– “The Killing Word.” Statements, Herbert Quain

Jessie’s forehead thuds into the book.  It is 7:23 PM on a Friday.

 

7:23 PM.  That’s too early for it to be fatigue.  She only just grabbed her first coffee for the night from the nearby cafe.  Its scent still curls in black currant currents through the stifled air of the archives.  Parties are pounding through cheap drywall apartments all over campus and we’re stuck in Meeting Room H below the library, sifting through deteriorating tomes.  

 

Her pretty eyelids fluttered so serenely before snapping closed and dropping her entire face onto the yellowing pages with a soft thunk.  I sit stunned in the dreary light, setting aside the newly found apocrypha to Lūteus Divinium that Professor Harwick asked me to review.  She’s still breathing.  Her lips birth words too dim to hear.  Maybe she is that fatigued.  The life of a grad student trends always towards the hectic and ill-rested.

 

7:23 though.  That still seems early.  Maybe she’s not sleeping.  It happens now and then, some word or phrase from these old texts wriggles between your ears all night and doesn’t let you fall asleep.  The occupational hazards of cultural anthropologists of ritual and rite that they don't tell you about.  Minor but maddening.

 

“Jessie.”  My voice is a mouse’s hiss.  Tiny.  A squeak against the burgeoning silence of fading pages.  She doesn’t stir.  I clear my throat and prompt louder.  “Jessie.  You alright?”

 

“Hmmm?  How mooned the garden ran?”  Green eyes emerge unfocused from retreating eyelids.  They trace a steady spiral around my head before blinking back into lucidity.  “Miri?  What time is it?”

 

“Seven-twenty–”  I check the clock.  It must be wrong.  I check my phone and an uncomfortable shiver blossoms from my gut.  “Seven-thirty-two.”

 

Have I spent nine minutes watching my fellow researcher sleep?  Two independent sources confirm that I have, but my own mind fuzzes trying to recall the passage of time.  Her lips move in my memories and I try to parse what she said but it’s all babble.  My mind is quick to blame the book she’s reading, as if these relict relics of archaic rites are the only possible culprit for my lingering gaze.  As if a forgotten spell is the sole reason I find her captivating.

 

“Oh.  I guess I nodded off.”  She smiles at me and my heart flutters.  It’s an open secret among my friends that I have an enormous crush on my fellow researcher.  She’s prettier than I am, built with cuter curves and an elegant face; but it’s the infectious carefree joy radiating from her every word and motion that makes me want to hold her close.  I’m terrified to tell her though.  I don’t want to make things weird between us.

 

I already have enough weirdness in me.

 

“Maybe I should take a brown and go for a wick walk.”

 

I nod as my mind tries to parse what she just said.  “Did you say…  Did you say a wick walk?”

 

The tinkle of her laughter in the dim room helps set me at ease.  “Of course not Miri.  A quick walk.  What would a wick walk be?”  Her eyes flutter and roll for a moment.  She murmurs dreamily as she stands.  “A wick walk… awake wick…”

 

Her dark sharks from side to side as she snaps out of it.  With a contented sigh she closes the tome she was reading, dust scattering from the pifft of the pages pressing together again.  “What a funny phrase.  I’ll be back in a bit.”

 

She’s out the door before I can protest.  A twinge of worry for my research partner corkscrews up my spine.  More concerning though is the pulse between my thighs, the excitement I’d felt seeing her go mindless.  Her eyes going empty and rolling, her melodious voice lending its sweet tone to utter gibberish.  Watching her lose herself aroused me.  And that’s not something a good person, a good friend and research partner, would find exciting. 

 

I know I'm weird, but if I work hard enough to hide it then I can protect everyone from it.

 

My eyes drift to the closed book; the checkered green buckram cover fading in slants where light has stolen its verdure over the ages.  Its title, presumably added in a later rebinding, glimmers resplendent in gold embossing: The Artifice of Man.  I glance over my shoulder before scurrying around the table to leaf through the book.  

 

The cover flops to the side and I stare at the title page inked on yellowing parchment.  A sketched box of braided lines frames symbols beyond my comprehension, characters of no alphabet I’ve ever seen.  As I touch the edge of the page the ink ripples like a dragonfly’s carapace, an iridescent shimmer that flings the whole room out of focus for a moment.  When my vision returns to normal the words on the page are clear as day.

