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By Rivka Z 
There was an old parking lot north of the middle of town that was an excellent spot for Nihiling. Spackle adjusted her belt and crunched her way across the gravel pavement looking for the wrong spot. You didn't find a Blank spot by looking for the right spot, unless you were trying to do something other than look for it- in which case one could run into Nothing quite frequently. Usually it just turned into a Nothing Else or a Nothing Sight and was much harder to catch when that happened. Nothing Else's and Nothing Sights were another division's problem anyway. This particular lot was a veritable mine of Nothing. Parking lots usually were. Hallways, alleys, and bridges too- the stuff was everywhere you didn't think of looking. This made Spackle's job easier. She was good at sensing things that were ignored, she thought. At twenty-eight, dumpy, with frizzy hair contained by some kind of scarf, and permanently addicted to too-tight jeans, she was not the prettiest of girls, nor was she an outspoken person. She grew up an only child, scraped by in school, and had lived in lower class homes all her life. She got ignored a lot herself. But Spackle noticed a great many things that no one else did. It had been easy to train herself to find the in-betweens of things. She'd done that sort of thing all her life. The Job hadn't always been there, but its presence hadn't startled her much either. No surprise, the Job meant Nothing- and it snuck up on you much like Nothing too. It was always there, but its business was to stay out of your way. She habitually did the same. Spackle was perfect for the biz, after all, she had grown up with Nothing as a friend. She stuck her hands into her pockets lazily, nondescript grey eyes wandering around from under heavy lids covered in dark blue eye shadow. It was a sunny day, the sky was clear and the asphalt was heating up. Weeds grew out of the concrete. The air stunk halfway between big city and open air, but she was used to it. Spackle paced over to a corner made by the two walls of some downtown businesses. She sensed Nothing all around in bits and pieces. The corner seemed a good candidate, but she kept walking. She was not looking directly at the corner, but someplace between here and there. The corner was full of Nothing too, but it was a more garden-variety nothing than the kind she was looking for. Spackle was after the more neglected kind. The Spot was about fifteen inches in front of the corner. It emitted a very deep feeling once you knew it was there. Nothing always made her a little sleepy and dissolved, like she was quietly being forgotten and mixing back into air and space, the binding between her particles oozing out of her and leaving her a weightless cloud... or like a doll. Spackle thought back to the time when her boss had explained the whole thing to her for the first time. "Dolls are the result of too much Nothing." He had said in his strong Bronx accent. "See, when urban sprawl showed up, Nothing levels exploded exponentially. Nothing was never rampant like this when the earth was crawling with life, but when the land was smothered in concrete and steel, a new kind of emptiness showed up. It seeps into corners and into empty apartments like bugs do... the big cities are chok full of Nothing. It turns out that when people live in a place too saturated with Nothing, they start to become more and more forgettable. They level off towards indescribably average. They become normal in ways that would make your hair stand on end. Ever wonder about the depths of mediocrity? Even death and despair have a sort of ecosystem to them, but total forgettable-ness is too horrible to wrap your brain around." He had looked over his dark glasses at her, his tone dire. "Profoundly bland human beings that hardly even count anymore, the people who get lost in the grey, whose lives seem to exist only because a piece of paperwork says they do, who go on merely because that is what they did yesterday... that's the kind of sterile Hell we created. People become so forgotten they disappear, like all of the sudden they realize they can't remember why they exist- and poof! That person becomes a doll: a blank, Nothing-filled husk that nobody can remember. Sometimes they turn invisible, and wander aimlessly until the last thread of consciousness breaks and slides out of them. That is why the Job was created- to help reduce the Nothing that eats into the bodies of people who are too routine. People like you are found by the business and trained to discreetly bring some chutzpah into the dark corners of existence- so we don't keep breeding these sorry non-people." She had been younger at the time, and far too shy to think that she could be such an important person. "Confidence is a suit I never had," She had said. "But saw in a shop window and thought, 'how nice that would look on me', but I never tried it on. I couldn't afford it anyhow." Her boss had looked her straight in the eyes. "I notice you, I