§/D



11.03.2024


“In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.”
Susan Sontag

(download audio)



Lavender


(Billions Will Witness,

Millions May Die)




“Intent to Destroy is the mental condition, the means rea, codified in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on the 9th December, 1948, defining any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Intent is the most difficult aspect for prosecutors to prove, as perpetrators often fail to leave recorded statements about their intent. If the intent is not proven, the actions would likely qualify as war crimes or crimes against humanity. Perpetrators often claim that they merely sought the removal of the group from a given territory, instead of destruction…


The focus on intent has been detrimental to efforts to prevent genocide.”

This all happened years ago—I can remember, for the first time in my life, I was beginning to feel old,, as if I had noticed that my body was slowly ossifying, and my mind was weary, and I could hardly sleep, whereas now, as I recall this, in some transfiguration, I feel very young, younger than I have ever been)—some years ago I was visiting a city along the shore of a lake that was so massive it reflected only the sky. I traveled often in those days, in semi-official employment as a fixer, bringing groups of people, artists mostly, out of the city and across the country.


A friend of a friend had arranged for us to attend a party held in this new place called Lavendar. There would be musical performances and, in keeping with the fashion at the time, DJs. This friend of a friend had also arranged a tour of the place, described to us as a former meeting house for an obscure religious singing society, and later a spiritual yoga cult.


We found the place down an alleyway, and waited in front of a small iron gate, partially open, leading through an open portal knocked out of the brick facade and down a staircase.


After 20 minutes of uncertain loitering, a man with long hair and a trim beard appeared and identified himself as Molly. As he vigorously shook each person’s hand, repeating our names back to us, keen to display enthusiastic hospitality, he finally came to me and made a curious comment about my shirt, “striped like a prisoner behind bars,” he said, winking, to which I responded, “or like a forest.” And Molly gestured for us to follow him, but not before stopping once more, his finger dangling in the air—curling away from God, some lightning rod luring in an evasive thought—and he said, “as in camouflage.”


We ducked through a narrow passageway and entered into a large hall with a parquet floor. I removed my sunglasses and hung them from the neck of my shirt. A mural traversed the four walls, depicting images from various religions: the story of Jonah, visible in metanoia, kneeling in a pink cavern within a cross-section of the whale, the skeletal, digestive, and muscular systems exposed; beside this the Mahabharata, depicting the dice game in which the a royal heir gambles and loses his and his brother’s kingdom; a large scroll with hebrew text, atop which a segmented diagram, its various orbs resembling both fruits and the atoms within a molecule, the Kabbalist tree of life; and then, along a long hallway flanked by a mirror, a map depicting the discovery of the Americas by Viking war parties, their paths to Newfoundland charted with annotated lines.


Despite his bohemian hair, Molly wore the clothing of someone who grew up in a church, or at least a well-off social environment, a shirt with a collar and pleated pants and leather shoes, but his appearance was rough. As he explained the history of the house, he opened a beer or another, dangling the bottle between two fingers, and it swung lazily along to his gait.


Following the mirrored hall, we walked up another staircase, much wider, and wooden, entering into a large living room with bay windows facing a garden. A bookshelf took up the entire wall—it was the centerpiece of the room—a library containing hundreds of volumes, and many many more books stacked in tidy piles on the floor all around the space.


Molly talked excitedly about the building and its acquisition, which he had arranged for a surprisingly small sum of money. He took us out through a large door into the garden: a Chilean pine tree, a traveler palm, a yew tree, and a topiary formed around an iron glob, segmented like an orange. A rose bush climbed the facade. Turning around, we saw the building the Lavender was inside was a Romanesque, greystone mansion.


Back inside the space I browsed the books in the library. The titles all had this subtle appearance of the ordinary, but with every close inspection I found that the arrow of cognition and value of this library leaned into the world from a slighter point of view, one concerned with—taking it as granted that there are any—the revelation and management secrets: Accounts of mediums and prophets, multi-volume biographies of ascetics, practical guides for achieving enlightenment, the analysis of dreams. Synchronicity. The authors were gurus, preachers, scientists, serious men in suits, Western men who had traveled to the “east”.


