Black and white: the comic strip, the film, and now this: a consolidate threnody all in monochrome to encompass that brief moment of each morning’s waking grace, where he has yet to place himself within the narrative of his own relentless grief.
deleted name: Lights, please?

               
 

THE MASKS THEMSELVES aka

 

First to step forward into the spotlight and speak, a young boy, perhaps eight years old, his attire a white polo shirt patterned with its horizontal black zigzag, black shorts and shoes.
cog (his voice both echoing from within and dampened by the paper bag covering his entire head): My name is Charlie Brown, though right now the kids call me Mr Sack, or even just Sack. That’s because of this grocery bag I’m wearing to cover a rash I have. It makes my head look like a baseball.
pause
cog (with uncharacteristic brightness): Actually it’s kind of working out for me.
peering from behind the bag’s eyeholes, each of which looking less crudely scissored than simply drawn on.
Next the light widens to encompass a mis-shapen creature, a man perhaps, the air immediate to him disturbed by the putrescent stench of his clothes and maybe indeed his actual person. His body is enclosed in a dark cloak which covers him to the ground, from beneath which protrude a pair of massive and shapeless slippers. Equally shapeless, a bag of grey flannel topped with a stitched-in peaked cap covering his similarly massive head, a single fissure permitting him his limited perspective upon the world. His breath sounds as a continual wheezing, like air passing through the rasping lungs of a deteriorated bellows, punctuating his speaking and decelerating his any ability to deliver the following words.
cog: [unintelligible]
the sounds emanating from within the hood wet as the boy’s voice had been dry, and who regards him with a sympathetic and silent confusion he inherently comprehends.
cog (again, struggling to enunciate): My name is Joseph Merrick, though there are those as call me John... an error on their part and yet in truth I do respond to either out of simple politeness... Both I find much preferable to that other moniker by which I have come to be known... The Elephant Man... this on account of my somewhat grotesque and frightening appearance... blighted as I find myself by strange growths and distortions to my limbs...
pause
cog (breathing deeply): I will expend my every best effort that you might understand me... well aware as I am that my speaking voice can often be rather difficult to comprehend... for which may I in advance apologise profusely.
He pauses again, clearly exhausted, patting at the lower half of the flannel covering to absorb whatever excess saliva has been expended in his monologue, darker patches appearing at his hand’s removal.
cog: This mask I wear to protect myself from others... as much as to protect them from me.
cog: Amen.
pause
When he suddenly finds himself included within the light’s widening diameter, Brother Skunk feels compelled to breach the ongoing uncomfortable blank, prompted just as equally by the absence of any voice else.
Skunk (clearing throat): Ehm, my name is… Brother Skunk and I am also
sighs
Skunk: I’d, I, I too would also like to apologise; I’ve been...
swallowing
Skunk: ..unwell, I’ve been quite unwell, I think I think it’s fair to say that, and
encompassing within a quick gesture the ruin of his scalp, its bald and scabbed patches where the hair has been wrenched from out, and then rolling up the sleeve of his Levi’s shirt
Skunk: and ehm, likewise I think it’s fair to say that I uh I, I have not exactly been kind to myself
the exposed flesh of his lacerated fore-arm appears to have been pulled together and rather coarsely stitched back into some semblance of its original contour.
cog (bewildered): You did this? To yourself? But
Skunk: Jesus Christ I thought at least with you guys I’d get a free pass.
his Uncle Jesus the sole ghost attendant.
cog: But we’re... You’re not wearing a mask. You lack
cog: Yeah where’s your mask?
Skunk (pointing to his face and its inherent agony): This is the mask.
Not recognising the finality with which Skunk wishes to imbue his riposte, Charlie Brown chirrups
cog: I guess I’m kind of like the Lone Ranger, incognito without the mask.
cog: You’ll forgive me if I don’t underst-
cog: My identity is, no, actually that’s not true. That’s not true at all.
cog: [unintelligible]

 
 

THE BREATH and its issue

 

