Globules :oR: The Unidentified

7/29/2019 Globules :oR: The Unidentified

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Grant, Globules 1

f. Simon [email protected]

Globules :or: The Unidentified

At first I thought the stars were multiplying. Edit said it was me being unconquerablysentimental -- like one of those corny 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 was weird, 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. Imean she don’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 she smiled, and I knew what those lipsfelt 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 thelake, about forty of them floating there, bobbing a little. Not stars or nothing big like that;

something a lot more humble. I stood there staring at them -- the lake I can see from my window --

big, weird, wordless: those things, those weird things. Honestly, unlike most folks, my first

impression wasn’t flying saucer. I could only think of one word: life. Hell, I don’t know muchabout that philosophical stuff Edit’s always talking about, all that mind stuff; I just got this 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! And Edit said, “This isretarded, 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-shaped light-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 thatapocalypse; 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 to

disappoint us nowadays.”

And so they were floating in the city, and that’s all they ever did: just floated and floatedharmlessly, 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 big as a bus or bigger; a lot of them big as a dog

or smaller. And one of them looked like intestines and I heard myself say outloud, “I got part of my intestines 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 in my piss.” So we debated for a bit about what exactly a globulewas. I didn’t really know. And now every 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 andstarted beating it with a kayak oar. But it would just bang against the wall and float back to him

gently. So he kept beating it a good five or ten times until he gave up and ignored it. Edit said,

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.collectiveexile.com/

http://www.collectiveexile.com/

mailto:[email protected]



“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, “I looked at one of them andI think I saw my dead sister.” And this girl Appaloosa said, “I saw my dead brother.” And then

she and Noel started making out. 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. 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 lecture tour. 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 size is all relativeafterall.” Then she said something weird about perspective and fractal geometry or some damn

shit. I mean fractal? 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 then I told himabout 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 a sudden?” I

expected him to say the two were unconnected, just complete random happenstance and all that

babble. But he said, “It kind of casts doubt on the existence of outerspace, doesn’t it?” But Contiwas always a weird kid. Of course weird wasn’t quite as weird as it used to be, I mean considering

the -- 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 alien

speculating 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 itcalled? -- 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 make me feel good about

people, but they did.Then there was this girl Ashley-Ellen -- Mark’s babysitter -- I heard all these stories about

how she started a cult: The Believers in Globules as Dead Souls cult. She was this real charismatic

blonde and Edit said she only got a following because most of those people wanted to sleep withher. Then it turned out to be a suicide cult, but she was the only one who jumped in the lake and

drowned herself. And her sister Eliza-June who lived across the lake in a little town called Syrn, I

started hearing stories about how she started a cult: The Believers in Globules as Space Aliens cult

-- small town folk jump to the space alien conclusion more quickly I think -- and she jumped in the



Grant, Globules 3

lake and drowned. But I think she started alone and drowned alone, no cult following her. There at

the bottom of the lake: two sisters who hadn’t talked in years. And Edit said, “Please, that totally

lacks verisimilitude,” whatever that means, “Next you’ll tell me their mother jumped in.”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 would snatch it out

of my hand and toss it against the wall and say, “If you start talking about order and purpose, I’mleaving.” 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 withthat little bastard in there and I don’t need another one.”

I forgot to tell you about Mark. He was with us the whole time, 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 started making out; squinting when the weird floatingglobules arrived; squinting when his mother brought up his dead father and described how she’d

beat him back to the grave. He was quiet; in fact I don’t remember him ever talking. When I was

in the hospital back when I almost died -- strapped into those machines, feeling white, listening to

endless beeping and Edit going on and on about how she could feel herself getting sick just beingaround so many sick people -- I felt Mark’s fingers around my finger; I couldn’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 whenthe globules showed up he was fascinated. One day he and I spent a good twenty minutes never

speaking staring at one -- big as a blimp -- floating in front of the second floor window. I made 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 bang like it crashedinto cars. Edit was screaming for attention the whole time. We didn’t notice.

And then they started leaving us. They didn’t exactly leave. It was more of a dying;

vanishing like in a magic act is more accurate; no, disintegrating is more accurate, like sugar coating with water poured all over it. Or glass. Or a rotting 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 made sense 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 one casualty. 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 God machine.” 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 -- said anything about any of it. I mean, Ididn’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 and painted it blue and pink and deep orange. And I

heard him say in his little voice, “I miss them.” What did he mean? I miss them? I thought for a

while and said something Edit might’ve called unconquerably sentimental: “Yeah ... Yeah ... I miss



them too.”

Globules :oR: The Unidentified

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