Random Act of Authorship #1

I stepped
into the room and
I swear, it cracked. Not in any way that I am ever going to make any sense of to anyone, not in any way that I could point at and say, There, it broke there as if it was earthquake damage or the more weirdly probably hole in the wall caused by a random rare car accident. If I looked at you and said it cracked North by Northwest by Twilight Zone you would look at me

Yeah a lot like you’re looking at me now. But I do know a hawk from a handsaw even when the wind isn’t blowing, so give me some space. I’m not going to yell boo at you and make like an incipient ward of the mental community. Be lenient. I just felt a room fracture between reality here and reality somewhere else and describing it is a lot like telling somebody what that tiny something that you can only see out of the corner of your eye really, really looks like. I can’t see it straight on. I can only see it glimpse-wise. It isn’t like it has a shape or a color or a height or depth.

 Yeah, yeah, yeah, there was a noise but the sort that you only hear between your ears, sort of like the feeling you get when a nerve pinches wrong and half your head feels like it just spasmed and your tongue feels paralyzed only auditory somehow. Dissonance. Not static or white noise. Just me suddenly a quarter-step out of tune with everything. And then not, but with aftereffect, like it’s still twanging around inside of me, or that it ought to be. I want to put my feet down again and not feel like they should be stepping somehow differently, or somewhere differently. I want to hear again without feeling that weird jangly feeling like I should be hearing something else.

It was the window, I think. That was the only bit I can remember like it actually happened, even if it never actually happened. The window was the wrong color. No, not really the window, it was the light as it fell against the window. It was a different shade than the light that followed me through the door. The difference between day and late afternoon, maybe. Not darker, just not where it should have been or how it should have been. And there was someone there, someone looking in, looking at the room, looking at something and I’ll bet anything they felt that place fall apart the same way I did. But I can’t tell you who he was or what he looked like or why he felt the need to look into an empty house one very odd and fine afternoon. Just that he was there and that his eyes were very very blue and very suddenly scared and then

And then he just wasn’t there anymore, and I don’t know what happened to him at all.