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Contents
Page 2 – Maxine’s Way by Jason Rhode
Page 28 – Legion by Michelle Ann King
Page 33 – Zero, and Everything In It by Charles Wilkinson
Page 54 – The Shoe by Jaclyn Adomeit
Page 64 – Everything’s Alright by Brad Kerstetter
Page 80 – Flash by Dan Frazier
Page 92 – The Sequence by Peter Ryan
Page 110 – Vena Amoris by Matthew Lyons
Page 123 – A Rousing Intervention by Drew Tapley
Page 134 – An Act of God by Stephen Baily
Page 159 – Day of Blood by Matt Thompson
Page 172 – Author Biographies
Abstract Jam / Issue 4 / September 2016
ISSN 2059-8475 (print) / ISSN 2059-8483 (online)
Published and edited by Sam Leng, in Birmingham, United Kingdom.
Website: www.abstractjam.com
All fiction and poetry featured in Abstract Jam is © The Authors, all
rights reserved, and should not be reproduced or retransmitted in
any way without their consent.
Cover Art: “Dead” © Sophia D
http://bittersoda.deviantart.com
To submit to the next issue of Abstract Jam, please read the
submission guidelines over at abstractjam.com/submit.html
1
Maxine’s Way
By Jason Rhode
Nowadays, people think it was all Maxine, that he had nothing to do
with it. But Maxine never acted alone. Without him, she would have
ended up in some rich guy’s arms or dead in a museum, and that’s the
truth.
***
Here’s what happened:
Roger Kornstar, accountant and nobody’s fool, handed the folder
over to the shapeless white guy in front of him. The man was an
executive, one of several hundred thousand in New York. His eyes were
wide, and white as sea-foam. That crooked smile hung there, unmoving;
it had been that way for the last minute.
“Your return is done, but there are some issues that we need to go
over.”
The executive began to open his mouth, and Roger was hit with an
old, familiar, sinking feeling: this guy knows. He knows, and he wants to
tell me—
“Was your Dad...Lester Kornstar?”
Roger felt sure that before now this guy had never cared about
anything besides golf and very specific kinds of pornography.
“Yes,” said Roger.
“Sax player?”
“That’s him.”
This happened at least once a week.
It happened in supermarkets when he was picking up cantaloupe and
kale. It happened in clubs where jazz freaks, who had once seen Lester
Kornstar play, would notice a striking resemblance between the God of
Saxophone and the serious-looking young black man standing by the bar
ordering non-alcoholic beer. It happened in college, where intense
young music majors and grad students in horn-rimmed glasses would
2
Abstract Jam: Issue 4
corner him at parties and lecture him about what a great man “Lester,
the Jester of Jazz” was. A few of them could rattle off all thirty-one
albums. Without being asked to do so. And eventually, at some point in
the conversation, the other person would mention the single most
famous legend about Lester Kornstar, jazz saxophonist. It was as
inevitable as the turning of the earth:
“So, did he make a deal with the devil?” And Roger’s response was
always the same: “If he did, then he sure got his money’s worth.”
The line got better-than-usual results: the guy roared out loud. “I
can’t believe it! Lester Kornstar’s son! In my own blessed office! Wow!
Can I get you anything?” He was walking over to his desk. The man had,
apparently, assumed the answer would be “yes.”
“No thank you.”
“Honestly, I thought you might be his son but I didn’t want to say
anything! The name, of course. And you look just like him! I mean, I
hope that doesn’t sound racist!”
“It doesn’t.” The executive picked up a picture frame from his desk,
walked back over, and handed the photo to Roger. It was of him, a few
years back, wasted beyond the moon, standing next to B.B. King. “I’m a
fan, man!”
Roger stared at the picture, squinted, then said: “That’s Riley B. King
and Lucille.” He paused. “‘Lucille’ is the name of his guitar.”
“I mean, I’m a fan, a fan of musicians, man! Yeah!” The guy’s smile
went another mile wider. Roger was beginning to like him, damn it. “I’ve
got a collection you have got to see.” He put his hand on the lower right
hand drawer of his desk. “Can you believe people store files or booze in
these? Ha! What are they, doctors?” He rolled his eyes in satisfaction.
Then he paused: “Do you play?”
Right, Roger thought. The other inescapable question. “I did.”
“Well?”
“There are prodigies and not-prodigies. You can guess which camp I
fall into.”
“Prodigies like that Sally Ranpo!” The executive paused and pursed
his lips. “I frankly find her work a trifle baroque, you know?” Then his
face relaxed: “But what legs, am I right?”
3
Maxine’s Way by Jason Rhode
For about ten years, the words Sally Ranpo had triggered an
involuntary eye spasm for Roger Kornstar, hero of accountancy. Through
no small feat of will, he had learned to control this reaction and now was
as placid as a corpse. “We went to school together,” Roger finally said.
What the effort had cost him -- it was like shoveling an acre of coal
under Soviet management. With mighty willpower, he held his tongue,
and moved on: “Now, if we could discuss some of these Mexico City
business expenses you’ve placed under ‘traveling’ … The IRS, and one or
two other federal law agencies, might look negatively on some of the …
terms you’ve used here.”
“Oh! Of course,” said the executive. Both of them sat in ultramodern
black leather chairs, a glass coffee table between them. The man
beamed. “Say, you didn't have to do this! Sticking around after you’ve
handed off the file. Lester Kornstar’s son doing my tax return! Giving me
advice. Ha!”
“When I give my word to someone I keep it. I stick,” said Roger, and
smiled. You had to like the guy, he thought. He’s done a lot with
whatever the hell you’d call his “life.”
He checked his internal clock, which kept perfect time. He had
allotted a half hour for this man. Under any reckoning he was within the
appropriate parameters. Exactly twenty-eight minutes and two seconds
later, the executive was still gushing, but this time it was over Roger’s
work.
"This is well done!" the man said, the common sentiment.
"It's a living," Roger said, his usual reply.
“If you do your old man’s books as well as you did mine, no wonder
that he’s a success,” said the executive.
“Oh, well, I think that’s due more to him being the best sax player
ever.” Frankly, sir, Roger almost said, before I started balancing his
books, Dad could hold a tune but never a dime. He was a rambling man.
He shook hands with the executive and left. As he boarded the elevator,
he could hear the businessman humming the melody from “Mannish
Boy.”
***
4
As it turned out, Lester Kornstar was intent on staying unpredictable
well into old age.
Three days later, just as Roger sat down to his lunch -- exactly 11:45
AM on the dot, every day -- his phone vibrated. It was an old clamshell
model, but there was a small window on the exterior that let you see
who was calling: “LESTER.” It had been a while. He flipped it open:
“Dad?”
Silent as ruins.
“Dad, I’m busy.”
In his time, Lester the Jester had been famous for starting to play
whether the band was ready to go or not. It made for a real show, as
they used to say.
“I’m dying, son.”
Roger heard himself say the words “We’re all dying, Dad,” and then
felt terrible about it. The old man wasn’t the type to bandy philosophical
platitudes back and forth.
“Yeah, smartass, I’m gonna be goin’ sooner than later.” The old man
coughed.
“Dad?”
“Head down here, son.”
Roger did just that. One week later, he was standing beside his
father’s bedside as the man made ready to pass. Given how Dad could
never keep a steady hand on a buck, a woman, or his own habits, Roger
had expected the old guy to slide in and out of dementia, a creaky
drawer on a rusted desk. But here the man was, remarkably clearheaded up until the end. The Jester sobered his way through the last
hours.
The President of the United States (whom Lester had met multiple
times), under Constitutional mandate, receives the ambassadors of
foreign powers. It’s in his job description. Sick as he was, Lester Kornstar
was under no such obligation to receive the high and mighty, but he did
it anyway.
While dying, the Jester did the diplomatic business with all the greats
and near-greats who buzzed and hovered around his bedside: gaunt hasbeens, the young up-and-comers who finagled an invite, knowing mid5
aged owners and bookers of clubs, familiar faces and distant cronies.
Lean, big-eyed journalists counting the last loose change of a famous
man’s life-ledger came and left with all the light-footedness of their
trade. Friday afternoon, Roger sat in an old brown kitchen chair next to
his father’s bed. Lester had declined to wilt away in a respectable,
antiseptic fashion in a decent Christian hospital, and so here he was,
kicking off from the mortal coil in his own house, in his own bed.
Not a single word from the man’s lips had surprised him. Then Lester
had, without any muss or fuss, told Roger to
“Take Maxine.”
“What?”
“Boy, you heard me.” His eyes shone with the hardness of polished
stone. “Take her. She yours now.” The old man started coughing again.
When he finished twenty seconds later, he pointed to a chair against the
far wall, where Maxine sat. Roger had heard her speak hundreds and
thousands of times. She always stayed silent when he argued with his
father.
She wouldn’t come to him, so Roger went across the room and
picked her up. He held the saxophone up to the light.
She was a thin tube of brass, a shining miracle machine, a real beaut,
flaring at the end like the petal of an armored flower, a modified
mouthpiece on the opposite end. Maxine came with 24 tone holes, one
for each hour of the day. For decades, the critics who had heard her sing
struggled to explain Maxine's power, the mysterious rule over the hearts
of men that other tenor saxophones didn’t have, couldn't have.
Lester didn't let other men play it. Period. But Mr. Kornstar had once,
just once, graciously allowed a fan, an engineering professor at MIT, to
take Maxine into the labs and do every kind of acoustic and material
examination possible on her, short of taking her apart.
When they had gathered all the data and cross-referenced every bit
of information, they discovered that Maxine was, surprise, just an old
saxophone used every day for decades. So they found other saxophones
made the same year as she was, that had been played just as often, by
other jazz musicians; they had been reckoned, and weighed, and found
wanting. Maxine still sounded different. It was as if she'd been made to
6
frustrate scientists specifically or rational explanation generally, like true
love or World War I. The only notable aspect of her build, aside from the
extra tone hole, was that she was resistant to extreme heat and cold,
and that she had been dropped on the ground many, many times.
Roger had grown up with Maxine. He’d stopped being awed by both
her and his father years ago. However, just because you’d grown up with
Excalibur in your living room didn’t mean it stopped being the sword of
legend. Owning it felt wrong.
“Seriously. Dad, you're nuts,” said Roger. “This should be in the
Smithsonian.”
“Why? ‘Cause I played her?”
Roger blinked. “You did more than ‘play’ her.”
“What? Hell, man. Talent is nothing. A little edge -- if I worked like
you do at everything, I would've been great.”
Roger sat back down, horn cradled in his right arm. It was hard to
take his eyes off her. She gleamed under his fingers; chrome, and
history, and something else too, some indefinable thing he couldn’t find
words for. A feeling without a name. It was like holding the idea of music
in his hands. He kept noticing how his cuticles looked, set against
polished metal. Eventually he gazed back at this father. “You can’t ask
this.”
“Can. Will,” the old man spit, then added: “Why are you staring at me
like that?”
“You look like a scarecrow and beef jerky had a kid, Dad.”
“That’s my bucket of rocks to lug around. We all got our own bucket
of rocks. Now you know what your problem is, Princeton?”
“I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”
Lester shook his head. “Your problem is you believe in talent too
much and you quit too soon.”
“Right. That’s why I didn’t make it into a top school, become a CPA,
or make serious money. Wait. That’s exactly what I did.”
“Oh, Jesus. That ain’t what I mean. You love to take offense. Now
listen well, I know you don't like that book-keeping stuff. You never
could lie to me.”
Roger’s eyes drifted back to the horn. He gripped it tighter. "It's a..."
7
"I know, you always say 'it's a living.' A life you enjoy is a living!
Promise me. You'll play,” he said, another rasp leaving his throat. The
nurse who was in the hallway took one step in. Lester shot her a hard
look and she slid back out. “You play.”
"What? No." But Lester hadn’t heard him. Lester started coughing,
and this time he didn’t stop. Until he did.
Several days later, after the funeral, Roger sat in his childhood room.
Maxine was on his bed. He hadn’t touched the horn since the old man
left.
The Jester had timing, you had to give him that.
Play, Lester had said. Maxine felt lighter in his hands this time. He
blew into her. The noise that came out was horrible; he hadn’t played in
twenty years.
"Well, this will be a scheduling nightmare,” he told her.
Six months later, Roger Kornstar’s Manhattan neighbors had gotten
used to the sound coming from his apartment: “Brahhhh blahhhhhhhh
blahhhhahhhhhhh.” Somewhere in the distance -- who knows where? -no man can say -- the void of night hides all -- a dog howled.
One full year after his father’s death, Roger did all of his neighbors’
tax returns for free. Now the noise from his apartment went: “Brahnahh-nah, brah-na-Na-na, brah, Brah-dah.” The night-dog had recently
died.
***
Seventeen months after Lester Kornstar died, Roger sat in Witch Hazel,
a small bar on the Upper West Side.
It is true that the rich are different from you and me, and it is also
true some of the rich are boring. Yet it is difficult to be both very rich and
very boring; however, the crowd at Witch Hazel had done both
successfully for years.
The bar was a long, narrow shoebox of a room done in dark colors.
Guests sat at polished wooden tables with tiny white candles at the
center of each one. The bar was a smooth, minimal slab of black
ceramic, and would have been positively avant-garde in 1981.
8
In return for being exclusive, which in New York City is much harder
than it sounds, the customers of Witch Hazel were willing to put up with
an open mic night once and again. It is one of the ironies of the world
that the tighter the drumhead is sealed, the wilder the noise within.
Roger had not invited any of his clients to the bar, but had done
returns for most of the women and men in there. The fact that his social
and professional circle was a very small world indeed would have
probably occurred to him in a normal frame of mind, but, at the
moment, normal was a very distant country which refused to send
envoys.
Very few of us are brought to hyperventilation by the sound of
Dixieland jazz, but if anybody in that bar had had “When The Saints Go
Marching In” or “South Rampart Street Parade” as their ringtone, it is
highly likely Roger would have had his tenth imaginary heart attack of
the week. His knuckles were white.
The bar owner, a much more laid-back cat named Mitchell, owed
Roger a solid for catching an important deduction five years back. At the
moment, Mitchell was chatting up a new fish, some fetching lady lawyer
in black Armani, but his eyes kept checking the clock over the opposite
wall.
When the appointed time came a’knockin’, he sauntered over to
Roger’s booth. On the table sat a water glass with a single slice of bright
yellow lemon, both untouched. Maxine was laid out next to Roger, on
her side, as if she was sleeping off a bender.
“You ready for this?” Mitchell said.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” Roger said.
Mitchell sighed. He’d heard Roger play once before. He bit his lip,
gritted his teeth, then came out with it: “Well, you’re up now. You sure
about this? Don’t you think you might need more ....” He let the silence
hang, and then, after much searching, hit the right word: “talent?”
Roger’s stare was all glacier.
The man shrugged. “Great. I hope this was worth giving up sex for.”
The concept of a trade had never crossed Roger’s mind.
The owner got up on stage, cut the music, and made a rambling intro
which concluded, “Give a hand to Lester's son!” The applause was
9
consistent and perfunctory, like aging.
***
Two hours later, Mitchell and his new lady friend sat drinking at the
Witch Hazel. The room was empty.
“I don’t get it,” Armani lawyer said. Her name was Karen. When
somebody sings “Happy Birthday” in a movie or TV show, they have to
pay money to a corporation, or they’ll get sued. Karen was the person
who sued them. She was trying to get half-past-drunk with Mitchell.
“It sucked,” she went on. “I mean, okay, sucked is strong. it wasn’t
criminal. He -- what’s his face?”
“Are you kidding me? I announced it earlier. He’s Lester Kornstar’s
son. Roger. His name is Roger.”
“Really?” said Karen. “I know that name. Anyway. Roger Korngood.
Roger. He wasn’t horrible.”
“He was passable,” Mitchell said, and put his hand on hers, smiling.
She smiled back.
“So how did that happen?” she said. They stared at the tip jar
between them. It was packed so tight with dollars not even Moses could
have split them. “Mitch -- you don’t mind ‘Mitch,’ right?”
“If it’s you? Not in the least.” It wasn’t like him to be so forward, to
give away his game so early. I must be drunker than I thought, he told
himself. (He wasn’t.)
Karen stirred her drink. “You know me, I’m a regular. I see an
unending stream of talented players in here. Night in, night out. Kornstar
Junior -- he’s a soldier, okay? He’s a trooper. He’s not awful. I’m not
saying that. All the notes are where they’re supposed to be. We both
know his plays ‘sucks,’” and she used the air quotes. Wow, brutal much?
I must be drunker than I thought. (She wasn’t.)
Mitchell nodded. Karen gave a little gasp, then smiled. In the wider
world, women and men may ironically appreciate hotel lobby tunes;
they may even genuinely like them. Nothing is impossible. But in the
upper-crust world Witch Hazel operated in, giving mediocre music to
your clientele was equivalent to taking out a two-page ad in the Times
10
announcing your innovations in the cooking, serving, and marketing of
street dog.
“I really admire you for admitting that,” said Karen. “And I think
everyone in here tonight knew he wasn’t great.”
“And yet they still gave him a standing ovation at the end,” said
Mitchell.
“I know, right?” said Karen. “Far, far more than they should have for
a half-assed sax player who got in on social obligation and a famous
name. It was the kind of applause you give at a junior high concert: not
for the quality of the music, but because you know they’ve earned it.”
She pursed her lips. “Jesus, I need to work on being less cynical. I’m
going to donate to charity. And less cliché. I’ll work on that too.”
Mitchell considered this. “I’m drinking with you because I want to
sleep with you,” he finally said.
Karen nodded. “I am too, but I should warn you I’m a Type-A with
major emotional complexes.”
“I’m a needy man-child. I want to believe my success as a
businessman compensates for my commitment issues.”
He poured two more shots. They drank to each other’s health, and
meant it.
***
Four weeks later, Mitchell, Karen, and Roger sat in their usual booth
after a show. Mitchell’s brow was creased in disbelief. Karen rubbed his
back.
“Why am I getting this reaction every time I play?” Roger asked. “It’s
not logical.”
“You’re using reason? Ha!” said Karen. “Not to say you don’t have a
point, Rog. This is beyond logic. Music is … you know, right? Listen to
me. This hippie-dippy place is getting to me. I barely grind my jaw
anymore.”
Mitchell lifted up the tip jar. The fishbowl was a dense salad of green
paper. “I don't know why, but the bucket is full every time you play,
Roger. If it was just people lining up to shake your hand, that would be
11
one thing. But this … No offense.”
Roger held up a hand. “None taken. I’m aware this is all a bit odd.” He
shook his head. “I didn’t plan for this, you know.”
There was a knock on the great glass door of the Witch Hazel. “Well,
ladies and gents” said Mitchell, standing up, “that’s probably the Da Qin
delivery guy.” Karen picked up the jar and jiggled it with a spacey grin.
“May I make an observation?” said Roger.
“You may,” said Karen, still flourishing the container.
“You seem to really like my music. But I’m terrible.”
She frowned. “It’s not that you’re, well, terrible--”
“I’m passable. But that shouldn’t work here either. Even if I were a
little better than good. I’m Lester the Jester’s son. They should be
scoffing at my presumption for using the family name.”
She shrugged. “That’s beside the point. People know you’re keeping
a promise. That helps. Your music doesn’t have to be good to work. I’ve
barely sued anyone at all this month. And it’s not just me. The
Livingstons -- you saw they were here?”
Roger thought about this. “I know the name, of course, but the faces
-- oh, right. I know who they are. Old white guy and slightly older white
guy. Bespoke suits. Very shady Arthur Andersen-type bookkeeping.
Shame in the industry, serious letters were written. And they were in the
front booth during my show last week.”
“That’s correct,” Karen said. “The Livingstons -- Cyril and Richard -who between you and me are the two dullest, croakingest reptiles in
American finance, and would raid a school library if they heard there
was a twenty dollar bill between the pages of a World Book -- I actually
saw the father, Cyril, put his arm around his son after your set last week
and say, ‘I don’t tell you often enough, boy, how proud I am of you.’”
“Last year was very profitable for them, Karen. I’m sure the son had
something to do with that.”
She put down the jar. “Here’s the problem with that theory. Last
year, Richard sued Pops for damages. The Street got nervous. I know this
because I was involved in the case.”
“Why’d they come here together, then?” Roger’s stomach growled.
Near the door, Mitchell was giving the delivery kid a hefty roll of bills.
12
“Because Lenny Baumstein, their day-to-day guy, was here the week
before and somehow got them to show up together, by trickery or
promises, or however. The point is, that shouldn’t have happened.” She
put her immaculately-manicured hands atop his. “I don’t know what
about your amateur-hour show works. It just does.”
“That’s not an explanation,” he said.
Mitchell came back to the table. Karen turned her palms up in a
what-me-worry gesture. “When you’ve got a better one, let me know.”
The next week the show was wall-to-wall packed. The buzz was out.
Roger Kornstar didn't care about the buzz, but the buzz cared about him.
About five seconds after Roger finished playing, a group of
consultants came up to the stage and introduced themselves. Long
before he ever picked up Maxine, Roger had logged year after year of
cutting through sales bullshit with concrete accounting facts, so his
people-reading skills were fairly sharp. The consultants, he decided,
were well-dressed, earnest squares; as a member of the unhip tribe, he
recognized his own kind. The spokesman had a good, but not expensive,
suit. The watch was pricey but not exorbitantly so. They smelled like
money, but not too much of it. Roger approved.
After the usual greeting rituals, the peppy guy driving the
conversation, who introduced himself as Carl, finally played his card:
“We're church consultants and usually we think jazz is pretty boring,
but this has a kickin' beat, like Black Flag. We have a convention coming
up here in Manhattan. We’d like you to play for us.”
“Convention?” asked Roger.
“The FaithBrands convention.”
“FaithBrands?”
“There’s an entire ecosystem of church-centric services in the
postmodern economy.”
“I see,” said Roger.
***
The 18th annual FaithBrands convention was far more ecumenical and
13
modern than Roger expected. The entire affair had been squeezed into
one of those vast convention centers in the belly of a Radisson.
The room was a bland white monster of a cavern, as if a gigantic
marshmallow had been heated to enormous size and then hollowed out.
From his perch onstage, Roger had a good view of several hundred
persons traipsing the floor and munching delicacies handed out by
Saxe’s Lutheran Bakery (Missouri Synod).
The big room’s carpet was a Miami shade of blue and trilled with
thousands of little curlicues and artistic flourishes that a Rhode Island
School of Design grad probably dreamed up for her Ph.D.
Absolutely none of the attendees wandering on the convention floor
paid the least attention to the rug, as they shuffled back and forth
between displays of faith-based pool cleaning services, kosher cooking
equipment, Christian children's entertainments, prayer rugs made of allhemp, and several dozen booths dedicated to multimedia presentations
of faith texts.
An edgelord from Reddit's atheism board would have a stinging
rebuke to all of this presentation of sacred goods in a worldly setting,
but it didn't strike Roger as somehow hypocritical or daft. People who
have serious faith commitments are like people who have serious fitness
habits: you want all the parts of your life to jive together in a mundane
way, especially if you've got special needs that only someone that's hip
to your predicament can understand.
He felt brave and foolish; at the same time he was thoroughly aware
of how arbitrary these feelings were. He had played for a crowd of socalled sophisticates at the Witch Hazel, and not one of them had booed
him off. Roger shuffled his feet. His set list, which he had memorized,
was compiled from several online lists of the all-time best jazz classics.
He had taken those suggestions and then optimized them for time, all
the while keeping an eye to his very, very modest talent level. The list
had gone through seven drafts.
Roger Kornstar played. The music echoed in the hall, unremarkable
to even his ear. By the end of the third song, the attendees’ eyes were
fixed on him; not all of them, but most.
By the end of the set, every single eye in the hall, even -- no,
14
especially -- the eyes of the blind were fixated on him, Roger ended the
set with a rooty-tooty version of “The Saints Go Marchin’ In” that a
better sax player could have phoned in from Mars, and made a little
bow.
The applause went on for a whole minute. He didn’t know what to
say. The good people of Convention Hall 2 stared at him with a delighted
goofiness. They loved him, and there was nothing he could do about it.
What happened next put Roger Kornstar’s performance out of mind.
A man, florid of face but with the build of an NHL power forward,
clambered to the stage. He introduced himself and shook Roger’s hand
effusively.
Then he big man cleared his throat. “I say, my friend, that was. That
was something, Yeah. You know? Hi, so -- haha -- a lot of you know me,
I’m Chuck Rowson. I do vacation tours of the Holy Land. I just, uh, yeah -wow.” He cocked his head to the side. “Just throwing this out there: we
all do pretty well for ourselves? I mean, oh my goodness, I do. So, is it
just me, or should churches be taxed?” Chuck giggled as if he’d said
something naughty. Roger stood stock-still.
“Of course they should! We all know it,” said a dapper, older black
gentlemen wavering but six inches in front of the stage, whose cadence
marked him as a citizen of Georgia and a preacher from a family of
preachers. He had drifted near to Roger’s perch early on in the act and
hadn’t moved since. The voice, more of a rumble with vocabulary than a
human instrument, kept on echoing: “Heck, I got the gosh-darned
governor elected! I mean, friends, my beloved brothers in Christ and
other faithful, in no way are we not political organizations.”
