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“Please Look Up” by Madison Scott-Clary
“Don’t look up” the sign said and, really, what was I supposed to do? Not look up? Well, now, if it isn’t the consequences of my actions, come round at last…
Tonight’s story is “Please Look Up” by Madison Scott-Clary, who likes skunks less than some but more than most. She has several books, stories, and poems available on her site at makyo.ink.
Read for you by Rob MacWolf — werewolf hitchhiker.
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https://thevoice.dog/episode/please-look-up-by-madison-scott-clary
Transcript
You’re listening to the Ghost of Dog
Speaker:on The Voice of Dog,
Speaker:and Tonight’s story is
Speaker:“Please Look Up” by Madison Scott-Clary,
Speaker:who likes skunks less than some but more than most.
Speaker:She has several books,
Speaker:stories, and poems
Speaker:available on her site
Speaker:at makyo.ink.
Speaker:Read by Rob MacWolf,
Speaker:Werewolf Hitchhiker.
Speaker:The horror of the unknown is well remarked on.
Speaker:But the horror does not lie, as some might say, in one’s own imagination filling the blank spaces with personalized worst fears.
Speaker:No, the horror of the unknown
Speaker:is that it is unknown.
Speaker:The fear of having no understanding of the things happening,
Speaker:of having no control,
Speaker:of not knowing why.
Speaker:So tonight the Ghost of Dog
Speaker:presents a story of the unknown, without answers,
Speaker:without explanations,
Speaker:without reasons why,
Speaker:for both you and our protagonist
Speaker:to try to understand.
Speaker:Please enjoy “Please Look Up”
Speaker:by Madison Scott-Clary
Speaker:I quickly grow tired of my own footfalls.
Speaker:Those same padded feet
Speaker:hitting that same hard-packed path. Those same claws leaving those same indentations in the same dirt,
Speaker:that dirt that lies halfway between mud and stone.
Speaker:Was that the same stone?
Speaker:It must have been.
Speaker:There, beside it, those four dents in the earth,
Speaker:perfectly spaced for my own claws.
Speaker:I quickly grow tired of the same path, the same aspen leaves littering the ground,
Speaker:the same gnarled pine roots anchoring trees to earth.
Speaker:I grow tired of the scent of slowly decaying pine needles in the air, and I grow tired of the burning in my eyes from having spent so long crying.
Speaker:Don’t look up, the sign had said,
Speaker:there, nailed to the tree just past the branching of paths.
Speaker:It had to have been a joke.
Speaker:It just had to be, right?
Speaker:Don’t look up, right?
Speaker:In October of all months.
Speaker:Here, of all places, where pines mingle with aspen,
Speaker:halfway up a mountain whose name I no longer remember.
Speaker:It had to be a joke.
Speaker:It had to be. It had
Speaker:to be. No matter how much
Speaker:I say this to myself,
Speaker:how much I taste those words rolling along my tongue
Speaker:before being gated once more by sharp teeth,
Speaker:it was not. It couldn’t be, could it?
Speaker:It couldn’t be a joke.
Speaker:I had read the sign, and had immediately fallen down into the space defined by that dichotomy, the gap between had-to-be and could-not-be.
Speaker:Dichotomy? Dialectic?
Speaker:There was no telling anymore,
Speaker:no matter how many times I’d tried to paste one word or the other onto the two phrases.
Speaker:Were ‘dichotomy’ and ‘dialectic’
Speaker:a dichotomy or dialectic?
Speaker:Were my paws? My feet? I choke down a half-laugh-half
Speaker:-sob. I can’t even handle language anymore.
Speaker:Perhaps the last time I’d thought straight was back when I had first read
Speaker:the sign. How long ago was that,
Speaker:even? How must I even look?
Speaker:Do I still look normal, perhaps?
Speaker:A fox, in no way surprising, stamping along the trails,
Speaker:panting through gritted teeth,
Speaker:as one might who is tired and knows they simply need to continue on to the goal,
Speaker:whatever that is.
Speaker:If the path slopes up, perhaps the goal is the summit. If it slopes down, perhaps it is the trail head.
Speaker:If, as always, it does one and then the other,
Speaker:then perhaps the goal is that inevitable,
Speaker:final sleep that doubtless lays at the end of all trails.
Speaker:Or perhaps I look as panicked as I feel.
Speaker:Perhaps I’m wild-eyed,
Speaker:spittle flecking my chin and down the front of my shirt.
Speaker:Perhaps black-furred paws clench and unclench, and perhaps there is blood
Speaker:staining those claws where they’ve pressed through pads.
Speaker:I don’t know, I’m afraid to look.
