Words Without Paper, Part I

Sound poured through the air and into the ears of the congregation from the church bells. Osmond Panithel listened to their beautifully clear rings, then turned towards the altar. He bent one knee before turning and entering the pew, glancing at the program in his hand as he sat. A few moments of studying the “Upcoming Events” section, and he closed it again, placing it gently on the side and lowering a kneeler with his foot. For a few moments he knelt down in silent, personal prayer.

He prayed for himself. He prayed for others. He prayed for the church and all in it, and a part of it. He prayed for wisdom and guidance. After a brief sigh and a glance up at the altar, he whispered an “Amen,” audible only to himself and to whom he spoke. Sitting down upon the pew again, his hands flipping through the pages of a hymnal, he awaited the beginning of the worship service.

Osmond lived for Sundays. There was something, he determined, about a group of people coming together with the single purpose of connecting with the Lord the God of all. It had an imperfect beauty in it. He could think of no place better than this church, a church filled with gloriously bright stained glass windows on either side with an altar of brilliant colors according to the religious season. The pews shone with cleanliness; the rich red carpet had not a stain nor speck resting upon it; the building had an air of warmth all around it. It was both immense and comforting.

He had the distinct feeling of someone other than the Lord watching over him, and turned his head left.

“Hi!” said Dalyn, briefly raising his fingers from his hymnal in a short greeting.

“Good morning,” said Osmond, extending a hand. Dalyn shook it and beamed at him.

“Yes, it’s rather nice, isn’t it?” he said joyfully.

“It’s a shame it’s raining.”

“Pity.” He turned back to the altar.

And indeed it was. To be more accurate, it was damn well pouring rain. The normally brightly lit church took on a tinge of deep blue as sheets of water beat against the windows. Dalyn’s drenched raincoat lay beside him, with a small notebook in an inside pocket kept dry.

Eventually the service began, after a few more minutes of greeting arrivals. The building was nearly empty. Dalyn certainly heard the service, and repeated exactly what he had to say, but to him it wasn’t the focus of his attention. Instead, he found himself looking at the handful of people in the church, watching their heads carefully. At times, when he concentrated enough, he could see a faint glow around them. No color, just enough to know that it was there.

Halfway through the service he turned towards Panithel again as they both knelt down. He’d never really paid attention to the man before, with the exception of a quick greeting before services. Now he could see a faint neon orange around him, quite possibly in the midst of many other colors swirling around in the thin line that he couldn’t distinguish.

Dalyn found the auras intriguing. He couldn’t quite describe it—more accurately speaking, being he was a poet, he probably could, because that’s just what poets do—but it felt as if the smallest crack had been made in his image of the world; a small distortion he could not understand, but nevertheless remained there.

***

Nick was sitting quite comfortably. Leaning against the wall behind him, he reached for the bag of popcorn to his right, not taking his eyes off the screen that sat directly in front. He’d waited for ages to get his hands on a bootleg of Stranger Than Fiction, and nothing was going to stop him from watching it.

A book fell from above.

Some black dude leaned on the Customer Service desk that Nick was using as his personal little cubic space apart from the rest of the world.

He looked down at Nick.

“Bro, you work here?”

Nick stared at him, and nodded his head slowly. The fistful of popcorn froze halfway to his mouth.

“You got a music section, man?”

Nick shook his head and stuffed the popcorn in his mouth. “Firs’ off,” he said, chewing the wad, “were a boo’store. Sell boo’s.” He swallowed. “Second. I’m not your brother.”

“C’mon man—”

“I think you and I both know that I’m an adult, male, human, being. So can we get past that? Maybe?”

“C’mon man, you’re a bookstore. They always got a little section with music. You know. With CD’s, and those ’phones you put on, know what I’m talkin’ about?”

“Yes! I do. Would you like to preview a CD? I have the official music-preview-er right here.” Nick dug into his pocket and got out his iPod, knocking over the bag and scattering half the popcorn. “And here are the official headphones.” Pulling out a drawer underneath where the computer monitor usually sat (as it was now on the floor, displaying the opening credits of a movie), he found man’s greatest gift to the music-listening universe—noise-cancelling headphones. “Here,” he said, tossing them.

The kid caught them and placed them over his ears.

“Tell me when you can hear it,” Nick said, turning up the volume.

“Nuttin’.”

Nick’s finger spun faster around. “Anything now?”

“Nuttin’.”

“Now? It’s at the max. Oh. Wait.”

Compressed waves of sound hammered into the customer’s ears. He jumped and flailed his arms, as if he had difficulty locating his head.

“Sorry!” Nick shouted. “I forgot to plug the ’phones in! How stupid am I? Sorry!”

The pair of headphones flew back down at him.

“Bro! What the fuck? What the fuck?”