“Amen,” drawled a man from Texas. “Amen to that. Yes. Uh, I gotta
say, I feel pretty guilty now for all those things I said against colored
music in general. I think it’s just what my parents taught me. This boy,”
he glanced at Roger, then caught himself, “excuse me, this gentleman up
here kicks the holy freakin’ tail-feathers out of what I’ve heard.”
Roger eyes tightened to their narrowest point, as narrow as they
could go while still giving him the power of sight. “Uh … thank you?”
“It is not just you, my friend,” said a young man behind the Texan. He
wore a yarmulke and a charming sweater. “I have to ask, what are we
15
wasting so much time on with this ceaseless fashla in the Holy Land? You
know? One-state, two-state, let’s be done with it already! Could we bury
our pride, maybe?”
“Hey!” yelled a man in the back of the hall, wearing a traditional
thobe, with a thick New Jersey accent. He had a broad black beard, and
a smile so bright that the sun ought to have died of jealousy years ago. “I
agree one-hundred percent with what’s been said already. Honestly, I
never saw much difference between us, you know?” He’s incredibly tall,
Roger thought, until he saw the man had clambered up on a chair.
“Sorry about the settlers,” said the yarmulke guy, who had turned to
look at Jersey, gesturing as an orator would. His hand was olive-colored,
and matted in wiry black hair “Totally. Lame move. That’s on us.”
Yarmulke man cut through the crowd to make his way back to the
chair guy in the back. The Jersey dude had already stepped down from
his chair, and was headed to the front. The pair met in the middle of the
room.
“Bro, we’ve all stuck our wangs in this one,” said the guy from Jersey,
then he added: “As-salamu alaykum.” They embraced.
Roger was now in the middle of an honest-to-God freak-out. The
feelings inside him were mighty indeed, but some unemotional part
remained. It was that dispassionate section of his brain that recognized,
in the back of the hall, a mane of near-to-white blonde hair attached to
a familiar profile leaning against the door frame. His body registered her
before his conscious mind did; he felt his breathing speed up and his
field of vision collapse to a single point. He would have recognized her
anywhere. She was a knife sticking up in the middle of a rosefield.
Roger jumped down off the stage and the crowd parted for him like
so much Red Sea, creating an open passage between him and her. The
crowd knew her of course. There were Zen monks who knew nothing
else about the world except that she was in it.
There she was, on the other end of the thin channel. Sally Ranpo.
Ranpo.
Ranpo who loved the saxophone, whose sounds went all the way up
to heaven and down to hell, who knew every stop of her instrument,
who had famously slept with her saxophone every night since she took
16
up the art at age five. Ranpo, who, when offered a professorship of
saxophone at the Sorbonne, had turned it down, declaring "The French
can go blow themselves" and had gone instead on a worldwide tour that
brought the instrument back into a level of popularity equaled only by
the guitar. Ranpo, who hated other instruments, and orchestras and
symphonies, who did not trust musical bodies and all their collaboration.
Ranpo, who loathed mediocrity and the Romantic notion of genius,
which she regarded as the enemy of all music -- hated it for its excusing
of sloppiness, and laziness, and hated the recording industry for putting
the face of the musician on the cover of albums ("Whose god-damn
business is it what the person looks like?") and had become a musical
sex symbol despite her protests; Ranpo, who hated the industry for
selling out the musician and making money off the musician's back: the
daughter of a Cold Spring, New York farmer who had a promising career
as a pianist but had to put it aside when the recording company had
backed out on him, which she never forgot; Ranpo, who, the night she
had been elected Senior Prom Queen, had not attended, because Sally
Josephine Caro Ranpo spent every dance night of her adolescence
practicing, ceaselessly, constantly practicing until her fingers had
blisters, and when asked about it, said dances were for girls, but music
was a woman's business and women's business mattered; at age
twenty-five, when encouraged to tour with major acts like the Rolling
Stones, all of whom she had dated, she replied, "As long as I remember
the genius of Adolphe Sax, I will never play second horn to aging
troubadours." Ranpo, who loved the saxophone, and music, and
despised weakness because she never forgot what she was here for, or
who she was.
Five-and-a-half-feet of solid virtuoso supremacy in a black motorcycle
jacket. Currently her expression wavered on a tightrope between shock
and superiority. Roger swallowed. How much had she heard? She must
have come in right after the last note; he would have detected her
otherwise. Ranpo strutted up to him -- there was no other word for it -and blinked her eyes slowly.
“Maxine,” she said first, looking at the sax, nodded -- may have even
bowed a little. Then she looked at him. “Lester’s son.” That was always
17
how she referred to him.
“Hi, Sally.”
“Quite a turnout,” she said, and scanned the room, “Still trying to
play?"
“And succeeding,” he heard himself say. She smirked, as only Sally
Ranpo of the saxophone could smirk. “It’s been a couple of years.”
“Ten or so,” she said. “Why are you doing this? This has to do with
your father. Why would you abuse Maxine that way?”
"I don’t know, Sally,” said Roger, face getting hot, “Why do you play
the same ten songs over again? In your sleep. You could be doing so
much more..."
“Perfection is repeated art, Kornstar. I wish you’d figure that out.”
She turned and walked out.
After many, many hours of talk and back-slapping among the guests,
Roger got home. He pulled down the curtains. He went to the cabinet
beneath the sink and pulled out a dusty bottle of scotch, and made
himself a drink. He clicked his iPhone into the stereo and listened to
Ranpo’s latest album, Jedforest. He could have listened to her on vinyl if
he had wanted to; he owned almost every album she’d ever done. There
were one or two that he couldn’t get because they had been done
overseas and the record company had under-printed.
He took a sip. The conference would be in its second day tomorrow,
and he was booked for the entire time. Staying up this late was actually
pretty crazy. But he found detaching from the Ranpo recordings
unusually hard. She's so good, he thought. But this is easy for her.
***
When he pulled his mid-priced sedan with excellent gas mileage into
the parking lot the next morning, she was waiting for him. Sally leaned
next to the service entrance door, one boot on the ground, the other
pressed against the wall, the usual pose for cool high school kids since
the dawn of time. Her saxophone case, impeccable, rested beside her.
Roger had seen an Animal Planet special on African mammals during
sweeps week. In it, the patient British narrator explained that, contrary
18
to popular belief, it was the lionesses who did the hunting in the pride,
followed by a lingering close-up on a lady-lion’s face, shot with such
adoration Roger believed the cameraman might actually have a transspecies crush. What really stuck in his memory was the big cat’s gaze,
the total predatory focus. That was the look Sally Ranpo had now. He
stopped in front of her, six inches separating them. She smiled.
“That is a lot of crazy in a little bag,” said Roger.
“Only my therapist knows for sure.”
“I meant your sax.”
“His name is ‘Mr. Sam,’” she said.
“I know. Is it still rigged up in that weird way you like?”
“The correct way, you mean.”
Roger opened the door and went in. Half an hour later, setting up on
stage, eyes focused on Maxine, he heard the expected footfalls climbing
up the stairs. She had cleared the last step but was lingering on the tiny
metal staircase as if it was a doorway on death row.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“You should give me permission to come aboard,” she said.
“What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you have a sweet sixteen
to play for some billionaire’s daughter?”
She laughed at that one. “Yeah, playing for free doesn’t make a lot of
sense. Say I just felt the need to show you how it’s done. Call it devotion
to my craft.”
“Sally. What is this about? I know how well you do. You’re successful
to the point where you could ostensibly be one of my clients. What’s the
real reason? ”
“It’s me. Do I need a reason?”
Roger began to play: the same slow, regular, middle-of-road
procession through the classics he’d done since laying hands on Maxine.
Nothing new to report there.
He slid his eyes to the side. The look on her face was one of
expectation. She wasn’t trolling him; she really did want to play. The
idea that he could make Ranpo jealous was absurd. So what was it? Why
did she bother?
He left an opening for her to come in. She did -- no surprise there.
19
However, what was unexpected, what was incredible, what astounded
him, was Ranpo’s reaction. She began to improvise. Ranpo was a
virtuoso; Ranpo did not compose. Ranpo playing music off-the-cuff was
like Jupiter jumping its orbit and heading for Florida.
Someone applauded. Several someones. He saw people from outside
of the convention begin to move into the hall.
She left him an opening. He responded.
She replied again. Then she tossed him the melody. She let him take
the melody.
He did what he could with it, not believing it was happening. He
worked over the phrase, throwing every bit of musical arcana and talent
he had, poring over it, adding variation after variation. She was tense.
She was anxious.
Roger gave the song back to her, and went silent. That’s when the
fireworks came.
While she played, he was listening, but he was more conscious of his
other senses: the dryness of his mouth, the pain in his eyes from not
blinking. She kept going, and going. This was a music Lester had never
heard, that he didn’t know he could hear.
Earlier the crowd had been smiling and nodding as the two of them
dueled, if you could call it that. As far as Roger could see, the convention
hall, and the hallway outside of it, was packed with people. His face
must have been the same as theirs: the kind of look a tornado might
bring.
The lady -- this was something beyond him, beyond Lester, beyond all
of them. The sound went up and down, back and forth, in strange new
directions, moving like a knight on a chessboard. Fireworks came out of
her horn. She was actually sweating. Impossible. Absurd. Sally Ranpo
didn't have pores. That would suggest permeability. Vulnerability.
She kept playing. And Roger Kornstar -- Roger, who had been dealing
with Sally Ranpo and the idea of Sally Ranpo for most of his adult life;
that very same Roger began to smile. He lowered Maxine and let her
play.
They weren’t in the same league. Roger knew that. Roger had always
known that. The music wasn’t the remarkable part: Ranpo’s eyes were.
20
The fire was in them. No, not a fire.
Sometimes Roger left the TV on CNN when he was doing an onerous
return. Nothing distracted him, but it made for ambient background
noise, reminding him of the library he’d spent much of college in.
Several years ago, the network aired a documentary about the oil fields
set ablaze during the invasion of Iraq. Millions and millions of gallons
swallowed up by a self-feeding fire that lived to consume its own fuel
and turn it into air, flame, and radiance. The light in Sally’s eyes wasn’t a
cold mirror of real fire; it was the thing fire wanted to be. Sally Ranpo
had never played like this in her life. And she knew it too.
Roger smelled actual smoke. The imagination is a powerful-- he
blinked. Wait. Is that what it is? He sniffed again. Not imaginary.
Gunpowder? Here?
Over there, in the middle of the crowd. A fat bloom of thick dark grey
smoke rose from between a cluster of humorous T-shirts and a Veggie
Tales kiosk.
“Fire!” a high-pitched voice cried.
The conventioneers backed off and the cloud’s color darkened and
changed into a roaring ten foot pillar of dark smog. The top of the pillar
burned, a dead tree full of straw set ablaze. The voice came next, and
sounded like a backhoe engine with the strength of a wind tunnel.
“ENOUGH!” the voice howled, “ENOUGH, I say!” The force in the
bellow would have sent tooth picks through marbles. The pillar of smoke
parted like two curtains shoved aside. The cries of the damned echoed
from below and Roger knew who had come. A figure approximately
eight feet in height, whose skin burned red as coals and every foot step
shook the earth, sidled out onto the floor.
I knew it, thought Roger.
The figure snorted, the sound of a bull cow getting ready to charge.
“You’d be Satan?” said the black pastor from yesterday. It wasn’t
really a question.
The Prince of Darkness turned to the minister from Atlanta. “The
flesh at the barbecue was human after all. That parishioner was more
than an eccentric donor and you knew it, Obadiah.” He smiled, and his
way of speaking had changed, too: honey poured over Corinthian
21
leather.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, help me, I did.” The man fell to his knees.
The Dark One chuckled. “And He knows too.” He was silent, and then,
with obvious pain, he muttered: “And He’ll forgive you … anyway.”
“Probably!” the man managed, through sobs.
“No,” said the Devil, sighing, “He will. I’m sure of it.” Lucifer, the
fallen angel, lifted his damned head and stared directly at Roger
Kornstar. If looking into Sally’s eyes was staring into the sun, the
Adversary’s eyes, all black, were the void of darkness between the stars.
“Stop admiring me,” bellowed the Devil, “I don’t deserve it!”
“Uh,” said Roger.
One of the Mormons approached Satan. “Are you upset with our
convention? Is that why you’re here?”
Satan, whose ears could have detected the suicide of a sparrow on
the other side of the galaxy, pretended at first not to hear him, then
gave in: “No!” He growled, and pointed at Roger. “It’s him!”
“Me?”
“CONFOUND YOUR HORN!” the Beast of Ages roared.
“My horn?” said Roger.
“Aren’t you here for his playing?” said Ranpo, slicked with sweat,
angry at being interrupted, “I mean, he’s not great but in a few years, he
might be less vile.”
“No! His wailings would be a welcome addition to the cacophonous
shrieks of the damned! I could hear your piping down in the Pit!”
I didn’t think I was that loud, Roger almost said, but he got the sense
that Satan was working up to a crucial point.
“Your father -- I made that horn!”
“I knew it,” whispered Sally -- and Roger. They exchanged a look.
“He was an artist!” Satan roared, “With an artist's behaviors!
Whoring, smack, boozing, rambling -- oh, how the Jester rambled!
Sweetest deal I ever made! He had the music all along! For blues and all
its offspring are indeed my music. And what a MARVELOUS harvest it
was! Oh, Tipper Gore was quite right about American music,” he said,
chuckling. “How well your father peddled my gospel on Earth! But you,
Roger -- I never dreamed a man-nun like yourself would lay his sober
22
paws on my splendid work! Have you even looked at pornography? I
have literally filled the world with it!”
“I don’t believe so,” said Roger. “I’ve been too busy practicing.”
“And here’s the rub! You can't play! That damn horn doesn't do
anything for you!"
Sally actually stepped between him and the Devil. She was going to
defend him. "Wait a sec -- but --"
"How are you so dull?” the Devil went on, “Maxine is a magnifying
glass! It's an amplifier! It can only give more of what's already there!
Must I explain every angle of my perversity? APPARENTLY."
A slow-dawning awareness crept into Roger Kornstar’s brain. The
attendees of FaithBrands, who already were inclined to give the Devil an
ample section of waltzing-around room, scooted back any further. Their
resistance to panic in the face of pure and petty evil moved him; it was a
minor miracle nobody had run off screaming into traffic or fallen down
foaming at the mouth. Of course, Maxine and Roger might have had
something to do with that too. Thirty feet from where Satan was
standing, a young woman was talking on her phone. Roger could hear
her say. “I know it’s been a couple of years -- okay, ten -- but I want you
to know I love you.” The Adversary stomped over to her, sneered, and
grabbed the phone from her hand as if he was about to throw it. Then,
just as quickly, and with great anguish, he handed it back to her.
“Oh.” Sally had figured it out too. “Oh, I see.” She put her hand on
Kornstar’s shoulders. In any other circumstance, Roger would have
pushed it aside or tensed up, but now, in this moment, it seemed utterly
normal.
“Oh, good,” said the Adversary, mocking her. His Sally voice was close
to the real deal. "Oh good. Ugh. Don't you get it? How obvious must I
be?” And Satan walked right up to the front of the stage, never breaking
eye contact with Roger. “You're the worst! You studied to keep a
promise! Your horrible music isn't good, it's horrible! Just like doing the
right thing is awful! But when you play that horn, you make everyone do
the right thing! The dreary, annoying, drone-like, machine-necessary
right thing!"
“Thank you?”
23
“Thank nothing!” The Prince of this Vileness threw up his hands.
Before Roger could utter one word, darkness visible filled the room.
Then out of the ground came a geyser of pure white light, a column the
width of a European sports car. The column was a beam of forceful
energy: it shot up through the convention hall, through the ceiling and
into the sky. The light ought to have been blinding, but Roger felt the
shimmering radiance comfortable to stare at. Just as soon as it had
begun, it was over; the Devil put down his arms.
“I have done it!” he said, “I have freed every soul in hell! Even the
crocodiles and the Nazis--I hope you’re all real happy.” Satan frowned. “I
even freed your father, Son-of-Lester. Oh, don’t give me that look! He
knew what he was in for when he met me at the crossroads all of those
years ago!”
When he had recovered from the news, Roger finally got out the
words, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Spare me your thanks,” The Dark One bellowed. "I would take you
now, Roger Kornstar, were the Gates of Hell not closed to everyone.”
The Devil looked skyward. “Now I have to go apologize to an old friend.
Excuse me. Damn you." And Satan flew up through the hole in the roof
and out into the blue.
The next noise Roger heard was not the surprised noises of
thousands of human voices, or a crack of lightning; rather, it was the
sound of Sally Ranpo, dropping her sax for the first time in human
history, followed by:
“What.”
***
Four months later, Sally was in Lower Manhattan at the corner of
Broadway and Wall Street. Wearing a headscarf and shades, she sat
under the white umbrella in the park on the North-Northeast side of
Trinity Church. Directly across the street and to the right stood an art
deco skyscraper. Until three months ago, it had been the BNY Mellon
Building, and before that, the Irving Trust Company Building, and now it
was just referred to as One Wall Street.
24
After a mass meeting in July, which included several thousand
members of the global finance community, the people of the city had
quietly, without fuss, disassembled down the New York Stock Exchange.
Conglomerates had yielded up their holdings like preschoolers proudly
spitting out teeth.
This building, like so many others, was now being run by a funky
collection of cooperatives, many of which included former white-collar
criminals. It turned out once the incentives of cocaine and derivatives
were turned off, a great majority of Lower Manhattan plutocrats were
staggeringly good animal whisperers. Those devotees of capitalism who
couldn't find a role in animal handling found another niche: the former
Financial District of New York was quickly becoming America's hot-spot
for mom and pop bed-and-breakfasts. What with the slow dissolution of
Earth’s military might, tourism was up like never before. The world's
leaders were freaking out on a daily basis now.
Ranpo smiled. Even after listening to Roger's music God-knows-howoften, she still couldn't help but feel a little smug. Today's copy of The
New York Times lay on the table, resigned to its fate as the bearer of
confusing trends.
The headline, in big black serif font: THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE
DOWN. It was not so much a news story as it was a long, disjointed
ramble on the bizarre confluence of events of the past thirty-six days:
India and Pakistan amicable, China liberalized, over-fishing scaled back,
Australian Aborigines given a parliament of their own, art and music
programs nationally mandated, the drug trade bloodless, Kid Rock and
all his works exiled to Antarctica. Neither heads nor tails nor heads and
tails together could be made of this feverish parade of good news.
However, if the writers and editors had merely consulted the Arts
page, however, they might have seen a hint: a feature-length piece on
Sally Ranpo's double album Moving the World. Her collaborator? The
previously unknown Lester Kornstar's son.
The album had been released for free on every media platform, by an
unconventional production company, FaithBrands. The album had
already garnered notice for receiving blurbs from both the Dalai Lama
and His Holiness the Pope, not to mention the Greek Orthodox
25
Ecumenical Patriarch of Istanbul, the President of the National
Association of Evangelicals, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, The
Grand Imam of the Al Azhar Mosque, the Chairman of the American
Atheists, and a list of Nobel Prize winners and various celebrities as long
as your arm.
Ranpo, the writer breathlessly described, had broken out of the
golden virtuoso rut she had been laboring in for years; the new album
was an immortal record, a worldwide bestseller. It was broadcast
everywhere. The only caveat most reviewers had was the inclusion of
Kornstar ("a well-meant gimmick," "inoffensive nepotism," "decent of
her to do it"), although all the reviewers admitted they were compelled
to listen ("Kornstar's playing cannot be ignored," "I endured it for
hours," "heartwarming, for some reason"). Some of the sharper critics
noted that the same force that drove them to repeat listenings
("touches something in the soul," "earnest, unforced," "basic decency")
also obliged them to be forthcoming about Roger's deficiencies ("trite,
banal delivery," "uninspired," "tries hard and it shows," "'rote' is perhaps
too kind a word,” "right in the heart, wrong in every other way"). The
small handful of critics who had seen him live argued vehemently that
he had to be heard in person to get the full effect. At least they got that
part right, she thought. FaithBrands had already announced plans for a
worldwide tour to begin this fall. In the meantime, the recorded versions
would have to do the work.
A taxi pulled up in front of the Church in the "Only Bus" lane. The
driver hasn’t been listening, she thought, but stopped short: the zone
was okay for quick unloadings. Out of the back door stepped a worldfamous astronomer, who had recently completed a relaunch of a
beloved science documentary franchise from the nineteen-seventies. He
was also a fan of jazz, and the Ranpo discography in particular.
They exchanged introductions. She led him across the street and into
One Wall Street, through the lobby, and into the elevator.
“So,” the astronomer said, “we’re really going to do this.”
“Yes,” she said, one foot curled up behind her on the wall. She took
her sunglasses off and hung one end from her shirt.
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, revealing a large, busy
26
room. The music was familiar: it was Seriously What Is Going On Here,
the Ranpo/Kornstar duet that closed their album.
He cleared his throat. “Maybe it’ll work. Unlikely outcomes seem to
be the order of the day, after all. The Beatles got back together.”
“Yeah, who saw that coming?”
One hour later, the astronomer sat in front of a monitor in the mixing
booth. His lines of communication stretched to radio antennas
throughout the world; big government installations and amateurs eager
to do their part. The appointed minute drew closer. One by one, the
astronomer received messages that each station was ready to go. The
first go-ahead came from RATAN-600 in Russia. Then the Effelsberg 100m Radio Telescope in Bonn gave the thumbs up. This was followed by
the FAST installation in Guizho, China, and dozens of other broadcasters,
and who knows how many small scale participants. Finally, they got
word the biggest one of all, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico,
was good to go. All of them ready to broadcast to Caldwell 86, a globular
cluster in the constellation Ara.
The astronomer swiveled around in his chair. He gave a thumbs up to
Mitchell and Karen, standing at the mixing board. In the lobby outside
stood the staff of FaithBrands Productions: a large number of people in
traditional religious garb, mixed in with a crowd who appeared to have
come straight from a central casting sheet reading “Evil Eighties
Businesspeople.” Some of them were praying. All were quiet.
Sally and Roger stood in the recording studio, instruments at the
ready. On the other side of the mixing room window, Mitchell gave the
nod. He counted down with his fingers.
She looked at Roger. “You ready?”
"We all know they're out there. This time, they'll have to respond."
Mitchell pushed the button.
They played.
27
Legion
By Michelle Ann King
I first read The Great Gatsby when I was nine years old, but I was
fourteen before I understood it and almost twenty before I realised it
contained the secret of life. Namely, that the past is irrelevant, reality is
what we present it as and reinvention is the key. It’s like quantum
mechanics — on the subatomic level matter is both a wave and a
particle at the same time, until someone looks at it. Only then does it
choose. We make what we see. I am Schrodinger’s cat: alive, dead and
all stages in between, until someone lifts the lid of my box.
He was a clever fucker, that Fitzgerald.
The trick they missed, though, Gatsby and old F. Scott both, is that
you have to keep it moving. Wave, particle, wave. Stay in one shape too
long, get fixed, and you get caught in other people’s stories. The
cuckolded widower thinks that this is his story, and that you’re the bad
guy. Then you lose control. What you need is to make sure you’re always
the hero, the protagonist, the centre. And you have to keep an eye on
the genre — you don’t want to end up in a tragedy if you can help it, or a
Kafka. Waves and particles are one thing, cockroaches are quite another.
I’ve considered Gatsby himself, obviously, but it’d be too much like
hard work. The money and all the stuff would be nice, but I just couldn’t
hack all the parties. The bigger the deal, the more eyes it takes to
witness. He might have hated them all (apart from Nick, of course. You
ask me, that was the real love story) but he couldn’t show it. I haven’t
got that kind of tolerance. And Daisy was a waste of space, as well.
Frankly, I wouldn’t lower myself.
So no, Gatsby works as inspiration but not so well as actual model.
Not yet, anyway. Maybe at the end, when I’m done, that’s how I’ll go
out. It would have a nice kind of symmetry.
For now, though, for right this minute, I’m thinking about early
Elizabeth Swann. (What? That was a great film, and cultural snobbery is
never attractive). I need the wide-eyed, harmless exterior so easy to
underestimate, with the soul — and skills — of a pirate underneath.
28
Because one thing pirates are good at is stealing — especially jewels,
treasure and fine young ladies. Especially from other pirates. And
Elizabeth, being a fine young lady herself, is ideally placed to undertake
such a mission. The lighthearted vibe is important too, because this
keeps trying to turn into one of those dark, gritty urban crime thrillers,
and I’m not having it. I’ve done the exploring-the-darker-side-of-humannature thing, and really, you soon find there’s just not that much to
explore. I’ve been a child called It, Ugly, Lolita, Cinderella, Et cetera, Et
cetera. Yawn. Human depravity isn’t half as interesting as people think.
Including the baby tough guys we’ve got here. They might be
impressing the shit out of themselves, but not me. We’re not exactly
talking the Corleones or Tony Montana, after all. I’m not even convinced
we’re talking Nasty Nick Cotton. Buried under all the detritus — this
party has clearly been raging for a long time — this is a house that’s had
some money spent on it. The furniture is minimal but tasteful, the
gadgetry high-quality and expensive. It isn’t the lair of a gangster, it’s the
bachelor pad of a well-paid City boy with an excess of alcohol, coke and
bravado but a sad lack of imagination.
