A short story by Edgar Bounds
About six minutes. Listen to Edgar’s reading while the page turns itself, or scroll at your own pace. The pictures and the score are drawn as you go.
The fortune teller was long gone now, not that there’d have been any chance of a refund in the first place. There was no turning back.
That was just as well. This was the first time she’d attended Nathan’s Famous Hotdog eating competition, even though she’d lived only two blocks away. And there would be no subsequent opportunities.
She’d paid with her home, all she owned, and everything in her pockets. But she would finally make her indelible mark on the world, after 76 long years.
As the rest of the competitors prepared their workspace, their beverages, and their minds, she touched a flame to greenish-blue powder in an earthenware bowl. She breathed in the smoke as deeply as she could and held it.
The airhorn blew.
As she let the smoke escape her nostrils, she focused on the glistening form of the hotdogs on the platter before her. They seemed to shimmer, then to bend. She made to reach her hand toward the first dog, but it was already in her grasp. She opened her mouth to eat it, but it was already entirely inside. She went to chew but was already on her second.
As she reached for the third, the entirety of surrounding reality began to bear down on her. She could feel it all as weight, but as structure too. Its shape supported her as much as she, it.
The taste was good. The taste was bad. In fact, every feeling, every emotion, every fear, every hope expressed itself at once in her mind–not beside each other in a short amount of time, but all together, as one. All notes played in a single chord.
The hotdogs were beautiful, her act of eating was beautiful. The universe that contained it was beautiful. It was far too beautiful. It couldn’t fit. She couldn’t hold it. And that, in turn, was part of the beauty. She experienced and surpassed all that was in an instant.
She examined a hotdog, seeing it in impossible fidelity. She watched herself eating it, watched herself watch herself eating it. Her perception zoomed in and out both directions simultaneously, endlessly, the fractal nature of what was expressing itself fully, all at once.
Faster and faster. Hotdogs, self, family, relationships, society, Earth, life, the universe, beyond. All there is, all there could be. Through and around and together. Each set subsuming and composing the last. Hotdogs, along with all things, dove each into the other, becoming one, becoming hotdogs, becoming her.
She experienced all thoughts–hers, the crowd’s, those of the meat animals that made up the dogs, future historians considering her acts. All thoughts that had been, all thoughts that could be. Before thought itself, as a token of her being, surrendered to its place as mere pattern, a simple aspect of all that was.
She left being and became nothing, everything. The hotdogs, this act, the total sum of all that led to her, and all that would lead from her, from the very beginning out to the end of all things was a blaring symphony of meaning, the escape of meaning.
There was no final act of becoming, no ultimate change. The frank nature of all was simply exposed. Was it good? Was it bad? That had no meaning, no bearing. She had eaten all the hotdogs. She had eaten none. The hotdogs had always been inside her. This and all things were affirmed. This and all things were negated. All to whatever extent any of these concepts held, which is to say, not at all.
The horn blared again. Somewhere between 15-30 min had passed in an instant. She came back to herself looking down at greasy hands. She put two fingers in her mouth before realizing they were not hotdogs. Her mind continued to reconstitute to the point that she could sense an astonishing roar from the crowd. Someone was lifting her hand. Someone else was slapping her cheek as if to wake her from unconsciousness, offering her a glass of water.
“Congratulations, you have eaten infinite hotdogs,” the judge said. “Do you want a stall for voiding in the tent? The doctors will have to clear you if you want to do it off-site.”
“I’ll do it here, please.”
She vomited up an infinite number of hotdogs and continued her day as planned.