No Stories

An Addendum to Blanchot's Madness of the Day

Stories? No. No stories. Ever again...

I could become no more diminished before them, who have had me at their disposal; and now they had expectations of me that I could not reach. What they want is my story, yet they fail to realize they are the very characters and ellipses which dare not permit me through the terminal.

With my refusal to continue, the eye doctor asked me to read the letters on the wall. The mental illness specialist held his hands over my eyes, and I deemed this a cruel test of wits. I could hear her whispering to me sharply, “Open your eyes. Answer the doctor.” Yet my eyes were open but the doctor’s hands were firm and I could feel my own pulse against the cold austerity of his palms. And the law seemed to swallow every utterance I attempted. Though I could not visibly see her stealing of my voice, the sound of her digestion of my justification was both taunting and nauseating. I hoped she could taste my question, “Why have you betrayed me so?”

The room quieted, my vision still dark, yet I could no longer hear my pulse. “This is it,” I thought to myself. Was it the moment of disclosure of the ultimate truth? I hoped at the least for it to be at least the end of all untruth. I desired the dusk of the day- for the staggering flare of confusion to be enveloped by the ultimate evening.

I opened my eyes, and the doctors were gone. Because I could not make out the direction of the hands on the clock upon the wall, I knew that I had not been delivered unto the twilight. I saw the exhausted pattern of my shadow on the floor within fragments of light which crept through the window slats.. Or was it the pleats of her skirt from which the light shone? I thought, even the sun is mad in its ravenous reach into such small confines to solicit me.

The menacing shadow which loomed over me moments ago had begun to shrink before me as I stepped curiously into the light. With my fingers, I spread open two slats  invitingly toward the world outside, and the law cried out as the assaulted, her voice piercing to my ears. In this perturbation of both light and sound, I wanted to rip into the day. I seized a fistful of fabric and fractured the fastening. Frightened, her frigid limbs fought me as our frenzied bodies followed the flare of light to the floor.

Writhing on the ground, I felt the radiance throb like electric through my body. I looked for anything to identify with, but my shadow had long retired. I strived to remember my name, but the throbbing beat my memories into submission. The law had retreated to a corner by the window where she would quietly reassemble herself. Despite her repose, I could feel her bitterness and it allured me. I approached her cautiously, the light resisting me at all costs. While I wanted to jump and shatter into the daylight, there was a longing in her eyes which invoked shame within me. She looked to the floor, gesturing toward the broken pieces of garment, and I immediately remembered myself. I knew the doctors would soon be informed of my bestial violation of the law, but what mattered more to me was redemption in her eyes. I walked back to my seat and waited to recite.

-M.M.D.