(I haven’t seen a single book in the entire place, and despite the toplevel audiovisual gear the meagre DVD collection is mostly porn. If it
hadn’t already been abundantly clear that these lads are splashing in the
shallow end of the evolutionary pool, that would cinch it).
The really annoying part of all this is that this was supposed to be my
night off. A nice, free evening to spend getting to know someone I liked
the look of. There’s going to be a party, she said. Docklands, friend of a
friend. Come with me, it’ll be fun.
Fun.
Right.
It still could have been fixed, but they didn’t want to negotiate. They
didn’t want to pay. Not so much because they can’t afford it — like I
said, there’s no shortage of money here — but because the lizard brain
takes greater control with every slurp and snort, and starts howling that
they’re the kings of the universe. Kings of the universe take what they
want — whether to eat, fight or fuck it. At this point, they’re not looking
for a professional. They’re looking for a victim.
29
Legion by Michelle Ann King
Sarah starts to cry. It’s the wrong move; submissive but implicitly
judgemental. They don’t like it. They want her to shut up.
The one who’s house this is, I think his name is Alistair, explains that.
He punctuates the speech with a few slaps, and she starts screaming.
Alistair likes that even less, and decides to deal with the situation by
demonstrating his conflict resolution skills.
He’s short but strong; she hits the wall with considerable force. Her
head snaps back and she makes a huffing kind of sound before
crumpling in an ungainly heap on the carpet. Alistair and I watch her lip
swell and split in slow motion like time-lapse photography. It’s quite
beautiful.
First blood. It’s powerful, primal. It changes things. Changes people.
Alistair takes a step forward, the other leg drawn back. That booted foot
connects hard, and more blood flies. The other two soon catch the lust
and join in.
To be fair, she was probably dead when her head hit the wall. The
intent was to assault, but not to murder. If it had stopped there, maybe
things could have worked out differently. But this... by the time they
stop, panting and dazed, there’s no way to sell this as an accident.
So now we all have a problem: one dead body, one live witness.
The youngest of the boys, a wiry blond, drops to his knees and vomits
on the polished oak flooring. Alistair doesn’t look at him. One more
puddle of puke is the least of his worries right now. Alistair just looks at
me.
Forget Elizabeth Swann. Cunning and charm aren’t going to cut it,
now. There are decisions to be made and I can see in Alistair’s face that
they’re not going to go in my favour. Once a line that wide has been
crossed, it’s easier to just keep going in the same direction.
I think about fighting skills. I tried Inigo Montoya recently and it was
kind of amusing, but honestly? I don’t care who killed my father.
Vengeance is a great theme, but it takes a kind of single-mindedness.
Which isn’t really my strong point, if you see what I mean. And this isn’t
exactly a swordfighting kind of scenario.
Maybe law enforcement is more what I need. Classics like good old
Sherlock Holmes have served me well in the past, as have more varied
30
and modern types like Dana Scully and Clarice Starling (and there’s a film
as good as the book, which is something you don’t often find. Just don’t
bother with the sequel. I’ve got a stronger stomach than most, but that
scene where Anthony Hopkins eats Ray Liotta’s brain? Seriously.)
Puke Boy is still on his knees and the other one, dark haired and
slightly older, is whispering to himself over and over. It sounds a lot like
“oh, shit.” He fumbles a mobile out of his pocket and stares at it stupidly
for a while, but Alistair knocks it out of his hand. It goes skittering
through the remains of Puke Boy’s last pizza slice and cracks against the
wall. Jerry looks at it mournfully.
Alistair hauls Puke Boy to his feet and gives him a focussing slap.
Shape up, lad, there’s work to be done.
All three of them turn to face me.
Okay then. It’s not the law, the good guys, that I need here. I decided
a long time ago that Patrick Bateman was only for really special
occasions, because — and yes, I know the clue was kind of in the title —
that fucker really is crazy. It can be hard to come back from there.
But three on one, with the still-bleeding corpse of my girlfriend at my
feet, I think qualifies as special enough.
It takes a while, and I have to get inventive with some household
equipment, but eventually the odds even up. It’s just me and Alistair
now. Nearly done.
Alistair, of course, thinks the same. He thinks the odds are still on his
side.
Admittedly he has good reason, since in normal circumstances you’d
be forgiven for expecting the carving knife in my chest to be a gamewinning move. Other people have thought similarly before, started
celebrating just that bit too early.
Honestly, haven’t they ever seen a horror film? Jason Voorhees,
Michael Myers, Freddy Kruger — they don’t die, not for good, whatever
happens to them. Not when they’ve got more killing to do.
Alistair crouches down beside me. He puts a shaking, gore-covered
hand to my neck, feeling for a pulse. He stays like that for a long while,
then lets his head sag and his eyes close.
Now he can call the police, ask for help, tell the story of desperate
31
Legion by Michelle Ann King
self-defence against a homicidal lunatic without fear of contradiction. He
thinks he’s won. He thinks it’s over.
He stands up, his knees cracking in the silence, and turns his back on
me.
Someone needs to remind him that it doesn’t work that way, that the
story’s never-ending. I get to my feet, as quietly as I can. He doesn’t
hear, doesn’t look back. Good.
I am legion, for we are many, and I think that someone should be us.
“Legion” was originally published at
“Thrillers, Killers & Chillers” in November 2010
32
Zero, and Everything In It
By Charles Wilkinson
Murchell happened upon the hearse on a lay-by at the edge of the town.
He was intrigued by the dark glint of the bodywork. But as soon as he
caught sight of the vehicle’s sumptuously morbid interior fittings, he
knew he had to have it.
The lay-by lies on the main road between the mountains to the north
and the marshlands to the south. A place with little to detain a man of
sensibility, unless he possesses a passion for recycling centres. Few
people from outside the area visit, although it has one of the county’s
better bus shelters, robustly built of steel and glass and surprisingly
resistant to vandalism.
Someone has stolen five or six plastic chairs of the type found in pub
gardens, so you may sit down to watch the townsfolk bringing cardboard
boxes, bottles, garden waste, old clothes, stained mattresses, the ruins
of a three-piece suite and threadbare carpets, rolled tightly like Havana
cigars. The bus stops three or four times a day. Behind the shelter and
the recycling centre is a factory with a flat roof; it appears to be
abandoned.
Hardly a special spot; in fact, it’s not marked on any map. Yet some in
the town take a quiet pride in the merits of the recycling centre, which
also has plenty of parking space for those using the centre or waiting to
pick up children at the bus stop,. There is always a row of semipermanently parked cars: some abandoned by their owners; others
belonging to people who work in the town. A few are for sale: washed
and with details of price, mileage, MOT and owner’s telephone number
written on notices placed behind the windscreens.
Murchell had never considered buying one of these vehicles until the
day he saw the hearse.
***
The disappearance of the only undertaker in the town was inconvenient:
33
Zero, and Everything In It by Charles WIlkinson
he, or his father before him, had buried all the deceased members of the
Jaste family for the past fifty years. Mrs Jaste put the dead man’s sheets
in the tumble-drier and went back to the window seat. It was warm and
safe inside the launderette, sitting amongst such reassuring sounds: the
purposeful rhythmic shake and rock of the washing-machines and the
tumble-driers turning perpetually like Tibetan prayer wheels. She knew
the launderette was the one place in the town where time was
trustworthy: ‘If it tells you your wash will take an hour and twenty
minutes, then that’s how long you’ll have to wait – and no tricks.’
‘They say he’s got two women on the other side of the hill,’ said Mrs
Edwins, a woman with a long thin grey face that looked as if it had been
hurriedly sketched in pencil.
‘You don’t believe that, do you? He couldn’t cope with one woman –
never mind three!’
‘Well what other explanation is there, Mrs J?’
‘Don’t you worry. He’ll be back once he finds out there’s a Jaste to be
buried.’
‘I wish I had your confidence. I know he’s been on his travels before,
but it’s over a month now. Even Mrs Umbrill is worried.’
‘Has she told the council?’
‘She left a message out with the bins.’
‘Let’s just hope they do something. I’ve got Mr Jaste on ice at home.
It’s not natural.’
‘It certainly isn’t. But you know what I’ve been wondering? We do all
the sorting: this into the blue box; that into the green container; and
what won’t fit in is to be bagged up and put in the brown wheelie bin,
but who knows where it goes. I mean they say it comes back treated.
But what really happens to it? That’s what I’m asking?’
‘It’s a lot of work’
‘I think they just stick it right into the ground. And that’s what they’ll
do with us. Landfill, that’s what we are. Everything that’s used is just
landfill.’
In the far wall was a hatch, said to have been put there so an
assistant could take in washing. But there was no one out the back and
the hatch was never open. Although there were notices on the board,
34
none of them was signed. This was the one place in the town free from
the council and its posters.
The launderette was self-service only and had been for as long as
anyone could recall. But you could tell from the shape of the building
that there was another room. Some claimed this was where the clocks
were kept. But it was hard to be certain, for there was no way in - or out.
***
The town lacked leadership, and Michael Murchell was the person to
provide it. That was what he had decided. He bought an old redbrick
building in the middle of the High Street. They said he’d been lucky.
Nearly all of the shops were owned by either the undertaker or the
council, and they weren’t selling to anybody.
Michael Murchell never paid ground rent. There was a flat above the
shop and every night before he went to bed he murmured: ‘Fee simple
absolute in possession.’ At first it had been a prayer; now it was fact. He
had the documents to prove it.
The sound of a ladder being moved was followed by the creak of
footsteps up the wooden rungs and whistling. A sign-writer was at work.
The shop opened in two weeks and then there would be choice in the
town. But first Murchell would have to prove there was an alternative to
the council’s message of redemption through zero waste. Of course
everyone was in favour of recycling; it was just a question of how it was
done.
He dialled the number written on the card that had been stuck to the
windscreen of the hearse. There was no name or address for the vendor:
just the price, the date of the most recent MOT and a number.
Someone picked up at once, but did not say anything.
‘Hello, I’m calling about a vehicle that’s for sale in the lay-by.’
‘The hearse?’
‘Yes, that’s the one. Who am I speaking to?’
‘That’s not for me say. I’m an intermediary, acting on behalf of the
owner.’
‘Well, who is the owner?’
35
‘He’s not currently in a condition to communicate with you. You’ll
have to deal with me. I have the power of attorney.’
‘But if I don’t know who you are, or the name of the owner, how am I
to make out a cheque?’
‘Cash. We’ll need cash.’
‘Now wait a minute. This deal is legal?’
‘Certainly. You will be provided with documentation.’
The voice on the line was faint. Murchell heard an echo and the skirl
of high wind - as if the man were speaking from near the top of a
mountain in another country.
‘It would be simplest if we met. I’ll get the money from the bank and
be in the…’
‘No, I’m afraid that’s not convenient.’
‘We could meet at The Old Crow Café in the High Street at 11:30
tomorrow.’
‘A meeting is impossible.’
‘As a matter of fact, where exactly are you?’
The voice fell silent. Murchell heard a sound like a cold wind polishing
the edge of a glacier.
‘You are making,’ the voice resumed, so distant now as to be barely
audible, ‘some careless assumptions. The circumstances of my client…
and I… are such that neither of us... can have direct contact with you.’
‘In that case we don’t have a deal.’
‘Leave the payment in the unit at the recycling centre reserved for
waste paper.’
‘That’s absurd. I mean I’ve heard of cash being laundered…’
‘Money is recycled all the time. Once your payment is received our
representative will deliver the keys to your flat in the High Street.’
‘How come you know my address? I didn’t give it to you.’
‘We know as much as we need to know to complete this transaction.’
A click switched off the icy sigh of the wind.
***
This time he hadn’t even left a note. Mrs Umbrill understood that when
36
your trade is death you need to relax with warm flesh. Some in the town
pitied her, but her husband had buried their mothers and fathers. In the
fullness of time, those who whispered behind their hands would be laid
out flat on the table in the back room. Let them find out how hard it is to
gossip once you’re filled with embalming fluid.
Of course, she knew Mr Umbrill had other women. But he’d always
left a note saying when to expect him home and a number to ring if
someone in the town went quickly. People confided in her. How could
she admit she had no idea where Mr Umbrill was and no way of
contacting him?
As she came out of the bakers, Mrs Edwins peered out of the
launderette window and waved. There was no point in trying to avoid
her; she’d only be round knocking on the door. Mrs Umbrill crossed the
road, feeling the weight of every second, the familiar sensation of time’s
exactitude, an awareness of herself as alive in every pace towards the
launderette and its clocks.
‘If it’s about Mrs J’s husband,’ said Mrs Umbrill pre-emptively, ‘tell
her I’ve had no news.’
‘No it’s not that,’ said Mrs Edwins, glancing around. ‘It’s just that my
lad says he’s seen your … vehicle.’
‘What our blue car? I don’t think so. I saw Mr U driving it towards the
mountains Thursday last and he’s not back yet.’
‘No, not the blue car. The vehicle.’
‘What the hearse? That was in the garage last time I looked.’
‘It’s not now. It’s parked up by the recycling centre. Or one very like
it…’
‘How can that happen?’
‘I don’t know. I’m just trying to tell you what he saw. He’s a good lad.
He’d not make it up.’
As she walked away from the laundrette, a crooked wind hooked the
clouds back and forth across the sun, tugging the shadows first one way
and then the other. She was soon at the end of the High Street. Then
before she had sorted her thoughts she reached the tree-lined avenue
that leads up to the main road and the lay-by.
There was little traffic. It was too early for the school coach or the
37
mid-afternoon bus, the one that in winter came down from the
mountains with snow on its roof. Once she had crossed the road, she
saw the hearse parked at a slight angle, as if the driver wasn’t quite used
to the length of it. There was no doubt it was Mr Umbrill’s. Behind the
windscreen was a large piece of white cardboard with nothing written
on it. She tried the doors; they were all locked. There was only one thing
to do: leave another message out with the bins. Then perhaps the
council would finally get back to her. How much longer could they leave
the town without an undertaker?
***
Murchell made his way up to the recycling centre. The coaches had
dropped off the school children and the last bus was on its way up to the
mountains. There were a few parked cars that belonged to those
working late in the pubs and supermarkets. He was unlikely to be
disturbed.
The waste disposal units were arranged in two rows; most were
painted tank-grey, brown or green, which gave them a military
appearance. It was easy to imagine the barrel of a gun protruding from
the bottle-bank. Some of the larger units, used to collect garden waste,
were surmounted by sawn-off branches and miscellaneous greenery.
Murchell had the sense of approaching a heavily camouflaged area. At
the back, right up against a boundary fence, was a metal notice board,
like something borrowed from a fairground, on which regulations and
information about recycling targets were painted in bright colours. A
sheet of yellow paper, signed ten years previously by Miss Heffley, Clerk
to the Mayor and Town Council, informed the public that permission for
improvements to the site had been granted.
Two dark grey shapes, probably rabbits, were moving on the waste
ground on the far side of the fence. A light was on in the factory, which
was odd because during the day the building appeared deserted.
Murchell touched the envelope in his inside jacket pocket and then
went past the garden waste units to the paper bank. A gust of cold wind
from the mountains sent loose cardboard tumbling across the tarmac.
38
The paper bank was a squat construction with an industrial silver sheen.
It had two oblong mouths; the flap of the one nearest to him was open,
as if suspended in the act of vomiting undigested papers and packaging.
Murchell poked the other flap. It gave way to reveal what looked like a
half empty interior, before springing back into place with snap. Had he
disturbed something inside? There was a noise. Perhaps the sound of
paper making its way slowly up through paper? Right from the very
bottom. He knelt, so that his eyes were just above the level of the slot,
and he could peer down to gain a clearer picture of what lay within. He
pushed open the flap. There was a largely flat expanse of paper, but at
its centre something was moving very slightly: a faint simmering, as if it
were the first signs of an impossible process: dry paper coming to the
boil. It began to appear. It was hard say whether it was stirring itself or
being pushed up from below. And then there it was, shaking newspapers
from its shoulders. It had no eyes. Its heart-shaped head was
surmounted by immature horns, little larger than those of a snail; a tiny
tongue moved in its slit of a mouth. It was slightly damp, as if it were still
in the process of being formed.
Murchell took out his envelope containing the money and began to
slide it through the slot. The paper devil swallowed it with flick of its
tongue and started to work the money slowly in its crackling jaws.
***
It was hard being at home with her husband on ice in the big freezer and
no news of a date for the committal. No wonder Mrs Jaste searched her
house for washing. Any excuse for another hour’s peace in the
laundrette. She put a polystyrene cup under the dispenser and waited
for it to eject an exact amount of light blue washing powder at the same
speed as usual. Because of the clocks there was certainty in the
laundrette. The women on the benches watched their husbands’ shirts
and shorts turning. Every one of them knew precisely what point their
wash had reached in the cycle. Yes, they were waiting, but without
anxiety. They knew the time at which their machine would stop down to
the last second; they appreciated the freedom to turn the dial and
39
determine how long the clothes would remain in the tumble dryer. The
laundrette was the only place in the town where there was absolute
order.
Mrs Jaste tried to ignore the women on the bench but couldn’t help
hearing their vicious speculations.
‘Mr E.K.M. Suychard is the mayor.’
‘Yes, but he’d got to be dead by now.’
‘Why?’
‘Nobody’s ever seen him, have they? Well, not in our life time.’
‘What about the Town Clerk. She must have. What with all those
notices she signs on his behalf.’
‘That’s my point. Why doesn’t he sign them himself, if he’s still alive.
And come to think of it how many people have met Miss Heffley?’
‘My mother did. And that’s good enough for me.’
Mrs Jaste began to put her tea towels into the washing-machine.
There was talk of electing a new mayor. E. K.M Suychard had been
returned unopposed since anyone could remember. And now this man
who’d opened a shop in the High Street was going to run for office.
‘Nobody’seen any of the councillors, for that matter. But the bins still
get emptied, don’t they.’
‘That’s not the same. Nobody’s allowed to admit they’re a councillor,
so how do we know who they are? We might have met plenty. Mrs J
here could be one of them and you’d be none the wiser.’
Mrs Jaste turned towards the women on the bench and shook her
head. That was not the sort of thing you wanted to hear anyone say.
‘I’ve never been on no council,’ she muttered, turning towards them.
She switched on the washing-machine and went to the window seat,
well away from the women on the bench. Even if Mr Suychard was dead
that hadn’t prevented him from doing a lot for the town. She watched
two children playing in the street, happy in the flicker of fragile ordinary
lives. It had been a contented place ever since she could remember. Mr
Suychard and the council should be allowed some credit for that. Of
course there were problems. Friends went on a visit to the mountains
and never came back. But they had a recycling centre, a laundrette and,
until very recently, their own undertaker. How many small towns could
40
say as much? And now this Mr Michael Murchell, who hadn’t been living
in the place for more than two minutes, was talking about secret ballots.
Well, Mrs Jaste liked things the way they were. All she wanted was to be
able to bury her husband so the big freezer could be used for its rightful
purpose once more.
***
During the night someone had parked the hearse outside Murchell’s
shop and pushed an envelope containing the keys and the
documentation through his letterbox. At party headquarters he’d been
told about the people who lived between the mountains and the
marshlands: ‘Just because most of them have no loyalty to country or
party and prefer to worship in a launderette it doesn’t mean there aren’t
few a forward-looking individuals. It will be part of your job to contact
them.’ He had made a start; although it was unfortunate he had no
names to pass on to head office.
After breakfast, he would take the hearse out for a spin. Once the
shop opened, he would be a great deal busier. He decided to tour the
surrounding villages, but he was also anxious to check the hiding place
he had found for the blue car. If there was time after that, he would do a
little leafleting before lunch. He picked up one of his flyers:
Opening soon
Murchell’s Multi-Store,
Accessories for Life & Death.
From cot to coffin
Everything’s catered for!
When the townspeople realised the undertaker had gone forever,
they’d know where to turn. And once they saw the choice available and
began to shop properly, and in all good conscience, they would be ready
for participatory democracy.
Few people were about in the street to see Murchell slide into the
driving seat of the hearse. There was a faint scent of flowers, the
41
lingering legacy of a thousand forgotten funerals. He imagined the white
blooms above the flash of varnished wood; the dark clothes and pale set
faces of the mourners.
Within minutes, he was out of the town and heading towards the
villages. He passed the Yew Tree House Old People’s Rest Home, with its
locked gate and high walls topped by spikes and barbed wire. Were such
precautions really necessary?
It was a fine day, an impeccably blue sky dusted with a faint haze on
the horizon above the marshlands. To his right lay the mountains, their
highest peaks burnished to a dangerous gleam. Perhaps it was no
surprise that curious customs and beliefs survived in such a remote
place: a sense of washing-powder as being holier than the wine-blood of
the host; the rituals of recycling either heretical or ignored; local politics
the preserve of the dead. It was up him, Michael Murchell, to show
them what really worked: how modernity could be combined with
traditional values to create a society where even the smallest scrap of
waste was rendered economically viable and everyone could be
confident of shopping correctly.
Its black bonnet glimmering in the noon-day light, the hearse flew
along the smooth surface of the main road. On either side, sheep
cropped the valley-green grass. A dilapidated lodge stood next to two
pillars surmounted by weathered stone pineapples. An overgrown path
led not to a great house but fields with mature trees – oaks, ash, horse
chestnuts and cedar - that hinted at the magnificence of a lost estate.
About five miles out of town, Murchell turned off the main road. The
narrow lane was not signposted; overgrown hedges obscured the view
of the surrounding countryside. The hearse, slowing to a pace
appropriate to its former function, crushed the wildflowers and nettles
on the verge. If Murchell met any on-coming traffic, he would have to
retreat. But he knew this was unlikely, for in front of him there were no
houses - not even a cattle shed. When the lane dwindled to a track, he
stopped the hearse and got out. Ahead of him was a broken gate, green
with mould, clinging from its final hinge to a rotten post. Beyond lay
dense woodland. Strange that he’d come here when he had intended to
check on the blue car first. He was pleased to see the long grass had
42
sprung back and the tyre tracks were barely visible. Pushing back the
branches, he made his way through the ferns and bracken until he
reached the spot where he had buried the undertaker. The air about him
was filled with midges and scar-brown moths. It was a minute before he
found the grave, gaping and empty, the earth thrown back like a blanket
knitted from soil.
***
‘It was there,’ said Mrs Jaste raising her voice, for every washingmachine was in use except the largest. ‘It was turning right at the end of
the High Street. But I could only see the back of the driver’s head.’
‘It was up at the recycling centre the other day. I told Mrs U. Perhaps
she sent someone up from the garage to collect it,’ Mrs Edwins replied,
not taking her eye from the swirl of foam and sheets in front of her.
Several people in the town had seen the hearse, disappearing round
a corner or going over the bridge that leads to the mountains. No one
managed to get a good view of the driver.
‘Still, when you stop to think about it, I suppose it doesn’t really
matter, does it?’ said Mrs Jaste.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘All I’m saying is… what good’s a hearse without an undertaker?’
‘You’re right enough there.’
‘I’ll tell you this,’ said Mrs Jaste. ‘There’s several gone in the town,
and not all families with a big freezer.’
‘And what’s the council doing about it? That’s what I’d like to know.’
Mrs Jaste had put out a message with the bins every day for the last
month, and still there was no reply. ‘It looks as if I will have to go up to
the factory.’
‘I’d stay well clear. You know what it says: No visitors, before or after
dark.’
‘What else can I do? The bin men are saying nothing. I’ve no choice,
Mrs E; no choice at all.’
Mrs Edwins rose and put a hand on Mrs’s Jaste’s shoulder. ‘I
wouldn’t, not if I were you. I mean we all know she must be up there.
43
But what sort of shape can she be in after all these years?’
‘My mother saw her once.’
‘Miss Heffley?’
‘Of course. Mother was only a young girl at the time. But it made an
impression on her, I can tell you.’
‘And Miss Heffley. Was she really as large as…’
‘Enormous.’
For a moment, there was no sound, apart from the nine washingmachines in use, all at a slightly different stage of the cycle and sounding
a separate note; all accompanied by an appropriate degree of vibration.
Both women took comfort in the thought of the many sheets, shirts,
skirts, socks, trousers and handkerchiefs that were being washed, rinsed
and spun, each garment rotated towards a condition of absolute
cleanliness. The tenth washing-machine, which was larger than the
others, stood silently against the back wall. Despite not being a recent
model, it was in much the best condition. The women were able to
sense rather than articulate that the industry of the nine operating
machines, their ceaseless lavations, was a prayerful polyphony, a form of
offering to the tenth machine, which though apparently idle was the
very conduit through which time flowed from the back room where the
clocks were kept. For now, they were safe inside the launderette.
***
As soon as it was dark, Murchell locked up his shop and set off in the
direction of the lay-by. The blue car was not where he had left it on a
track leading to an abandoned quarry ten miles out of town; nor was it
outside Mrs Jaste’s house. Of course, it was quite possible that metal
thieves had towed it away for scrap, but all day Murchell, whilst helping
to supervise the furnishing of his shop, was troubled by the thought that
the blue car was parked, apparently without guile, up at the recycling
centre. But would it be for sale? And if wasn’t, did that mean the
undertaker had been using it?
