The Slaughterhouse of Slashered Paths
By
Daniel Scott Tysdal
The woman in the purple rain jacket hurried to the car. She hugged her bulky, jangling purse to her chest and clutched her hood against the wind-whipped rain.
“Claire?” the Uber driver asked as she opened the door.
He was white, mid-twenties, doughy yet immaculately groomed. He was dressed to drive a limo, not a subcompact: smart, black jacket, black leather driving gloves, a helmet of perfectly arranged hair. He gleamed a handsome-ish, service industry smile when he said her name.
“In the flesh,” Claire said, short of breath, face still buried in her purple hood.
She slid across the back seat, settling in the spot behind the driver. She slumped her purse beside her. The contents chimed, handbells to the rain’s percussion and the window wipers’ thrum.
Claire lowered her hood. She was Black, early-fifties, though her age was only visible in her eyes, attentive and weary. She wiped rain from her robust, elegant features, her closely shorn hair.
“You must be Mason,” Claire said, still catching her breath, and then quipped, “or do you prefer Blizzard Pearl Prius?”
“I’m prepared for both parts,” he laughed, poking at the phone mounted on his dashboard.
“Most drivers would roll with ‘White’ for the car description. Get adventurous with ‘Eggshell.’”
“I’ve got an eye for detail.”
“They count.”
“More than most know.”
He flashed her a winking grin in the rear-view mirror as he pulled into the empty residential street. She returned his smile, eyeing his reflection even after he returned his attention to the road.
“You look different than in your photo,” she said.
“Blame it on my sweet tooth,” he said, chuckling, then puffing out his cheeks and rubbing his tummy like a child pantomiming, “I’m full.”
Claire looked to her window, the lit and unlit houses smeared by the pouring rain. She rested her right hand on her purse the way a caring owner might place their hand on a sleeping aged dog.
The car sped through the storm, transitioning from the quiet streets to the busy expressway. Claire took in a big breath, let it out with a relieved sigh.
“You were in quite a hurry, Claire,” Mason said, another twinkle in the mirror. “Something after you?”
Claire smiled but her gaze remained on the swirl of storm and traffic.
“There’s always something out there, isn’t there,” she said.
“Certainly is,” he agreed, “and you got in the right car to beat it.”
He made the exaggerated gestures of a getaway driver.
She laughed, politely, but again did not look away from the window to meet his eye. He mugged anyway, striking an “I can’t help myself” shrug, though only for himself.
He glanced down at the seat beside him. There was another passenger: a black leather messenger bag. He turned his attention to the road, passed a moving van, returned to the middle lane. His gaze directed at the flow of traffic, he carefully reached a gloved hand for the bag, gripped the front flap.
“It’s in here, too,” Claire said.
Mason’s eyes shifted to the mirror, widened when they found her watching him. His hand shot up from the bag. He made a show of adjusting his hair, even though it remained perfectly in place.
“Sorry?” he said, trying to recover by imitating a teen coifing before a date. “What’s in here?”
“Whatever it is that’s out there,” she said. “That something.”
He nodded, trying to play along, but his face remained wrinkled in confusion.
Claire went to say more, stopped. She leaned forward in her seat to better size him up, her purse clattering with her movement. She studied him. Mason’s face cycled between stillness, like he was alone in the car, and a series of self-conscious winks and half-smiles.
“I thought you were driving away,” she finally said, and then flumped back in her seat, “I saw it.”
Relieved at the footing, Mason grinned, “I’m a 5-star driver, Claire. I’d never abandon . . .”
Ignoring him, she continued, “And then you weren’t.”
“Like I said,” Mason tried again, “I’m a 5-star . . .”
Again, she ignored him, “Are you fan of slasher films?”
This time, despite the swerve, he did not miss a beat.
“As a point of personal pride and principal,” he beamed, meeting her gaze in the mirror, “I am a fan of all art.”
“That’s what’s out there,” she said, “what’s in here.”
“Art?” he asked, excited, sitting up in his seat.
“Slashers,” she said.
He cocked an ear, playing the curious student.
She leaned forward again, further this time so that she had to push her purse aside, the contents clanging.
