid, Fence, and Vice, and short-listed in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Butler lives in Atlanta and blogs at gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com.
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Also by Blake Butler
Scorch Atlas
Ever
CREDITS
Cover design and photograph by Milan Bozic
Author photograph by Morgan Kendall
All other photographs by Justin Dodd
Copyright
THERE IS NO YEAR. Copyright © 2011 by Blake Butler. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-06-199742-6
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062087324
11 12 13 14 15 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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