Alger, Who Are You?

O.K. Mantz

Behind a dark, wine coloured curtain lounges Alger, directly before Justin Ernest, the broad shouldered interviewer. The mahogany stage remains dimly lit, protuberant crescent lights limning a bright gold shadow through the upright tarp. Leaning forward on his own armchair, Ernest suspends his bulbous head over the coffee table that separates the two and flashes his plastic white teeth.

“You are a fatherless child, haunted by a past of demons and ghosts,” he hurls at Alger, before forcing his chin upon his throat and procuring a hideous smile. Shadows hiss and slither at their feet and the room is cast into an ominous shade. Yet suddenly the great curtains draw apart and Ernest swiftly, yet elegantly sits upright and brilliantly gleams at the multitude uncovered to his left.

“A warm welcome to all of you fine people! Tonight we have a special guest with us— Alger: poet, author, and great thinker of our time. It proved exceptionally difficult to … ”

Alger peers about himself, studying each face in the swimming sea, realizing, either through a gift or curse, each thought and every emotion only through the glistening in their eyes. His lips begin to move, but, at first, no sound issues from his tongue, and his tacit thoughts have trouble taking form. At length, however, he mumbles almost unintelligible:

“I am the last—”

“You are a writer, are you not?” cuts Ernest off abruptly. “What is your favorite word?”

Silence spreads across the stage as Alger thrusts his mind into the inquiry. Interlacing his fingers upon his lap, he purses his lips and squints, wading with much effort through the swamp of words rushing through him. Gingerly his lips are pried open and with a meek voice he begins:

“Eva—”

“Much too difficult a question to answer, I’m sure!”

The crowd jeers, much too enthusiastically, but grows silent just as quickly.

“But let us move to the content of your writing.” Ernest pauses emphatically. “All of your works seem concerned with death and bitterness and psychopathy.”

Alger’s eyes sink into his skull, the surrounding rim darkening in an archetypal portrayal of his position.

“How can I not?” he answers. “When my hands are drenched in blood and the pen I write with is infallibly connected with my arteries?”

The unmistakable crooked smile has not yet vanished from Ernest’s physiognomy, although his entire visage seems to have grown perniciously grim. Thoughts prance behind his forehead, as viciously as in Alger’s own head-cage, producing a palpable passion bordering on fervent and fearful fanaticism. Ernest could not shut his lips— thus he drops his soaked tongue over the edge of his mouth and smears thick and viscid saliva everywhere but his cracking lips. The armchair no longer provides rest for he leans forward so much so that the only piece of skin kissing the chair proves to be his heels at the feet. Wide-eyed and caught in a frenzy upon the stage, Ernest points at Alger, focusing the attention of the interested crowd toward his shrunken corpse.

“How do you craft your stories? How do you find the right words?”

“I have read all my life: words flitter to me and beg me to be brought to life. I merely fulfill their request. Yet I do believe that I am the last—”

“Flitter— even now you demonstrate remarkable craft. Do you consider yourself wise, Alger?”

“Wise? What wisdom is there in these last days?”

Ernest chuckles, his eyes lighting with a fiercely defiant light. His laugh stirs an addiction within the audience as they burst into hysterical tittering.

“Too much it seems …”

Then Ernest springs up into the air, brutally flinging his chair off the stage. Alger reaches inside his pocket and produces forth a cigarette already lit. Placing the butt into his mouth and biting down with his charred and yellow teeth he inhales. His back is bent and he leans forward still, gnashing his teeth and rocking on his heels. Shouting zealously at Alger, the interviewer stabs with his pointer finger the atmosphere before him, the poisonous gleam dancing along his arm and bouncing from his hand to perish on the stage.

“Tell us about your childhood. What was it like? Where did you grow up? When did you start writing? Was your writing always this dark? When did you begin to see demons? Did shadows always surround you? Did they always whisper in your ear? When did you slide downhill? When did you reach rock bottom? Why did you steal? Why did you hate? Why did you murder? Why have you not ceased to do these things? How do you feel? How do you feel? How can you ever be forgiven? What is wrong with you? Why can you not forget your past? When will you lose your mind? Have you already? Why are you so troubled? Why are you so troubled?”

Flicking the half-burnt cigarette towards the audience, Alger slowly rises and moves around the coffee table until he directly faces Ernest. From the back pocket of his jeans, he removes a pistol loaded with nine rounds. The smile on Ernest’s visage fades, his cheekbones drooping while Alger paces across and shoves the barrel deep into Ernest’s throat.

“I am the last great thinker,” Alger utters, calmly, yet terribly. “The last great mind that may perceive the mysteries of the cosmos, the same mysteries within each person’s soul, and have enough wit, understanding, and sense to make them clear. All others have fallen away from everything splendid. I am the last great mind here on earth. The last great writer; all others have utterly lost the art.”

The same frenzy overshadows Alger’s countenance: wide-eyed, open-mouthed, bobbing up and down as though his body is only loosely connected, but held together and up by tattered strings. Retracting the pistol, Alger unloads the clip and thinks momentarily whether or not to stab the man’s eye, screaming: “see Ernest! But don’t you ever listen?” His hand quivers, but Alger drops the clip and then flicks the gun from the stage. Sinking his shoulders, he sucks in air, choking on the bafflingly dense atmosphere of oxygen, bitterness, and lunacy.

“My favorite word, Ernest, is evanesce.”

And then Alger swiftly and suddenly disappears.