have confidence in you." He said. "You're here, and have just as much right to being something as anyone else." He handed her a Badge of Nihiling. "Now go buy that suit." he finished. Spackle had learned an awful lot about life and Nothing from her boss, but nothing that she hadn't secretly suspected all along. Cracking her neck to one side, she sighed, and started her usual whatever-you-think-is-natural routine that came with the Job. She started to notice things. Each pebble, each weed, the dust between the pebbles and weeds, the battered, futile architecture of flaws unique to that single concrete edging strip, the rust stain on a cinder block, a decaying piece of paper, an equally flattened feather, a pop top... The particular lonesome feel of the place was most important of all. This place was Nothing. It wasn't even the kind of Blank spot that you could sit down in randomly; it wasn't even the corner. It was a place between the corner and the lot. It was someplace you walked over to get to somewhere else. Even the corner had some kind of culture to it on a miniature scale: water would drip down it, things collected in the corner, kids would hide from their parents... but the fifteen-inch between spot remained totally desolate. Ants didn't even stick around it. Spackle smiled. She'd do the corner next. First off though, she'd need the Needle. Her eyes scraped over the details again. All promising items seemed to be closer to the corner, which she didn't need yet. She kept a hawk's eye looking for the most desperate line she could possibly find fifteen inches from a forgotten urban corner. Finally, she spotted it. Underneath two year's worth of gravel and bits of trash was buried a decaying popsicle stick. Spackle gingerly picked it up between two fingers. She shook it once, twice, three times, and with her mind thoroughly focused on the last thing on earth that pigeons would do with a yellow-spotted greasy lampshade on a beach that a popsicle stick couldn't manage while eating dinner mints... the after image of the stick's movement solidified. She was suddenly holding the Needle. Spackle sighed. She had never been too certain if the trick would work each time she did it, but so far the Needle had always come to her. It was very long, very straight, silver, and distinctly not a popsicle stick. It had a finger-sized eye on one end, and a cross guard; at least six metal rings in a chain attached to it somewhere at any given time. The Needle was always vastly tasteful and ornate- or at least it gave the impression of being vastly tasteful and ornate. Since you couldn't ever actually focus on any of the decorative and fantastically original designs, it was difficult to tell. Also, like a dream, it would vanish completely if you stopped thinking about it, solid, and in your hand, that very moment. It changed every time you encountered it while remaining completely recognizable. Spackle rather liked it. She wished she could keep it out after her Nihiling was finished- if only it would stick around, and if only she could justify it as an extravagant accessory of some kind... but she hadn't found either an excuse or a way to keep the Needle on her backpack. Spackle began to walk around the area in question, keeping the Needle point centered on the Blank Spot and pivoting around it. She looked down at the barren piece of gravel with sympathetic eyes. "I notice you." She whispered. "I, Spackle, holder of the Needle, notice you as you hold my attention. I know that you exist. I can touch you, see you. I will remember you. I have left an imprint on you, and you have left an imprint on me. I will be changed, and you will be changed. You are now a place and a time and a thought." Spackle stopped circling and held the Needle still. "I have confidence in you." The silver rod tingled invitingly in her hands. Spackle closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and held the Needle out in front of her, rings jingling. The sound brought with it a strange, possessive kind of comfort. The noise was so engaging, so playful- a place so barren of interest would soak it up and keep it as a secret treasure. Spackle began to picture the Blank Spot in front of her. Slowly, in her mind's eye and in the eye of the Needle, a sunflower began to crack the concrete just in front of her. She watched with satisfaction as it grew up, and up, until it was nearly her height, and then it burst into all the radiant colors of a neon festival. The pebbles around it scooted around and formed a spectacular mosaic of faded rainbows, and small trickles of clear water ran between the gaps in a maze pattern. For once, the sun sparkled off the spot's shy surface as something truly interesting and profoundly THERE. A sigh seemed to escape the blank earth. Spackle opened her eyes- smiled, and went on to change the extraordinarily mediocre concrete and brick wall into a mural of Quetzalcoatl and Shiva dancing in the Olympus Coliseum. Nihiling was a tough job, but someone had to do it. ~*~*~*~ ~Back to the Shelves... |