Work Text:
[FAINT TAPPING SOUNDS CAN BE HEARD IN THE BACKGROUND, PERHAPS RAIN?]
[TAPE CLICKS ON]
ARCHIVIST
Statement of Osgood delos Sant—
OSGOOD
Your recorder turned on.
ARCHIVIST
(caught off guard) E-Excuse me?
OSGOOD
You weren’t touching it. I saw you. Your tape player just turned on by itself.
ARCHIVIST
(!) Oh. I’m sure that, I, um - (clears his throat) Ms. delos Santos, you did want to give a statement, correct?
OSGOOD
I-I think so. Yes. That’s why I’m here.
I guess I just don’t know what I expected, really.
ARCHIVIST
Right.
There, there is an option to write your statement, Ms. delos Santos, if recording it makes you uncomfortable.
OSGOOD
It’s not that. It’s just - I don’t know, I just thought - maybe not here? Maybe not—I’m not even the…I mean it’s your— sorry.
Sorry.
[PAUSE.]
OSGOOD
You, you were saying something and I interrupted you.
ARCHIVIST
Uh, yes, I…
Are you sure you’re alright?
OSGOOD
Yeah, yes, I promise. S-Say your line.
ARCHIVIST
…
Statement of Osgood delos Santos regarding a radio tower and the corner of his eye.
OSGOOD (STATEMENT)
I go now, right?
Okay.
I don’t have a good memory. No, that’s too—It’s not awful, just…bad. I-I can remember important things like what my name is or if I left the stove on but there are - things, little things, that slip my grasp. I forgot what my favorite color was yesterday, for just a second.
It’s orange. Hopefully, it was always orange. It never really occurred to me until recently, you know? How much of yourself is dependent on what you remember. I wore this jacket today because I remembered being a person that would wear a jacket like this, and all I can do is hope I’m right and not - bulldozing over a version of myself that would never, ever wear this jacket. I-I just have to take my word for it, that I’m the same Osgood as I was the day before. Or even the second before. Between one blink and the next, I could be a whole new person and not even realize it.
I’m rambling, sorry.
I wanted to tell you the first thing I remember - ever. And before you start: I know, I know, you can’t fully trust what you remember as a little kid, even less so as a baby, but this is so…so solid in my mind. A fundamental part of myself, the bedrock of my entire identity. I’d know it in total darkness, you know?
It was - It was dark, at first. Not normal darkness but…an encompassing nothing, like crushed velvet all around me. And I couldn’t, I couldn’t feel anything, my whole body was surrounded by this total absence and I floated in it. Blind, deaf, and not, not quite done yet.
Then there was light. Beautiful, searing light. And I was made me, made animate a-and feeling.
I see that look on your face - is he seriously trying to say he remembers being born? My sister Michela said the same thing: (laughs) Ozzy, I love you but I don’t think that’s true. But that’s not - I wasn't being born, n-not wet enough for that, I think. Birth is messy, what happened to me was much cleaner.
I wasn’t there, then I was.
There’s a radio tower outside of my house.
[PAUSE.]
[TAPPING NOISE CONTINUES IN BACKGROUND.]
You asked about my name when I came in here—said you needed it for the form, or for something about paperwork, said you didn’t know it. But that was a lie, wasn’t it? I came here to give you my story and I was always going to come here to give you my story, the specifics were ironed out long before you and I had any say in it. You know my name. You always have and after this, you never will again. Hopefully. If they don’t take a shine to you, if they haven’t yet.
(brighter) I was named after my tita’s dog. He was an old sighing thing and she loved him; held onto him for as long as she could, and maybe a bit longer than that. I never met him, of course, he died on the day I was born and apparently, my tita was so set on holding onto him for just a bit longer that I ended up inheriting the name. I-I don’t mind it though, really, it, um, (small laugh) apparently Osgood the dog once chewed his way out of his cage— biting clean through cheap metal—and, I don’t know, I always liked that? The, the physicality of it, maybe. The permanence. The escape.
