Brian Evenson

I should consider meditation to better attune myself to the city’s needs

You will embody a city of millions. You need not be them

ou will embody a city of millions. You need not be them, but know that they are part of you.”

I wonder sometimes how much of what I think I know is embroidered falsely upon these images, is my mind working with what it was given to create another, fuller, more promising world.

A twelve?”
“That’s right,” said Gous, then rattled off in a schoolboy’s voice, “Leg, toe, toe, toe, toe, toe, left arm, finger, finger, ear, eye, ear.”

A twelve?”
“That’s right,” said Gous, then rattled off in a schoolboy’s voice, “Leg, toe, toe, toe, toe, toe, left arm, finger, finger, ear, eye, ear.”

The room was large, Spartan in furnishing: a bed sitting low to the floor, a low desk, a small bookshelf, a reclining chair. In the latter sat a man wearing a bathrobe. He was missing an arm and a leg, his robe cut away and left open at shoulder and hip to reveal the planed surfaces, hardly stumps at all. The other arm and leg were intact, though the hand was missing all but two of its fingers, the foot all but the big toe. Both ears, too, had been cut off, leaving only a hole and a shiny patch of flesh on either side of the head. One eyelid was open, revealing a piercing eye, the other closed but deflated, the eye under it clearly absent.

“May I ask who was murdered?”
“A man called Aline,” said Borchert. “He organized this community, this brotherhood. A prophet, a visionary. Both arms lopped off at the shoulder, legs gone, penis severed, ears removed, eyes removed, tongue cut partly out, teeth removed, lips peeled away, nipples sliced off, buttocks gone. Anything that could be removed removed. A true visionary. Murdered.”

Gous’ cheek on the pillow, just next to his own eye, was the last thing he would remember until, hours later, he awoke, alone, to the sight of his bandaged foot, the bandages already steeped with blood. Even then it was not until he felt the dressings with his remaining hand that he realized that three of his toes had been removed.

In the bed, a mutilated head rode on the pillow, the rest of the body covered by a blanket. He knelt down beside it. The eyes had been dug out, the lids cut off as well. The ears had been shorn away to leave two whirls of slick pink flesh. The nose, too, was gone, leaving a dark gaping hole. The lips seemed to have been gnawed mostly away, perhaps by the teeth that now loomed through their gap.