Jeffrey Bartleby walked towards his office, a publishing house located between tenth and eleventh street. is an editor for the science fiction publication Googaleegs Ascension, which is unfortunate for him as he does not like science fiction all that much. While he walked his mind overfilled with his own judgements of other city-goers. His sneers chaotically lashed at all those who stood in his way— the way people dressed, talked, touched, looked at each other... His conceit was so strong it affected his vision, creating a long dimly lit tunnel in front of him. Bartleby found enjoyment in the regular townies though. His favorite people were not those who wear suits and hair products and who whisper about business opportunities. No, he favored those who were chewing loudly in the back of the pizza shop, keeping to themselves but eager at the chance for a conversation if one were to arise. Jefferey eventually reached his job area.
Jeffrey stormed into his office, his legs moving at a pace that caused his loose pants to fall around his waist. Every couple of seconds his hands had to dart to his belt so that he could pull his trousers back up in an effort to remove discomfort. He looked towards his purple door and name tag reading “JEFFREY BARTLEBY” in black block letters. Jeffrey extended his hand towards the door knob but before turning it he glanced upwards at his name tag, taking a couple seconds to read it to himself before entering his office. A golden outline surrounded each letter, giving his name an overall sharp tone.
Inside the office he sat, with both legs spread wide, one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse. He was earlier than every other person in the publishing house but still, somehow, he could hear noises through the walls. It sounded like feet clattering across a wooden floor, or chairs shuffling back and forth. It seemed to be coming from all angles around where Jeffrey was sitting. These sounds were always deeply unsettling for Jefferey and he tried his best to not be fearful.
One interaction that happened yesterday afternoon shook Jeffrey’s memory slightly. At around half past three, an unknown writer stepped into Jeffrey’s office carrying a manila folder covered in black marker. Jeffrey had never seen this man before but he still made sure to play his part by habitually pointing to the seat in front of his desk.
“Hello there please have a seat. Yes, yes right there. Yes, that’s fine.” Jeffrey said with eyes bouncing between the seat and the man. The man looked at him, locking his eyes for a second before sitting in the chair.
“Hello. My name is…” The man stopped midsentence and extended his folder instead of continuing to speak, pointing to the name printed on it. “Here is a synopsis of what I am writing and the first three chapters.”
Jeffrey took the folder, opening it up and examined the contents. It wasn’t too weighty of a package, maybe a couple hundred pages.
“Your agent told me about you, I think. He said great things about you. Before I get to reading it could you briefly explain your writing to me. We should probably get coffee sometime soon as well. I’ll need some time to look over what you’ve written but to get some background…” Jeffrey put both his arms out and widened his eyes in expectancy. The man looked at him.
“Sure, yeah. It’s pretty simple. I play with some scientific concepts and make people think about them not as truth but… yeah… fiction.” An awkward silence descended on the two as they continued to stare at each other.
Jeffery bit his lip slightly but continued on with his act, “Good! Good. I always like me classic sci fi. Great… Well it’s nice to meet you!” Jeffrey said overenthusiastically. He put his hand out so that it could be shaken. The man looked at his four fingers and thumb and nodded before lightly gripping Jeffrey’s hand and giving it a subtle shake. Then he got up, not looking back at Jeffrey and left the room. Jeffrey continued looking at the door and let out a sigh as he thought to himself.
“Blast it. I’m looking at it now: a simple wooden door painted pale purple. A desk with the name Jeffrey Bartleby! A chair on wheels next to a stack of shredded trees! A few hideous fake wood decal filing cabinets from the 80’s and a slightly crooked poster of Harrison Ford. You could not make this up in any sort of sitcom… And moreover, I also regularly make jokes about ending my life whenever I walk into this room. I tell myself it’s a joke but it’s really just me momentarily forgetting where I keep my gun at home…”
Jeffrey began to laugh at his own sick joke, causing him to mistakenly drop his pen. He outstretched his right foot to see if he could kick it back to him without having to get up from his chair. He felt nothing and pulled his leg back underneath his chair, deciding to leave the pen wherever it fell. This sent him spiraling back into his own morbid thoughts,
“I don’t own a gun and even if I did, I’d only use it to scratch the scabs that develop behind my ears. Yes, it is true. I’m a strict believer in removing guns from public usage… well… except when the public has an itch for suicide, then I believe it’s a person’s right.”
Jeffrey’s mind flashed back to a memory of something beautiful. The memory appeared as a person, no one in particular. He could see their face and he wanted to speak to this person, even though it was only a memory in his head. The image slowly fizzeled out before coming to fruition inside his mind and so he continued pontificating in his strange monologue fashion.
