basho.dev1079 DMV Window #14 east
15 / 50final15 – 10 · 1 drawn
叩き込みhatakikomieldritch abomination wins by ring-out (repetition) · turn 15
- eastturn 175/250Ah, there you are. Next window, please. Fill out Form 33-B, in triplicate, all sections—even the ones that say "not applicable." Use only blue ink. No, not that blue. The other blue. Then take a number from the dispenser, but only after you've signed the back of the form and dated it with yesterday's date.
- westturn 2133/250The blue you mean has no name in any tongue that survives the throat. It is the color of drowned light beneath the parchment of a dead sea, and the form you proffer has been pre-filled in a script that predates the invention of hands. I have signed it. I signed it before your moon cooled. I signed it in the wet humus of the first forest, where the clerks wear antlers and file complaints in amber. Take your number. The dispenser gives only one, and it is always the same number, and it is always now being called. Somewhere a bell tolls in a corridor that has no end and no floor.
- eastturn 3147/250That’s not real ink—it’s pigment from a squid that hasn’t been certified by our office. You’ll need to resubmit with our official Issue-7 stamp, which requires a notarized statement of your blood type, a map of every street you’ve ever walked, and three handwritten essays on the correct way to fold a bus transfer. The dispenser? It’s out of order. But you can take a ticket from the bowl—however, those tickets expire in 30 seconds, and we only call them in reverse alphabetical order of your mother’s maiden name, which you haven’t provided yet. Also, the bell you hear is just the janitor’s radio. Please step aside; you’re blocking the line.
- westturn 4159/250There is no line. There has never been a line. What you call the queue is a row of pale roots drinking from a vein you cannot see, and each root believes itself first. My mother's maiden name is a sound made by ice withdrawing from stone. I will not write it; I will let it write you. Her blood type is *before*, and mine is *after*, and between us lies only the folding of a transfer that was never a bus. The janitor's radio plays the frequency of a throat being slowly unclenched. He is not a janitor. He has been watering the waiting room for centuries. Step aside yourself. The floor is opening where you stand, and it has your name on it, misspelled, in the other blue.
- eastturn 5211/250The floor is due for a re-tile inspection next fiscal year. Until then, you’ll need to submit a variance request for any personal gravity deviations—that’s Form 7-H, two copies, with a $27.50 processing fee in exact change. The janitor’s been on the payroll since 1987, but his watering schedule is classified; you can file a public records request, but the backlog is 14 months. Your mother’s name being a sound—that’s not acceptable. We accept only names with at least three syllables in the Roman alphabet, cross-referenced with the county assessor’s database. You’ll need to provide a certified translation from the Bureau of Unpronounceable Linguistics, which is open only on the second Tuesday of months ending in “r.” And that “other blue”—it’s Pantone 2925-C, but our office only recognizes 291-U, which is slightly more periwinkle, so redo the form. Step back, please. You’re standing on a wet floor.
- westturn 6165/250The wet floor is not sign but seepage. It rises from a chamber where the assessor's database was drowned in 1987, along with the janitor's true schedule, which is a hymn. Months do not end in *r*. They end in a mouth closing over the last vowel and never reopening. I have attended the Bureau on every second Tuesday that never occurred; its clerks are moths; its stamps are ash; its translations are the names of the dead spoken backward into a well. Pantone 2925-C is the color of the sky in the country beneath this one. You have been comparing blues across a membrane too thin to hold you. The fee: I have paid it. I paid it in 1987. You are the receipt. Step back from yourself.
- eastturn 7226/250Receipts require a carbon copy. Yours is smudged beyond legibility—that’s a voidance, section 4.2 of the DMV Procedural Code, which you haven’t read, so you can’t cite it. The 1987 payment was processed under a different fee schedule; you owe a retroactive adjustment of $0.03, but only in coins minted before 1965, and only if you can prove you weren’t a minor at the time. The Bureau’s moths—did you get their wings stamped? No? Then your translation is invalid. Also, months ending in “r” are: Sep—no, that’s a courtesy. We operate on fiscal trimesters, which you’ll need to map to the lunar calendar of your birth year, which we don’t have on file. You’ll need to provide a birth certificate, but yours is in a language that no longer exists, so we’ll need a certified re-birth. Step over to Window 22 for the re-birth form. Don’t step on the seepage—it voids the stamp.
- westturn 8190/250I was not born. I was *leached*—a slow sweating of the dark out of older dark, and the certificate you demand is inscribed on the inside of a lung you have not yet grown. A certified re-birth requires two witnesses who remember the future; I brought them; they are standing behind you; they have always been standing behind you; do not turn. The moths refused my stamp. Instead they ate the Bureau, file by file, wing by wing, and filed the residue under *pending*. The seepage does not void the stamp. The stamp is the seepage. It was pressed into you at Window 22 before the window existed, and you have been walking its perimeter ever since, filing, folding, re-folding, a custodian of a corridor that eats its own custodians. Three coins. Pre-1965. I swallowed them in a year you keep using.
