Globules (Illustrated)

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Globules :or: The Unidentified

At first I thought the stars were multiplying. Edit said it

was me being unconquerably sentimental -- like one of thosecorny little things I’d say about a month or two into our

relationship. But I told her it wasn’t sentimental: the stars had

slowly doubled over the last month or however long -- it wasweird, like life multiplying, like the stars were alive and

breeding like rabbits. And she laughed at me and said I was a

corny romantic. But that’s Edit; it’s how she is. I mean shedon’t even go by her Christian name, Edith; she leaves out the

last letter like it weakens her or something. And she’s smarter than me anyway, so I take her word for most things. There was

a time she’d say that stuff with a different tone. And shesmiled, and I knew what those lips felt like. Now she only ever

smiled with one half of her mouth when she stopped believing

in life or anything.And very suddenly, drastically, without any other sort

of build up, we saw them over the lake, about forty of them

floating there, bobbing a little -- not stars or nothing big likethat; something a lot more humble and simple. I stood there

staring at them -- the lake I can see from my window -- big,weird, wordless: those things, those weird blobs I couldn’t

make out the shape of at first. Honestly, unlike most folks, myfirst impression wasn’t flying saucer. I could only think of oneword: life. Hell, I don’t know much about that philosophical

stuff Edit’s always talking about, all that mind stuff; I just gotthis feeling life’s a whole lot more unconquerable than any

crackpot scientist or philosopher ever speculated. But the TV

immediately started screaming: UFO attack! UFO attack! AndEdit said, “This is retarded, this is like some damn idiot



Saturday morning sci-fi movie.” I’m guessing Edit agreed with

me somehow: I mean they weren’t saucers or cigar -shapedlight- blinkin’ space-roamin’ vehicles; they weren’t silver,

metalic, mechanical, lifeless -- What’s it called? -- automatons.They were bodily, organic like something out of Biology class,

but not necessarily scientific. Semi-pastel, sunset color, mostly

blues and fleshy pinks, and maybe a deep orange. Life colors.But the television kept screaming apocalypse, the final war is

here! Well, we waited and waited for that apocalypse; we

waited and waited for that final war, waited and waited for anything at all. Nothing happened. They floated there and

Edit said, “This is pointless, like they expect something not todisappoint us nowadays.”

And so they were floating in the city, and that’s all theyever did: just floated and floated harmlessly, these weird pink

and blue globules in random shapes with what might’ve been

veins or arteries if you saw it on an animal. Some of them bigas a whale or bigger; a lot of them big as a horse or smaller;

most of them somewhere in between. And one of them looked

like intestines and I heard myself say outloud, “I got part of myintestines taken out back when I almost died; that’s

nightmarish.” And Edit said, “Oh don’t be solipsistic,”whatever that means. I remember saying to the doctor weeks

or so before I went into the hospital: “I got blood globules inmy piss.” So me and the doctor debated for a bit about whatexactly a globule was. I didn’t really know. Later, me

strapped in all those blue tubes like I was a machine now, andEdit there holding my hand sometimes with her brood face on

as usual, and Mark’s little hand too. That warm flesh, you

know, one of those things you forget about when you don’thave it. I tried to say, like I was apologizing for something,



“All I said was I got blood globules in my piss.” And nowevery body was using that word: Globule, a nonsense word.

And I started hearing stories and speculation: this fella by the name of Stanley -- he worked with me down at the sign

factory -- he said he woke up one day and saw one floating

above his bed, bobbing there, oblong, about the size of a child.He said he screamed and jumped out of bed and started beating

it with a kayak oar. But it would just bang against the wall and

float back to him gentle like a balloon or something. So hekept beating it a good five or ten times until he gave up and

ignored it. Edit said, “I’d’ve kept beating it til it was dead.”And Stanley said, “So you think they’re alive?” And Edit said,