“Some things about me... Haha… Yes that’s it make it like a game-show biography. I’m twenty eight with a fish bowl for a home and a master’s degree in privilege. I see things within a glass shell, a translucent barrier that keeps everything not right with the world at a tasteful distance, although don’t get this twisted. I am assuredly obsessed with everyone else. I love all of them and their beautiful faces. I could care less for anything mushy on the inside though, keep all of that away from me. What else do I do? I make sure to tell everyone that I take a shower everyday with two handfuls of shampoo and one scoop of conditioner, the perfectly reasonable ratio. Oh, and let us not forget, just the other day I figured out the two separate paths I could take. One of these paths is pastel and covered in doilies and future brides while the other… dreary, littered with cardboard cutouts of half-naked men seen in underwear commercials.”
“But even with this information, hell, with any kind of information… how can I find myself a calm and content life within this looping shape that I mistake for a real, tangible human form? I have a job. This much I do know. This job is as an ‘editor’ and I work closely with newspapers, scriptwriters, novelists, pulp writers all of those in that business. Ultimately though, what is it really that I do? Come on, I know that you can guess it. What is that you say, that I am an executioner of grandiose ideas, reducing them into black shapes on white paper? Whatever you say, it will not change my stance that I still will always believe this to be great. I see things as they really are. I see the truth. I have had five aborted children, all with different women. Please, do not get the wrong idea about this, I am in fact no swinger, simply just a man caught up in the winds of life. This detail only means one thing… that if I could have a child by now than I would, see? It is unfortunate; I see children as the only joy in the world and would love to raise my own. I enjoy things. Yes. I do. But I also understand my dependency on the female body for existential meaning. I understand the deepness of how much it controls me. Other than women, I cannot comprehend a meaning in life.”
“And so, I work and work and work as my occupation as a word hunter, makeshift art marketer and troubled artist ringleader. I stare into the toilet bowl and look at what kind of ‘interesting’ person I can find splashing their way towards the forefront of the sewer system. It is a stylish job at first but after a while… you see that everyone repeats everyone and even those with the deepest, saddest stories cannot tell it the way they intend to. I guess that is what makes it stylish. Personally, I hate most of what my clients bring me anyway; they cannot lie well enough. No, they can’t repeat well enough.”
Jefferey began to rapidly tap his feet as he continued along his train of imagination.
“Who was that man who arrived here too? He arrived shaggy and unshaven; his shoes looked like a pair of moldy swiss cheeses, and his eyes had this dark ring around them that made it hard for me to look at his face without feeling embarrassed. Well what I could see of his face… He had thick, long black hair that covered his eyes and ears. It stuck out like some unshaven lawn bush, unable to hang loosely around his head. He’s the youngest writer I’ve met with in a while; only nineteen and already living like a crab without a shell. The whole time we talked his hands groped at his body uncomfortably, almost like there was something invisible poking him. He held constant eye contact with me which I found impressive. I do a lot of interviews but never really with someone like this. He seemed determined in an alien way, like it was to the point that his determination was causing self-inflicted suffering. I told him that we could meet again later. He shrugged, left the manuscript on my desk and walked out.”
Before Jeffrey could get a chance to read the manuscript left by the man, his door opened and Helen, another employee of the publishing house walked in.
“Jeff” she said. “You have to listen to this.” She swiftly made her way around Jeffrey’s desk and placed two ear buds in his ears. Jeffrey thought to himself. “Fuck. Not this again…” He knew what he would hear even before the sound reached his ears. It would either be new-age sound collage experiments with all sorts of jungle noises and monkey whoops or a disorderly mix of songs by bands who had nothing better to do than stroke their own egos… Helen had been dealing with a breakup; her yoga teacher recently dumped her. She told Jefferey that this breakup hurt her twice as much because of how this yoga hack could understand her body like no other. Jefferey, with his conceitful attitude, thought that this was because Helen only liked guys who had the confidence to act like they understood all the puzzles of the world.”
Jeffrey looked at Helen before she could start playing the music and said, “Look Helen, I can’t do this right now… you can’t even do this right now. We’ve only got 45 minutes left and I still have to read a few manuscripts and make some final edits for our next feature.”
Helen looked back at Jeffrey with wide eyes and a scowl. “... Ew. Ok. Sure. No problem Jeff. We can’t all enjoy the secrets of life. I’ll let you work at your small desk.” She spoke with irritation, her eyes looking below Jeffrey’s waist but then quickly resuming eye level with him. He raised his arms in ambivalence and pointed towards the door. She began to walk but then turned around and said, “Oh yeah one more thing Jeff… I’m having a release party for my new set of paintings that I have been working on for the last 3 months. You’re welcome to join.” She slammed the door and went out as quickly as she had come in.
