The Age of Wire and String

THE WEATHER KILLER

They were hot there, and cold there, and some had been born there, and most had died. Their houses were boxes, tents, scooped-out dogs, brick towers, and actual houses. Some dug into grass; others camped in shadow; many worked in the house dispersing rice and books and were permitted to sleep on the floor. There was to be no unfolding of blankets or spreading of sheets. Never could a barrier or blind or corner be erected in the house, nor could cloth be clipped or crimped or hung. They sheltered off of one another and slept in heated chains of body. No one could sleep for more than one dream. The dream happened during the day, and the dream was the storm, and the storm was whatever you could name.

The days were cold and hot and the sun did both things. A man had two names. When a dog punched through a wall, it was devoured. Fur came from anywhere, and even a person’s hair could be stolen. In the tower, a man kept watch. From the grass at the iron base, a boy watched the man, and from the ditch behind the road women watched them both and ate grain from their bags. Eating was secret. Boys brought fruit from the river and were beaten. Men left over from the first storm were the first fed. They drank water and cried.

The ones that never got born were poured into the river. Throughout the years, they built skin to be inside, and holes were introduced by the wind gun. Houses got small. Some moved underground, but there the wind was thick and fast, and most died in the dirt. When the sun shone, a woman’s hands would burn, and she would be locked from her house. Women sang and built flowers from sawdust, pleading for reentry. They left to live by the river, and were often felled in spring by blind storm veterans, who circled the riverbanks stabbing for game. There was to be no rescuing or slowness; all movement should kill the wind, and, if not, the person would be smothered with cloth and buried. If the river grew calm, a man built a boat. No one ever returned. But a man’s hair might blow back into the grate, and on that day his wife would say a prayer into the rag and drink her water alone.

The rain was all out. It got thick and it thinned down. But it never stopped. Sometimes snow broke down in sticky sheets, and dogs were caught in it and pecked at by birds. In the flood years, the girls packed the doors with straw and honey. They saw other people broken by fast water. Some schemed to escape in this flow, wrapping themselves in rubber from the rice mill. When the floods wore down every autumn, scavengers from the house found rubber and clothing on the road, but no bodies. No one left. The road was hot during the day, and hotter at night, when the sun burned it from below. One day, the man in the tower fell and was dead before he landed. This happened again. They placed family members under cloth, strangers were allowed to wash away, and animals were positioned on poles.

The wind grew high-pitched. Many became deaf or their ears blackened. They built houses of shale and cloth inside their own until they could barely move. When the blankets had eroded, a man set to shaving the wood. No one new was placed in the tower. Every year a day was set aside for discussion. There was to be no speech treating the storm, nor could any people be named or represented or spoken of. House-building theories were welcome. When she died, a girl could offer her own bones as a charm against the wind. People sang. Others watched from the last window. Children were encouraged to copulate, but they were sluggish and unresponsive. Birds were loaded with ice. A man taught the children how to have intercourse. They used a stick and some string and a cloth. They broke glass with their feet. They were shielded by a blanket as a scheduler kept them working.

When the tower froze, a group shattered the base and ran for cover. For months, the iron scraps enforced their roofs, until twisters plowed in from the north. After sleet had frozen their barrels, a group petitioned for suicide. The children were excited. There was no one to keep watch. Objects could smash a man down in the fog. Speeches were given at night, and the large children made fun of the adults, who complained. Storm widows told stories and were punished. A girl prayed at the fence and carved her sign into the ground.

When the children roamed outside, they formed a circle and moved fast. No one died. They built gloves from thin fossils, and they strengthened their shirts with mud. Chickens were kept in a tunnel beneath the field. A new warm wind was burning the grass. They tied a thin bundle of sticks to their dog and sent him out. A cloth was stretched over the river, and nuts were cooked in the grass. They fixed the fence with wire, and the rain fell off. Some children grew angry at night and beat the veterans. They masturbated into a cup, left the cup by the door.

There was no season. The sun began to make a noise. There was no rain. Birds began to fly, spooked by the sound. The grass fires cooled. The chickens suffocated and were dragged to the door by the dog, who coughed and tried to hide. A cloud could be fat and have no end, and it might spill fluid onto the hillside. The children made the adults wash their arms. A barrel of seeds was brought up. They baked loaves. The last storm veterans would not uncover themselves. They said they had heard this before. A woman begged to be put to death, wrote her request on a piece of cloth for a child to consider.

From the window, they saw the sun crowding in, and somewhere a large motor boomed. People slept standing up and held sticks. Clouds were low and shook under the clicks of the sun. A person slammed on the door and was pulled in and beaten. They used hair to pack their roofs and shaved the elders when they slept. A team built huts away from the main house. Children covered their heads and tried to dig. The tunnels were narrow. They placed new babies there. No one could speak above the noise. Girls burned their shirts and covered their breasts with ash. Some dug too far down and drowned in pools of freezing oil. The elders tried to say prayers into rags. They slipped on the ladders and could not return to their rooms. Wrists were broken; ankles were frozen to rock. Salt could be pecked from the walls. The sun’s tumult blasted in through holes they had dug with a wire.

