Zk | A Time Approaching

writing

Backronym this :P A Time Approaching? Yes.

Initial challenge: some sort of New Weird story that must incorporate all those lovely words that pluralize with -ata.

Maybe also:

Secondary challenge: first usage of MarkMyWords

Also, I’ve been having some weird thoughts about the loss of innocence after watching that series by Innuendo Studios. Something about how being confronted with new knowledge and being asked to internalize it feels like being robbed of innocence. I don’t know how much I want to reference that directly or just make it a metaphor or what. Given the New Weird nature of it, metaphor is probably better: sudden change of those around (maybe sudden new knowledge?) leading to a challenge of prior assumptions. It’ll have to be long enough to get all those words in there; maybe a novella?

Summary

Stigmata and Miasmata: Marks appear on everyone’s bodies somewhere, intricate and fuliginous, sometimes shifting. It’s as if they do not exist; appear to eyes, in photos, etc, but only when viewed by people, not electronics. Scans show that they are being seen and recognized by people, but even attempting to register the input in retinas fails. No one knows what they mean; it is apparently up to us to figure out what they are.

Traumata and Dogmata: It becomes divisive, but mostly among older generations. A small portion apparently have theirs on the inside, as visible by xrays, but they nonetheless attempt to declare themselves somehow more pure. Various other divisions begin to form, based on shape, whether to celebrate or hide, etc.

(unsure from here on out, it feels dangerously close to preachy)

Lemmata and Schemata: Some are drawn to the fact that it seems to draw attention away from other divisive factors, or at least prove their absurdity; what matters race when we so easily form groups around non-existent marks?

Anathemata: The generation who grows up in the era of the stigmata are universally changed in some ineffable way. More organized, more filled with light, more chill, resistant to adopting parents’ attitudes, less religious, almost nihilistic except in that meaning in life is what you create, some shared knowledge etc. ~~Perhaps they can’t see the marks?~~ This does not go well with parents. Try to war, doesn’t work; drafts universally fail, etc.

Melismata: To whom does the future belong? Certainly not to you. It belongs to us, and then it doesn’t. There is a taste of the metamodern to time itself which cares not for belief and meaning, cares not for us. It is our responsibility to create meaning, to believe as we will. And yet by virtue of that these things are melismata in the world: fluttering, changing, and then gone. And that’s the beauty of the whole thing.

Characters

Outline

Stigmata

“Yves! Yves!”

And that’s how it began. It began with a shout. It began with a yell. It began with a name and with panic and with, in short order, a mad scramble to the bathroom.

With such panic, Yves felt acutely aware of the layout of the house. The living room, so packed with books, was cozy and warm-lit by sun, and the kitchen, filled with the scent of tea and reheated leftovers, was comfortably messy and warm-lit by the oven. The kitchen was also a single step down from the living room. Some architect’s joke, perhaps, or some design element poorly understood by those who actually had to live with it.

And then a single step up to the entryway.

And then a single step down to the hallway which led to the bathroom.

Yves knocked his toe against the step from kitchen to entryway, and the dash from there to bathroom was less graceful than the rest.

AJ stood before the vanity mirror, wide-eyed. Stood, gripping the edge of the vanity, white-knuckled. Stood and stared at the steam-clouded mirror, fresh from the shower. Undried. Their skin, always a comfortable, warm olive, had been burnished into bronze by the heat of the water.

The way in which they relinquished their grip on the edge of the vanity and turned looked tightly controlled, anxiety kept from them by sheer force of will. It set Yves own nerves on edge, and he balled his fists up.

There it was. Night black. Blacker. Fuliginous. Beyond soot: it ate light. An utter dark. Harsh geometries and graceful curves, aciculate, full of parallels and careful angles. The lines were all of the same pencil-thin width, and stretched from AJ’s hip up along their flank, slipping past the curve of belly, gracing breast, shoulder, bicep.

“Yves.” Their voice was raw and spoke to all the anxiety their movements wouldn’t show. “Your face.”

He walked woodenly to stand next to his partner in front of the mirror. Carefully curated scholarly visage marred by, yes, impossibly black lines. No straight edges, but something that was floral without containing flowers, graceful, but somehow without the grace of AJ’s new stigmata. Collarbone to mid-cheek. Undeniable, unmissable, unreal.

“The fuck.”

They both stood still, staring into the mirror. Yves would trace the surreal lines of the mark covering his neck and chin, and then trace those covering AJ’s side, chest, and shoulder. Minutes of silence. A rhythmic silence, tick-tocking between fear and bewilderment.

“What is it, Yves? What’s going on? How…”

“I don’t know, love. I don’t know.”

They turned again, movements no longer so well choreographed, and brushed their fingers over the tattoo-like marks covering his face. Then pressed and rubbed as though to remove rubber cement. “It doesn’t…feel. Doesn’t feel like anything, I mean. I can’t tell that it’s there.”

Yves touched his face, touched AJ’s side. Hunted for words. Words his only solace. “I don’t know,” he repeated.

Another moment’s silence, and then: “Did it happen in the shower?”

“Yeah. I was reaching to turn off the water and looked down and it started.”

“Started?”

“Yeah, like it started there–” They pointed at a confluence of lines on the point of their pelvis. “–and then spread upward.”

“You could see them moving?”

“Mmhm. It was quick. Took maybe a second. I tried scrubbing it but it’s like it’s in my skin, or is my skin. That’s when I called for you.”

Yves nodded. “Stay here, love.”

He ducked out of the bathroom and walked — more cautiously this time — back to the living room. There on the roll-top was Isaac’s fly-tying rig. The magnifying glass was integral to the set up, but the whole thing could be picked up in one go. Picked up and carried back to the bathroom.