Jeffrey told himself again and again, like a mantra, that he liked Helen's art because he did not want to accidentally say in public that he disliked her art, but due to how many times he had recommended her pieces to others, this had almost lent itself to a false satisfaction while viewing her works, like he was marketing them and somehow gaining a share of the 0 dollar profit that they would make. Speaking to her was just another component in his routine he had concocted, and she only represented an emotion to him, that is, the desperation to be known. So, he fed this to her and moved on with minimal collateral damage.
He looked towards his framed poster of Harrison Ford and thought, “It’s a cold world Harry, no one’s gonna like your expression… I know… I know. It’s tough when no one knows that you’re really just an android, it’s tough, it’s tough.”
Jeffrey grabbed the clasped envelope containing the man's manuscript. It felt heavier than before and he realized that a short autobiography had also been included inside the folder. For one reason or another Jeffrey found himself genuinely interested in this young man’s autobiography. He decided to start by reading it and as he pulled it out of the folder, he thought to himself, “Maybe he can breathe some new life into these
monotonous writings that I have been receiving for the past ten years. Maybe just maybe.”
As he read the synopsis, he realized that it was anything but a synopsis. It was an autobiography of sorts by the author. This instantly made Jefferey uncomfortable but not in way where he had to put it down. It was entirely the opposite; it was addicting for him to learn about the insights of another and he took great glee in being given a doorway into this young man Cameron’s life. His sick mind’s neurons fired off at what possible juicy details he would uncover.
Autobiography of Cameron Perry
“I remember the feeling. It was like someone had crossed my name off a list, maybe Gods list. Something or someone with far more power than myself in some faraway place had decided to cancel my soul. Do you know what that is, the unseen part of yourself behind the eyes…?”
“This happened around the end of my first semester at college, some time before I started winter break. I was still writing papers and socializing with my peers at this time; I passed my classes with great marks, but I could not remember any of it. My soul had been cancelled... Destined to fade away into the darkness of space. Was it being transferred into another world? Perhaps. But that does not change the fact that I am still here, living and breathing on planet earth. You can call me crazy all you want. That is fine. I have been told that more than I can count.”
“I noticed this transferal through the words I read and the speech I heard. Letters and language transformed themselves into the design of this foreign world, a world that is all too neglected in modern day speech. With this I began to develop concrete memories and experiences of myself in this new world. I tried to explain this place with my own language to others around me, but for most, this was a place only in my head. It did not matter how in depth I explained my perception, it was not real or, by my understanding, just far from the way many people understood reality.”
“Overtime, I realized the difficulty in explaining the existence of another world. One way I could describe it is that everything appears to have a translucent veil placed over it. This veil covers all persons, objects and buildings in a delicate thread of noise and static. Sometimes though the static is thicker like a ghostly fog that groans slowly swallowing everything around it, and creating something new to the eye, but not entirely covering what lies beneath it. It makes no sense... I know... But have you been to Kessiq before or any major city? In the city It feels as if everyone is living in their own world, in their own bed of fog, so why should I not? Who is to say that my interpretation of reality is wrong? The man with the belt or the man with the scepter?”
“Often, I find myself thinking of these questions, over and over. Who is this person who determines subjective tendencies? Who is the one who is beating down the correct way to understand the world we inhabit? In order to answer these questions, I had to
travel back to the memories of the beatings I received. These beatings I was subjugated to attempted to conform me to the rest. It was done by my parents, my peers, my teachers turned. They were unable to change me with the hits... I refused to see humans as just another horde of unconscious animals, acting on impulse, without respect or self- reflection. That is why my memories continue to form of this world; there are memories of empty hallways, dripping pipes, vast concrete expanses… all visions linked to a place that someone wants to be kept hidden from us. A place that is more real than reality itself.”
“This strange barren alien place was entering my mind. It was something I started to view like a screen on the wall. It followed me everywhere. I must write it down before… before… before the tide turns.”
“Smells, sight, light, sound, touch… all these senses felt part of a past life form. They were part of a different world, becoming further and further distant as I went deeper into my new reality. Something else was replacing these perceptions as one covering, wrapping me up in otherworldly metal. The sudden change in the way I translated my surroundings led me to believe that I had entered a new body with a new conscious as well. My mind was tricking me for some reason; there was no way I could understand why but I knew that something inside me had been extracted, something that I’d have to spend the rest of my life looking for to find again. I thought that this missing part was the soul, but I now believe this to be wrong. What is missing is much more physical than the soul.”
