FEATURE: “The Journeyman of Suspicion” by Andy Mallory

You might find such a claim disagreeable, but what I contend is this: there exists an interminable impermanence to human consciousness, to its ancillary faculties. They slide away from the edges of one’s perception of things, perception which is not the same as the consciousness itself. They slide until all that remains are people. The opposite of things.

So when asking why a man ought not to drink himself into a stupor in public such that he requires multiple retirement trips to the restroom, one might as well ask oneself why a man ought to do or not do anything at all. A man simply does, you understand. This includes the man in the stupor, and it includes whoever else he might encounter on his journey. And whatever else can be said to be true of the shared space in which they find themselves, it must be recognized that their perception of this space has structural limitations.

You see, there is an order to things, but our consciousness of this order cannot always be trusted. Our consciousness, whether of things or their opposites, consists of perception, yes, but also symbols. What these symbols mean is not necessarily obvious. The order of things, it could be said, lies behind the perception, behind the symbols. How these things appear in our consciousness can be considered a matter of truthfulness, of its entanglement with illusion.

So long as we are pondering such things, it must be asked: why did the man in coveralls — we will call him the Coverall Man — behave as he did? And, furthermore, why did I react to him in the manner described forthwith? Perhaps, a man simply does.

I am sure you will agree that there is a serenity to the fact of being a restroom’s sole occupant that cannot be described as well as it is felt. Trepidation hugs one’s body like a weighted blanket as one rounds the corner into the room, followed by a deep sensation of release, emptiness after fullness. Absence in the wake of total envelopment, how an ocean wave recedes from shore. And then a man is relieving his bladder. Sometimes to the somnolent tune of concrete-dampened popular music intruding from an alien world outside, sometimes to the lonesome rhythm of his breathing and his piss that streams freely into a toilet bowl. And before a man has understood what is happening to him, the sensation of his feet on freshly wettened sand has filled him with ecstasy. And a man is pissing, alone.

This is the position in which I found myself, you see, when I encountered the Coverall Man. It was in the restroom of a popular craft brewery, known and lauded by locals and tourists alike. This restroom, this lonely room with a singular person in its center was my ecstasy. And this ecstasy overcame me to the detriment of my otherwise highly-tuned senses, whereupon a man of short stature but stark build, dressed in coveralls, wearing a baseball cap patterned in woodland camouflage — an aberrant, hideous thing — and a pair of tan-colored boots, suddenly appeared before the urinal directly next to mine at the exact moment he began to empty his bladder into it. The urinal directly next to mine, you understand, in a row that included four additional urinals, none of which were presently in use.

As if this alone were insufficient to give offense and outrage — and I will confirm for you, dear reader, that I was indeed outraged as well as offended — he then proceeded not merely to piss, but to speak. His lips parted, and out of the depths of his maw fell a string of words that landed upon my ears as might an uncooked ham dropped onto cobblestone.

Makin’ some bud, huh?

Surely, there was a mistake. For one man to speak to another at all was one thing, for the act of speech to unfold within the mutual sanctuary of piss-space was another. That the Coverall Man furthermore posed a question, this was a conundrum. Was he speaking ‘to himself,’ as it were, and therefore not attempting to solicit a response? This seemed unlikely for two reasons, namely, that his speech was carried in the cadence of a question, and also that the intolerable proximity of our bodies was geometrically social. Did he believe that I was someone else, someone familiar to him? This was possible, but then, why not address me by name, however false the syllables?

Some time must have passed, because the Coverall Man laughed. His laughter echoed from one sheer surface of our reluctantly-shared sanctuary to the next, a thin peal that broke upon the porcelain walls like shattered glass.

Ya know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout, don’t ya?

I did not, and I indicated as much.

That’s what it’s called when ya piss. Ya makin’ bud. Get it?

I reaffirmed my confusion as tersely as possible.

Friggin’ dense this one. It’s ‘cause bud tastes like piss. Joke ‘specially funny when ya drinkin’ bee-ah that’s actually good. Ya makin’ bud.

