Six Words Copyright © 2017 by Ralph Robert Moore.

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Published in Black Static #59, Jul-Aug 2017

I had no trouble writing this first sentence.

Practice.

When Mary and I were getting ready to leave California, wander across America to find a new home, we decided to bring our white Mustang in to have it checked out. The last thing we wanted was for the car to break down a thousand miles from anyone we knew, some small town with mountains in the far distance; sprawling metropolis crowded with one-way streets, angry car honks.

The balding mechanic told us it would take four hours to check out all the systems, repair any weak spots. We walked away from the repair shop holding hands, headed towards the business district three sunny sidewalks away. Found a restaurant where we could sit down over breakfast, eggs on a white plate are so reassuring, then run some 'leaving everything we know' errands.

One of the places we visited was a multi-storied department store. We wound up on the top floor, and carrying bags with the store's logo by our sides, went down the escalator to the building's third floor.

At the third floor of that escalator a middle-aged man was wiping the hand rail. He smiled at us. We stepped off with our bags, circled left, stepped onto the descending steps of the next escalator, taking us to the second floor.

At the bottom of that escalator was the same middle-aged man from the floor above, again cleaning the hand rail. Again, he smiled at us.

It could be the store had hired twins, but I doubt it. To this day, I don't have any explanation how the same maintenance man showed up on two floors of that department store, seconds apart. Or why.

Going down that escalator reminded me of Thomas M. Disch's short story, 'Descending'. In fact, every time I go down an escalator I remember that story. That's how powerful a writer Disch was. Oscar Wilde said of the painter J.M.W. Turner that he "invented sunsets", and it's just as true to say Disch invented escalators.

'Descending' deals with an unnamed protagonist who wakes up hungry in his NYC apartment. The story starts with a list of various foods ("Catsup, mustard, pickle, relish, mayonnaise, two kinds of salad dressings…") he owns, and going through all those commas it doesn't take us too long to realize that the protagonist has nothing of substance in his pantry--only condiments for the staples he can't afford. He has no money for food, and is behind in his rent.

He decides to go to Underwoods, a multi-floored department store a subway ride away, to obtain some provisions. Once he arrives at Underwoods he selects a number of 'fancy groceries'. And what are those fancy groceries? Instant coffee, a tin of corned beef, pancake mix, canned tuna fish.

He's a desperate man, hungry and poor. Carrying his tins and boxes, he descends the escalators to the cashiers on the first floor, but without having any means to pay for this food. To be able, instead of just carrying food, to eat it.

Disch went on to have a celebrated career after 'Descending' was published, as a novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist, critic. His children's book, The Brave Little Toaster, was a critical success, made into a Disney movie.

Mary and I ended up in Maine, winter storms starting, windows and hands going cold. We didn't have much money either. The idea was Mary would find temporary work while I wrote my first novel, Always Again. Very quickly, so I could find work myself, to help pay for rent and food. You don't want to be homeless when there's three feet of white and black snow on the red brick sidewalks. I still remember, vividly, that first day, Mary at work, me sitting down in our new apartment to start my novel. Pen and paper, pressure, like I know so many of you who are writers have felt, keenly aware I had to walk across the desert of that first blank page of hundreds of blank pages and find under my footsteps, forests.

And I couldn't. I had the mustard and salad dressing for some subsequent sentences in my novel, but not that all important opening sentence. I carried one arrangement of words after another, riding down into my imagination, riding further down, further, but never reaching inspiration.

Disch lived with the poet Charles Naylor. Naylor died in 2005, and Disch became progressively more depressed.

As the protagonist of 'Descending' goes down one escalator after another, it occurs to him that something is wrong. He is descending far more floors than he ever rose.

"At first, he allowed the escalator to take him along at its own mild pace, but he soon grew impatient of this. He found that the exercise of running down the steps three at a time was not so exhausting as running up."

'Descending' was published early in Disch's career, July of 1964, 53 years ago this month, in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination.

In 2008, Disch started a LiveJournal account online, posting about his life.

July 2, 2008 Disch posted an entry titled, 'Inflation/Starvation/Fun'. The post talks about the themes of 'Descending', without ever mentioning the story by name, and it's possible Disch didn't consciously relate what he was posting to his story from so long ago. "Short of succumbing to the madness of anorexia, I doubt I am likely to experience actual starvation before I die…"

That was the final entry in his blog. Two days later, on July 4, 2008, Independence Day, nine years ago this month, Disch, instead of picking up a pen, picked up a gun.

And that's really the point of 'Descending'. If he were in a real department store, he would have to reach a cashier eventually, have to pay for his food in order to leave the store, carry the food home, eat it. Except he couldn't pay for the food, because he had no money. So the food, his precious armful of 'fancy groceries', would have been taken away from him.

But since this is a horror story, he is forever trapped on one descending escalator after another, never getting any closer to the cashier's station, and therefore never having to pay for his food. If he weren't trapped in this never-ending loop he would starve. Because he is trapped in this loop, he's able to enjoy a wide variety of foodstuffs over the course of his never-ending descent, opening the tins of food over the course of his descent, no one on the escalator to stop him. The horror of his situation saves him. In some ways, as bleak as the story appears to be, it has a happy ending. Our hungry, anonymous man is finally able to eat a decent meal before his death.

After several hours of writing words, crossing them out, sideways pen strokes like hands trying to wave away the realization of my failure as a writer, descending deeper and deeper into the despair that maybe I wasn't really a writer? I finally came up with the first sentence of my first novel.

"The birds wake up the monkeys."

Six words, but I am so proud of them. It was the perfect opening sentence. For my purposes. And that morning, that was what mattered. It was what I needed. Uncorked, all the subsequent sentences came spilling out, puckering the page.

"Then, he was lying at the foot of the escalator. His head rested on the cold metal of the baseplate, and he was looking at his hand, the fingers of which were pressed into the creviced grill. One after another, in perfect order, the steps of the escalator slipped into these crevices, tread in groove, rasping at his fingertips, occasionally tearing away a sliver of his flesh."