“See that turnoff up ahead?” she asked. “We could take that.”
“We could,” he said, glancing with concern at the map on his phone, “but that would take us way off our route.”
“Forget that,” she said. “My point is we could do both. We are capable of staying in this lane and travelling that turnoff at the same time. We have the capacity to take part in this conversation and drive in silence together at the same time. You can both pick me up and speed away, leaving me in the rain.”
Mason looked skeptical, a teacher dealing with the figment of another homework-eating dog. Claire was too lost in her reverie to notice.
“All of these realities could be real at once,” she said. “We have the brainpower, the spirit. Even our bodies, which seem so limited, could travel these vast networks. But that something out there, in here. These slashers that inhabit space and time slaughter every forking path, stab every alternate possibility, make an abattoir of our potential, binding us to this one road.”
Mason took in an exaggerated breath and shook his head, pulling Claire out of the trance of her musing.
“That’s what dreams are,” she said, “and our imaginings, too. When you dream of swimming in Hawaii or bouncing on the moon. When you daydream about achieving fame or confronting doom. These are the ghosts of these slashered paths. We’re haunted by what could have, what should have, been.”
“When you saw me driving away,” he said, “that’s glimpsing a pathway forking?”
“That’s a rup,” she said, “yes.”
“Rup,” he repeated, liking that, a parent hitting on a newborn’s name.
“The ‘ture’ cut,” she said, “because the path always gets slashed.”
“Slashed or not, it’s quite a gift to even think you glimpse them.”
Claire’s lips pursed and brow furrowed at the word “think.”
“It’s not because I’m special or anything,” she said. “It’s simply because I know to look. I attend.”
That last word grabbed Mason, too. He nodded
“It’s why I told you all this,” she said. “I get the feeling you watch close. Eye for detail and all.”
He played a shy debutante receiving a compliment, tilting his head and batting his lashes.
Claire rolled her eyes at his dramatics, her gaze meandering to the road visible through the wiper-swept windshield. The traffic had grown sparse. She looked closer, leaning forward and squinting through the rain to read a passing sign.
Her voice came hard, “You missed my turnoff.”
“I guess we’re on a different forking path,” he winked.
“You missed my turnoff,” she repeated.
“Blame the slashers.”
Claire forcefully sat back. She yanked her purse close. It clattered into her lap.
“There’s a road washed out,” Mason said, pointing at his phone, out of her view. “We had to change our route.”
He looked back over the seat at her, staging the remorseful eyes of a chastened prankster.
“My apologies for the failed attempt at a joke.”
Her features remained set, purse clutched tight.
As Mason faced forward, he reached over to his messenger bag. He flipped the flap open and pulled it closer.
“I just got excited,” he said, “because you’re right. I attend. I watch carefully, though I see things a bit differently.”
“How’s that?” she asked, her voice still firm.
“I was a boy when I first witnessed it,” he said, drifting off into his own spell. “Our pet dog, a collie-lab cross named Inches, had been hit by a banged-up boat of an Oldsmobile. My brother bawled and the driver, this dusty rasp of a man, consoled him, apologising and promising to make things right.”
Claire ducked her head slightly and squinted to read another passing sign. She bobbed with a barely perceptible “huh,” held her tongue.
“I don’t know what it was,” Mason continued, “the shock, the newness of the situation, all the impossible promises the man blurted, but I laughed. A quick, high-pitched bark. Nothing like my usual giggle. The stranger glared at me and snapped, ‘boy, God’s watchin’.’ He sounded like a preacher in an old Western.”
Mason signalled and eased the car right across two lanes.
“‘God’s watchin’,’” Mason repeated in imitation of the old man. “That’s when I first got a glimpse of what I would come to know. The truth of this world. The beauty. We’re a work of art, us, all of creation. We’re players performing the grandest play for the one who made us.”
The car slowed as Mason made a turn onto a dark, two-lane highway.
“Watchin, I call him, in honour of that old timer,’” Mason said, smiling and shaking his head in wonder as if at a baby’s first steps.
The ride grew bumpy on the untended road.
