Zig
by
Hugo Yabner
Copyright 2011 Hugo Yabner,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0242-0
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Chapter 1: An Introduction
My name is Zig, and whether you choose to believe that or not is to be tested over the course of these next few days, much like the rest of your fidelity. This is, these initial words and pages, an introduction. But I know what happens when people see the word introduction. They skip over the whole damn thing. Especially those collector reader types. The ones who read pages, not words. You know the types. The ones that read like they’ll win a medal if they can get through something over seven hundred pages, keeping a bookmark between the pages so they can squeeze the bulk they read and masturbate some pseudo-intellect, meanwhile forgetting the chapters and daydreaming over paragraphs that present themselves too formidably.
Damn. It just occurred to me that I’ll have to maintain this standard of naming chapters. I don’t really have any ideas for chapter names… How could I? So what will I name chapter two when it starts? “Chapter 2: the stuff I said before I got tired.” “Chapter 3: the stuff I said before I got hungry and ate a sandwich.” Shit. No good.
Huh?
My stenographer informs me I don’t need to worry about titles for chapters. Or, what’s that? That I could go back and add the titles after assessing the chapter content?
Poindexter weasel. You would suggest that, wouldn’t you? This isn’t something to be edited. No editing. Just write. Look at you, with that smirk pasted on.
Fuck man. Write your own shit down!
The stenographer doesn’t seem to understand that he can write down his own words, and mine. Well. Go on. Write that down then. Write it!
“It seems unprofessional to intervene in your manuscript, sir.”
Said the stenographer.
“Excuse me?”
Write that down.
“I did.”
But not like that, like you’d read it in one of those paperbacks. With the comma and the end quotations.
“Like this?” said the stenographer.
Yes! Perfect. You have to write everything thing you say. Everything! From here on out! Every last damn word. If I’m mid-sentence and you have to piss, you say, “Can I piss?” And you write it. And I say sure, why the hell not? A stenographer in pissed pants is one distracted stenographer. Write it all!
“That might cause problems for our readers, sir.”
Said the stenographer. Write it!
“It doesn’t seem necessary. I’m the only one being quoted.”
Right. Wait, what? Problems? What problems?
“Well, per say, if you have a conversation you’re dictating to me. What if I ask a question? My quotations will be contextually, semantically contradictive. It will be like an alternate dimension.”
Like aliens?
“No, sir. Not like aliens,” said the stenographer.
Oh… I think I follow you. You’ll work that out when we get there. But for now you write down every god damn thing.
“I feel I am instigating digression. Please continue.”
Right, so here now is an introduction. I am Zig, etcetera. It’s obvious at this point that I am dictating. My words are being typed by this son of a bitch with a smirk. Allow me to take this time to describe that son of a bitch.
He is slouch-shouldered. Ugly glasses, some kind of acne scar or something on his cheeks.
“They’re freckles.”
What have you. A nose like one of those toy birds that sit on desks and tip over and drink water. You know the ones. Weird, long face. An aura about him that makes everyone, even me, want to either puke or be feignedly civil. You know, because you’re scared you’ll hurt the poor creature with a mere word, so you have to maintain some preternatural amiability. Probably only has prosthetic friends. Probably masturbates to deviant pornography. A real squirrely looking son of a bitch. Red hair. No one likes a ginger. Not a ginger without an accent, anyway. He has no accent, his voice seems to flop out of him like a dead fish. I am starting to realize I hired a son of a bitch. Really disconcerting to know I have to look at him while I dictate. It creeps me out how he pecks the typewriter keys, even. Like some machine. An ugly machine thrown away by his maker and forced to whore himself out to the first hobo that comes along.
“Stop it!”
Said the stenographer.
“I don’t want to write about me. I’m not part of your manuscript.”
Don’t be so sure. I want to introduce not only myself, but my tools. The things I am using to convey my words. So, there’s you, the stenographer, and his typewriter, two tape-recorders with a stack of ten hour-long tapes, a stack of lined paper yay big and fourteen pens, and a chalk board- but I don’t have any chalk.
I want you, the reader, to know what I am writing with because I want it to be as pure as possible. I’m a purist, really. The way things get jotted down, the hand they’re written in. Beautiful. God, what horrible emulated version are you reading right now? Do you wonder? The editing. Pah! You weasel son of a bitch! No editing, not if it’s right. Not if it’s pure. Imagine! The words flying out of me, hitting the page from those ink-stamped templates from that archaic typewriting machine. Onto a page! The lucidity of certain letters, like notes in music. Some defined more than others, hit by a fervent finger, one caught in a moment. Others dim on the page like a dying street light, typed without enough weight because the hands were in a flutter. Or, wow! On the pages already written, maybe: Crumbs of a brownie because the dictator was hungry. The one crumb, with a bit of icing smearing over one singular pronoun. She. Put that in quotations. “She”. That pronoun smeared with chocolate. Is it Freudian? Is it chance? Either way she- quotations god damn it- “she” is a sloppy bitch, smeared over the page. Gluttony, sloth, decadence. Brutality. Oh, how chocolate brownie crumbs can look like blood! That pronoun has life, given by chance. By a fucking brownie crumb!
But where is the smear? Where is the life? Edited out! Flabbergasted I am! Fucking flabber-fucking-gasted. Edited, transcribed by those printing machines. Where are the templates for my pure word? Where is the “She” with brownie crumb. Good. You remembered the quotations.
And why? Why, oh why isn’t page 29 jotted down in a late night frenzy, a night terror that gripped me like the holy ghost and made me spew glossolalia like some fanatic from a medieval exorcism? Where’s the passion, the curve and jolt of a hand so frantic as if to catch the breath of its mind’s own thoughts? That page, should it ever happen, is just like this. Black on white, static bullshit. And the tapes, the late-night tapes where I ramble on for hours, should that happen. Gone to this format, this emulation.
Good graces! Do you see it? Emulation, man! The fucking transcription. Is it life? Is it the dull fate of life to have everything transcribed for dissemination? Everything emulating the last component to fit that square block into the round hole like some stubborn child with a hammer? You shit! How will the other children