PIECES OR SHREDS OR THE GLITTER IT HAD BECOME
Richard St. Germain
Some creatures, all they could do was sing. But there had to be a difference when the creature that could talk chose to stop talking, and sing. One difference was that all the talking creatures within hearing distance of the creature singing paused to hear if the singer was getting it right. Most creatures went right back to what they were doing and what they were doing drowned out the singing for them, even if they were also singing, singing along with the singer, trying to get it right, trying to keep the world from leaving, from disappearing, and them with it. There were the sounds of teeth-brushing, the sounds of water going down the throat, down and down with the sounds of swallowing; there were the sounds of the avenue with all the creatures on it, the sounds of intersections with all the creatures on them slowing, but with more creatures, with more sounds, the sounds of brakes and cables and little radios that creatures had turned up too loud; there were the sounds of rooms so big that the rooms echoed even the littlest sounds, so singing certainly could not be allowed in those rooms; instead, there were the sounds of creatures making almost no sounds except to themselves. “Good morning,” they said. “Getting hot again,” they said. “Yes,” they said. They said, “Could you tidy up the conference room?” They said, “There was no answer when we came by last night. We waited almost an hour for nothing.” They said they were sorry, often, but often the creatures that heard them did not know which creatures they were saying it to, so they said it more often, just to be sure they said it to every creature they should have said it to. They took the bus, for God’s sake, to say they were sorry. Because some of the creatures—the sorriest creatures, the creatures that could not only talk and sing, but also fix fans, though belatedly—could not say they were sorry, even belatedly. They were not allowed to. They had to find something that was obviously difficult for them to do and do it until God, for their sake, told them to stop. Because He did not stop creatures from hurtling on their trajectories. They were just bodies to Him. With the world filling and emptying at the same time, they were bound to change trajectories when they ran into each other. Because some of the creatures that had been taking the bus ran into towers. Next days brought a vagueness to things that had been seen clearly when there was no brightness for creatures to speak of. Would catapults of brightness come from the “ocean” or from a different direction? Every creature gauged the brightness against lights it had seen by and things it remembered having seen in the days before creatures had asked this. Every creature had something it liked to see first thing. Teeth-brushing came later. Or during. There was spittle on windows. No one liked to see spittle on windows first thing. Because days did not always brighten on schedule. Because days did not change trajectories. Because days that had brightened on schedule had changed their trajectories forever, when they saw bodies falling, creatures hurtling with no trajectories, floors that should have stopped those bodies from accelerating, accelerating, with no one able to stop them, especially creatures brushing their teeth at a window. Because they were not God. They brushed their teeth, for God’s sake. Obviously, it was not difficult for even the sorriest creatures to brush their teeth or even, after a while, to take the bus, and after a while it was difficult for them not to brush their teeth and not to take the bus. They had to say they were sorry even though they were not allowed to, because they did not have to take the bus, but what creature wanted them to stop brushing their teeth? Even the least sorry creature chewed on something to keep its teeth clean and if it were not allowed to chew on one thing it chewed on the next thing, so it was better to let it chew on the one thing, unless you liked having every next thing chewed on. It was playing. One thing it had played with before the world disappeared survived into the next world, and them with it. The fabric that covered the armrests did not have to match. It could match other things it had chewed on. There was not one thing that some creature had not chewed on until it spilled out of that creature unrecognizable as the thing it had been, recognizable to that creature in its pieces or shreds or the glitter it had become, but mistaken by other creatures as the thing it had been. Some creatures, all they could do was chew on things, unless you took them out for a walk. The only thing that stopped them was a siren. Because they could not talk. All they could do was howl. Everything that happened in the world, happened to them. Because they could not choose. The only place they would be happy and safe was the graveyard. Because the only creatures that recognized tombstones were the persons. Everyone recognized a name on a tombstone, and if they did not recognize a name they recognized a date, and if they recognized a name and a date on a tombstone then maybe they had someone to say goodbye to. Persons were going to ask you who you had to say goodbye to. Because everyone had someone to say goodbye to. Maybe they would ask you about the dog, or say what a nice day it was if you got away from rooms and “air conditioning” to where insects were groaning and some creatures, at least, were singing or even lying in the fuzz taking a nap, where there were trees and flowers and roads no one was hurtling on, because there was nowhere to go to, there was nowhere else. Where were you going? Because I was not staying in a bunch of dusty rooms or in a lumpy graveyard while you went to San Francisco. You were going to put my favorite chewed plaything and a bowl of food and water in the van, and I was going to look out the window and maybe put my paws up on the dashboard, but I was not going to talk to you about anything, unless I had to go to the bathroom, and then you had to look, not at the body or at whatever I was doing to distract myself but from where I looked at you, you had to look into, and you would see me telling you that I was going too, that I loved you, or that I had to go to the bathroom. Or all three. You could choose. If you had to go to the bathroom, you would probably choose that I had to go to the bathroom. If you were going, you would probably choose that I was going too. If you loved me, you would probably choose that I loved you. Persons were like that. Because persons were the only creatures that talked to other persons—they were the only creatures that talked to themselves. No one wants to talk about pockets. It does not matter. Because no one wants to talk. There was nothing to talk about. There were pages on the floor. There were pages on the avenue. Creatures picked up pages and gaped at the sides they were supposed to be reading to the bottoms of, starting from the tops of, left to right. As many times as you had picked the same pages off the floor, some creature had picked the same pages off the avenue, and as many times as you had thrown the same pages to the floor, some creature had thrown the same pages to the avenue. What were they saying to you? You should have asked this about the creatures instead of the pages. You knew what the pages were saying to you. The pages would be arranged perfectly, with numbers at the bottoms and a word somewhere that would help the next keeper put them together. All the pages with the same numbers could be put together, and persons who read the pages would see all the different words their “authors” had put somewhere to separate them from pages that talked about the same things. There was a loveseat. There was a chaise lounger. There was a spice rack. Your mother could have had a loveseat for every room in Peabody, from the sounds of pages being pushed into receptacles and the sounds of receptacles being pushed down the avenue. Creatures jabbed pages with sticks that stuck to them and held them until a receptacle could be brought nearer, then the creatures jammed them in. You could do that. There was nothing you could do and nothing you could not do.