No one sleeps here. Sometimes in the morning you feel as if you should wake up. Your body knows by some lingering instinct that there is a need to wake, to move from one state of consciousness to the next. But as the sky lights up and the day pours over you, it becomes clear that you weren't ever asleep. And yet it does not feel as if you are awake and always have been, it feels more as though you are asleep and have never woken. You feel, sometimes, that there was somewhere you were on your way to, and that you can get there if only you can remember where it was you were going, and day by day you drift further away, a reflection of a reflection of a traveler in the woods.
Not to say that it's so horrible here, or that I would know any better if it was. I don’t remember ever not being here. If it weren’t for my mark, the mark of my tribe, I wouldn’t even know that I had once been someone else. Like everyone else, I suffer from an occassional random memory. As soon as it arrives it is gone. And I am not one of those lunatics you see hiding in huddles, whispering memories to each other. They want to capture something they can't even define, emulate a life that we know less and less about every second in the Never. This life is what we are given, it is what we have and all that is. No one sleeps, no one escapes, the only way out is dead. If you want to succeed here, as I have, you have to learn to function according to the rules of Neverlaw and the Treaties of the Cult of Mantis. There’s a saying among Tribe Yellow Eleven: The sky is only blue so long as it remembers to be. I’m not sure what it means, other than that you should dwell only in the moment; Perhaps this is all that it does mean. I don’t wonder about sleep, or the shift of the buildings, or the way things come to be.
But Noel, he’s ridiculously philosophical about the sleeplessness, about most anything. It’s maddening the way he’ll babble on and on. He can talk to death the most insignificant and tiresome subjects, searching for some greater and deistic significance. “Isn't it odd,” he asked this morning, oblivious to the fact that I had no thoughts on the subject, and also, ironically, to the possibility that I might, “That we continue to breathe? If we needn’t sleep, or eat, or seemingly engage in any other physically supportive function, why must we breathe? Do we have physical bodies, or are they a mere manifestation of thought? And if our bodies are not real, how is it that we are able to experience the small range of sensation that we are?”
I watched the folds of the curtains rustle slightly as a breeze brushed through the glass. The sunrise was white and the sheets of clear plastic that hung over the mortuary windows trembled.
A mortician's work is very involving. It requires both skill and concentration. In return, we are rewarded with what is possibly the loveliest building in the Never. I will describe, for those of you who aren't alllowed access, the interior of our oldest establishemnt.
The mortuary has ash colored ceramic tile floors. But to say just that they are grey and ceramic does them no justice. These floors are the most perfect color ever conjured. Not black enough to shine, nor white enough to glow, they seduce the light, trap it within and show always only the same, dark face. Even the slightest splash of blood on the floor of the mortuary gleams like the lips of a young child under running water. There is little furniture, save the table where we eat, the tables where we carve, the green lockers where we keep our belongings, and the front desk where they sign in the bodies. The lockers are metal, and the carving rooms are segregated by eight foot rusted steel panels. Other than the six carving rooms, there is only the great hall. There are three wooden tables in the whole area, which is roughly two thousand square feet. There are no lanterns, which is why, if you have wondered, the mortuary is the only building locked at night (it is no safer inside than out.) But the windows are glorious. Every carving room has at least one wall of windows, and the great hall facing the mountains is circled in them. The effect of these windows, with their sheer plastic curtains and great, black frames is astonishingly beautiful. The building, after all, is near fifty feet tall and the windows stretch from floor to ceiling.
You might wonder, with such visual treats about, why I would bear the prescence of an assistant such as Noel. But you haven't seen him. If the mortuary is the ideal of Never beauty, Noel is her rightful lover. He belongs in the mortuary. He is competent at his position, but I long ago gave up hope that he would ever be a successful mortician himself. He lacks the absolute focus that it takes to carve. I keep him now only for principle and inspiration. On occasion, however, I have second thoughts.