“Bye! Come again. Have a nice—oh, look, it’s Ze Boss! Alyssa! What’s going on?”

Nick turned his attention to Alyssa, who was staring down at Nick’s small pit of comfort, littered with wires and popcorn.

“This is what is known as the Customer Service desk,” she said, glaring. “It’s designed for employees to help people. Provide them service. Not for watching porn on the company’s computer!”

“Hey! This is a bona fide bootlegged movie. I’m not that low.”

“You’ve quit and been fired from so many bookstores. I don’t even know why I bother keeping you myself. I don’t even know why the hell you tried applying anywhere with a record like that! Look at the guy that just walked out of here.”

“He thought he was my brother. Leave me alone. Shoo! I can’t find the pause button. Could you pass me the keyboard, I think it’s over—”

“Honestly. A little earlier I saw you put a sixty dollar book back on the shelf. Who’d you let borrow that? Sixty bucks worth of pages? Explain to me why I shouldn’t fire you right now, on the spot. Just give me one good reason.”

“E-excuse me,” said a voice. It belonged, as best as Nick could make out from his perspective, to a lump of brown hair. “I’m looking for a book, an-and it said Service here and I really hope I’m not interrupting anything and I just wanted to know because look if it’s not a good time I’ll go ask someone else but—”

“What’cha looking for?” Nick asked, his voice taking on a friendly quality.

“I can’t remember the title. It’s got something to do with this main character, he’s like sarcastic and all this, and all I know is that it opens with him at a train station and there’s this woman who’s handed a stapled package by some guy she doesn’t know, and the guy’s wondering what’s in it—”

“Anne Tyler. A Patchwork Planet. Turn around. No, just right now, turn around.” The lump of hair turned. “Yes, alright, see the sets of bookshelves across from the display table? Go three to the left, then go two forward, you should be in the bestsellers. It’s on the third or fourth shelf from the top, all the way down, towards the music section. Got that?”

“Yes, thank you.” The hair disappeared.

Alyssa’s facial expression hadn’t changed at all since when she had first appeared at the counter. She was good at that kind of thing, watching her face and body language. Nick simply looked up at her again.

“Because I can do that,” he said. He offered her the bag. “Popcorn?”

She disappeared as well.

“More for me,” he said, returning to the computer monitor.

Words Without Paper, Part II

He’d nearly forgotten about Bible study. Dalyn felt ashamed of himself.

Funnily enough, he decided later, he couldn’t really remember what it was about. He was too distracted, it seemed, by the people around him sitting at the table.

There was Nathan, to his left; he had been turned to the Lord after witnessing His power by speaking in tongues. Joshua was a devout Christian since birth. Mrs. Urbington, old enough to be known as Mrs. by nearly the whole community, had found her calling after a powerful sermon. Osmond never spoke of any amazing transformation, but his enthusiasm about religion made it obvious that whatever past he had was a dramatic one. The death of Kathleen’s older sister brought her more strongly to the faith. Many seated at the table had a strong tie to their Christian values and beliefs, a bond which nothing could break.

How stupid, Dalyn found himself thinking.

Watch yourself! he commanded his mind. You’re just as stupid as any of them. They’re not even stupid. They’re just faithful. And if faith is stupidity then I’ll be stupid any day.

None at the table had a stronger bond to the Holy Spirit than the Reverend Irving Powers, who sat with his head bowed and both hands resting on a copy of the Bible. An older man, his insightful and emotional sermons had served as the inspiration of Dalyn Blackpool many times.

Everyone had a common glow around them, a faint aura of light, perhaps yellow, even golden? A sort of—

So today they were looking in the New Testament. He’d always found them more insightful stories than—

—maybe the glow was stronger around some than others. Why, look at Panithel. Osmond! Osmond, not Panithel. Respect starts in the mind—

—good heavens, another parable is it? Oh, good, no it isn’t—

—Osmond hasn’t hardly got any glow at all! Look at everyone else. Even Mrs. Urbington, she’s got a nice healthy glow there—

—what chapter was it—

—nothing! But he’s the most devout of all of them, aside from Reverend Powers—

Dalyn found himself unfocused, distracted by these odd auras that appeared in front of his eyes. Neurological condition or not, he decided, it had some truth to it. Perhaps it was even a gift, of some kind. Still, he couldn’t explain what a single color meant.

He wondered vaguely if this was what it was like to be a hippie high on something.

Floating through the Bible study as if he were jammed into autopilot, the next thing he knew it was a half-hour later, and he was sitting on a pew with his notebook, listening to the murmur of conversation—the final ripples of energy that were expelled during the reading that he’d paid no attention to.

Absentmindedly, he began tapping his pencil lightly against the empty pew in front of him. Osmond broke his focus and startled him upon asking, “What’s with the notebook, friend?”