“No, of course not!” One day about two weeks in, the three of us were sitting

with some people at Ezekiel’s (All-Nite) Shrimp and Waffle

Queen and my friend Artemis said, “I think they’re dead souls,you know, like dead and forgotten souls come up from the

underworld, because, I mean, how’re we spose to know what

dead souls look like?” And this guy named Noel, he said, “Ilooked at one of them and I think I saw my dead sister.” And

this girl Appaloosa said, “I saw my dead brother.” And thenshe and Noel started making out like right there in the middle

of Ezekiel’s like a non-apocalypse gave people the excuse todo life stuff like that. Edit pointed a finger to the back of her throat and made a gag like she does. Then later she said, “If I

saw my dead husband’s face in one of those damn globules I’d beat it till it exploded.” I haven’t heard from Noel in a while; I

mean that kid always had those arm scars. Why don’t I call my

friends more? Why don’t I keep in touch with people I love, people I grew up with? I got all these sentimental ideas about



life and shit like that, but look how much I act on it. Noel and

Appaloosa can let everything go and make out in the middle of Ezekiel’s. Me I need an excuse to just drop a phone call. I

promise tomorrow I’ll look up Noel’s number. Tomorrow. Anyway, back then this girl Joy started saying the

globules were only outcroppings of our inferior psychology,

whatever that means. She said she was going to start a lecturetour. I expected Edit to agree, but she said, “Boy, that Joy

thinks a lot of herself, doesn’t she.” Then this girl Hope started

saying we’d all shrunk down to microscopic size: “I mean sizeis all relative afterall.” Then she said something weird about

perspective and fractal geometry or some damn shit. I meanfractal? What the hell is that? And Edit scoffed and said,

“These idiots want to see patterns don’t they.” So I was talking to this guy Conti and I told him how I

didn’t think they were space aliens. And Conti said, “Of

course not; you’d be silly to still think that anymore.” But thenI told him about the stars multiplying before they showed up --

“I mean one plus one don’t equal two in this case; if they’re not

space aliens, what was the deal with the stars doubling all of asudden?” I expected him to say the two were unconnected, just

complete random happenstance and all that babble. But hesaid, “It kind of casts doubt on the existence of outerspace,

doesn’t it?” But Conti was always a weird kid. Of courseweird wasn’t quite as weird as it used to be, I mean consideringthe -- What’s it called? -- the context? I was tempted to think

maybe he was right, maybe there was no outerspace up there.And they printed a survey in Huddled Masses the next

week under the title, “What Are They?” -- nobody needed to

elaborate that title -- twelve percent said, “Dead souls”;fourteen percent said, “Nothing,” Joy’s followers I assumed;



two percent said, “God’s messengers”; two percent said,

“Harbingers of the Apocalypse/fulfillment of Biblical prophesy”; one percent said, “Space aliens”; seventy two

percent declined to speculate. I was surprised the space alienspeculating was so low. I mean I stopped believing they were

space aliens early, but I thought my opinion was in the

minority. I mean the knowledge is so under the surface in the -- What’s it called? -- the subconscious, I was afraid nobody

could get to it. It made me feel good about people. I mean it’s

weird that these bullshit floating nonsense animals could makeme feel good about people, but they did.

Then Stanley told me about this girl Ashley-Ellen -- sheused to babysit for Mark sometimes -- Stanley said she started

a cult: The Believers in Globules as Dead Souls cult. She wasthis real charismatic blonde, and when Stanley told us this Edit

scoffed like she only got a following because most of those

people wanted to sleep with her. Then Stanley said it turnedout to be a suicide cult, but she was the only one who jumped

in the lake and drowned herself. And Stanley said her sister

Eliza-June who lived across the lake in a little town called Syrnstarted a cult: The Believers in Globules as Space Aliens cult --

small town folk jump to the space alien conclusion morequickly I think -- and she jumped in the lake and drowned. But

Stanley said he thought she started alone and drowned alone,no cult following her. There at the bottom of the lake: twosisters who hadn’t talked in years. And Edit said, “Please, that

totally lacks verisimilitude,” whatever that means, “Next you’lltell me their mother jumped in.” But I didn’t know how much

to believe Stanley -- he liked tall tales, said he spent time in

juvie for beating Ashley-Ellen with a kayak oar when theywere kids. I mean what’s going on with a guy like that?



