Diary fragment · 2 min read ·
The Teeth That Count My Nights
A warehouse checker writes down the numbers his nights drop, and the shift roster keeps answering to them.
- dated: "the dark months"
- narrator: "Kit Farren, warehouse checker"
Dark months — the second night.
The dream of the teeth came again, the common kind, where they loosen like beads off a snapped string and lie waiting on the blanket. I woke with the count still in me and made it before it faded: three. I write it here because a checker writes things, and because a number that follows you up out of a dream deserves a shelf the same as any other number.
Dark months — the fifth night.
Seven this time, counted twice by the doorway light. The tally sheet for the morning had seven bays chalked to my line. I put the two numbers side by side in this book and ruled a line between, the way you would for any pair of counts you mean to keep honest. Then I worked my seven, and signed the sheet, and said nothing, because a checker says nothing until the count is done.
Dark months — the ninth night.
Twelve on the dream floor, twelve on the roster, bay by bay. There are nine entries now, and every one of them agrees, no variance, and the order never alters: the dream files its number first, and the roster chalks the same number after. Mr Combes takes the bays off the office ledger, and the ledger is copied off the night book, and the night book is written at the desk before anyone sleeps. I have walked that chain of copying three times with my own eyes, deck to door. The number cannot travel my way ahead of me. Only mine does.
Dark months — the last stretch.
Two nights left in the dark months that no dream has counted yet, and Thursday is the first of them, and Thursday is when the deep racks come down for the yearly check. My columns are ruled and waiting, one for the dream and one for the chalk, and I find I am holding them open the way you hold a ledger open at a page you expect to be written on. If the roster keeps answering to my dreams, then the posting is done somewhere before the posting, and I would like to be shown by whom. And if nothing answers to anything, then I am simply the one being checked here, bay by bay and night by night, for variance — which raises its own question, the one I set down and cannot close: who checks the checker, and against what roster?