Q & A #5 - Sources

Lastly, we have a question from Wx5?(6). who asks that eternal-age question,

Where do you get your ideas from?

Well, Wx5?(6) [I hope I’m pronouncing that right], I’m not privy to the Writer’s innermost thoughts, but what little that’ve been leaked through inform me that his influences crop up from all over. Social commentary are taken from the latest news events of the day from careless gossipers sharing tidbits they let slip. Other stories are acquired through casual conversations from the living personnel and staff willing to share their life history to someone who’ll listen without judgement.

Observant readers may have noticed certain allusions to literary and pulp giants along the lines of Lovecraft and Kafka deliberately sprinkled about the text, creating a mishmash of the two. LoveKafka, if you will. Really, it’s surprising how well they mesh together.

Despite aiming for lofty aspirations, he mainly steals punchlines from newspaper comics from ages past that no one recalls anymore, so something that once seemed old hat back then is seen as being revelatory today. If it were just a matter of plagiarizing old jokes, there wouldn’t be much to crow over. But his interpretation of old jokes filtered through his warped mind come back so twisted that they wind up sounding completely new.

As for me, my main impetus in these stories is to serve as an involuntary narrator, an outside overseer if you will. A confident sounding voice that sees how these anthology events play out, while remaining thankfully unaffected.

Oh, wait, now that I look at it again, there’s more to the question. Come see me in my office. NOW. “Hmm. I think this is for you.”

“Hang on, I’m still writing your monologue - what’d you say?” I looked at the initials again. Wx5?(6) “This is the serial number. How could you think this was fan mail?”

“I just read what’s written.”

I pulled out my codebreaking tome to make sense of the incomprehensible gobbledygook, which gave me another redundant code to look up in another form elsewhere, indulging in more subterfuge. What was the purpose of all this secrecy? It wasn’t as if anybody else was going to peek in. I navigated through the documents, ricocheting back and forth six times until I finally arrived at the answer of ‘W.W.’ Warden Warren. I should’ve known.

“Well, it looks like I’ll be giving a longer answer than expected.”

“Will I be narrating more of - ”

“No, this is something I need to take care of on my own.”

---

I was summoned to see the Warden again. Of course, given the nature of this place, it took some time before the proper procedures were put in place, ensuring that outside forces were kept in check in the eventuality of unexpected interruptions. In the meantime, I waited on the hard bench of his office, despite the valid urgency of the request, the unhurried response to my expectations was keeping me in suspense, not knowing what I was seeing him for.

As usual, the Head of Security was standing right behind him. He never hesitated in giving me the stink eye whenever I was in his presence, but here and now, his grim features remained neutral. I couldn’t gain any insight to his thoughts which never veered far from outright disgust, and the fact that he wasn’t showing me anything to register should’ve been ringing alarm bells.

When the Warden finally spoke, it was a carefully measured response with a steady tone. “I’ve been keeping track of your written prose, such as it is, with a certain detached amusement of your interpretation of world events. You certainly have an eye for detail.”

“Thank you. Not many bother to read my stuff, even when I force it under their noses.”

“You’ve made remarkable progress since you learned the truth about the outside world, and it would be a shame to throw that away. That’s why I’ve been lenient with your diary entries, allowing you to record your trauma. But lately, some of your latest input has been… disturbing.”

“If you’re objecting to your portrayal, just know that all names have been changed to protect the guilty. If it’s a question of copyright, most of the stories have already passed the public domain date by now. And it’s not like there’s any copyright on jokes. If you have a problem with my stories, you can censure them, like you did last time.”

“That’s not what I’m concerned about. I’m concerned about the confidential nature of your sources. They touch upon sensitive subjects that are uncomfortably close. Where did you hear about them?”

“I mostly made them up.”

“I find that hard to believe. These are details that hit too close to just be coincidence.”

“You mean those Meeting minutes really happened?”

“Don’t play the fool. You can hardly expect me to believe that you happened to stumble upon confidential notes word for word with a few superficial changes here and there.”

I started off by trying to play dumb, but then decided not to prolong the facade any longer. “I don’t want to get anybody in trouble.”

