May 26, 2005

A year ago Dave said, “Write me a story — I want to profit from your brilliance.” And I said, “Dave, I usually don’t write stories but for you I’ll make an exception.” The story I wrote is ass, literally. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to write fiction. I am one of them. The story goes like this:

You’re troubled by the vacant stare reflected in the cracked mirror lying at your feet. The face is undoubtedly yours, perhaps more tired and dusty, but the harsh light makes your eyes look dead. Suddenly, you crush the mirror under your heal and the bright sunlight explodes in a million fragments of light on the dusty pavement.

“You can’t change a person,” you say loudly to no one, “at least not where it really matters.” You haven’t changed in years, not since she spat on your shoes and ran out into the rain, not even a raincoat on to keep her dry. In this strange country, wearing your strange tourist clothes and tired eyes, you look slightly altered, taller even, but that’s not enough to make a difference. You were an asshole then, and you’re still an asshole now.

You walk away from crushed mirror, feeling lost and ecstatic at the thought of being lost. Lost is what you have instead of something more permanent or meaningful. Lost makes you feel adventurous and free, and you quickly leap up the white set of stairs in front of you.

These steps, like the ones before, lead to the same intricate passages, endlessly twisting and endlessly similar. All the whitewashed walls look the same in that impossible, blinding sunlight. You fear that you’re running in circles, but you’re reassured when you see that the passages are getting narrower.

You’d gladly ask for directions back to the plaza, even though you don’t speak the language and you don’t like the locals. Unfortunately, you haven’t seen anyone in hours, not even a kid into whose hand you could shove a few miserable banknotes to lead you back.

You quicken your pace, tired of finding the same monotonous passages and desolate doorways leading to yet more stairs and you quicken your pace. With your left hand you wipe away the sweat from the corners of your eyes.

When you open your eyes you see another flight of stairs and you run up two stairs at a time. The stairs lead you into a courtyard, enclosed by the same immaculate walls. And in the courtyard, a man stands on top of an improbably long ladder and paints a window. He’s the first person you’ve seen since breakfast and you smile broadly.

You approach him eagerly and realize that he’s not actually painting a window but an elaborate mural. The window in the picture looks real enough to jump through: the sky is dazzling blue, and leafy branches grow wildly on the other side.

The painter ignores you as you stand puzzled at the foot of his ladder. After painting another perfect streak of blue, he stops to admire his sky. The window is almost complete. You are thirsty and tired.

“Hello!” you shout, a bit too loudly, at the man standing above you. His brush touches the wall again to paint a puffy cloud in the background. Ordinarily, you’d stop to admire his concentration, but right now you simply want to find your way back to the hotel.

“Which way? Out?” you scream hoping he has at least a rudimentary grasp of English.

“Hotel!” you say as he enlarges the puffy cloud in his painted sky, still oblivious to your existence. You’re about to shake the ladder when he puts down his paintbrush and extends one bony arm towards the left corner of the courtyard.

He looks down at you, still pointing, and smiles. Reassured, you smile back and wave your hand, and for a second you consider kicking his ladder just to see the look on his face.

But instead you run towards the end of the courtyard, and oh, the look of disbelief when you encounter yet another solid wall! Tears of frustration mix with sweat in the corners of your eyes, and you wipe them away again brusquely and run along the wall looking for some sort of crack through which you might crawl. The whitewashed wall is imposing and unmoving, even when punched repeatedly.

Determined to finally kick down his ladder, you run back towards the painter. By now he finished painting the cloud and the window and he sits at the foot of the ladder methodically cleaning his hands. The window looks real and exquisite, and even that painted cloud looks as though it’s about to fly away. You want to strangle him.

“You lied!” you shout at him even though he’s standing only a foot away from you.

“Yes.” He looks tired, or maybe just bored. You’re a bit taken aback and soften your voice.

“Why?”

“If there was a door there, and there isn’t, it would only lead to your old self and still nothing would change. I wanted to paint you one, but you came here looking for something different, some spark of life that you once had inside you.”

