Operation Ten Days

Submitted by Mary LaForge

To Reedsy Staff

OPERATION 10 Days. Hie there, we are sorry for the extended delay in meeting with you today, due in part to circumstances beyond our control. Luckily, force majeure applies. The following report illuminates the information we received about Agent X's last assignment with the Corps. It was a complicated mission!

Seated-BlackmaskWhitehair was instrumental in providing the necessary research, as well as all expert tactical guidance required to bring closure to this very, very important scenario. We wish to thank all cells involved who, under the astute guidance of Seated-BlackmaskWhitehair, were able to achieve our intended goals and bring this difficult effort to a positive and complete conclusion. From the tens of thousands of handwritten, mostly illegible pages of data we received, the team has worked all night to condense the entire Day One to Day Ten sealed document into relevant excerpts from X's Thursday Journal that was secured three days ago at 2:00 a.m. in our Budapest embassy. They additionally provide appropriate commentary regarding their findings after each journal entry. Below is that excerpted report so you don't have to read the entire 129,562-page document originally presented to us yesterday. We will take questions after lunch. Chef is serving oysters on the half-shell and pink champagne with tira-misu flambe. One per customer please, and no doggie bags will be available. 

Abstract

In the sense of postmodern behavior, authoress X is no longer under surveillance. Evidence of authoring is acknowledged and given as priority clearance of the highest rank. All destructions are removed and authoress is free to pursue her dreams, as is the right of all human beings on planet (Earth: name to be reinstated momentarily).

Evidences

Exhibit Day 01: Music's Responsibility 

i traveled to Budapest with a mandolin. We sat on a stool, and it was spotlight-lit on an otherwise dark empty room. We played an Aria. i sang. War broke out. Because my song sent words spiraling out from my lungs into the brain-holes of 10,000, en masse. Together we shook the Earth. We are responsible, being responsive. Now, quite exhausted from the friction, our song stilled. The war died down. As if a whirlwind swooped in on us from sky's enchanted placeholder, circling our auras, pulling delusions to the surface like sediment bubbling in a water-glass for us to see the dross, i saw that we are exactly water! No doubt. Waves also of gross emotion, spittings of thought-forms, and again whatever. Me, and thee, frequent life's Jubilee. Do you enjoy the ride? Who said you could enjoy your slide? Yes, thee and we!

[NOTE: X never in fact traveled to Budapest, with or without a mandolin, and is therefore released from wrongdoing in the natural. It is currently unclear just how X's Thursday Journal wound up in Budapest but an investigation has been implemented].

Exhibit 02: Winter Solstice Rhyme and Riddle 

[Missing file. Pages torn out. Check with the DOOD about this one. Code name: jfryvp864-URSFU]

Exhibit 03: Max the Dog

Ambling into a small temple situated at a SE corner, you could whiff the chuchiness, as if surrounded by inimitable God. Hushed, and full-light dazzled from afternoon's sun, the spiritual felt real, palpable. I was greeted and seated. Alone I sat at the roundtable, back facing away from the now closed entrance. I could not see, but heard the door creak and slide across the carpet, uniformly heralding a one-by-one caravan delivering believers straight to me. All sat. They came in two's. One man, one woman. 12 places in all. How tribally adept! Each woman fine-looking, upright, most blonde. Each man was Jesus in cobalt corporate garb. I hardly noticed though from out my comfort zone, alone and feeling cold. Was like zero energy warming up the empty chair to my left. Must've been the Holy Spirit, no doubt. Being awe-shocked, I heard no words and at the last moment, uninvited elsewhere, I left. Astonished and perplexed, I turned to see a man stare at me smiling, then shut the door. I felt a lot like Lot's old wife, and oddly ended up in Saltillo.

[NOTE: Saltillo is an existing community Longitude 15 and Latitude 7000 on the Riester. However, no inhabitants of Saltillo go by the name Lot, or Lot's wife, but there are lots of wives, although X is not a Lot and has not had a lot of contact with wives there].

Exhibit 04: Switched Dreams 

When Katie told me she visited her hometown after many years gone, she felt a twinge of Innocence. Didn't last long. Kept waxing and waning like the tides, and she almost drowned at sea. Oddly peaceful too, she claimed, as if a magical force or perhaps a porpoise, floated her ashore. For years Katie recalled drowning as a distant dream. Katie could rely on her dreams. They were fragments and incomplete frames of safe mind movies. Her body at rest, Katie's imagination could soar. Not so different than when awake (except for the occasional nightmare). Katie usually recognized the dream players and places that were out of place and that mishmashed time / space / identities. Several dreams per night, only snippets remembered upon rising. Usually! Katie's dreams were fairly similar to her reality (except for the occasional real life nightmare). Then one day while on vacation in the tropics, Katie realized her dreams and reality had suddenly switched places, as if she were now wearing socks turned inside out. Except now, Katie's reality was more nightmare than her nightmare dreams ever were. That night, she blessed God for letting her dreamworld, that was now her real world, be calm and innocently un-nightmarish.

[NOTE: X has assumed the alias "Katie" and is solely responsible for the fiction herein].

Exhibit 05: Stanza Think-Breath

In a heartbeat, Philly jumped to the rescue, 

as his feline friend Federico fell from the abyss

and Philly reached his torso out like a swinging sword.

Federico got flipped on his side, and sighed.

Within a wet second, Federico shook hisself stark dry,

fur flying to and fro windward from his shake. 

Dazed and lost in space, Federico peered long at Philly.

Staked out his spot, and slept. 

Later, the night woke up, and so did Federico. 

Bounced from bed to heights above, his tail swiped too far left. 

Philly shocked, peered down at broken shards of ashtray glass. 

No more puffing out a smoky breath, no stain upon a lip or fingertip.

Devoid of jars, containers, bowls of non-existent ash,

in which to catch the remnant dirty deeds partook,

what is now to do with life? 

Unless one cats like Federico naps.

[NOTE: Can't make heads nor tails of this one. From Day 06 to Day 10, X scribbled symbols and marks, mostly undecipherable. We have, however, summarized what we believe is what X was trying to tell us. Basically, five days after Christmas it was quite quiet where X had taken up residence in the attic, and X's thoughts began to play tricks on her again. Dirty monsters that they are. Anywho, they got caught in the nick of time when X noticed that her thoughts came similar to breathing. Inhales were fraught with activity; exhales released all sorts of fears and angers. X decided to make the best of it, and transformed breathing into actual words that mirror movements in and out. Did X succeed?]