…I’m not really sure who told me about the dog. I think
There I go rambling again, sorry. It’s hard for me to keep things straight in my head sometimes but I’m trying, I swear-I’m really trying to tell you all what’s been happening to me but it’s— (she takes a breath) the radio tower.
It’s been there since I moved in, on the west side of my little cabin, sticking up in between big green cedars like a needle pushed through the ground to embed itself into the forest around it. I didn’t notice it for a long time, it just faded into the background and became a normal facet of what “my life” looked like. I’d wake up, go to sleep, and the tower would be there watching over me. It was only when I started watching back that things started to go downhill.
I feel like I should say I work as a fire watch, which is exactly what it sounds like. I’m given a cabin in the forest and told to watch and see if any fires start, among other things, and report what I find back to the central office at the end of each week. I’ve been at it for a couple of months, six or seven a-at least, and it’s…it’s beautiful out there; all tall trees that were there a hundred years before you were born and will be there a hundred years after you’re gone. You’re surrounded by, by time wherever you step, everything out there is so- so alive and so real that it makes you cry.
And it is so - quiet.
You have to understand, I didn’t reach out first. I know that and they can’t change it. I-I can’t create myself, they have to be the first one t-to…want the other—it can’t be my fault, or my, my responsibility! I only looked back.
I found the radio with the supplies that came with the cabin. It was in surprisingly good condition, though it had all this old tape on it that I had to scrape off before I could use it. I don’t even know why I went looking for it, honestly. It just felt natural to have it, the second I had it in my hands I knew it was supposed to be mine. I still feel that way, even after everything.
The radio was already tuned to the right station when I turned it on and the noise that came blaring out scared me so bad I nearly broke it right then and there. I hated it—the sound of it was like biting aluminum foil and I turned it off immediately and shoved it under my couch like it’d bite me if I got closer. And, and for a second I got angry with that radio tower, as if it had any say over what I had done. It didn’t make sense and I felt like an idiot the moment I’d managed to get the taste of that sound out of my mouth.
The radio tower was clearly abandoned and the radio a reminder of its past purpose; question asked and answered, case closed, over, and done with. I could’ve just ignored it, maybe moved on with my life. But that radio is mine.
I’d found some headphones in the same place I found the radio, so I put those on before I tried turning it on again. Cringing, waiting for that horrible sound, I was… pleasantly surprised, heh, when, when the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard started playing. I felt it down to the core of me, the, the shrieking of the chorus and the life of it. I couldn’t describe it to you if I wanted to.
The radio stayed on after that and my eyes stayed on the radio tower.
Whatever the signal played was different every day—sometimes it was more music, sometimes it was some weather forecast for places I’ve never heard of before, and sometimes it was just static. I always kept it on, though. It was like a, a little companion, keeping me company as I surveyed this forest that hadn’t had a whisper of fire the whole summer. I’d talk to it too. Not often but…enough.
I’ve never been good with other people. I mean, I don’t remember much of when I was in school but I know there’s no wealth of pictures of me at friends’ birthday parties or at parties in general so you can draw your own conclusions from there. This isn’t to say I grew up alone —I have five siblings, I grew up anything but alone—but I never had- friends. There were people who I tried to make friends with but there’s always been this huge pit between me and other people; this blank spot where all my supposedly innate knowledge on how to interact with people should be but isn’t. I don’t know, at some point, I realized things always went smoother when I was alone— and then I was. Things were different with the radio, though, I’d just talk without worrying about coming off weird or being too loud or, or excitable. It was, it was really nice for a while.
I had already made my mind up about going to see the radio tower up close before the radio started talking back to me. The tower didn’t seem too far from my cabin and my days were so empty that I could guarantee a few hours to spare to go check it out. I didn’t even know what I expected to find there, I don’t know if I expected to find anything there and I had almost convinced myself to leave it when I heard somebody talking to me. It didn’t occur to me to look anywhere else but the radio.