Claire reached a hand into her purse.
“Watchin’s not God, though,” Mason said, pausing until he drew her eyes to his in the mirror. “Not in the way that old timer meant it. Despite the wisdom he sparked in me, he was just another half-witted Bible-thumper, you know?”
Claire nodded in agreement, took hold of something in her purse.
“Watchin is so much more than we could ever imagine. And I can feel It. I can feel Its joy and awe at what we make. Watchin’s gratitude and glee.”
“But that’s not how you attend,” Claire said.
“You’re right,” he said, his face flashing to the mirror with genuine surprise. Something at once animal and grave rippled through his features before his salesman’s smile submerged it. “You do pay close attention.”
“You’ve got your own rups.”
“Slips.”
“When someone isn’t playing the part Watchin made for them.”
“I’m glad you understand,” he said, nodding a smile that bounced between somber and gleeful. “I truly am.”
The car slowed. Mason turned down a gravel road the rain had muddied. He eased the car ahead at a deliberate, juddering pace.
Claire spread her legs wide. She pulled something bulky out of her purse, moved it quickly with her left hand into the dark behind Mason’s seat. With her righthand, Claire pulled a jangling something from her purse to the dark. She didn’t even bother hiding the sound of chains crossed with spurs as she worked to attach it to the strangeness she gripped in her other hand.
“That’s the hard part of our performance,” Mason continued, ignoring Claire’s labour. “It’s not as simple as just living. We’ve got to get it right. Do you know what happens if we don’t?”
“No Oscar nods?” she asked without looking up from her work.
“No Oscars,” he laughed, mirthless, with disappointment.
The jangling locked into place. Claire sat back, kept her creation hidden.
“No life, Claire,” he said. “No life. Not for a long time. You see, Watchin, this miracle that made our miracle, starts the play again. Flips back to page one. Banishes us all to the dark of the wings to wait for our cue. And each time the work gets harder. With each new mounting, we’re a bit more tired, a bit more self-conscious in our delivery, our gestures forced. That’s why everyone is so tired all the time. Living this all again and again and again until we hit all our marks. That’s why it’s my duty to play my role, to catch these slips and give my notes.”
“Mason,” she said, “the man who owned and drove this car.”
The car stopped. The wipers stilled after a final thrum, and the dashboard lights went dark.
“He slipped,” she continued.
Rain battered the car.
“You gave him notes.”
The man in the driver’s seat, no longer Mason, undid his seatbelt. He lowered his head in a slow nod, kept his head down. The mirror was black. Claire pushed her right hand back into her purse.
“You’re worse than me,” he said, reaching his hand to into his messenger bag.
He withdrew a claw hammer, held it up for her to see the silhouette.
“You slash back at these slashers you imagine,” he continued, passing the hammer to his left hand, and then reaching back into his bag.
He held up a chef’s knife.
“It’s why I must stop you before you force Watchin to send us all back to oblivion to start again.
Claire clicked a button, the hidden thing in her left hand violently whirred.
He heaved a pity-drenched laugh.
“I’d be worried,” he said, “if I didn’t know how this was going to end.”
He turned in his seat, knife and hammer raised. Claire lifted her purring defence to waist height.
“I was going to let you choose your path, Claire,” he said, nodding to the knife and hammer, “but I suppose you want both.”
“If you can believe it,” she said, “I’ll take neither.”
She withdrew a phone from her purse. Held it up for him to see.
“It’s too late to call anyone,” he said.
“If you had a better eye for detail,” she said, “you’d know I don’t need to call.”
She flashed the screen on and off, on and off.
Through the rain-whirled rear window, just down the road, a pair of headlights brightened and neared. The bodies in the car lunged and thrusted and screamed.
Daniel Scott Tysdal is a writer, filmmaker, and teacher. An Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Tysdal’s works include the ReLit Award-winning poetry collection Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method, the short story collection Wave Forms and Doom Scrolls, the poetry textbook The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems, and the TEDx talk, “Everything You Need to Write a Poem (and How It Can Save a Life).” His most recent collection of poetry is The End Is in the Middle: Mad Fold-In Poems.
