Vacui | Fiction
Vacui originally ran in Tales of the Unreal Volume 1. Ogden Nesmer is the author of Silkworm, which can be purchased in either paperback or digital format here
The wind drives a sharp cold, barreling up the slopes as fast as a boulder might tumble down. Bending the blades of grass and tattered shrubs towards the same subject like reverent onlookers. All pointing to the ridge, all crusted with frost and locked in accusation at an empty edge and the vacuum beyond. Standing there, looking straight into the roar and trying to assemble the village below from the golden pinpoints that shimmer through the murk, it feels as if you've been placed in the way of impending punishment. Someone is coming to get you.
Melner marks this down in his log-- the small one, for personal notes, not to be produced at the end of the assignment. It's lonely, he writes, but it feels crowded too. His pants are tucked into his socks, but the cold air still finds a way to slip up past his ankles, his knees, his crotch, chilling him under his thick coat. He scratches three thick lines over his entry. The measurements for the day are filed; the 22 km hike between vantage points, completed. Dobrick is down there already, nursing a whiskey and keeping a seat free. But Melner has to put something down, lest he should forget. The days would be lost if not for vigilant observation.
The vibrations of a foghorn, inaudible under the sustained blasts of frigid air, resonate in Melner's chest. It's the boat, invisible, but unmistakeable. He jots two words ("Oxbow back") then scoots uneasily into the misty flow, looking away as he stumbles with care, trying to keep the ice out of his eyes.
A block away from the harbor and the boat phases into view. Its main deck is still too high to see from the cobblestone streets, but Melner can hear a crew laughing and cursing, the only human sounds to be heard in otherwise empty streets. Inside the tavern, Dobrick and Oxbow are already conversing. They speak low, but it doesn't matter. Sailors and locals, equally drunk and raucous. Nothing can be heard in the bar this soon after a landing, unless someone's shouting it in your face. But Oxbow is calm, and Dobrick is listening politely, both of them grinning. Melner walks past them and sits at the bar, waiting for his turn.
Oxbow is a code name. He told Melner and Dobrick this on the day he brought them to the bay, making it clear that, although there were things being kept from them, their employers would be transparent in their obfuscation. That was a long time ago now, hard for Melner to remember how he felt about it then, but it set the tone for the entire expedition. They didn't know where they were stationed. They weren't to stray too far from their observation points to collect measurements, and the village was their only respite for shelter and essentials. Perpetual cloud coverage made determining location effectively impossible. Government jobs could be like this, enforcing a level of secrecy that seemed to precede any real goals. Neither of them spoke the language of the locals, and Melner wasn't even sure what language it was. He couldn't say if Dobrick knew, as they didn't speak much when they shared a drink at the end of the day. They weren't allowed. They weren't even allowed to talk about their lives before the assignment. Melner didn't know what Dobrick's responsibilities were, and Dobrick never asked about his. Naturally, Oxbow's infrequent visits always involved a lot of precision misinformation, a mix of delaying, misrepresenting and perfectly timed silences. And, of course, every so often he had to feed them a little something to keep their hopes up.
"We're South," he confided one quiet night, either a little too drunk or just putting on an incredibly convincing act.
"What do you mean?" Melner had asked, knowing damn well what Oxbow had meant but hoping he could squeeze some more out of him (he couldn't). What he meant was that they'd already been lied to: the mission to collect data from key points in a certain radius from the North Pole had been a front, and they were actually somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, something Melner had been suspicious of since the first time he pulled his compass out. It felt good to hear his suspicions vindicated, but that was all Oxbow said, and then it was Dobrick's turn.
Melner watches them through the mirror behind the bar and sips his gin. Dobrick laughs at something likely unfunny. Dobrick is an excellent kiss-ass. He would thrive anywhere, in any field, so long as someone were above him. It's somewhat impressive, Melner can't deny, considering the brutal, unabating cold and the hours of enforced loneliness. Melner can barely muster a smile. He couldn't socialize if he wanted to-- but Melner was convinced Dobrick didn't want to, he was that committed to his sycophancy. He smiles, stands up and shakes Oxbow's large hand, turning to Melner to salute ironically before departing for wherever he slept (Melner didn't know).
"You'll have a drink?" Oxbow asks. He has the same accent as the villagers.
Melner jingles his half-full glass in the air and takes a seat. "So, what's new?"
"Nothing good." Melner has come to expect this response. It will be followed by a brief list of not-good things (for example: 'project's off-schedule,' 'money is running out,' 'some nameless higher-up is being transferred,' etc.) of which, Oxbow will select one to enumerate upon, drawing out the description to somewhere around fifteen minutes. He will allow a follow-up question (which, naturally, must be confined to the appropriate, already proffered subject matter), then respond vaguely for approximately twelve more minutes. He will then check the clock 'subtly,' and explain that unless there are no other issues he needs to be back on the ship. And if there are other issues, you really ought to be sending all of these questions to the aformentioned nameless higher-ups, and also you knew about the classified nature of the assignment before you took it, and other such shit.