On the brow of the hill, he waited for a car or lorry to come along the
main road and light up the car park for an instant before heading in the
44
direction of the marshlands. Little traffic went towards the mountains in
the evenings and it was several minutes before a van passed, its
headlamps revealing an apparently empty car park, apart from three
vehicles that had been for sale ever since Murchell had come to the
town. He crossed the road. Having prepared himself for the presence of
the blue car, he was reluctant to return home without double checking.
Perhaps it had been left in the dark shadows of the recycling bins? As he
drew level with the bottle bank, he heard a movement. There were
creatures subsisting in the rubbish, but something human about the
noise told him it had not been made by anything at work in the bins.
‘Hello?’ he said.
A faint shuffling sound and then something detached itself from the
surrounding darkness. He was about to take a step back when a car
passed, its lights showed an old woman, her hair covered by a headscarf;
one side of her face was illuminated, an unnatural white; the other half
was in shadow.
‘If you’ve come for the bus up to the mountains, you’re too late,’ she
said.
‘No. I was looking for a blue car that I’d heard was parked up here.’
‘A blue car?’
‘That’s right. You haven’t seen one, I suppose.’
‘The only blue car in these parts is owned by him who went missing.’
‘Really? And who might that be?’
‘I’d like a word with him. Certain responsibilities, he has. Once a
man’s said he’ll do a job…’
A car flashed by in the opposite direction. She had turned away from
him; her face in profile smaller than before. He tried to form a picture of
what she looked like in daylight, but it was as if he had picked up a piece
that did not fit a jigsaw.
‘I too dislike it when people leave jobs unfinished,’ he prompted.
‘My man’s on ice,’ she said. ‘His face on the frozen peas. How long
before he gets a proper burial? That’s all I want to ask. The council
should do something.’
‘Oh yes, our elusive council and its absent mayor. I’m certainly with
you as far as they’re concerned. It’s about time someone else is given a
45
go.’
‘I wouldn’t say that, if I were you.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘They’ll feed you to the clocks!’
At party headquarters he had been warned what to expect. ‘You’ll
find the townspeople have given themselves up to all sorts of
superstitions. It’s likely you will come across things that at first appear
difficult to explain: the ghost of a cardinal trapped in a tin can, paper
demons, incubi arranged as broken glass, a daffodil powered by the
moon. But just remember that a good proportion of whatever you see
and hear will turn out to be a conjuring trick.’ Was it really worth
unravelling what this old woman meant by ‘the clocks.’?
***
‘Did you go up there?’ asked Mrs Edwins.
‘Yes.’
‘And was she in?’
‘I think so. I waited until a light came on and then walked over to the
factory. There was no letterbox and so I pushed my note under the door.
Something was moving around inside. And very large it was too. When I
put my hand against the wall, I could feel the vibrations.’
‘They say they had to knock down most of the interior walls, so she
could move around more freely. That’s why there’s so much scaffolding.’
‘I can credit it,’ said Mrs Jaste putting her sheets in the tumble drier.
‘She’s always been big, Miss Heffley has. That’s well known.’
Four of the machines reached spin at almost the same moment, as if
the chorus were building towards the crescendo. Mrs Jaste and Mrs
Edwins paused out of respect. It was a privilege to be alive in a place
where time was accurate and garments moved inexorably towards
greater whiteness.
‘There’s one thing that has always puzzled me,’ said Mrs Edwins.
‘Why do they call it the factory?’
‘Because there are machines up there. They do the thinking behind
the by-laws. Or so it’s said. Miss Heffley couldn’t operate without them.’
46
The smell of clean laundry filled the air. Now she had delivered her
message, Mrs Jaste sensed a process was at work; events were moving
towards a favourable resolution. For the first time in months, she went
about her everyday tasks with a buoyancy she had not felt since Mr
Jaste was last with her.
‘I’ll tell you what is strange, Mrs E.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘The night I was up at the factory, a man was there. Asking if I’d seen
a blue car.’
‘That don’t mean anything. Just because there’s always been only
one blue car in this town …’
‘Wait a minute. Let me finish, Mrs E! As I was saying, this man … well,
I believe I’ve seen him before. It was quite dark, so I can’t be certain, but
I think it was the new man. The one with the shop in the High Street.’
‘You know what I’ve heard about the blue car.’
‘It’s back. Parked outside the bakery it was, for a good half an hour.’
‘That’s right … and up by the auction house too.’
‘No one has seen the driver.’
‘Mrs U’s not saying anything.’
They glanced at the tenth washing-machine. Although they could not
see anything remarkable, they knew it was sucking in the minutes, one
after the other; just as it was giving them out, one at a time. But what
did it do with the old ones? Once enough were collected were they sent
to the clocks to be reconfigured and given back to the world as the
present afresh? Or did they sink to the bottom of the machine, waiting
like memories to be sluiced down into darkness? The council said there
was no such thing as nothing, merely that which gathered at the point of
zero. Everything that was unclean would be collected, washed, spun and
rinsed, and then returned dry into the world as something else that
could be worn again.
***
Murchell was so preoccupied with the rumours that he rose a full two
hours before he was due to open the shop. That the undertaker was
47
alive hardly seemed possible. There had been a commendable finality in
the manner in which he’d brought the monkey wrench down on the
man’s skull. And how could he forget burying him, bloodied and without
breath, mouth wide enough to catch the first spadeful of soil? Yet
Murchell was informed that the blue car was back in the town and, what
was more terrifying, several interments had taken place, including that
of Mrs J’s husband. In spite of this, no one claimed to have seen the
undertaker. The bodies vanished from the freezers and out-houses
where they were kept and then reappeared, reverently laid to rest in the
cemetery.
There were also the disappearing deliveries. Murchell’s Multi-Store
was decorated to a high standard, with newly painted walls and deep
carpets, but the fine wooden shelves, made from the best oak, remained
empty. On three occasions central office assured him the goods had
been sent but not a single shipment arrived. Inquiries to the suppliers
elicited either bewilderment or vague apologies combined with
unconvincing assurances that the supplies would be with him shortly.
‘How am I supposed to run a shop without anything to sell?’ he had
asked his contact at central office the previous day.
‘Don’t worry. I’ve checked. There have been delays in your part of the
world. You‘ll have everything you need within the next two weeks. All
the high chairs, carriers, building blocks, baby food and soft toys should
arrive in a day or so.’
‘As it happens, it’s the other end of the range I’m concerned about. A
few of the more sensible citizens here have accepted that the
undertaker isn’t likely to be available in the near future and know they’ll
have to look in another direction for funerary services. But it’s hard to
sell a coffin from a catalogue. People want to feel the wood; see the
shine on the brass.’
‘Yes, I can understand that.’
‘In that respect they’re quite traditional. Particularly when it comes
to death. One old boy told me that things have to be done properly if a
settlement is to be reached. Proper contracts, that’s what he said.’
With an effort, Murchell shook off his disquiet and began spraying
furniture polish over the vacant shelves. At least his plans for the
48
election were on course. At first, he thought he would be returned
unopposed, but a week after announcing his candidature, notices, all
signed by Miss X.T. Heffley, were put up around the town. They stated
that E.K.M Suychard, the incumbent Mayor and candidate of the
reigning council, would once again be standing for office. A contest
would add legitimacy to the election and, as far as Murchell could see,
he had little to fear. His rival had disdained all forms of campaigning,
aside from his name on the ballot papers. Murchell, on the other hand,
had been very busy promoting his vision of consumerism as ‘carnival’, a
joyous celebration of choice. ‘It is through the act of shopping that we
forge our identities,’ he told the small crowd who had gathered to hear
him speak outside the Auction House. What he needed was a way of
communicating that the old order was gone for good. He decided to
paint the hearse pink.
***
There was a choice of washing-powders in the laundrettes and several
conditioners, all supplied without the need for a request. The machines
themselves offered a selection of cycles, and it was possible to use hot
or cold water. Nor was there anything pre-ordained about the size and
composition of each load. As they went about their tasks, the women
were conscious of freedom within defined limits: the space within the
four walls and the time that flowed beneficently from the tenth
washing-machine.
‘And Mr J. He’s been settled now, has he?’ said Mrs Edwins.
‘Yes, he was taken. Some time in the small hours it must have been
or I’m sure I’d have woken up.’
‘You weren’t there to see him off?’
‘No, but when I went down to the cemetery the next morning
everything had been done proper. And that’s what matters.’
Mrs Jaste went over to the dispensers and filled a polystyrene cup
with light blue powder. When she was a young girl, she had asked her
mother why the powder never ran out. Did somebody creep out from
the back room and put more of it in the dispenser when no one was
49
looking? Her mother laughed, but then, after some thought, admitted
that although this was possible, most people believed there had always
been washing powder in the laundrette and, as far as anybody could tell,
there always would be.
‘And you’re sure it was Mr U who … provided the service?’
‘Who else could it have been? The Jastes have always been very
particular about how they’re buried. No one else would have known
what to do.’
‘Mrs U must be pleased to see him.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Jaste, turning the dial in the direction of ‘delicates’,
she’s not actually seen him. She says he’s just working nights at the
moment.’
‘But how can she be sure he’s there?’
‘Oh, the little things. His favourite mug unwashed in the sink and the
lid of the tea caddy left open; the sound of sawing during the night, and
wood shavings all over the floor, just like they always used to be; the
black book ready and the page marked; his tall hat waiting on the side
table. He’s back all right. It’s just that he’s not showing himself … as
such.’
‘He’s not going to be pleased when he finds out what’s been done to
his hearse.’
‘No, he is not! I heard the man that’s got it claimed to have bought it.
What a cheek!’
‘He’s not been here long enough to know better, has he? Still, he’ll
soon find there are only certain things that are for sale in this town and
a hearse isn’t one of them.’
***
On the morning of the election there was bright weather and roof tops
glittering in sharp-slanted sunlight. The lines of colours in the striped
awnings were crisp; a glassy sparkle on the pavements. Someone had
decreed that the door of the launderette should be left open so that the
best quality time could flow into the street. The minutes wouldn’t run
down too quickly nor an hour vanish without explanation. There were
50
few people out on the streets, but Murchell sensed expectancy in the
air.
At the recycling centre, buses arrived and departed; the traffic moved
briskly in both directions. An average number of cars were for sale; for
the moment, nothing stirred in the paper bank.
On the other side of the fence, the rabbits flickered over the fringes
of the waste land. Only the factory, its flimsy walls supported by rusty
brown scaffolding, did not reflect the sun. There were no lights on and
not the slightest signs of any activity within; Miss Heffley was asleep - or
thinking.
Murchell had leafleted every shop in the High Street on foot, and
now he was in the driving seat of the hearse, proceeding pinkly, and at a
pace well above the funereal, around the estates. One hand held the
steering wheel; the other gripped a megaphone through which he
fulminated on the council’s record of maladministration, its unrivalled
reputation for invisibility and the strange longevity of its Mayor, Mr
E.R.M Suychard.
As he drove back towards the centre, he told himself that he had
every reason for optimism. Predictably his opponent remained
impalpable, less than shadowy. A public appearance would be
unthinkable. He had not even met anyone canvassing on the Mayor’s
behalf. If it were not for the notices signed by Miss Heffley and the two
names on the ballot papers, he would have no way of knowing that he
was in contest. He remembered head office’s opinion of the
townspeople: ‘Of course, they don’t have any proper beliefs, and no
loyalties to anything of substance. They have a few traditions and some
contractual obligations, particularly when it comes to burial rites. And a
misguided faith in their ability to create something out of nothing. In
that sort of place, once you’ve disposed of the undertaker, you should
have a clear run.’
It was late afternoon before he saw the first of the strangers heading
towards the auction house: an old man in a badly cut black suit passed
him in the High Street. His face was a web of fine lines and a white shirt
hung loosely around a drainpipe neck. Within minutes there were
others, people whom he’d never seen before, all pallid, the men stone51
bald, the women with the residue of hair, like sea-foam left on the
strandline. Their eyes were small, as if it had been thought necessary to
screw them down deep into the sockets. As Murchell watched them, he
understood that there was something familiar about these strangers. To
him they appeared prototypical of the town’s present inhabitants. They
were all heading towards the ballot box. Were they from the
surrounding villages? He had to find a way of putting his point of view to
them.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, approaching a small man, bent over and with a
white, crumpled face and ears like putty. ‘Have you and your friends
come into town to vote? I’m Michael Murchell, one of the candidates.
I’m afraid that you might not yet have had the chance to hear…’
‘We’re the forebears,’ the man replied. ‘There’s no point in the likes
of you speaking to us.’
‘Just listen to me for a moment. The organisation I represent is not
just a political party. It’s the largest chain of hypermarkets in the
country. It’s even a bank. What sort of interest are you getting on your
savings?’
‘Zero and everything in it.’
‘Well, you’re going to need more than that unless you’re dead!’
‘There’s no such thing as ‘dead’ when you’ve been properly buried.’
He turned away, and moved on with the surprising swiftness.
They were proceeding steadily up the High Street now, in groups of
four or five or more, although there was one man with large glasses
loitering outside Aickman and Co. If all these people were going to vote
for Suychard, something would have to done very quickly. The
launderette. It was the one place he had never seen the council’s
regulations displayed. There were always plenty of women in the
launderette. He should go there and tell them that with his policies all
women would be allowed names longer than one letter and everyone
would soon be able to afford their own washing-machine.
To his surprise the place was empty. He shut the door. The floor was
littered with empty polystyrene cups. Baskets filled with laundry, some
of which had been folded neatly, no doubt awaited collection. The door
of the largest machine was open and the hole appeared quite dark, as if
52
there were no steel drum inside, simply nothing. For a reason he
couldn’t understand, he took several steps towards it.
Then he heard a noise behind him. The undertaker was taller than
when he last saw him. Although his face was unrecognizable, ice had
edged its way out of the wound left by the monkey wrench. The snow
on his shoulders and the broken cap of his head suggested that he was
not long down from a visit to the mountains. There was enough sunlight
from outside to stretch out his freezing shadow on the floor. His icicle
fingers had grown the capacity to cut.
In the auction house, the ballot papers would be collected in an
hour’s time. All was quiet at the recycling centre, of which the town was
so proud, although if you put your ear to the ground there was a very
slight vibration, which could be the bus coming up from the marshlands or Miss Heffley, shifting her position ever so slightly behind the factory
walls.
Murchell looked from the undertaker to the open door of the tenth
washing-machine. For the first time, he wondered whether there was
more than one type of nothing. Extinction here, and resurrection
through recycling or … who was the philosopher who said we cannot
imagine the absence of space and time? He couldn’t remember. Outside,
snow was falling; in place of the dim light bulb, a stalactite glistened on
the ceiling. His grey breath steamed and vanished in the whitening
world.
The room was even colder now that the undertaker had shut the
door. He was moving slowly towards him, with glacial inevitability. In his
outstretched hands of frost and ice he held legal documents: affidavits,
powers of attorney, a will, contracts - all the years of paper that
Murchell had ever signed. Trying to kill him again would be a waste of
energy. Nothing was as persistent as an identity in law. If Murchell
stepped backwards and fell down into the darkest black drum, would he
be washed white and spun round into a new time. Every last bit of the
self’s fleshy rubbish recycled? Or should he dive straight down, hoping
to hit absence at the heart of zero?
53
The Shoe
By Jaclyn Adomeit
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
Alright, let's get something clear. I wasn’t always the old woman who
lived in the shoe.
Once, she was a young woman that lived in a shoe. Her parents died
prematurely, due to a nasty bacterial ailment that would have been
speedily resolved by the discovery of penicillin a half century later. But,
alas, the young woman was left alone to manage the leather
homestead. She polished and stitched, dusted and buffed, keeping the
shoe in top condition in remembrance of her dear, deceased parents.
I’m not even sure where all of the shoe bollocks started. So let me
straighten it out for you: it’s a house made of leather – no laces, no
buckles – leather and wood. There was a surplus of cows one year.
The shoe was built the summer the architect ran off to Banbury
Cross, and the town's shoe maker was rapidly promoted.
The care of a shoe is a difficult thing. For the old woman, the harsh
chemicals and cleaning products she used thinned her hair, spotted her
skin, and deprived her of youth and beauty.
It was hard labor. I'd like to see you buff leather after each snow
storm.
So, she resorted to child labor: for her strength and health.
Now, no one was calling it child labor, but there was a shortage of
orphanages in the area, and it was incredible how many bunk beds
would fit within the shoe’s leather walls. The standard line given to
neighbours was that though she had never found the love of a man, her
life was worth so much more for the love of so many children.
The children brought home endless assortments of animals. The old
woman didn’t mind: the dogs kept out the nosy neighbours, the cats ate
the birds, the birds ate the spiders, and the spiders ate the flies that
nestled on the smaller children. Also, if an animal went missing, and that
night there was extra meat in the soup, the children knew not to
mention it.
54
It built character! They sure didn’t have it worse than the brats at the
orphanage.
It was a golden time, until Jack began collecting everyone's pennies.
County law mandated that the children were, by rights, allowed to
have allotted pocket money. When the old woman asked how much
money and did not receive an answer, she determined that a penny a
month was a sufficient sum.
Who was I supposed to be, the Queen of England? Maybe if they
stamped my head on coins I could have started handing them out like
they were jelly beans.
Okay fine, I never handed out jelly beans either.
The children did contribute to the home, after all. The girls sewed –
the ones with poor eyesight were provided extra thimbles. Tourists
passing through the county went crazy for Granny Shoe's homemade
quilts and pillows.
The boys labored, chopped, honed, and polished: all the tasks
necessary to keep the shoe in good condition. They even climbed the
leather exterior to shine the chimney. The children made furniture to
ensure there was a place along the bench so each child could be served
meals, and a bed for each to rest their malnourished head. At night,
when the children were nestled, tucked in their beds, at the toe of the
shoe, and pretending to snore, the old woman would cross the sole,
walk through the kitchen in the arch, and climb her spiral staircase in the
heel, until she arrived at her own tiny room in the ankle.
The place was kept spick and span. Shoes were not allowed in the
shoe.
For meals it was porridge for breakfast, porridge and an onion –if
there were extra—for lunch, and soup with a slice of bread for supper.
The thickness of the soup varied by season and the old woman's mood.
When kids got sick or injured, or if they got a little too comfortable, the
old woman would relocate her charges to the streets of nearby towns.
What else was I going to do – throw them a pity party? It was an
orphanage not adoption.
And as long as the woman received the correct amount for each child
in her pocketbook at the end of each month, she was satisfied.
55
The Shoe by Jaclyn Adomeit
Now Jack – an orphan with no last name – had been around a little
too long for the old woman's liking. She understood, however, that it
was not every day you found a six-foot tall thirteen-year-old who could
lift double his body weight. There was no way she was giving up Jack.
Jack wasn’t an issue, until he began collecting pennies.
The old woman didn’t notice at first, back then a penny could buy a
whole satchel of candy, and sometimes she would snatch away a sweet
from an unsuspecting hand.
There was no money for dental care!
Perhaps the sugar gave her a brief interlude to an otherwise sour life.
Well anyway, Jack was collecting pennies.
Pennies! You keep talking about pennies like they were worthless. You
could buy a book for a penny back then. I was funding their education!
The children were each given the lowest possible denomination of
currency that was available in the county as their monthly allowance,
and that amount of money could buy a book.
Well bully. Get on with it.
Now Jack wasn’t beanstalk Jack, or candlestick Jack, or that skinny
Jack with the chunky wife (though he'd met those guys in town), but just
Jack who lived with the old woman in the shoe.
How about Lady of the shoe? Doesn’t that have a nicer ring to it?
The Lady of the Shoe eventually learned that Jack was good at more
than lifting small cows over fences. Jack of the shoe was good at having
money make money.
Bo-Peep lost her sheep: not the first time, not the second time, but
the third time. Jack had a soft spot for Peep, and she knew she could not
ask her father for replacement wool-bearers, and it may have been,
partially, Jack's fault since they had been off behind the barn. Jack
fronted the money for a new flock then helped her shepherd, even sent
a few of the younger orphans to curtail the flock when Peep was off in
town. With the talented child-labor of the shoe, Jack and Peep didn’t
need to sell raw wool, but hats and mittens and scarves and blankets.
When the pennies started coming back in, Jack was happy to see his
coins had new companions.
The business commenced as most prolific business ventures
56
commence: completely by accident and as a side effect of attempting to
bypass impractical morality. Farmer MacDonald needed a forward on his
cash crop, so he came to Jack. Cat needed a new fiddle – Jack. Bo-peep
lost her sheep, again: our young man Jack could mend all worldly
problems for a reasonable interest rate.
The kids were all in on it – their pennies paid dividends. Jack gave
them each a piece of paper with a count of how many pennies they
contributed and bore Jack's own fingerprint to prevent forgeries.
No one ever thought to default on Jack. There is certain vigour for
vengeance that is present only in the young. A whole band of children
backed Jack's cause.
Mother Hubbard didn’t have a bone in her cupboard after the
orphans snuck in through an upstairs window. The town suffered a
rampant rat problem when the Pied Piper's newly purchased flute was
filled with hot lard then left in the snow. The crooked man—whose
name should have spoken for itself—came home one day to find his
house propped up, his mile long path paved straight, and even his cat's
tail upright. His business went under since Straight Man Moonshine just
didn’t have the same ring to it. As well, the tourists had no desire to
taunt a normal man with a hunched shoulder.
Enough of it, get on—we get the picture.
You think it was an accident that Humpty fell from the wall?
I swear to leather bound stiches, if you carry on for one more minute.
After that the town knew when to leave well enough alone. It was all
going well until the old woman needed money.
There was inflation! And you think the county would increase the
amount I got for those brats. They decreased it! Something to do with an
"allowable amount" of orphan income.
The old woman attempted to enter the world of entrepreneurial
finance for herself. She took an investment tip from the Straight Man, a
venture rumored to turn pennies into pounds. Unfortunately, the
Wishing Well cough syrup factory, with real opiate derived cough syrup,
went under before the first highly addictive batch could be sent to
market. This was around the time that opium was deemed to be a blight
on the general population, and made illegal.
57
Back in the days of plentiful copper, the old woman bought, day-olds
– or half-burnts –from the baker. She'd even get a combination discount
on green meat and bent candles. But the money was gone, so there was
no longer any bread, the candles were burnt down to wax stubs, and
there we no longer any animals left on the property save for the old
woman's beloved dogs.
So she went to Jack. Well, first she attempted to spy on Jack. To find
where he hid the coins, and take what was her fair share. The old
woman followed him herself, attempted to train a few of the remaining
dogs to sniff coins and hound down the money, and even bribed the
younger children with imaginary baked goods and lollipops – all to no
avail.
She learned that Jack had started an account at the bank during one
of his frequent errands into town. The lending was now such an
enterprise that the tellers took care of the loan transactions.
So she sat Jack down, swallowed her pride and asked for help. The
children jostled to eavesdrop at the keyhole of the kitchen where they
sat. At the end of the conversation, the old woman and Jack shook
hands, a paper was signed, and she left to the bank. After all the old
woman needed a loan to keep the shoe, and Jack did not want all the
orphans to be left sole-less.
It was when the old woman defaulted on her first month's payment
that the trouble began.
Defaulted on payment my bloomers; those were my pennies.
The children were determined to get even: defaulted payments made
for lacking dividends. They started small. The old woman didn’t take
kindly to salt instead of sugar in her coffee, or frogs slipped under her
bedroom door, but she was willing to turn a blind eye if that was the end
of it. She grew paranoid and locked her bedroom door with three
deadbolts, a combination lock, a door chain, and a skeleton key, for
good measure.
She was sure her age old tactic of discipline would be sufficient in this
situation as well. A riding crop, cast in the same leather as the shoe,
hung next to the pots, pans, and serving spoon. There were no horses on
the property. The old woman had never taken the crop down from its
58
peg.
The orphans didn’t need to know that.
Then, one morning, the porridge was doled out and scarfed down,
but not one bottom rose from the table when the day of chores was
meant to commence. When the old woman asked what they thought
they were playing at she was met with countless stares that said the
same. No fingers would sew, polish, chop, or knit. Not until the loan was
paid all up.
Defeated, she strode to the kitchen, and turned the lock. The children
raced out into the sunshine and did not come back until the sun touched
the horizon, and the table was set for supper. The old woman stood at
the head of the long table. In the pre-grace silence snickers passed up
and down the table in rolling waves.
"Until attitudes improve," the old woman said, "and until the house is
free of vermin –present company excluded – there will be only broth for
breakfast, broth for noon-day meal, and broth for supper. There will be
no bread."
A hush hung fast in the leathery air. Eyes flicked from Jack to the old
woman.
Jack lifted his bowl and passed it down the line for his portion of
broth.
