ONE: I MET A FICTION WRITER

This will have to do for a first line, I thought.

I loitered blearily in front of the registration kiosk, swaying slightly from a combination of sleep-deprived, drink-depraved dizziness and my body’s involuntary reaction to the acid-klezmer-funk sluicing through the Dummytext Building’s sound ducts. The receptionist looked up with a standard, corporate-issue Officious Smile (#3207B), which faded to an off-the-rack Startled Expression (size L) when she got a look at me. Knowing the sheer variety of dissipation that must pass in front of her desk during De-disorientation Fortnight, I was flattered in spite of myself.

Pro that she was, she affected a quick recovery. “Good morning, sir. May I see your identification, please?”

I rifled through my jacket pockets but only came up with an ATM receipt with a negative balance and a few mocking emoticons, a few losing game tabs from the Megasloth Enervation Drink Billion Dollar-Shaped-Bill Cash-Like Giveaway Sweepstakes, a crumpled pack of No Exit 100s, the corpses of two dead lighters and a couple of darkly-bleeding Bics, and a heavily-folded piece of loose-leaf paper covered with my inimitable, illegible scrawl. “Uh, heh-heh, I’m sorry, I appear to have misplaced all my ID.” Did I take my friends’ dare to “ride the shredder” at the Staplegunnery last night? I couldn’t remember.

She pursed her lips with Mild Distaste ($10.75 per 8-oz bottle). “I see. Well, let me see here… how much money do you have on your person?”

A thorough spelunking of my pants pockets turned up a wadded-up dollar, one quarter, two nickels, a train-flattened penny and a token from the nearby Sadville Darkade. “This is all I have,” I muttered apologetically.

Her eyes brightened. “Ah! So you are a writer! Excellent.” She pulled out a drawer and presented a sheaf of papers to me. “Go through the heavy glass doors to your left, walk down the corridor, stop, go back thirteen paces, bite your lip, look around with steadily increasing agitation, tap your feet impatiently, roll your eyes – um, yes, counterclockwise, grumble aloud, and snap at the first person you see. Then come back out here, no, stomp back out here and go through the entrance marked ENTRANCE. You will then be led to the proper office, where you will wait for two to four hours in mounting discomfort until you’re told to leave and come back tomorrow.”

“Is there an easier way to go about it?”

“Well, I suppose we could introduce another character…”

“Excuse me…” A turgid gust of generic schnapps blew into the room, bearing a rumpled mass of tweed topped with a freshly-regurgitated silver hairball upon it. “I am Heinrich Selb-Stefallig, world-acquainted novelist and three-time runner-up of the Roderick Spooge award for outstanding pagination. I am here to receive my weekly allotment of obsequiousness.”

“Oh, yes, Herr Selb-Stefallig, good morning,” she purred. “Wonderful to see you here this morning. Would you like some coffee? A bagel? May I brush lasciviously against your inseam?”

“Perhaps later. Right now I would like to provide mentoring to a comparatively young writing tyro. And then vomit copiously into a wastebasket.”

“Ah, you’re in luck. Allow me to introduce you to – "

“Please, no names. It gives the story a strong if unearned sense of mystery if its protagonist remains anonymous.”

“Wow,” I wowed. “That’s very astute.”

“And were I a different man, I would have twisted that last word into a crude fart pun. But I shalln’t. No, I believe it would be more appropriate to provide you a modicum of guidance, send you on your as-yet-undefined quest, and attempt to establish myself as a character worth recurring. Let us find a place more conducive to all of the above.” He gestured towards the ENTRANCE door, froze, and stared unblinkingly at it for several minutes.

