As Summer's Mask Slips and Other Disruptions by Gordon B. White

Author:Gordon B. White [White, Gordon B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
ISBN: 978-1-950305-21-6
Publisher: JournalStone
Published: 2019-12-02T16:00:00+00:00

MISE EN ABYME

AFTER A YEAR OF MARRIAGE, I told my wife that I was going to write this story and call it “Mise en Abyme,” which means “Placed into Abyss.” Of course, if she’d told me not to, I wouldn’t have, because I would do, or not do, anything for her. But she only said that there wasn’t a need, that what has happened has happened and what will come will come.

We had been discussing, in a general sense, the problem of having children, when she told me that when she was a little girl, she would sometimes wake to find the outline of an old woman sitting on the corner of her bed. Neither her mother nor father believed her, but through half-open eyes she could see the pale skin and hair. She felt the mattress move under the woman’s weight. In her room, a mirror stood beside the closet and another hung on the wall, and my wife very clearly remembered how the visitor’s reflection, and the reflection of her reflection, curved away into a seemingly infinite bow.

The visitor spoke in just a whisper, so soft and so low that she almost couldn’t hear it above the sound of the blood running its circuit through her ears. But it was always the same story, and after enough repetitions it carved deep grooves in the layers of her memory.

There’s no stopping it now, of course, and we’ll never be heroes, but there’s more to it than that. This is still a love story.

***

By the time of the Great Return, Heira has worked for the Commitment’s state-run television news organization for almost twenty-three years. Although listed merely as an “editor,” and with only a single assigned responsibility, the level of respect accorded to her far exceeds that which could be expected merely from her relationship with the Overseer. Although unrecognized by the public, the deference paid to her by everyone from the Commitment’s rank and file guards at traffic checkpoints and the station doors to the wives and husbands of top-ranking officials hovers between obsequious and religious. Chalmers, the oldest of the television station’s guards and a veteran of the wars, sometimes even bows to her. It’s an unnecessary and extravagant gesture, but some ripple of acknowledgment follows in her wake as she enters each afternoon to prepare for the nightly broadcast.

Every night, that is, until the beginning of the Great Return. That night, for the first time in over a decade, Chalmers stops Heira to check her identification. Entering the open room of the broadcast set, too, she’s greeted by the backs of a crowd. Gathered like they were going to the gallows or arrayed for the firing squad, the newsroom’s crew stands before the bank of monitors. They gasp and gape in silence, a row of tombstones undulating in the siren strobe of the screens.

“It’s a rogue transmission,” Nelson, her producer, whispers as Heira joins the ranks.

“Do you think”—the anchor, Carol Denish, takes up the satellite of rumor—“I

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