Speaker:Do I look lost? I suspect not.
Speaker:One who is lost would look at something other than the ground.
Speaker:Do I look as though I am lost in thought?
Speaker:I don’t think this fits, either.
Speaker:I imagine that doesn’t come with a frantic pace
Speaker:or soft curses hissed through sharp teeth.
Speaker:I don’t know why I’m asking myself this. I know what I look like.
Speaker:I look like a ghost.
Speaker:Not ghostly, no. It is nothing so fanciful as that. I’m not translucent. My legs have not been replaced with a wispy tail upon which I float.
Speaker:I am not torn or buffeted by unseen winds,
Speaker:and I am not drifting aimlessly between straight-standing trunks. No, I look like a ghost.
Speaker:I look like one of those hollow,
Speaker:empty folk who has died
Speaker:and simply doesn’t know it yet.
Speaker:I can feel that hollowness in every secret cell,
Speaker:that emptiness that rings like a bell with every step.
Speaker:I can taste the death on my every breath and feel it burn within my nose.
Speaker:Beyond that, there are signs.
Speaker:There is, for instance,
Speaker:the way that others out on their hikes
Speaker:steer around me without acknowledging me.
Speaker:It’s deeper than that implies.
Speaker:It’s not just that they walk around me without saying hi, but that
Speaker:they are unable to acknowledge me. They’ll stumble, perhaps,
Speaker:claws skittering across a rounded stone or caught in a winding rootlet, and they’ll lurch to the side
Speaker:such that they don’t even bump against me.
Speaker:Or maybe a couple, walking side by side, will suddenly straighten out into single file
Speaker:as one falls ever so slightly behind.
Speaker:Or, and this is the most common,
Speaker:something out in the woods,
Speaker:something far more real than I,
Speaker:will catch their attention and they’ll turn to look,
Speaker:ears perking, back straightening,
Speaker:and always they’ll turn away from me.
Speaker:Some whim or breeze
Speaker:or subconscious twitch of muscle making their tails swish this way or that
Speaker:so that I don’t brush up against them.
Speaker:Or, consider the fact that I don’t know how many days I’ve been out here.
Speaker:I have been walking
Speaker:for at least two,
Speaker:because I remember,
Speaker:whether or not it was dark,
Speaker:the glint of moon
Speaker:on some foot-polished root-knuckle,
Speaker:the way it differed
Speaker:in its silvering than that of the sun.
Speaker:How many times had I seen that root
Speaker:-knuckle, though? Dozens, perhaps. I can’t look up into the sky to check the hours,
Speaker:nor look around me to check if I’m walking in circles (I must be,
Speaker:right?), so I just don’t know.
Speaker:Time, as well as language, has lost all meaning to me.
Speaker:And food? Water? I had brought with me a bit of jerky and a water bottle.
Speaker:Surely that would be enough for a two-hour hike, right? Ten kilometers? The weather was cool, my coat is thick, my shirt is light.
Speaker:I wouldn’t need any more than a few calories along the way and a half liter of water.
Speaker:But if it has been days, why is my water bottle still half-full?
Speaker:Why do I still feel it sloshing against my hip
Speaker:with every step? I am a ghost, yes,
Speaker:and I haunt this trail.
Speaker:I am not chained to this place by some spurned love, and I am not lingering for some unfulfilled purpose in life.
Speaker:I’m anchored to this trail, this wood, this mountainside
Speaker:by those three simple words.
Speaker:Don’t look up. And I,
Speaker:as anyone with half a whisker’s worth of curiosity,
Speaker:did precisely that.
Speaker:What else was I supposed to do?
Speaker:Not look up? A sign listing no consequences,
Speaker:no enforcement, that bore so vague a warning
Speaker:all but invited one to look up.
Speaker:So I looked up. I looked up
Speaker:and met the eyes of the dead
Speaker:and felt in that moment not only the fullness of my mistake,
Speaker:but my very soul leaving my body.
Speaker:I looked up and saw there,
Speaker:up at the level of the treetops,
Speaker:a figure treading,
Speaker:stomping, walking through the air.
Speaker:I saw the possum above me,
Speaker:saw the tears streaming down her face,
Speaker:saw just how dead she was even as her feet
Speaker:pounded a trail I could not see
Speaker:but which was nonetheless as real as the one I stood on.
Speaker:I saw her walking through the air
Speaker:and, though it wasn’t true,
Speaker:I imagined I could see the blue of the sky through her.
Speaker:And I saw her, though it oughtn’t be a surprise,
Speaker:looking down. Very pointedly not
Speaker:looking up. I looked up and met the eyes of the dead and she laughed.