Again they seem suspended in their moment, until this time it is Mr Sack’s paper bag as vibrates with words:
cog: It’s not so easy to breathe in here; I’m re-breathing my own breath.
Merrick manoeuvres the entire upper half of his body to bring Mr Sack within his single slit’s field of vision.
cog: [unintelligible]
and again
cog: At this very least you can remove that impediment to your breathing... My own respiratory issues are much less easily resolved... Every breath feels less passive reflex, more a conscious act of will on my part... in that if I didn’t breathe I would simply cease so to do... to be, indeed.
And thus he wheezes on, the passage of air audibly filtering in and out around those words he forms within his broken mouth.
Skunk: My breath... Jesus it is my actual breath... It’s like blood, or the heartbeat, so... it is that absolute.
pause
Skunk: Enough.

 
 

THE REVELATION plural

 

Thus embarrassed and shamed, the boy now raises the paper grocery sack up off his head to leave revealed a plain face, the everyman: ecce puer.
cog: I’m ashamed twice over: ashamed to hide behind this disguise, and as ashamed again to show myself.
dropping the bag to the ground at his feet.
cog (arriving at his unhappy conclusion): I know I am nothing. I only became visible this once by my being invisible.
He looks up at both others, perhaps in expectance of consolation or that they might at least confirm otherwise, which neither do. Rather, he finds himself greatly disturbed by his inability to discern anything in that impenetrable and infinite abyss beyond the roughly-stitched eyehole framing Merrick’s vision, and within whose gaze he is certainly fettered, the damp cloth cover sucked in and out at the dictate of the ongoing audible breath.
cog: [unintelligible]
Perhaps himself thus prompted and using only his left hand, his good hand, Merrick now drags the combined cap and hood from off his head, the friction of which leaves his limited hair wildly askew, a kinetic disarray pulling from off the bloated tubers of his bulbous skull which itself has the appearance of an ill-inflated balloon, where thin patches in the otherwise uniform latex circumference have disproportionately swollen out, leaving one eye occluded by the cantilever of bone.
cog: Or you see pictures of explosions - big explosions - they always reminded me of these papillomatous growths on John Merrick’s body. They were like slow explosions, And they started erupting from the bone. I’m not sure what started the explosion, but even the bones were exploding, getting the same texture, and it would come out through the skin and make these growths that were slow explosions.*
cog: Bear witness to my self, if it is not too upsetting... and again I apologise for any discomfort attendant upon such viewing.
While speaking, he removes the cloak to reveal a three-piece suit of what appears to be a fine grey tweed.
Details: a patterned tie; a watch chain; a pale handkerchief tucked into the jacket pocket, unused, while in his hand now he clutches another, a greying rag with which he dabs repeatedly and of necessity at the slabber saturating his jaws.
The cloak he folds and lays across a newly-appeared nearby chair, on top of which he carefully places the hood, with implicit in their placement some sense that he might at any moment require their access, and quickly. Brother Skunk suddenly realises he is no longer inhaling the previous foetid air, as if from persistent exposure he has perhaps become desensitised, or as if in the removal of these layers the smell itself has been dispersed.
Turning back to the others, Merrick instinctively flinches from the unexpected and tentative hand Brother Skunk extends; his agitated breath audibly and momentarily accelerates and as suddenly settles, as the outstretched fingers alight so gently upon his flesh, itself stretched to contain the ongoing violence of his bones.
cog: [unintelligible]
Absent anything to remove, still Skunk must again insert himself amongst their words, an inherent tremor manifest in the withdrawal of his hand.
Skunk (unaware): I’ve not, I’ve, I mean I’m the, I’ve never known any different myself, and too
lifting his jeans from the ankle just enough to exhibit the birthmark, embossed dark grey upon the pallor of his ankle’s oblique aspect
Skunk: there is this.
though his words sound back with the sudden unique acoustic of an empty auditorium. Looking out upon what he now perceives as row upon row of vacant seats, and then back to his companions, Skunk comes to understand he is the only one of the three who has not prepared for the role, as unaware of those lines he is expected to deliver as he had been of their whole council being in rehearsal.
When the boy turns, seemingly unprompted and revealing to them both that rash crawling around the back of his head, Skunk is alarmed to see that it is not in fact an irritation to the scalp at all, but is in fact actual stitching with its own texture and dimension, the implicit tension of a skin so visibly knit together.
cog: [unintelligible]
cog: Good grief.
Skunk imagines himself to trace the curving arc patterned around the boy’s spherical head, only to find his fingertips actually following the coarse and irregular terrain of his own fore-arm, an action of which he is surprised to become conscious partway through its execution, ignorant its any relationship to himself until interrupted by Merrick who seems suddenly and conveniently fascinated by his walking cane.

