Rampike is delighted to present this new work of fiction by underground cult writer, Fausto Bedoya. Like Thomas Pynchon, to whom he has often been compared, Bedoya is recognized internationally for his innovative style and cavalier disregard of literary convention. At the time of this publication, Bedoya insisted on maintaining his incognito and incommunicado status.

“Add a truly unforgettable day to your life. Whatever your age, whatever your lifestyle. Royal Cruise Line will fill your all-day carefree cruise with activity—from shipboard games, to an exciting casino, to a colourful evening floorshow. There’s live music throughout the day in the Atlantic lounge and dancing in the Royal Nightclub. Also, you’ll find a sparkling swimming pool, a cinema, and even target and skeet shooting!”

I recall that day, outside, walking in the rain. Later, by the beach, admiring the large pieces of granite, quartz resting nearby. Then, the lingering kisses at the door, the coffee, the television words in the background, “trying to relieve stress?” and moments later, “try Windex.” The blue Curacao on the table, the amaryllis plant, its red trumpet blossoms atop the tall green stalk in the middle of the room, the last kiss she gave just before parting, her husband in the bathroom at the time, coughing. A couple of days later, she gambled, visited, a calculated risk, walked around the apartment watering plants, soaking the pots of soil, keeping the greenery alive, talking to the plants, encouraging them with the perhaps-false hope that there would always be a source of water in spite of the fact that they lived indoors beyond the reach of rain. By then, I was in the bedroom, lounging, and there was nothing so unusual about this except that it was four in the morning. Her husband was on the night shift. Later, I thought about my own four walls enclosing the table, this interior desert, this chosen exile. I thought about her secret lips, inviting, the other, coughing on the toilet, her wetness, thighs, waiting for the plunge, but not this time, perhaps another time, or maybe never again, but at least there in thought, a gesture in good faith, or bad, a hint of things as they might be elsewhere, or once were. Later, feeling outcast, like the twelfth inch, or maybe the thirteenth, that finds itself on the wrong measure of space or time. After she is gone, the TV with the sound off, jazz in the background, good but somehow out of place, sounding like a lonely saxophone on an old Anglo-Saxon street somewhere near or in Scotland, echo fading to black, an old movie, or a dog’s footprints, snow-blown, disappearing, in the black watch of a December night, like a quick Windex clean exit, out the window with no fire-escape, just the too-willing concrete, twelve floors down. Later, contemplating the view, considering whether the way is clear, unobstructed by trees below, contemplating the rain-spotted reflection on the glass, the open window, beyond the twelfth measure. Next day, a sound outside the glass, a leaf? The wind? The indoor heat or outside cold causing expansion, or perhaps contraction of the wooden window-frame? Enough of a sound to draw the eyes outward, out to the beak of a blue bird chirping too far away to hear but close enough to see. A bird suspended on a poplar branch that seems to float on the thin cold air of a January morning. Afterwards, another visit, and it is too late to change anything. Why change? My face, her crotch, so close, the thighs already spread, the hips undulating to a slow jazz pulse, the TV rasters shadowing the room, the announcer’s voice, “takes a lickin,’” our muffled laughter, our shadow lives still somehow distanced.

One day on a highway, north, away from here, where the snows cover all traces of footsteps, it was fall, the trees yellow, brown or flashing red in the sudden breezes, the shifts of wind, light stabbing into the forest over the white birches, nearby, the fields, fallow, her long dark hair caught in a sudden breeze. Then, as now, it was a time of rain, un-seasonal now, but then, normal in most respects, a sun-shower in the pine-soaked fall. Afterwards, the pez-candy-blue sky, the Curacao-blue sky, the princess-of-the-Mediterranean-blue sky, afterwards, the silence of the woods, the soft luxury of moist moss, thick, undetectable echoes, the smell of fungus on department-store-bought hiking boots, the smell of cold water lakes with white-fish sliding silent in the black-water-deep within icy thermo clines, far beyond angler’s spoons being lifted and thrown in careful measures on Shakespeare reels, angler’s spoons flying, hooking the pine-raked wind, the creak of the cedar-strip, the click of her camera, the photos, sitting now, in a small pile on a blue table in another world, as if on another page in some book, somehow out of place. Overhead, the sound of a jet arriving after the plane has passed, after the fact, an improper measure, somehow out of sync, as if erasing the image that preceded it, but still leaving an impression on the mind, a shadow on the window next to the table, the typewriter, a teaspoon, the rings inside a coffee cup.

