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A Small Dog Barking (Anvil Press $18)
Mete had noticed bar codes appearing on things long before the scanners appeared
in the stores. In prison he tried to make the connection, but the iceberg it was the tip of floated just out of reach. In jail you live in your head, but Mete had always lived in his head. Jail wasn't a big change. He tried to make the connections but there were none. Church was a conspiracy to keep you from God. Families ensured you never had intimacy with anyone. Justice, a jury of your peers, just one more extinction event. Lazarus raised from the dead should not be in charge of the nursery.
One night the wrath of God trampled all over his imitation Persian rug, breaking several of his fingers, landing him in a cell where he was immediately ~aped by a chalk outline. Jail was where you were force-fed time. The biggest thing that never existed, they pushed it down your throat. It was all you had to think about, that and your crime, if you were lucky enough to have one. In the early days family visited, bringing their baskets of memories. As their visits became more strained, they wanted him to confess to the poor woman's murder. They were tired of making the trip, but naturally they denied it. Mete was glad when they stopped coming. It was like when everyone knows something they're not telling you, something they know about you, something too appalling to tell you about yourself. Tidy resolutions, adherence to irrefutable absurdities.
Just remember to take cell doors at a crouch, and the chairs kill your back if you try and relax in them, all the while trying to block the clatter out, elbowing suspicious bowls of meal. Everywhere, propaganda proclaimed that revenge had been eradicated from the face of the earth, but they never told you about the vial they'd lost somewhere in the files.
Already one parole hearing was a file folder; his test score grid didn't line up to the machine's, so they turned him down. When they told him, he just nodded like they made all the sense in the world, relaxing his muscles, taking it in. The warden had to placate the guards' union, the government mandarins, the news media, his wife. Somebody had to pay for it all.
DNA was no sooner coined when it turned up in forensics. He could see it coming and then it overtook him, like bar codes. Ambitious smalls were always making everything smaller; it was the great stone, the great uphill. What occurred occurred because of the completely unrelated connections between things. It was the warden, claiming rashly, in public, that no wrongly accused men were being held in his facility.
It was the urine sample of fate, a piece of meat on the head of a pin. Some pinching and probing, and a few tests and sword dances later, the odds were in his favour, ranging in the billions to one. The DNA tests were conclusive and the warden was out on his ass, but it took months before Mete staggered down into the valley a free man. There had been no hoopla, nobody on the outside waving in. City administration threatened him and lawyers shouted. A priest whispered that he should forgive God. And the only free shrink found him repellent.
He rented a room in his old neighbourhood and relaxed in his gonch. What it was simply went on. The public found his vague innocence troubling. Slowly he resigned himself to the traumas in the walls and the not insignificant reigns of garbage. It didn't matter; he'd become an old madman long ago, anyway.
One night after he'd turned out his lamp it all started again. He thought he was having a dream: his door flying open, six Navy seals framing him in watertight pistols. They called him a terrorist motherfucker, bound his wrists with zap-straps and were about to drag him down the stairs when a bright light in the crowd realized they were in the wrong room, on the wrong floor. This revelation was followed by a considerable pause. One of them reluctantly reached out with his bayonet and, with a flick, cut the zap-strap. Covering each other, they withdrew. A minute later there was a crash on the floor below, a cry of protest cut short. A small dog barking.
--excerpt from "A Small Dog Barking" (Anvil Press) 1-895636-69-8
in the stores. In prison he tried to make the connection, but the iceberg it was the tip of floated just out of reach. In jail you live in your head, but Mete had always lived in his head. Jail wasn't a big change. He tried to make the connections but there were none. Church was a conspiracy to keep you from God. Families ensured you never had intimacy with anyone. Justice, a jury of your peers, just one more extinction event. Lazarus raised from the dead should not be in charge of the nursery.
One night the wrath of God trampled all over his imitation Persian rug, breaking several of his fingers, landing him in a cell where he was immediately ~aped by a chalk outline. Jail was where you were force-fed time. The biggest thing that never existed, they pushed it down your throat. It was all you had to think about, that and your crime, if you were lucky enough to have one. In the early days family visited, bringing their baskets of memories. As their visits became more strained, they wanted him to confess to the poor woman's murder. They were tired of making the trip, but naturally they denied it. Mete was glad when they stopped coming. It was like when everyone knows something they're not telling you, something they know about you, something too appalling to tell you about yourself. Tidy resolutions, adherence to irrefutable absurdities.
Just remember to take cell doors at a crouch, and the chairs kill your back if you try and relax in them, all the while trying to block the clatter out, elbowing suspicious bowls of meal. Everywhere, propaganda proclaimed that revenge had been eradicated from the face of the earth, but they never told you about the vial they'd lost somewhere in the files.
Already one parole hearing was a file folder; his test score grid didn't line up to the machine's, so they turned him down. When they told him, he just nodded like they made all the sense in the world, relaxing his muscles, taking it in. The warden had to placate the guards' union, the government mandarins, the news media, his wife. Somebody had to pay for it all.
DNA was no sooner coined when it turned up in forensics. He could see it coming and then it overtook him, like bar codes. Ambitious smalls were always making everything smaller; it was the great stone, the great uphill. What occurred occurred because of the completely unrelated connections between things. It was the warden, claiming rashly, in public, that no wrongly accused men were being held in his facility.
It was the urine sample of fate, a piece of meat on the head of a pin. Some pinching and probing, and a few tests and sword dances later, the odds were in his favour, ranging in the billions to one. The DNA tests were conclusive and the warden was out on his ass, but it took months before Mete staggered down into the valley a free man. There had been no hoopla, nobody on the outside waving in. City administration threatened him and lawyers shouted. A priest whispered that he should forgive God. And the only free shrink found him repellent.
He rented a room in his old neighbourhood and relaxed in his gonch. What it was simply went on. The public found his vague innocence troubling. Slowly he resigned himself to the traumas in the walls and the not insignificant reigns of garbage. It didn't matter; he'd become an old madman long ago, anyway.
One night after he'd turned out his lamp it all started again. He thought he was having a dream: his door flying open, six Navy seals framing him in watertight pistols. They called him a terrorist motherfucker, bound his wrists with zap-straps and were about to drag him down the stairs when a bright light in the crowd realized they were in the wrong room, on the wrong floor. This revelation was followed by a considerable pause. One of them reluctantly reached out with his bayonet and, with a flick, cut the zap-strap. Covering each other, they withdrew. A minute later there was a crash on the floor below, a cry of protest cut short. A small dog barking.
--excerpt from "A Small Dog Barking" (Anvil Press) 1-895636-69-8
Submitted on April 11, 2006 in By David.