By
Daniel Scott Tysdal
The woman in the purple rain jacket hurried to the car. She hugged her bulky, jangling purse to her chest and clutched her hood against the wind-whipped rain.
“Claire?” the Uber driver asked as she opened the door.
He was white, mid-twenties, doughy yet immaculately groomed. He was dressed to drive a limo, not a subcompact: smart, black jacket, black leather driving gloves, a helmet of perfectly arranged hair. He gleamed a handsome-ish, service industry smile when he said her name.
“In the flesh,” Claire said, short of breath, face still buried in her purple hood.
She slid across the back seat, settling in the spot behind the driver. She slumped her purse beside her. The contents chimed, handbells to the rain’s percussion and the window wipers’ thrum.
Claire lowered her hood. She was Black, early-fifties, though her age was only visible in her eyes, attentive and weary. She wiped rain from her robust, elegant features, her closely shorn hair.
“You must be Mason,” Claire said, still catching her breath, and then quipped, “or do you prefer Blizzard Pearl Prius?”
“I’m prepared for both parts,” he laughed, poking at the phone mounted on his dashboard.
“Most drivers would roll with ‘White’ for the car description. Get adventurous with ‘Eggshell.’”
“I’ve got an eye for detail.”
“They count.”
“More than most know.”
He flashed her a winking grin in the rear-view mirror as he pulled into the empty residential street. She returned his smile, eyeing his reflection even after he returned his attention to the road.
“You look different than in your photo,” she said.
“Blame it on my sweet tooth,” he said, chuckling, then puffing out his cheeks and rubbing his tummy like a child pantomiming, “I’m full.”
Claire looked to her window, the lit and unlit houses smeared by the pouring rain. She rested her right hand on her purse the way a caring owner might place their hand on a sleeping aged dog.
The car sped through the storm, transitioning from the quiet streets to the busy expressway. Claire took in a big breath, let it out with a relieved sigh.
“You were in quite a hurry, Claire,” Mason said, another twinkle in the mirror. “Something after you?”
Claire smiled but her gaze remained on the swirl of storm and traffic.
“There’s always something out there, isn’t there,” she said.
“Certainly is,” he agreed, “and you got in the right car to beat it.”
He made the exaggerated gestures of a getaway driver.
She laughed, politely, but again did not look away from the window to meet his eye. He mugged anyway, striking an “I can’t help myself” shrug, though only for himself.
He glanced down at the seat beside him. There was another passenger: a black leather messenger bag. He turned his attention to the road, passed a moving van, returned to the middle lane. His gaze directed at the flow of traffic, he carefully reached a gloved hand for the bag, gripped the front flap.
“It’s in here, too,” Claire said.
Mason’s eyes shifted to the mirror, widened when they found her watching him. His hand shot up from the bag. He made a show of adjusting his hair, even though it remained perfectly in place.
“Sorry?” he said, trying to recover by imitating a teen coifing before a date. “What’s in here?”
“Whatever it is that’s out there,” she said. “That something.”
He nodded, trying to play along, but his face remained wrinkled in confusion.
Claire went to say more, stopped. She leaned forward in her seat to better size him up, her purse clattering with her movement. She studied him. Mason’s face cycled between stillness, like he was alone in the car, and a series of self-conscious winks and half-smiles.
“I thought you were driving away,” she finally said, and then flumped back in her seat, “I saw it.”
Relieved at the footing, Mason grinned, “I’m a 5-star driver, Claire. I’d never abandon . . .”
Ignoring him, she continued, “And then you weren’t.”
“Like I said,” Mason tried again, “I’m a 5-star . . .”
Again, she ignored him, “Are you fan of slasher films?”
This time, despite the swerve, he did not miss a beat.
“As a point of personal pride and principal,” he beamed, meeting her gaze in the mirror, “I am a fan of all art.”
“That’s what’s out there,” she said, “what’s in here.”
“Art?” he asked, excited, sitting up in his seat.
“Slashers,” she said.
He cocked an ear, playing the curious student.
She leaned forward again, further this time so that she had to push her purse aside, the contents clanging.