Speaker:She laughed! How could one twenty feet up in the air laugh at me, here on the ground? I was the one who was as I should be,
Speaker:and she was the one who was as she should not!
Speaker:But then the enormity of my error
Speaker:crashed into me and knocked my soul
Speaker:from that anchored form
Speaker:and suddenly she
Speaker:was alive and I was dead,
Speaker:and I watched as her path began to steeply descend.
Speaker:I watched her face wrestle
Speaker:with the dichotomy
Speaker:(dialectic?) of pain and relief at the sudden ache of muscles that comes
Speaker:with descending after so long ascending,
Speaker:of coming alive after so many days or weeks or years of being dead.
Speaker:And then I watched a third emotion,
Speaker:pity, crest in those features as her black-stained-pink ears canted back and her furless tail flitted this way and that to help her keep her balance.
Speaker:I saw pity in her gaze as she met mine,
Speaker:and the unspoken knowledge passed between us that whatever curse she bore was now mine
Speaker:to carry. I watched as her path took one switchback,
Speaker:then another, through the air
Speaker:and then her feet met the trail —
Speaker:the anchored trail on which I stood —
Speaker:for the first time in who knows how long.
Speaker:I watched as, with pity painted upon her face, she mouthed a silent apology to me,
Speaker:and stumbled down the path to where my car even now
Speaker:was parked, if it hasn’t already been towed.
Speaker:I have inherited her curse.
Speaker:I have died so that she may live,
Speaker:and even as I stomp and stamp along the trail, the evidence rolls out before me like some red carpet from some thinner reality.
Speaker:I don’t know how long I’ve been walking,
Speaker:I don’t know how long she had been walking,
Speaker:but I know that this is mine to bear until it isn’t,
Speaker:until some poor fool looks up in the air and sees me, however far above,
Speaker:or that very air thins to nothing and I gasp and struggle for breath and burn up in the heat of the sun even as I freeze to death, there in the rarefied air.
Speaker:I am a ghost. That is evidence of my error.
Speaker:I am a ghost because I ignored the admonition and looked up to the heavens and saw a lonely ghost in turn,
Speaker:and even as she stepped down to earth and breathed the breath of life, my own breath was taken from me.
Speaker:I am haunting these trails, these woods.
Speaker:That, too, is evidence.
Speaker:I am the fox who walks
Speaker:and walks and walks. I am the fox whose hissed breaths between clenched teeth carry curses and pleas both.
Speaker:And now, I realize,
Speaker:my feet no longer touch the ground.
Speaker:That is the final evidence.
Speaker:My claws no longer dent the dirt that is half mud, half stone.
Speaker:My pads crunch against some more numinous trail now,
Speaker:something less tangible
Speaker:and more real than the anchoring earth below.
Speaker:I am inches off the ground now.
Speaker:How long until I am feet
Speaker:off the ground? How long until, as I perpetually look down to the dirt and
Speaker:rocks and roots, I am able to measure my distance to the ground in multiples of me?
Speaker:How long until I, too,
Speaker:walk at the level of the treetops?
Speaker:Why bother thinking about this, though?
Speaker:Why try and understand?
Speaker:What is there to do about it
Speaker:but wait until some poor fool looks up to the heavens and sees a lonely ghost,
Speaker:meets my eyes, and lets me weep in pain and relief and pity?
Speaker:And what will I even see?
Speaker:Will I see the small beasts of the land making their nests in beds of needles?
Speaker:Will I see the birds of the sky making their nests in crooks of branches? Will I see Arrowhead Lake —
Speaker:my goal! Do you remember when I had a goal? I do not —
Speaker:making its nest between three peaks?
Speaker:Will I look down on the mountains?
Speaker:Will I look down on the state?
Speaker:The country? Will I look out to the ocean?
Speaker:Will I see God in the curve of the earth?
Speaker:Will I see dreams in my uncounted hours on the trail?
Speaker:Perhaps I will finally divine their meanings:
Speaker:what did it mean
Speaker:when my muscles gave out
Speaker:and my voice failed?
Speaker:What did it mean that pink horses galloped across the sea?
Speaker:Why mene, mene, tekel, parsin?
Speaker:And until then, what is there to do but keep walking?
Speaker:What else is there to do but keep walking and, lest I miss my chance at living again,
Speaker:not look up? Please,
Speaker:please look up. This was
Speaker:“Please Look Up” by Madison Scott-Clary,
Speaker:read for you by Rob MacWolf,
Speaker:werewolf hitchhiker.
Speaker:You can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,
Speaker:or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker:Thank you for listening
Speaker:to The Ghost of Dog.
