The Myopic Ideation of Frank Shishido ~ fiction by Henry Knollenberg

The explosion of brass, a tsunami: paintbrush bristles staining skin, tickling eardrums; a titanium mass soaring skyward, blocking, encompassing all auditorial perception, absent peripherals, reverberating metallic and hollow; a traffic jam at all four corners of the bedroom, the precipice of a gasp, a ceiling’s pull at the sternum, unrelenting; dive bombers; controlled demolition; uncontrolled demolition; swerving firetrucks; fire alarms; fire; ash and silence. It is swallowed, then released; a decelerating vacuum; a dyspneic black hole; residue. There is nothing—nothing but the deceleration of sticks circling a drum set, grasping for organization, structure, sonic geometry. There is then the bass creeping, driving forward. Everything else is coming—the formation; everything else is jam.

A tumbleweed’s struck by a red 1986 Audi Quattro—an orange horizon purpling the evening sky, the highway strip blurred yellow beneath, into: FRANK SHISHIDO AS … JOHNNY COOL. The words linger, then dissipate … Johnny sips his cocktail, eyeing—suits, briefcases scrambling about behind the woman in green velvet, her twirling dress, her pistol raised, the suits falling and discarding, into: SIERRA HARRINGWAY AS … ALICE MIND. Again, the format … A Westie trots across the casino floor—a purse of diamonds dangling her bite, into: AND LOLA AS … HERSELF. The music fades …

I do not think that I am like other people. Other people can just do things, and I cannot just do things. All I can do is watch myself do things. I have no agency; it is not me in control; I cannot actually do anything. I do not think that I am fit to be a person. I am aware that there is a person here, but I do not think that that person is me, and I do not think that you realize this. I do not think that you realize that I am not the person that you want me to be nor am I the person that you think I am. How am I supposed to be expected to make important decisions if I am not the person who is actually making them? How are you supposed to know if you should ever trust me? I do not think that it is good for me to be putting you into that sort of position.

Dust aerosol—motes at various velocities—shimmering clockwise, counter, etc. of the three dimensions, tumble about crepuscular rays beaming in via the hotel bay windows onto a white silk comforter. Alice lifts up and lights a cigarette. “What do you think? Room service?”

“Mm, that’d be nice …” Johnny pandiculates.

“Where’s that damn dog?”

Lola barks, leaps onto the bed, panting.

Alice pets her, commands, “Fetch me the menu, girl.”

She does.

Alice unfolds the cardstock. “What sounds good?”

“This is unreal; it’s so unreal. Anything—everything’s perfect!” Johnny kisses at Alice’s biceps. Cut to …

You keep asking me what I am saying, Sierra, and I keep telling you that I do not know. I keep telling you that very fact—that I cannot and will never know. Certainty is make-believe. Romeo and Juliet fucked us; Mickey Mouse pulled the trigger. Do you get what I am saying? I am saying that I am too goddamn scared to fucking kill myself already. I am saying that I completely understand why Travis Bickle wanted to assassinate that guy and that Jesus Christ really had no choice at all. I am a coward, however, and that coward has no say. There is, whatsoever, no control, no yeses or noes about it.

In the sandy soil out front an old adobe chapel, Johnny Cool and Alice Mind face off against an upper-level suit. It’s got a pistol pressed into Lola’s side.

“Hand over the purse, or the dog gets it!”

A helicopter hovers overhead; a Jacob’s ladder dangles.

Johnny approaches and makes the exchange. The upper-level suit mounts the ladder; it cackles as the copter ascends.

The brush settles as the dry air stagnates; the heat stings the calm.

“We good?” Alice asks.

Johnny pulls an engagement ring from his pocket. “Righto.”

They laugh; they sigh; Lola barks.

The chapel explodes.

This is not real. You are not real, and I am not real, and neither are we. I guess we will just have to deal with that for the rest of our fucking lives.

Alice and Lola’s picture’s pinned to the Quattro’s sun visor. Johnny kisses his syndactyl fingers palmer-side; he presses it up into the picture.

The forever drive into the orange horizon; the fingerpicking of a classical guitar; dark ambient wave cycles. Credits roll. Fade out.

Henry Knollenberg is a writer of fiction. Henry received an MFA from the University of Kentucky, serving as fiction editor for the New Limestone Review from 2022-2023, and receiving the 2023 MFA in Fiction Award. Henry has been published in Bending Genres and The Collidescope. Henry is from the Midwest.