But it's different this time:
Oxbow leans back and speaks to the waitress in her (their?) language, asking for another drink. Wasting precious minutes. He leans back in slowly.
"Say your goodbyes to Dobrick tonight, he will be gone by tomorrow morning."
Melner can't speak, afraid to ask the wrong question whose answer is classified and yields a quick departure.
"You don't have to tell me," Oxbow continues, "I know you must be jealous."
"At least you know," Melner can't resist.
"But chin up; you are next," that perfectly timed glimmer of hope. "Once we find someone to replace Dobrick, we will come for you. So be happy." He swallows his drink in one gulp, and leaves with a quick excuse.
Not bothering to try and find Dobrick's dwelling for a feigned farewell, Melner makes his way home after a few more gins. By this hour the wind is thick with slush, smears of white that criss-cross the air and melt into gray sludge in the road. Melner heads to the boardwalk and travels the span of Oxbow's boat from bow to stern. The gang plank must be drawn up, Melner can't find it. He kicks a pebble over the edge and into the water but doesn't hear it splash. At home, up the stairs of a creaking building that groans in protest, past the always-locked doors of other boarders, Melner makes an entry in his personal log. Leaving out the jealousy and the fear, the blind rage and visceral hatred of Dobrick, who in actuality was only mildly annoying. Keeping the entry as brief and factual as possible (ultimately just "Dobrick leaving, me next hopefully") to save space on the paper. He throws the notebook down on a stack of already-filled logs, his stomach sinking. Before he'd learned brevity, he was filling pages a day. The three full logs amounted to just a few months, within what he'd signed up for at the start. Melner tried to remind himself for the sake of his own sanity. He was not lost, not forgotten. Everything was moving along as planned. The village was so bleak and cold and isolating, it was making a bad thing unbearable. Melner would make it, and he'd have a few pages to spare.
He remembers Dobrick asking him about the personal logs. He called them "diaries."
"Can I read them sometime?"
Melner scoffed, but Dobrick was apparently serious.
"I won't judge," he assured.
Finding himself surprisingly livid at the potential violation, Melner shook his head and tried to compose himself. "First of all, No. Second, what is the point of a personal log if I go around sharing it with other people?"
"I wouldn't know, you're the one keeping track of empty days."
"Consider it classified."
"Don't let Oxbow find out.”
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well, they sent us here for our observations. If you're logging observations, Oxbow will want to know."
"How is he going to find out?"
"I don't know the substance of your conversations."
"No, but it sounds like you're describing to me the substance of yours."
"Excuse me?"
"Can't you just leave me my one pleasure on this shitty island?"
"I wouldn't say this is your one pleasure," glancing hard at the drink rising to Melner's lips, "and this isn't an island."
"Figure of speech: we're stuck here, trapped, a deserted island," Melner feigned and the conversation moved on, but as soon as the night was finished he rushed home to make his entry for the night: "not an island."
As Oxbow had promised, Dobrick is not in the village the next morning. Although normally avoiding the encounter, Melner makes it a point to be in the tavern for coffee where he knows Dobrick likes to start his day and finds no Dobrick. He starts his daily trek, and soon discovers he is whistling. He moves briskly, despite the wind splashing up over the ridge and threatening to send him careening into the muddy valley. The angelic smudge of the sun behind clouds feels uncharacteristically warm on his face. He feels some guilt, of course. Dobrick wasn't all that bad, Melner scolds himself. But his departure is a good omen. "Me next," Melner repeats in his mind. Hidden in the fog, miles away from anyone in the village, Melner lets all his giddiness out in one triumphant explosion, jumping up and down and pounding his chest. Thinking of all the beautiful things he's lived without for so long (hot showers, electricity, sunlight, meals not centered around preserved fish, etc.) he laughs maniacally. The sound is carried away, and his energy is depleted. He is reminded he is cold. Finding himself at waypoint four of six, Melner pulls out his log (non-personal) and scribbles two amounts for the last waypoints. He doesn't even know what these are for, why the hell should he care anymore? He tucks it away and makes for the village. It'll be a celebration, he thinks. "To Dobrick," he'll say to nobody and pour a little of his drink out on the dirty tavern floor.
