The man without a head might have wished to nod. Instead he crossed the room again halfway toward a third wall against the outdoors, the sun and fields there. In the center of the wall he felt along the surface for a panel till it clicked. He opened the panel and pressed a button. A small hole in the film room with the father opened. The slurring film there began to thread out through the crease—through the crease into the air outside and into the air of all other things—there was a sound of skin or skins becoming slid from—cells barfing wide into the light.
The film spooled out around the building that held the room that held the father. It crept in wadding tides along the flat walls and out into the larger air, fluttered in thin ropes of darkened frame-hid color both all through the make of space and to the ground. It masked the windows of the building where heads had looked in or out on where they stood behind the pane divided. It knocked large birds out of the sky, dark bodies that as they fell dropped many eggs in clots of bombing, their half-bred babies also gone. The film gave sound in popping bubbles, scratching the surface of the concrete miles around the center of its eye. The concrete had been poured by state-named men to cover the earth over and keep all the crap and bugs and bodies or their sound from coming up—the concrete had been poured over rivers, statues, flowerbeds, and homes where homes had been before our homes now, ages interred—encasing the encased. The film slit slots in the fresh ground and went into it, spreading roots. Somewhere deep inside there it found itself again and reconnected in new frame, the father’s images rubbing in incidental friction. Through the film could squirt no light.
The film amassed around the building and mussed up quickly, building the building into some sort of slick and massive hive. From a distance the sheen of the film would reflect so much sun though you could not see—it would burn your eyes out—it would want to.
The film grew even as it burst. It grew as babble lathered in computers and as confluence under hair and tideless ocean. The film lashed across continents unseen, gushed in making new memory of its own presence, bowled over forests, wrapped through windows, undid locks. It mummy-wrapped the dead, engorged the subway system stalled and fat with bodies swollen from waves of heat, flossed the teeth of several living. As excrement it wormed into cows and birthed their young, came through TV screens and PC monitors and out through books, splashed up from coffee and other burning liquids, became tongues, became the language the tongues vibrated—it filled every inch of air of certain rooms, of certain weeks already passed and weeks uncoming. In many of the rooms the film came into there was no one left but this did not stop the film’s advance.
The film defeated sleep. It wedged as a disease into the ears of the half-conscious, wiped the goggled colors all to white, the motion there embedded back to nothing.
The bodies all woke up. The bodies moved from their beds and touched the window, looked for who had been there and who was coming. The bodies could not see beyond several feet, as if they’d remained stuck their in their own heads, their vision squashed and remaindered in the brain.
The film slid down the mouths of crying babies in their beds or in their cages, left alone in houses squashed by mice deformed and starving. The tape made loops inside their gut. The tape masked their eyeballs, made bandannas, curled into a new shining second skin. Became the child. The tape choked the elderly, slapped the deaf. Became the child. It washed through sound not known, layered in years of melted vinyl, it stroked the ceiling of soundstages, it skewered the holes in certain kind of breakfast cereal and then ate the breakfast cereal and then repackaged the breakfast cereal in better boxes, boxes more apt to get someone to touch it —had there been
The film spooled out around the building that held the room that held the father. It crept in wadding tides along the flat walls and out into the larger air, fluttered in thin ropes of darkened frame-hid color both all through the make of space and to the ground. It masked the windows of the building where heads had looked in or out on where they stood behind the pane divided. It knocked large birds out of the sky, dark bodies that as they fell dropped many eggs in clots of bombing, their half-bred babies also gone. The film gave sound in popping bubbles, scratching the surface of the concrete miles around the center of its eye. The concrete had been poured by state-named men to cover the earth over and keep all the crap and bugs and bodies or their sound from coming up—the concrete had been poured over rivers, statues, flowerbeds, and homes where homes had been before our homes now, ages interred—encasing the encased. The film slit slots in the fresh ground and went into it, spreading roots. Somewhere deep inside there it found itself again and reconnected in new frame, the father’s images rubbing in incidental friction. Through the film could squirt no light.
The film amassed around the building and mussed up quickly, building the building into some sort of slick and massive hive. From a distance the sheen of the film would reflect so much sun though you could not see—it would burn your eyes out—it would want to.
The film grew even as it burst. It grew as babble lathered in computers and as confluence under hair and tideless ocean. The film lashed across continents unseen, gushed in making new memory of its own presence, bowled over forests, wrapped through windows, undid locks. It mummy-wrapped the dead, engorged the subway system stalled and fat with bodies swollen from waves of heat, flossed the teeth of several living. As excrement it wormed into cows and birthed their young, came through TV screens and PC monitors and out through books, splashed up from coffee and other burning liquids, became tongues, became the language the tongues vibrated—it filled every inch of air of certain rooms, of certain weeks already passed and weeks uncoming. In many of the rooms the film came into there was no one left but this did not stop the film’s advance.
The film defeated sleep. It wedged as a disease into the ears of the half-conscious, wiped the goggled colors all to white, the motion there embedded back to nothing.
The bodies all woke up. The bodies moved from their beds and touched the window, looked for who had been there and who was coming. The bodies could not see beyond several feet, as if they’d remained stuck their in their own heads, their vision squashed and remaindered in the brain.
The film slid down the mouths of crying babies in their beds or in their cages, left alone in houses squashed by mice deformed and starving. The tape made loops inside their gut. The tape masked their eyeballs, made bandannas, curled into a new shining second skin. Became the child. The tape choked the elderly, slapped the deaf. Became the child. It washed through sound not known, layered in years of melted vinyl, it stroked the ceiling of soundstages, it skewered the holes in certain kind of breakfast cereal and then ate the breakfast cereal and then repackaged the breakfast cereal in better boxes, boxes more apt to get someone to touch it —had there been
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