The
Machine that Never
S.H. Mecham
Seeing the things I do really sobers a man
to how things really go on running around here. There ain't a damn
chance you can't see what I'm saying when I put up that sentence
alone. If you can't, then you are already laid out flat and square
and fixed and you wouldn't know what I'm talking about even if you
were in my shoes.
See, I was
where you were about the same time last year and I was in the same
shoes as you are in now. It all started with small stuff going on.
You know, you think someone might be following you, but they turn the
corner at the last minute, just before you're sure it's them
following in your footsteps like they were your own shadow connected
to your own two feet, clicking and clacking along to your every step,
without missing a stride, speeding and whirring until you feel they
are going to go straight on clicking and clacking through you, but
they never do, clicking and clacking along as they go walking on
their own good business away.
Couldn't sleep, neither. Part to my
roommates and part to the clicking and clacking of the men walking
and going down the hall, most of them to stop by my door and try
banging for a response. A few of them even came swinging on down on
the brass handle so they could swing the door open. Imagine my
surprise to see the door getting swung open and close in the dark of
my room, the hallway light coming into the room in the cracks in
yellow-light colored streaks. They're clicking and clacking and
calling to my name all whispering and the like as if they didn't come
stomping all the way up to my door and swing so hard on the handle
that the chain lock almost cracked open it was being stressed, so
much.
It don't do a
man like me no good to get so little sleep, but when I could sleep, I
was getting woken up by the knocking and the roommates making their
noises in the room by me. If you go on standing out so much being
shut in like I do and going along all loud and hooting and hollering
like I do when I ain't quiet in my room, no sir. No sir, no good is
going to come of it. Soon enough some one higher up is going to come
on down bringing the hammer down on such behavior. Al Jolsons are
going to bring the hammer down. You've seen them go about his
business, stalking about on those thin wispy black legs, trotting
about with those big toothy grin and those peerless eyes, checking
and maintaining on their fine little world to make sure everything is
square and flat and congruent and settled.
Well, I sure as hell am not, so they came
over with those long hands, cast in immaculate black charcoal, so too
are they all charcoal and all over and started working in on me. They
pulled and pulled at me when ever I was out of my room moving about
and they watched me from my third story window when I slept. They
moved and they pulled and they watched and Jesus Christ did they
watch and watch and watch and watch. Nothing is changing and I am not
going to crack, so they turn up the heat. They point out with one of
those hands and start swarms of mosquitoes and hands underneath my
skin firing out on all cylinders and they're planting holes in my
back that don't bleed until I'm out in public and I make a mess
embarrassing myself in front of my friends and they make me piss
myself waiting for food at the cafe and they put snakes out all over
the ground they keep pulling and pulling and pulling.
And pulling
clean through until the end of the year, where I can go home and I
don't have to worry about Al Jolsons out there at WSU no more. I can
go home and relax and don't have to get pulled and watched no more.
Funny thing about stuff like this. They follow you when they find out
you are not going to work in this world of theirs. You knew this was
their world, didn't you? Just like they followed me and gave me more
mosquitoes and they pulled more.
This time, though. I started seeing the
cracks in the whole thing. They couldn't have done too good of a job.
The Machine
they got us on here has so many sloppy mistakes in it all, doesn't
it? Most nights, you can go out and see the moon moving along on a
tower made of gears and metal beams and the exposed wiring in the sky
fizzing and popping and sparking when it has electricity running
through it just like our own wiring does when we're sloppy with it.
Oh, for God sake's, you can hear the
Machine whirring and mechanically
operating everywhere, all the time! I even saw one day where the Al
Jolsons were marching out of the
Machine, out of the underground,
the ground moving and ebbing like a water bed covered in metal plates
as the workers come out of the surface to work their work and ensure
the whole
Machine
continues to work, work, and work! You
can see it out there at the farmers markets and the people with
smiles made of metal teeth. You must have seen it going on with their
skin all seamy and loose, not fitting the way it ought, exposing the
steam and gears and metal pieces with a million different names like
mouth goerring connections and forearm pump servum servicers. Walking
around like fuming machines, like everybody can see through them
walking along on their tracks, janky pieces of metal, moving along in
a bunch of nothing at all that looks like a man walking along.