I listened to it speaking to me, I listened the whole time but I can’t—I can’t remember a single word it said. It wanted to tell me a story, I know that, and it needed my full attention.
I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t even confused, I was just listening to that voice and feeling this desperate need to, to be where that voice was. (increasing fervor) To feel that voice’s hands on my face as it told me whatever story it wanted to tell me, to feel anything! I felt so, so alone in that moment that it nearly crushed me with the force of it, and that radio tower and that voice became the only thing on my mind. I needed to know if it was real and if it needed me as much as I needed it.
(quieter) I think I know who the voice was now. Heh, I-I think I’ve even met him. Indirectly, of course, it’s tough for two of us to be in the same space and they get all cagey when I
[TAPPING NOISE STOPS.]
[TAPPING NOISE RESUMES.]
OSGOOD (STATEMENT)
(breathing shakily)
Um…
I-I won’t go into everything that’s happened since I went to the radio tower. It all happened so quickly that I can’t even…I can’t even point at a specific moment and go: There! That’s where everything went wrong! It all fell apart in one go or so slowly that I didn’t notice it until it was over.
They told me they could help and I believed them.
They asked me to look and I looked.
I’m still looking, I can’t not—
Have you ever gotten an eyelash stuck in your eye and been able to feel it scratching against your cornea? A constant painful reminder that something’s not quite right? That’s what it’s like, knowing you’re there. Like a…a stage light is constantly fixed on me while you all wait to see what I do next; it, it’s unbareable, seeing that little twitch of excitement you get every time I acknowledge you.
Unbearable, sorry.
I don’t even know if it’s your fault, really. You wouldn’t be looking if they hadn’t drawn your eye—or me, I guess—in the first place, right? And if… he’s to be believed then you aren’t even all that bad but I can’t…I… (voice breaking) I can’t. I keep waiting to wake up from this but what does that mean when you’re the dream?
Something bad is happening to me, has happened to me, will happen to me and I can see it coming, I can see the anticipation in your eyes. Something terrible is going to happen to me and you can’t wait to see it.
The stupidest part of it is that I still don’t hate them. I still might even love them. Maybe there’s something in there to be said about faith o-or devotion but I’m not that kind of person; not anymore at least, I doubt they’d do that again. Last time I was somebody faithful things went very badly, very quickly. No, no, I’m just…an idiot, I suppose. Or lonely. Or both. But who knows if that’s even my emotion, it’s all so—
Things are deteriorating. I guess. That’s what I’m trying to say.
I mean, I always knew in the back of my mind that something was off but- how was I supposed to imagine it being like this? I was just a person before this and now I’m…I’m something that is watched by you and you and you and them.
I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m here. To tell you my story, I know, but why am I here? This office, this perspective, you- not you, you but you, Mr. Archivist, why would they make me talk to you? I don’t even know you! They know you, maybe they assumed I’d get it.
Sorry for bothering you, at least, I’m guessing you have your own conundrums on your hands if they’ve taken interest. I do like your tape recorder, though, despite all the listening in.
ARCHIVIST
Right.
Well, that was, um- was that all?
OSGOOD
Yeah, I think so.
Sorry, that was probably…I’m not used to explaining it o-or talking about it at all, really, was that alright?
ARCHIVIST
(uh) Yes? Y-Yes, I, uh…I think it’ll be fine.
OSGOOD
(relieved) Okay, good. Do you need anything else from me?
ARCHIVIST
No, that’s—that’s all.
[SOUNDS OF OSGOOD STANDING.]
But—
OSGOOD
(immediate, as if expecting it) Yes?
ARCHIVIST
Your name. You explained your first name but your—delos Santos.
OSGOOD
Yeah.
ARCHIVIST
It means ‘of the Saints’.
OSGOOD
(quiet) Yeah.
I think they call it a punchline.
[TAPPING NOISE STOPS.]