I looked into a dissonance on the shelf, a blank space at my eye-level, all-white, with no name or title. In the glossy, slightly convex surface a vague disfigurement of my own face looked back at me. I drew this single book from the shelf, watching in the shimmering mirror my own palm close over the spine, the front cover similarly blank as it came free from the shelf. I heard Molly say some encouraging words—that this library was a private collection he inherited with the building—that we were free to browse, and suddenly I was self-conscious of not previously asking permission.


The group continued back down the stairs,into the basement, where now music and voices rose through the stairwell in some hymn-like register, until the doors to the living room closed, and I was left alone.


I set the book on a table. The jacket, I found, was not blank, but had been turned inside out, effaced from the room, edges taped to the board, in order to be hidden, or, perhaps the inverse: to draw a particular eye. I held it in my hand, invited.


Stored within the front cover were two items held together with a paperclip. On top was a photograph of the planet Saturn, focusing on the colors of the rings. On the back of the photograph was a handwritten date, 1968, and below, an inscription: “with intent to destroy, many more will die. Which way will we face?” 


The second item was a piece of paper folded over twice. The handwriting began with clarity, a slow and effortless penmanship, but as the writing went on, the words crammed into less and less space, the text became harder to read, until it was difficult, almost impossible to determine one word from the next. I set these materials aside and began to read the manuscript. Leaning over the table, my sunglasses fell from the neckline of my shirt, and the sudden sound caused me to jump. I collected myself, folding the plastic arms of the glasses, and placed them beside the lamp as I read. I have the testament here with me now, along with the photo, so that I can recall them in their entirety. It begins: The title at the top:



The Monkey Puzzle


The first thing that happened was I awoke to the sensation of someone tugging at the corner of my bed sheets. I turned, with great effort, rousing myself with half-conscious assurance, expecting to see someone there, but there was nobody, of course, because I live alone. I have lived alone. My house was making its noise, familiar pops and creaks, like joints settling into their sockets after a long day. Outside, there was the CTX train’s distant moan. In the living room,  the streetlamps cast oblique replicas onto the floor, an orange, primal geometry. I moved silently through the rooms, refilled my glass of water, and went back to bed. As I wrestled myself into a cocoon, I faintly recalled a sound, like bubbles popping.


You are alive forever, and the whole time, your subconscious sleeps. After the end, perhaps the opposite occurs, and you exist in the bliss of endless sleep, occasionally glimpsing a vague dream of having once been alive. Of course, there is also a common belief that both of these states of infinity and oblivion occur simultaneously, so it is not as if one or the other is real, but more so that reality is like the surface of a mirror. To look directly along the surface reveals nothing. It is only when your perspective shifts, even slightly, that you realize there is not one, but in fact two identical images.


Restlessness sticks to me. I had experienced the ordinary vignette I described earlier maybe hundreds of times throughout my life. But, thinking back, as I write this down, for it has only really been now, at this exact moment, that I began to realize that cataclysm was imminent, and I must be extremely disciplined, make up for lost time, get everything down while it is still fresh in my mind–now, thinking back, I understand that the other night was in fact the very first incident. This is how my evening went.


Ever since the first incident, I began to have paranoid, perhaps irrational thoughts about my neighbors. The family had moved in across the street. They were very kind, and made an immediate effort to establish themselves with the rest of the neighborhood. They had many children, too many for me to count or to know individually, or even their ages, impossible for me to discern, for I had never had children of my own, and could scarcely remember my own childhood as anything more than a series of curious dreams. The children would play games of their own invention. The first time I met them all together, I was on my daily walk. They were seated on a ratty couch someone had placed for collection on the curb. They would break into song at intervals, saying a single string of sounds in perfect mimicry. They called to me, asking if I was a frog or a flower. Without waiting for a response, they began to make frog noises. I will never understand why I did this, but, just then, I stopped and crouched on the ground, to their great delight, and I put my hands between my legs and opened my eyes wide and spread my lips into a frog-ish expression, and I stuck out my tongue as if to catch a fly, and the children howled in delight. Pleased with their excitement, I stood up and bowed.


Up the street, the father of these children emerged from the house. He was the sort of person that always dressed in suits, or at least what I would interpret to be a formal suit, for the fabric and the cut of his clothing was foreign to me. Cloaked in the long shadows of the afternoon, his posture and expression was of a person encased in ice. He made some brief gesture with his hands, said some inaudible words that broke through the frog-chatter, and the children became very quiet, and the children rose all together from the couch and walked in single file back to the house without saying a word. I waved to the father, embarrassed, for what if he had seen my little performance? And he nodded back at me, indicating nothing other than the fact that he knew I was there.


