As a Machine and Parts: a novella by Caleb J. Ross

Author:Caleb J. Ross [Ross, Caleb J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Viscera Irrational
Published: 2013-06-19T04:00:00+00:00

Last night I dreamt of Twinkies. It was my job to inject the crème filling. I think it was a wet dream.

The couch accepted me well enough, as did Marsha’s bed—now I’m relegated to the floor for weight reasons—but I still feel the part of an abstraction in a world of realism.

When Dr. Fielding first consulted his Dr. Something nemesis for a gulped pride session and a few ounces of direction regarding my curious condition, I sat back and daydreamed in comfortable repetition. My head straddled an edge between human and machine, floating amid the mutual appreciation of ambient loops and their mathematical logic. The air vent hum, a distant car alarm, and layers of wind-rustled leaves appeasing both halves of my schismed brain.

Dr. Something, his voice loud through the phone or perhaps my hearing attuned, assured Fielding that my head would break down as an Asberger’s patient, swollen by logic and zapped of any social dictionary. Fielding thanked the man and hung up with yet another pilfered diagnosis on his lips. Fielding wanted to be a veterinarian. I just wanted to stay human. Things happen and we react as well as we are programmed to. Hang in there, Mitchell.

This morning I search to regain that relaxed monotony hidden in the outside wind, in the window unit air conditioner hum, in the dying refrigerator compressor, perhaps beneath layers even my attuned, though still transitory being cannot permeate.

Like a statistical spike, Marsha’s head peeks above the couch back. She controls the TV in fixed bursts, color, black transition, color, black transition… Her pattern pulls me from the search for my own.

She spins. A frown to most would mean sadness. A frown to me should mean nothing. So when I approach Marsha’s frown I do so with a contradicting smile, happy that I still understand her anger.

The night shed my feet for riveted base plates and my ribs for rubber belts. I’m still wearing Marsha’s camisole shirt, making for a machine fetishist’s dream incarnate. Marsha tempts with an amused grin, a sign I anticipate as a gesture of wanted forgiveness. “Do you care yet?” she asks. She holds a dripping spoon above a bowl of soggy cereal, the TV remote dropped to her lap.

I’m not programmed to lie. “No.”

She takes a bite, slurping the milk through terse lips. Forgiveness dissipated.

“But I have an idea. Give me this last one.” I slide to Invacare’s base, the floor’s planks bowing beneath me. The stressed house wheezes at my every shift. Invacare is war-torn already, dressed in the battle scuffs and dents of a learning cripple. Marsha’s fingers bleed and her palms reflect a Neosporin shine. Her cast, an ancient plaster model, holds the inscriptions of well-wishers, most names I don’t recognize, likely known but now forgotten. “You should be more careful,” I say, on behalf of Marsha or Invacare, I don’t know.

“The idea,” she says.

“I’m going to return Ferret’s llama to its owner.”

“I’ve seen the posters.” Marsha tips the cereal slush to her mouth and slurps to bloated cheeks before swallowing.

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