October 15, 2043
I’ve been accepted! By train and boat we journey to join the other initiates. We’re allowed three final phone calls – “chatter away to your heart’s content!” the email instructed. I called my mother and father first, but found I had little to say, and mostly listened. They cried of course, and pleaded with me to speak, so I described the fog-licked moors and tannin-soaked peatlands, the jaunty heather and juniper. “Speak normal Cormack,” they said, “stop banging on like a pious knob. Just speak normal before we forget what ya sound like.” But I find it impossible to speak the same way, now I’m aware of how many words I have left. My sister is furious with me, but she answered when I called her separately. “It’s not your fault they made the choice they did, Corm,” she said angrily. “A choice isn’t right,” I said back, “that’s not quite the right word.” I decided not to use my third phone call.
November 7, 2043
Apologies. I haven’t written for weeks. Well, except for the violent waterfall of consciousness we pour into our lab books, exorcising the cathartic and the mundane, to be burned in the evening fires. Ash settling into earth; our thoughts soaked up by layers of soil. This journal they don’t know about. My bunkmate, Yongyi, has one too, and we have a silent pact (haha) not to tell.
November 22, 2043
Most initiates fail to join the Inner Canal. They fail one of the Four Tests that Yongyi and I JUST PASSED:
The Comic (We did not laugh)
The Tragedist (We did not weep)
The Unjust (We did not gasp, or rage)
The Romantic (We did not fall, but we Love)
November 25, 2043
No one can tell us how bad it hurts, obviously. Yongyi and I have ours this afternoon. We stayed up all night by pilfered candlelight, sticking our tongues out and wagging them around – slimy, red slugs. We sang in bold whispers and flailed around the room, we told all the childhood stories we knew, we talked shite and nonsense and tongue twisters, we told each other our secrets because we won’t be able to speak them after today, and he told me he didn’t blame me for stealing Maxwell’s girlfriend in biology class, it wasn’t my fault he made the choice he did, plus my presentation on regenerating coral reefs was epic and objectively hot, and there were clearly bigger issues he was dealing with. Then I didn’t want to talk much anymore, but Yongyi made me sing a song about a turtle who was born without a shell and thinks he’s a person, and we laughed so hard, and neither of us slept a blink because to be honest we were scared shitless.
February, 2044
I know it’s been months. You must be wondering how it went. I’ve got the hang of swallowing again, though I went through a phase of swallowing non-stop until my throat swelled up. We eat endless potatoes (I can still taste variations in earthiness and sweetness in my soft palate and mouth), dry biscuits with gravy, seaweed, the occasional bit of mutton (finely chopped). Yongyi and I have fully graduated and when we’re not Listening, we walk through the old castle grounds and pretend to be crows convening and scheming amongst the stone circles, our robes billowing behind us—burnt amber wings. When one of us lies on the mist-whetted ground with our legs and arms toward the sky, teeth gnashing, this means we had a day of HARD Listening. We are supposed to visit the caves and purify our bodies and minds, to cleanse ourselves of everything we hear and absorb into our nervous system and spirits, which we will do, but first we come here and gnash gnash gnash.
February still (I think), 2044
People tell us everything. They confess their crimes, the horrors they live with, their desires and their shame, their unbearable fears, they confess the grotesqueness and beauty of their psyches, they confess how much they love, and how they fear failing the ones they love. We are trained to bear true witness, and in doing so become a conduit down to the molten earth and up into infinite galaxies, creating space for pain and suffering to be transmuted into unbounded possibilities. Some Listeners fail because they cannot handle their own silence—when a person vows to suicide, we do not argue with them or convince them or persuade them or threaten them or comfort them. We do not know if our Listening will amount to a life extinguished or a life lived. I take comfort in knowing what it was like twenty years ago: So you call the number right, you worked up the guts, because it’s embarrassing to ask a stranger for this kind of help, the soul kind. And you get this automated voice, wait twenty to an hour, probably longer. Finally, some sleep-deprived, unpaid social work student who needs it for their CV answers – you hold back a volcano, but the words bubble out. And then, the checklist. How suicidal are you: a standardized questionnaire design.
Choose from two options:
1 - Not enough: Well, if you don’t have a means or a date set, you’re probably just attention seeking. A few minutes of platitudes, some subtle shaming about how terrible it would be for your family, call back if you’re actually suicidal.
2 - Too suicidal: Now you’re a legal liability. The cops are called and you’re carted off to a facility where they lock you up against your will and force meds down your throat and they don’t provide therapy, only more suicide checklists, and you’re forced to lie and say you’re fine because you must escape that hellscape.
I remind myself of this, and other reasons, when the not knowing is difficult.
April? May? The crocus are blooming. 2044
There is a kind of sickness moving through the Listeners. We have been informed to increase our grounding (stomping bare feet into mud) and purification (the caves) exercises. Some Listeners appear to be… psychically disintegrating. I wonder… yesterday I was Listening for a man who felt his existence was pointless, he only repeated life (his children who do not respect him) but he has not created anything of meaning, and also he feels his only worth is his paycheque, and nothing was particularly unique about the call, except my body evaporated, I mean completely disintegrated into the atmosphere, and I was tethered to this reality only by his words, and I nearly cried out. Imagine! They would have put me on bed rest.