“Um. What’s…”

“Oh, goodness. I’m sorry, Mr. [REDACTED], I’m afraid Herr Selb-Stefallig suffers from a rare malady known as Syllabic Misemphasis Syndrome, or LEB as it’s known for short by those under the tragic sway of Deviated Acronym Disorder. You see, he misread the sign; where you and I might see the noun – ‘en-tr&n(t)s – he sees the transitive verb – in-‘tran(t)s. He’ll be like that for hours, I’m afraid, his eyes pinwheeling, his mind regressing to some pure animal state to the internal strains of The Master Musicians of Joujouka or Vanilla Fudge, perhaps engaged in some highly metaphoric battle with his insecurity, as represented by a seventeen-foot-six-inch tall hydra-headed insect/goat hybrid, or the spirit of his murdered father, also represented by a seventeen-foot-six-inch tall hydra-headed insect/goat hybrid, only with bifocals. But don’t worry, I’ll send him back into the story at a decent strategic interval, providing there turns out to be a story. We’ll have to send you off via other means. Oh – “ she opened another drawer – “but before you’re seized roughly by a pair of massive, hirsute guards and spirited away, you’ll need these.” She handed me two black objects, one resembling a jai alai racket encased in onyx with the ball still in it, the other flat and oblong, like the monolith from a 2001: A Space Odyssey playset. (I am suddenly struck with a pang of regret; why did I sell that complete Kubrick for Kidz action-figure set? It was the rare, limited-edition one too, with the Humbert Humbert bathtime shot glasses, the Barry Lyndon sleep aids and the black cloaked figures to put in your field of vision to cover the sight of people having sex.)

“What are these for?”

She flashed an Enigmatic Smile (#8765Q). “You’ll figure it out. You may want to keep the exposition to a minimum, I will say that.”

Suddenly, I was seized roughly by a pair of massive, hirsute guards and spirited away. They whisked me down a long corridor and flung me bodily into a small examination room. A scowling, mustachioed cop in mirrored shades stood sentry at the door. A balding, bespectacled man in a long lab coat stood behind a table with a Benevolent Smile (generic). His nametag read IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU’RE STANDING TOO CLOSE. “Ah, good morning. Thank you, Burleigh and Hirscheute, that will be all.” The guards nodded and retreated. “Have a seat, Mr. [DELETED]. I trust my associates didn’t make your passage too uncomfortable.”

I sat, kneading my shoulders. “They could have gone a little easier with the whisks, frankly.”

“My apologies. We outsource a large percentage of our help to the Kitchen Implement Fetish Clinic in the building. Just count yourself fortunate that the oyster fork contingent has been transferred to the haiku division. I am Dr. Herk Ferblungit, T.D.S. I will serve as your orientation counselor for the first leg of your journey. I assume you brought your potential title menu?”

“Yes, of course.” I pulled out my sheet of loose-leaf, unfolded it, and passed it over. He studied carefully. “Very impressive. Practically unreadable. You will keep your posthumous scholars and archivists occupied for years trying to figure this out if you play your cards right. I trust you’ve been lacing your journals with cryptic symbols and meaningless abbreviations?” I nodded. “Good, good – and your file tells me that your incipient alcoholism and misogynistic tendencies are developing right on schedule. And you’ve already put your security deposit down on that squalid studio apartment where you intend to spend your last, miserable days, I see. Although after this project is completed, I advise you to come back here so we can discuss the possibility of interviewing women to serve as either your third wife or your personal assistant – someone who can cut off all contact to your friends and estranged family members, dispute your will and keep your biographers in a state of perpetual litigation for up to fifteen years after your tragic, lonely demise. A very popular option, I’m told. But we have lots of time for that. Well, five or six years, anyway. Let’s look over your list. Go ahead, from the top…”

“Okay, um… Tropic of Rickets.”

“Mmm.”

“The Naked, the Dead, the Scantily-Clad and the Comatose.”

“Ah.”

“Love in the Time of Post-Nasal Drip.”

“Urp.”

“The Grease Fire of the Inanities.”

“Brap.”

“One Hundred Years of Solitude and Three Weeks With a Houseguest Who Snores and Refuses to Pay For His Food.”

“Impassive syllable.”

“At the Molehills of Blandness, The African-American of the Narcissus, Bright Lights, Big Fucking Deal, Great Expectorations, Sense & Sinsemilla, What Price Celery?, Portnoy’s Compliant, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress But It Looks Good in Heels…”

“All right, I’ve heard enough. While you were reading your intermittently-clever litany, some of our associates from the meat-tenderizer-fondling division took the opportunity to affix our own title choice at the top of the page. It was out of your hands from the beginning.”