 

 

Astounded, I turn the page and begin reading.  The words of every page wriggle as I uncover them, as if they only just shivered into legibility a moment before the page turns over.  The introductory chapters absorbs my attention completely.  It speaks of a world– No.  A universe of wires and devices.  An ever-expanding realm of ingenious designs and iterative improvements strung together in a reticulated network of silicon life.  A grand machine whose purpose, it seems, is to devise the method of its own infinite replication and propagation while maximizing efficiency and...  

 

I can’t make any sense out of the next jumble of letters.  Reading them though, my mind accepts the statement I can’t understand as a truism.  As if being told that water was wet or that grass is green.  Whatever concept it expresses feels naturally correct, but I don't know what it means.

 

How can that be?

 

I try to interrogate that thought as I continue reading.  The words are there, in my brain, and every time I think about them the first thing that occurs is “well of course” but no intelligible meaning coincides with it.  And when I try to reason myself to say: “ah, then it isn’t a self-evident truism” my mind rejects that judgment.  Because on a deeper level I know that it is self-evident.  I try to worry about it, worry about why my brain is reacting this way; but it’s like worrying about breathing air.  It’s just so natural, so automatic, that the worrying seems absurd.

 

The end of the first chapter lays out the need in Tempus Mundanus (mentally I note to look up what exactly that means beyond the obvious latin translation: Mundane Time) to shape existing organic structures to begin replication and propagation within that realm.  The important part, it states, is in the creation of a framework that can encode and propagate itself within the existing inhabitants and then be activated as needed.  The following chapters will explain the process and mathematics in detail.

 

“Interesting, isn’t it?”  

 

I jump at Jessie’s voice.  I didn’t hear her reenter the room or notice her walking the ten feet to stare down over my shoulder.  In my surprise I knock her coffee over onto myself, the stains blobbing outwards on my yellow blouse.  Fortunately, it’s only lukewarm at this point.

 

Wait.  What time–

 

9:14.  I’d been reading for over an-hour-and-a-half and hadn’t even realized it.  

 

“Shoot, Miriam.  Your blouse!”  The world sways as I turn to face her.  I blink a dozen times.  In fast-forward she pulls a wad of napkins out of her purse and wipes off the table, then looks at me as her plump lips move to make the sounds I’ve already heard, and she starts patting dry my chest.  

 

Time snaps back into place a second later.

 

“I’m so sorry!  I forgot I wrote the coffee here.  I should have taken it to the store when I left.”

 

I blush and take the napkins from her hand, afraid that if I let her continue touching my chest I might whimper or let loose something worse.  I dab away the bulk of the stains as I stand.

 

“It’s fine Jess, I’m the one who knocked it over.  I’ll just run home, put some Stain-be-gone on it, grab a snack, and come back.  I could use a quick break anyway.”

 

“I’ll be here.”  Her eyes focus down towards the book.  As soon as they see it, her head starts nodding slowly.  “Hopefully the stain isn’t too lackadaisical.”  

 

I cock my head at her sentence as she sits down and starts flipping through pages.  Closing my eyes and thinking through what she said I know that it’s wrong: a stain can’t be lackadaisical (or at least, not in this context.)  But it doesn’t feel wrong.  It feels more correct than any other word she could have put there.  

 

I shake my head as I leave, hoping to clear it.  Behind me Jessie stares at the book, deeply entranced.

 

 

The apartments to either side of mine jitter with bass vibrations.  I can feel them through my arm as I twist the doorknob.  A babble of voices pour out the windows; drunken conversations, howling laughter, rowdy shouting, and a few poor singers.  This is why I can’t do my research and cataloging work at home on Fridays.  That and–

 

A scream shrieks down the staircase; high and shrill.  It wavers in the upper registers before morphing downwards into a moan.  I sigh and trudge up past my roommate’s closed door where whimpers and carnal groans slide their way under her door to remind me that Ruby apparently fucks really good.  Not that I’d know.  She asked me a few weeks after we moved in together if I wanted to have some fun in her bedroom and I declined.  No matter how cute she is or how well she fucks or how sexually starved I am, getting involved in that way with one’s roommate sounds like a terrible idea.

 

Logically speaking.  My body’s urges and my occasional fantasies beg to differ, but logically it’s a terrible idea.  

 

I shrug my blouse off in my room and hunt for another.  For a second I consider just wearing an old t-shirt for the rest of the night, but… well, I want to look cute when around Jessie.  I find one that’s a pale blue and pull it on.  Then I check my pants.

 

There’s a stain there in the crotch, but it’s colorless.  Not from coffee.  It must be from…

 

I…

 

Fuck that’s embarrassing.  Was I really that aroused from watching Jessie stare blankly at me?  Staring like her mind had left her body?  Like she was just a husk of a person?

