from Timaeus System Disappointing

John Paetsch

Crumb Boss Vlon to Fremin: “Take you down this my testament? [Fremin glances at his restraints] Never mind! Item, this my testameat, that I threaten again to raze, that feeds us no more than Marine Snow, deposit at the precinct that it might precede us. [Fremin glances at his restraints] Enough! Thus, Item, so that the tax I levy (without having the authority to do so) upon this my Counter-System not go to waste, wheel at once yourself & anyone in your vicinity to a cross-roads. Once there after drinking five hours clasp (or let fall into your clasp) a mark (really any gull, ideally one ‘not that into cam-work’) and, thinking he pays for that one round, pays for it and all preceding. Show him then choice feeds …. Would that were all! No—with the mark well in the rat-trap, his estate broken into pieces, have fellow vermin muster up & sit in triumph with your prisoner and, under color of showing him favor (as is called: waiting for bail), you & your leeches swallow 6 gallons more! Your mark (now become agent) chafing at waiting so long for his Bail begins to suspect he could transcribe this My Testament within the limits of a walnut & make a pesto of it. Begins to worry too that Creditor’s Militia might press-gang him into their ranks herd him into debtor’s prison & towards canal-life.” Vlon turns to the prisoner: “But that’s not possible is it Fremin? [glances at his restraints] Never mind! To the cricket-faced bailiff who hauled me in for my debts, Item, pine-mulch to cover his tracks. He’ll be keen to scatter it behind him once skimming from the commissary & plundering the evidence locker. Can you blame him? [Fremin glances at his restraints, Vlon at the earth] Lord mother [he bellows] once I follow that track to the bailiff’s pine box let me in! shoe-horn my box atop his. I’m keen to piss in his pine-box … keen as I was years ago to do so in all five corners of Val’s shore condo & many clepsydras besides …. Anyway when my debt runs dry I’ll, Item, seal his hull as totally as burning my precinct my fate (no amount of piss to put out that fire!) then collect—unless they find me first! I exempt no one not even Fate (assuming Fate not Debt hounds my life’s trails). So … to whatever tracks me across featureless plains I leave, Item, a body if not a life to pay this ransom once and for all … & if that’s not enough, Item, I lend it this story on credit. Don’t be afraid to find a little bit of yourself in this my story:

Eyes twitch towards the grate. Flyrt bites his lip. “Erxpécting someone?” Flyrt shakes off a sign. Dangerous play I tell him for one strapped to a chair …. Best case for us here: that fetid mass sprung from the beds of the embalmed counter-earth (canal) surging now towards the surface (city) be neither Creditor nor Angel-Investor nor Proxy-Ward but Testator, “Don’t” I warn him “tip them off.” Flyrt bites his lip. I nod to Vlon who flips a switch. “Why” Vlon yells over the machine “tase Flyrt?” Flyrt not hearing through the pain I speak freely: “We’re hoping he tips off the fetid mass. The more organic fibers stippling this debtor’s body [gestures at Flyrt] the more leverage over it. I almost feel bad for it—cosigning to fetid middens, no amount of skin-grafts or Botoxins to free him from it. We just need to strip away everything inorganic ….” Some months later fetid mass Flyrt passes through a “grate” (bosonic field) near Vert’s chuckwagon. That grate strips it of everything inorganic. We confront it. Not like us to worry over the sacking of a sugar tit when fetid mass nurses whole pap …. It fingers us; we catch case. Try parsing (I say) unadulterated bio-acoustic pulses & other archaic declensions before saying we have something to go on! Nothing Vert sees to go on …. We take the case anyway. Bailiff Lyf rings us in: “Next on the docket:

Carsolved Mysteries, Case 1

‘Cam didn’t see him.’

Case closed.

Carsolved Mysteries, Case 2

‘Not really seeing he cam here.’

Case closed.”

