Matt Bell
It begins with a man walking toward you from the far end of a long hallway, from the end of a courtyard between two symmetrical buildings, from the doorway of a country home and down a packed dirt driveway. You are stationary and he is moving, and though the distances between you are great they are not infinite. Two objects in motion moving down the length of a line cannot remain separated forever. Sooner or later, they must crash into each other and afterward whatever happens next will happen.
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A little girl in a sundress pirouettes on a coffee table, her curly red hair encircled in a costume tiara. Her expression is concentration, the grimly pressed lips of a trapeze artist. She spins round and round, and when she stops she is so dizzy she doesn’t notice the shadow moving closer, a human form with some sharp darkness clenched in its left hand. The light coming through the window suggests sunrise, sunset, the dusk or the dawn. It suggests choices and borders and the parting of veils between one world and another. When the girl sees the shadow’s owner, she begins to scream, a one-note blast as the scene cuts to black.
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Forever will not be solved with algebra but with geometry, not with ideas but with things. Even an infinity symbol can be traversed by a single line drawn right. Even the scratchiest record can’t skip forever, even the moldiest peach can only decay for so long. Eventually, there is an end to discord, a return to either harmony or silence. After the end credits, there is still the clatter of film against reel, of a machine waiting to be turned off. There is still the need for agency, for someone to help bring everything to a satisfying finale before the lights can come back on.
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No one is holding her under the water, not anymore, but still she lies there on the river bottom. She blinks her eyes but does not shut them. The faces of fishes are the last sights she will ever see, their shiny eyes reflective as they float by her. Their lips purse and un-purse wordlessly. She wonders what it would be like to have gills, but not for long. She curls onto her side, turning away from the sunshine slicing uselessly through the surface of the river. Underwater, everything is the same color, and what looked like a riverbed of pebbles from the shore appears here as layers of baby teeth, their cavities worn white again by the flow of water unceasing.
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The man again, in a series of jump cuts. The man halfway down the hall. The man halfway across the courtyard. The man halfway down the driveway. The human eye perceives thirty frames a second, so the one frame close-up of his face is too fast to register anywhere conscious. When you immediately start sweating, you will not be able to tell yourself why. Goosebumps spread. These theatres are always so cold.
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A fork, a knife, a spoon on a white linen tablecloth. An apple on a fine china plate. There is a bite missing, the meat of the apple turned brown in the indent. The voice of a waitress or a mother, asking, Are you done with that? Repeating herself repeatedly: Are you done with that? Are you? Are you done? When you’re done with it, you have to throw it away.
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Off camera, pray for editing, for the rearrangement of film. The director could take the first scene and throw it away. With a pair of scissors, he could let the second scene tumble to the cutting room floor in a clatter of 8mm frames. Cellulose nitrate is highly flammable, so pray for the fourth scene to be cut short by fire. Pray to keep her safe from the person who wants to hurt her. Take the next scene, throw it away. Resist denouement, resist the solving of mysteries and the revealing of truths, because it is only through these that you may be judged.
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Guilt is a loop of footage repeated ad infinitum: He’s here. In the hallway and the courtyard and at the end of the driveway, he’s here. The man’s face is close to your face, and although film captures only sight and sound you know how his breath smells like the aftertaste of white pills manufactured in white factories, distributed by doctors in white coats who promised they would help with the pain, the feeling that was once white but is now a million more complicated colors. The man wears a mask of mirrors. Reflection: a lit cigarette between coarse-stubbled lips, a tiny fire bobbing back and forth. The smoker rocks himself, consoles or controls himself. He has urges. He has needs. They are not necessarily all ones the audience already suspects, but some of them probably are.
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Hiding your face from the mirror man will not stop reflection from turning into recognition. You know what you saw, what you did, what you continue to see and do in all too frequent flashbacks. The problem with this film isn’t what you see but what you don’t. Your flaws are the product of another’s too-small imagination, a city limits delineated by bias and slim experience. The director is your only hope, his edits your only chance for revision. He has set himself up to be your savior, if only you’ll ask him. If only you’ll beg. Beg, we beg of you, beg. For her sake and for your sake.
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At last, the forgiveness of new film: A little girl in a sundress pirouettes on a coffee table, her curly red hair encircled in a costume tiara. Her expression is concentration, the grimly pressed lips of a trapeze artist. She spins around and around, and when she stops she is so dizzy she doesn’t notice the shadow moving closer, a human form with some sharp darkness clenched in its left hand. The light coming through the window suggests sunrise, sunset, the dusk or the dawn. It suggests choices and borders and the parting of veils between one world and another. The camera lingers long enough that when the girl looks up the shadow is gone. She sits down on the edge of the table, flushed and exhausted. Her legs dangle over the edge, her toes floating just above the floor. She smiles and waves, and when she is ready she stands to repeat her dance all over again. The only thing that captures her is the film, preserving her exactly as she is in that moment, as safe as mere cameras can keep her.
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Originally published in No Colony, and since revised, “Ten Scenes From A Movie Called Mercy” is part of Matt’s debut collection, How They Were Found.
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Matt Bell is the author of How They Were Found, a collection of fiction from Keyhole Press. His fiction has been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories 2010 and Best American Fantasy 2. He is also the editor of The Collagist and can be found online at www.mdbell.com.
Be sure to read Amber Sparks’ interview with Matt.