NEW STORY!!!!
Enjoy!!!
THE SEVENTH STEP FOR DISAPPEARING
Gabriel Walladem, stockbroker, looked outside the window of his office and started disappearing. He didn’t quite notice at first, but when he smashed on the floor the glass of water he tried picking up for drinking, he definitely felt his skin was far whiter than normal. “Low pressure” was the first explanation to come to his mind, his father had from it suffered and every time he got what he called a fit, his indian, brunette hands turned slightly white. Still, that didn’t explain the smashed glass on the floor, the water had already touched his shoes and it did no good to the polish, spoiled it. Perhaps it was the knowlege that after retaining a loyal client for more than six years, he had decided to look for someone else to handle the stocks down in the old building. No, that couldn’t have been it.
Gabriel suddenly felt that the window had something to do with the glass, maybe there had been a weird conversation between the two objects –related by their material-, and after hearing extremely shocking news, the glass had decided to just faint. Gabriel also felt something alien from the other side of the window. Like an audience. The feeling that despite being fourteen floors above the street, there were rows of seats lined up in front of the window and funny, fat men and women were sitting there watching Gabriel Walladem’s office life while eating pop corn and sipping sodas. This feeling, this sensation of being watched by a paying crowd, made him ignore completely the soapy texture that the carpet under his feet had acquired. He approached the window and put his fingers against the five-milimiter-thick glass and allowed his fingertips turn white from pressure, Gabriel’s eyes were fixed in the horizon as if trying to make out the little square window from where his life was being projected. Then, they sank. His fingers, faithful companions of his hand for as long as he could remember, started pushing the surface of the glass and narrowing those five milimiters of thickness. Four... three... two. Gabriel withdrew his hand as fast as the glass filled with water had fallen to the floor, his breathing was very altered and his eyes were sharpened to the point where he could have forecasted the weather for a week. A couple of seconds more there and his fingers would have brushed the heavy wind you can only feel seventy feet above the ground, or higher. It was wrong, the sinking fingers were wrong and the soapy carpet was wrong, too. Yet the strong impression from the unusual sinking did not erase the sensation of being watched from the other side of the window, the crowd was still there and the fingers melting in the glass might have been just a trick to have people buy 3D glasses at the ticket booth. Some of them would laugh at the visual gadget, some others would keep the same space between them and the image by pushing themselves into their seats as the gigantic fingers approached. Some others would get scared, like the women you see that haven’t been to the movies in ages and their husbands lightened up about it just a couple of weeks before. Good husbands that they are.
Gabriel, on the other side of the window/screen, breathed as if to soothe his own performance and not scare the living things out of the audience. He felt for a moment only, that there was a guy hidden next to the couch mimicking someone cutting his own head off, a camera assistant advicing him not to overact. “They are only your fingers and a window. And they are still watching.” A little voice inside him whispered, he recognized the voice immediatly, of course. It was the voice of his head when reading contracts or a book of fables. Or a script, the voice went.
If he was acting, he must have started at some point, and likewise, he would also finish at some point. He calmed down, breathed deeply and brought his hand down. He started playing with his fingers to stop trembling and let out a smile. It was ok, no big deal. Then he sat back behind his desk, back facing the window. Fuck the watchers, he thought and laughed. He was to ignore everything and yet, the soapy puddle of water had to be dried and the pointy glass remains had to be picked up. Intercom, a magic gate between his office and any other place in the building, including the cleaning office down on the second floor, the floor most elevators seem to ignore because that’s where the administration office is, and also the accounting office, and the cleaning one, too. Gabriel reached for the 0 button, the one that connected him to his secretary, and found that the god damned zero swallowed his index finger. He pushed the button, but there was no beep on the receiver, because the button hadn’t been pushed, it was as if his finger hadn’t even touched the button. The zero had eaten his finger up to the first joint. He retreated again and his eyes were rounded in surprise again. His hand was next to his head and on the other side, he still held the receiver when plop! The receiver hit the arm of his leather-covered chair. The hand that held it clenched in a fist and, for a second, the fingers sank in his palm. He put his hands before him really quick and saw them too white, beyond low pressure. His father would have never gotten his pressure so low. Especially because now Gabriel, could see a hazy figure through his hands, through the palms: a telephone with no receiver on it. Gabriel froze. He was vanishing damn well, and he was very sure of it because he started going down. He was sitting, but he was going down, he felt the desk grow taller, but it was a lie. He knew what the hell was happening, he was sinking in his chair.
