Jess lanai

‘The doctor say he no can help me. He don’t find any prob-lem. He say:

Mr. Oh, you might think perhaps about consulting another doctor. A psychiatrist. Many times, such phantom aches and pains can be caused by stress or excessive worry. I can give you a referral if you’d like.

No, I shake my head. I know what he talking about. He don’t believe this pain in my neck. Almost, I can no longer swallow. He think I’m crazy, have some kind of mental prob-lem. What he know anyway? 

Doctors, they just suppose to find place where pain start and fix it.

Two months ago this start. Sudden pain in neck. Near back on left side. Like somebody take my skin between finger and pinch. Like my older brother used do. Like I do to younger brother. Hard to move with that kind of pain. That kind enough for making stay down. Last week, two days I not get up. I stay in bedroom, watch Korean videos. 

Usually feel good to hear Korean language, my ear understand right away. But with pain in neck, hard to enjoy. Korean sound like English, coming long way to me. It take time to travel and in meantime this pinch-ing. This the third doctor I see. This one specialist. Always they say they can find nothing. Wife come with me but she don’t believe me either. She just trying to help me.

On way home, when wife say: What he say? I tell her he say I depress, go see psychiatrist. Wife look worry, then mad.

She want to know where exactly pain is. I try to explain but car almost hit fence, so she say: Watch the road! Watch the road! I say I watching the road fine but she want me to show her pain or not? She say: You problem you nervous all the time.

Never relax. I say she make me nervous asking question and then screaming when we far away from fence anyway. ‘

From the short story ‘Mr.Oh’ by Caroline Kim

‘The Body’ is one of my first attempts at writing a short story.

All the short stories I wrote are pretty bizarre.

But I am considering putting them all up just as they are in their bizarre form and seeing if anyone can make any sense of them.

The fun of reading short stories for me is that they usually come in little collections and you just read them with no context.

No idea what you’re reading about until you read it.

That was my favorite thing about going to film festivals. My producer friends just gave me tickets and I went to films without any idea what I was about to watch.

I might do that as a little series on here. Simply post my nonsensical unfinished little shorts with zero context and just leave them be.

The first rule for entering the void they learned on an early morning lesson when Vincent was sitting behind Talia and singing bits of her hair with his lighter as a prank. When she caught him, she beat the top of his head with her book cover as he laughed and she didn’t even notice

Professor Faeris walk into the room. Not until he cleared his throat and she went beet red and sank her head below her desk.

“There are two parts of the machine.” Rang Professor Faeris’s voice over the still and silent class room. Some-in the class were listening so intently that their souls didn’t seem in their bodies but were instead becoming one with Professor Faeris’s low timbre voice. While the rest of the class were the stragglers only trying to make sure it appeared as though they were listening intently. And those were the ones that seemed trapped inside their bodies. Their faces twitched and no matter how still they sat some limb seemed to involuntarily vibrate. 

Professor Faeris seemed neither aware of the ones listening nor the ones attempting to listen. He seemed not even aware of his own voice speaking to them. It was a quality the Professor had. A far away quality. A godly quality that made them all fear him, as though the room wouldn’t be able to handle the entirety of his presence and thus he dwindled it down to small doses. “The first part-of the machine is what you will program yourselves and therefore it will program to you. The second part is being programmed by the void and thus it will program to the void. Can you guess which machine has the authority in default mode?”

A few feeble hands hovered over heads but hesitated to stretch fully for the sky. Talia’s-hand drifted to where her hair had been singed and she felt it go from smooth to straw textured right as Professor Faeris found her eyes. She dropped her hair and joined those that tried to pretend they were intently listening. 

Professor Faeris dropped out of her eyes and she didn’t know if it meant she had succeeded or failed. His eyes found another student who proudly declared that the machine programed to the void would take over in default mode. 

“Correct.” Said Professor Faeris. “the void part of the machine will take over in default mode. It is more likely to keep you alive. The second rule of the void..” Talia straightened her back and tilted her head, quite sure that’s what people did when they were really seriously listening. 

Professor Ferguson’s class was easier than Professor Faeris’s class for one simple fact.

Professor Ferguson wasn’t as intimidating as Professor Faeris. She in fact wasn’t intimidating at all which also somehow made her words much less interesting when listening was optional. 

If people talked while she was talking all she did was smack her tongue against her teeth so everyone knew she was upset.