My sleep became restless. I began to suspect my memory was faltering, or perhaps that I had begun to sleepwalk. I awoke one night to refill my water glass to find half a cake resting on the kitchen table, saying “happy…” with three ellipses. Another night the sound of the dishwasher woke me—I had no recollection of setting it, although I was in the habit of letting it run as I went to bed—and later when the cycle was complete I opened the machine to find it had been filled with socks and underwear. One morning on my way out the door I paused, sniffing the air, and in my shock the oven had been on for who knows how long. For days afterwards, I would not light a candle, for I swore the smell of gas was present in the house. I called the power company and a man came through, waving an instrument back and forth, nodding to himself, concluding that there was no leak present in the house. Another night, I woke to a fly buzzing around my head. I turned on my lamp and discovered many more circling the lampshade. I went into the kitchen and to my horror I found hundreds of flies making their mirthful jamboree across every surface and ceiling. So many flies I could feel their bodies tickling my bare soles as they hastened to escape from beneath my footsteps. In a rage, I spent hours dispatching them one by one, using every method at my disposal. I opened the door and waved them out with a towel, I stunned them with a spray of water when they landed to rest, I swung my rolled up magazine like a madman wielding a machete, and afterwards I inspected every inch of the place, taking all of the plants out onto the porch, breaking out yellow gloves and then scrubbing the corners and baseboards and nooks until the sun rose.


As much as I questioned my own sanity, I had to wonder: was I being pranked? I found a bracelet on one of my couch cushions, the kind made of string beads, tied by hand, with purple stars and moons. In the center of the bracelet was a daisy. For fear of arousing concern, I immediately threw the bracelet away, telling nobody, for what thoughts would cross the father’s mind if I walked right up to his door and said, “hello, well, this is quite awkward, but I wonder if this bracelet I found inside my house belongs to any of your children?” After all, it was possible that I may have left the back door unlocked one day, and perhaps they were curious.


I lay in bed that night, thinking about the appearance of the bracelet, its presence like some puzzle or game, the incongruous but benign object that stirred panic within me, simply because it couldn’t be explained. At some point I fell asleep. I again experienced the familiar night terror that something was tugging at the edge of my bed, bidding me to awaken. I could not turn to see who was there. I was simply a mind inside of a body, having no control over it, my limp fingers touching the fabric, without moving my eyes, vision cast inside the dark theater of my skull, a strange illusion of complete sight, as if I were a nervous ungulate with eyes spread on either side of my head, observing an almost complete image of my room, a procession of small, dark figures moving to surround my bed, hands clasped in a chain, if they were hands, because I could not glimpse the details of their extremities, the number of limbs, how many of them talking among themselves in a low chatter. I tried to stir, straining with great effort as if to move a rock that was crushing me, rousing myself with half-conscious assurance, expecting to see someone there, the vacant faces of the children close enough that I could hear their tiny breaths, mouths murmuring, smacking their lips, bubbles popping… 


—- audio break —-----


After this, the writing became increasingly illegible, until it no longer consisted of characters from any recognizable alphabet at all, but little circular sketches overlapping until they ran off the bottom of the page. I folded the manuscript along the same lines as before, and placed the paper, along with the photograph, in the pocket of my jacket. I put the book back on the shelf. By now, darkness had fallen outside, and the room was illuminated by a single lamp on the table where I had conducted my reading, the green Tiffany glass causing the furniture to glow with an alien discoloration. I felt a strong urge to be outside, and I crossed the room, sensing a sudden vulnerability, strange as it was that I was alone in an enormous house full of people. When I reached the door, I realized–all of that trouble, and the book! I never looked at the cover. So I went back. To the shelf, drew it again, and laid the book back on the table. I drew each flap back, closed the book again, and set it aside. The front cover depicted an eye, or, perhaps more specifically, a mandorla, set within a red triangle. The title read:


“The New Self-Hypnosis”

by Paul Adams

With a forward by William Joseph Bryan Jr.   