 
 

“PLEASE DON’T LET ME FALL.”

 

cog: Your stick there, may I see it?
having first tucked his own support under the deadweight of his right arm, Merrick fetches Brother Skunk’s Bazooka cane up in his one good hand occupied still with its damp rag, and turns it this way, over and back, examining closely its printed letters while its owner rocks to and fro in attempt to re-establish some sense of balance absent his essential prop, one arm extended as if in presumption of the imminent arrival of whatever support as might be proffered,
Skunk (whispering): Christ on my left side. Chri-
cog (reading): “Bazooka bubble gum”, whatever does it mean?
Skunk: It’s a bran-, oh do you eh, do you mean bubble gum? It’s maybe after your time. It’s, it’s a little piece of...
eventually resigning himself to use of the same word
Skunk: gum, I, I have no idea what it’s actually made of, you put it in your mouth and chew on it.
cog: But to what end? Does it provide some manner of sustenance, or nutritional value?
Brother Skunk and Charlie Brown both laugh.
Skunk/cog (together): No!
Skunk: It’s like a sort of... your nearest equivalent might be chewing tobacco, maybe? It’s just... something to, something for your mouth to be doing. You chew it, thin it out in your mouth, shape it with your tongue and
miming
Skunk: blow air out into it to make a bubble.
Skunk recoils as Merrick suddenly and with an unexpected dexterity jabs the Bazooka cane at the imaginary bubble occupying that air immediate to his face
cog: [unintelligible]
before returning it, and mopping again fastidiously at the spilling drool.
Perhaps feeling he is become somehow surplus, the young boy interjects with lines spoken as if scripted, which in fact they are:
cog: Never let your outfielder blow bubbles on a windy day.
pause, and again
cog: And don’t ever suggest your baseball scout to write anything on it.
cog (ignoring him): As to my own requirement, I fell, as a child... Tripped and landed upon my hip when I was perhaps four years old, before...
pause
cog: It rendered me alien to the other children for I was unable to join in their play... and ever since then... ever since then...
drifting gently into a reverie from which he must forcibly and consciously disengage
cog: and also of course on account of needing an assist... to mitigate the encroaching imbalance of my... of my condition.
blotting again at his saliva, the while beneath such fine clothes his rotten and twisted spine ever writhing as if in attempt to extricate itself from itself.
cog: [unintelligible]
pause, and again
cog: I do recognise myself forever condemned to such external support.

 
 

THE MOTHER

 