“I’ve tried to stop it, you know.” He continued, as if I had shown any inkling of interest. “I’ve sat very still and tried holding it in, or breathing myself empty and stopping there. My lungs actually forced me to respire. Perhaps there exists some essence of divinity, hidden in the air, that we thrive on.”
“Maybe you are too incompetent. Later you may try again with my assistance.” I could think of nothing less interesting to discuss, and yet his voice was a tremendous distraction from my preparations. "Do you ever think about anything relevant?"
This stopped him only momentarily. “You know, I can’t even recall what it was like to taste. I haven’t the faintest memory...” He smiled for a moment, his blue-black hair slipping as he contemplated, of all things, food. “I’ll never get used to it. I don't know how we all get through it, Calli. I’ll just never be comfortable in a world without the small details, the taste of things, small touches.”
“And just why should it matter? Is sense such a great thing? I don’t even remember if we had it where I came from.” It’s the truth. After a few years in the Never, you forget what life was like before you came here. Even the ones that come crying, the ones that shake or scream, the ones that are determined to find a way out, eventually they all just forget and move on.
“Scalpel.” I thought of my locker. I had a collection of snapshots in my locker- a visual diary of the bodies that had appeared on my block. I’d pulled in twenty bodies, five of which had stayed in our tribe, the rest had gone rogue. Statistically, that makes me an excellent mortician. The waking is troubling. Most people don’t want to believe they’re here. They wake, and immediately isolate themselves in their own corner of the Never. We call them Hermits. There’s a story behind this, one that was passed down so long ago that it’s virtually nonsense, but the tradition of Hermitage continues.
“I went to the museum last night.” Noel pulled the slab out, revealing a young man with waxy hair and dull skin.
“Did you? Was it safe?”
“Bearably. There were beasts lurking, but for the most part I felt comfortable.” He dug into his bag and pulled out a scalpel. “They were showing sedition.”
I traced a line with the scalpel from the body’s neck to the curve of its hip, just deep enough to leave a lacey trickle of blood. “You spend too much time there. It distracts you.” I had mis-cut. The skin peeled at the seam. “I’ll need a needle. The skin is tearing.”
Noel threaded a needle and burned the ends together. “There were portraits of children wearing masks. They were following a goose. I wonder what it means?”
I sewed the seam together and cut an arched line across the torso. The dull skin was weaker than it looked. I would have to draw more carefully, or I would lose this one. “It means that you are a goose chaser, and that you won’t admit it to yourself. Cotton.”
Noel dabbed at the wounds. He adjusted his coat, a habit of his that I could never understand. He couldn’t feel the coat, anymore than the body below us could feel the flesh coming loose from itself. He said, “I looked at all of the other paintings, trying to find the significance, but to tell you the truth, I’m at a loss.”
“I need to concentrate. None of this is important. You’re wasting time.” I cut a little too severely at the brow. The exact duplication of lines is imperative when drawing in the body. If you cut in the wrong places, or gouge too recklessly, you can scar the body or prevent it from waking.
“I started to wonder if the painting may be there by accident, if it was a statement or possibly a casual joke. You know, put there for a little giggle at the insecurity of our predicament. As if the painting where there only to cause me to ponder it.”
I drew in the fragile creases around the genitals. “You know what you are, Noel? You’re a malingerer of art. You aren’t an artist, but you’re addicted to the culture of art.” I thought again, with some guilt, of my secret locker catalogue.
“I resent that.”
“Cotton.”
Noel made no move. He looked somewhere south of me and made no move.
“Cotton.” I repeated.
He blinked, breathing at himself. “Do you know what conclusion I came to?”
“I know that if you don’t clear the blood off of this corpse, I’ll have you re-assigned.” Blood spilled down my wrist and soaked my coat. “I can’t see what I’m doing, Noel. I’m about to cut this guy’s dick off."
Noel probably would have hit me, if he were a man. But Noel was a child. In his mind, Noel was lost to anything more real and significant than water. If he wasn’t so easy on the eyes, I’d of killed him myself years ago.He padded the body. His hands cringed as the cotton swelled like a brilliant red flower.
end (2)
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