Khokhot

      Terror and comedy are akin. Each mood has its own exchange economy. In exchange for a receipt of terror, one screams: "Ahhh"; in exchange for a receipt of comedy, one laughs: "Hahaha." The duration and quality of one's screams or laughter will be commensurate with the value of the product delivered. But there was a time and place when these two goods were more than akin. They were one. At that time, laughter and hoarse screams were the same vocal emission, and sounded quite different. It was a halting, cranking sound - the heart knocking around the wet, dark barrel of the body, trying to start itself up and somehow escape its own response to something that had suddenly borne down upon it.

     You are at a bar on a Wednesday night. You come here for the two-dollar tall-boys. The stand-up open-mic is a negligible pretense for it all. In a back room decked in bright, convex planks of pine from floor to ceiling, you watch a procession of 'comics' cycle on and off of the stage. There are variants of modern laughter in response to their perfectly comprehensible anecdotes: "Hah," "Heh," and "Hee." 

     But then one line falls flat, receiving no response from the crowd, except from you. The stage is empty when this line is delivered. In fact, it seems everyone has mutually, wordlessly agreed to take a break. But something about these words that you know you haven't heard excites your spinal cord, makes you squirm on your stool and drop your clanging can of beer into the warmth-depths between your knees and the wall of the bar.

     You vomit a sound from your stomach that extends beyond the identifiable physiological responses to physical stimuli:

     "Khokhot... Khokhot... Khokhot..."

     Each time these phonemes trickle out of your mouth, you are ratcheted around in the space of the room. After your third outburst, you find that you are looking at yourself from the vantage of the mirror behind the bar. Your body remains on its stool, while shades of indifferent patrons mill past it in the background. After a few seconds, the body sags and falls out of sight onto the floor.