Those Who Know by Julian Ferris
Fortune favors those who know, the pamphlet said. The end of the world is coming.
The pamphlets littered the grounds of the school like old snow. They lay dirtied by hundreds of muddy shoes. They collected in ugly, misshapen drifts along the edges of sidewalks. Groundskeepers with leaf blowers herded the pamphlets into piles, and stuffed those piles into recycling bins, but no matter how many binfuls they trundled away there were always more pamphlets the next day.
Whenever my back was turned, the pamphlets multiplied. I was convinced that if I could turn fast enough, I’d catch them by surprise. A pamphlet copying another of its kind out by hand. A swarm of miniature pamphlets following their mother away from the copying machine.
I refused to read them.
I was convinced they were watching me.
As far as I could tell, no one was handing the pamphlets out, they simply appeared. I would see someone I knew reading one, a pamphlet that had been around the block once or twice, driven hard by the wind, with a cover stained yellow with nicotine and grease, and when this person I knew saw me looking, they would turn away. They would bury their nose in the pamphlet. The paper wings of the pamphlet—its embracing word-tattooed arms—would hug that person’s face in a loving embrace. And I would never see that person again.
The words screamed at me from the ground: Fortune favors those who know.
But what about those who don’t want to know? Who refuse to know? Who take an epistemological stance to purposely not know? To un-know?
I thought my students would understand. But my classes were empty and those who showed up had pamphlets instead of books. They had pamphlets instead of clothes, instead of hands. Instead of eyes, when they looked at me I saw words. Despite my refusal to know, I knew that they knew.
I thought my psychiatrist would understand, but he’s just another professor trying to make ends meet with a side job. I had to wait until a student conference ended before he’d see me, and then when I stretched out, using two chairs as a makeshift couch, he excused himself. He claimed he had to use the bathroom, but there was a pamphlet folded up in his back pocket.
In the corner of his office sat a piece of furniture that did not belong. It was a small cupboard, its wooden shell worn to black with age and use. The doors of the cupboard were closed, but they were straining to keep whatever was inside contained.
From the cracks between the doors and the frame something wiggled like the antennae of roaches searching for a place to lay their eggs. It was as thin as paper. It had words on it. It wanted me to read everything it had to say.
About the Author
Julian Ferris’s fiction has been or will be published in Digital Americana, The Chariton Review, DIAGRAM, and Daily Science Fiction.