“See that turnoff up ahead?” she asked. “We could take that.”
“We could,” he said, glancing with concern at the map on his phone, “but that would take us way off our route.”
“Forget that,” she said. “My point is we could do both. We are capable of staying in this lane and travelling that turnoff at the same time. We have the capacity to take part in this conversation and drive in silence together at the same time. You can both pick me up and speed away, leaving me in the rain.”
Mason looked skeptical, a teacher dealing with the figment of another homework-eating dog. Claire was too lost in her reverie to notice.
“All of these realities could be real at once,” she said. “We have the brainpower, the spirit. Even our bodies, which seem so limited, could travel these vast networks. But that something out there, in here. These slashers that inhabit space and time slaughter every forking path, stab every alternate possibility, make an abattoir of our potential, binding us to this one road.”
Mason took in an exaggerated breath and shook his head, pulling Claire out of the trance of her musing.
“That’s what dreams are,” she said, “and our imaginings, too. When you dream of swimming in Hawaii or bouncing on the moon. When you daydream about achieving fame or confronting doom. These are the ghosts of these slashered paths. We’re haunted by what could have, what should have, been.”
“When you saw me driving away,” he said, “that’s glimpsing a pathway forking?”
“That’s a rup,” she said, “yes.”
“Rup,” he repeated, liking that, a parent hitting on a newborn’s name.
“The ‘ture’ cut,” she said, “because the path always gets slashed.”
“Slashed or not, it’s quite a gift to even think you glimpse them.”
Claire’s lips pursed and brow furrowed at the word “think.”
“It’s not because I’m special or anything,” she said. “It’s simply because I know to look. I attend.”
That last word grabbed Mason, too. He nodded
“It’s why I told you all this,” she said. “I get the feeling you watch close. Eye for detail and all.”
He played a shy debutante receiving a compliment, tilting his head and batting his lashes.
Claire rolled her eyes at his dramatics, her gaze meandering to the road visible through the wiper-swept windshield. The traffic had grown sparse. She looked closer, leaning forward and squinting through the rain to read a passing sign.
Her voice came hard, “You missed my turnoff.”
“I guess we’re on a different forking path,” he winked.
“You missed my turnoff,” she repeated.
“Blame the slashers.”
Claire forcefully sat back. She yanked her purse close. It clattered into her lap.
“There’s a road washed out,” Mason said, pointing at his phone, out of her view. “We had to change our route.”
He looked back over the seat at her, staging the remorseful eyes of a chastened prankster.
“My apologies for the failed attempt at a joke.”
Her features remained set, purse clutched tight.
As Mason faced forward, he reached over to his messenger bag. He flipped the flap open and pulled it closer.
“I just got excited,” he said, “because you’re right. I attend. I watch carefully, though I see things a bit differently.”
“How’s that?” she asked, her voice still firm.
“I was a boy when I first witnessed it,” he said, drifting off into his own spell. “Our pet dog, a collie-lab cross named Inches, had been hit by a banged-up boat of an Oldsmobile. My brother bawled and the driver, this dusty rasp of a man, consoled him, apologising and promising to make things right.”
Claire ducked her head slightly and squinted to read another passing sign. She bobbed with a barely perceptible “huh,” held her tongue.
“I don’t know what it was,” Mason continued, “the shock, the newness of the situation, all the impossible promises the man blurted, but I laughed. A quick, high-pitched bark. Nothing like my usual giggle. The stranger glared at me and snapped, ‘boy, God’s watchin’.’ He sounded like a preacher in an old Western.”
Mason signalled and eased the car right across two lanes.
“‘God’s watchin’,’” Mason repeated in imitation of the old man. “That’s when I first got a glimpse of what I would come to know. The truth of this world. The beauty. We’re a work of art, us, all of creation. We’re players performing the grandest play for the one who made us.”
The car slowed as Mason made a turn onto a dark, two-lane highway.
“Watchin, I call him, in honour of that old timer,’” Mason said, smiling and shaking his head in wonder as if at a baby’s first steps.
The ride grew bumpy on the untended road.
