Fiction: Jonai

Giovanna Puthumana

Entry

October 01

22:45

I can’t do this anymore. I wrote songs whole-heartedly and half-heartedly asked the producers to eat it up using stupid Google Translate to speak for me. They don’t have a place for a “challenged” man in songwriting is what they said. All the songs I’ve written and sung comes to nothing now. I’ve won Grammys for my work! It’s like I’m no person anymore, but merely a meek shell of my voice. Without it, I’m not an asset to the industry; I’m a liability. I’m less.

What’s happened to me’s all a brain illness, I assume. I never liked my brain anyway. This organ has cemented my worth. I’ll probably have to do something about that.

The man was tired, both in his useless physicality, and in his mundane mentality of words swept away. He sat on a bench, reached a right limb onto his scalp, and pressed each nail sharply inwards. They slowly poked through his skin; and then his skull; and hooked the unpleasant lump of meat within, and then grappled it out.

 

Diary Entry

Actobar October 1

9:45 p.m.

I don’t like how Derek from school always calls me stupid and spits on my face! It’s not my folt fault if I’m stupid. My brain was made that way since forever, I can’t change it. I might as well have to live with it, then.

I wouldn’t call me stupid, though. I can read and write, count till two hundred tenny twenty, and I know better than to make a mess. Derek’s probably the stupid one, anyway.

Speaking of brain, I came acros across one today. I wouldn’t know what to do with another one.

Noelle was still in kindergarten, when she came upon a thing of scientific wonder: a human-sized brain, out in the open, unabashed on the sidewalk next to the grocery store on her way from school. The pink dough was folded of many intricate ridges and a few glossy parts in between. Noelle picked up the sentient ball and thought: An interesting beach ball.  I’ll throw this on Derek’s face and he’ll fall to the ground.

But first she checked for a heartbeat, because people have pulses, and her cousin brother said that people are their brains. She placed the pseudo-sphere on her bicycle handle and noticed that it was piercing through the center of the brain. She took it off and placed it in her basket.

 

Entry

October 02

23:15

I cannot see myself. I’ve lost my body. I must say, I’ve never been like this before. I’m sketching an entry mentally in case I forget any of this. I don’t want to! I’m rolling around and almost never still. I don’t want anything. All thoughts have been purged of the thickness of the sickness of want, and have bent to the thinness of freedom. I want nothing except more of this feeling, I don’t need to earn to fend for myself. I feel neither thirst nor hunger. I don’t need any ambition for hope, and the hope I hold in the girth of my fist cannot be pulled down.

I found guardianship in a little girl. She’s really nice, checked for a non-existent heartbeat and everything. She waddles around with me on her palms and cares for me. It’s been fun, I’ll stare at the stars and rock side-to-side now that I’m on a table outside. I don’t even want sleep. All I want is to remember this. If I make it back to him. I don’t even know where he is.

 

It was morning when Noelle hugged the creased ball in her lap. She thought of when Derek called her stupid. She wondered what it was even supposed to mean. It’s when your brain doesn’t  work good, right? Noelle thought. Derek would see today that I’ve got two of them now. She narrowed her eyes at the spherical specimen on her lap. “You don’t think I’m stupid, do you?”

“Of course, not.” Noelle almost heard the affirmation through the vibrating rhythm of her ball. “Thank you,” she responded and embraced it.

 

Diary Entry

October 2

11:00 p.m.

I’m up way past my bedtime because I could not stop crying. I brought the brain to school with me today and showed Derek whose who’s boss. He said I needed that one to make up for my real brain not working. I didn’t need to do this, but I hurled it at Derek’s head.  And then Miss. Pastures made me stand in the corner. I hate standing. I hate school, I hate Derek, I hate everything!

I don’t understand it. All the grown-ups hear me talk and call me a prodigy. What. It’s a good thing, a parent Lee apparently. It means something like smart. But folks my age wouldn’t stop calling me stupid. I wonder if that’s just what most people my age do. Or maybe most of them were calling me that because someone else was. Maybe they don’t like my messy handwriting. Or my tilted gait. Or how I always read my dictionary. Why would that bother them so much to yell at me? Wait.

I left my brain outside on dad’s table! I can’t go out now! Oh no, someone will find it!

 

It was almost midnight, and the man’s new form rocked side-to-side on the dusty table outside. He suddenly heard a thud that broke his trance: it was Noelle tripping over her bedroom window. “Ouch,” she cried out in a hushed voice. Noelle found the table with her nightlight, picked up her pet brain, and gently rolled it inside through the window. Then she followed with a thump. “Ow!”