cog (to divert): Perhaps you would care to see my mother?
his left hand now working at the jacket’s inner right pocket, emerging with delicate in its fingers a tiny carboard facsimile framed portrait of a teenaged Priscilla Presley, her head wrapped in a pale scarf, which he places in Brother Skunk’s open palm with every degree of deliberation.
Skunk: She looks so sad.
cog (as if in sudden understanding): Yes... Yes, you are right, she does... She does.
Skunk (handing it back): Sad and determined.
cog: Yes, yes again yes.
pause, and then
cog (as if reassuring the tiny portrait retained in that one good hand before its replacement in his inner pocket): I am happy every hour of the day.
and to his companions
cog: She did not live to see me... She saw me, but she did not see me...
there are too many words for him to place in that order required for sense, his mother having died before so much of his life had happened to him, the fall, the falling, falling, and this subsequent and unexpected attainment of grace.
cog: I miss her terribly. Oh terribly.
weeping, his already sodden handkerchief now pressed hard upon his eyes
cog: [unintelligible] ..an elephant, an elephant...
cog: My mother is a housewife, always offstage, forever unseen.
He feels himself becoming lost, wonders at perhaps retrieving the modified grocery sack from off the floor if only to facilitate his re-appearance.
Skunk: My mother, my mother, Jesus, my mother...
long pause
Skunk: My own mother was insane, there towards the end. In fact, she was always insane, to an extent. And now...
sighs
Skunk: ..gone.
pause
Skunk: And the mother of my child, gone. The child itself, likewise.
he will not, cannot name them, his voice in trying to command its words breaks to speak them, a distress so blatantly manifest as to move Merrick, who reaches to touch his arm
cog: Oh my boy, my dear, dear boy you mustn’t... you simply mustn’t.
his one visible eye further wetted with its own tears.
cog (in sympathy): My own brother died a child, an infant, almost five years old... and born into that time when I myself warred with my body, already being engulfed in its own fungus... William Arthur, God grant him peace... And I have a younger sister too, though as to what has become of her I know not.
Charlie Brown regards them both with something akin to silent trepidation, the way a child might suffer to watch a weeping parent, his any compulsion to mention his own little sister suppressed by an empathy in reading the scene as it plays out.
cog (kicking the grocery bag away from his feet, and quoting): “Little Sister Death”.
Brother Skunk’s stomach begins to gnaw upon itself.

 
 

and THE FATHER

 

cog (to distract): And your father, does he still live?
cog (interjecting): My dad’s a barber. He runs a barbershop. I guess I’m like a living commercial for his business.
Skunk (deflecting): How about you?
cog: My father? Oh I cannot... No. But he was not a bad man... He was not a bad man... He did what he could for me... but in truth there was little that could be done.
cog: I’m not sure he’d appreciate me hiding his handiwork under a grocery sack though.
pause
Skunk: My dad died a long time ago, when I was very young; he died in a car accident and I ehm, I know a little girl was also killed. My mum was pregnant at the time and she lost the baby, I think, I, looking back maybe it was the shock, just the shock of it all. My mum wouldn’t, she didn’t want to talk about it. And ehm... I understand that.
pause
Skunk: I understand that now.
pause
Skunk: And then after that it was just us, just the two of us, until...
pause
Skunk: And now, finally, just me, myself alone.
He inhales deeply before letting each breath go to his lungs’ extent, repeatedly wiping his fingers across his eyes, eventually looking up to understand his companions suddenly absent and the stage on which he stands alone now emptied of its props, the soundtrack bereft its desperate and conscious wheezing breath, the desolate theatre likewise itself become a vacuum, its absent air something he still continues to suck up into himself and exhale as putrescence, over and again, and over, and again.
Skunk: And so this is to be my testament, written upon the accumulant dust of us.
pause
Skunk: All of us.
long pause
deleted name: Lights out.
 
 

 
*-David Lynch
-Lynch on Lynch (revised edition)
-edited by Chris Rodley
-Faber and Faber, 2005

 

 

Skunk: Not at all?

ache¹: Nope, not for weeks, not since... y’know.

Skunk: So but do you,

pause

Skunk: That’s so weird. Do you remember any, what eh, do you remember the last dream you had?

ache¹: The last dream I remember, I dreamt I was there the exact moment God told Elvis not to make too much mess when he killed himself.

 

 

 

 

Father's day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

deleted name (writing): It’s less that everything happens for a reason, and more that we try to impose reason on everything that happens.
pause
deleted name (writing): Especially if it is happening to us.
writing, in fact, to himself.