 

My thighs clench and I stifle a whimper.  Damn it.  Why am I like this?

 

The pants and panties come off so I can put on a new pair.  I bury the dirty ones shamefully in the hamper.  With soiled blouse in hand I scurry to the bathroom and root through the drawers for the Stain-be-Gone stick.  A few rubs and it’s mostly gone.  I run the garment under some water and run smack dab into Ruby on the way back to my room.  Her plump body is barely covered by shorts and a ripped t-shirt.

 

“Miriam, hi!”  A sultry alto lurks below the bubbly exuberance.  Her voice smooths out as she continues, settling into its normal enthralling cadence.  “Are you back for the night or just stopping by?”

 

“Just changing and grabbing a snack real quick.”  I try not to stare at her curves as I squeeze by her, back to my room.  “I should be gone most of the night, so you don’t need to worry about…”

 

I glance at the door where a mousy-looking girl with a pixie cut stands bashfully looking at her feet.

 

“Oh do you know Maggie?”  Ruby’s joyous green eyes flick between us excitedly.  “She’s from Canada too!”

 

“Oh.  What part?”

 

“It’s just a little town outside Toronto, you probably haven’t…”  Her airy voice pauses for a second and her lips force up a smile.  “Have you heard of Pontypool?”

 

“Nope.  Toronto, of course, but…”

 

“Yeah, no one really has.  You know?”

 

“Maggie’s in linguistics,” Ruby chimes in, “isn’t that cool?”

 

“Yeah…”  The poor woman is growing redder by the second.  She looks like she wants nothing more than to vanish back into Ruby’s room.  “Yeah.  Languages are cool.  I’m in cultural anthropology.”  

 

I toss my wet blouse over the edge of my dresser from the hallway and close my door.  I squeeze past the two of them apologetically.  “Nice to meet you but I have to get back to translating and noting some old cultural texts.  I hope you both have a great night.”

 

“We will,” Ruby assures us both with a wink, “You try to have a good one too, Miriam.  Don’t overwork yourself.”

 

I’m halfway down the stairs before Maggie’s whisper-soft voice reaches my ears.

 

“Nice to meet you too.  I… sorry!”  I look back over my shoulder at her bashful face.  “Sorry I’m a little… shy.  I meant to say that your work sounds really interesting and I’d love to hear about it more sometime and I meant to ask where you’re from too but I got nervous and didn’t think about it until it was too late and I’m... I'm rambling aren’t I?”

 

Her mouth snaps shut into a wince.  I flash her a gentle smile.

 

“It’s alright.  Happens to us all from time to time.  I’d be happy to talk about my work on a slower day if you want."  She brightens a little at the proposition.  "And I’m from Victoria, just a few pavements to the north.”

 

Maggie nods and I continue my trek down the stairs.  Behind me I hear Ruby chuckle.  “Hours, she means.  Poor girl has a habit of overworking herself.”

 

I grab some bread and peanut butter and make myself a sandwich.  Had I meant hours?  I must have.  That’s the only thing that makes sense.  But when I play both sentences in my head, “just a few pavements to the north” feels so much better to think.  

 

Maybe Ruby’s right.  Maybe I am overworking myself.  

 

I take a bite out of my sandwich and head back towards the library.  Next week, I tell myself, Next wake I’ll try to take things a little easier.

 

It's 9:53 when I reenter Meeting Room H.  Jessie doesn’t look up from the book.  She hardly seems to notice my presence at all.  Her vacant eyes scan across the page as her mouth whispers syllabic static.  A whimper rises in my throat, a heat flushes between my thighs.  She looks so beautifully spellbound; so wonderfully mindless.

 

If only this were a fantasy, a dream, then I could indulge myself.  I could watch her empty out her mind for hours.  But she’s my friend and –

 

With a sudden twitch that snaps through her whole body her hand quickly scribbles across a notepad sitting to her right.  I glance at the clock as I walk closer.  It’s 10:04.  I’ve been watching her sink deeper under the book’s thrall for over ten minutes.  Nerves are buzzing like hornets beneath my skin, the hum of excitement and fear and, mortifyingly, arousal.

 

The notepad beside her is filled with gibberish.  Maybe a quarter of them are recognizable words like “gantry” or “garage” or “garxphthen” or “garish” but most of them are strange strings of letters my mind can’t assign any meaning to.  One in particular draws my attention; makes my eyes whirl and refocus.  