Founder of the American Institute of Hypnosis


The back cover contained a photo of the author, as well as further testament by Bryan. “Having been the first medical doctor to specialize in the use of hypnosis in the United States, I know better than most of the difficulties of applying self-hypnosis. I believe that Dr. Adams has written a very clear and understandable book which takes the mystery out of the phenomenon.”


Outside, I lit a cigarette for a woman, and we began to talk idly about the unusual venue. She had never been there. Neither had I. I mentioned my tour of the library, and we traded knowing expressions. I repeated what I had found earlier, and she took time to smoke, watching people come and go from the basement entrance, before saying “William Bryan is one of those unusual American characters. He essentially invented hypnosis as a quasi-scientific practice. He worked closely with the CIA. His name is listed in MKUltra disclosures, associated with Project Paperclip, the mass exodus of Nazi scientists from Germany to the US in the wake of World War II. During the cold war, there was a lot of interest in hypnotic and drug-related methods of remote control. Brainwashing. Sleeper agents. They drank the kool-aid, so to speak. But Bryan managed to find some fame for coercing serial killers to confess to their crime under hypnosis.”


What happened to him?


He was canceled, I guess you could say. Accused of molesting multiple female patients. Struck from the record. And then he died some years later in a hotel room.


You make it sound conspiratorial.


Well, it gets conspiratorial. Like I said, there was a lot of interest in quackery back then, same as now. You heard of Xavier Von Koss? He was a hypnotist as well. A scientist and a preacher, brought over during nazi relocation by project paperclip. He set up a practice in Los Angeles, promising some of the usual spiritual epiphanies. Guess who went to visit him? James Earl Ray. The man who assassinated MLK. Some people go further, saying that Sirhan Sirhan, the guy who killed RFK, was also under the influence of hypnosis.


I couldn’t resist commenting on this fortuitous exchange. You sound like an expert. You said this was your first time here?


She said: I’m no expert. I wrote a personal essay about it, or a dramatization of sorts.


What made it personal?


You can read it if you want. It was for my MFA program. Based on some things that happened at my high school, way back in the day. Another town. Another life.


She made a silent gesture for me to take out my phone, and in the browser typed in a link to her personal website: a sky blue background, a thumbnail of her own face, slightly more youthful, her hair and makeup different, with ordinary, professional links below to Biography, Work, CV, Contact Me.


It’s that one, she said, pointing at the screen. The Somnambulist. The text was black.


Hold on, she said. I removed the hyperlink. Taking my phone, she manually amended the URL, loading the hidden web page. She let her cigarette butt fall to the ground. Enjoy, I’m going back inside.


Why did you remove the link? I asked.


She turned at the entrance, leaning on the brick. Out of respect, she said. The case was closed. You’ll see.


The Somnambulist


The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 German silent horror film, what Chicago Reader critic Roger Ebert calls “The first true horror film”. The film is notable for its imaginative set design, making use of bizarre, expressionist forms, hastily constructed as if in preparation for a small-budget theater drama, to display a village gripped by dread. In the film, the titular Dr. Caligari is a master hypnotist, who brainwashes a sleepwalker into committing a series of murders. In reality, the film’s frame structure leads us to the conclusion that the entire plot is merely a flashback—the audience has glimpsed the delusion of an asylum patient. Dr. Caligari’s legacy is inseparable from that of the Weimar Republic, and its release in the wake of World War One invites commentary into the state of mind of the German people preceding the rise of Adolf Hitler, culminating in the Reichstag Fire of February 27, 1933, which Hitler took advantage of to further consolidate power and establish the tyranny of Nazi Germany. Many Weimar films display eerie prescience, depicting madness, insanity, and absolute authority that corrupts an otherwise innocent population, who are powerless to resist or revolt.


I attended high school with Lily Jager, who during my junior year was arrested and charged with three murders, all occurring within the span of a week in May 2012, days before Lily was scheduled to graduate high school: Francis Wilson, an itinerant laborer who was, at the time homeless and living underneath a bridge overpass; Adele Moscowitz, another classmate of ours; and Shane Thomas, a 22 year old electrical engineer. The following is an adaptation from memory of my own testimony to the court during Jager’s trial, recorded on August 13th, 2012.