She grabbed the brain and tucked it alongside her under her blanket. “Good night, brain,” she said, and fell asleep hugging the sentient goop that didn’t need sleep.

“Good night, kid.”

 

Entry

October 03

22:15

I’m inside. She likes when I swing from side to side. She probably knows I can think. She shocked me today. We listened to my song . . .

 

Noelle plonked herself into her bed after school. “Let’s do something,” she insisted to her friend. He rocked sideways. Noelle gasped. He slowed down.

“Are you here?” she asked. The brain oscillated again. “You can feel! I know what we’ll do!”

 She disappeared out and returned with a cheeky smile. “I stole it.”

She raised her father’s phone with both hands like Simba. The brain swayed in childish agreement. She looked up her favorite song. “He doesn’t sing anymore,” she explained. “I think he got sick. His name is Jonai. No full name like the other artists. Just Jonai.”

The brain’s swinging staggered to a halt.

Noelle found the song. She tapped play. The brain on her desk hurled itself onto her palms and the phone slipped out of her hand. Then the brain followed.

“Brain! What are you doing?” She lifted him up and felt a shock wave. Her eyes widened as she carefully set him down. She pressed her fingertips softly against him and heard hushed sobs.

“I’m sorry,” Noelle said. “Why did you get upset? Something about the song?” the voice within slowly quietened to sniffles.

“It’s fine.”

 

. . . and she likes my song. I shouldn’t have thrown myself like I did. She’s a good child. I must have terrified her. But I want to go back. I need to be a person again. I feel numb. I miss the complexity of the human condition. Yes, there is sadness, grief, and other innumerable ways that a person might struggle to go on; losing your voice.

Hearing my own voice again made me realize just how much I missed being me. I’m not me unless I take in the gains and the losses. The good and the bad. And the ugly. And the beautiful. There can be no ecstatic highs without the lows to compare with. I will live for a life as creased and nuanced as the shape I inhabit now. If I could find him.

 

Diary Entry

October 4

12:13 a.m.

I’m actually writing this for . . . yesterday?

That’s because the brain talked to me. It He has feelings and everything. He used to be a man, but now he’s just his brain. He asked me to help find the body. I had no idea where to look.

I snuck out past bedtime. The body clearly was not in my house. Whenever I hold him, I could feel what he means. So I went to the park that was right across the street, where he took his brain out.

My purple dino nightlight wasn’t bright enough. So I went back and crawled inside. I asked brain what to do. “Get a torch,” I heard. So I went to get one. I searched everywhere, even our trash can. It was in my room all along in my closet. That was that. Brain said get some rest and I sure wanted to, but I had to help him. He said no. And I insisted to him I write this. He’s on my desk and he’s as still as a sleeping baby. Did he want sleep too?

 

Noelle sighed to stifle a yawn. She yawned anyway, and collapsed on her bed. The next morning was a Saturday, so she didn’t lose any sleep. She stretched and yawned on her bed. Her desk quivered; the brain was calling her.

“Brain, what happened? Shouldn’t we find him?”

“What number can you count till?”

“Two hundred tenny- I mean, um, twenty.”

“Excellent. Count till then. I’ll be back. I have a surprise for you. Just wait by the front door.”

Noelle nodded and shut her eyes. The brain bounced up and out the window and rolled past the street. The motion was so quick and swift that no passerby found it odd that a human brain was strolling about. And then, he  found his body.

Noelle counted as fast as she could, waiting for the surprise. It took only a minute. She went to the front door. And she found nothing. She ran to the park and found her brain colliding with the ear of a rotting specimen lying limp on a bench, face down. “Brain,” she said, “try this instead.”

Noelle took the brain and tried pushing it in from the back of the head. Nothing. She even let her feet off the ground when pressing it into him. Still nothing.

“Try from the top,” the brain said.

“Restart this?”

“No, from the top of the head.”

And she did. The brain seemed to merge with the soft brown strands of hair atop the damp, decaying head. It shrieked when it combined with the scalp. Noelle’s eyes welled up. “I’ll miss you,” she said. Not a word or feeling was perceived from the other end. My only friend, she thought. All gone.

She stopped pushing. The brain was an extension of the head now, making its way into the cranium. Noelle heard one last shriek. No, not a shriek; a wail. Loud and elongated. It was finally home.

The limp man was not limp anymore, but very hungry. He uprooted from his grave, fixed his face, damp with mortality, and his beard, wet from being on a wet face. He noticed Noelle staring. He cleared his throat and his eyes widened in shock. He shuffled to his feet and shook her hand. “And now, your surprise.” He said, “My name is Jonai. Just Jonai.”

Bewildered, Noelle stood on the bench and reached a right limb onto his scalp.

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Setu, October 2024