When I came, I wrapped my tongue around her nipple and found it surprisingly cold. I had forgotten that moments earlier I had been mouthing her, and that her wet skin had begun to chill in the January night air. Now, I am sitting at the blue table once again, and the day is much like any other, the sky, pale and distanced, the phone if it ever rings, rings because it is a wrong number, or because somebody wants money, another overdue account, or sometimes, “Hello” “Yes?” “How much do you charge for a singing telegram?” “Do you charge extra if it’s nude?” She. Laughing. I recall her sudden kiss, her hand on my face, her wedding band. Next to the typewriter, a coffee cup, the series of rings marking the inside edge, rights that measure extinct hours or days when the cup sat idle, unwashed, or half-filled, while my fingers paused or flew in shifts over the keyboard, a quiet cacophony, a dactylography, the measure of a foot, the shifting beat, pterodactyl flight or dinosaur tread, the meter, a slow measure of successive steps, sometimes breaking rhythm, abruptly leaping towards the echo of rubber-stamp minds, breaking do-not-fold thoughts, or ideas still-forming but already extinct, considering the birth of the first self-conscious minds of babes, say, or the-first-of-the-first-now-extinct thinking creatures eons earlier, later risen to a century that shapes not only the words themselves but these windows of opportunity, the slow scratch of graphite on paper, or the flying of keys, unlocking moments lost to past rains. My thoughts drift around the table, eyes turn inward, observe the mind, lists, records, charts, this, like some unfamiliar world, a re-invention of an invented world,. Except that she was real, is, blood-pulsing, sabertooth heels clacking on the floor, flesh-devouring mouth, her thirsty mouth lapping the liquid moments in relaxed rhythm. Later that day, the phone, a distant electronic buzz, I answered and heard only silence, waited, waited for a sound, after a while, hung up.