—-----------------------------------------------


I finished reading the girl’s story, hunched over my phone, and as I returned to the world I realized I was once again alone, standing outside of the temple while music, intense as an argument heard through apartment walls, wailed inside. I decided to head home immediately, without letting the rest of the group know, since I could easily send them a text message and be on my way, I would be fine to walk home alone, I had done it many times. I instinctually patted my pockets, taking stock of my belongings, and I stroked my ear lobe, realizing I had left my sunglasses in the mansion, on the table next to the green lamp.


I went back inside and made my way through the crowd. The temple was unrecognizable, full as it was of people in all kinds of dress, some in costume, some looking as if they had come straight from their jobs, as cashiers, custodians, restaurant servers, plumbers, laborers, lawyers, and even a few chefs, and of course the black denim and band shirt, the uniform of the underground, all of these people parting just slightly to let me through, sometimes holding drinks high in the air if there was not much space, forming the tunnel arch of a bridge with their arms, shimmying in an invitation to dance, the passive smile of bliss and oblivion, and threaded through this was the hum of incredible bass, an almost purely physical sensation with no sonic color, so that my clothing rippled, and in between the channels of air broken up by each dancer, the empty bass-less room began to form a sort of percussive syncopation, an ascension of air that gave the illusion of tones rising and falling, as if airplanes were taking off and landing within the room.


At the top of the stairs, I found the door to the library locked. I was in such disbelief that I tried the door again, and then stood there dimly, considering whether to knock. Sunglasses being sunglasses, I turned to leave. Molly was standing directly behind me.


Sneaking around in my house? He asked.


I left something in there.


He smiled and produced a ring of keys. Of course, he said. Just trying to control the flow of people. He unlocked the door and gestured for me to enter ahead of him. Let’s get your sunglasses, he said.


Everything was as it had been, but the table surfaces were covered in many more bottles, of beer, energy drinks, wadded up napkins, and plastic bags and paraphernalia of many unidentifiable party favors, so people had been coming and going, but there were my sunglasses. Molly went to the fridge and produced two beers. Handing me one, he theatrically fell back into a leather recliner.


This is quite the place, I said.


Molly smiled at me. You’re different, he said.


Sure.


I notice these sorts of things, he said. We stood there, looking at each other. I wondered what he could have meant, but I kept my gaze and steady and my mouth closed, for it appeared, just for a moment, that we had begun to play a sort of game.


Molly continued: you’re a little bit of a sociopath, aren’t you? He was smiling with his teeth, pointing the neck of the beer bottle in my direction, a knowing expression in his eyes, like he had been waiting all night to disclose to me some secret, now that we were both in private, and I felt no threat in his body language, nor in his eyes, which had no sparkle except for the , inviting me to run away, to leave right now, but knowing that I would not, because whatever Molly had to say, he knew I would listen.


Perhaps evasively, I said: I’ve considered this before. I think everyone does. You read the symptoms and you start to worry about yourself. I laughed. That’s me, right?


Hey, look, no big deal. I can see it in your eyes. I know. Even right now, you’re scanning me. You look at everything, like an animal. I’m a bit of a sociopath, too. It’s okay, he said. We get by, right? In fact, we do better than get by.


I’m sure there’s a storm inside me, I said, trying to ride the conversation while remaining noncommittal to Molly’s strange interrogation, because I began to suspect that, like the bottle that continuously swung from his wrist, this stream of consciousness was about something else, and the more I listened, the more he may reveal.


Have you ever thought about killing a person? He asked.


In a Homer Simpson sort of way, I said.


Well the way I mean, said Molly, is more like: have you ever wondered how you would feel after you kill a person.


I’ve made my commitment, regardless of how I feel, or what stray thoughts enter my mind.


What are you committed to?


Love.


Ha! This was funny to him. But the laugh was forced. It was a toy laugh—the boisterous gesture of a stage actor. Hey, me too, brother, believe me! It’s hard to love everybody, though. Isn’t it? I mean, 99% of people, people are people are people: they’re good. They’re harmless. But don’t you think there are some people that don’t deserve to be here?


I think that every person’s hell is one of their own making. You commit to your path, you commit to your eternity on Earth: in the face of love you see only love reflected back at you; likewise if you gaze into hell, you will see it reflected on your face.


