David's Curtain

David stepped around it with flat feet. He was a crooked man, his back was curved like a scythe. Every breath rattled, but he didn’t want to look into it.

David wanted to look at the thing inside the red velvet curtain.

He limped around the rustling curtain, let the whorls of his fingertips carry him towards it, brushing against its surface. He felt every individual bristle raise, snag against his skin, release, rustle back. The whole rippling crimson ocean tantalized him, carried his waveform across its circumference, tugged on its golden clasps. These golden clasps clung to a silver donut hanging from the ceiling on tense metal cords. The whole structure wavered ever so slightly in David’s wake. His eyes were glassy, swiveled to capture that silver halo as he carried himself along, slumping, hanging, listing, dragging around the circumference of the curtain.

David limped on. He exaggerated his limp, and his flat feet flapped. He was always complaining about it. He had flat feet on account of Posterior Tibial Tendon Dysfunction. His tendons were torn, or worn, or loose, whatever the Doctor had said. David refused to stop, and he refused to listen to what damned Dr. Trouncey told him. He peered at the thin rim of light underneath the garage door, the door that blocked out the hated sun. Dr. Trouncey had told him that he needed to go to physical therapy. David knew that the physical therapists had tiny microphones, and were going to plant them in his house if he left it. David flicked his eyes back to the cement floor that the curtain brushed, flapped himself around it. Dr. Trouncey told him to seek professional help for his psychological needs. David knew that the people out there were going to get him, to dig into his body with vicious glass claws, to replace his veins with glass and break them.

David hated the sun. David circled the shape in his garage. Dr. Trouncey told him that he could use orthotics. David thought that orthotics were the devil’s mechanisms. David refused to install mechanical devices that would press against the skin of his arch of his foot, force it into shape, realign his spine.

Dr. Trouncey told him that people weren’t out to get him. David rolled his eyes around madly, plinko machine balls, and gritted his teeth, faltering on his circumference path. David had an appointment with the Doctor later, but he wasn’t looking forward to it. David would much rather walk in his circle for a bit longer, even if he hated the feeling of it on his ankles, and felt his spine curving, writhing, twisting in its cavity.

The daylight faded, and David slowed to a stop. He felt his tendons lax, his ligaments sear and snap. David became an automaton whose mechanism was ticking down. The axel slowed down; David was the teeth of a gear, and the rod was the red sea, and the mechanism shut down.

The space under the garage door was full of stars and darkness. He laid down, spread his arms wide, and let his fingertips touch nothing. David reached out and ripped open the curtain and laughed at what he saw there inside the curtain, the thing that was in there.

Dr. Trouncey was a fool, and David would unveil the truth. But first, he had to convince her.

“Dr. Trouncey,” David began,

“Like I said, you can call me Sarah,” she said gently. She had long, swaying curtains of salt and pepper hair. She smiled in a practiced manner, and her cheeks were lined from a whole lot of that.

“Okay, Sarah,” David said, “I had that dream again.”

Dr. Trouncey did not appreciate the dreams that David had. In his dream, David explained, he’d seen a man die, but the man never touched the ground. In his dream, David said, he saw the machine again. The machine that operated without electricity. The machine that had its mechanisms plunged into the sands of time, took orange electricity from sparking demonics.

Dr. Trouncey then reminded David that he had made the appointment to discuss treatment of his Posterior Tibial Tendon Dysfunction, and that this was not an appropriate time to discuss such matters.

David immediately explained that he would do what he’d like, thank you very much, he’d paid her and paid her well. Dr. Trouncey frowned, crossed her arms, and leaned back.

Like he usually did, David had dreamed about standing inside the mechanism of a grandfather clock. His flat feet were rooted to the surface of a vast metal gear, and for once, they didn’t hurt. They were cool, rigid, and arched.

The vast darkness of the wooden cabinet stretched near to the limit of David’s vision, and massive cobwebs hung in a smear, like smarmy clouds. At the edge of the gear, a Biblical saint stood, face dark with shadow, at the rim of the platform. The Saint’s hair was long, gangly. The two men faced each-other as they stood upon that single gear that slowly spun, articulating with other gears paneling off into darkness, slowly churning, whirring.

Then there was a glint, and David’s eyes snapped up. A line as thin as piano wire glinted about the Saint’s neck, and laughter chorused out from the void.

The line snapped down. David watched a biblical saint die forever, starting at the moment he could first remember.

And so Saint Valentine was decapitated, and David stared at him. With a gong, gong, gong, as the massive pendulum swung, slow, David felt the entire force of it ram through his body. His body slammed down to the metal gear, weighted down with incredible force.

