The Break

Then he stopped dead on the sidewalk astounded to overhear himself say quite distinctly I quit, in his own words — be glad you weren’t there. Pandemonium in the cerebral combs, unprecedented mass desertions, solar flare-ups. It said itself actually; the lips moved not, no thought was taken. With massive finality and apropos of absolutely nothing it came, a cruel blessing, the ultimate low note of an organ made of ice or a passing night train of black holes. He kept lying there — what else was he supposed to do? — with watch pressed to one ear, emitting a molecular hum. (Ever wonder how they fit a whole hive inside one of them?) Minute hand starting to disappear, such was its speed by now; on his face an expression of guarded rapture. No one could do a thing for him now. They’d stop, gaze down in disgust and concern, a moment before they hurried on or, without looking, adroitly moved around him, the way you would dog shit. Invariably in such cases there is a line that no one crosses. You know what I’m getting at. Mainly everyone just stands around and waits for the arrival of the ambulance; the mind simply stops, nothing, silence. Then the most silver, the tiniest sound of a fracture like that of an ice cube dropped in vodka can be heard around the world; people freeze at whatever they’re doing, and bow their minds, those persistent illusions in pain, or shame. But all is soon forgotten, the sunlight appears all at once like a great shadow and floats with the gas-like hush throughout the twelve spokes, the brilliant yellow darkness of the twelve candlelit hallways forever abandoned, forever emanating out from the one central hexagonal chamber so much larger than all the rest, in which the young queen lies dreaming, amazed, eyes open wide inside her lead-lined matchbox rocking bed, tits up dead, immovable sow, maggot in color.