Dalyn wondered why the man felt obligated to end sentences with that word, as if it were vital for him to establish he was on your side.

“Oh! Nothing, really,” he replied, flipping to an empty page. “I’m just thinking, really.”

“Doodling?”

“No, not really. It’s just—I write a lot, sometimes. Wondering if I had something in me today.” He laughed miserably.

“Interesting,” said Panithel. “You know, it mystifies me—sometimes people spend their entire lives writing.”

“Really.”

“Yes. Not to get paid, either. It’s just that they have this, this drive that makes them keep going day after day, week after week. Why do they do that? Writers, I mean. Poets in particular,” he added after a short pause.

“Hmm. Well, I’m sure they have all kinds of reasons,” said Dalyn after a few seconds, as if he were mulling it over. “I mean, probably they have a lot of ideas in their head they just want to get out.”

Panithel made a brief “hmm” sound, just barely audible. He was clearly not convinced.

“What part mystifies you?” Dalyn asked.

“Well, God is everything,” said Panithel. “He created the planet, the world. He created us, most importantly. And we’re a part of Him. All of our ideas are just a distorted version of His. Well then, friend, what is there to write? We have the purest form of His Word—the Bible. Everything else—well, think of it like this.

“Take a painting. You see it as a work of art—every detail exact and perfect, every aspect of it the way its creator intended it to be. Now, photocopy it. Suddenly, the detail is lost, and you just get a pretty fair-sized image. Photocopy the copy, then copy the next copy, and so on and so forth. By the time the painting’s been passed down through all these copies, it’s become blurry, it’s lost its perfection. It’s no longer a painting, just a mere outline of one.

“You’d have to agree that we’ve strayed from God’s Word in the same way. We’ve taken it, rephrased it, twisted it—we’ve even claimed that we’ve come up with better ideas. It’s been lost in the books, and the books about books. It’s gone and branched out so far there’s no hope of it coming back—unless we read something pure and untouched. That’s why I always carry this,” he said, taking out a small paperback copy of the New Testament from his jacket’s inside pocket. “Reminds me where the truth is.”

“Hmm,” said Dalyn after a beat, and bobbed his head up and down.

“Well, friend,” Panithel sighed, resting his hand on the pew’s back, “I think I should be going. I’ve got to be ready for work…” He snatched his umbrella away from where it was leaning, and turned to leave by the rear door. “I’ll see you next Sunday!”

“Yes!” Dalyn exploded with false cheeriness that typically came from being in a church of inspired people. “I’ll see you then! Have a good day,” he ended weakly.

Panithel waved and left.

Dalyn returned to tapping his pencil thoughtfully against the open blank page, then began scratching it across the paper.

Words Without Paper, Part III

The notebook sat propped against a wall, atop Dalyn’s desk. His bedroom consisted of little more than a bed, a clock, a set of drawers, a bookshelf, and his desk. The walls were bare, something he’d always promised himself he’d get around to fixing. The bookshelf was stuffed with poetry and novels, half of which he’d always promised himself he’d get around to reading. For every book he started, he’d hear of three more before he hit the back cover.

Dalyn’s bedroom only had one corner of personality, where the notebook sat: Paper littered it, discs of music occupied a dusty corner, pens and pencils stuffed themselves into a crowded mug. He pulled his chair closer and studied what he’d just written—for once he’d attempted a sestina, despite his hatred of organized poetry. It followed strangely complex yet simple rules, and he wasn’t sure if he quite liked it yet. Still…

He rested his arms on his desk and let his head sink down. The fluorescent light on his desk reflected off of a black pen, that, against all logic, wrote in purple. He stared at it. Then he picked a good spot on the wall and gave that a good stare, leaning back in his seat. His eyes eventually landed on the drawers next to the bed, sliding down to the handle on the third drawer.

Crossing the room, he stepped out of the patch of light and into the shadow where the drawers lay. His hand encompassed the decorated handle for an instant before pulling it open, revealing, in one swift, anticlimactic moment, a pile of folded underwear.

“Wrong one,” he murmured, and moved up a drawer. This one also had clothing in it, which he dug into, uncovering a small golden circle in one corner. The chain attached seemed to have no end—eventually he found it, and slowly pulled until the talisman revealed itself, out of the depths.

He held it in midair for a moment, watching it gently swing from side to side, then eventually slowing to the point that it rotated around the chain. He laid it on his palm, then grasped the sides—it sprung open energetically, revealing a frozen clock face.

“Needs batteries,” he grunted, closing his hand around it. A light click sealed it up again, and Dalyn returned to his desk. He sat back, dangling the pocketwatch from its chain, gleaming an artificial white from the lamp.

