Plenum

1 piece of art & the 3 stories inspired by it

This piece is part of The Lot, the first volume of SUM FLUX. Featured in Edition 3—the culmination of Volume 1—this work is one of eight contributions to this edition. Read more about this zine and its theme here: https://sumflux.substack.com/p/volume-1-the-lot.

Original artwork by Aaron Tolopilo (Aaron T.)]

The emptiness of a parking lot at night stirs in me a sensation akin to thalassophobia—a quiet dread of something vast and unseen, lingering just beyond the edge of my perception, watching as I remain unaware. In the darkness, our eyes, poorly adapted for this realm, leave us vulnerable, out of our element. It is like swimming in the depths of a lake or sea, where we are strangers in an environment that hides its inhabitants and their intentions.

- from conversations with Aaron Tolpilo

It was with this sense of primal unease that Aaron Tolopilo crafted his dark and oneiric creature, a shadowy figure barely visible in the night sky above the lot. The design draws from ancient armored fish like the Dunkleosteus—primordial beings that once ruled the deep, their plated forms evoking a raw, otherworldly power. Tolopilo’s creation exists in a liminal space, vast and nearly imperceptible, a manifestation of what our instincts fear but cannot fully grasp.

Presented with this haunting image, three of our writers were tasked with creating microfiction inspired by Tolopilo’s work. Each piece takes a wildly different perspective, exploring unique angles of the drawing, yet together they weave an uncanny, collective resonance. The results are as strange and elusive as the entity itself, an intertwining of ideas playing on the same dark mystery.

---

Oscar Ruto Chemelil: “Monsters”

It’s been a couple of months, but I wonder how long? How long before you give me time? Time enough to be enough, her eyes-tracked fingers as I spoke.

There she went again - playing chords. Playing chords.

I knew nothing about Satie or Rachmaninoff til I met you. I guessed she already knew. Preaching words that I didn’t believe to impress a blue-eyed girl. You knew, didn’t you?

Of course I knew. We were under that solo light in the parking lot for hours. I can’t forget how you sounded. Talking a big game with that bottle in your hand. I guess I knew but… I don’t know… I thought I’d get you to get me. Get you to get this, eyes to checkered keys.

You’ve had decades of training, a tiger mom, dystonia, de quervain’s, grand stages, local stardom… I’d never get it the way you do. The parking lot… me reaching into the unknown, you, pulling from the known… that was as far as we should have gone.

Maybe. Maybe you just came back to mine? Maybe all we had was the parking lot, the solo light and you creeping out come morning light?

Yeah, I let my finger straddle along forlorn keys. None of these wishes. Me praying on a love from a world out of reach. Solo light, parking lot engulfed in darkness. But we pulled something out, didn’t we? Pulled something out of the dark. I wonder what monsters unrequited love creates.

---

Magnetic: “Lake Ozark”

Priyanka stared at the dark water under her father’s boat and it appeared to transmit her own reflection. In the middle of Lake Ozark she sailed with her father who often seemed to lose himself in that water. She was under the impression that they were attempting to catch fish, but it seemed he was looking for something else out there. Something unknown that she couldn’t fathom.

That night she could hear the faint sounds of crickets and crows flying above them. The air chill was intense.

You should wrap yourself in this blanket Lynette packed for us. She winced at the mention of her stepmother’s name.

No thanks, I’m not that cold. She whispered as her hands trembled.

She looked out into the sky and saw nothing. Just empty blackness. Her father had begun unpacking his materials to score some more fish. He already procured a school of white bass and wanted to try his luck for some more. She turned away from him, in a pensive disposition. She was annoyed at his inability to know when to quit. She could hear his excitement at the weight he felt on his hook.

Oh yeah, I stuck him! I think we got another one Pri! A big one too, this guy’s a fighter.

As he reached in to struggle with the fish, he felt the sharp bite of a piranha encompass his hand as he fell into the lake.

Wait! Priyanka help! In a panic, she leapt after her father as he was pulled into the depth of the lake.

She no longer saw a little girl when she looked at her reflection, and would never find herself faced with the emptiness of the sea again.

Jon T. “You Once”

I was you once. Reading in the dark. 
At the bottom of the pool. Looking up 
for holes where the stars used to be. 
Shuffling occasions in the pitch. Legs in 
hot glue. The vast has come for you. 
Made ruts and grooves and puzzling moves, 
a serpent trail in weeds become. 
In the slumber buzz, Let it steep. Linger in the tea. 
I’ve a nostril flared in some general direction. 
Subtle crane, the neck in knots, that haunty mane. 
A figment squeak and bossy beak, on the follow. 
Peeking over the deep end. And you reading. 
Like now. 
In the dark.
Unbecome by the despair of nothing. 
Black hollow and the tank enamel 
chipping off the space like your gums.
Loosened and playful, a last spritz on the scene. 
Skinny maven-fog fox, under the overneath. 
Slurping bennies like fat pellets. 
Horking spokes and transistors by the silos, 
you can wander the foothills but 
the imminent and the inevitable doesnt need to hover.
It just needs to be. On top of you, 
while youre reading this, 
in the dark. 
Like now. 

---

---