He stood up, fast enough to surprise anyone in the audience. The chair moved away spinning as if it had been pulled with transparent cords by the prop guys. The crowd was interested again, the actor had showed his scared face again and was making them laugh like crazy. The housewives, in particular. “This is the funniest movie I have ever seen” they would murmur at their husbands and then a kiss on the cheek as a way of thanking.
Gabriel wanted to cry, or to scream. Gabriel wanted it all to stop and as he slowed down on his frenzy, his feet got cold because the shoes were no good for a guy who is vanishing and is stepping on a fresh puddle in a carpet. The water between his toes felt good just as long as they were still there. He could almost hear the crowd laughing and laughing at his ultimate sorrow, he was ceasing existing. And a cheering crowd was eager to see how it all ended, their 3D glasses were set perfectly on the bridge of their noses to stop them from falling and missing a second of Walladem’s performace. He relaxed, he didn’t know why, but he relaxed. The clothes on his shoulders started slipping down revealing nothing, the distant wall where the door to his office was. The pants went down too and now he looked like an elegant ghost in a cheap movie: a head with a sloppy blue shirt and black silk tie; black, french jacket. It was all going down but his face. His face looked like the one a man would have if he were confirmed about the day of his execution. The elegant ghost, the audience went mad with this concept and some cheerful fellows started clapping while stamping the cinema floor in laughing fits.
Finally the jacket, shirt and tie went down and Gabriel’s face aproached the window/screen and melted in a dangling collection of colors and humorous sadness that would only reappear next show. Nine-thirty pm show, once the cleaning guys tidied up the room a bit.
FEDERICO AC.
05.03.2K4.
Enjoy!!!
THE SEVENTH STEP FOR DISAPPEARING
Gabriel Walladem, stockbroker, looked outside the window of his office and started disappearing. He didn’t quite notice at first, but when he smashed on the floor the glass of water he tried picking up for drinking, he definitely felt his skin was far whiter than normal. “Low pressure” was the first explanation to come to his mind, his father had from it suffered and every time he got what he called a fit, his indian, brunette hands turned slightly white. Still, that didn’t explain the smashed glass on the floor, the water had already touched his shoes and it did no good to the polish, spoiled it. Perhaps it was the knowlege that after retaining a loyal client for more than six years, he had decided to look for someone else to handle the stocks down in the old building. No, that couldn’t have been it.
Gabriel suddenly felt that the window had something to do with the glass, maybe there had been a weird conversation between the two objects –related by their material-, and after hearing extremely shocking news, the glass had decided to just faint. Gabriel also felt something alien from the other side of the window. Like an audience. The feeling that despite being fourteen floors above the street, there were rows of seats lined up in front of the window and funny, fat men and women were sitting there watching Gabriel Walladem’s office life while eating pop corn and sipping sodas. This feeling, this sensation of being watched by a paying crowd, made him ignore completely the soapy texture that the carpet under his feet had acquired. He approached the window and put his fingers against the five-milimiter-thick glass and allowed his fingertips turn white from pressure, Gabriel’s eyes were fixed in the horizon as if trying to make out the little square window from where his life was being projected. Then, they sank. His fingers, faithful companions of his hand for as long as he could remember, started pushing the surface of the glass and narrowing those five milimiters of thickness. Four... three... two. Gabriel withdrew his hand as fast as the glass filled with water had fallen to the floor, his breathing was very altered and his eyes were sharpened to the point where he could have forecasted the weather for a week. A couple of seconds more there and his fingers would have brushed the heavy wind you can only feel seventy feet above the ground, or higher. It was wrong, the sinking fingers were wrong and the soapy carpet was wrong, too. Yet the strong impression from the unusual sinking did not erase the sensation of being watched from the other side of the window, the crowd was still there and the fingers melting in the glass might have been just a trick to have people buy 3D glasses at the ticket booth. Some of them would laugh at the visual gadget, some others would keep the same space between them and the image by pushing themselves into their seats as the gigantic fingers approached. Some others would get scared, like the women you see that haven’t been to the movies in ages and their husbands lightened up about it just a couple of weeks before. Good husbands that they are.