“Bailiff Lyf” chirps the Judge “keep my traffic moving!” My turn. “Can you identify the defendant.” “Not since” I say “grate stripped it of everything identifiable.” I don’t care (Vert defiant now) how winding tightly a vagrant & shoving it through a grate endows it with enough force to scramble its chirality decant itself into multiply-stratified wave-fronts. “Bless you Vert.” Better to air out this case here than when shackled to a radiator …. Time-grates conjugate the wards & churls (I don’t understand the mechanics behind it) now barking now parsing the sentences that’d negate the paradigmatic equations written into the world’s foundations. If that’s not dealing oneself a losing hand in this ill-starred world then I don’t know up from down frowntown from upside-down-town roughside up rightside out down …. Debtors-on-feed-tubes gasp for something to foul the feed. There’s only this: In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni—we turn in the circle by night & are consumed by the fire. More noise floods ill-begotten worlds. Incurable rinderpest of a geometry, once seated at the table, amidst all noise and slag, decaying drags us down with it …. I hope you liked my fucking story! Did you see a little bit of yourself in it?

If not, Item, I give to you Clone Gall [checks notes] noise swamping Warden’s signal. Vrey never could disentangle the two. And so he inherits, Item, the thread that unravels it? even if it ain’t Warden’s meaning just yet? Jest you wait! meanwhile wind yourself into immense background radiation striding forth now & then to imprint itself on flesh inscribe itself on bark sign itself on shore lost in fog founder on shoals fledge itself & sink out of sight to be gnawed at last by the great fog-skinned cop himself Warden Creature:

creature     ,

Creatur ?

whichever

* Come Confess *

lit

out

with nothing

but necrotic lit

skin

in the game

map my

undoing

pupating trash along

canals I finger

Endogenous Vats

churls become

«» This is the Policeman’s Creed «»

& so finally let, Item, Defective’s Missives cloud Vatt’s Lays.”

—Ods belly man you talk here of Testaments? When in danger it behoveth us to bestir our stumps lustily or never.

Vrey says nothing.

—I mean, the most minimal geometry should rule it out! Yet we bathe in signals of ever lesser quality ….

My play. I flick the lights off & on. Vlon's bleached torso darkens the threshold. Plain to see he's ratted us out .... I humor him anyway:

—Bleached torsos ain’t cheap. You rat on us all or just me?

—Ill-testated ill-starred & ill-begotten corpus if the System that nutated it slipt into my precinct’s feed I’d reach for the fissile material ….

—I’m asking the questions here.

What a life .... How near was I to having had enough? Strike out

for lightless hadal zones

without, Item, the object of this inquiry! Likely all I have left, I guess, though not mine to give, since unattainable .... Yet I say to you Take freely from it & spurn it, this my Testament, that will be testated in memory of me. So to Vrey leave, Item, the vanishingly small stakes in the results of this inquiry. In whichever future he claims it there'll be exactly as much left of it as there will be of me, which is exactly as much as I'm leaving him now, just in the future. That's not a salve but a solvent if you catch my drift .... Would that they measure my sentence by the clepsydra I piss in periodically! [Fremin indicates that this would lengthen his sentence] Never mind! Sloughing off skins (like as I have) lets you feel anew the body's horror at becoming sentient which is how it's always been, or will be, I suppose .... Far better to be mere matter, I suppose, some anonymous cyst bubbling in the nearest vortex not a thought for leaving anything behind ... except, Item, this one larva we spackle into the corner of the spytell-house; if only because they opened for us the road to it, as they opened it for all vagabonds, truants, ruggers, rufflers, faitours, auriums and patricos (false priests), hedge-creepers, clones, filocks and lusks. Mark them as they file in: pock-eaten flesh & rind, lousy & scald & peeléd like as apes, dragging bag & staff---they might metamorphose still, if given a hint. You think you know me? & yet all the while on the ground, which is my mother's grate, one knocks with his staff both early and late, crying "Leve mother let me in, how I vanish in flesh & blood & skin." How's that for a return on investment! Nothing left in the bag but,* Item*, tactical skeleton key. Why want that? When they cuff you to the wheel, angle the car towards the culvert and release the brake you'll see! If not here's your fate: adjuncts (off script for sure!) tongue your body as it surfaces and---tonguing alike the underside of solar winds & heliospheric current sheets---class you amongst presently-deliquescing organisms. You get what you pay for! Anyway I don't pretend to give you a choice but only,* Item*, what we scrubbed from Warden's signal. Rather than discard it I arrange it here, as if in a circle around your pit, or some other shape, noise though it is, so that those passing by can take of it and sleep well, knowing that what's beclouding their head isn't this, or if it is it's sequestered in a pit, at least until a vagabond's staff fructify it, and one more bruit expressing negatively the geometry of Warden's sigil bounces off rain-blackened pines:*