He drops the rag in the dust and climbs up the ladder as you watch, speechless. Once he reaches the painted window, he extends his arm confidently, grabs the latch painted on the wall, and with a slight tug opens the window. You can feel a light breeze wash over you, and you grab the ladder putting your foot on the first rung.

“Stop,” you say, “come back!”

He puts one foot over the ledge and smiles sadly at you. You begin to climb after him, with a look of desperation in your eyes. Elegantly, he shifts his weight, kicks the ladder away and flies out the window, over the branches, and into the painted sky.

Dazzled by your fall, you quickly jump on your feet even before he disappears into the painted cloud, and lean the ladder against the wall. Ignoring the pain in your leg you climb after him, determined to find a way out. Once on top of the ladder, you get to verify that the window is merely painted on, the latch just a dark line of paint against the blue sky. The window refuses to open even when confronted by your fists.

You want to scream, but you decide it won’t do any good. On the painted window you find a note: “Only By Going In Will You Find A Way Out.”

“In?” you wonder as you climb down the steps gingerly, the note clutched in your hand. You decided that you dislike the painter for leaving you such puzzling notes and audaciously flying out a painted window. Once you reach the ground, you finally kick the ladder, and it falls, like before, with a loud thump raising dust into the air.

Leaning against the wall, you unbuckle your pants to have a closer look at your injured leg. Your hip is bleeding and bruised. Suddenly you feel indescribably sad, tears swelling up in your eyes and your lips quivering uncontrollably. For some reason, you start thinking about her, before she spit on your shoes, and how she often tried to make you feel better by playing with your genitals and anus.

In a moment of intuition, you squat on the ground and gently press a finger against your anus. Pretty soon you have two, then three saliva coated fingers probing your insides, and it doesn’t take you long before you can insert your whole hand into your orifice. You bend over and to your surprise you find that you can fit your head between your legs.

“Only by going in will you find a way out,” you repeat the painter’s advice, staring prudently at your cavity. You have to let go of everything you think possible, and because your back hurts rather intolerably, you pull your shoulder between your legs with a giant heave you plunge your head in while holding your anus open with both hands.

Your insides are dark and moist, and you pause to allow your eyes to adjust to your darkness before proceeding further. You push your neck in as well, and find that with a bit of effort you can also pull in your arms. Crawling forward on your elbows is difficult at first, but gets easier as the passage gets more slippery.

You finally manage to pull your legs in, and you search into your shirt pocket for a flashlight. Once you turn it on, you notice a pair of legs stuck ahead of you. Startled — you didn’t think anyone crawled up here before — you edge forward cautiously just to be kicked in the head by one of the legs.

You are mortified when you realize that the painter has crawled in here ahead of you when you weren’t looking, and is now proceeding to kick you in the head repeatedly.

“I didn’t think you’d make it here, but I’m glad you did,” he says as he delivers another blow.

You reach up and grab his foot, but he quickly yanks it away and start climbing further up your bowels. You chase him, but the stench coming from the painter or your lower intestines (you can’t be sure), is slowing you down. Somehow, you manage to lose sight of him as you make your way through the endlessly twisty passages, all alike. Deep within, you can hear the steady pulse of your heart shaking your blood — you almost forgot you had one.

It takes you a while to reach a relatively large opening (the stomach you decide), and you continue climbing up though the oesophagus, until finally, and much to your surprise, you see the light at the end of the tunnel. That’s about all you can see as you’re vomited out on the pavement. Oblivion.

You open your eyes to see the sun going down and the painter squatting at the end of the courtyard painting you a door. “No need,” you say, smiling at him and wiping off your shit and vomit. You feel like a changed man as once more you lean the ladder against the wall and climb towards the window. This time, you’re sure you can fly even through a painted window or a slightly parted anus.

Update: an edited and expanded version is now available.

Posted by Tudor at 11:55 PM in Writing & the Media | TrackBack