Melner stops at his room, not remembering why when he gets there. The door is locked, and inside everything is where he left it. But the absence of the stack is felt immediately. He flips the nightstand and checks under the mattress and bed frame and between the cushions of the single chair, but they're gone. The window is locked, and no one has a key to the door but him. All of his filled diaries are missing. No, he thinks, not missing. Stolen. How could they not be? That bastard Dobrick. Somehow he found out where Melner lives (or always knew) and he lifted them to hand off to Oxbow. It had to be. The little rat. The cancerous, scum-filtering muck-dweller. Spineless protozoan filth donning the skin of a pale, rat-faced, pig-fucking ass-kisser. Melner bursts into the tavern as if Dobrick would be there waiting. But of course he isn't. It's barely occupied at this early hour, and the few drunks already dutifully sipping don't notice Melner. The boat is gone with no telling when it'll be back. Will Oxbow be angry? Will he even care? Hard to say, but the feeling that Melner is now untethered, freely floating in a directionless vapor, is inescapable. What day is it? How long has it been, he is already wondering.
"I need those logs back," Melner says aloud. No one says anything back.
Oxbow must be brought back. For the first week Melner stays up all night staring at the gray void where the horizon should be and prays for Oxbow's boat. Feeling a phantom buzz from a foghorn not present. He tries to bridge the language barrier with the barmaids he's seen Oxbow flirt with but receives only confused glares. So he starts breaking rules, shirking his responsibilities and writing in fake measurements for his daily entries. Soon he stops entering them altogether. He drinks from morning to evening in the hopes that Oxbow or Oxbow's supervisors are keeping an eye of the expanding tab. Weeks go by without luck, and Melner begins to fear the opposite-- perhaps on reading the logs and seeing Melner's prompt disobedience, he's simply abandoned him. He'll be stuck here (where?) forever. Panicked, he snaps back into action. He is up early to spend extra time at each waypoint, making measurements across a span, just in case it helps the project. He longs for an ass to kiss. Marking off a few new waypoints, deeper into the cyan valleys that span endless into the fog. The direction in which the wind is always pulled. Out here, the roaring of the wind being too loud to allow for the passage of sound reasoning, Melner begins to consider another way to summon Oxbow. Surely they wouldn't let him die out here, he thinks, looking down the slope that becomes gravelly and jagged the steeper it falls. Surely, if he were in actual real danger the project supervisors would step in, right? The ground is muddy, and this made-up waypoint is hours away from the village. Is anybody watching? They won't let me die, he promises as the dirt under his feet crumbles away.
Melner remembers another conversation with Dobrick; it's after the discovery of the "diaries," during a period when Dobrick would offer his own experiences as contribution to Melner's personal logs (some of which made it in) often about things the environment made him feel or reflect upon.
Useless fluff, which Melner suspected was meant to mock him.
"Can you keep a secret?" Dobrick sounded playful, signaling that the secret he was about to reveal was ultimately meaningless. Technically a secret yet lacking the essential elements of any good secret.
"Mmm..." Melner mumbled.
"I stepped out of my research zone today. I was at my second waypoint. Down the slope leading away from the village, there's a little tree-covered grotto. I've always noticed it and today with the sun we had (sarcastic) I thought it just looked too enticing to ignore. I slid down and had my lunch there. And from that angle, it's the most incredible thing, the mist caught by the wind shoots up like an inverted waterfall. What light cames through at noon catches it and spreads its colors. It really is amazing. I don't know what you'd call that phenomenon, or if it's anything one can observe enough to give it a name..."
A silence.
"Anyway," Dobrick shrugged. "It's nice to see a bit of beauty in this place. I thought there would be more before I came."
Melner didn't move, but he felt like jumping up and grabbing Dobrick by the next. Slamming his wooden skull against the table edge and breaking a bottle over his temple. Were we admitting it? Was it really coming out of his mouth without so much as a question from Melner? That he had known where they were going-- where they were-- and he was just now slipping up and exposing himself. Privy to the machinations that defined their joint suffering and only just now feeling the urge to say so. Melner felt so triumphant he wanted to sob, but he sipped in silence and let Dobrick continue.
"It feels like so long ago, you know?"
"hmmm..."
"I guess it's only been a few months, but I feel like a different person."
"Of course. How can you not?"
"You feel different too?"
"There's no other way to feel. Considering we are nothing but a series of consistent responses to our environment, we react different to different environments. But we have no environment here, really. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear. Can't talk, can't even reach out and touch anything without feeling identical cold, wet, withering surfaces. Meaningless input. We're floating in space or stuck in a cocoon—it's impossible for us to tell."
"Does Oxbow know you feel this way?"
"Why should he?"
"Maybe he could help? Get you something for these feelings of hopelessness."