“Shall you read your entry, or shall I?”

“You’ve already got it, so you might as well go ahead.”

“The diary entries for the day in question starts out fairly typical. You note what time you got up, getting dressed, complain about stubbing your toe against the bed, hurting your foot again when you attempted to kick the bed in punishment, forcing you to limp towards breakfast, where you memorize what’s eaten, ‘in case I’m quizzed about it later’, before you go exploring the numerous hallways in search of the library.” The Warden paused to catch his breath. “The next entry is what piques my interest. In here, you note, ‘Had a surprise encounter with __________ who showed up suddenly to briefly talk to me. It wasn’t something I was expecting.’”

“Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”

“That’s what it says. There’s no written entry here.” The Warden turned the pages in my direction, showing me a blank space where my writing should’ve been.

“That’s impossible!” I distinctly remembered writing plenty of words. I flipped ahead, and there were notable absences of blank expanses that I’d recalled writing vast notes on.

“Have you found yourself missing time, as if hours have passed without your awareness? Events transpiring with no recollection of what just happened?”

There HAD been such times, but I thought it was from sheer boredom and fatigue. It was notoriously difficult to gauge how much time had passed. I would be engaged in my writing overnight and before I knew it, it would be morning already.

“You see our worry? If we could meet your mysterious source, it could help fill in the blanks.”

I sat dismayed. It seemed like a betrayal of sorts, but I needed some answers. The name I spoke might not even register. I had to be careful in my choice of words. “You might know him. He seems rather knowledgeable about the subject. He’s on all the Employee of the Month frames.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“If you must know, I was talking to your Janitor about it.” I had all kinds of interesting things to hear from him, which came up from casual anecdotes about his job.

“I always bring my own stuff. I prefer using my tools, and we’ve had a rash of thefts lately.”

“Who’d want to steal cleaning supplies?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“We don’t have a Cleaning Service.”

It took some time for me to snap out of my reverie for the Warden’s words to sink in. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Have you seen the size of this place? We can’t afford one.”

“So then… who was I talking to?”

“That’s what I want to know. You wouldn’t be talking to yourself for nothing. Just to be sure, is this the image of the person you were talking to?”

I looked at the familiar-looking poster that bore the Employee of the Month sign that now read, “WANTED: Dead & Alive”, and made a positive identification.

The Warden gave a name to the face, “That’s the Black Man.”

It was a name I’d only heard spoken of in legends and whispers, and I’d foolishly believed they were tall tales made to frighten old children. I’d no idea that this was based on an a figure that actually existed.

“You know what this means.” I nodded glumly. Seeing the hidden figure behind the poster that would show a black slate for anybody else was grounds for keeping the afflicted in solitary confinement to keep the contamination from spreading. It didn’t matter how innocuous my meetings were - all those who had the misfortune to encounter the Black Man in one of his innumerable forms met with unfortunate fates, following the direct consequences of his actions that were unscrupulous and unfathomable. As I was led outside the Warden’s office, I distinctly heard him remark, “It’s like I always say. The mentally ill have an uncanny ability to attract mythical monsters.”

Without a word, the Head of Security solemnly transferred me out of the Charles Dexter ward towards the mental asylum wing for more severely afflicted criminals. Compared to the people I’d been acquainted with, many who were still comatose, these prisoners were even more deranged. I’d seen part of this during my first survey of the place, their screams and wild movements being tangibly visible at the corner of my mind, but this was the first time I was physically within these grounds.

After a long walk in full view of everyone who daren’t look at my presence, I finally arrived at a blank empty cell where I proceeded to transcribe the following text on the walls to gain better insight of the events leading up to this, trying to pinpoint where things went wrong. It would’ve been poetic justice for the Black Man to make one last appearance, sneering down at my newly jailed incarceration, but he remained elusive.

I didn’t put up any resistance. What would be the point? I clearly met the profile for being locked up with all these other crazies. And yet, despite the fact that it was sharing these stories that got me in trouble, I don’t regret it.

Even though I know I’ll be punished for writing these thoughts down, I cannot stop. I am driven by the overwhelming need to make sense out of a world where nothing makes sense.