Of being dragged

(This is the most recent piece in a project that begins here.)

Where the first fifty went, I don’t know
Duplications
Copies
Insurance
No, contagion.
I see

— I don’t drag you.
— What?
— I don’t drag you. I’m not touching you.
— You are touching me.
— Um,
She is touching him
— Oh. Did I drag you?
— No.
Inhale
Hold
— I’m sorry.
— I don’t know what that means.
And the world stops
She stops
She looks at him and thinks he will keep moving
Inertia of some kind
Tethered to something else that drags him
— What is dragged?
Blink
A pale instinct attempts an electrical signal
It emerges in a sphere like radio
The quiet snap of electrons
Then nothing
He is stopped and there is no sign of the question
Pause
Then no sign of the instinct to answer
She looks at where he has stopped
He stands on nothing
Behind him is the city
Its holes
Its pieces strewn over the regular lines of the streets
The objects that draw the streets
The objects that adorn them
Twists at the waist
Looks back through the door
An apartment
Turns back
The man stands in the bathroom inside the rough hole in the wall
She looks down
Nothing beneath her feet
Up
And an apartment with walls intact
A muffled voice sounds from somewhere beyond the walls
Dull and limply pushing at the air

– It is language.
— Hm?
– At first I ignored it.
He discards ‘At first’ or doesn’t hear it
They stand to one side of a tree in a stand of trees
The man looks up
The Beast looks at him, then up at the tree
Pause
One dark arm is lifted towards the nearest branch
A foot is drawn up
The other arm
Slowly the dark man-shape moves up along the trunk
The man watches
Then turns around and walks away
The lower branches sway in the disturbed air
As the Beast climbs farther from the roots, it begins to still
Then silent
Pause
Silence
The man’s footsteps
He walks to the tree
Looks up
Two blue discs glow high up in the foliage
Looking down and regarding the man
The man reaches up with one arm
Fingers closing about a branch
The other hand
Application of force and then lift
He climbs
The lower branches sway in the disturbed air
Then nothing
Quietly their voices can be heard from above
Sound meandering through the foliage