The new babies had bumps on their hands, and they were strong and big. When they had eaten their grain, they hooked ropes to the surface and made daily trips to the river. The babies’ shelters slowly popped under pressure of the sun, and wood was sent splintering into the warm wind. Horses collapsed. Their ears bled. The society lived underground, and the rubble from their houses drained in on them. Children were born without light. When an elder died, the body was pushed into an unused tunnel and the tunnel was sealed. Boys placed scraps of wire in the widows’ mouths and imitated their crying. Food experts scavenged downward. One day, an underground river burst in on them and seven of them were drowned. In the darkness, boys raped men and shouted. They poked sticks upward in secret, pressed their ears to the surface.

When the grain was depleted, the youngest ones piled out of holes and ran in the grass. The noise could be seen, and yellow waves pushed down on them. Some collapsed and died. They poked the horses in the belly and stole jewelry from the rubble. The air was cleared of life and birds littered the grass. When the older children emerged from the tunnels, they were tired and their eyes were weak. The youngest ones smothered them and kicked them in the face. A funeral was held for the elders who had not died. Children pulled them on a cart to the river. A young boy held a webbed hoop and swished it through the air to produce a song from the sun’s engine. The girls spread a cloth on the bank of the river and stood on it and spoke. No one had eaten. The elders stood and shivered. Some urinated into their hands for warmth. A boy walked among them. Brushes could be used to force a man to crouch. His shoulders were blackened and he carried two bags. He stripped the veterans and the widows and the elders, and he saw his own parents and he took their rings and clothing and put everything in a bag. The sun was small and hard. Its noise became a new kind of wind. Trees grew soft and crumbly under it. There were five of them and the boy. He took each naked man into the river and gave him to the current.

The wind grew strong and reversed. Birds were jerked upward, beyond their ability. The sun became smaller and louder. Holes formed in the earth. Air blasted forth. They walked along the river and camped next to trees. A boy developed his body by carrying rocks and swimming alongside of the group. A close regiment of intercourse was followed. Babies were therefore born. Seeds could be eaten in bulk. A girl rubbed the organ of the leader and tried to take him inside her. They used wire to beat a path north. Clouds were packed with insects and broke open every morning. At night, the leader dragged sand and covered his group with it. He climbed trees to get closer. When they spoke, the sun’s noise grew small. They slept. They pressed their faces into the sand. The air became cold and slow and they could not see. They followed the water. Fish jumped from the freezing river and rested on the shore.

They were gone for three winters. All their clothing was ruptured with sound. Girls used sliced wood to keep their vaginas from burning. He treated their skin with baked soil. When a dog appeared, the men cried. They held their hands in the river. Waves crested downward. They hid under trees. He went to each of them before they slept. At night, girls spoke in small groups. The morning sun was loud, and they ran into the open and gouged at their ears with wire. He collected oil from broken drums and led them in prayer. A rag was found hooked on a tree branch. Men could no longer urinate and their hips blackened. Each day he left them and climbed to high ground.

When they slept, he poured oil in a ring. He watched from a distance as each body erupted and was silenced. He held the rag to the sun. No one survived. He returned home along the river. Years had passed. There was a house there. The people welcomed him and fed him a sauce. They had children who played in the sunshine. They asked him to wash, and he sat in the river. Another house was built, and a fence. Vehicles came along the road. The horses were strong. Dogs rolled on their backs. At night, the rain was soft. Clouds emptied their bugs onto a hill. He wore a large shirt. The people told a story and he shouted at them. He killed a dog and was put on trial. A man with a beard spoke. The sun could be a tiny dot and it could be anywhere. He saw people hugging. The noise seemed to be coming from a piece of wood in the field. Birds hung in the air. They were white on top and flew in place. The scaffold was built by the gate. He stole glass and cloth while waiting for everyone to wake up. The sun made a sound. He heard it coming. He pushed the whole structure toward the river.

After he died, they spoke to his body. A girl used her wagon to carry fruit from the hillside. Women pedaled bicycles down the road. Towers were built from wood and fastened together with wire. A boy was born blind, and the girls massaged his legs. In the winter, they held a day of singing before sealing their doors. Men transported grass to their doorways. Rice was hauled on sleds to the windows of their houses. The girls placed pebbles on his grave and pressed their faces in it.

There were seven houses there, then ten, then twelve. Wires were erected in the spring. The sky was clean, and bugs died in the light. They emerged and hammered flax into cloth. No one died for four years. They practiced writing. A boy appeared on the road. They sealed their door frames with cracked glass and glue. The wind moved slowly and could be seen chopping at the grass. No one could sleep. Birds glided in the air and chattered. Frost enveloped everything, and a boy moved about their houses, prodding the earth for holes while they lay in their beds. He carried a wire. He scratched into the ice on their walls. He pressed his ear to the ground. He looked up at it. Sun, wire, hair, house, river, hole. Cloth. He examined the tombstone. He sat under the scaffold. His hand was open. He had clear eyes. He held his wire to it.