The
Machine never goes, stops, moves, stops,
left, right, up, down, around, fixes, breaks, maintains, frowns,
smiles, goes, stops or stops.
Jesus, Lord in heaven, you had to have seen
that. I need you to see that. I need you to see what I see. I need
you to live in my shoes for only an instant to know how terrifying
this world is for all of us who are here. I need you to listen before
it's time for me to go take my meds again and I get all lost on this
thought all over again. I need you to get
me before the loonies go away and I
need to pick it up where I was again. I need your understanding and I
need your help - for the love of God how much I need your help.
But I gotta not see, don't I? I gotta not
go along thinking so much. Thinking does me no good and always gets
me worked up on the Machine
underground and
the tracks and how close I think I can get to closing a part of the
Machine - for however briefly - if I
can just wedge something in the track that bends and breaks and
reforms before I can get a good hold on it. I just need to not see.
That's the fickle part about it all. Seeing
don't cost anything and it's the only part of us that is free. We
can't go around touching the machines or the Al Jolson charcoal men,
but Jesus in heaven what we can see is always free. If seeing were
drinking, I would be drunk on what I've seen. Drunk for a long time.
Look, there's no way for me to convince you
of what you need to know, but I need it so desperately. I need you,
so desperately to know. I can't bottle it up inside, I simply must
tell you. The truth is just so horrible. It's too horrible to
imagine. It's the world we live in, this one.
As
impossible as it may seem, I saw another world down there. Red light
fixtures are sprinkled about below me like stars as I stare down.
There is metal. Everywhere. Expanding as far down as the eye could
discern the gaps between them, until they all fade into the horrible
red glow, unrelenting in bathing this other place. The metal is in so
many forms. Catwalks, Machines,
gears, wires, pulleys, arms, snakes, supports, trusses, railings, and
many other metallic edifices I could not name. All working on
different timings, forever changing the deafening audio to create
harmonies that will never again form as they are replaced just as
quickly by clanging of other components of this Machine
deep underground,
each piece serving a purpose beyond my comprehension. I saw metal
snakes in the forms of sunflowers who's sole purpose was to stir and
rattle in the ashy air. Gears spinning, getting their teeth cut off
by a blade, only to have new teeth attached in their place, forever
spinning and each tooth lasting only seconds before being replaced
and discarded some miles below. The
Machines with
purpose, acting with purpose, beyond our understanding this all is
going on.
It was a very calm Summer
night, the sun had set long ago and the darkness was already
impregnable. I was tossing in bed, when I heard the typical noise of
the
Machine growing
louder, signifying that another opening was surfacing. From the
noise, I could tell it was close. How close, I could not determine.
I sat up to look out my
window to find the backyard ground moving, undulating onto itself,
rocking. It was slowly growing thin, ever so thin. A pounding can be
heard from underground
and a screaming is beginning to overcome the increasing noise of the
workings of the machine.
Finally, a breaking point is reached as the ground
moves apart to reveal a young woman, frantically sprinting up from
the underground
catwalks and stairs, bathed in the horrifying red light that only can
exist underground,
down there.
The light
is glaring, I have to cover my eyes from the intense scarlet shining
off of the underground
metal. It simply
bathes the whole of the yard in it's grasp; the trees, the fence, the
house, the inside of my room and the street all cannot resist the
glow. If the machine is roaring, the scream is deafening. A hand
reaches out, then another, as she pulls herself out of the hell that
exists underground.
She
throws her hands out before her as fast as she can, crawling out of
the hole. She is completely naked, her blonde hair is streaked with
blood, motor grease, and ash. So much ash covers her body.
Quickly,
like hounds on the hunt, five Al Jolsons sprang out from underground,
long and silver knives in hand. They are set upon her instantly,
having followed her screams from the pit. Their joints crack and
charcoal breaks off from their bodies as they articulated after her.
They were slow and deliberate. There was no need to be quick. It was
the dead of night, no one would hear of this. There would be no
witnesses to drag back to the
Machine that
needed correcting or putting on tracks. Knowing the grave
consequences of my witnessing this ritual, I stifle my own
reservations at the sight. I simply could not go outside to help. I
was as helpless as she, lest I am forced to the same grave
underground.
Time to go to
sleep.
Time to go
away.
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