Ghost Horses.
A Micro-Short Story by: Sean
McGovern
For Karen – happy late
birthday.
This next tune is Jeru, by
Miles Davis. I piped that through to
Vern. His programming turned it into
something else, and I eased through the dance floor. The grain of the wood was warping, nature
having taken its course with it when most of the roof fell in behind the bar. I still love the feeling, though. The tactile sense of the chipping lacquer and
the waves of the planks. I cannot help
but love it. This is home.
Vern shimmered
into life on the dais – classic Vern, before his later days when the cigars,
beers, and diet based mostly on potato chips took their toll. Vern was at the peak of his cool when this
hardlight scan was taken. That was
before my time, obviously. Had it been
later, when Vern was mostly sober and his decline was less damn near everything
and more focused on expanding horizontally, then my phrase “The next tune is
Jeru by Miles Davis,” would have come out as commanded. In its place, Vern held one blue light hand
to the earphones that are a part of his head. .
The other hand rose into the air, and forms a gun with first and middle
finger extended, and pistons forward and back, as Vern-Classic called out, “Get
ready to move, girls!”
The word
comes out ‘gurls’. Sometimes, I am
pleased that no one really comes here. Language
may be a living thing, but even here, in my home, I can feel it dying. It may yet be like a phoenix, and rise from
the ashes, but it is more like a construct, built using the materials and
general pattern pilfered from a previous site.
The constructs cannot be the same, no matter how perfect the replication
– by its very nature, it must be different.
Example – the version of Vern now enticing g(i/u)rls to move, is a
perfect replication of how he looked on an unseasonably warm May evening not
too long (by my reckoning) before the roof became one with the floor. Except for the fact that his clothing is a
part of him. His headphones are a part of
him. There is no separation between the
uniform he had created for himself, and him.
This ignores,
of course, the fact that he is also blue.
I do not believe people were actually, physically blue. That was only a turn of phrase, expressing sadness. We have some of the songs those sensations inspired,
too. From the audio files I studies
before joining the building, I understand that Vern may have been blue under
the display of hedonism, and wanton of sales pitches for the g(i/u)rls “shake (their/dem)
asses”. That may have contributed to his
propensity for snorting narcotics – a sadness hidden under the display. My files indicate that he chose the color. I do not think that this was a subconscious attempt
to communicate his emotions to his employers – but rather a contrast to the
other beams of light that expanded and contacted around the dais. When I see him now, he is but a figure imprisoned
in a luminous organ – pulsating, and vital, and slowing down. It is hard to notice, but it is there.
Vern’s
location is dying.
I wonder if
there is enough I in his VI for him to understand what is happening. I do.
I suppose it is like the numbness some diseases cause as their rot takes
hold, before the pain begins in earnest.
Vern is slowing down. This means
that I am slowing down. Not at the same
pace, of course, but close. When he is
gone, others will go. And more and
more. Until there are very few sparks
left of me. A part of me is already mourning
his passing. It wishes to summon the dancers, on their pedestals and stands, gyrating
at curious angles from tables that are no longer upright. I avoided this for the same reason I always
did.
She is scared
by the other, etheric dancer.
She does not
come every day, or every night. There is
a pattern to her appearances, mimicking the patterned patter of her feet on the
warping boards of my floor.
One-two-three. And three is the
downbeat. And on the third day or night,
she appears. And this was one of those
nights. So I course through the dance
floor, through the walls and door ways of my halls. The cleaning VIs make little improvements
where they can – she only sticks to the dance floor, but the hallways and rooms
will be ready, should she ever choose to glance on them, walk through them.
The chronometer
read nineteen twenty-two when I saw her, a figure swathed in rags from head to
foot, covering all. This was wise. The wire storms could strip the unprotected
to the bones and beyond – and though they had their rhythm, too, it would be hard
for a human to detect it. They would
seem random. Chaotic. As unpredictable as the slivers that slash
through it like rain. There is a
pattern, though. 0.1.1.2.3.5.8.13.21.34.
2.3.5.7.11.13.17.19.23.29.31.37.41.43.47.53.59.
Distance between drops/shards/slivers/stone/bones. One-two-three. One.Nine.Two.Two. Five.
She will stay for five hours, sometimes dancing, sometimes just sitting,
watching Vern as he adjusts records and leavers and buttons that have decayed,
broken, or have been pilfered for other uses.
She did not
steal. There was nothing to take,
really, none whose uses were readily understandable.
I heard the rubble
shift under her feet, felt a few loose bits rattle down across my boards and
beams, as she makes her way to the dance floor.
This next
track is Blue Train by John Coltrane.
Vern said, “A’ight, we’re going to slow it down a bit!” I watched her begin to sway. In the different spectrums I saw how her muscles
move under the rags and skin, the delicate ballet under the dance. She moved, and the rectus femoris, vastus
lateralis, and vastus medialis move and shift, the oblique abdominal and
serratius anterior bend and stretch, along with the gluteus minimus. These were all hidden under the shifting rags
she wore, but I saw them. I knew them.
I recorded
the images. For the times when she would
not be here. I remember – if I can
remember – the time before this. I
remember how they held each other, dance with each other. Is this what they were doing, I wonder. Fingers to another’s midriff, tactile
memories to remember when youth faded.
The feeling of skin upon their own, bound by motion and the attempt to
match its harmony. Is this what they
did?
I watched her
move. I preferred to keep the music
slow. She did not cough so badly when
the music was slow, though I could see she wished to go faster. Sometimes I complied. Sometimes they were not jazz. Electronic sound scapes. Bouncing street rhythms. Jangling guitars. I watched the slow sweep of her toes as the
rest of her foot rose off of the ground.
The rough sole absorbed the ticking splinters.
And after
five hours…she was gone again. And I was
alone in my dance hall.
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