[FICTION][02/25/26]Cello
by Nicholas Wilder Forman
Charlie holds an ice cube tight in his left hand as he stares at himself shirtless in the mirror. The cube drips, Charlie clenching and unclenching his fist. He believes that he is squeezing the water out of the cube as opposed to the truth of the ice cube just melting. Last week he told his roommate, named Goliath, that it is the best forearm workout ever—better than wrist curls and reverse wrist curls, even. Goliath is sick of stepping in puddles around their apartment. Charlie’s cube melts while his Shins CD plays and he continues to look in his mirror eyes, trying to see the future. Not there yet. Future hasn’t happened yet. His hand is numb; the cube has been squeezed dry. He puts on his parka and goes to Cleo’s house. It’s raining. Cleo’s got hieroglyphs tattooed on her arms.
and
.
and
She’s got
and
and
Cleo and Inkbow ask Charlie who he got the weed from. He struggles to match the pace of a YouTube video where Seth Rogan teaches you how to roll a joint. This used to be a lot easier when I was younger, he says, looking outside. It has been raining for 438 days. Cleo’s apartment has a large window wall overlooking downtown and the east side of the city. But it has no other fun amenities. You’re paying for the view, Cleo’s realtor had said, acknowledging that what we can see is always much better than what we can touch.
I don’t know, Charlie says. Some dude who lives under an awning on my block.
Charlie's weed is laced. Awning Man didn’t disclose this, but did tell Charlie that the weed is really mint, which could count to some as fair warning. Charlie, Cleo, and Inkbow all smoke it and can’t stop talking about how much they miss the sun. Sundial, someone whispers. Someone whispers. Someone whispers. Charlie says, Let’s go to a casino, his voice turning to stalagmites. A chemical reaction occurs between the pH of his throat, the 2cT in the weed, and the exact pitch of his voice to create a new, nefarious chemical compound. It wafts out of Charlie’s mouth, like a pink fuzz, commanding Cleo to get on top of him. They kiss. Inkbow has been a ghost in this story until she says what the hell while watching the two make out. She feels turned on, or nauseous, and walks to the kitchen. Wowwwww, she says to herself. What the actual fuuuuck. She paces, imagining herself in the scene that’s unfolding before her eyes. Cleo climbing Charlie like an icecap, Charlie’s hands clenching and ticking in a way he can’t control, Cleo’s hand grabbing the stalagmite in Charlie’s pants. Inkbow's mental projection of herself kisses Charlie and also puts a hand in Cleo’s pants. But the real Inkbow can’t imagine how Cleo would moan so the overlay of her projected self fades. So nauseous. She decides to go outside and call her girlfriend.
For all people involved in this story, and for those consuming it too, Charlie’s pink breath becomes an echoic voice of diatribes that cannot be read but only heard, lower, in the blue parts of the brain. They guide us terribly and passionately to points that are obtuse, malignant, and wonderful. These are not points of no return, but points we had not yet considered on the map of all possible thought and behavior.
Inkbow’s girlfriend, Atlanta, neglected to pick up her call. She decides to drive to her house in the Valley, wearing a brown shirt with yellow text which reads "facsimile."
It is raining on the drive.
The two kiss with dry lips and lay in Atlanta’s bed. Atlanta’s got a nice window in her bedroom, not unlike Cleo’s. It faces a hill overrun by large pampas grass, which has only ever grown. It was invasive in the sixties. It is still invasive, but has been here so long it’s hard to really feel invaded anymore. A single pampas plume can grow over twenty feet tall. One day it will grow around Atlanta’s house, encasing it like a tomb.
The two girls are in silence, each aware that the other is thinking terrible thoughts and that there is not much of anything either of them could do to help. All of life is played out in the hypothetical. They lay for hours. Atlanta is on the cusp of a small tear.
Hey, what’s wrong?
There is no future in which I’ll be happy. The kind of happy where I won’t have to think of any other life I could have. I will always have so many lives, up here, Atlanta says, pointing to her head, and all I will ever think about will be the other ones. I will always be in every life except my own.
Inkbow would nod in agreement if she wasn't spooning Atlanta, so she squeezes her shoulder instead. Night falls and the next day sits up slowly. The rain is heavy on Atlanta’s tin roof. A lot of people have tin roofs now.
Inkbow makes oolong tea and the two watch the first Hunger Games movie on the couch before she drives home.
On the 5 she thinks about how time has become far slower, far less erotic, and even more dangerous as a result of both of these conclusions. If nothing changes we will find ourselves sleeping as we wake. She wants to create the opposite of a rave. Something completely personal in its resonance, yet still demands to be talked about. It must occur over a set period in which those involved witness something change drastically as time progresses. Something that can’t be ignored. A book club, Inkbow whispers to herself. I need a book club.
Inkbow knocks on the door of her house and no one answers. She enters, first noting the smell of smoke. Distinctively camp fire smoke. But nothing is on fire and no one is home. Charlie and Cleo’s clothes are strewn over the couch and floor, each garment apart, as if their body parts have been raptured in separate moments and movements.
A note is on the kitchen table, written with red ink in Charlie’s rather juvenile handwriting. It reads:
“Dear Inkbow
Wasn’t that joint fiya? We hope you’re okay. We learned a lot here and have gone to Vegas to get married. We don’t know if it is the right call yet. But we had the idea and realized if we don’t do it we are just as dead as this world is. We love you so so much. We love everyone so much.
We love you,
Cello (our new combined name, Charlie plus Cleo)”
Inkbow reads the note a few times in the way you might read a book while hungover, with the words creating images but the sentences not allowing themselves to connect from one to the next in your head. Eventually, on her fifth read, it sticks for Inkbow. The two must be in a chapel right now. In a chapel at the end of the world called Las Vegas.
Inkbow picks up Cello’s clothes and throws them into a laundry basket.
NICHOLAS WILDER FORMAN is an artist and writer from Los Angeles. Their work is forthcoming or featured in Hobart, The New Review, Soft Union, Maudlin House, Dunce Codex Anthology, Midcult*, and more.