This is the seventeenth chapter of my month-long work of fiction, NOV.
This sidewalk café, this black mass of circular latticework metal tables and matching chairs set out on fresh brickwork, is not deserted. People may for the most part be background noise, filler, and props in his life, but they are there, and he is happy for that. He is usually happiest when he has people to ignore.
Except when they can’t be ignored. Like that kid over there.
He and one are seated near a wall, coffee freshly served, but just a couple of tables away is a family with a small child and this kid is a demon screamer. Our man is sensitive to loud noises, but triply sensitive to screaming: it sets up an alarm in his body, an emergency state that is pulled three ways between wanting to fix the emergency, wanting to escape, and wanting to start screaming along. As he cannot do the first or third, he is stricken by a desire to do the second. But he can’t. He is nearly transfixed by the screaming, but his shaking hand holds the pitcher of — for his coffee.
Wait.
He holds up the — towards the source of the s—ing and cancels out the blanks: sing.
“Lalala lalalalala lala lalalala” babbles the suddenly happy child. Continue reading
Sesquiotica 