Whenever the fuck it is.
People are whingebags. I’ve heard enough of their mundane, shitty problems. GET A GRIP. If I Listen for one more second, I will kill myself. And who will Listen to me???
Probably June, 2044
I decided not to cross out the last entry. It is all part of this exhilarating discipline. Today I feel such love for all life-forms. Such an impossible, brutal yet resplendent ecosystem we exist in! The complexity is unending, without edges or point of origin. I love. I LOVE!
TIME IS A CONSTRUCT
Are we not God? They speak to us, into the abyss. And we listen, silently, and they trust that we listen.
Probably still June or maybe July, 2044
Got a tad grandiose there, sorry. But it’s difficult sometimes, all this silence. Yongyi and I have learned a type of morse code, through blinking. If someone finds this journal, please keep this knowledge to yourself. Or come find us in the stone circles, and we can teach you! But only if you’re cool.
I was actually warm today. August? 2044
I haven’t experienced the disintegration again. They’ve been giving us longer breaks, more time spent with the chickens and the sheep, even games to play like mancala and crokinole. Yesterday a young woman called—you can tell age through the texture of the voice. She didn’t want me to change her mind. She wanted a witness for the end, a kind of confessional. And that I gave her. Sometimes people yell and scream and flirt (the smuttiest things! It’s hard not to respond, I admit) and plead with their Listeners to make a sound, even a mumbled yes or no. But this girl sounded exhausted mostly. I think she was relieved by the full silence. I want to specify that it is a full silence we give. There is nothing empty about it. We never let anyone feel alone, like they did before, even with all their advising and diagnosing and chastising.
August, 2044
I can’t find Yongyi. There is a search party tonight. I’m worried, but I can’t stop thinking about that girl, either. I’m certain she’s dead, but maybe my Listening helped her. Maybe she hung on to this material plane. Sometimes I think I possess the power to traverse the expanse of space and time. I will find Yongyi, and I will find that girl, and I will bring back my friends. But this is attachment, which is BAD apparently. I don’t know. I like attachments. If we’re not attached, we might float away.
Later in August, 2044
Yongyi is still missing. He is my best living friend. There was a spontaneous laugh attack in the Listening Hall today. I giggled too. No, I roared with laughter!!!! Which is probably not so great, because the person I was Listening for just lost her husband to cancer. But then… she shrieked with laughter too! People are disintegrating and reintegrating, and even the Master Listeners are all a jumble. I miss being a crow with Yongyi. Sometimes he would peck my arm really hard and draw blood.
Later today, 2044
Just so you don’t think he’s a wanker, he also nuzzled into my neck and blew air on my ears and made crow noises (which is not allowed, but he does it anyway, which is one of the things I love about him. Another thing is that he saves me extra biscuits).
October 15, 2044 (the other initiates are joining today)
Yongyi has been missing for two months. When people glance at Yongyi’s empty seat, I’m sure they think of the sea and its unforgiving rocks. Maybe I’ve got everything backwards. Maybe he was close to the edge all along.
His seat will be replaced this afternoon by a new initiate. I buried a tack into the chair’s fabric so they can’t see the shining metal tip.
March 3, 2045
Daily rhythms have settled down again in the Inner Canal. The Masters have added group expression sessions so we don’t bottle things up and erupt in laughter or tears while Listening. We’re allotted ten minutes a day to scream and make any noise we wish. We continue to Listen. I don’t want to talk about it here, but Listeners have been reporting a repeat caller who doesn’t speak but makes garbled sounds. A dam’s cracked open; blood surges through my veins again.
Listeners don’t police calls like they did in the past, but this morning they taught us how to track calls. Training Listeners is an expensive investment and we signed contracts to stay here. They punish those who shirk their duties, but losing a finger or two isn’t so bad after what we’ve been through.
March 7, 2045
Yongyi knew it was me by the weight and shimmer of my silence. He made our cawing noises and I had to bite my lips to keep from cawing back.
My friend Maxwell, he used to have a pet crow. The crow had fallen from its family nest, and Maxwell made him a bed out of socks and put him in a cage for safekeeping. The crow would nuzzle our fingers and play with us, but his eyes became harder over the years, little accusing shards.
Yongyi doesn’t know about the track command though. When he comes back, he’ll see that things are better. I’ll keep a watchful eye on him. We will leap atop the standing stones, crouching like bullfrogs. Croaking doesn’t need consonants like cawing does, so we can bound through sea haar making all the noises we want, and we will sound perfect.
Robyn Thomas is a Canadian writer and filmmaker currently living in Scotland where she’s completing her PhD in anthropology and discovering her love of haggis. Her writing has been published in Orca Literary Journal, Hunger Mountain Review, Marrow Magazine, Carmina Magazine, Psyche Magazine and other publications.