CONTINUOUS WINTER, IN LAW

Continuous winter, in law, alteration of the provisions of a season. The term usually refers to the extension of a SNOWBANK or an ICE CAP, but it is also applied in TEMPERATURE LAW to proposed changes of a climate or windchill under consideration and in judicial (procedure) to the correction of frost. A statute may be amended by the passage of an act that is identified specifically as freezing, or by a new statute that renders some of its ice sheets nugatory. Written forms of winter, however, for the most part must be amended by an exactly prescribed procedure. The SCHEDULES AND DISPENSING RULES OF SEASONS, as provided in Article 3, may be amended when the Season Assembly decides. Again, written forms of winter are the most severe, essentially colder and more realistic than those encountered while outdoors, and can pull the so-called LIVING into long, continuous periods.

IF X > FIRE

Girl burned in water, supplementary terms help or X, basic unit of religious current. It is the fundamental spiritual object used with the X-water (burnable) system of units of the GOD-BURNING SYSTEM. The girl burned in water is officially defined as the current in a pair of equally long, parallel DROWNING WIRES one river apart that produces a force of o—1 girls between the wires for each fire that occurs in the water. Current meters such as the burnable girl (equipped with help message) are calibrated in reference to a drowning balance that actually measures the speed of a river in which X amount of girls have burned while conducting religious transmissions along a wire. Until recently, the river was defined as the flow of one God charge per flammable wire, the God charge being then considered the fundamental unit to incite burns. Now it is commonly known that the river generates X to satisfy its own fires, where X negates the charge of God by issuing claims for help across the sunken drowning wires, an act that generates a blue or gray spasm (fire) over the body of a girl in the river, which cools and burns at a steady rate, according to the hidden greatness of X.

THE METHOD SHE EMPLOYS AGAINST THAT WHICH CANNOT BE SEEN

Our mother, a Catholic stone-writer, carver of the form, published a book at Albany in the year 1989 concerning the weather used underground. In it, we can find (taken from Ruth Connor, her mother) the true cure of many weathers, including the hail-bed ripplings, backward wind, yellownesses, and nonvertical rain.

p. 41—For if you shall enclose the warm wind of a storm in the shell and white of an egg, which is heated on the boneless coating of the belly, and this wind, being mixed with the hair of a storm witness, you give to a hungry boy, the weather departs from the sky into the boy.

No otherwise than the hurricanes of Poughkeepsie passed over into Jason through the execration of Mrs. Marcus.

p. 210—If He would develop an act at the door, and the weather would be prevented in the end times, take the arm red-hot from the sleeve of the shirt if it is burning, or the bone from the skin if it is fallen, and put it into the wind. By meteorism, His wind will develop rocks and actions to the east, and his breath will circle his own face in a burning motion until his gestures are collapsed into the sun.

Survival is indeed impossible lest we make a small house of the lightest, whitest, and basest kind of boy’s hair. At the door, it is our requirement to place a piece of rock from the latest storm. We apologize if this is against her own ideas. On the rear porch, we must in due time lay a sleeve and a button from the sleeping gown of a boy. The waiting period is comprised of stones and slow air. We shall often be stabbed by water. We will pray for a garment to come among us. When it surrounds the sleeve, seams will border the button, and we will wait for the man to enter his clothing. It will be the best kind of miracle, which we would share only with her. We apologize if anyone dies from our activities. The love is for our Jason, the sky, Father, our house. We have learned from our mother that for each of us there is a double, and this double is comprised of wind. We beg her to take notice of our brother above. Under this house we have built, there will appear the man who decides each storm’s eye. Bless us, please, but we choose to remain aboveground with this father. Its hand will grasp the rock, if we are lucky, and throw it in among the trees. Dear Mother, do not blame us if we have gone to this rock to dig for ourselves — whatever it is that we know we are without but cannot name. It was you who initiated this procedure of burials. Accept our apologies if we continue to dig in these and other areas. No matter what, our shovels will stab shy of your location.

THE RELIGION

The man activity looks like many other tasks. An overhead view shows your man in your choice of terrain, accompanied by certain fellow living creatures such as slow-moving children and older, less relevant persons which can do no harm. An occasional bald eagle soars overhead and fellow men sniff at you in greeting. Your man can run, walk, sleep, drink, eat, and, of course, weep and die.

But it is actually living as a man that makes Man addictive — and life as a man is hard. Man lets you move through different scenarios, from the simple — killing the child or finding water — to the difficult — mating with a man of the opposite sex.

You can operate in a campaign mode where your man lives in a pack and tries to become the “thompson,” or supreme leader, while grappling with everyday survival. Bad weather, nonspecific terrain, and scarce food all are quick conquers compared to the threat of the animal; eluding the dog that might stalk you is nearly futile, and not worth failing at, even for points of valor. The quickest scenarios, such as digging the hole and achieving confinement, ultimately prove to be the fastest forms of exit, considering the complete coverage of the animal, and its central, driving need to have your man, wherever you may have hidden him.