AJ laughed at the sight of it. A nervous laugh, perhaps.

“Sit on the toilet.”

They did, and Yves sat on the edge of the tub next to them. He flexed the magnifying glass away from where it had been aimed at the vise and pointed it toward his partner’s side, toward those lines. They were as dark and as surreal under magnification. No: darker, less real. The black ate light all the more hungrily under magnification, and with it stole definition and texture from the skin. But there, if Yves nudged AJ’s skin until it faced up toward the ceiling light, there was the faintest hint of a hair, two, five. So it was only skin deep.

Balancing the rig between knee and left hand, he flicked at the design sharply with the fingers of his right. Pinched it.

“Ow.”

“Sorry, love.”

The skin reddened to either side of the mark, but within it, nothing. No change.

“Do you have your insulin lancets?”

Yves frowned. “Yes. Are you sure?”

AJ nodded.

Another trip to the living room, and he returned with a small, teal lancet. In the bathroom, Yves twisted off the cap and sat on the tub once more. “You’re really sure about this?”

They smiled weakly. “I can handle a pinprick, jerk.”

Yves snorted, nodded, pinched to either side of the line once more, using his partner’s bulk to his advantage, and quickly dotted the lancet into the skin. A sharp hiss from AJ, and from his skin a droplet of blood, carmine shining bright amid the blackness of the stigmata.

Before the blood dripped, he pressed the pinpoint of the lancet into the plastic of the cap and tossed it in the trash. Back into his lap the rig went, and he lined magnifying glass up with eye, blood. The contrast was sharper, thus. Blood shown brighter, nearly glowing against the eager blackness of the line.

The drop started to roll downward, so he grabbed a square of toilet paper and dabbed at it, then held that up beneath the magnifying glass. “It’s red.”

“I can see that, Yves.”

He lifted his eyes to shoot a wry glance above the rim of his glasses. He pressed the paper back to AJ’s side. “No, I mean it’s not colored any by the…the ink. The whatever. It’s just red. Nothing different.”

They grunted and nodded. “Right, yeah. That we can see, at least.”

“Fair.”

“So what do we do?”

Yves set the rig down once more and rested elbow on knee, forehead on palm. This thought was too big, too strangely shaped to fit within his head. “Wait for Isaac, I guess. Unless you want to risk a doctor.”

AJ’s face twisted into a grimace. “No thanks.”

“Right, sorry.”

“So what do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, love.”

“You’re the brains of this operation.” The words were fond rather than testy.

“And you’re the cute, yes.” Yves lifted the toilet paper and, seeing the bleeding had long since stopped, tossed that into the trash as well. “Even with your new tattoo.”

AJ laughed. “Really? I think I’d look better with yours. It’s all flowy.”

He grunted.

“This is dumb, Yves. Why are joking? What is happening?”

He stopped himself before repeating his I-don’t-knows. “Something weird. It’s too organized to be something like an injury or whatever, or some sort of reaction.”

“Never heard of black being the color of a reaction, anyway.”

“Me either. Maybe something we can look up online?”

“Yeah. Maybe Isaac’s heard something, too.”

Isaac had, indeed, heard something. Had heard much. And while the three of them sat on the couch, Isaac at one end then AJ between him and Yves, he spoke and they listened.

“When it hit, we were all heading back to the trailers to get our stuff. One of the guys, Aaron, looked down at his hands and yelled. I was right next to him, so I could see it rush up under his sleeve. I thought it was some sort of animal at first, the way it was moving, so I slapped at his arm to try to knock it off. We rolled up his sleeve and there it was. It looked like vines or tentacles or something wrapping up around his arm to the elbow.

“A bunch of the other guys turned around to look at us and then at each other. A few of them had the marks on their faces and Aaron had his on his arm. One of them unbuttoned his shirt and saw it on his side, so everyone else looked under their shirts. A few had them there. The others went to the johns and looked in there, and they all had them somewhere.”

AJ frowned. “And you?”

Isaac shook his head. “Nothing.”

Yves stood and rooted through his husband’s hair. “Not on your scalp or anything.”

“Yeah, nothing that I could find, unless it’s, uh…way up between my cheeks or whatever.”

Tamping down the absurd urge to crack a joke, Yves only nodded.

“So we crowded in the trailer and boss pulled up some news on his laptop — he had a mark across his forehead and cheek — but there wasn’t really anything on the news sites. Folks were talking about it on Facebook though.”

“What were they saying.”

Isaac shrugged. “Didn’t ask. I was grabbing my stuff so I could come home. Nothing looked that out of the ordinary on the way. No crazy drivers or traffic or whatever.”

A minute of silence, of averted gazes.

“I was too afraid to look at my phone. I was afraid something might have happened to you two.”

AJ and Yves both shook their heads.

“Did either of you two research? AJ?”

They shook their head. “I was afraid, too.”

“What of?”

“That everything would be crazy and I’d get sucked in and be glued to the screen. I’m sure I will in a bit. I’ll get stuck scrolling and scrolling or whatever, but I didn’t want to be…that when you came home.”

Isaac’s smile was weak. “Thanks for that, love.”

Another silence, and then Yves spoke up. “Well, shall we?”

The other two nodded, and AJ went to warm up the projector and get their laptop plugged in. Yves, meanwhile, stood, stretched, and walked to the kitchen. He caught himself walking as quietly as possible, as he always did when stressed, as though by making noise he might somehow invoke the wrath of whatever force had initially brought that stress.

Dinner. Dinner would help. There was rice to make and leftovers to reheat.

Miasmata

From the living room: the voice of an announcer. She managed to sound both calm and as stressed as Yves felt. Her voice was level, reassuring, and yet riddled with repetitions.