Molly fiddled with his beer, pantomiming curiosity. He swished thoughts around in his drunken head. That may be true, he said. But in the meantime, millions will die. How many millions? Some individuals, people like us, like you and me, we are set apart from the rest. Maybe we’ve been chosen—because we’re different, or merely because we believe ourselves to be different—so we self-select, in that sense, we decide to take decisive action that others aren’t willing to take.


How do you decide?

Philosophically, you must consider a great deal of variables. In practical terms, these days, it’s computer-assisted. 


My initial uneasiness with the tone and content of the conversation began to subside. I was witnessing a practiced performance. The rant of the powerless. I decided to wrap things up and get out of there. I think mercy is a decisive action many are not willing to take, I said.


I know you see it, said Molly. You notice it in the faces of others. Fear, panic, denial. Fear is natural. But panic…is this an affliction of the ego? Am I in imminent danger? Are you? Is anybody else aware that we are all in imminent danger? The animal sense of fear fattens in the stomach until it fills the throat. It is a sense of purpose–something must be done right now. But something must be done by you, is the dictum of fear: thy will be done, an apple is suddenly inside of you, you sense that a predator is nearby, such a feeling is to be given wings. But panic does not fly. Panic is the opposite of knowing, that the world is real, that you may look at your neighbor and see yourself reflected in their eyes: panic is a slackening, of real, of the possibility that anything can be done.


Are we still talking about me? I asked.


If you want to know more, I can show you. A guy burst into the room, and flopped onto the couch.


He’s heard all this, said Molly.


And what do you think, I said?


The man on the couch waved me off. Don’t get him riled up, he said.


It’s late, said Molly. He led me to the door. As I crossed the threshold, he gripped my shoulder in a brotherly gesture, and said: have you ever shot a gun before?


No, I said.


You should learn. His eyes betrayed nothing. I met his gaze as one might stare into the depths of a cave.


My story begins now, after leaving Lavender. As I wandered, legs leaden and moving mechanically, I began to experience a strange waking dream, as if I were no longer inside my body, but witnessing everything from above: I saw that I was seated in a large theater, witnessing a completely different event unfold in a foreign place that was inexplicably native to this new body, and from these new eyes I watched with the metacognition of an animal that knows nothing of itself or the world in the mechanical terms of the world, yet comprehends everything as it is natural, and has no doubt, and no awareness of limitation or law, and I watched with curiosity as the story unfolded, as if I were merely a passive audience in this strange waking dream. This is my story, the night of


The Hound


A lens reflex: the pinhole opened and filled the theater with light. For a single moment, the audience was visible, cached in their seats laid in velvet arcs, every face attentive towards the stage. A single individual, dressed in black, sat and played a black piano that sucked up the light from the pinhole and plunged the theater back into darkness. Every time the player hit a low C sharp, a mechanism attached to the hammer opened the pinhole bored into the side of the piano, and the entire theater filled with light for a single moment, and everyone was visible, trying their best to understand the impossible passion of music, each low C sharp threaded through a vellum membrane of light arpeggios, the player leaning heavily on the use of the sustain pedal to coax the fleet of keys higher, until the entire piano seemed to tremble with resonance, the low C sharp a simulacrum of other C sharps growing thinner and thinner in the mounting orogeny of the arpeggio, reaching towards the thin air accumulated in the apex of the theater, where a person would likely never go, the ceiling that collects music carried by air as a condenser collects vapor, framed by a moulded medallion painted to suggest the presence of an eternal blue sky because the pedals and leaves that unfurled from the ornamental center, while down below the player leaned a little heavy on the sustain, a little heavy for the Hound's taste, not that he knew much about the performance of music, or of this particular piece, which was the opening number in a concert dedicated to a Japanese composer who was supposed to be in attendance, but could not, unfortunately, it was revealed before the performer took the stage, the composer was unable to attend for undisclosed reasons, and so the show went on, as the Hound watched, and waited for his tail to indicate the mark. Airplane landing in a grass field formed by a controlled burn in the inaccessible reaches of a dense forest, thought the Hound as the music raised and lowered its volume, a barrage of sustained notes punctuated by a low C sharp in tandem with the muzzle flash of a pinhole camera, the artifacts of the audience projected onto the purple darkness like blots of algae growing on dark, wet rocks. The Hound sat with their left hand holding their right wrist, hands in their lap, a demeanor quiet and open to absorbing the music, the curious absence of the composer stood out in the Hound's mind despite the fact that they had not recognized the composer's name, and even then, it was a packed house tonight.