There was much clamour and steady slurps of watery soup. During
the commotion, Jack passed a handful of coins to tiny Tom Thumb, along
with a whisper. Tom was not the size of a thumb—his legend grew in
later years, as rumors do—but he was the smallest orphan in the shoe,
and certainly not the youngest. At ten he stood at the height of the old
woman's gnarled hip. He had dark hair and eyes that whispered of gypsy
blood. They glimmered, day or night. When Jack looked into Tom's eyes,
his own reflection did not look back, but was swallowed in their depths.
Tom had not spoken a single word since he arrived at the shoe, four
years earlier. The orphans would whisper about gypsy witches and
amulet curses, but only when Tom was not in ear shot. Tom accepted
Jack's coins with a nod.
At the end of the meal, the old woman stood. Stomach grumbles
greeted her as she faced the children. "I know what you think," the old
59
woman said, "that broth before bed is just cruel. But you'll thank me one
day for a lesson well learned. For young bodies need more than hot
gruel." She had been working on the rhyme while she pretended to sip
at soup and thought of the dried fruit and bread she stashed in her own
quarters. "That when discipline comes, discipline counts, and that I do
know better than you."
Caught up in her words the old woman did not notice that the eyes of
the orphans were focused on Tom Thumb, and the bucket he carried,
then placed, behind the old woman.
"And with that," the old woman concluded, "I will send you to bed."
She stepped back, and much to her surprise, the bucket swallowed
her stocking foot, caught her skirts and caused her to go Rumple over
Stiltskin. The layers of linen and petticoat over her head did not muffle
the yelping laughter of many children.
Damn brats, should have sent them to bed starving. Not an ounce of
respect for authority.
Wresting her skirts from her ears the old woman shrieked. In the
corner of her eye she spotted one child out of place, a single child not
laughing. The lady of the shoe grabbed Tom by his tiny thumb, snatched
the whip from beside the pots, and dragged them both outside and into
the light of the setting sun.
Laughter ceased. The boys clambered outside and the girls huddled
together and covered their eyes.
She ripped Tom's shirt from his back before the first orphan could
make it outside. The crack of the whip rang over the chirp of crickets.
The second crack expanded to fill the silence. The third parted Tom's
silent lips.
Jack wedged his way through the children and rushed forward to stall
the fourth blow. As he grasped at Tom's wrist the riding crop slashed
through the air and left a gash on his unbearded cheek.
His eyes met the old woman's as drops of blood stained Jack's shirt.
"To bed with you all now." The old woman said, releasing Tom. "And
I'll not hear a peep."
The old woman and Jack stood, eyes locked, while the stain grew on
Jack's collar. He broke eye contact first, and strode back to the Shoe.
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Insolent boy. I should have whipped him raw and thrown him to the
dogs. If only I had known.
Each child trod with heavy feet to bed. They put on their caps and
tucked into false snores. The old woman climbed her stairs, latched the
bolts, and lit a stub of a candle so that she could read in the fading light.
Jack lay awake in his too small bed, and pondered his options. He let
a cordial hour elapse as the dusk turned to night, and many of the
orphans to joined Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. Jack sat up in bed. More
than once, when Jack knocked on the old woman's door, he heard the
jingle of coins and the scraping of wood, but he never dared to enter her
room. He knew there was no way to get through the door with all those
locks. As Jack walked through the beds in the darkness, a couple of tiny
frames fidgeted.
"Tom."
Tom's eyes were wide and pulsing. He sat up as Jack crouched down.
On more than one occasion Jack was led to believe that Tom could read
minds. He couldn’t. He simply picked up on conversations, overheard
things that a large boy like Jack would never be privy to.
"I think I know where she keeps the coins. I've heard tinkling and the
scraping of wood when I've knocked on her door."
Tom hopped from the bed, crouched down, and knocked on the
floor. A board wiggled.
"Exactly. There is only one way of getting in with all those locks." Jack
pointed to one of the small windows that let in pre-moonlight.
Tom replied with a firm nod. Together they walked to the side door.
Jack turned the lock, softly. He clasped the bell above the back door,
turned the handle, and Tom slid into the night.
Outside, Tom walked through the tangled grass to the back of the
shoe and looked up at a window located at the very top of the ankle. A
flickering light distinguished it from its frame. The leather of the shoe
was supple, aged, and easy to climb. Tom did not have much weight to
support on the handfuls of hide. A quick glimpse into the window
showed the old woman fast asleep her candle on the nightstand burning
down to its stub.
No lock slowed Tom as he slid the window further open and fit like a
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thread through a needle. He slunk along the floor waiting for a telltale
creak, but each floorboard he stepped on was firm.
The bed frame was just far enough off the ground to fit Tom's narrow
torso. He looked up at the old woman. Mouth open and pillow growing
wet with drool. He crouched beneath the bed. Several boards later he
found a raised plank. It squeaked.
Tom held still in the silence. The old woman slept on.
Double-crossing, stinking, good for nothing, gypsy-cursed fool.
His dirt encrusted nails scraped the edge of the board and pried it
from the floor. He slid the board aside and looked into the shallow joist.
The bed creaked. Tom froze. A held heartbeat later the old woman
snored on. The gashes on Tom's back throbbed with the heat of his
pulse.
Beneath the missing floor board lay a white cotton bag. It bulged
with the outlines of circular objects. Tom took a deep breath, clutched
the draw string and began to pull.
The coins jingled as they slid to the bottom of the bag, but then shut
their copper lips and kept Tom's secret. Standing up, Tom edged to the
window and tossed the coins onto the ground below.
His only mistake, if indeed it was a mistake, was the knock of his
shoeless foot against the bed table as he slid out into the night.
The old carpets of the old woman's room ignited in a flash, as the
stub of the candle touched their dust saturated fibers. Smoke fit where
Tom could not, and it snuck through the crack below the woman's door.
Jack sat on his too-small bed frame and waited for Tom to return.
Then he smelled the charred air. He yelled.
The domino reaction of shouts and yelps set the orphans into a panic.
Bells banged against the doors and the old woman sat up in her bed.
Yawned curses that poured from her lips were quickly replaced by
screams.
Outside, the night was filled with orange glow. Flames leapt from the
leather. The orphans stood in their caps and gowns, Jack at the front,
and stared at the shoe under the gaze of the Man in the Moon.
Tom, it is said, broke his curse that night. All the words he'd wished
to say tumbled past his lips in a gurgling stream as he raced the dawn
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into the forest. The jingle of coins was heard only by the trees.
Before the last lock could unlatch from the old woman's bedroom
door, the screaming stopped. That was the last that was heard from the
Lady of the Shoe – for a time.
No one was getting rid of me that easily.
The oils of the leather smouldered and roasted, and soon the home
was a skeleton of ashen wood with only the smell of burnt hide on the
wind. The proper authorities came at dawn. Jack was hauled off to a cell
in the county jail. Inquiries were made, and the king's men found much
more than they bargained for.
Jack, it turned out, was actually a 22 year old eunuch, named Boris,
with forged papers. He was running from some unpleasant criminal
charges involving a horn, a dell, and a pumpkin. This time, his unbearded
face did not save him from an indefinite term on the Mother Goose
Chain Gang. Jack changed from Jack of the Shoe to Jack of the Ankle
Shackle, and would remain so for the next ten years.
The children were dispersed, and their lives did not necessarily get
better. The institutions beyond the shoe were no less averse to child
labor, and orphanages puttered along with very little. The only orphan
who did well for himself was that Peter kid who was cursed by a fairy
and kidnapped some of the others, but that’s another story.
The old woman, who once lived in the shoe, was not gone for long.
You will still find her on street corners, flanked by her remaining dogs,
with naught to cover the soles of her feet. She begs for change, hoping
to gain back her missing pennies.
63
Everything’s Alright
By Brad Kerstetter
Well, hello there, Douglas fir. Never realized till now just how much this
damn thing has grown since planting it at the naming ceremony for our
first born, Ben. Funny. That it took till now to smell the...fir, so to speak.
Hard not to, I suppose, when I’m crouched behind it, spying into the
same living room Teresa gave birth to Annabel in. Not my idea, Teresa's.
Why on earth she wanted a natural birth is beyond me. But hey, I’m just
the guy who knocked her up. So… got her one of those inflatable
birthing-tubs, filled it up with water, and shabam! Annabel came out in
the caul. Like David what’s his name in Emily, not Emily, Charles. Charles
Dickinson’s book.
A week later, when we went to plant the placenta with the tree,
Teresa accused me of over-defrosting it in the microwave. Said it was
half-cooked. What difference does it make? I asked. Going in the
goddamned ground anyways.
And now? Boy, if she knew I was using this tree as cover to spy into
the living room of ours, she would have had me cook her placenta like I
cook our steaks on the Barbie-- crispy.
Inside, it looks like they’re about to start the birthday party for Ben.
Can’t believe the little prick is turning seventeen. He was no accident.
More of a misguided attempt to right our listing marriage. A planned Csection baby. After Annabel, Teresa said there was no fucking way she
was doing that again. Can’t blame her there. Sorry Ben. No Gregorian
chants, and scented candles, no bubble bath for you. Maybe that’s why
you turned out so much more...what’s the word? Challenging?
Demanding? Challengingly demanding. The kind of son who hoards his
Halloween candy, and come summertime, sets up a stand for his annual
gouge-the-neighborhood-kids candy sale, while his sister gives hers
away to the less fortunate.
The rain is coming down steady now, and it's dark—perfect
conditions, what with the sun being too bright for me these days, too
harsh on my cracked and peeling skin, and the fact that I can’t be seen
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anywhere near this house, on account of my condition. Supposed to be
at the recovery center. That was the deal I made with Teresa (what
choice did I have?), but I don’t want to miss the opportunity to give my
son his birthday present. I’mna sneak over to the rhododendron by the
windows and get a closer look.
Ben's friends are piled on the couch, laughing. Ole Buster lying in his
favorite spot underneath the coffee table. Teresa’s leaning against the
pink wall of the living room, wearing black knee-length, exercise tights
and a pink athletic shirt, which I might add, is zipped down to show her
cleavage just the way it was at the PTC when I first met her at the
Doubles Mixers tournament. Pink (give that woman a choice and she’d
paint the goddamned grass pink), she said, was the color most
representative of mankind’s natural, benevolent state of wellbeing.
Whatever the fuck that means.
I spy through the other windows into the kitchen and see that the
compost bucket is overflowing, and I bet the garbage and recycling need
to be taken out too. Without me to hound Ben, he never does anything,
'cept play Xbox. Teresa lets him get away with murder. If it was me I’d
give him a good whooping.
But it’s not me, it's Teresa's new boyfriend, David, who has one of
those stupid-looking tufts of hair under his lip, and who’s whooping
skills are as worthless as tits on a mule. I wonder. Does he have to do
the Challah in bed for Teresa too? ("Oh, honey, the Challah!") And how
does it feel for her with the soul patch? And thank god I don't have to
wear that silly, plastic fireman's hat anymore, and announce, "Where’s
the fire? I'm here to put out the fire!"
David's in the kitchen now, putting candles on the cake. Probably had
to ask how many candles to put on, the wanker. I mean, the fact that I
see the kitchen faucet still leaking leads me to believe the guy can’t
even change a lightbulb. Teresa comes in and gets down the dessert
plates. The dessert plates, with the little red barn and the black and
white cow with the red nose that she and I got as a wedding present
from my Ma and Pa. She knows those are only supposed to be used for
Christmas. I wonder what other things she is doing now that I am gone.
She’s probably getting nonfat milk instead of two percent, trying to
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Everything’s Alright by Brad Kerstetter
serve sweet potatoes instead of russets. Probably gonna take David to
the cabin for a romantic getaway.
I hear tires squealing, an engine tacking at Daytona-Speedway rpms.
Holy moly! Here comes my chick-getter (that’s what Ben calls it)
screaming down the road, careening into the driveway. The garage door
opens and the BMW screeches to a halt six-inches behind David’s
hypocrite hybrid (he must have stock in Exxon. He must!), which I might
add, is parked on my side of the garage.
Out jumps Ben, all strapping six-foot-three of him. Definitely a chick
getter there. But late to his own birthday party. He slams the car door,
runs inside, slams the front door. Dude. The car. How many times? How
many? Don’t run it at more than three-thousand RPM’s. And don’t slam
the effing door!
I leave my post to check on my baby. A scratch! I see a scratch! I’m a
gonna kill that boy. And he left the garage door wide open. Anybody
could just waltz right in.
Like me. But not just yet.
From the gay-raj I sneak back to my hiding spot next to the rhody.
Now, if I had taken a roncho instead of a lefto, I could show you the
wooden platform I built in the trees where I used to perch and hunt
when I developed my insatiable appetite for raw meat: squirrels, rats,
bunny rabbits, the usual small game. WTF? You ask. Has the Duke taken
the Paleo diet too far? Told me self I was just getting touch with me
Montanan roots.
And if I continued on behind the house, we’d see the area of dug up
dirt in the dahlia garden where I often slept, lightly buried under six
inches of soil. Just sleeping with Mother Earth beneath the stars I told
myself. The truth is, I’ve told myself a lot of things that weren’t true.
And when you tell yer self you deserve happiness or wealth, or
whatever it is we think we deserve--because you think you’re somehow
special--well, there's going be some fallout. Like…what’s that physical
law? For every action there is a reaction, or something like that.
So. You thinking Duke’s got some issues? Well, you’d be thinking
rightly. Specifically, got one Big-with-a-capital-B issue: I’m what some
might call a zombie. I prefer the term, undead. It’s less pigeon-holey,
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more open to interpretation. But hey, that’s a matter of opinion.
***
Since becoming a zombie, I've had more time for what our late therapist
referred to as, "contemplative introspection.” For example, Ben is about
to blow out his birthday candles. Dawns on me the purpose of all those
years of working my ass off, spoon feeding, butt wiping, the point of all
the stupid you-pick-up-the-kids, then-you-make-dinner, you-clean-up,
then-you-put-the-kids-to-bed arguments is this: this moment I'm spying
on. I should be the one singing happy birthday, cutting the cake,
watching my son (so what if he’s a prick, he’s my prick) open his
presents, not David, with his sweater made of--wait a minute. That’s my
sweater he’s wearing. Teresa gave it to me for Christmas last year. Said
it was made of sustainable alpaca wool. So what if I never wore it.
Anyways, seems to me the very sacrifices I made to have a family are
the very reasons I’m the one outside looking in. And now, David sweeps
in and picks up the pieces: the knerd in shining alpaca.
All this introspection is making me feel sorry for myself when I hear
Toccata and Fugue in D minor: one new text message from my bud, and
fellow Z.A. member Bobby. He’s a little slow (aren't all zombies!), but he
must notice that I've escaped the Hades Recovery Center, and am not
sitting under the large poster of the twelve steps of humanity where we
hold our Zombie Anonymous meetings. I love step number eight: Make
a list of all persons you have harmed, and be willing to make amends to
them. What would I say? Sorry I ripped your heart out and ate it?
Zombies can’t message for shit, what with missing digits and loss of
dexterity. But let's see what ole Bobby has to say for himself.
“935!” Bobby texts. Typical.
“?” I text back.
“911,” he texts.
“411?” I text back.
“STFC,” he texts again.
Special task force coming? Dammit.
“TITTI,” I text. That is terrible, terrible information. It’s not just Bobby
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that noticed I’m not at the HRC. Means I have to crash the party sooner
than I'd planned. Wanted to give Ben his surprise present when Annabel
wasn’t around.
“G2G,” I text.
“G2GW?” he texts back.
“Please call my secretary,” I text. Whoops, wrong shortcut. “MILE,” I
re-text. MILE is the zombie version of MILF: Mother I’d Like to Eat. Add
an S for SMILE, and you get Son of Mother I’d Like to Eat. I put away my
phone, and set out to do what a zombie’s got to do.
***
It’s not like I got all zombie overnight. More of a slow, leprous spread.
After we bought our Ball and Chain house it started with the thinning of
my hair, a general pasting of my complexion. Then came the kids and a
stiffening of the joints, a yellowing of the eyes--all shit that could be
explained away by stress and aging.
Teresa and I were having problems, too. She was the kind of person
my people call a, “well-aren’t-you-special.” In other words, she was
what I was looking for, what I thought I deserved. She was an
opportunity to get out of the chicken-of-the-sea waves I’d grown up in,
and become that person I was destined to be. What person that was,
wasn’t real clear, but I felt I deserved something other than cattle
farming in Montana.
Problem was, Teresa spent a lot of time at the Shambalalalalala
Buddhist Retreat Center, or training for her marathons, and I ended up
working all the time at my import/export business, so we didn’t exactly
see much of each other. Teresa insisted we get an Au Pair to help with
the children, the cooking, and the cleaning. I wasn’t big on the idea (if
there was one thing I learned on the ranch it was that money don’t
grow outta cow patties) and said why don’t you help with the children,
and the cooking, and the cleaning. Well, that got her all riled up. She
said, “why don’t I just grow my hair down to my ass and go barefoot.”
“Okay, okay,” I said and put my hands up.
The Au pair was a cute little thing from Japan, named, Cho. Wanted
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to practice her English and save some money. She glided around the
house in her kimono doing just what we asked her to do: cooking,
cleaning, childcare…and as it happens, a little bit more. She liked
baseball, was a big fan of Ichiro Suzuki who played for the Seattle
Mariners. Pretty soon she and I had a Sunday afternoon watch-thegame-ritual. I showed her the proper American way to enjoy a game;
how to crack open a peanut shell and a PBR.
One summer Sunday we were watching the Mariners versus the A’s,
drinking cold ones and making a pyramid out of the empties. Teresa on
a meditation retreat, the kids at their grandparents. It was the top of
the seventh inning, and we both reached for the peanuts, her soft
fingers lingered with mine amongst the rough and wrinkled shells. I
stroked her index finger.
“Let me show you the seventh inning stretch,” I said, and took her
hand, helped her off the couch. We stood facing each other, our arms
stretched to the ceiling. I put my palms against hers, let my hands fall
slowly down, down along those little melons of hers, down to her sash
where I gave a little tug.
“What about Teresa?” she asked. Yes, what about Teresa? She was
probably ass-high in downward dog, or silently retreating across the
meditation floor as six enlightened guys tried not to stare.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We have an open relationship.”
She stepped back and dropped her Kimono to her feet, Shogun-style.
“I’m not very experienced,” she whispered.
“No problem,” I said and lowered her to the couch.
Seemed to me she picked it up pretty quick.
A few Sundays later I came back from a round of golf (I hate golf, but
I got to take potential clients somewhere) looking forward to watching
the game with Cho. I went to the kitchen to grab a cold case of PBR and
that’s when I realized there weren’t going to be no more seventh inning
stretches. Teresa and Cho were sitting across from each other at the
kitchen table. Teresa lightly held Cho’s hands. I couldn’t see Teresa’s
face, but Cho was crying.
I did a one-eighty out the door, and down to the neighborhood
watering hole I went, told Jake to get me two double bourbons. He
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asked me if everything was, alright. Alright? I asked. Or, all right? What
the fuck does that even mean? All not wrong? And who’s to judge
whether this or that is right or wrong? What if it just is, neither all right,
nor all wrong. It just fucking is. And is “is” good enough? I mean, for Life.
Yes, Life with the big, capital “L.” I mean, is that how we're supposed to
go through Life? Is? Alright? I hadn’t noticed Jake turn and leave, but I
did notice when he set the bottle of bourbon down in front of me and
said, it’s on the house. It’s on the house? I muttered to myself. What
does on the house even mean? How ‘bout in the house or, for the
house, or by the house. Where on the house? Like, on top of the house?
Shiit.
***
Teresa and I went and saw this lady counselor, by the name of
Weingast. Practiced out of her house in the West hills. On the cherry
coffee table in her office, a plate of cookies and brownies. My wife eyed
the cookies, wondering whether they were worth the caloric risk. By
then I was full on Paleo, and had exhausted our neighborhood’s supply
of squirrels, found myself eyeing our therapist, the quivering mound of
flesh around her middle, the hanging flab under her arms.
“What brings you two in?” Dr. Weingast asked.
Teresa and I sat on opposite ends of the couch, a large pillow
between us. She started right in by saying I’d been sleeping with our Au
Pair.
Dr. Weingast raised an eyebrow. “Is this true?” she asked me.
I shrugged my shoulders.
Dr. Weingast went on about how good communication is the key to a
successful relationship. According to “How to Communicate with A
Zombie”, (scarily coincidental) Teresa was supposed to reach out to the
non-talkative, non-interactive male in a non-threatening manner, and
that was supposed to help me communicate with the non-male
persuasion.
“Teresa,” Dr. Weingast said. “Why don’t you ask Duke how he’s
feeling today.”
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“How are you feeling today?” Teresa asked with all the charm of an
empty bag of potato chips.
“Just dandy.”
“Now why don’t you ask Duke if there is anything he’d like to share.”
I don’t know about you, but when I am asked if there is anything I’d
like to, “share,” my reaction is to put out the “Do Not Disturb” sign.
“Is there anything you’d like to share?” Teresa asked, looking at Dr.
Weingast.
“Why don’t you try asking your husband,” Dr. Weingast said.
Teresa turned to me. It seemed to be the first time she’d looked at
me in months. “Why are you wearing a wool hat? It’s August.”
“I’m cold,” I said. “You got a problem with that?”
Truth be told I was cold (circulation system wasn’t circulating so
well), and I was missing an ear. It had popped off my head when I
brought the kid's orange juice over to the breakfast table the other day.
The whole ear, auditory canal and all, bounced to the table, and rolled
to the floor. Ben and Annabel stopped catapulting their oatmeal at each
other, stared at me, at the ear on the floor, back at me.
“Ever hear of Mr. Potato head?” I said.
“I thought Mr. Potato head was just pretend,” Annabel said.
“I’m telling mom,” Ben threatened.
“No, No. Don’t do that. We don’t want Mommy sad. We want
Mommy happy.”
“Happy like when the TV repairman comes?” Ben asked.
“What? When does the TV repairman come?” I asked.
“Like every Wednesday.”
Hump day, huh? Turns out I wasn’t the only one dogging it. “He
does?” I asked.
“I think the TV works fine,” Annabel piped in.
“Of course it works fine stupid head." Ben said.
“Don’t tell Mom about this," I said, bending down to pick up my ear.
“About how you are a freak?” Ben asked.
I was in no position to smack that boy, but still. “I'm not a freak,” I
said to Annabel. “I'm just having some issues.”
“Then no more oatmeal for breakfast. From now on pancakes,” Ben
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demanded. “Everyday. And pizza for dinner.”
“I can't promise—.”
“Mom. Hey mom!” he shouted.
“Shhh. Alright, alright.” I said.
“And real maple syrup. None of that Ain’t yo Mamma.”
“It’s Aunt Jemima,” I said.
“Whatever it is I don’t like it,” Ben said.
What was I supposed to do? He had me by the bullhorns. Besides,
who wants oatmeal prepared by somebody breaking into bite size
pieces?
Teresa looked at Dr. Weingast. “How am I supposed to reach out
when he is being a jerk?”
“I’m the jerk?” I said to Dr. Weingast.
“Listen to yourself,” Teresa said to Dr. Weingast.
Dr. Weingast held up her hand, her thick fingers spread apart looked
like sausage links. She gave Teresa a look that suggested, “I know, I
know. Just humor me.”
Teresa took a deep breath and turned to me. She twirled her golden
locks. I had a fleeting urge to wet my hands in her waterfall of curls, to
gaze into her eyes--eyes so swimmingly blue it made you want to strip
naked and dive in--to make this whole thing go away, to make
everything the way it was, recalling how when we first met she liked to
drink boxed wine in bed and called me her big, furry bulldog.
“Is there anything you’d like to--,” she started.
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head.
“See?” Teresa asked. “See what I’m talking about?”
“Duke?” Dr. Weingast asked. “Teresa is trying to reach out. Can you
honor that by contributing to the conversation?”
“Okay,” I said, mentally turning the, “Do Not Disturb” sign over to,
“Caution! I’m Watching Porn.”
“I never see Teresa anymore,” I continued with my best puppy dog
impersonation. “We never have sex. I was feeling lonely.”
Dr. Weingast raised her other brow.
“We used to play tennis when we first met,” Teresa said. “We’d talk
and he’d make jokes. He was fun.”
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“Fun?” I asked. “How do you expect me to be fun when I barely feel
alive.”
Teresa seemed stricken, as if she’d forgotten about a yoga retreat
she’d signed up for. Did she suspect I was turning into a zombie?
Probably not. We hadn’t made eye contact, let alone skin to skin contact
in who the hell knows how long. Besides, she was squeamish and
sensitive to odor. The fact that she hadn’t complained about my squirrel
breath told me that she didn’t suspect squat.
“He used to make me laugh. Now all he ever does is come home and
watch baseball. Or basketball.”
“What’s there to laugh about? I work all day. I’m exhausted.”
“Maybe you could work less,” Teresa said.
Work less, she says. “How do you think we afford the house, the
private schools? How you think we afford the cabin in the woods?”
“I thought you wanted those things.”
“Don’t give me that I-thought-you-wanted-those-things crap. You
were the one that wanted the big house, then begged me to get a cabin.
Who was it said, ‘sure would be nice to have a cabin in the woods?’”
“I thought we could get away as a family.”