Something was bothering him—which was odd, considering there really wasn’t much on his mind save for watching the world. At least, not until recently, when he discovered these auras around people. What was this anyway? What’d the colors mean—if anything at all.

Coming back to meaning, he gave his notebook yet another read. He’d written it—he’d been there when the pen spilled out the words, sitting in the pew, then in his cramped living room, and finally here at his desk. It meant something to him. He never wrote without meaning. Meaningless words had no purpose.

Meaningless words didn’t exist.

He’d written it, but he couldn’t read it. It’d happened before, but it irked him still that he had to let his poetry travel the minds of others just to get a picture of his own. None of his readers knew him. Maybe it was about time he picked someone he knew personally, or not even personally, but knew him as a human being.

***

“Where’s Nick?”

“Ah yeah Nick,” he said, pushing his thick-rimmed glasses up his nose. “Look if you wanna kill him use the back room okay? Prevents lawsuits you know. Heh.”

Dalyn was vaguely impressed that someone could shoot straight through a whole line of sentences without so much as considering a comma. He didn’t particularly like commas himself—as a matter of fact he’d annihilated all punctuation in most of his poems—but he doubted the man in front of him had a poetic license, and he seemed to downright despise the little things.

“No, I just wanted to ask him something.”

“Look really if you wanna ask something you should really be asking someone else. He can get a little ya know witty and such, thinks he’s so amazing.”

Ah, there’s a comma. Just horribly misused, is all.

“Yes, yes, I understand that,” Dalyn continued, with just a faint hint of annoyance. Customer service, my ass. “It’s—just tell me if I can speak with him for a moment.”

“Oh sure yeah. Just—Jade! Jade tell Nick someone wants to speak to him okay, don’t worry I don’t think he’s armed heh.”

“Dalyn! Dalyn Blackpool. He knows who I am.” He slapped himself internally for mentioning his last name. There was always something he did that was off ever so slightly—just enough to for someone to pause a moment and give him an odd look. Even if they didn’t physically do it, he knew, in their heads, they thought something was wrong with him for a split second.

Dalyn took his pocketwatch from his right inside pocket and looked at the time. He didn’t really need to know—his internal clock could have guessed it was around 2:15—he just enjoyed having it out and hearing its steady tick.

***

Jade poked her head into the break room and found Nick reclining in a chair clearly not designed to do so, reading a book that she just knew would make her head twirl from looking at the print. He was always buried in one book or another. It didn’t matter what book, really—she would see him reading anything at all from Captain Underpants to Dante’s Inferno in a variation of old English that he had to explain when he read excepts aloud.

“Hey, Nick,” she called across the room.

He didn’t bother to look up, instead raising a finger in the universal “just a second” signal.

“Nick, I’m not waiting for you to finish a damn paragraph. The world doesn’t revolve around you.”

He raised a different finger.

She sighed.

“All right, what?” he asked, closing the book.

“That Dalyn guy is here, and he wants to talk to you.”

“I’m dead.”

“I wish.”

“I’m not here.”

“Fine,” she said, and turned to go.

“Hold it! Get a message from him. Oh, wait a minute. Movie night is this Friday, right?”

“Last Friday of the month, yes,” she said testily, one foot beyond the doorway.

“Hmm. Maybe he’d like to, you know, tag along?”

“With the rest of us? Are you kidding me?” she laughed. “It’s obvious from just looking at the guy. His hands don’t stop moving, except when he’s grabbing the counter. His left foot’s tapping. He stands far too straight. He’s not a social person.”

“Not to insult my own intelligence by saying this, but, duh. Wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if he was.”

“What, so I just waltz out there and ask him, you wanna come to some movie? With a bunch of people he’s never even met?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And you think he’s gonna accept?”

“No.”

They stared at each other for a moment.

Jade gave in, and a smile crossed her face.

“I hate you,” she said. “What do I have to say—you’re taking a vacation?”

“Sounds good.”

“Won’t be in the store for a week?”

“Even better.”

“Won’t give out your number because none of us have it.”

“No, back up, try again.”

“Won’t give out your number… because none of us know him and don’t want to just hand out your cell to some random guy.”

“No, that’s just stupid. Come to a movie with us, but I won’t tell you your friend’s number?”

“You don’t want to be disturbed.”

“That’ll work.”

“Loopholes?” he asked, reaching for the book again.

“Maybe he can wait a week to talk to you.”

“Bet anything he can’t.”

“Maybe he’ll ask us to deliver the message, and that’ll be it.”

Nick thought for a moment, and then said: “Nah, he’ll want to talk to me about something or other. Just go with it. Invite him.”

“And if he finally says no?”

“You fail at being a manipulative bitch.”

Jade’s smile grew again. “Fine,” she said, and left.

Nick reopened the book to page three hundred twenty-seven, third paragraph. Bookmarks were for amateurs.