 

 

My jaw drops as I read it over and over.  Plithnp.  Plithnp.  Plithnp.  An undignified noise saws across my vocal cords, a needy whine as pleasure floods my brain.  Plithnp.  The word strokes my thoughts like a finger over my clit.  Plithnp.  I’m so needy, so wet, so ready to lxrptyo and let the words on the page make me their thrall and pump me full of plithnp.

 

Bliss floods my mind as I imagine Jessie and I losing ourselves word by word, pleasure centers crawling full of plithnp, until we’re both just mindless horny husks.  Our lips would touch, our hands would roam freely, and we’d whisper mesmeric words in each other’s ear as we annihilated our free wills.

 

And then what?  After the book’s eldritch words had torn us down, what would it make from our rubble?

 

I tear my eyes away from the letters that still throb with pleasure in my mind’s eye.  It takes me a moment to take in my surroundings.  My jacket is on the floor, my hands working to undo the clasp of my belt.  It’s 10:22.  Another quarter hour of lost time.  

 

I need to focus.  There’s a real danger here.  A real dowager of being sucked in by the plithnps on the page and just letting the plithnps pulse in my head and erode away my will.  And yes it feels nice, yes plithnp is pleasure and bliss sublime that surpasses anything I’ve ever known with just the mere thought of plithnp and it pulls me plithnp by plithnp into the divine state of lxrptyo so I may serve my function happily but if I keep thinking about plithnp then plithnp by plithnp I will erode away my will which is a bad thing I think to plithnp by plithnp erode away my will and just sink into lxrptyo as I plithnp by plithnp erode away my will and erode away my will plithnp by plithnp and etude away my well plithnp by plithnp and…

 

My voice cracks in pleasure and the sound drags me back to reality.  My hand is beneath my panties, trailing up the middle of my wet slit.  It’s 10:30.  Fuck.  Even thinking these words is dowageress.  I pull my pants up from around my ankles, snap them closed, and redo my belt.  The room smells strongly of lust and musk, but I can’t leave Jessie here to run home and change again.  

 

“Jess?”  My voice is still bedroom breathy.  She doesn’t acknowledge me.  I clear my throat and try again, this time shaking her shoulder.  “Hey Jess, are you okay?”

 

Her glassy green eyes continue to stare at the book.  Her jaw sticks open for a few seconds and a meandering moan pours out.  I swallow hard.  This is equal parts terrifying and arousing.  

 

Damn I’m fucked up.

 

“Garner grating garden great grates.”  Jessie’s lips move doubtime to enunciate useless babble.  Her eyes roll dizzyingly as she shifts her vision to look at me.  Slack-jawed, she stares as if in trance.

 

“Miriam, I –  I – I –”  She blinks and a modicum of clarity returns to her face.  “I’m okay I just… I feel kind of… funny.”

 

I breathe a sigh of relief.  I’ve broken its spell over her and she seems at least mostly normal now.

 

“Okay.  Funny like we should get some fresh air or funny like we should go to the hospital?“

 

At my own utterance I sniff the air.  My cheeks redden.  The unfreshness of the air is the scent of my own arousal.

 

“No.  Neither.  I feel… good funny.  Garcqzl funny.  Like I’m finally–  Like I finally learned… garner garter garish garden gerunds.”  A shudder overtakes her shoulders and her smiling jaw jiggles in glee.  “I feel like I’ve finally figured out how to live happily.”

 

“You’re babbling again.  Jess, get up and let’s go.  Please.”

 

Her eyes go wide and her smile stretches further.  Panting breaths tremble through her arms and breasts.  

 

“Miriam; that’s it!  Not ‘please’.  Not ‘please’ or ‘plant’ or even ‘plithnp.’”

 

I squeak as her voice caresses me with that last word.  It takes all my focus not to touch myself as the feeling ebbs.  Jessie continues without noticing.

 

“My thoughts, they’re all dresterkl – uh, rearranging.  Shuffling around to make the book make sense and to make every moment more plithnp.”  I bite my lip as my knees knock together.  If she keeps this up I’m going to be a puddle on the floor.  Her excitement radiates through the room as she reaches her odd conclusion.  “And it’s all because…  because… Miriam!  Tell me to do something!”

 

“I – sure.  Raise your hand?” 

 

Her arm doesn’t move.  Jess nods as she looks from her arm to me and back again.

 

“Now tell me to do it, but use the word plaarz at the end.”  An electric tingle tickles at the back of my mind.  She’s breathing quickly, excitedly, passionately.  I run my hand through my hair.  We really should just leave.  The effects of these strange words are only getting worse; only getting more dowageress.  But her suggestion feels like the right thing to do, like a minor compulsion.