Gabriel, on the other side of the window/screen, breathed as if to soothe his own performance and not scare the living things out of the audience. He felt for a moment only, that there was a guy hidden next to the couch mimicking someone cutting his own head off, a camera assistant advicing him not to overact. “They are only your fingers and a window. And they are still watching.” A little voice inside him whispered, he recognized the voice immediatly, of course. It was the voice of his head when reading contracts or a book of fables. Or a script, the voice went.
If he was acting, he must have started at some point, and likewise, he would also finish at some point. He calmed down, breathed deeply and brought his hand down. He started playing with his fingers to stop trembling and let out a smile. It was ok, no big deal. Then he sat back behind his desk, back facing the window. Fuck the watchers, he thought and laughed. He was to ignore everything and yet, the soapy puddle of water had to be dried and the pointy glass remains had to be picked up. Intercom, a magic gate between his office and any other place in the building, including the cleaning office down on the second floor, the floor most elevators seem to ignore because that’s where the administration office is, and also the accounting office, and the cleaning one, too. Gabriel reached for the 0 button, the one that connected him to his secretary, and found that the god damned zero swallowed his index finger. He pushed the button, but there was no beep on the receiver, because the button hadn’t been pushed, it was as if his finger hadn’t even touched the button. The zero had eaten his finger up to the first joint. He retreated again and his eyes were rounded in surprise again. His hand was next to his head and on the other side, he still held the receiver when plop! The receiver hit the arm of his leather-covered chair. The hand that held it clenched in a fist and, for a second, the fingers sank in his palm. He put his hands before him really quick and saw them too white, beyond low pressure. His father would have never gotten his pressure so low. Especially because now Gabriel, could see a hazy figure through his hands, through the palms: a telephone with no receiver on it. Gabriel froze. He was vanishing damn well, and he was very sure of it because he started going down. He was sitting, but he was going down, he felt the desk grow taller, but it was a lie. He knew what the hell was happening, he was sinking in his chair.
He stood up, fast enough to surprise anyone in the audience. The chair moved away spinning as if it had been pulled with transparent cords by the prop guys. The crowd was interested again, the actor had showed his scared face again and was making them laugh like crazy. The housewives, in particular. “This is the funniest movie I have ever seen” they would murmur at their husbands and then a kiss on the cheek as a way of thanking.
Gabriel wanted to cry, or to scream. Gabriel wanted it all to stop and as he slowed down on his frenzy, his feet got cold because the shoes were no good for a guy who is vanishing and is stepping on a fresh puddle in a carpet. The water between his toes felt good just as long as they were still there. He could almost hear the crowd laughing and laughing at his ultimate sorrow, he was ceasing existing. And a cheering crowd was eager to see how it all ended, their 3D glasses were set perfectly on the bridge of their noses to stop them from falling and missing a second of Walladem’s performace. He relaxed, he didn’t know why, but he relaxed. The clothes on his shoulders started slipping down revealing nothing, the distant wall where the door to his office was. The pants went down too and now he looked like an elegant ghost in a cheap movie: a head with a sloppy blue shirt and black silk tie; black, french jacket. It was all going down but his face. His face looked like the one a man would have if he were confirmed about the day of his execution. The elegant ghost, the audience went mad with this concept and some cheerful fellows started clapping while stamping the cinema floor in laughing fits.
Finally the jacket, shirt and tie went down and Gabriel’s face aproached the window/screen and melted in a dangling collection of colors and humorous sadness that would only reappear next show. Nine-thirty pm show, once the cleaning guys tidied up the room a bit.
FEDERICO AC.
05.03.2K4.