Claire reached a hand into her purse.
“Watchin’s not God, though,” Mason said, pausing until he drew her eyes to his in the mirror. “Not in the way that old timer meant it. Despite the wisdom he sparked in me, he was just another half-witted Bible-thumper, you know?”
Claire nodded in agreement, took hold of something in her purse.
“Watchin is so much more than we could ever imagine. And I can feel It. I can feel Its joy and awe at what we make. Watchin’s gratitude and glee.”
“But that’s not how you attend,” Claire said.
“You’re right,” he said, his face flashing to the mirror with genuine surprise. Something at once animal and grave rippled through his features before his salesman’s smile submerged it. “You do pay close attention.”
“You’ve got your own rups.”
“Slips.”
“When someone isn’t playing the part Watchin made for them.”
“I’m glad you understand,” he said, nodding a smile that bounced between somber and gleeful. “I truly am.”
The car slowed. Mason turned down a gravel road the rain had muddied. He eased the car ahead at a deliberate, juddering pace.
Claire spread her legs wide. She pulled something bulky out of her purse, moved it quickly with her left hand into the dark behind Mason’s seat. With her righthand, Claire pulled a jangling something from her purse to the dark. She didn’t even bother hiding the sound of chains crossed with spurs as she worked to attach it to the strangeness she gripped in her other hand.
“That’s the hard part of our performance,” Mason continued, ignoring Claire’s labour. “It’s not as simple as just living. We’ve got to get it right. Do you know what happens if we don’t?”
“No Oscar nods?” she asked without looking up from her work.
“No Oscars,” he laughed, mirthless, with disappointment.
The jangling locked into place. Claire sat back, kept her creation hidden.
“No life, Claire,” he said. “No life. Not for a long time. You see, Watchin, this miracle that made our miracle, starts the play again. Flips back to page one. Banishes us all to the dark of the wings to wait for our cue. And each time the work gets harder. With each new mounting, we’re a bit more tired, a bit more self-conscious in our delivery, our gestures forced. That’s why everyone is so tired all the time. Living this all again and again and again until we hit all our marks. That’s why it’s my duty to play my role, to catch these slips and give my notes.”
“Mason,” she said, “the man who owned and drove this car.”
The car stopped. The wipers stilled after a final thrum, and the dashboard lights went dark.
“He slipped,” she continued.
Rain battered the car.
“You gave him notes.”
The man in the driver’s seat, no longer Mason, undid his seatbelt. He lowered his head in a slow nod, kept his head down. The mirror was black. Claire pushed her right hand back into her purse.
“You’re worse than me,” he said, reaching his hand to into his messenger bag.
He withdrew a claw hammer, held it up for her to see the silhouette.
“You slash back at these slashers you imagine,” he continued, passing the hammer to his left hand, and then reaching back into his bag.
He held up a chef’s knife.
“It’s why I must stop you before you force Watchin to send us all back to oblivion to start again.
Claire clicked a button, the hidden thing in her left hand violently whirred.
He heaved a pity-drenched laugh.
“I’d be worried,” he said, “if I didn’t know how this was going to end.”
He turned in his seat, knife and hammer raised. Claire lifted her purring defence to waist height.
“I was going to let you choose your path, Claire,” he said, nodding to the knife and hammer, “but I suppose you want both.”
“If you can believe it,” she said, “I’ll take neither.”
She withdrew a phone from her purse. Held it up for him to see.
“It’s too late to call anyone,” he said.
“If you had a better eye for detail,” she said, “you’d know I don’t need to call.”
She flashed the screen on and off, on and off.
Through the rain-whirled rear window, just down the road, a pair of headlights brightened and neared. The bodies in the car lunged and thrusted and screamed.
Daniel Scott Tysdal is a writer, filmmaker, and teacher. An Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Tysdal’s works include the ReLit Award-winning poetry collection Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method, the short story collection Wave Forms and Doom Scrolls, the poetry textbook The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems, and the TEDx talk, “Everything You Need to Write a Poem (and How It Can Save a Life).” His most recent collection of poetry is The End Is in the Middle: Mad Fold-In Poems.
