Yipin the Cat

Outside of the bedroom sits a small, sounding creature. It bothers him. He looks down at the packets and thinks of words. The only words he can think of he reads. He has to read for thoughts now. And the animal won’t stop sounding. It sounds interminably. It is going to leap, he fears, leap up or out and onto some unwilling frightened part of himself. That is what creatures that sound do. It is muttering and sounding interminably. It sounds like a man now, sad and sharp and deep. It is hurt. He cannot think of anything but packages, each one nearly full, or full mostly, and each one with words. He cannot remember certain things. Names or names for things. He cannot remember her at all, or at least not through the creature’s constant soundings. Not much can be thought of or recalled in the presence of a creature sounding. It bleats interminably, always, just outside of the bedroom. It bleats on and on.

Then from off of the table a small sheet emerges. On it are faces drawn in black ink and bodies that strain and curl off the page. People cannot sound on pages. We cannot have people sounding for nothing. Or rather we cannot have anything sounding for nothing. And by this I of course mean that a thing on a page curling and straining cannot be allowed to sound, simply and for no reason at all, but that is of course what simply means: no reason at all.

I cannot hear the soundings at all now. I can still see the packages. They still have words. White words against an inky surface. The letters more dry than the surface. The creature has at last stopped sounding. For now. As is the case with all things interminable. When it resumes I will not have this to write on any longer, for I have already written on it now. I have filled up this small and crumpled thing. I will have to endure the small sounding creature with nothing at all now. But for these packages, I suppose. And the words that they have printed on them. And their inky insides.