The Saint! David worried. I need to save him! David crawled towards the man, but Valentine’s body was slumping at the edge of the gear, slowly tilting, blood droplets spinning in the air about the clean line of his neck. The space was such that the gear David crawled on, while spinning, grew outward forever too, expanding from the center like the rings of a tree, so the further edge of the gear kept moving away, and faraway gears that articulated with it pushed into the horizon.

David blinked, stretched himself forward, pushed away from the crimson axel, and moved more quickly towards St. Valentine. At least I’m not on my flat feet, he thought incongruously. Valentine’s headless body continued listing near the edge, where the golden teeth articulated with another gear, and another, all spinning.

David quickly realized that the gear grew at a rate so fast that he could never reach the bloody Saint. Crawl as he might, heaving and puffing, David couldn’t make any progress. The growth of the gear was always expanding from himself, spilling out in a sea of liquid gold. What was even more frustrating for David, as he clawed himself across the oilstreaked surface, is that he himself seemed to be shrinking inasmuch as the gear he crawled across grew.

And, David thought, he was rather cross because the gear he dragged himself across kept spinning all the time. Always spinning, always expanding, damn the thing, and hell it was connected to another gear and another, all expanding, all expanding forever and spinning forever in a machine. The machine universal, he thought, and that was how he saw the universe. David decided that he was the man who saw infinity.

Dr. Trouncey reminded him amiably that she had another patient at noon.

David explained that the patient could fucking wait.

As he crawled, David said gently, it was like that riddle where the object of desire is 12 meters away; but the first step you make is 6 meters, and each step after that covers half the space; the next only half, 3; the next half that, 1.5. So it is that you get frustratingly closer and closer to the ending (6m to the object, then 9m, 10.5m, 11.25m, 11.625) but never, ever reach it. The periphery of the gear never got any closer, and St. Valentine slumped forever, never quite touching the bronzed floor, blood splatter suspended midair.

Dr. Trouncey told David in no uncertain terms that he needed to vacate the premises.

David told her to fuck off.

Dr. Trouncey made a call to security, and everything seemed suddenly, utterly demonic. The microphones on her phone swelled, grew, began to spread through the air, and the lighting turned red.

David stretched, made an exaggerated curve to his spine, and cussed wildly as he flapped off to the exit.

Clement’s hair stood still on end. It was gelled, spiked out, thumb-high outward divots crackling above a smile of tombstone teeth covered in permafrost. His thumb had a long peel of flesh missing, and he was always picking at it, and he reeked of petrichor.

They sat together in David’s living room. It was almost utterly dark, unilluminated other than by the windows’ bleed of gray daylight. Actually, all of the breaker switches for that room had been switched off. Neither Clement nor David liked harsh lighting, or microphones. They hated them both even more than they hated the sun.

David gave his friend a lukewarm beer. winced, and sat across from his friend, Clement. He massaged the tendons of his feet.

“Dr. Trouncey told me to get orthotics again,” David grumbled. “Machines. In my feet! Connected to them, man!”

“I grabbed a live wire, Dave,” Clement said. “Did you know that?”

He always said that. David glowered at him. “At least you don’t have flat feet.”

Clement chewed at nothing, arranged his mouth into a grin, and tapped a cigarette out on David’s couch. “I really grabbed it,” Clement said, shoving to his feet in a cataclysmic spring. “I really did.” He began a sort of dance, but it was walking. Clement always walked like he was pirouetting. Clement shook the cuffs of a yellowed work shirt, snapped his wrists tight, where tan hands cut abruptly to pale at the sleeves and hairs pricked up to flow with the air.

“Told you,” David spat. “Great arches.”

“Dave, I was stuck,” Clement said, “like glaciers.” Clement gnashed ice blocks free from his teeth, pacing, boots squeaking uncomfortably on linoleum. “Glaciers get stuck in the mountains, Dave, and that’s how I got stuck when I grabbed it. It was as if an electric tree tore holes through my body, riddled me with buzzing, hot metal chasms. They reeked of ozone.”

David grunted. He’d heard this before. People needed to stop saying the same things all the damned time, David thought.

“Dave, I reeked of nothing but burnt wire ends and it all wriggled through me like worms, David.” Clement spun around, leaned over, shirt crinkling and one lapel falling free of an old plastic button.

“So now you’re electric, too,” David grumbled. He’d heard this nonsense.