This man: what was it? How did he know the flavor of piss? I suppose that part of me was morbidly curious, yet I found him revolting. I was finding it difficult to render with any greater clarity my lack of engagement, my lack of care. My affectation was as stone, inert. Perhaps engaging with him at all was my mistake, a dialectical error. And who was he, that he felt compelled to violate our sanctuary? But more importantly: who was I not to ignore him?

We pissed, not together, but in close proximity. Evidently unsatisfied with my participation in his dialogical attempt, the Coverall Man persisted.

Ya know bud’s not really that bad. Cheap too. I been known to pah-take.

My desire to flee was strong. I tightened the muscles proximal to my bladder in order to hasten the extrication of piss. An acute worry fell upon my mind like a shadow: was this man prone to violence? If I were to ignore him completely, would I be assailed? He was shorter than myself by no small margin, but, as I have indicated, strongly built. And what of his level of training for hand-to-hand combat, an entirely unknown factor? Should violence occur, would I be capable of stopping him? I was equally vexed by these inquiries as by his own provocations to them. This man, this grim man, this little big man. He was entirely unamusing: I therefore decided, it being the providence of unamusing men not to abstain from wrath in the face of their own mediocrity, of their poorly disguised self-loathing, to engage with him. It seemed necessary to establish, as it were, an Aristotelian mean of engagement which might be named brevity, so as to incite him neither to annoyance nor vengeance, nor myself to total despair.

I allowed myself to chuckle.

His laughter resounded as it broke upon the restroom walls once more. Ya know I mean it, bud really ain’t too terrible. Not bad. Not bad at all.

With one hand he continued to stabilize his stream, while with the other he reached over to me and delivered a series of soft, open-hand strikes to my middle back.

I recoiled as subtly as possible. I dared not oppose him directly.

Ya evah try bud before? It ain’t too bad.

I found myself in a state of near-paralysis. Was his question meant earnestly? Or was this some kind of rhetorical flourish, some ruse meant to destabilize or unsettle me? This grim man. Dialectical mistake, indeed. 

I shook my head, affirming the negation.

His next move — I will confirm for you that it could only be named thusly, for that is what it was — shook me from my alcoholic stupor.

The Coverall Man withdrew both of his hands, lifting them into the air above his head while a stream of piss continued to flow — unguided — into the urinal bowl out of his utterly regular penis. And then he spoke:

Why don’t ya try some?!

My hand gripped the side of the urinal with immense force.

His laughter broke once more. His hand repeated its earlier gesture upon my middle back.

Oh I’m just messin’ with ya hon. Don’t look so grim.

My mind, if such a thing can be said to exist, withdrew. My soul, of whose existence there is even greater doubt, retreated into a nothingness whence no redemption could be glimpsed. To experience one’s sanctuary violated thusly-wise, so thoroughly desecrated, so irredeemably and irremediably befouled: it is akin to a crime against nature herself, against God, against every bastion and every cornucopia of creation.

Theoretical possibility of violence be damned: I hated this man. This grim man, this little big man. For some time, past the negative fulfillment of my body’s excremental demands, I stood upon the threshold of the urinal. The Coverall Man spoke, but I did not listen, could not listen. The cognitive faculties which governed my mind’s very capacity for language were diminished.

Eventually, the Coverall Man departed.

I was alone in my sanctuary, defiled.

I could not remain: this space, this brewery, this life. And so I departed, fleeing into the night. I cannot recall whether or not my tab was paid. It matters little, now.

As I fled toward home, down alleyways, through streets filled with people and filth, a shadow fell upon me. I turned, looked. Behind me at some distance strode the silhouette of a humanoid figure. Against the luminosity of orange street lamps this tenebrous figure stood, walked. Beneath his thick neck strode a body of wide dimension, nearly unichrome, while upon his crown was fixed the unmistakable shadow of a curved bill, of an ugly, perilously stupid baseball cap.

The Coverall Man was following me.