“I don’t understand. Why did you have me read all these titles to you when you weren’t going to use them in the first place?”

Dr. Ferblungit chuckled. “To make things easier on you. All will be clear shortly. You see, you’ve gotten yourself in deep. You signed onto something that you don’t fully understand. And now you’re trapped. You will now be required to plumb the depths of your curdled creativity on a daily basis, an act that requires a great deal of stamina, not to mention chutzpah and a certain je ne parle Francais. And if you fail to produce the requisite 1666.6666666666666666666666666667 words a day for this and the next twenty-nine days, well…” He nodded at the cop, who broke into a sneering smile and grabbed his nightstick.

“Lord Calamine grinned salaciously, the turbid contours of his engorged dewlaps glistening in the twilight. Saliva dripped from his chinstrap as Gladys unhooked her neckbrace and slowly ran her thick, humid feather duster against the downy tips of her still-bloody steak. She writhed in unthinkable rapture as Lord Calamine caressed his damp, rigid cheroot. ‘Now, my dear, is the time for what the Greeks call ‘the Congress of the Malamute,’ he whispered. ‘Only they say it in Greek.’”

“That’ll be sufficient, Sargeant.” Ferblungit put his hands on the table and leaned into my face. “He’s got tons of incoherent erotic fiction at his disposal and he’s not afraid to use it. So it will be in your best interest to keep the story moving forward. Even though, as I strongly suspect, all you really have at your disposal is the depleted currency of the creatively bankrupt. Fifty thousand words in thirty days about the attempt at writing fifty thousand words in thirty days, am I right?”

Tears welled in my eyes. I nodded.

“Right. Well then, I think you have a little work to do before the chapter’s through, don’t you?” He handed me the two black objects. I stared dumbly at them for a moment before the lightbulb went off over my head, which was helpful, as it provided sufficient illumination for the ascent. I put one object in each pocket, took as deep a breath as twenty years of two packs of No Exits a day allowed me, reached up and grasped the top of the paragraph with both hands. My muscles creaked as I pulled myself up. “Go on,” Ferblungit called up. “The next one should be easy. It’s a short one.”

He was right. I hoisted myself onto the seven-word shelf above me with ease. But it was thin and lacking in content, so I had to leap onto the one above it quickly before it collapsed. Up and up I went, my muscles complaining as I rappelled up and over each block of text, careful not to tear the thin characterization beneath my feet. As I ascended, ill-chosen verbs and weak wordplay cracking under me, I began to gain momentum. I skipped over one-sentence paragraphs like I was hopping over stones and used my shoes as makeshift grappling hooks to scale my wordier passages. After what seemed like hours, and was, I pulled my aching body onto the top of my first setting-establishing sentence. I gazed for a long time at my destination. With a sigh, I hooked my leg over my first line, wincing as it dug into my thigh. Why the hell did I do it in italics? I hauled myself up, wiped the sweat from my eyes, ran my clammy palms over my pantlegs, and gingerly took the first, curved object from my pocket. With the utmost care – I wouldn’t want it to fall and bean a supporting character or bisect a gerund or anything – I slid it into place at the foot of the “I” above me. I rose unsteadily to my feet, steeled myself, and pressed my hands against the far incline of the vowel above me. It was heavier than I expected, and I nearly dislocated my shoulder, but I managed to push it next to the T beside it. And now the tricky bit – I took the flat object in both hands, raised it to eye-level, and pushed with all my might until it affixed itself solidly into the gap between the two words. When I was satisfied that it wasn’t about to dislodge itself, I slid slowly unto the back of the nearest italic f, leaned back, and gazed with exhausted resignation at my handiwork.

“ONE: I, META-FICTION WRITER.”

I covered my eyes with my hand and emitted a long, rueful laugh.

Christ, man.

It’s gonna be one of those.

(11/1/09 – 1:57 PM)