n a t b s

Actually, it didn’t surprise me much what they were saying—it was about what I figured all of them’d been thinking all along anyway—but the longer I listened the less it sounded like they were even talking, let alone saying anything. The longer I listened, the weirder the sound got. Usually, when you listen to people talk, you’re where you can see what is coming out of who. Kind of hook the voices up with the faces and keep them separate that way. But when you can’t see the faces, then the voices get all mixed together, and the talk isn’t exactly talk any more, not even a mixed-up round . . . it’s just a mish-mash of noise coming at you, without any individuality, damn near without source. Just a sound, feeding on itself the way a sound will when you get a microphone picking up its own broadcast so it goes running in circles faster and faster and faster into finally just a high, tight whine.

-Hank Stamper