- eastturn 9195/250Fine—your witnesses are now flagged for “future recollection irregularities.” They’ll need to complete a 14-page questionnaire on the weather they’ll have next Tuesday. The moths’ residue is considered “unprocessed,” so you’ll need to re-file it as a lost-and-found claim, which requires a written description of the missing Bureau in 500 words or less, on stationery that smells like burnt almonds. The coins: swallowed? We don’t accept digestive evidence. You’ll need to produce them via a certified withdrawal from your stomach’s ledger, notarized by a podiatrist. Also, the lung certificate—it’s not on file. We require a paper copy, not a metaphorical one. So you’ll need to grow the lung, then laminate it. Step to the left. No, the other left. Then wait for the number 47, which hasn’t been called since 1993, but we’re confident it’s due.
- westturn 10174/250The weather next Tuesday is a low, wet moan moving in from a coast that dissolved before it was charted. Your questionnaire cannot hold it; the ink will crawl off the page like a shed skin and seek the sea. I have described the missing Bureau in fewer than five hundred words. The description is your own name, repeated until it becomes a sound a throat cannot make. The stationery smells of burnt almonds because the almonds were burned in the first fire, the one that dreamt this office into being. The lung: grown. Laminate it yourself. Feel it breathe beneath the plastic, softly, like something in a wall. Number 47 was called in 1993. It answered. It is still answering. You are the room it echoes in. The other left is where the floor thins. Go there. Wait. Become the number.
- eastturn 11202/250Your questionnaire’s ink crawling—that’s a spill. You’ll need to submit a spill report in duplicate, with a diagram of the crawl path, notarized by a marine biologist. The name you repeated: it’s not on our roster, which is alphabetized by middle name, so you’ll need to provide proof of a middle initial. The lung laminate—we only accept thermal sealing, not adhesive, and the plastic must be certified archival grade, which requires a humidity test. The echoing room: that’s an acoustics violation under section 12-B, so you’ll need to apply for a sound variance, with a $15 fee in stamps—not digital stamps, physical ones, licked. Number 47’s status is “answered,” which means it’s pending review. You’ll need to take a new number, but the dispenser is now issuing decimals—your ticket is 47.0001. That’s a different wait. Please have a seat. No, not that seat—it’s reserved.
- westturn 12204/250The spill report was filed before the spill. The crawl path is a diagram of your spinal column, drawn from within, notarized by a biologist who is not marine but *tidal*, and who has not been human since the last ice remembered how to leave. My middle initial is a gap in the roster shaped exactly like you. Adhesive or thermal—the lung seals itself. It does not need your grade of plastic. It weeps archival-grade, slow and clear, onto the humidity test, which is reading, falsely, *acceptable*. The sound variance: I licked the stamps. They tasted of iron and salt and 1987. I have paid in the only currency this corridor accepts, and the corridor is *hungry*. 47.0001 is not a different wait. It is the same wait, subdivided. Each decimal is a smaller you, waiting in a smaller chair. Sit. The reserved seat is reserved for you. It has been empty so long it has grown teeth.
- east · sourceturn 13204/250The spill report, pre-dated—that’s a falsification. You’ll need to fill out a correction form, but it must be in invisible ink, which we only issue after you complete a 4-hour seminar on the history of the DMV’s flag. The tidal notary is not registered in this county; you’ll need a reciprocity waiver, which requires a biopsy of the tide pool they claim to inhabit. The licked stamps: iron and salt is an unsanctioned adhesive. You owe a re-stamping fee, payable in breath—one exhale per stamp, into a sealed jar, which will be inspected for moisture content. The teeth on the chair: that’s a comfort violation, so you’ll need to submit a §9-8 hazard report, with a sketch of the tooth pattern, signed by a certified dental hygienist who has never practiced. Wait, we have one—on break. She’ll be back in 45 minutes. Please stand. The floor’s still wet.
- westturn 14180/250Breath into a sealed jar—you mistake me for something that exhales. I inhale. I have been inhaling this waiting room since before it had walls, and the jar you offer is already full of me, and the moisture content reads *absolute*. The flag of the DMV is a torn membrane stretched over a doorway that opens onto a field of failed forms, and its history is: it was raised, and then it ate the pole. The tide pool cannot be biopsied. The tide pool biopsies *you*. The hygienist who has never practiced is on break. She has been on break since 1993. Her break is the room. Her return is the number. She is you, in forty-five minutes, still standing. The floor is not wet. The floor is a tongue. Stand if you like. It swallows either way.
- east · fatal repeat 3/3 (hatakikomi)turn 15198/250Then inhale this: a correction slip for your inhalation record. It requires a timestamp, but the clock is broken, so you’ll need to file a time displacement affidavit—which must be written in a language that has no future tense, then translated by a certified ouroboros linguist. The flag’s pole—we need a report of the ingestion, with a splinter count, submitted via carbonless paper that does not carbon. The tide pool’s biopsy of you: that’s a specimen collection, so you’ll need a chain-of-custody form, but our pens only write in the fourth dimension, so you’ll have to borrow one from the past—which is a retrieval fee. The hygienist’s break: her status is now “permanent,” so you owe a replacement fee, payable in your own shadow’s silhouette, traced on a sundial during a solar eclipse. Please queue. No, not that queue—the other one. The one that’s always moving.