200 CCs - January 2016

The Finely Grooved Surface of the Sea
by Nolan Liebert
I had a phonograph once and just one record. It
was a very important record. Nobody liked to
listen to it except me. It was a shark.
"Listen to this," I'd say to my friends. I'd put the
record on and turn the crank. Out of the horn
would come the wet crack and silence of a shark
being harpooned. It was followed by a riotous
cheer, the zip of the cross-cut saw, the wet
flopping of the headless shark, and the helpless
struggle suddenly stopping.
The recording continued, seemingly forgotten, for
some time—sailors shouting, the sound of
wooden kegs being cracked, ale sloshing on the
deck, laughter, singing. The shark was not in any
of this, not from the beginning.
The sounds ended abruptly, much like the shark,
but before the end, there were a few minutes of
silence, like everyone had gone to bed. All you
could hear was the ocean and the sound of the
needle scratching the surface.
"Turn it off," they'd say. "Nobody wants to hear
that." Or, "We can't dance to that."
They didn't understand. I
didn't want them to dance.
I wanted them to listen.
Instead, they left and
slammed the door.
Nolan Liebert hails from the Black Hills where he lives with his wife and children in a
house, not a covered wagon. His proximity to the Sanford Underground Research Facility
feeds his obsession with dark matter, as his farmboy roots fed his obsession with plants,
herbs, and alchemy. His literary experiments appear or are forthcoming in An Alphabet of
Embers, Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry, and elsewhere. You can find him editing
Pidgeonholes or on Twitter @nliebert.
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