three fifty seven

Good Friday, and if it wasn’t raining then perhaps some seconds could have been inserted into moments of taxi-patience for the fountain pen to be pulled from his back pocket and made to scrawl upon paper: Today is now over.

That was the if. The maybe was that perhaps walking home was not entirely out of- 
“Public Castration Is A Good Idea”

It entered his eye as the metal slats were pulled down across a shop front, bolted into the pavement and padlocked. From all the available information around him: animate, inanimate, neon, print, image and text “Public Castration Is A Good Idea” caught and kept in a way the eye sometimes does, pulling summary reference from out disorder and only then going back to confirm the exact location and its co-ordinates. In this case a record store, closing.

He quickly stepped inside after the sales assistant.

cog: Sorry mister, we’re closed.

deleted name: Yeah, sorry, look I need something from the window... “Public Castration”?

cog (raising his eyebrows): You need it, huh? Okay, hang on a second... Mike! Mike can you bring the Swans album from the window?

The lp sleeve was held in a column of same by way of parallel nylon threads, and its removal necessitated careful replacement lest these become too loose to hold the others in place.

Not one but two 12” inserts located in the racks behind the counter, both slipped inside the sleeve.

cog: You a fan of that stuff, eh?

deleted name: No I’m ehm... it’s a... it’s a gift... for my son. He’s...

turning the record sleeve over to see a list of titles that read off like a poem either of his hands might describe in the air as he slept: “Money Is Flesh. Fool. A Screw. Anything For You. Coward. A Hanging. Stupid Child. Another You.”

deleted name: How much is this?

cog: Thirty five dollars.

deleted name: Sorry? Thirt-

with nothing in his voice to suggest he had changed his mind about this purchase. Not indignation, just curiosity (noting also: Only a fool evaluates portents with currency.)

cog: Mmhm, it’s a real rarity. It’s been deleted years now.

cog: And he’ll love you for it.

deleted name: Excuse me?

cog: Your boy, your son. You take that home with you and... there’s not many of them about. If he loves Swans he’ll love that. That is classic Swans.

deleted name pulled a wallet from his hip pocket.

Between the transaction and slipping the black plastic disc over the spindle of his own turntable: nothing. The large white number “1” on the orange label rotating as he dropped the needle onto the outer edge (heeding the sleeve’s printed statement “Play at maximum volume”, the LED on the sliding control pushed up just past its calibrated scale) and the room filled immediately with a noise akin to burning sticks.

Then a little audience ambience.

Then a little whistling.

And then he leapt in himself as the speakers shook with a massive blast of distorted sound becoming rhythm that went on and on and on.

He felt it in him the way he had understood those words back outside the store, how he had somehow recognised the words themselves even before his brain had time to arrange them into that phrase in which he could consciously look for meaning. not marking the music’s lack of vocal until it began some minutes into the piece, joining the pounding drone of drum and guitar.

cog: Money’s... flesh. Money’s... flesh in your hand.

The voice was more solemn, more resigned than anything he had ever heard in his life, its words burning their way from out somewhere deep in the throat with a tone that was tired of repeating the same thing to the same people: I-am-beyond-you. I-am-beyond-your-games. I-am-beyond-fucking-about.

cog (bellowing): SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT. SERVANT.

Every music he had heard previous suddenly became as relevant to his existence as that chocolate egg, sent him by her and there on the mantelet, to the actual death of Christ.

He felt himself perspiring, his condensing skull itching with moisture that crawled toward his hairline as the room boiled with noise, the rhythm relentlessly hammered out into monotony and the voice which became, for him, that of a vengeful and judgemental Old Testament God who punished with the knowledge that every life with little or no variation was a compound of eventualities that would occur and reoccur and replicate themselves

cog (whispering): I’m sorry

and this life not measured out in its years, its women, its dollars or vacations, but in seconds

cog (bellowing): LET ME GO

and saw his twin parallel payments to those girls extend far off beyond even his own perception

cog (bellowing): LET ME GO

and each second after second after second being counted off and counted off until the repetition of breath itself ceased.

When the first of the four sides ended, deleted name, exhausted and damp with sweat, understood this droning man to know of existence and its finity what he knew too, and in such found less comfort than disquiet.

Eventually he rose to turn it over.