“I never believed spirits prior either. Something had programmed me to start accepting things that I did not believe. I know that all I feel is my skin and bones. I do not know how this programming happened, but I started to lose assurance of myself and my mind developed a jagged pain.”
“But once my body left me I realized what really shapes people: Each person lives in this entirely different world, separate from our shared planet earth. We inhabit this different world, deciphering a unique meaning out of the surrounding environment and transforming it into a place that is entirely our own, all the while not realizing how delusional we are being. How foolish we are to play with life like we do.”
“My skull became a creaking mess and when I saw myself in the mirror my eyes seemed darker than normal. Even motions and forms I witnessed with my eyes seemed darker. I noticed small mirages appearing around my town: street lamps that attracted flies larger than the size of my head, hills with hollowed out tops and with clumps of hair emerging from within them, fully clothed women rubbing themselves on dismembered body parts in the streets. These ‘illusions’ never seemed odd because I could only notice them while I talked with other people, and I believed that they gave insight into what I was meant to think or say.”
Jeffrey’s eyes started to droop and he caught his head falling as he lost concentration. He put the manuscript down and checked the time, “Four forty five... It’s time to leave.”
He bunched the papers into their folder and got up to exit the building. The outside air was cool and dry. Above him, a dark crystal sky without stars and only a foggy grey hue strung its way through the world's ceiling like the veins of a waterlogged corpse. The pipes could be heard dripping water onto sheets of chrome roof and dust covered sidewalks. Jeffrey’s city was an industrial wasteland with sewers above and below. He walked through a metallic maze of skinny structures that blow the aftermath of communal living into the air and breath in solitary confinement. His walk was always the same, sinking feet in the mud by the old pencil factory, the echoing of a homeless man’s busking experiment, and the earth’s dust finding its way into his mouth. While he walked back home he thought to himself,
“Yes. This young man’s writing intrigues me. I need a way to escape this world. When was the last time I felt passionate about another person’s writing? Do people even write in this world anymore?” Jeffrey looked across the alley and saw some signs, bright glowing things advertising a specific lifestyle choice. They had words like, “Open”, “Gasoline and Heat”, “Empty Flowerpots”, and “Charlie’s Flavored Strawberries.”
Jeffrey remarked how he read these words more often than the books he worked on editing, “Oh yes, sad very sad. My thoughts become neon signs as well... I can see them bend into bright letters, the flashy glass, the reluctance to keep words in the dark. The signs illuminate my questions. Where is the art of writing going? Is it all meant to be bought? The sentences I say… are they spoken for the consumption of others?”
Nobody was in the streets, only concrete buildings holding layers of metal pipes above Jeffrey’s head, like a roof extending from one building to the next. Maybe there were some people scattered here and there but Jeffery could not see them; he followed reflective puddles instead of footsteps. Their noises could be heard but they were of a world far away from him.
Jeffrey reached the door of his apartment building unexpectedly. The turns came faster than usual; his walk home took only half the time it regularly takes. Pushing the door forward, he entered his apartment lobby of black and white sentences. The lobby reminded him of a home living magazine; vowels and consonants played as chairs, couches and meaningless décor were minimally placed so that the designer could gloat their unaffected and pure taste. This appearance was accompanied by a cigarette smell and the noise of people finding enjoyment in their bodies more sensitive areas. There were two kinds of people in his apartment building, those frustrated and those indulging. Jeffery thought to himself, “I can’t blame them, there isn’t much else to do on this speck of gray dust.”
Jeffery found his bed and perched on it. He could feel a bird inside of his chest. It was hard for him to see it at first because the only birds he had seen in the last month were small grey ones. But tonight, he saw a brightly lit parrot emerge from his chest. Its wings were upside down and it had five pairs of claws. It had a female human voice as well and repeated the same things as anyone else... well its English was just like that of anyone else. It could not say anything new; it could only repeat. She talked about her job, her partner, her income, her house... so on and so forth. While she talked about this Jefferey’s guts were thinking of other things. When thoughts stumbled from her mouth they sounded like the language of networks, truthful but not fully. The poison in the water became her journey for a clean house and the cold eyes of other people became her need for a husband, all things relatable in some way while also obviously divisionary.
The walls turned around, and a zoo could be seen through the moonlight. Jefferey wondered to himself, “Was it hard to get here? No not really. Suddenly I am a bird and all the vertical lines are trees and metal bars, greys and browns trying to reach green. The zoo is not anything different from the outside world.”