 

 

  

The closer they are to Christmas, the longer it takes her each evening to put to bed their infant son, as frustrated by the slow crawl of advent as he is excited by the morning’s prospect of opening each little calendar window, both routines from which her husband has absented himself.
She lullabies the little Brother Skunk with memories of distant Christmases, her voice become a sedative to decelerate his agitation and bring him to sleep.
Back downstairs, and entering again into their ongoing and unresolved back and forth
Mother (choosing her moment): What should we get for him?
knowing from the child himself over and again the idea of whatever presents brought and left so much less thrilling than his anticipation of a visit from Santa Claus.
Father: I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t think it matters. You choose.
and then the silence, through which, fearful to interrupt that reading to which he has returned, she must wait until he again momentarily sets aside the latest of his library-borrowed western novels,
Mother: What about you?
Father: What about me?
Mother: For Christmas, what can I get you?
His answer is so long in coming she has already given up on its ever arriving, her assumption he has opted to ignore the question not unusual.
Father (finally): Cowboy gloves, pale leather, so they will wear their ageing.
pause
Mother: Cow-
Father: Nothing else.
and still to be thinking on this exchange as she passes another night lying full awake and willing the onset of her menses, now that many more days late than she will dare admit. 

 

With dinner now finished, and their emptied dessert plates still clutter to the table, Brother Skunk and ache¹ sit on regardless; neither of them, each subject to their own reason, is in any rush to leave, and with it being late enough to understand they need not surrender their places to incoming guests having been among the evening’s last admitted covers, there is zero pressure felt so to do.
Of the two, Skunk is himself perhaps especially hesitant, knowing once he does indeed leave the restaurant there is every possibility of his having to go on home, while for her part ache¹ is, in this moment at least, without notion to force the issue either way.
There is no sex as yet, sexual activity being for each exclusively masturbation (excepting her acknowledged unlucky once just those mere months past) though both understand they cannot be far from, another scent as percolates that air between them. Both recognise it spiralling toward and away, toward and away, and neither aware it will tonight crash on in toward them, their mutual intake of alcohol continually collapsing those barriers yet remnant inbetween. At point of impact, Brother Skunk will be literally falling down drunk, or damn near, his any inhibition or embarrassment a deal diminished by the Tennessee whiskey disseminate throughout his coursing blood, additional testament to this the space around and between their dead plates cluttered with several empty bottles of Moosehead lager, squat beneath that bottle of Jack Daniel’s through which they are almost finished making their rapid progress.
Perhaps in lieu of sex itself, or as its willed precursor, their talk veers toward that masturbation.
Skunk: I ehm, I mean from my, I had no reference points at all, I didn’t know anything about it, nothing, hadn’t read anything about it in books or spoken about it, I mean, definitely not spoken about it with friends. Looking back, it’s entirely possible, it’s probable even they all spoke about it with each other, but just, just not with me. I was that naive.
bending down to scratch at the sudden quiet rage of his inflamed ankle, but not willing to unlace the boot in which it is wrapped.
Skunk: Or or, well no, I mean, I’d heard... something, but without any reference points it made no sense at all, almost as if whatever I’d heard was in a different language,
pushing his chair back some from the table to cross his legs, and noticing with no little embarrassment some nondescript chewed foodstuff spilled upon the black denim of his 501s
Skunk: but I remember the sensations, but no, not the actual event, not the time or place or anything like that, even what age I actually was, I would think 12 or 13 maybe?
unaware he is in motion, pulling now at the soft angles of his self-cut black hair
Skunk: I must have known it was somehow connected to sex and making babies, I must... but, and I wasn’t sure if this was somehow expected, or if I was maybe broken
ache¹: But didn’t your mum
Skunk (immediate): Oh my Christ no! No. Never.
both laugh
Skunk: I was... just venturing out into this unknown territory, on my own
laughing
Skunk: just a... lonely explorer... with no roadmap
ache¹: No Roadmap for Masturbation sounds like a terrible album title.
both laughing, her hands spanning an imaginary marquee
ache¹ (too loud): “ELVIS! LIVE IN VEGAS! NO ROADMAP FOR MASTURBATION!”
Skunk: Shh Jesus shh, calm down.