My mind’s eye beheld its own ruinous fortune. Why? Did he intend to deliver upon me the not-so-bad piquancy of bud, the taste of piss? I was a drinker of craft beer, and yet so was he. Was his aim to make of me a convert, to lay bare the floundering of my own gustatory shortcomings, the failure of my modal perspicacity? Or did I fall short, so to speak, of my mean, of my intended symmetry between two pillars of consequence? After all, he was following me. He strode perhaps fifty or sixty paces behind me, although this by the reckoning of my own body; one might therefore ascertain that, by his own stride, this number was closer to eighty or ninety.

Providence was decidedly not in my favor: I took no chances. At a particularly busy street corner, I tucked myself into a nearby alley and doubled-back upon the Coverall Man’s position. When I emerged from the alley’s posterior entrance, I found myself, after no long interval, on his tail. I watched him at a distance from me, his head rotating upon his body in confusion, or perhaps some other kind of trepidation.

In measured step I swayed, timing the intervals of my appearance within the arc of his gaze such that the local peasantry remained always between us. I watched him and waited. He wandered the busy street corner for several moments, failing to ascertain my position. After some time he continued onward, having given up his pursuit.

I followed him.

Why?

One could cite his violation of certain natural laws, namely those governing Man necessarily being at a distance from others: after all, he had touched me physically, not once, but twice, acts to which I had granted permission in neither instance. Or one could cite his general vagabond-like qualities, his brutishness, his mediocrity, his unimpressive stature or the gormless meandering of his primitive vocabulary; in this latter instance, we speak of Man necessarily being at a distance from himself. And yet, one is always so distant. To apprehend one’s own duplicity, the interval between the masks that one wears and the human flesh that wears them: this mode of apprehension requires at least a small measure of self-perception, awareness of one’s self as understood through the interlocution of others. This Coverall Man, this grim little big man, this depraved homunculus; of all the aforementioned qualities — of apprehension in any ontological mode — and more, he was thoroughly and disturbingly lacking. A black hole of a human being, an endlessly interpolated nothingness with neither content nor form to substantiate it, a tenebrous horizon without end: the Coverall Man was, in other words, a man and yet not, an aberration and yet not, an act of cosmic devastation and yet not.

That is to say: he was a threat.

He was a threat, and to make of its ruinous potential a smoldering crater, an end with no uncertain punctuation, a negation negated: this would be my crusade.

The kingdom of ash which was his being’s portent could not be allowed to pass.

He could not remain.

And yet the question is unanswered: why ought I to follow him? I mean myself, rather than another? Surely he would receive due retribution in inevitable, dialectical time? Why, in other words, did I consider it necessary that I abjure — in a manner most personal — his nightmarish and destructive potential?

Why ought I do it?

And to pose such a question: that is your error, dear reader, as it was nearly mine. The truth is this: one might as well ask oneself why a man ought to do or not do anything at all.

A man simply does.

And so I followed the Coverall Man. I remained at a distance behind him, trailing him through crowded intersections, down busy streets. More than once did he turn to face my direction, and yet by guileful movement and careful positioning did I maintain my obscurity from him. At some point it began to rain. The street lamps spilled forth their luminous bounty, and in their glint that reflected off the wetted concrete I took the measure of my quarry. His gait was impoverished, his stupor was evident.

Time passed with uncertain measure into the black, black night, and I was persistent in my pursuit of the Coverall Man. Eventually he arrived at an apartment building in one of the unsavory — though far from the worst — neighborhoods in town. Watching from a distance, I could see that the atrium was guarded by a series of manually locked doors. The Coverall Man, with wasted time and considerable effort likely owing to the extent of his drunkenness, withdrew a key from his person and made his way through the series of doors.

The hour was late, and by this time the streets were sparsely populated. Time passed without the appearance of others; no one entered the shabby edifice, no one exited, and only a small handful of strangers crossed my path. I therefore made my way to the entrance, confident that I would be ignored.

My first move — the beginning of my campaign, my counter-attack — consisted in checking the exterior of the entrance for security cameras, as was common. There were none. This struck me as unusual, but I considered it good fortune, perhaps the first in a series of karmic rebalancing acts aimed in my favor. Next I produced one from the supply of professional-grade lockpicks which I kept hidden about my person at all times. I checked the street one last time, in every direction, before commencing with my task.