Clement nodded drastically, beaked nose bobbing birdlike. “The electricity’s still in me, man. Sure of it. Would’ve felt the hole a different way if it’d left my body.” Clement’s eyes glinted, went distant, and he wandered to the window. He stared over a pasty, faded green lawn, violet flowers, and black crows gibbering nonsense as they bit thrashing worms.

“Did you know that there are mechanisms that can raise your arches?” David asked. “Then you really could be a machine. Orthotics, Clement.”

Clement ground his teeth, mouth full of water. “Say, David, have you heard the humming?”

David went rigid. He rolled his eyes towards Clement, coughed gruffly. David hucked up phlegm, and he spat it on the linoleum. “What?” he managed.

Clement ground his teeth. “The humming of the wires. They’re always on, you know. Did you know how many cables are in a telephone pole? Hundreds, Dave, and all in different colors. The hum and the thrum, tangled and snagged. They’re always listening, you know, the men in the wires.”

David peered at him, his face seeming carved of oak, tense, lined, but patient. Maybe it was time.

Saint Valentine burst inside the infinite, endless mechanism, the thrumming machine that ran the universe.

David swallowed. “Let me show you something, Clement.”

Clement chewed air. “Yeah?”

David nodded, flapped to his feet. “Yeah. It’s in the garage.”

“Alright, Davey-boy.” Clement worked his jaw, and the veins of his face thrummed.

David flapped off. David crept with flapping flat feet around the corner of the hallway, Clement shuffling behind him, babbling, wobbling. Shadows extended the ceiling up and away.

“Trees are another kind of lightning,” Clement snapped. “Branching off, lighting kind of makes a mark in the sand like that, man, a glass tunnel you can take out and hold.”

David grunted. “Trees aren’t made of lightning.” He fumbled with a key.

“I saw a man electrocuted once,” Clement insisted.

“I thought you were electrocuted.”

“That too,” Clement whined.

“Fine,” David said, “But that’s still not a tree.” David managed to unlock the door, shuffled it open. He fumbled for a light switch. He wanted to finally do it. He wanted to show Clement what sat within the red curtain, endlessly purring and rumbling like a cat. David snapped on a harsh white light, illuminating the cylindrical red curtain in harsh relief. A thick black shadow splayed upon the garage door.

“TURN THAT OFF!” Clement screamed suddenly as his vision pulsed blue and violet. Brack glared at him, snapped it off.

“I said,” Brack hissed, eyes flitting about, squinting in the slight, pale light of the line under the garage door, “Turn, it, off.” He stared at the breaker box, pointed a shaking finger.

Because, earlier that morning, Clement had been walking down the street with his scuffed leather shoes. He’d reached out on impulse and grabbed a live wire dangling from a telephone pole, and screamed as he saw only patterns of white and purple.

A vivid, epileptic cacophony of flickering lights filled his vision as he screamed, fixed, jolting. A pattern like roots burned itself down in fire-tinged brown from the nape of his neck to the middle of his back, down below, and with roots dangling off, and spat with sparking wire-life.

Then Clement was spat back to the ground, ejected, flat on his back like a dead roach, smoke rolling off his body in plumes. He remembered the shape of it all, all that electricity jagging. He stared viciously up at the powerlines, at those snagged and thrumming coiled black wires.

Cussing, David flapped over. The circuit board’s switches were snapped out. Clement glowered at him from the darkness, dual globes refracting out the faint blues of the outside sky.

“Are you ready?” David asked.

Clement nodded grudgingly.

David meandered to the cylinder, brushed his hand lovingly against the velvet sea. It rippled, spun, and he walked around its circumference once. Golden light shimmered in from a dying, hated sun.

“Hurry up,” Clement snapped.

David bored into the man with his eyes. He reached into the curtain, shoved it wide. The thing breathed rhythmically, moved with thick, strumming connections, rigid and soft and palpably moving.

“A machine without electricity,” David hissed.

“I suppose it is,” Clement said. He shut his eyes tight. He could see it, now, propped against a tree, fueling it. Electrical, maybe, but in another way.

They stared at it together, crept nearer to it, and Clement got on his knees, reached his hands out, palms up. The mechanism whirred, wobbled, panted.

A metal cage rattled.

“Bark!” went a glinting brown dog, wagging its tail. “Bark, bark!”

David grinned. “A regular dog!”

The dog grinned, tongue out, panting.

Clement grinned. “A regular dog!”

“Yes!” David cried. “It is!”

Dr. Trouncey opened a door, grinned, and stepped into the room with them. “That’s what was behind the curtain!”

“Yes!” David cried out happily. “A regular dog!”

“Bark, bark!”

That was what was behind the curtain.