Some of them felt bad for her, like Laura. Laura felt-bad so she’d face Ferguson with her hands interclasped and her big brown eyes all wide and tilted up and she’d nod along and look-back and shush Talia and Sarah.

But neither Talia nor Sarah gave Laura anymore attention than they gave Ferguson. They were deep in conversation about what they would wear to the summer festival.

 They were deep into winter and their summer festival was now only six months away. Sarah said she would wear a hip chain and then she showed Talia how she would move her hips to make that chain stand out. 

She jutted her left hip out and vibrated it and described-how the chain would shake with her hip. Talia tried to copy her but the whole of Talia’s butt con-caved at her attempt to jut her hip and both girls fell to giggles. Laura turned her head to scold them and they caught a glance of Ferguson’s pointed nose and narrow eyes pointed right at them. 

Their ears perked up for ouly a moment at her words. She mentioned of how the creatures could move much easier in the void’s heavy gravity.

They each felt a slight sinking in the chest, like some deep dread. A seed of dread for the future planted in them. But it was easy to pull their focus back to the summer festival when Talia said she’d like a dress that was the pale grey blue of winter turning to summer and Sarah argued that the sunsets got more golden when summer was coming and she should base her dress on that.

The last month of winter reached the lowest temperatures. The grounds were frozen and everyone ran in between buildings. There was a frenzy in that last cold month. 

An unspoken pressure hung around. What it meant if you were held back too much and entered the void when you were too old. 

Nobody really knew what it meant, only that it meant something bad. Like you got the bad jobs nobody wanted maybe. But the other thing was, the thing that really got to Tallia at least, was no one wanted to be behind in the spring time.

Everyone wanted to be ahead come spring. So that they got to have their summers to themselves without much worrying. 

Talia felt the same as the rest of them. A kind of desperate focus not to fall behind the reward was the freedom of summer. 

She had picked a sun fire dress that was a bold yellow through the chest and then blended down to burnt oranges and reds. She thought she’d crimp her hair as well and borrow-gold chains from Victoria. 

Victoria didn’t like her but she was the type of girl that would still probably say yes. So long as Talia asked her while she was already wearing the chains. 

All this to put her mind off the fact that Professor Faeris had called her to his office. He only ever did that when someone had done something wrong. 

So she kept her mind on the summer festival all day long. Her heart didn’t sink into the pit of her stomach and dissolve in its acids until she knocked on his door and she heard a curt, “Come in.”

In she walked and he was sorting through papers. It was a few moments before he even said. “Sit down Talia.” And she felt her bones splinter and shiver run through them. 

It was another few moments before Lord Faeris even said anything else. “Talia.” He said at last. “I wanted to discuss your grades.” It was her pelvis that shattered this time. “You’re too far ahead for your group. I’ll be moving you to group two, you’ll have to catch up but I’d rather you catch up than be held back. “

“Group two?” She asked. All of her insides had now tumed to jelly and she felt no pain-only the numbness of heartbreak “But. Group two already had their end of the year festival.” Is what she wanted to say.

But she didn’t say that. 

“Thank you.” She said and then she sat there another few minutes. She wanted to ask him, ‘Can I still go to the festival?” How would he react? Would he be so mad that she dared ask when he was advancing her? Would he take away the advancement? Would she care if he took away the advancement?

“Any questions?” He asked.

She hung there. Maybe he would understand and say yes. 

“No. Thank you sir.” 

“You’re welcome.” 

Moving into group two was a sad passing. All her friends congratulated her but their tones vibrated with that somber quality, as though they were giving her their condolences.

Vincent was most chipper, his words hovered on a quick and excited buzzing as though she’d really accomplished something. She didn’t tell him how she really felt about it. 

She eyed Victoria’s gold chains dangling around her wrist and down her neck, somehow they offended her even more than Victoria’s pleased giggle as she said “oh you must be so proud of yourself;-you won’t even care that you miss the festival”. 

But she fell quickly into the flow of group two. It was a wave that crashed down on her and she had no choice but to swim or drown on the shore. As far ahead as she’d been in group one was as far behind as she was in group two.

Group two had started programming. They’d left teachers behind and were onto the work that had to be done on their own with their own judgements and very little supervision. 

When she went into the lab most people were already on the treadmills programing their feet and Talia hadn’t even started on her first hand.