The street was empty.

I was alone.

Picking my way through the series of doors was easy work. I made little noise, and hence attracted no attention that I was aware of. Inside, the atrium gave way to a poorly lit hallway which ran perpendicular to the entrance in either direction, with a transparent door leading to a stairwell at both ends. In order to locate the Coverall Man, I would follow the trail of rainwater that fell from his clothes in dense beads.

As I followed this trail, I was reminded of slugs. If I could compare the Coverall Man to any creature of the Earth — for this is precisely what the Coverall Man, with the infinite nothingness which emanated from him and into which his victims invariably fell, was not — it would be a slug. Yet a slug has purpose, utility, pride, even character. Nonetheless, I conceived not, still cannot, of a more suitable metaphor. The Coverall Man writhed and writhed across the surface of our world, and all who met with the misfortune of crossing his path could expect to entreat with slime, and this meeting would be the measure of their reward for having encountered him. The Coverall Man, the grim little big man, the slug.

I tracked the Coverall Man to his slug sanctuary, his apartment on the second floor of the building. I decided, in the interest of prudence, to remain outside for some time, so as to ensure — to the greatest extent possible — his incapacity upon the moment of my entrance, my surreptitious penetration into his lair.

And so I waited.

Night deepened.

The apartment building was awash with quiet. Precious little noise could be gleaned from its stygian corridors, from its yellowing walls and its hallway corners packed with filth. A nocturnal shroud had fallen upon my mission, and I aimed to take advantage of its generous shadow. When I was confident that the Coverall Man slumbered, I deftly picked the lock of his door. There was an additional chain guard upon the door’s inner face, but in his stupor the Coverall Man had neglected to fasten it. No further obstacles remained. The door swung gently open.

I listened.

No noise came from within.

I stepped inside.

My footsteps were silent as they fell.

In the interest of a certain species of phenomenal insight, of a “bracketing off,” as it were, of anterior or posterior considerations, I will endeavor to describe the interior of the Coverall Man’s apartment on its own terms. The space itself was small, a single-bedroom style urban apartment with a restroom and an open, combined kitchen-living area, all with wooden floors and off-white walls, illuminated by the orange glow of a single dim light which was fixed beneath the metal hood that lingered above the stove. The sparse contents of this open area — which included a row of fourteen identical tan boots aligning the wall adjacent to the front door, a single twin-sized mattress in the center of the living room, a stack of four stainless-steel pans which sat upon the electric stovetop in the kitchen, a wooden block containing assorted kitchen knives which stood on the nearby countertop, a sixteen-by-eight inch wooden crucifix which adorned the wall opposite the living room window, and a three-by-four foot poster depicting former First Lady of the United States Nancy Reagan which was fixed upon the living room ceiling — all arranged themselves with tidiness and efficiency. The space was otherwise vacant.

As my senses adjusted to the austere environment, my ears detected a soft, consistent noise emanating from the partially open bedroom. Outside, the night and her quietude remained, disturbed only occasionally by the distant sound of a car horn or police siren. I proceeded inward, silently switching off the kitchen light and grabbing the Coverall Man’s heaviest skillet and largest knife before making my way to the bedroom to investigate.

Inside, the Coverall Man slumbered, snoring softly as he dreamed his drunken un-dreams. His body laid over the covers upon a twin-sized bed — this one complete with a wooden frame — which was neatly made. He was entirely naked in the insubstantial yellow light of the street lamps which peaked through the blinders of his bedroom window, save for the baseball cap — the repulsive, repulsive baseball cap — that remained fixed upon his head. He stirred very little, his gentle wheezing filled the air as his chest rose and fell with the unsteady rhythm of his breathing.