“How are we supposed to get away as a family when you are always
off at your retreats?” I asked. When she didn’t answer I got kind of
vindictive. “How we supposed to get away when you spend
Wednesdays with the TV repairman?”
She shot me a look. Dr. Weingast raised both eyebrows.
“What? You think I didn't know?” I asked.
Teresa started to cry. I looked down at the oak floor, at a nail head
pushing through a putty hole.
“Teresa?” Dr. Weingast asked. “How does that make you feel?”
“I feel misunderstood,” Teresa said. “Used.”
“Used!” I said.
Dr. Weingast put up her hand. Now her fingers looked like
drumsticks. I imagined pulling the dark meat off with my teeth.
“Duke?” Dr. Weingast asked. “How does that make you feel?”
“Manipulated.”
“Manipulated?” Teresa said.
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Dr. Weingast held up her hand. She told us how misunderstandings
can lead to resentment, how we try to combat our own fears by
shaming the other person and how when we feel threatened we lash
out. She got that right.
Week after week we went back to Dr. Weingast where she would
start the session by asking, “who's the zombie now?” In other words,
which partner is not putting in the work required to sustain a
relationship?
And every week from behind a wall of throw pillows, we’d turn and
point to each other. That would pretty much set the tone for the
session.
***
I try the front door and lo and behold it is locked. Go figure. Ya lock the
front, leave the garage door wide open. I shuffle back down the steps to
the garage. Billy, our Siamese, comes out the cat door, takes one look at
me and puffs up like Jiffy Pop Popcorn. Never did like me. Got all pissy
when I started competing with him over the rodent population. Course
he got all the credit from Teresa, saying, “good kitty, such a good
mouser.” Billy and I knew the truth.
The garage leads into the back hallway where I’m hit with an inferno.
Inside it feels like summer in Arizona. Surprised I don’t see cactus
growing out the floorboards. Good thing I’m not paying for the gas bill
no more. And yuck! Teresa put that nasty smelling potpourri back in the
bathroom. Even with half a nostril I can smell it.
I take a left, shuffle down the hall. Miles Davis sax in the background.
One of Ben's friends lets out a teenage laugh. Ahh, to be young and
unencumbered. I shuffle past the TV room, notice that somebody left
the TV on, take a few shuffles backwards. You’ll never believe what’s
showing. The Walking Dead! Yeah, no kidding, huh? I take a moment to
watch. It’s a pretty good show, but they got some things all wrong. Well,
not all wrong, I mean, we look bad, but not that bad. So we might be
missing an ear or a nose, or a--but it’s not as if our faces are dripping off
or our guts are spilling forth. And we don’t just wander around
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aimlessly, bumping into walls, waiting for humans to stumble by. After
all, we have brains. We can think. Sometimes I think we can think better
than we used to think. But, what they did get right is this concept that
we’re all infected with this disease. We’re all potential zombies. We’re
all the walking dead. At least most of us. I mean, I think there are a few
that have a natural immunity. Like Annabel. She’s not consumed by the
fever of bullshit. She’s just... she doesn’t do the pretense, the games.
She’d be a horrible first date.
At the end of the hall, I take a ranchero down toward the kitchen. I
sneak past the living room where I see a fire in the wood stove. Which
reminds me, I never got the chimney swept. Too late now. I zombie
round the corner to the edge of the dining area.
Buster sees me first, probably smells me, what with those glassy
eyeballs he’s got in his old age. He lets out a low, slow growl. Ben tells
him to shut-up, but Buster keeps growling. C'mon Buster, it's me, your
master, the one who fed you, took you for walks, scratched you behind
those floppy ears. Then Maggie, my daughter's friend, spies me as she is
about to stuff cake into her mouth. I put my middle finger to my lips,
not my index, because it broke off the other day trying to pick
something cerebral-gray and gooey out of my nose. Does she think I’m
flipping her off? I hope not, because really, I’ve got nothing against her,
other than the fact that she’s a complete flirt and I think sometimes is
only friends with Annabel so she can get to Ben. Her expression is part
what-the-fuck, part terror. Her fork drops out of her hand to the floor,
which momentarily shuts Buster up as he scarfs down his gift from the
food gods. But then the vacuum of silence is filled with Maggie's scream.
The last time I heard screaming like that in our house was when
Teresa gave the final push to Annabel. All through her labor Teresa
called me every name in the book. Called me a son of a bitch, a cock-well, you get the point. And the funny thing was, I loved it. I mean, she
was like a wolverine. Wild, unrefined, pure animal. It was the only time I
knew exactly what she meant, the only time I truly understood her. And
I loved her for it.
All heads turn to me, forks drop. So much for a sneak attack. Buster
doesn't know what to do with his new windfall.
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“Duke,” Teresa says, clearly surprised. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you said Duke was dead,” David says.
“No. I ain’t dead Dave,” I say. “I just smell funny.”
“Duke. You know you're not supposed to be here. We had an
agreement.”
An agreement, she says. Me rotting away, she living the...the what?
Not really the dream, unless it’s one of those dreams where you wake
up groggy and delirious, and don’t know what the fuck just happened.
Still though, she’s living and I’m not. What kind of shitty agreement is
that? So what if I ate the therapist? She didn’t like going any more than I
did.
Doesn’t she know she’s infected too? But of course not. Denial ain’t
just a river in Egypt. Those bags under her eyes are getting bigger. She’s
got that telltale jaundiced look. Either her infection is physically
manifesting itself or she’s taken up Meth.
“Feeling okay, Resa?” I ask. “You’re looking a little--”
“I'm fine, Duke. Just fine. But you’re ruining our evening.”
“Come now,” I say. “Just wanted to wish my son a happy birthday.
Give him a birthday present.”
I look for Ben, but I see Annabel. The look of disbelief in her eyes
breaks my heart. Anna, honey. Daddy would never. You have nothing to
fear.
David's lips are pursed and he is nodding in sanctimonious
agreement. Asshole. I lunge at him, grab his arm, take a bite. Ahcht! The
alpaca sweater sticks to the roof of my mouth. I go for his exposed neck
when someone jumps me from behind, throws me to the ground.
Ben.
Damn, he's strong as an ox. Takes after his ol' man. He's pinning me
down with his knees on my arms.
“Hey, Bennie,” I say. “It's Daddy. Give yer old man a break.”
He lets up for a split second and I flip him over, all two hundredtwenty-five zombie-pounds of smelly after-death pinning him down.
“Hey, boy,” I say. “Who's your zombie now? Huh? Who's your
zombie?”
That's when I see David coming back from the fireplace, swinging the
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axe like some Mongolian warrior, and just like that I’m headless. I roll-kind of like head-over-heels without the heels--into the kitchen and
come to rest against the refrigerator. Shit. I didn’t see that coming. I
mean, figuratively.
“Dammit,” Teresa says to my body. “Goddammit. Look at what
you’ve done. Look at the mess you’ve made.”
“David made,” I say from the refrigerator. “Not me.”
“Mom,” Ben says.
Teresa finds my head with her eyes. “And we were planning on going
to the cabin.”
I knew it!
“Mom,” Ben says again. My body is still pinning him down.
“You are such an asshole, sometimes, you know?” Teresa says to me.
“Mom!”
“What?” Teresa asks indignantly, turning to Ben with her hands on
her hips.
“Can you help me?” Ben asks.
“David,” Teresa says. “Help Ben, would you?” David chops off my
arm. Blood splashes onto Ben’s face as he rolls out from under me.
“Okay, everyone,” Teresa says. “Let’s just forget this happened, and
be normal now. Can we do that?”
Ben wipes the blood off his face with his sleeve.
Teresa has a plastic, fake smile on her face. “Ok? Alright,” she says.
“Let’s just take a deep breath and have a drink. David! Whiskey!”
David puts down the axe. He nods, leaves for the kitchen.
There is silence, except for Buster crunching on my arm. Then my
phone rings. Toccata and Fugue. We listen to the music: the lighting, the
roll of thunder, the ensuing storm. Instinctively I go to answer, but
obviously, one of my arms is serving as a chew toy for Buster, and my
other, also disconnected from its mother ship, only gives a feeble
twitch. Anna, bless her heart, reaches into my pocket and answers my
phone.
“Hello?” she answers. “Just a second,” and looks at my body, then
sees my head. “It's for you, daddy.”
“Can you hold it up for me?” I ask.
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Anna comes over and lifts my head by my hair like I'm a carrot
plucked from the garden, but gently, like the root of me is tender and
might tear off. She holds the phone to my ear.
“Duke?”
“Bobby.”
“Is that you Duke?”
I don't know what to say, because it's just a part of me, and not my
strongest part either. Come to think of it, I haven’t been “me” for a long
time. Come to think of it, who am I? I mean, not to get all existential,
but really, what the fuck?
“Duke?” Bobby asks again.
“I'm sorry,” I say. “It doesn't look...I don’t think...what I mean is--.”
“It's okay Duke," he says. "We're coming.”
“Whaddya mean, yer coming?”
“There's thousands of us, Duke. We broke free. It’s an apocalypse.”
“Is everything alright daddy?” Anna asks, and swings my head away
from the phone.
Right then I have this feeling, like phantom pain in a missing
appendage, to gather my family around and share with them what I
know. To tell them about the apocalypse. About this disease. Don’t you
see it? I would ask. Don’t you understand? You can’t live like this.
Outside, the rain is falling in torrents, spraying against the windows.
“Listen, honey,” I say. She brings my lips closer to her ear. I breath in,
the way I used to inhale her newborn smell when I held her tiny body
against my shoulder. And I smile, because I smell a remnant patch of
innocence lingering like snow in summer, and I know somehow she’ll
survive this apocalypse. After all, she was born in the caul. “Listen,” I say
again. “When I was growing up in Montana, my father had a head a
cattle that got sick from Mad Cow Disease. He lost fifty steer. A few
survived. Those that survived were good stock and lived to produce
healthy herds. You are the good stock. Now, put my head down and go.”
But before she can go, David returns with the whiskey and glasses.
He pours and hands everybody a drink. Everybody except me of course.
“Cheers,” Teresa says as if we’re all sitting around the dinner table.
One big, happy family, sitting around without a care in the world,
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celebrating our good fortune. “See? Isn’t that nice? A little whiskey to
calm our nerves and then we’re going to be a nice, normal family again.
Everything’s going to be, alright.”
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Flash
By Dan Frazier
She sucks in her sunburnt belly as acid burns her throat and bile oozes
between her teeth. With gravel digging in her knees, she looks up from
the gutter; yellow dribble hangs off her lower lip.
Our eyes lock and I want to tell her, “Don’t worry sweetheart, at least
you’re sober enough to hold your own curls up. On my fateful night, my
extensions were dried spaghetti and my camisole was a toddler’s bib.”
Her friends are standing close enough to hear her but not close
enough to touch her. As her mascara smears, I want to bend over and
say, “Darling, you have no reason to cry. You haven’t been ditched yet
like I was.”
Tonight, I’m in another seasonless city, following another
meandering mob down blocked-off streets with rows of bars. The sun is
gone and the air is sticky. And for those who travel here, this is their
vacation or break, an excuse to stay drunk and go wild:
Drink.
Wander.
Flirt.
Screw.
Repeat.
But for me, this is just another notch. Getting around, I’ve learned
that tourists wear those flowered shirts because vomit blends in with
the patterns. And now my nose is immune to the mix of alcohol, urine,
and spew.
Every night this time of year, they all act the same. College kids.
Trailer park couples. Biker gangs. Middle-aged divorcees. They all come
together without any goals, obligations, or morals. Everything is put on
hold: jobs, school, life. No time for second thoughts. Just sayin’, that
much I do remember.
A crowd gathers ahead and blocks the foot traffic.
“Oh, come on!” says a dude with a popped collar and chiseled jaw.
“Do it! Do it!” says another guy in a white visor and seersucker
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shorts. His companions, covered in Greek letters, support his plea by
chanting, “Show us more! Show us more!”
“Sorry, I don’t think so,” snaps the brunette who doesn’t look old
enough to vote.
With arms held high, these dudes showcase the girl a collection of
plastic trinkets. Pushing each other out of the way, they bid by shaking
and twirling the currency for tonight’s lewd barter system. This works
because silly girls always want what they don’t have, and will trade
anything for it, just like I did.
These plastic beads that dangle from the bros’ fingers, some are
green and gold with charms. Some large as Christmas tree bulbs, others
small as marbles or pearls. Some shaped as disco balls, others seashells
or red hearts.
But unlike these douchebags here, the professional pervs go online
and buy beads in bulk. And they know the more different, the better. A
rare color or unique shape means higher stakes to obtain, make the girls
go crazy, more outrageous acts performed—but only for the right
treasure.
The super pervs, they know if you hold the only string of beads with a
mermaid pendant or plastic shot glass, then you control the party
streets. Ruler of Sluts. King of Deviants. All shall submit to your will or
awe at your power.
The beads that aren’t gifted tonight, leftovers of putrid propositions,
the real pervs will box them up in attics, garages, and storage units.
Buried away behind dusty comic books, sci-fi DVDs, and Magic: The
Gathering cards. But unlike everything they’re surrounded by, these
beads are never forgotten. They’re lying and waiting to be used again.
These plastic beads mean so much tonight, but tomorrow they’ll be
worthless, disposable. Hotel trash cans will overflow. Yet this is now and
this girl gazes at them, needs them. Souvenirs for her grit, or tokens of
her regret.
The circle of dudes stands before the girl in hopes of a flash. During
her spotlight, for two whole seconds, she’ll be the center of the world.
Just sayin’, that’s how it was for me, before I became every daddy’s
worst nightmare.
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Flash by Dan Frazier
And you really can’t blame her, cause everyone wants to be famous.
Everyone has dreamt about walking down a red carpet in a Gucci gown
with perfect makeup and bleached teeth. Interviewed by E!, featured in
US Weekly. But no one ever thinks about having fame for the wrong
reason. Or at least, just sayin’, I never did.
The beads swing back and forth, glistening in the streetlights. The
poor thing reaches out but the hands with the prizes pull back. The
barbarians start grunting, “Take it off! Take it off!”
They make a wall on every side of her, shoulder to shoulder. All
escapes blocked.
Maybe I should warn this one. Protect this one. Stop her. But no, this
girl is my bait tonight. Bless her heart.
Her own stupidity may prevent the humiliation of so many more just
like her. She must learn from her mistakes, just like I did.
Hiding half a smile with her tongue, she lifts her tank top and lacey
bra high above her shoulders. Digital snaps and bright strikes attack
from all sides. These strobe lights of narcissism and debauchery make
her spin, jump, and dance as a candy raver. Then her top comes back
down and now there’s a fresh collection of pride around her neck.
This sort of attention will give a rousing rush to the head. A flashing
moment of fame. Just sayin’, that’s what I remember, before I was
worldly renown.
Shouts and howls morph into sequel chants of “Show your bush!
Show your bush!”
The girl unbuttons her jean shorts and pulls down the zipper, but her
friends grab her arms and pull away. If only I’d had friends like her, I
wouldn’t be here.
The dudes groan and take their harassment further down the strip:
Approach.
Chant.
Gawk.
Cheer.
Repeat.
And as they move on, I see one trailing the pack.
Now we begin by removing my petite bowler and gauzy shawl. But
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my masquerade mask stays on, purple feathers and all.
They always carry a camcorder and a thirst for flesh. Various beads
choke their necks and bend their backs. Their entire lives revolve around
these so-called festivals, breaks, and holidays where revelry is
mandatory. They countdown the days on a Playboy calendar and cross
time zones to attend.
They chase the crowds, waiting for the opportunity to witness
simultaneous sin: someone’s vanity and everyone else’s lechery. Never
initiating but always lurking. Leering. An optical scavenger. A genuine
voyeur.
Maybe at one time, binge-watching Netflix or gaming on Xbox
consumed their lives. But broadband just made porn more accessible,
and long nights of staring at a bright screen turned a bad habit into an
addiction.
So now on the street, I approach him. Come on too strong and they’ll
cower in confusion.
Begin with eye contact, no blinking.
Follow up with a slow walk, one heel in front of the other.
Then tease with a little skin…
Tonight, this one twists his neck sideways, then right back at me. My
polished fingertips grab the bottom of my cropped top and he freezes.
“You wanna see something?” I say and flick my navel chain. He hides
behind his display screen. His beads shake.
“Well, you’ll have to follow me,” I say. “Somewhere private. Just for
you.”
They never question their ultimate wet dream coming true. And this
one is lured into an unlit alley, empty except hunter and prey.
“You ready?” I smile. “Your eyes will soon be mine.”
His beads sway as he rubs his fly. Spinning on my stilettos, I bend
over and pull up my mini skirt. His camera beams a light over my thong,
shining it up and down my crack. My spray tan and gym membership
have paid off.
After I cover up, he pulls out a string of beads that blink with lights.
Seeing him do this, offering his top prize, now we know he’s hooked.
“You wanna see more?” I nod and cup my hands over my chest. “You
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will. But not here.”
Their motel rooms are always within walking distance, even for high
heels. Booked a year in advance, the rooms can see the action by
overlooking the festivities, costing extra for party proximity and views of
vulgarity.
After a few flights of stairs, his key card makes the door handle flash
green. As it opens, I’m expecting a laptop, external hard drives, and a
wastebasket overflowing with moist tissues. As I strut inside, the only
light is from a computer screen. Hidden in the dark are dead bugs and
scuffed furniture.
He stands still—they all do—until I tell him what to do.
“Turn the camera on night mode,” I instruct while closing the door
behind us. “And put it on that table facing the bed. I’m gonna need your
fingers somewhere else real soon.”
He drops it before setting it in place. And after the record button is
pushed, there is no turning back. Through the lens, my skin turns green,
my pupils go white—transformed.
His beads jingle.
“You know,” I say while pulling off my top and letting my freckled
breasts bounce. “You’re gonna be part of this too.”
Gasping, he squeaks, and tosses the string of blinking beads around
my neck. After I slide open the balcony door, a cool breeze hardens my
tits. The gust blows past the wastebasket and now the room reeks of
dogwoods in bloom.
“Lie down on the bed,” I hush. “Face up.”
Outside, the party cheers roar from the streets.
These crazy creeps, they always smile when I pull out the handcuffs
and rope from my satchel. They watch so much BDSM, they must expect
it.
His wrists are now locked to the bedpost, legs tied to the railing. He
lies there, beads still, as his heartbeat syncs with the blinks of my new
necklace and the camera’s red light.
Pulsing.
Flashing.
Recording.
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See how easy that was? I say into the camera. They’re always so
fucking desperate.
Now we’re halfway through as I’m saving the dreams of countless
debutantes and pageant queens.
Beside the bed, I drop my skirt and slip off my heels. Standing on the
rough carpet, I stretch the straps of my thong—pulling out and letting
go, snapping as his breaths pollute the air.
I hope you know what you’re in for, I always hush into their ears as I
lean over, brush back their comb over, and kiss their forehead.
“You’re never going to forget this night,” I say.
His beads jangle.
In Coventry, England during the 11th century, I tell him. A bold
noblewoman known as Lady Godiva once complained to her husband
about his oppressive taxes over their people. He told her he would only
revoke them if she rode a horse nude throughout the town at night.
Taking off my blonde wig, but keeping on the mask, I let my natural
red hair fall past my shoulders. Leaving one hand covering the skin right
above my crotch, I peel my panties down to my feet.
“I hope you like what you’re gonna see,” I wink.
My hand moves. His beads are still. He stares. But he’s not checking if
the trimmed carpet matches the long drapes. Instead, he’s transfixed by
my tattoo; a tiny green shamrock followed by a rainbow.
“I know what you might be thinking,” I always say. “Pretty basic
right?”
Just like all the others before him, his forehead scrunches. He’s seen
it before. Everyone’s seen it before. He figures it out, they always do.
“You have to understand I was not very sober when I decided to get
it,” I laugh. “I was far from home or anyone who could tell me what to
do.”
Or help me.
Save me.
Prevent all of this.
“I thought I was having fun,” I continue as his eyes follow my hands
into my satchel. “But to tell you the truth I really don’t remember much
of that night at all.”
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My hands now hold a pair of pruners and a few strips of duct tape.
His beads clatter.
Don’t forget this step, I say into the camera. No one likes to hear a
squealing pig. Such a buzzkill.
He twists his wrists in the handcuffs. The sunken mattress squeaks. I
tape his mouth.
No protesting.
No pleas.
No screams.
But his beads keep clanging.
My friends and I drove all night to get here. Then we hit the strip with
fake IDs. At the first bar, we were doing body shots off each other when
some hot guys offered us some beads—but only if we showed our
boobs. Then some other fine fellas offered us more if we did it again. We
loved showing off our graduation presents so much we turned it into a
contest: Whoever collects the most beads before sunrise wins. And
there was no way I was going to lose.
My hand pumps the pruners’ handles in and out. The recoil spring
squeaks with each slow squeeze.
The last thing I remember was my bestie screaming at me. I had so
many beads, they covered my chest without a shirt. My friends were so
jealous, they just left me. And after I puked on myself, it all went black.
Wasted and abandoned, I must have kept trying to win, outdo myself. I
was very naïve back then. This was before I learned how disgusting and
cruel men can be.
Leaning forward, I part my lips and say, “Men like you.”
After peeling off my mask, I stare at its facade.
Never forget, it says with hollow eyes. What we’re about to do is just.
I slide it over his face. His pupils bulge behind the slits, gazing at me
beneath the gold trim. He wiggles on the stained duvet. His beads jolt.
Now he knows for sure who I am, I say into the camera. Or what I am
now. Our reputation is starting to precede us. He knows it’s true. We’re
real.
He looks at me, to the camera, and back. His beads jump.
“I never thought I would really know what happened that night,” I
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sigh. “But I was wrong. Someone was following me. Documenting every
move.”
A few weeks later my Dad asked his coworkers why they kept
snickering behind his back. Soon after, my boyfriend dumped me saying
he didn’t want to catch some STD. My sorority sisters voted for my
expulsion. My college revoked my scholarship. My crown was stripped.
Then my mom took down all my pictures: dance recitals, cheerleading
camp, prom.
Life just isn’t the same when every stranger gives you a long hard
stare and asks why you look so familiar. Ironic how something that takes
a few minutes to stream can scar an entire life. Call it mass viral
disgrace. Call it a smear campaign against the girl next door. Could’ve
been anyone, I try to tell myself.
Stepping onto the bed, I straddle his hump of a stomach. His shirt is
stuck to his skin and it makes me wetter.
“Now tell me,” I clench. “Who filmed me and put me on the Internet
for everyone to see? Do you know how many times my clit clip has been
viewed and liked? Do you know how many times my viral vagina has
been shared?”
Too many.
“Soon, you’ll be just as famous as me,” I always whisper in their ears.
He shakes his head. Drops of sweat sprinkle the room. His beads
clink.
Don’t ever hesitate, I tell the camera.
A jab with the pruners and a double-handed grip:
My elbows lock.
My shoulders pinch.
My knuckles turn white.
“Is this how you like it?” I ask. “No? Well, don’t worry. It’ll be a
quickie.”
His thumb drops to the floor. A fountain of warm liquid sprays.
Housekeeping will never get rid of these stains.
Coming from outside on the streets, drowning out his pain, we hear
collective chants of “Do it again! Do it again!”
TVs, laptops, smart phones, tablets. It doesn’t matter. If it has a
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screen, I’ve been on it—can’t wait for Apple to unveil what I’ll be on
next. And the worst part is, as they keep finding better ways for
resolution, my cellulite becomes clearer. And as definition advances, the
more my acne breaks out.
“I know how all you sick fucks work as a ring,” I bark.
They’re part of this network of shooting, trading, and selling realityporn. But I’m part of this new counter group. We’re in their deep web
chat rooms. We’ve breached their private torrents, personal FTPs, and
protected websites. We know how they operate. Making fake profiles to
facejerk. Hacking tweens’ webcams for bedroom strips. Phishing cloud
storage for naked selfies. They were behind The Fappening. And they’re
the reason the amateur sites just keep growing.
“So tell me,” I say. “How many micro cameras have you hidden in
women’s locker rooms, tanning salons, and toilet seats?”
His eyes widen with guilt.
We find them all the time. Soon, we’ll find them all. And everyone
who views them.
Film.
Upload.
Stream.
Jerk.
Repeat.
These mega pervs, they’re overexposed to the usual studio porn. The
type made with actors and sets. Boom mics and stage lights. They’ve
seen every posed position, penetration, and scenario so much that now
they’re immune. Can’t get a hard-on to get off.
These ultra pervs, now they only crave footage of real sultry
situations and authentic assaults. Impromptu intercourse featuring
natural nipples, public pussy, and candid clits.
“Do you think,” I screech, “I can ever get back to having a normal life
after what y’all did to me?”
Every person I know stares at me with disgust or lust. Any form of
achievement will always be overshadowed. I was on track to graduate in
the top of my class. Get a master’s in Education. Become Miss Georgia.
But now, my reputation will never be more than a silly girl tricked into
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being a whore.
His beads rustle.
“Thanks to pervs like you, at least I’m not alone,” I smile. “And just
like y’all found each other, we found each other. And as long as y’all
keep doing what you do best, I’ll keep getting new recruits. More to
train. More to help avenge.”