"I don't need pills, damnit. I'm telling you this is how a rational person reacts to a situation like ours. I'm the one who's thinking straight-- you're the one who needs a frontal lobotomy--"
"Come on, Melner. This is textbook: I'm sure they have some cute name for this syndrome like 'island fever,' or maybe 'open-space anxiety.' Try to be calm and think about this for a minute."
"'Try to be calm--' Why don't you turn your brain on?" Melner, sitting back down, kills his gin.
"In fact... 'Kenophobia.'" Dobrick thinks aloud. "That's the word Oxbow used when he first approached me. I acted like I knew what it meant, but I had to look it up after," he chuckles. "Fear of the empty, the open, the blank. I'd say you've got a pretty bad-- Melner?"
Melner is on him in a second, trembling and pulling his face close by the collar. Red-faced, he's slobbering and demanding to know everything all at once: when did you meet Oxbow? How do you know him? Who is he? What's his real name? All while Dobrick pleads and summons the staff for assistance. Slobbering and digging nails into Dobrick's skin, Melner is still shouting, questioning, cursing, as he's removed by two burly barkeeps. Dobrick is let out the back door while Melner is tossed out the front. After circling the building repeatedly for half an hour, he determines there is no back door, so he storms back inside and is removed again. He runs in the general direction he believes Dobrick lives, crying, asking simply 'why' now. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? No answer but the wind.
Two days after the fall and Melner finds himself in a place he's never seen. The novelty is precious for a moment, but the odors of excreta and death and the familiar howl jostling the windowpanes tells him he hasn't strayed far. Two planks are strapped to the sides of his calf, and his arm is in a sling. A swollen seam runs up from his shin, spreading out like a spiderweb. Frayed loops of twine hold his skin together, black and crusted with scab. A quick wiggle, and he can feel the scrapes, tears and bruises decorating his body. A nurse brings in a metal tray and sets it by the bed. Melner cannot see its contents from supine on the bed, his leg elevated in a rickety framework. The nurse sits on the edge of his bad, and puts a warm, calloused hand over his sutures.
"You had a fall," her accent is slight. "This is true?"
"Where am I?"
"You are in the hospital."
"Where am I?"
"We have told your friend about your situation--"
"My friend? Who? What's his name?" Melner can feel her grip tighten.
"He is very concerned."
"Where are my logs--"
"He has consulted with our physicians on your behalf, and" she reaches for something on the tray, "we've come to an agreement as to the necessary treatment--"
With his tattered leg, Melner pulls the framework down crashing into the nurse's back. The pain of something freshly broken shoots farther into his hip as he throws himself over and scrambles for the door, throwing the tray, the sheets, anything at the woman writhing on the floor. The wing is empty. The other beds have no sheets. He slams the door and catches the nurse's extended fingers; her cries bring two male nurses out, thundering down the hall with their thick shoulders scraping the walls. In a flash, Melner ejects himself towards the only light he can feel, sending his whole body tumbling through a pane of glass and out into the cold. He's made new cuts, warm blood running down his legs and torso, and the nurses inside are cursing at him in English. Melner makes for the hills as fast as his shattered limbs will allow. He's almost naked, the flimsy hospital gown flapping in the gale and trickling red all over the cobblestone. Soon he's crossed the village limits. If anyone is chasing him, he can't hear them and can't bear to turn around and check. Unevenly, but hastily, he clambers up the grassy slope, digging the planks of his cast into the mud, seam popping, halfway on his hands and knees, clawing at grass and mud. He clears the top and slides down the other end. He repeats. He repeats again. He is far from the village before the adrenaline has worn off, his wounds caked with dirt and grass. Numb from cold, something warm beats like a heart inside each of his fingers, fading fast. He stands erect, looking right into the wind. It screams at him. He screams back. It can't have him. Melner might die but the wind can't have him. His voice breaks and he can't scream anymore. He's panting and starting to get cold.
A figure reaches the ridge behind him. From this distance they're small, and Melner covers them with his thumb at arm's length. Make them go away. No one is following me. A gun cracks, and the earth at Melner's feet sprays mud and rainwater. He falls backward and the gun cracks again. The figure is shouting, waving his arms, shooting. The gun cracks. Melner is scurrying up the hill and slides down the other side, farther away now from the village than he's ever been, slipping into a fog-filled basin. The gun cracks again, and a faint voice is yelling for Melner to stop. Stop, but he's sliding too fast. The fog doesn't abate, it gets thicker and thicker, and his leg twists the wrong way. He screams, and he's picking up speed. The gun's cracking is sucked away until it's lost somewhere in the abyss above him. Everything is soon lost, reduced to rhytmic pounding on his numbed and twisted body. It's white with nothing, and the only thing stringing Melner to reality is the pain pouring up from his leg, until that, like everything, fades into nothing.