For some time I watched and listened. The Coverall Man persisted in his nakedness and his disturbed respiration, and so I persisted in my nocturnal vigil. By the dim sliver of light which stabbed into his inner sanctuary, his naked body gleamed. This unimpressive, mediocre man, worse than mediocre, capable as he was of the fullest, most violent corruption without so much as a moment of consideration for the human meaning of the destruction which his passage wrought: I hated this man. With his every breath, his every partial and unsettled intake of air, my body screamed for his nihilation, for the permanent negation of the black flame of nothingness which poured insouciantly from his lips and left a river of ash in his wake. Every hair, every pore, every drop of blood, every molecule out of which my rage — my vital umbrage — emanated and by which it was constituted; with indignation and righteous abhorrence toward this scion of nothingness, this dark king of slime, this infinite negation, this writhing man-thing which crawled upon the Earth, they shouted: death, death —

The Coverall Man awoke.

He bolted upright, facing the door.

Huh?

I stood, silent and motionless.

I knew: in the darkness which shrouded me, in the umbral sheen which had secured my passage thus far, he was unable to see me. And yet, something had alerted him. What was it? My silence was total, my darkness complete. Only the dim light remained, the light which stabbed meekly through the curtains and fell in tattered ribbons upon the Coverall Man himself, the light which broke upon the curved bill of his hat — his evil hat —and which failed to reach past the foot of the bed upon which he now sat upright. And yet, he was awake.

We remained thusly wise, locked as we were into our respective positions, for some time. Neither of us spoke, neither of us moved. The Coverall Man, now stripped of his namesake, the token of his worldly invulnerability, continued to stare into nothing, into the black beyond his door from which no light emanated. And I stared back upon this thing, this slug man, naked upon his throne of ooze, his perfectly organized and sparsely furnished den of corruption, the inner sanctum of his dark abode. This walking, talking nothingness languishing upon the Earth in his wet and unimpressive corporeality, his total nakedness of feeling and thought, his sheer metaphysical and bodily nudity, save for his hat, his crude, roguish, indiscreet, outmoded, wicked, brainless, hideous, cumbersome, disgusting, sickening, in every way nauseating and offensive hat —

I threw myself into the room.

I fell upon him.

The Coverall Man shrieked, but was quickly silenced. By skillet and kitchen knife I tore him asunder, rending his fleshy body into pieces, committing his corporeal form to the infinite nothingness that lay beneath his skin. It was a moment lasting perhaps seconds, perhaps minutes, perhaps hours: my blade and my rod bit into him with the terrible ferocity of a hurricane, of a volcano. His sanguine fluid, blacker than night beneath the dim yellow glow of the street lamps which fell into the room, fled his body in gouts, covering us both. The knife slid with easy repetition into the spaces between his bones, drawing forth ribbons of crimson with every retreat. The skillet landed upon his crown like lightning, and with each successive, thunderous strike his head softened and fell apart, until finally there remained only a viscous stain where once the ignoble nothing-man wore his obscene hat.

The Coverall Man was undone.

Eventually, the sun rose.

And so the tenebrous night was undone with him.

Do you understand what I meant about consciousness and impermanence, then? About the order which exists behind our perception? I should like to think so, although if you’ve come this far then I doubt you would claim not to understand it. Why would you?

I sit in the Coverall Man’s apartment, alone, his corpse mere feet away. I debate whether or not to call the police. It is not a question of fear or retribution, but of brevity. I am unafraid of the consequences of my actions. The Coverall Man could not conceive of his actions having consequence. In this way, we are mirrors for one another.

Somehow, I love the Coverall Man for the same reasons that I hated him. I love his nothingness, his being’s infinite regression towards the damnation of all, its perverse revelation of life and other obscenities. His undoing was not, in this way, a matter of personal animosity, but rather necessity.

“So that’s it?” I hear you ask. “That’s the story? But how does it end?”

Does it end? Ever?

“So it keeps going?”

And why would you want it to end?

“But why? Why any of it?”

You’ll need to be more specific, I’m afraid.

“Why do it?”

I would hope by now, dear reader, that of this question — at the very least this question, if none others — an answer might be rendered with clarity.

Andy Mallory (they/them) is a philosophy instructor, musician, and bartender. They are the author of the chapbooks Four Seasons of Ghosts (Alien Buddha Press, 2023) and Schopenhauer's Dog (Bottlecap Press, 2024). They live in Bangor, Maine, with their partner and two parrots.