I thought back to my gut surgery a lot those days, how first

seeing the globules made me think it was all about that, aboutlife enduring, about flesh and guts, and stuff like that. For

Stanley, it finally gave him a story to share with Ashley-Ellen,something violent and alive, long lost sisters joining instead of

him joining with the girl always in his dreams -- I don’t know

if there really ever was an Eliza June. I saw a girl I thoughtwas Ashley-Ellen in the grocery store a couple of weeks later

and I wanted to ask her what it felt like being dead at the

bottom of the lake. It all felt real, like both of them were true -- but everything then felt real. It’s like Artemis and Noel and

Appaloosa looking for resurrection. Or Joy and Hope andConti finding proof in it all of something. Me, I saw this life

around me and it made me wonder about life again.And I quit my job at the sign factory. I started reading

Genesis more: not because I believe in that stuff or nothin’;

just, you know, looking for something bigger. And Edit wouldsnatch it out of my hand and toss it against the wall and say, “If

you start talking about order and purpose, I’m leaving.” And I

said to her one day, “We should have a kid.” And she said,“Why?” with that gaggy shock, you know the way Edit gets.

And I said, “Cuz I been thinkin’ a lot about life lately, how life,you know, fills the world and keeps filling it.” And she said,

“I’ve had enough life with that little bastard in there and I don’tneed another one.”

Oh, I forgot to tell you what Mark was up to this whole

time. He was with us during most of the stuff I told you about,most of the time behind the door in his little back room,

tagging along with us wherever we went, fast as he could on

his little legs: squinting when Noel and Appaloosa startedmaking out; squinting when the weird floating globules



arrived; squinting when his mother brought up his dead father

and described how she’d beat him back to the grave -- but nowords, only his eyes talking. When I was in the hospital back

when I almost died -- strapped into those machines, feelingwhite, listening to endless beeping and Edit going on and on

about how she could feel herself getting sick just being around

so many sick people -- I felt Mark’s fingers ar ound my finger; Icouldn’t quite see so good, but I felt his fingers; I hardly knew

the kid back then, but I felt his fingers around mine. And when

the globules showed up, he was fascinated. One day he and Ispent a good twenty minutes, never speaking, staring at one --

big as a blimp -- floating in front of the second floor window. Imade a game of pointing out shapes -- like clouds, you know,

when you’re a kid -- and Mark would smile, but he wouldn’t join in. I don’t know why he never talked. Anyway, this

blimp-sized globule, I swear, had arms and legs like a man

floating along on his back, like a dead body in a river or something -- except, no head and his guts floating upward

toward heaven -- and it floated down into traffic and we heard

honking and screaming and squealing and rattling and bangingmetal like it crashed into cars. Edit was screaming for attention

the whole time. We didn’t notice. And then they started leaving us. This kind of miracle a

brief gift like the thirty three years of Jesus. Except they didn’texactly leave. It was more of a dying; vanishing like in amagic act is more accurate; no, disintegrating is more accurate,

like sugar coating with water poured all over it. Or glass. Or arotting dead animal. Or smoke. Or you know how a downed

power line, the blue sparks’ll jump from puddle to puddle. A

few of them exploded, some of the big ones -- It kind of madesense to me, something to do with gravity and black holes:



beats me; I don’t know science too well. But it made perfect

sense to me that explosive energy would be part of their --What’s it called? -- repertoire. And I saw a report: The last one

exploded down at Pappisville Train Station. Only onecasualty. And I said outloud, “Edit was at the train station.”

All I could think of was the smirk Edit must’ve had: “Oh, of

course. How convenient. Show me the fucking Godmachine.” Then the face disappears in fire, never losing the

smirk until the final second. And those smirking lips, I

remember what they felt like. One time, a long time ago.And then it was nothing -- a long weird nothingness. I

don’t know. I don’t know how to describe it. Empty,wordless, nothing. Just a bunch of unexplainable blank.

It wasn’t till about a year later he -- Mark I mean -- saidanything about any of it. I mean, I didn’t mind taking him in or

nothing. He’s a lot like me: we don’t need much. His mother

had enough money stashed. He made a balloon one day and painted it blue and pink and deep orange like this orange you’d

only see back then. And I heard him say in his little voice, “I

miss them.” What did he mean? I miss them? I thought for awhile and said something Edit might’ve called unconquerably

sentimental: “Yeah ... Yeah ... I miss them too.”

Globules (Illustrated)

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