Read Online Arcane II by Nathan Shumate (Editor) - Free Book Online
Authors: Nathan Shumate (Editor)
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being sent last minute, and you got in so very late. What is this one for? Something about something, you think. Something about writing, or writing something.
You stand, feeling your aging knees pop and your spine crack as you yawn. You pull your phone from your pocket, noticing that the button on your left cuff has fallen off. The end of your sleeve flaps like dead leaves as you flip open your cell phone. Its screen is blank.
“Good luck getting reception,” a soft feminine voice says from over your shoulder. “Too deep here, too thick.”
You look for the voice’s owner, but it could have been anyone. You shuffle the sleep, heading into the flow, lugging your luggage and wondering if you will see yourself in that sea of countenances. You are, after all, just another model number.
Soon you find yourself in front of a wall-sized sign listing all the events for the day ahead, but not the date. Every seminar or panel discussion seems to have the word “ekphrasis” in it. Your eyes slide across the grid of possible entries, each one seeming to strive to snare them with their obscurity: Towards a Pseudonymic Ekphrasis, The Ekphrasic Relationship Between Viewer and Reviewer in Post-Gadamerian NeoMcLuhanism, Shifting the Haikuic Ekphrasis in Plate Tectonics, In Defense of Female Circumcision: A Feminist Ekphrasic Odyssey in Ritualistic Infant Body Modification Hosted by Rabbi Elle Whorphin. And so on.
Someone shoulders you aside, a girl you can’t stop staring at. Maybe it’s the lace-trimmed black nightgown she’s wearing that barely covers her ass––the only thing she’s wearing besides a pair of strappy silver sandals. You feel overdressed. She hands you a small card and winks before vanishing into the crowd.
You wonder how a girl dressed like that could disappear so quickly as you turn over the card, hoping it’s was the girl’s phone number. An embossed invitation beams up at you. Please join us at the hotel chapel to witness the blessed union of the manuscripts Leprosy: A Love Story and The Undefined Use of This . The happy couple is registered at Pottery Barn and Barns and Nobel. You stick the invitation in your back pocket and look around for someone to take your suitcase.
You spy a bellman pushing an empty luggage trolley across the carpeted hallway. “Excuse me,” you call. “Where do I check this?” You point to your suitcase.
“Right there, sir,” he answers, walking away from you. “Follow the signs.”
Check luggage, reads the sign that wasn’t there before. Underneath it, an arrow mounted on a disk points right. You grip your bag by its creaking, near-broken handle, and take a step in that direction. But as your second foot follows the first, from the periphery you spot movement and look again to the sign. The arrow points left.
That can’t be right, you think, realizing that it’s left, and in that irony you find some cold comfort to balm your mounting paranoia. You start again, wondering what, indeed, is left, as you step off, and once more the disk shifts––shifts right. That’s definitely not right, you think, even though it is. This sign is wrong it its rightness. You stand still and the arrow moves, pointing down this time.
You set your suitcase on the ground as you notice a bell on a small shelf next to the sign. You give the bell’s steel nipple one light tap and a panel slides open. From that black quadrangle emerges a white-gloved hand at the end of a red-piped gabardine arm. The hand grips your bag by the handle and pulls it into the wall. You watch on, helpless, as your possessions are pulled into the inky emptiness.
You stare at the open panel for what seems like an hour, until you finally decide to move on. When you turn your back you hear the snap of fingers and turn to see the gloved hand holding out a claim ticket. You take it, noting that nothing is printed on the beige cardboard tag. You turn again, and are called back again by that finger snap. The hand
You stand, feeling your aging knees pop and your spine crack as you yawn. You pull your phone from your pocket, noticing that the button on your left cuff has fallen off. The end of your sleeve flaps like dead leaves as you flip open your cell phone. Its screen is blank.
“Good luck getting reception,” a soft feminine voice says from over your shoulder. “Too deep here, too thick.”
You look for the voice’s owner, but it could have been anyone. You shuffle the sleep, heading into the flow, lugging your luggage and wondering if you will see yourself in that sea of countenances. You are, after all, just another model number.
Soon you find yourself in front of a wall-sized sign listing all the events for the day ahead, but not the date. Every seminar or panel discussion seems to have the word “ekphrasis” in it. Your eyes slide across the grid of possible entries, each one seeming to strive to snare them with their obscurity: Towards a Pseudonymic Ekphrasis, The Ekphrasic Relationship Between Viewer and Reviewer in Post-Gadamerian NeoMcLuhanism, Shifting the Haikuic Ekphrasis in Plate Tectonics, In Defense of Female Circumcision: A Feminist Ekphrasic Odyssey in Ritualistic Infant Body Modification Hosted by Rabbi Elle Whorphin. And so on.
Someone shoulders you aside, a girl you can’t stop staring at. Maybe it’s the lace-trimmed black nightgown she’s wearing that barely covers her ass––the only thing she’s wearing besides a pair of strappy silver sandals. You feel overdressed. She hands you a small card and winks before vanishing into the crowd.
You wonder how a girl dressed like that could disappear so quickly as you turn over the card, hoping it’s was the girl’s phone number. An embossed invitation beams up at you. Please join us at the hotel chapel to witness the blessed union of the manuscripts Leprosy: A Love Story and The Undefined Use of This . The happy couple is registered at Pottery Barn and Barns and Nobel. You stick the invitation in your back pocket and look around for someone to take your suitcase.
You spy a bellman pushing an empty luggage trolley across the carpeted hallway. “Excuse me,” you call. “Where do I check this?” You point to your suitcase.
“Right there, sir,” he answers, walking away from you. “Follow the signs.”
Check luggage, reads the sign that wasn’t there before. Underneath it, an arrow mounted on a disk points right. You grip your bag by its creaking, near-broken handle, and take a step in that direction. But as your second foot follows the first, from the periphery you spot movement and look again to the sign. The arrow points left.
That can’t be right, you think, realizing that it’s left, and in that irony you find some cold comfort to balm your mounting paranoia. You start again, wondering what, indeed, is left, as you step off, and once more the disk shifts––shifts right. That’s definitely not right, you think, even though it is. This sign is wrong it its rightness. You stand still and the arrow moves, pointing down this time.
You set your suitcase on the ground as you notice a bell on a small shelf next to the sign. You give the bell’s steel nipple one light tap and a panel slides open. From that black quadrangle emerges a white-gloved hand at the end of a red-piped gabardine arm. The hand grips your bag by the handle and pulls it into the wall. You watch on, helpless, as your possessions are pulled into the inky emptiness.
You stare at the open panel for what seems like an hour, until you finally decide to move on. When you turn your back you hear the snap of fingers and turn to see the gloved hand holding out a claim ticket. You take it, noting that nothing is printed on the beige cardboard tag. You turn again, and are called back again by that finger snap. The hand
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