She shakes her head to dislodge what seems a tiny sound suddenly apparent deep in her ear, and attempts distracting herself by asking him if he suffered “nocturnal emission”, laughing, over-enunciating each syllable to define this the least desirable thing as might ever occur to anyone, but then zones out as he starts to answer, straining again to fix and decipher the vague and barely audible irritant, until eventually, frustrated, she forces herself to re-focus upon his words partway through his response.
Skunk: waking up with this sort of... a pale... sort of watery phlegm in my pyjama bottoms, so this actually happened to me in my sleep before it did when I was conscious.
ache¹ expresses her curiosity as to whether this remains an ongoing concern.
Skunk: What? No, Jesus no, if, even if you put a gun to my head I couldn’t tell you the last time that
ache¹: Okay, okay.
falling suddenly silent as one of the wait staff appears to collect the detritus from off their table, standing each of the dead beer bottles upon the tray before checking the whiskey,
cog: Can I get you guys anything else?
ache¹: We’re all good here, thank you.
both bewildered that he then leaves their dessert plates uncollected.
Skunk splits the bottle’s last dribble of whiskey between their shotglasses.
In this extended silence she determines it to be a voice she can hear, and begins to wonder if it is in fact inside her head at all, or if it belongs to someone out beyond the windows, or in a distant section of the restaurant or kitchen, and is irritated to have her attempt at locating its exact origin interrupted again by Brother Skunk who seems anxious to return to the topic.
Skunk: The weirdest thing I do remember though was wondering if that was it? Having first had that sort of hot dry itch and not realising that was the first part, that that wasn’t all of it, then keeping on going to produce this... ejaculate, I did wonder if that was all of it or if there might be some other stage
She looks to see if someone has headphones on closeby, if this is in fact an easily explicable residual leakage. It has the texture of a distant itch beyond the reach of her scratching.
Skunk: I remember making no end of trouble for myself by keeping going, thinking maybe there’s another part to this, something more, that this bit is just the prelude.
ache¹ (back, laughing): Did you just say prelube?
Skunk (laughing): I did not.
both laughing
Finally the wait staff arrive again to clear away the dessert plates.
ache¹ blinks repeatedly, hard, as if clearing her ears of fluid.
ache¹: I’m stuffed and I still feel hungry. Is that weird?
emptying her shotglass.
Skunk: Well, do you want to order anything else?
likewise tipping the last of his own glass’ content into his mouth.
ache¹: I don’t think so.
Skunk: You sure? Toss for another bottle?
ache¹: Toss, what?
Skunk (one hand now jammed to his face, the other making a quick and loose circling gesture): Flip a coin, flip a coin.
ache¹ (with some heat): Flip with what? It’s not like I have any money. I don’t need it.
Skunk: That’s not what I
ache¹: That’s how it came across.
hating to be so suddenly ambushed by this reminder of her defined existence, and taking it personally, snaps again
ache¹ (definitive): Don’t ever forget why I’m here.
Absent his any concrete understanding of her ongoing circumstance, Brother Skunk feels himself assigned his rightful place as participant spectator in the unknown and occurring whatever, suddenly wondering if she actually is in fact aware of that moosehead quarter he has been carrying everywhere concealed in the watch pocket of his Levi’s.
His new quiet offers space enough that she can again concentrate on the sound, only now come barely discernible as a frantic and desperate screaming as if being created at some great remove, not a multitude but instead a single tiny voice operating at the extent of its capacity to be heard, with that distance between her and its source noticeably diminishing, and no clear notion as to which body is in motion toward the other.
Un-nerved, she tries pulling everything back up from out where she’d abandoned it
ache¹: Shall we go up?
reaching over to the seat adjacent in which she had earlier deposited her little E.T. doll, and dragging him out into the air by one of his skinny and flaking brown arms.
Skunk (shrugs, resigned): Why not?
clumsily rising from his seat, before reaching over to lightly tap his finger upon the mouth of the empty whiskey bottle
Skunk: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

 

Note for photograph: 

The likelihood of rationally walking yourself through a complete mental breakdown during which

-it is impossible to listen to people talk without first wondering whether their every single uttered word has been previously scripted i.e. doubting that anyone could ever actually speak coherently and articulately without recourse to those words having been pre-written

-likewise having spent so much time typing or transcribing actual speech, everything heard or thought is accompanied by the mental visualisation of those words being typed out on a keyboard 

-you suffer the ongoing sense of your limbs coming loose from the body, an inability to make hands, arms, feet, legs cohere to the main corpus