Behind the Hound, the breath of the tail who had been sitting there in a similar posture, quiet and enthralled by the hypnagogic bluster of the music, despite this not being the point of the evening, the music or the concert or the composer, whose name the Hound's tail likewise did not recognize--the tail leaned forward and his breath enveloped the Hound's right ear as the tail prepared his instructions. The tail wasn't much of a fan of classical concerts. The Hound was aware the tail occasionally attended heavy metal shows, though this had no bearing on their professional relationship, and in fact the Hound tried their best to forget this knowledge, because in their business, personal knowledge was sacred. Not only that, it was dangerous. Knowing too much was dangerous.


Vertical striped shirt. Poplin, sports collar. Did you see it?

No.

Check again in a few measures. One row up. Your two o clock.


The Hound nodded, although the tail would not have seen them nod, nor would he acknowledge it, because the two did not know each other, and had never met before, and would never face each other, and would, hopefully, never encounter each other again.


The piece had a languishing tempo--there was no way of telling whether the player had turned a page, or even finished repeating the same phrase, a mountainous landscape of arpeggios crossing over hands--and the Hound counted three of the sixteen measures it would take for another low C sharp to trigger the flash bulb, a melancholy and minor key composition accompanied by photographs of the audience taken by a pinhole camera enmeshed in the piano itself. When the theater blinked--because that is what it felt like at this point, to blink while staring intently into a burning bulb--the Hound glanced to his right and saw the mark, a man with a striped shirt collar, although this was not in itself the distinguishing characteristic, because the Hound would have correctly identified this individual as their mark no matter what description was given, it was, in the end, simply the encouragement of the tail that set him on the right track, and the Hound registered the mark as the theater settled into darkness and every dyad of pupils widened in excitement, engorged with darkness, elegant and complete, the piece careening into a cacophony of atonal notes, like a slew of rocks clattering down a mountainside. In the darkness the Hound saw people rise from the seats to let someone pass into the aisle and after the mark passed by with his head lowered, following the red strips of light inserting into the floor for the safety of the theater patrons, the Hound also rose and began to follow at a safe distance.


The mark lingered in the lobby of the theater, standing idly underneath the chandelier with his figure reflected in both mirrors on either side of the wall, and the Hound stood in the dark theater and watched the mark through the crack in the door and listened to the music, which began to resolve, possibly, approaching an understated climax, but still seemed to patter and threaten complete ablution, a bleached and unsatisfying climax. Despite the occasional sense of bewilderment with these more contemporary pieces, the Hound enjoyed the theater. The work was good too, there was no doubt about it, it kept the Hound out of the house, on their feet, and the fact that most of the work took place in a theater was a plus, because the Hound had learned a considerable amount about music in the process. Music, especially acoustic music, whether it was on piano, or strings, or woodwinds, which the Hound had come to understand was their favorite sound—not quite like the human voice, but more evocative of some alien speech, like the cries of birds searching for one another—this was a new experience, and it was strange and bewildering, not just because it was so complex and varied, but the feeling in itself of discovering something new, this late in life, not that the Hound was old, but that they felt old, for sure, overworked and undercompensated, another person lost in the flood of commuters that facelessly stalked the night beneath the street signs and subway stations. The music was a chance to learn, and the work was pleasant enough, though the hours were strange, and there were certain dangers involved, too, of course.


The Hound patted their right breast, instinctually, confirmed the familiar silhouette of their weapon concealed beneath a respectable but ultimately unmemorable wool sport coat. The Hound has always held a pen in their right hand, from childhood, right-hand dominant, but when they began training at the shooting range, the instructor corrected the Hound's uncertain shot by having them hold the gun in their left. Of course it worked--the Hounds shot came true and they began to strike targets definitively, without the luck of an amateur. The Hound learned that they had a tremor on their right side, in the hand and the arm and potentially also the thigh and leg. They had never known this. It wasn't exactly a debilitating tremor, but in a situation as dire as an armed standoff, which had never occurred, the Hound had never even had to chamber and aim the weapon, though they kept it loaded at all times, at the urging of the tail...this thought makes them cross themselves once, twice for good measure, a superstitious gesture that for the Hound has no basis in religion or tradition.