One day, she told me that some people believe that certain types of stones or rocks can store energy, like capacitors, the way the mind stores memory. “We don’t know how it works, only that it does.” She said. “Consider the crown jewels, the scepter and ball, not only phallic symbols signifying fertility, the continuity of the line, but also magnets pulling bio-electric pulses in the form of the subjects for the betterment of the common-wealth.” Wondered out loud what would happen if there were no human beings on the planet. If there were no flesh-and-blood repositories for consciousness as we know it. “Can consciousness inhibit the trees and rocks of the earth?” “Does it already?” “What ideas could a cliff-side have?” I wonder about the silent language of stone. She continued her inquiry. “Do you suppose there are inter-planetary thoughts hurtling through the cold wastes of space, a super-luminary telepathy, the way I sometimes send thoughts to you?” I am thinking we are planets orbiting… but, what? I am thinking about her questions, I am thinking about her magnetic forbidden mouth, her husband’s wet cough. I am thinking about her lips parted, the taboo tongue shooting majestically through, momentarily touching teeth, ready to open and close on the soft flesh of inner thigh, to horn the king. I am thinking all of this, watching myself with a cold voyeuristic eye, and thinking about the mind, and the way it might organize itself, this, or photograph, the charting of nature onto a periodic table of valences, the cobalt blue day, the zinc memory, a kind of storage battery, the language of stone, or quartz, words, or rocks, the bedrock, the water table, the liquid memory, the dream from the night before; a gold ring, a black onyx stone, I shit my pants, can’t find a bathroom that isn’t already occupied, a beautiful woman smiles at me, I return the smile self-consciously, not sure if she can smell my loaded drawers, as I smile back, the onyx falls out of my ring onto the concrete sidewalk and shatters, like a tiny mirror, into small black sky-reflecting pieces, around me the day ruptures into tall shards, holographic sheets fall around me while I listen to my heels on the sidewalk. I momentarily keep walking, feel unconcerned, feel that the ring is not particularly lucky, but then stop, turn and decide to retrieve the pieces, and as I pick the last shard from the stone sidewalk I look up to find myself suddenly on a beach somewhere in the tropics. Perhaps it is on the southern tip of Taiwan, or some island in Indonesia. It is hard to tell. But, there is an offshore ocean liner and there is someone shooting a rifle at me from the ocean liner. The Royal Cruise line. I see a beautiful woman in a black bikini walking along the beach. She smiles at me. She has a camera hanging from her neck. She is either unaware or unconcerned by the bullets exploding the white beach sand around our feet. Puffs of sand pop up and drift back to the hot ground. The lens on her camera catches sunlight, swings, glints into my eye. She smiles and asks me if it is all right to take my picture. The ring is somehow whole again and is on my auricular finger. It glows blue, perhaps a reflection of sky, I think. I raise my hand in a gesture of friendship, perhaps toward the woman, perhaps to the ocean liner, as I do, a bullet pierces my palm, hurtles past my eye, I have a moment flash-view of the sniper, but the face is obscured by the barrel and stock. I can see, but cannot hear the sniper onboard the ship. Somehow, I can feel the trigger being fingered, being slowly pulled back. In the magnified air, the sniper’s long hair caught in a sudden breeze, her black hair caught in the breeze, the delayed puff of smoke, the vision of one eye blotted out by a small onyx disk growing in size at a fantastic rate, racing to block out the sun, racing through the crystal-stone air, the other eye watching this, the smoke-puff drifting past the liner, the sound of the rifle finally arriving, dizzy and faint, the cobalt sky dropping stone clouds to my face, the stone on the beach dropping into place, the visor dropping on some medieval armour, balance, a big blue table tilting, falling on its side for no apparent reason, a stone table, a table of blue stone, the thirsty beach sand, warm, drinking red thoughts, a sparkling pool spilling from the back of my hand, for some reason the grains of sand slipping through my toes seem terribly important, my hand remains aloft, the soft quick steps of the nearby woman drawing closer, the camera raised, her dark hair blowing toward me, somewhere else, a room past the twelfth measure, the kiss on parting, an onyx ring pressed into my palm, her husband coughing in the bathroom, a line of thought slowly falling to the sidewalk, the blue-sky-table tilting…that one time, she walked around the apartment, a distant magnet, drawing things near, watering the plants, the parched earth, keeping them alive, bio-electric pulses, talking to them, encouraging them, her subjects, for the betterment, for the perhaps-false hope, of the common wealth, the need, someone like herself, to pour, thinking of these things, water, in spite of the fact, her magnetic, they lived indoors, beyond the reach of forbidden lips, her husband, rain, by now, in the bedroom, her mouth, nothing so unusual except, parted, the taboo tongue, and four in the morning, later, momentarily, touching, the four walls, teeth ready to open and close, enclosing the room, the table, soft flesh, inner thigh, desert, the chosen exile, coughing, the toilet, the wetness and thighs, this, and thinking, plunge, waiting, for another time, maybe never, at least there, how, it might organize itself, thought, a gesture, good faith, charted onto a table, ring pressed into hand, valences, another life, the cobalt-blue day, overcast, smoke-puff, onyx, cast out, sudden, sparkling pool, blood from palm, dis-placed, beyond the twelfth, zinc memory, storage finds itself, wrong battery, beach sand, language of measure, nearby, stones, or quartz rising, words, place, the TV rasters, sound off, background jazz, or, rocks, bedrock, sounding, the water table, liquid memory, the way, lonely saxophone, night dream, Scotland, a street in northern, before a ring, telephone, black saxophone echo of, shit, fade to black, “Printed Matter Only,” like an old, bathroom, movie, footprint, snow, blowing over, “Do Not Fold” December photograph, beautiful smiles, night, swift Windex exit, smile flying returned, fire-escape, too-willing, consciously uncertain, concrete, twelve floors later, crap, the view, the way clear, onyx falls, reflection onto glass, concrete sound, outside of stone, shatters glass leaf, wind pieces heat, or outside, cold causing expansion, unconcerned contraction, of frame, not particularly, but enough sound, ring, to draw the eyes, lucky nonetheless, outward, beak of bird, the camera lens glinting, pterodactyl flight, pieces retrieved, too far to hear, but close, last piece, enough to see, eye, scope, suspended stone, sidewalk, sky, table tilts, branch floating, Sabertooth January air, thin cold, Ocean Princess, morning, beach, Taiwan or, tropics, afterwards, white sand, red, late, thirsting, tilting sky, or blue table…