Circles

 

Circles. I walked in circles. Every step forward was a perfect mathematical representation of the foundations of so much scientific law, and also irrational, inexplicable, and soft. Walking in circles, I ended up here.

 

At the beginning, with my tail in my mouth, staring in to her perfectly round eyes and listening to the wholly logical dissertation that floated cartoon-like in a balloon over her head. Nothing was real, even then. She kept talking and I kept hearing her, I kept reading her like the Sunday funnies, but all I could do was wonder what’s the radius of the time of my birth to the big bang? Can p explain the distance from my birth to my death? I didn’t really care, I’d just left my geometry class and I was failing. Anything was preferable to thinking about the comic-sans type within the bubble over her head.

 

What did she say? The type got smaller and smaller as the words grew angrier. Some living emotion in my right arm balled my fist and made ready to bust her jaw, but I had no idea why. The balloon over her head filled with red and I could hear her again, screaming at me to get out, laying on the ground with her hand over her cheek. So I got out, and walked the carefully drawn circle around the next few blocks that would lead me back here again.

 

I should just step to the left or the right. Every time I follow the path back along things get worse. 

 

School feels like a million miles away, and I realize it’s been years, not miles, since Elementary Geometry and English Comp I-II-III and intro to Psych and all those useless Liberal Arts credit hours. It’s been years since my last circuit when she said yes, to when she said I do to when she said get out. I can’t remember the filler material, there just isn’t anything there. The street looks pretty much the same, it’s always Friday afternoon and the sun is always just hidden behind the slow moving fat maybe-rain clouds that break the blue sky into jig-saw. She feels a million miles away in that same s****y two room apartment with the roaches and the lack of rent control.

 

I can just as easily step to the left or the right. Make that sudden switch down the alley at Baker’s Food Mart, disappear among the dumpsters and the starving dogs and the bums for an hour or two and try to remember how the hell I got mixed up in all this. Try to remember the filler material. Just step to the left or the right. Step to the left or the right. It’s like one of those military marching songs, and my feet follow the rhythm in my head but they continue along the diameter of the circle. Come on! Step to the left or the right! I can’t.

 

The door is ajar…she never leaves the door open, who is she? Back at the beginning and I can feel the journey in my back, in my legs, in the joints of my fingers. I step over the threshold because the circle intersects the living room. She’s there, who am I? Dead on the floor. There are marks around her neck so evenly spaced and delicately pressed they must be from human hands. I can’t remember the filler material no matter how hard I try, just the way around the circle and the few points at which it intersects some meaningful line on the great plane. I’m walking in circles and my fingers ache.

 

Reviews

[yinseriv]

Ah my twisted sister. I love returning slowly from the gloom to read one of your tales. As always your work demands my attention. As always your work deserves my attention. The story was so manic that my swiss cheese meth damaged brain found the perfect path to follow it. Thanks Luth for your writing and reaching out when I hide away.

[Damian Alan Gray]

I love stories like this one; stories that enable the reader to look through the eyes of the killer, rather than the victim. The confusion, the frustration and the lack of reasoning tend to give a human touch to the villain that is rarely seen in most crime stories, where the villain is simply made into some sort of irrational monster. The Hannibal series by Thomas Harris is a great example of what I mean. It gives credence and reason to the madness. Nice work, Luth!

[flaneur]

I don't sympathize with the narrator for obvious reasons, but you did an excellent job portraying his selective amnesia and OCD. It's interesting how that simple step to the left or right can be the hardest move in the world to accomplish because we are fixated on our obsessions.