Mardi Gras, Fantasy Fest, St. Patrick’s Day, Memorial Day. They’re all
the same. New Orleans, Key West, South Padre Island, Savannah, Lake
Havasu. We’re everywhere. Cancun: spring break. Rio de Janeiro:
Carnival. We’re going international.
With another prod of the pruners, another tight pinch, I demand.
“What’s your screen name? Your username? Your password? Which one
are you? HungDaddy12? MeatBeater45?”
His lips fight to open, his voice is muffled, but all I hear is his beads
clanking.
We’ll figure it out by process of elimination, I tell the camera. See
who doesn’t log in anymore.
A snap as thick as celery breaking echoes off the faded walls. His
other thumb drops. No longer a primate, his dexterity is gone.
Masturbating, fapping, it’ll never be quite the same.
Coming from outside on the streets, answering his agony, we hear
“We want more! We want more!”
While wiping the pruners on the sheets, I take out two sterling silver
letter openers. Stained dark, I grind the blades against each other.
This is the last step, I tell the camera. And the most important.
Heavy breaths move his ribs up and down. Back on his belly, I ride
him as a mechanical bull set on “low.” My faint nipples align with his
eyes. Tears are streaming down his cheeks. They collect and drip into a
pool beneath the folds of skin around his chin.
His beads are static. In them, strange reflections stare back at me in
all sorts of angles, sizes, and colors. The faces stretched, the bodies
warped, all beyond recognition.
Never forget, they say. What we’re about to do is just.
I poke the tips of the letter openers into his Adam’s apple. Dragging
the blades down, I leave red creases as the strings around his neck are
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cut. The beads fall off the bed and crash as hail, bounce as rubber, and
roll in circles around my stripped clothes, both unstrung.
Before Lady Godiva rode naked that night, I continue to tell him. She
asked all the townspeople to close their windows and doors out of
respect. But this old creeper named Tom, he just couldn’t resist. He bore
a small hole through his shutters and sat there, waiting for her to come
by. And when he finally saw her, her breasts bouncing with each step of
the horse, he was struck blind.
After that, the townsfolk called him Peeping Tom. But the saddest
part of this fable is that he would have gotten away with it, if he just had
a camera. And by using technology, modern pervs have found a loophole
in the curse. Which is why I’m here: to carry out Godiva’s will, manually.
He bucks as if cranked to “high.”
My thighs pinch his torso.
His eyelids clasp.
I point the blades down…
Imagine shucking an oyster from a shell made of skin. And don’t even
try, if you think cutting grapefruit is just too messy.
His hands and feet keep shaking, but the beads stop bouncing.
Sliding off the bed, I kick two beads the size of ping-pong balls.
Rolling around on the floor, they’re caked with blood and dust. I grab
them, push them through the mask’s holes and into his sockets.
Looking into the camera, I say, “Mission accomplished.”
Coming from outside on the streets, breaking the silence, we hear
“Whew! Yeah! Fuck yeah!”
Now we’re almost done. I pull the memory card from the camera and
put it in an envelope. Make sure to always label it with the tally number,
location, and date. And just for fun, feel free to slip in that special string
of beads you earned—like my flickering trophy here.
In the bathroom, I twist the shower handle on hot and place his
computer, hardware, and video camera underneath—pornfolio
drowned. Blinded by the mist, I step in. But no matter how much I wash,
I’ll never be clean.
After drying off, I re-dress and look at the giant mirror above the sink.
Using my finger to cut through the fog, I write Atonement was here.
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Never again can I be my parents’ precious little girl. My stature will
always be tainted, no matter how much I cry. Always unforgettable, no
matter how much I hide. Never forgiven, no matter how much I pray. My
celebrity cunt and me, we’re infamous for infinity.
Before closing the outside door with a “Do Not Disturb” sign, I pause
to tell him to make sure to warn all the others. That the message boards,
the forums, they’re all wrong. We’re not some cyber urban legend. The
evidence will soon be posted and they better find a new hobby before a
former victim finds them. Now a Frankenstein’s monster. A disciple of
Godiva.
Hunt.
Seduce.
Torture.
Warn.
Repeat.
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The Sequence
By Peter Ryan
The bar was tucked inside the Redwood Inn, but there weren’t any
redwoods in Tucson, just cacti and subdivisions. As he entered from the
lobby, Stephen tipped up his red and white baseball cap so that it was
no longer shielding his eyes.
“What do you have on tap?” he asked.
“Well,” she said looking at the names on the handles, “Budweiser,
Miller Lite, Fat Tire…” She raised her eyebrows, as if to say: are you
really going to make me run through the list?
The bartender was in her forties. She wore her red hair in a careless
bun. Her nose was narrow and sharp, which Stephen didn’t like, but her
breasts were enormous.
“Fat Tire,” he said.
“Great.” She poured him a pint.
Daylight poked in through the cracks in the blinds. Neon beer logos
had been mounted to the walls, along with six flat screen TVs. Two men
narrated a golf tournament in whispers that were oddly intimate.
A man settled into the stool next to Stephen’s, dropping his suitcase
beside him on the floor. He already smelled like booze.
Picking up a menu, he skimmed it, flipping it over and over again, as if
he might have missed something.
“Do you have Coke?” he asked.
“Pepsi,” she said.
“It’s not a Jack ‘n Coke,” he said, “without Coke. I’ll have a Jack ‘n
Pepsi.”
She scooped some ice into a cup and mixed in the rest.
“Grazie,” he said, immediately chugging a third of the glass.
She left the bar to wipe down tables, and the man leaned into
Stephen’s side so that, for a moment, they were shoulder to shoulder.
“Oi, oi,” he whispered, “The tits on that.”
Stephen glared at him. The man was speaking in a low voice, but not
so low that she for sure couldn’t hear.
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“Just saying,” he said, “You could do worse. You could do much,
much worse.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Getting there.”
When the bartender returned, the man demanded: “What’s your
name, what’s your name?”
“Clarissa,” she said. Somehow it didn’t seem to fit.
“My friend here,” he said with a wink, “wanted me to ask you.”
Stephen glanced up at the TV. A white ball launched up into the air,
too small for the camera to capture against the clear blue sky. It landed
and rolled noiselessly down a patch of smooth green grass.
The man reached out both hands over the counter and pushed up his
digits, wriggling them softly in the dim light.
“Hold on,” he said, “Hold the phone.”
He stared at them with a mixture of horror and admiration.
“What’s happened to my fingers?”
Stephen looked up. As far as he could tell, all ten were accounted for.
The man got to his feet. He leaned from side to side, as if he were
stepping off a boat onto shore. Then he stumbled out of the room in a
hurry.
There was light applause as a man tapped the ball into a hole from
the edge of the green.
Stephen glanced down at the briefcase the man had left behind, and
then he turned to the door. He waited for the man to realize his mistake
and come stumbling back in.
The TV cut to commercials. A scene of a woman jogging alongside her
dog was overlaid with an announcer rattling off a litany of side effects—
eye pain, bleeding ulcers, paranoia, memory loss, tooth decay, thoughts
of harming oneself or others.
Stephen had a second beer and then a third. By that time, curiosity
and impulsiveness had the better of him.
“I’m cashing out,” he said, leaving a five-dollar bill on the counter.
Then he picked up the briefcase and walked out the door.
***
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The Sequence by Peter Ryan
His palms were greased with sweat when he lifted the case up onto the
bed. It wasn’t heavy, but Stephen was nervous.
Originally, he’d assumed that the man had stumbled back to his room
and passed out. He had an image of him laying flat on the mattress,
clothes and bedcovers still on. This would have left him plenty of time to
rifle through the contents before inquiring at the front desk about a lost
and found.
For the first time, the possibility occurred to him its owner had simply
stepped out to go to the men’s room. If so, he might already be back at
the bar. He could see him there now: retracing his steps, falling on all
fours to check under the tables and chairs—
There was a knock at the door.
Stephen froze. Every muscle in his body tightened.
The taps on the door were repeated—this time with greater urgency.
After a minute, Stephen heard a bit of shuffling in the hallway. Then
silence.
There was no turning back now. Might as well see what he had
“won.” He popped open the briefcase.
Four large plastic bags had been strapped to the bottom interior with
duct tape. Each contained a powder of a different color: one orange, one
yellow, one red, and one blue. Drugs—they could only be drugs. Cocaine
with food coloring? Maybe. If so, there was many thousands of dollars
worth.
The phone by the bed rang and Stephen jumped back, nearly
knocking the briefcase to the floor.
When he was eight, he had grabbed a pen from the South Bend
mayor’s office on a class field trip. When he was sixteen, he’d snatched a
bag of food off the counter at a McDonald’s. Just picked up an order that
wasn’t his and waltzed right out the door, digging to the bottom of the
bag for fries. He didn’t steal for money. And he wasn’t compulsive about
it. It wasn’t like he stuffed a candy bar into his pocket every time we
wandered into a store.
The phone rang again, and he panicked. He kicked open the door to
the bathroom. Then he tore open one of the bags, dumping it out into
the toilet. There was enough powder that he was worried about clogs,
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so he only emptied half of it before the first flush.
As the rosy red water circled the drain, it bubbled and spit out a thick
black smoke, glittering with bright red specks. Stephen coughed, lifting
his shirt to shield his mouth.
Then he heard a noise. It was a combination of two sounds: a baby
bird crying out for its mother and a man violently gurgling water in the
back of his throat.
Something not entirely dissimilar to a fetus, but much larger, pulled
itself out of the bowl and into the black air that swirled around the
room. Its skin was red—as if it had no skin at all. And though its head
and hands were fetus-like, with eyes that could not yet open because
they were not fully formed, it was easily the size of a large dog.
Instinctively, Stephen took the suitcase from the bed and began
smashing in the creature’s skull. It was his body, rather than his mind,
that was processing the situation. And his body had chosen violence.
When the red, fleshy thing was not just dead, but thoroughly dead,
its brains bashed into the tile and its head deflated like a sad balloon, he
sank to the floor and cried.
He was drowsy. He could barely keep his eyes open. His last thought
before falling asleep was that he should probably buy garbage bags.
***
When he woke, the man from the bar was sitting in the chair beside him.
He looked sober.
“Oh good,” he said, “you’re awake.”
Stephen sat up. He was under the sheets, but he realized suddenly
that, other than his boxers, he wasn’t wearing any clothes.
“What’re you doing here?”
“You let me in,” the man said.
Stephen couldn’t remember.
“You’re sleepy,” he said, “That’s the red powder. You’ve started the
sequence.”
“The sequence,” Stephen repeated.
“Red, Orange,” the man said, “Yellow, Blue. You take Red without
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Orange, you sleep and don’t wake up. You take Orange without Yellow,
you have a heart attack. You take Yellow without Blue… well, at least
you die happy. But there isn’t really anything left of you.”
Stephen stared over at the bathroom. The creature was still there, its
brains and guts oozing over the tile.
“Yeah man,” he laughed, “you fucked ‘er up.”
“What the hell is it?” He wanted to leap out of bed, put on some
pants, and get out of there as fast as he could, but he was so tired that
even sitting was an effort.
The man frowned.
“So there’s magic,” he said, stretching out his left hand all the way to
the left as if to say magic is over here, “and there are drugs.” He
stretched out his right hand all the way to the right, and then slowly
brought the two together. “Then there’s a very teeny, tiny overlap. If
you’re a wizard that uses drugs, you keep it secret from other wizards. If
you’re an addict that uses magic, you keep it a secret from other addicts.
It pays to be discrete, and I’m the one who gets paid for that discretion.”
Stephen leaned back onto the pillow.
“I can’t sell this shit to just anybody,” he said, “Plenty of mundanes
would love the high, but the Dark Council would fuck me if it got on the
news. I mean, so would the Council of Light, but they can suck a dick. I
mean, sorry, no offense, but it’s true.”
The man took a drag from his cigarette. Stephen hadn’t even realized
he’d been holding one.
“Point being: I only sell to wizards. And even then, I have to be
careful. I surround myself with people who don’t snitch. You see where
I’m going with this?’
“I won’t say anything.”
Stephen closed his eyes. He could feel himself drifting off to sleep.
The man grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled up and down, as if
trying to shake down an apple from a tree.
“Not yet!” he shouted, “Not yet!”
Stephen roused.
“Red,” the man said, “How do I explain Red? It makes you a double.
Your ideal self. Pure vanity trip, if you ask me. Lasts about an hour.”
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He glanced to the bathroom and then back again.
“Real short. You didn’t miss much. Brings you down seeing your own
flesh melt back into a puddle. Worst part of the trip. Orange smacks you
up again. You don’t sleep for three, four days. You get a chance to hit
things hard. You’ve got time to organize the garage. Finish that novel.”
He paused and smiled. There was a gleam in his eye that almost
made Stephen believe he intended to write the next great American
bestseller.
“They call it ‘the muse,’ right? Except the shadows are hot on your
heels. They think you’re dying, but they can’t touch you—like a lion
trying to pounce on a tourist but slamming into the glass wall of the
cage, right? Like they get real mad about it.”
He laughed.
“Yellow gives you that one-with-the-earth feeling. That’s the good
stuff. That’s cloud nine, classic high. Blue brings you back to okie dokie
and you can’t remember any of the shit that just happened. I mean your
memory is wiped.”
“People pay for this?”
“It’s the whole damn thing,” he said, “Life. Ego. Inspiration. Mortality.
Then you go all one with the universe, say fuck it and start it over again.
But it kind of drives you nuts. Our brains can’t process that shit. Hence
the wipe.”
“People do this more than once?”
He laughed. “Oh yeah. I mean, it’s hard because you forget. I had to
write it down. I was like: Harold! That shit is good! You’ll like it! One
more time! Just trust me!” His laugh devolved into a cackle.
“You don’t cold turkey this shit. You just don’t. Right now you’re
tired. You’ll sleep, sleep, and sleep. That’s cause of the Red. If you don’t
move on to Orange, you’ll sleep forever.”
Stephen thought about reaching for the phone and calling 911. Then
he thought about the dog-sized fetus in his bathroom.
“You’ll die,” Harold explained, “I mean: coma. But basically dead.”
Stephen sighed. “How much do I take?”
“Just a pinch,” he said, “I mean you went all-in with Red, I mean half
of the fucking bag all-in, so we might want to up your dose.”
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“How much will it cost me?”
Harold smiled. “You’re gonna work for what you owe.”
“I’d rather pay cash.”
The man shifted in his chair uncomfortably. He grimaced. “Now you
know too much,” he said, “When you make it to Blue, you can forget this
whole thing ever happened. Then you’re free. Meanwhile, I’m not
letting you out of my sight.”
He took another drag from his cigarette. In his other hand, Stephen
realized, he was holding a gun.
***
“This heat’s the worst,” Harold cried, even though the air-conditioning
had been cranked up to the max and it was actually a bit chilly inside.
They had been driving for three hours. For some reason, they had taken
Stephen’s car, an old Chevy, and Harold had left his Buick back at the
hotel. Stephen was at the wheel—he got the impression he would be
the whole way there.
When he had dissolved some Orange in a plastic cup in the hotel
bathroom, he hadn’t just felt wide awake; he felt a sense of urgency. He
couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something in his blind spot,
following the car, and he wanted to get away from it. Harold had to tell
him three times to slow down.
Harold tilted his seat back. “The fucking worst, man.”
Stephen pulled his baseball cap down, shielding his eyes from the
sun.
He thought he saw a shadow in his rearview mirror, but when he
turned his head it was gone.
***
They pulled into a trailer park a few hours outside of Salt Lake.
“Okay, little bird,” Harold said, “Time to earn your seed.”
“I’m ready.”
“Here.” He handed him a small ziplock bag. It was full of what looked
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like tealeaves. “He gets this for three faeries. Make sure they’re alive.
Man’s name is Ephraim.”
It took a second for this to sink in. “You’re not coming?”
Harold shook his head. “Never done business with this one before. So
you go. Everything pans out, next time he’ll get the real deal.”
Everything pans out was clearly code for nobody gets shot in the face.
“I’m not going in there.”
Harold was still holding the gun in his lap.
“What the fuck do you think this is? You’re on Orange. You’re gonna
go faster and faster until your heart bursts. Unless, that is, you top it off
with Yellow at the peak. Those are my fucking drugs you’re taking. Go
earn it.”
Stephen’s heart really was beating fast. Even just sitting there talking
it out was making him anxious. He was having trouble sitting still. And in
the afternoon sun, the shadows were long. He couldn’t help but think
that they were waiting, watching.
He snatched the bag from Harold’s hand and stuffed it into the
pocket of his jeans. Then he burst out of the Chevy, hopping up the
steps to the trailer. He knocked on the door, and Harold gave him a
thumbs up from the car.
An older man answered. He had a full head of white hair and a trim
beard. He was wearing an XXLarge shirt with a picture of the Grand
Canyon on it, but he was really a medium.
“Who’s your friend?” he asked, immediately spotting the car.
“That’s, uh, my associate.”
“Does your associate drink coffee?”
“I’ve only ever seen him drink jack and cokes.”
The man snorted and waved him inside.
***
The trailer was filled with heat lamps and small metal cages scattered
across newsprint that had been flattened over counters, couches, and
the floor. It smelled like wet dog, but there didn’t seem to be one
around.
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Ephraim poured Stephen a cup of coffee.
“All I have is mason jars,” he said, handing it to him with an oven mitt
around the glass.
“Thanks.”
“Well,” he said, “You can have your pick really.”
He brought out a shoebox. It had tiny holes that had been punched
into the lid. Stephen opened it. A dozen or so yellowish-gray bodies
squirmed over some paper-thin tissue. They had tiny butterfly wings
that didn’t look big enough to lift them up from the ground. They had no
eyes or distinguishing features. In fact, they almost looked like they were
made from putty. Some of them were stuck to the side of the box.
“They’re alive?”
Ephraim appraised him critically. “Well,” he said, “Just look at ‘em!”
Stephen took another look. They were all moving—if only just.
“Do you have a—have a…?” Stephen wasn’t sure what he needed.
“I’ll get you something to put it in.”
He opened a cupboard and an entire collection of grocery bags
floated to the floor. Stephen picked one up. Then he dropped in three
faeries from the shoebox.
“You’re not pledged?” Ephraim’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Not what?”
“You don’t belong,” he pressed, “to any of the guilds?”
“No,” Stephen said, “No sir.”
He nodded approvingly. Stephen pulled out the bag of tealeaves.
Ephraim reached out to take it, but then hesitated.
“I need you to understand,” he said, “This is for my arthritis.”
“No judgment.”
“That’s the kind of thing a dealer would say to a junkie.”
Stephen shrugged. The man snatched the bag from his hand.
***
“How did he seem?” Harold asked. They were halfway to Iowa. He
scratched an itch on the left side of his temple with the gun. “Like the
kind of guy who pays his bills on time?”
100
Stephen had been on the wheel for seven hours, but he wasn’t tired.
There was a whistling as the wind hit the car, nearly pushing it out of
the lane. He couldn’t help but think that beneath the wind, he heard
someone laughing.
***
They drove down a gravel road through ten acres of corn before
reaching a driveway.
It was really a mansion, not a house. There were two stories and at
least seven windows on each level. In front sat a grand covered porch
with room enough for a hundred rocking chairs. Instead of furniture,
there had been collected there a vast assortment of statues of all types:
naked men about to hurl discs, proud lions, women holding vases to
their heads, men in robes, gargoyles, cherubs, unpainted gnomes, and
abstract figures, with heads, arms, and legs but no features to
distinguish one from the other. There were cobwebs bridging some of
the gaps between marble, but not an excessive amount. The house was
freshly painted blue with pink trim.
When they stepped out of the car, Stephen thought he heard
something rustling in the corn.
The heavyset woman who greeted them at the door was wearing a
checkered pink and white dress, white nylons, and an oven mitt. She had
tattoos up both her arms and around her neck—all animals or mythical
creatures: owls, foxes, bears, dragons, unicorns, and faeries woven
together like patchwork. She wore dark purple lipstick and heavy
eyeliner.
“Jo, this is Stephen,” Harold said, “Stephen, this is Jo.”
Jo nodded, but didn’t extend her hand. The house was even more
impressive on the inside. There was a grand white staircase leading up
to the second floor, allowing for an enormously high ceiling in the main
hall. The walls were red with light oak trim, and there were floor-toceiling paintings of women in elegant white dresses and men wearing
shredded black robes. There were a few objects here and there laid out
on tables beneath glass, like in a museum.
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“I hope neither of you is a vegetarian,” she said.
***
“I’m so grateful,” Harold said, polishing the last bit of pot roast from his
plate, “so honored to know someone who can cook like that.”
“It was all really good,” Stephen agreed, wiping his mouth, “Really
delicious.”
“I guess I’m supposed to deny it,” Jo said, “but what can I say? There
are two or three things I do really well.”
Stephen half expected Harold to say something nasty. Maybe
suggesting that “fucking” was one of the other two or three things.
Instead, he just smiled and nodded.
“Well,” she said, “who’s getting high tonight? Just me?”
Harold laughed. “Stephen here is about to Yellow.”
“For fuck’s sake,” she said, “You started without me.”
“He’s on Orange,” he said, “Right now.”
Her eyes lit up. “Yeah? How’s it feel?”
Stephen chose his next words carefully. “Like I’m a wounded fox
being chased by dogs.”
She laughed. “Fear is a drug.”
“Love is a drug,” Harold suggested, “Food is a drug.”
“Only the good stuff,” she reminded him.
Stephen stared down at his hands. They were trembling. “I just don’t
like feeling like I’m not in control.”
For a long moment, the table was silent.
“Who is this guy?” Jo laughed, “Harold, this is your partner?”
“More of a friend,” he said, “More of a tag-along.”
She stacked their plates, putting her hand up when Harold stood
from his chair, as if to say: no, I can handle it.
“I’ve never been in control of anything,” she said, “Not one moment
of my whole damn life.”
***
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Jo led them into a large attic. The ceiling was filled with skylights, and
mosaic windows lined the wood-paneled walls. There were a number of
antique dressers pushed to the corners, covered with candles and dried
wax, but it was otherwise unfurnished. The entire floor was made from a
chalkboard material, on which a number of large concentric circles had
been drawn: some with solid edges and others with dotted lines; some
with script from an alphabet Stephen didn’t recognize; and some with a
centerpiece in the middle—a bowl of water filled with petals, a candle, a
framed photograph, or a dead mouse still caught in its trap. There were
hundreds of sealed bottles and glass jars scattered about the room.
“This is my workshop,” Jo said. She took a seat on the floor—not
inside, but next to, one of the chalk circles.
“This place is famous, Stephen,” Harold said, “Watch your step.”
Jo laughed. “I’m laughing, but he’s right. Don’t fuck with my circles.”
Stephen crept through the room carefully and took a seat with his
back against the far wall.
“Give me the stuff,” she said.
Harold handed her four ziplock bags, each with a small amount of the
various powders. She took the red one and immediately dumped it into
a bowl of water sitting at her feet. It bubbled and spit up a hissing black
smoke.
“You can have three bottles.”
“We agreed on four!”
“Asshole,” she laughed, “I’m pulling your leg.”
Stephen watched as Harold collected four glass containers sitting
around the room, choosing them seemingly at random.
“What’s in the bottles?” he asked.
“Jo’s a medium. She can talk to the dead.”
“They’re not ‘the dead,’” Jo explained, “They’re just echoes. They
have no coherent sense of self.”
“Whatever, she talks to echoes. Then she traps them in these circles
of protection and bottles ‘em up. You can use ‘em for all sorts of spells,
but you can also ingest them directly. A powerful spirit will take over
completely and never give you back, and that’s no good. But a weak one
will take control just as long as you let it. It’s a weird sort of out-of-body
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rush. You can be out of control for a little while, someone else in the
driver’s seat, but then snap back in whenever you want.”
“Even a weak spirit can take you over so you don’t come back,” Jo
warned, “Just between friends, I wouldn’t recommend it.”
A small figure emerged from the water bowl, black smoke drifting off
its flesh like steam after a hot bath. As the black, glistening cloud
dissipated, its red skin pinkened and more distinctive features began to
form.
“Oh my God,” Jo cried, “Oh my God.”
It grew quickly. It was thinner than Jo. It had blue eyes, but they were
clearer somehow, like shallow pools. They glittered like rain in the
sunlight. It had black hair, but it was jet-black with no trace of gray. Jo
was completely entranced.
Stephen couldn’t take his eyes of it either, but he was sweating up a
storm. He could feel his heart pounding in his throat. Every shadow in
the room looked like it might pop out and clutch him by the throat.
“Time to Yellow,” Harold said. He reached into his pocket and dug
out another plastic bag. Stephen headed to the kitchen downstairs. He
poured himself a glass of water and then dumped the yellow powder in
it, stirring with his finger. It didn’t bubble or boil. He sniffed it. The scent
was lemony, like dish detergent. He poured it into his mouth with one
quick flick of the wrist and then puckered his lips.
His heart slowed, but otherwise he didn’t feel any different. It only
hit him when he reached the bottom of the stairs.
