“JERRY SEINFELD”
I’m locked into a coffin with Jerry Seinfeld. We move our body parts around to the best of our abilities, trying to figure out a way to coexist within the confined space, but I just keep getting his nose in my eyes and his arm on my ribs and his knee up my crotch. After a few minutes of jigsaw puzzling our limbs, we end up in a somewhat comfortable position inside the wooden box. Finally still, finally silent.
I stare into Seinfeld’s eyes and he stares back, between us nothing but the sound of heavy breathing, and I realize that we’re not only locked into a coffin together but also locked into each other’s inescapable gaze.
Suddenly: a fart coming from Seinfeld’s pants. It’s a muffled sound, although powerful enough to make the entire coffin vibrate slightly.
“Thought we might need a little oxygen,” he smiles, expecting a laugh I reckon. But I don’t laugh. I want to laugh, mainly out of courtesy, but I can’t get myself to laugh since I’m too busy not throwing up all over his face and all over mine.
While I’d rather just stand up and leave, I have no choice but to keep staring into Seinfeld’s eyes. It’s awkward, I can say that much. It’s painfully awkward. And it’s only getting more awkward as the smell of rotten meat from Seinfeld’s intestines start filling the coffin like the corpse that should have been here instead of us.
Why did he have to fart? I think to myself. Was it really necessary? Being stuck in this claustrophobic space is already a weird situation to begin with, why did he have to make it even worse by passing wind? But for some reason I feel a responsibility to lighten up the mood, somehow save us from the awkwardness he’s put us both in, so I start thinking of potential icebreakers.
“I know for a fact,” I say, “that Dad would very much like to have dinner with you.”
“Who’s Dad?” Seinfeld asks, seemingly relieved to finally hear me utter a combination of words.
“Dad is my wiener dog.”
“Well,” Seinfeld scoffs. “Dad can’t have me for dinner if I’m having myself for dinner first.”
Then he takes a big bite of his own shoulder, chewing it eagerly and greedily without blinking once. When he’s done with that, he starts digging in on his arm, then his chest, then his torso. He keeps devouring the different parts of his body until he’s eventually swallowed his own head and vanished altogether.
Now I’m left in the coffin all by myself, with nothing but the funky smell from Seinfeld’s lingering fart as my company.
“INTERSTATE 10”
I’m heading West on Interstate 10, speeding through rural Alabama while billboard signs keep flashing by along the highway. The deeper into the Bible Belt I go, the more consistent the advertising gets, and by the time I’m crossing state lines from Mississippi to Louisiana the messaging has narrowed down to promote three things exclusively: sex, religion and legal services.
Local strip joints offering lonesome truck drivers a quick escape from the tediousness of the road, cult-like churches promising salvation to the anonymous masses of unsaved souls, middle-aged attorneys attracting petty criminals with the irresistible pull from Colgate smiles and dubious law degrees.
As the solitude inside the car encourages my mind to wander, I begin imagining these three types of establishment being in collusion with one another. I mean, it would make perfect sense, wouldn’t it? Visit the sex club and make your twisted fantasies reality, then see a priest to clear your conscience, then get yourself a lawyer when your wife finds out.
Suddenly this Ram appears in the passing lane, driving at the exact same speed right next to me without actually passing. I turn my head, and as if on cue, the boy in the back seat presses his butt against the window, the pale cheeks spreading out over the glass like melting ice cream with a dark cherry on top.
The driver, I assume the boy’s father, is laughing and mouthing “fuck you, man!” and giving me the middle finger. Then he steps on the gas, making the truck blast off into the pink Texas sunset while I’m left all alone, thinking, how very strange that I’ll never see those two again.
“BERGHAIN”
I’m at Berlin’s infamous Berghain, the former power plant converted into a nightclub. Even though there’s no music, not even the faintest murmur of voices, people are partying and dancing and not giving a fuck in such an air of liberation it’s as if the wall fell yesterday and not three decades ago.
Since the soundlessness of the nightclub pretty quickly creeps me out, I turn to this man right behind me, pulling his elbow and wheezing into his ear, “Dude, where’s the exit?”
The man turns around, observing my body from top to toe as if casting for a porno. Patiently I wait for him to stop scanning me, to say something, to at least point me in the right direction. And every now and then he draws a breath as if he’s about to speak, but then he doesn’t.
This goes on forever. He sighs. He gasps. He utters the occasional word of nonsense like a quiet “oh” or a thoughtless “huh” or a surprised “ah” but nothing coherent that allows me to respond.
He doesn’t seem to grasp how tormenting the absence of language can be, doesn’t seem to care how fucking loud his silence is, how it’s echoing inside my head, how I want to put my hands over my ears and scream each time there’s an eternity between two words that come out of his mouth.
“Hey,” I try again, “where do I get out?”
The second he says something in a Slavic language it dawns on me: this is not a defunct power plant turned nightclub. This is an actual nuclear power plant, active and very much functional. These people are not here to enjoy a forty-eight hour drug binge, they’re here to make a living. How could I not have seen this until now? They’re all male, all Eastern European, all dressed in the same coats and pants and hats.
I freak out a little bit for obvious reasons. I know a little bit of history after all and I also know where this is going. The problem is, no one else does.
Now I start running around the power plant, grabbing random men by their shoulders like an escaped asylum inmate, screaming at their faces, trying to warn them, doing my best to communicate that we must get out, but they don’t understand a single syllable of my English. They just scoff or shrug or stare at the frantic lunatic in front of them.
All of a sudden there’s all this light and all this heat, then a sensation of being contaminated as I’m standing inside Chernobyl while the historical disaster is taking place around me.
Henrik Düfke spent a decade writing ads in London and New York before switching to fiction. He is currently finishing his debut novel.
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