In the end, though, the introduction of firearms into the Hounds life came to represent not a sense of empowerment, but a loss of confidence, specifically in the right arm, the formerly dominant one, and to some extent the body as a whole, since this revelation seemed to spread, like a sinister disease, withering the Hound's spirit, though they took great pains to look on the bright side, to hear the music for what it was, a joyous noise, as they say. So the Hound kept their weapon strapped to their chest, on the right side, at all times. Over time, the Hound found themselves compensating for the unexpected weight of the weapon. This presented problems of its own: a person is instantly recognizable by their gait. Many fail to account for this. Few are aware that they walk like themselves and themselves alone. But then again, few people are followed.


The mark turned to leave the theater. When he was enshrouded in the vestibule, the Hound began their pursuit, leaving the music behind. The Hound kept a safe distance of about a hundred paces, which at this time was conservative, since it was the hour after dinner, and though most of the shows and events in the neighborhood had yet to release the full berth of their crowds onto the street, there were still people milling about, a sort of arpeggio of sharps and flats, accidental people, some still figuring their way, but nonetheless a screen of faces that Hound hid behind as he tailed the mark for six blocks south, passing familiar restaurants, on one occasion the building of a close friend, whose eleventh floor apartment overlooked that very street, although it would have been impossible for this friend to notice the Hound in their suit, which was not a typical garment their circle of friends knew them by--a work uniform, if you will--and against the Hound's best guesses, the mark continued south, for a further three blocks, the Hound occasionally pausing in front of shop windows and affecting an air of dérive in order to maintain their distance, with the occasional red light and intermittent crossing signals.


When the mark rounded a corner and headed west, towards the warehouse district, the evening crowd thinned out and it was just the street and the mark and some lone cars shoring up the sidewalk against steam that poured out of vents from the subterranean automatons of the sleepy city. The Hound took a moment at the corner to stop and light a cigarette, in order to appear inattentive. Society understands the cigarette to be a fixation of the ego. Someone who smokes, as the thinking goes, would be too preoccupied to engage in pursuit of prey.


The mental condition of the pursuer, according to the Hound’s training, is a state of shared mind with the prey. Ancient cultures from around the world have spoken at length about the mutual relationship between the tracker and its prey, because it is not so simple as catching up, this is not the sort of predation a human excels at, but rather the slow, stalking pursuit, a sort of morbid dance: the hound and the mark have entered a single, shared, experience, both attempting to coax the course of fate towards opposing outcomes. Escape or capture.


The mark continued to walk, keeping the exact same pace, not quite a rush, but faster than a stroll, a determined gait with an assurance of its surroundings. Soon, the binary pair were no longer in an area of the city The Hound recognized. The warehouses had given way to ruins, broken structures, exposed rebar and slabs of concrete blocking the sidewalk, papers, clothing, the ordinary contents of kitchens and living rooms lay on the street. The Hound’s focus began to weaken. They glanced down side streets, risking losing the mark, overcome with tension, for it seemed as if entire blocks in all directions had been laid to waste, the signs of what were once businesses covered in ash, intact homes were visible in the craters carved out of the upper floors of the few buildings that still stood, as if a terrible wind had brought devastation down from the sky. The surface of the ground became muddy and rolled as if down a hillside. The Hound followed its mark down and back up the walls of craters that were so large, the city was no longer visible from the base, and the black sky was framed by a faint orange halo of light pollution settling on the wreckage like snow. It was as if they had left the surface of the Earth, and in these craters there was no sign that there had ever been a world.


Rising to the edge of a high crest, the slope so steep that the Hound had to scramble bent over, clothes dirtied by the mud, beneath which a sensation that hands were reaching out to grab theirs, each step like an embrace, the dim light of the stars revealed a featureless, barren landscape of craters that extended into darkness, so complete that the holes became as imperceptible as cells of human skin as they receded into the horizon.


In the depths of this ruinous expanse, the Hound watched the mark, small as a tick, approach a hut that stood in the basin of a crater, visible only when a door opened to reveal its interior. The lone figure embraced a woman, then a child, and the door closed behind them. The Hound waited for some time, before turning to walk back the way they had come. After this there was no music, no sound, even the wind held its breath.