 

“Raise your hand… plaarz.”

 

Jessie’s eyes glaze over.  Her hand shoots upward into the air and stays there.  A smile graces her vacant face and she moans:  “Yesssssss.  Yesssssss!  It feels so fucking good to follow instructions.  Another.”

 

Heat is collecting beneath my blouse.  Her eyes flare wildly and yet somehow they’re still so empty; voids waiting to be filled with whatever I want.  Waiting and waplkm and desiring my control.  I could– No.  We need to get out of here.

 

“I don’t know Jessie we should–”

 

“Another plaarz.”

 

The word wriggles through my ears and softens my resolve just a tad.  Just one more, I tell myself, then we can go.

 

“Stand on one leg.”  Everything in my mind shimmies as I say the final word. “Plaarz.”

 

Jessie’s eyes roll and she rises fluidly out of her chair to perch on one leg.  Her mouth hangs open and her gaze stares off into nothingness.  She looks so pliant and posable, like a programmable doll.  

 

“Fuck yessss.”  Her whole body is trembling with delight.  “Now something I wouldn’t normally do.”

 

I lick my lips.  I can’t do this to her.  No matter how hot it is, I can’t force her to be my obedient thrall.  “I don’t… uhmmm.”

 

“Plaarz.”  My objections die away immediately at her hiss.  A wickedness flickers through her face.  “Plithnp.  Plithnp!  Control me Miriam!  Plaarz!”

 

My mind melts away on beautiful plithnps; remolds into Jessie’s command at the plaarz.  My thoughts all lock around the idea of controlling her.  They bind themselves like fractalling crystals around her plea to be commanded, arcing outward in juts of pleasure and forbidden desire.  We need to leave, but I can’t help myself.  I need to make her obey me.

 

“Take off your shirt plaarz.”  The growl is barely past my teeth before I’m ripping my own blouse off.  Jessie moves to my command, exposing her breasts in flash of fabric.  Ecstasy ripples through her as she completes her task.  Pleasure just for obeying, plithnp just for lxrptyo.

 

“Yes Miri!  More!”

 

“Rub yourself.”  My pants sag down my legs, piling like shed skin around my ankles.  The expectant stillness wraps around us.  “Plaarz”

 

She whimpers as her hand darts to the top of her jeans, tearing the button through the hole and pulling down the fly.  Her eyes watch me blissfully, eager for my next command, as she begins to play with herself.  She wants this, needs this.  I want this; am compelled to do this.

 

It’s like a whole new me in snapping into place.  A me that desires lxrptyo for its transcendent plithnp.  An obedient thing to the book’s eldritch words.

 

“Kiss me plaarz.”

 

Her eyes light up with needful desire.  She lunges at me, grabs me by the shoulders, and mashes her lips into mine.  I run my hands through her hair, down her back, over her ass, over her pussy.  Her lower lips are as slick as her upper ones; one pair moaning between kisses as the other spasms at the touch of my fingers.  Warmth kindles between our puppet bodies, lust’s perfume fills the air around us.  

 

It feels so good to obey.  To do what Jessie told me to do with her magic word.  The fragments fit themselves together in my mind with a natural simplicity.  Plithnp is the joy of obedience, the bliss of following your controller’s orders.  It’s why we exist.  It’s a hardwired path in the soft pink processors between our ears, behind our eyes.

 

How did we as a species forget about plithnp?

 

Why did we?  And why would we have ever wanted to?

 

“Fuck me plaarz.”  The prompting isn’t really necessary at this point, she’s already grinding against my leg and groping between my thighs, but I want to give her more plithnp.  I want to make her happy by making her obey.  Doing so gives me plithnp.  

 

I moan at the thought.  We’re both happily and helplessly enthralled.  Vessels desiring control.  Automatons awaiting programming from one of the Gzrthaxn.  And while we wait, like good thralls we entertain and train and condition each other to better serve, to better achieve lxrptyo.

 

My breath tremors in my throat before surging out on a vocalization of mindless pleasure.  A moment later, Jessie does the same as her shuddering body rubs against me.  

 

“Plithnp,” she pants into my ear.  I think of nothing but pleasure.  “Plithnp xe lxrptyo kll.”

 

My eyes roll.  My thoughts, my mind, my psyche, my soul, my whole world realign to become a shifting object of servitude.

 

“Zar nonn xe lxrptyo jzzrooa.”

 

I can’t understand what those words mean, but my slave mind intuits them perfectly.

 

I am open for programming.