***
He looked down at the space between his hand and the rail. There was
dust in the air, and it was catching the light of the windows. The voices
all spoke at once—but softly, like the fluttering of a moth’s wings. Like a
small creek pouring itself over a bed of stone. Like a candle-lit dinner
where guests murmured only to their neighbors, no one so brash as
command the entire table’s attention at once. Only there were others—
surrounding them in the dark—weeping, screaming, begging. Their
voices, for all their added urgency, were no louder than idle chatter, and
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the party was not disturbed.
The next step was all steps. It was the barefooted march into tall
grass. It was a lurch forward onto an airplane from the jet bridge.
The stairs were all stairs. They were the spiral steps of stone up a
long tower. They were the mossy rocks placed in a trickling stream,
leading across the water. They were the ladder upon which a man stood
to change a light bulb, before falling and breaking a leg.
There was no reason to go up the stairs or down them, but there was
also no reason to stand still, and Stephen’s legs pressed on.
He thought he heard Jo and Harold and tried to concentrate, to
focus. He saw a rainbow form in the mist of a waterfall. He saw a woman
eclipsed by a swarm of bees. He saw islands of plastic drifting in the
ocean.
“Yeah,” Harold laughed, “he’s toasted.”
But she wasn’t paying any attention. She was still crying. Her double
was dancing around the room—slow and elegant. Jo’s eyes were droopy,
as if it had sapped the last ounce of her will just to keep them open.
Stephen thought: when the spider spins its web, does it think I better
do this so I can catch some flies? Or does it do so regardless, some inner
compulsion and propensity for geometric forms? He was watching a
thousand spiders spin their silk, he was spinning it himself, he was in and
out of their heads, but no closer to an answer.
Harold put the gun to Jo’s head and pulled the trigger. Her brains
splattered over the walls like a can of Coke exploding in the microwave.
Her double melted into a puddle on the floor.
On a mountain a man crouched behind a bush and took a shit. He
wore a heavy “outdoor adventure” jacket that he had purchased from a
catalogue. A woman woke up alone in the dark. Someone was
hammering at the knob of her door. She screamed and screamed, but no
help came.
“This is for you,” Harold said. He put the gun in Stephen’s hand,
making sure that he got the finger around the trigger. He pushed
Stephen towards the body, so that he tripped and fell onto the corpse,
getting blood on his pants and shirt before he was able to lift himself up.
She dug her way up from the sand where her sisters had buried her.
105
They had put seaweed on top of the mound, and the tide was becoming
strong. He pulled himself up the rope and rung the bell, sliding back
down. His hands and fingers burned. He lifted himself up on the kitchen
counter and put his foot into the soft sponge cake. He was three years
old. His mother was mortified.
He wasn’t just in the attic—he wasn’t in any one place. He was
everywhere all at once.
“You have no idea,” Harold said, “what all this is worth. And the
police won’t either. No one will notice a few missing bottles.”
There was a girl missing in Colorado. She had been locked in an attic.
It was smaller and darker than this one. She had stacks and stacks of
board games, but no one to play them with. At night, the man would
come.
“I reported Ephraim to the Dark Council,” he continued, “You know—
the guy you sold wyrm leaves to instead of me doing it? He’ll have no
problem identifying you after a little coaxing. They won’t pin this on me
either.”
In a small room, four women and three men spoke in hushed
whispers. They were scared of themselves—scared of each other—but
they expressed this in irritation and violence. They spoke of prophecies
of their leader’s return. They dreaded it but worked tirelessly toward
that end.
“My partner is coming for me,” he said, “He’s been following us this
whole time. I’ll leave you this.” He dangled the bag of blue powder and
dropped it on the floor. “So it can be your choice. You either wake up
with no memory beside a dead body and holding a gun, your car parked
out front, or you can ride the high, and scatter your atoms across the
universe. I’ve got no beef with you personally, but that doesn’t mean I’m
not fucking enjoying this.” He offered a grim smile as evidence of this
fact. “You stupid piece of shit. God help you.”
The partner was already outside. He was a tall man. He wore jeans
that were too tight. He was nervous. Stephen could feel the sweat creep
through the pores. It was hot outside.
They took many trips up and down the stairs. There was no reason
for Stephen to move. There was no reason to stand still. He shuffled
106
around the room and found himself at the center of one of the circles
that had been drawn in chalk on the floor. There were flower petals
scattered there and a small pot containing either dirt or ash. As he
stared down, a thin green mist seeped up out of the soil. It wrapped
itself around his neck like a scarf, and then he inhaled it through his
nostrils as he would a fine perfume. He felt a presence now—stronger
than all the others.
You’ve got to do something, it said. The voice was loud, almost
deafening.
Harold and his partner gathered up the last of the bottles. Stephen
picked up the blue bag and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he followed
them down the stairs.
You can’t let them leave.
As they pulled out of the driveway and into the cornfields, Stephen
started his car.
He was driving the Indy 500. He was every single commuter on the
405 freeway. He was standing in a junkyard putting a new engine into an
old metal frame.
You have to drive fast.
Fast or slow didn’t matter.
You have to run them off the road.
Life and death were continuous.
Stephen sped up when he turned the corner onto the highway. He
swerved into the oncoming lane and hit Harold’s car from the right. The
wheels screeched beneath him, and he wobbled, but he pulled the
steering wheel tight and hit the other car again, running it off the road.
It flipped and tumbled through the corn. There was the sound of
scraping metal and the crunch of broken glass.
You have to give them your gun.
Stephen pulled over and pulled up the emergency brake. He walked
over to the wreckage. There were bodies squirming inside.
Wipe it off first.
He wiped the gun with his shirt. Then he tossed it into the grass, as
close to the car as he could get it.
Tell them to go fuck themselves.
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“Go fuck yourselves,” he said, startled by the sound of his own voice.
In Vienna, a choir sang a mournful dirge. In Cape Town, men and
women played clarinets and pounded on large drums in a performance
hall. From space, a woman stared down at the blue Earth from the
window of her shuttle, humming Don’t Think Twice It’ll Be Alright.
He stepped back into the Chevy and closed the door.
Go to Ephraim, the voice said, save him if you can.
***
Stephen was at the wheel. There was open road ahead of him,
stretching far out into the horizon. There was an older man beside him
that he had never seen before. He had a full head of white hair and a
short beard.
The last thing he remembered was having a drink at the bar. His head
throbbed. It hurt even more when he turned his neck to glance at his
new companion.
His name is Ephraim. The voice in his head was crystal clear, as if the
words were being sung softly into a microphone.
Tell him he’ll be fine.
“You’ll be fine,” Stephen said.
The man snorted in reply.
“I’ve only ever met three legitimate fortune tellers in my life,” he
said, “and they were all still wrong half the time.”
They drove in silence for a while. Stephen had no idea where he was
taking them, but he decided to stay on the highway.
Tell him Edith O’Dwyer sends her regards.
“Edith O’Dwyer…” he began, half mumbling it to himself, but then he
stopped.
The man’s face soured.
“Why did you say that,” he demanded, “Who gave you that name?”
Tell him.
Stephen shook his head, like a horse shivering to dust off the flies.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t feel all that well.”
The man fumed. “How do you know the name Edith O’Dwyer?”
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Tell him you met me at a meeting of the White Council. That I told
you he was one of the people I most admired. Don’t tell him I’m dead.
“I don’t. I don’t know her. The name was just in my head.”
They drove for another hour before the man demanded to be let out.
Stephen pulled off the highway and up to a gas station. The tank was
low.
After the man stepped out he leaned back inside.
“Get yourself sober,” he said.
Then he slammed the door.
***
A few hours later, he was in the canyons, a few miles outside of Spanish
Fork.
Pull over.
He turned off, following signs for the “scenic vista.” But it was almost
like he wasn’t driving at all, like he was just watching it happen.
He stepped out, leaving the engine running. The dashboard offered a
friendly reminder that his door was ajar.
The heat washed over his skin, pressing down. He crept out onto the
edge, near the rail, and stared out into the horizon. The sun had begun
to set. The rocks yellowed and lost some of their burning intensity. He
adjusted his baseball cap so that it wasn’t blocking his view.
There was such a vastness, and Stephen was swept up in it. He was a
part of it as much as he was an observer. The feeling he had now was
sharp and clear—the first time he had been truly awake in days.
He lingered awhile, but soon a feeling crept over him that it was time
to move on. Only his feet were somehow planted there. He couldn’t
move them—couldn’t even avert his gaze. Something didn’t want to let
go, didn’t want it all to end.
So he stayed. He watched and waited—long after the dark, and the
stars had begun to fill the sky.
He wasn’t in control, but it didn’t matter. He was in good hands.
109
Vena Amoris
By Matthew Lyons
She storms out of the house, suitcase in hand, and slams the door after
her, leaving me here alone in all this stupid empty space, wringing my
hands and screaming at no one. Outside, I hear her car door clap shut
and then she's driving away and I'm standing in her big bay window
shouting at her car as it dissolves into the vanishing point beyond the
suburbs. The house smells like dust and death and her and the silence is
already starting to suffocate me. My hands and my chest and my head
all throb and pound.
It doesn't take me long to get sucked into a hurricane of booze and
pills and self-pity. The day gets fuzzy and ugly and I try my hardest to
disappear into it. I start in the shower, in my clothes, clutching a bottle
of cheap gin. The icy water slashes at my face and neck and I swear I'm
not crying.
***
There are ghosts inside the storm, rattling chains and wailing all the
things she said to me before she left. When they start chanting You
never touch me anymore in chorus I start beating my fists against the
closest hard thing I can find and do it until my knuckles split and my nails
tear back to the cuticle because I know they're right. My hands are
traitors and traitors have to pay and at least I know that much for sure. I
keep falling.
***
There's a place at the bottom of the storm that's cold and empty and
sick with darkness and when I think of going back there I want to throw
up.
***
110
I start cutting them off the next day. Right hand pinkie, as good a
starting line as any. It's not that hard. I have a new pair of tinsnips with
yellow rubber grips, half a bottle of vodka for sterilization and pain
management. Her left-behind iron, cranked up as high as it'll go cauterizing. Lots of paper towels. The gag I make out of a knotted
bedsheet from the set we got for our wedding.
The blades bite through flesh and bone like they're birthday cake.
Snap, sizzle, splash. Takes all of ten seconds, less.
One down, nine left. Plus a little extra on each side.
I fit the fist of heirloom fabric back into my mouth and keep going.
Snap, sizzle, splash.
***
I get through a whole five before I realize that Left is a traitor who's
been playing me this whole time. Can't believe I didn't see it. He was so
willing to go along with the plan, so happy to dismember his brother.
Now look at the mess we've made: Right's a stumpy mangle, a ragged
Eggo dipped in pinky-red froth and scorched shut. Gonna have to come
all the way off eventually. All three of us know that.
At the end of my other arm, Left dances a victorious quintuple jig,
stabbing his nails down into the soft wood of the table with a
maddening chicka-chicka-chicka-chicka. I stare at him, trying to shame
him into stopping, but it's no good. He's won. Worse, he knows it. With
his brother out of the picture, we both know I've got no one else to help
get rid of him. Just me and him in the house, now. Even more after what
comes next.
Out in the empty garage is the table saw. It screams like hell when I
get it spinning up to full speed, can't hear anything else. I don't want to
do this. Right doesn't want to die.
But we've gone this far already.
Right, without the legs or the will to stop us, goes limp as Left curls
around his wrist to guide him down.
It's a mercy killing. I keep telling myself that. It's a mercy killing. It has
to be. I hate them. I hate them both. It's their fault I'm here. They
111
Vena Amoris by Matthew Lyons
brought this on themselves. That has to be true. Please make it true. I
can feel the wind whirring off the edge of the saw. Sinking closer and
closer, closer still, the air around it weirdly warm. Almost comfortable.
I realize I left the gag in the kitchen half a second too late but it
doesn't matter 'cause nobody can hear me over the wail of the saw
anyway.
***
When you run a table saw at top speed for long enough, the spinning
blade gets so hot that it almost glows.
The garage fills with the smell of burning blood and for a second I
think I can hear another tiny screaming and that's when I pass out.
***
In the dream, Right and I decide Left's gotta go. We fetch a carving knife
from the kitchen drawer and hold him over the sink's edge. Right twirls
the blade in his fingers in anticipation, and when the moment's right, he
slashes it down in a neat arc, but of course it goes wrong. Left twitches,
then rolls over at the last possible second, and the knife opens up a deep
red gash across his back. Pins of white crosshatch the mess and Left
starts screeching and skittering around like a spider on fire. Then he
goes for my throat and it's all over.
***
I come to on the garage floor, shivering and wet and stiff. Table saw still
and quiet. Pants coldly spackled to my groin - not sure if it's piss or
something else. Worse. Right's gone, a blackened, ripped up stump
where he used to be. Ugly as hell, but it doesn't hurt. I wonder why it
doesn't hurt.
At the end of my other arm, Left's grinning at me, his mouth spanning
the breadth of his back, wet and crowded with yellow teeth.
"Hey, buddy. How you feeling? Better than you look, I hope. Because,
112
wow. All I'm saying."
His voice is all oil and blood burbling out of a rusty drain onto clean
porcelain. Too friendly, too practiced. He talks like corporate training
videos teach you to. Pure confidence. I blink a few times, trying to clear
the crust and blur from my eyelids. He's not wearing our ring anymore,
the skin where it was pale and crepy, bowed in before the knuckle.
Staring at him for too long makes my head hurt, makes me feel like I'm
going to throw up.
"Time is it?" It hurts to talk, to move my mouth. My lips are dry and
scaly, spiderwebbed with bloody mudcracks.
"Almost noon, if you can believe it."
"I was out all night?"
"Mhm, most of the morning, too. Didn't look like a whole lot of fun,
tell you the truth Sleep. You were screaming, thrashing, making all this
noise. Bad dreams, buddy?"
"I don't know. I don't remember."
He smirks. "Whatever you say, buddy. You're awake now, up-andattem, and we got all the time in the world, you and me. Us against all of
them now, you know? Better get used to it. You thirsty? You look
thirsty."
He's not wrong. I'm parched. I'm beyond parched. I'm arid. I'm
dessicated. I'm sand and dust. I heave my dry bones up to totter on
unsteady pins and needles, then lurch toward the door, the kitchen. Left
opens the door for me and it's too bright in here, the light too loud.
Hurts my eyes, the inside of my head. Pulses like white poppies. The pain
is sharp and incredible and only melts away the tiniest bit when the
water passes my lips. I hadn't even noticed Left filling the glass.
"That's right, buddy. Drink it all down. It's good for you. That's it.
Good, buddy. Real good. There you go."
He fills the glass again while I catch my breath, holds it to my lips. The
water is rich and cool and cuts the hurt just a little bit more.
We find the painkillers in the bathroom, in the half-empty medicine
cabinet. Left shakes out a handful and stuffs them into my mouth, I don't
know how many exactly. Another glass of water and they're gone.
"There. That'll help. Come on, buddy. Let's go get you cleaned up."
113
He undresses me and goes under the kitchen sink for a plastic
grocery bag, then fixes it over the mess at the end of my right wrist,
secures it with a rubberband. In the bathroom, he runs the shower and
we step in when it's the right temperature. I close my eyes against the
warmth and try to let it soak into my bones.
Left turns up the heat and I start to think about the last time we were
in here together and how the way she was warm was different to how
the water was warm and about the way she bobbed her hips back and
forth and slapped her palms against the wet tile and screamed and told
me to pull her hair harder and come inside her and I'm all the way hard
already and Left's curled himself around me, gliding back and forth.
"Just relax, buddy," he coos. "I'll take care of everything. You just lean
back, right there, that's it. You just think happy thoughts and I'll do the
rest, okay?"
And I hate him for it but I do it anyway. I think about the way she
looked in heels and the freckles on her shoulders and her lips in artificial
cherry red and the way her hair spilled down her back in hazel ringlets
and my knees twitch and my hips buck and Left finishes me off and
when it happens I yelp and press my face against the tile and he kisses
my tip the same way she used to and that's when I start to cry and cry
and cry.
The plastic bag crinkles and crackles as the water plays against it and
everything hurts and eventually the water goes all cold and then that
hurts too.
Left keeps telling me I did such a good job and when he asks if I want
to go again I bang my face against the tile until the blood catches in my
beard.
***
I call in sick to work. I call in sick to work for the next two weeks. And for
two weeks after that. Left tells me what to say and I listen to him. I don't
think my boss can hear him talking in the background and that's okay.
He's got something tufty and brown and red stuck in his teeth. He says
words like gastrointerologist and hypercystic diarrhea and hospital study
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and I say them too. My boss apologizes to me for no reason and gets off
the line as fast as she can. Left laughs at her and licks the brown and red
smear around his cracked lips and says he'd suck her dick if she weren't
such an uptight asshole. I tell him that doesn't make any sense but I
don't think he's listening.
His breath smells like gray meat and mold and salt.
I haven't seen my cat in three days.
***
The place where Right used to be is getting worse and worse, gone all
purply and black and brown-white. It smells like mayonnaise and hot
cheese when I get too close. When I touch it too much or bump it
against anything, the pain is so bad that it makes me pee in my pants. I
don't have any bandages in my house big enough to work and I don't
want any of the people at the Rite-Aid to see, so I just duct tape an old tshirt over and around it. It throbs and oozes but I think it's helping. Left
laughs and laughs every time I do it.
I think he hates me. He knows I still need him and I think that makes
him hate me more.
I try to hate him back twice as hard but the need gets in the way and I
just end up hating myself.
One morning he says something shitty to me and I tell him to shut
the fuck up so he fetals up into a fist and beats himself against my thighs
until I can't walk anymore. The next day there are bruises the size of
grapefruits where he hit me and he helps me put on heavy pants so
neither of us have to look at what I made him do.
When I tell him I'm sorry he pets my hair and tells me he knows I am.
Then he makes me think about her while he jacks me off again.
Afterwards he makes me give him a thank you kiss without washing off
first. We shower together and he laughs at my body. I tell him I want to
call my dad and he tells me no, the phone's his. I tell him okay and
pretend to understand.
He gives me more pills and I eat them and even though I'll never
admit it I start to hope he'll feed me too many and I'll die. He stuffs them
115
all the way to the back of my throat and makes me swallow and I never
ever ever think about biting down on him.
He likes it when I hate him and he likes it when I'm stoned because it
means he wins.
I used to want to be things.
***
I only dream in his voice anymore.
***
The first time he calls her, I'm asleep.
He hits me in the side of the head until I wake up. I don't know what's
going on until I hear her voice on the other end of the line. She sounds
mad.
"What the fuck are you calling me for?"
"Tell her she's a bitch. Tell her, buddy. You're a bitch!"
"Uh..."
"Don't uh me, okay? Tell me what could be so important that you're
calling me in the middle of the night."
"Tell her, buddy. Tell her what a big bitch she is. You hear me? Huh?
You're a fucking bitch!"
"I, uh."
"Oh, fuck off. If you don't have the balls to say anything, then fuck
you too. Don't bother calling me again. I'm changing this number."
The line goes dead and Left starts screeching and hits me in the ear
with the phone until the screen cracks. I start to cry and he tells me to
shut up. We lay in uncomfortable silence until the sun starts slipping
through the blinds with puffy orange fingers.
He doesn't talk to me for three days after. Doesn't hit me or laugh at
me when I go to the bathroom, either.
It's wonderful.
***
116
The next week, he starts calling her from payphones and cheap burners
like the ones drug dealers buy from Walmarts and 7-11s. He doesn't
even bother holding the phone to my ear when he calls her. Shouts all
sorts of horrible shit when he does it, vulgar, angry, violent, racist stuff.
He does it three or four times a day. I don't think she hears him, and if
she does, I don't think she responds. She's better than that, and we all
know it. Doesn't stop Left from trying, though. He threatens to kill her
parents and rape their dog. Burn the house down with her inside. He
says he's gonna film it and put it on the internet. Some of the calls go on
and on, as long as Left can keep talking. Sometimes it seems like he's not
ever gonna stop. Every day for almost a whole week.
Then one day he just quits. Doesn't want to anymore. So okay. We
don't have to do it anymore. But then he gets quiet and stays that way.
Again. And I don't know what the right answer is but whatever it is it
isn't asking if he's okay.
I don't lose any of my teeth but later that night I notice that a few of
them feel real loose behind my split lips.
***
In the morning, Left tells me he wants to go drinking. I ask him where
and he smiles sweet and says he knows a place, so we drive out to the
desert and a bar with a sign out front that reads CISMA and two cars in
the parking lot. We go inside and it's just like you imagine it would be.
Lots of wood. Lots of neon. The last cigarette vending machine in the
world. It smells like pee and peanut shells and there are two versions of
the same guy behind and in front of the bar. Flannel. Denim. Mustaches.
Leather skin, gummy eyes. They stare at us as we walk by, looking for
the bathroom. Inside one of the grubby, scribbled-up stalls, Left slaps
me in the face and bites me on the nose until tears pour out of my eyes.
When he lets go, I'm bleeding, but he doesn't wipe it away. Someone's
written ugly cocksucker on the back of the door in white-out pen. Left
slaps me again and tells me to look at him.
"You don't get to fuck this up for me, buddy. No way."
"I'm not gonna."
117
"I know you're not. You're gonna go out there and order us some
beers and we're gonna have a nice day out. A nice date. Isn't this going
to be fun?"
"I guess so. Sure."
"I'm sorry, what was that?"
"I said yes."
"That's right. That's exactly what you said, buddy. And change that
shit before we go back out there, you're disgusting."
I don't have anything to replace the t-shirt on my other arm with so I
make do with the shitty single-ply and my belt. It hurts and squeezes
red-flecked discharge out of the stump but Left says to not worry about
it so I don't. We layer the toilet paper on until nothing's seeping through
anymore then head back out to the barroom for our beers. I get his with
a bendy straw in it. They're cheap and warm and taste like shit but I
know better than to complain. Left sucks his down in one go and
demands another. While we're waiting I notice he's spinning something
gold in his fingers. It's my wedding ring. He told me he threw it away.
He sees me looking and starts to chuckle under his breath. His teeth
are big and yellow and jagged and chipped. He doesn't say anything and
I don't either. We both already know everything we'd say. I don't want
to make him mad. He waggles his gray tumor tongue at me and drops
the ring on the nicked-up bar just as his second beer arrives. He drains it
and licks his lips in that way that I hate. He does that after he goes down
on me sometimes, so proud of himself. Then he picks the ring up again
and whips it at the old guy drinking at the end of the bar and shouts Hey
fuck you hillbilly.
Then he chucks the empty ceramic ashtray like a frisbee and when it
shatters against the guy's head we're already up and on top of him. Left
balls up and socks the old guy in the neck over and over and over until
we hear something break inside, a jar crushed underwater. Pop. The old
guy gurgles on the ground and dies and I don't ever register that the
other one's circled out from behind his twenty feet of pine until he slips
the bar knife into the meat of my back and twists.
Electric pain whips up and down my spine and I start to thrash. I spin
around and fall on him in an awkward clobber of knees and elbows. I'm
118
already crying again, shaking with pain and panic and anger and I'm so
fucking scared.
Left isn't.
He spiders around my shoulder and yanks the blade out of my back. I
feel a pulse of cold followed by a fresh wave of new hurt, but Left
doesn't give a shit. He jabbers the knife into the guy's gut again and
again and again and again, stitching a neat line of red across the middle
of him before jamming the sharp metal stiffly into his temple.
The bartender whinnies and gags and starts to shake and convulse
and Left starts going through his pockets. All I can hear is the desperate
scuff of bootheels on hardwood and my own notched breathing. Left
empties the guy's stuff on the ground all around us. Wallet, keys, pack of
smokes. Snotty handkerchief. Couple quarters and some pennies.
Butane torch lighter. He checks the other guy and strikes gold: a little
baggie of hazy crystals and a glass pipe.
"Score. Cmon. We're really gonna have some fun now, buddy."
"But my ring."
"Fuck your ring and fuck you. Cmon now."
"But."
"I said now."
Left leads me out back to the alley and eases us down onto the cool,
rough pavement. He sticks the pipe between my lips and a finger in my
face.
"Close. Gentle."
I do as he says. The glass clicks against my teeth.
"Good. Now hold still. Don't you dare fucking drop that."
He strokes the side of my face with a lazy, loving thumb. Between
hitching breaths, I nod, and he smiles. Snaps open the baggie and shakes
out a few little shards. Takes the pipe from my mouth and loads the
crystals in. He puts it back and punches the bartender's torch lighter to
life. The smoke is chemical and horrible and it burns my lungs but a few
seconds later I get this sort of calm and everything's cool again.
Left takes the pipe out of my mouth and holds it to his own, bending
his fingers all the way back to keep his grip. It twists my stomach to look
at and I know it should hurt but it doesn't and I don't know where the
119
smoke goes when he breathes in but my arm goes all sparkly-numb and
we both start to giggle.
Before we fall asleep (pass out?) he tells me he loves me and I kiss
him and say me too.
***
"Wake up."
The voice is distant, thick, alien. Shouted through syrup.
"Fuck up, I said."
An enormous boot swells out of the darkness and drills me in the face
and just like that I'm all the way awake and looking into the dead eye of
a gun barrel.
The cop behind the pistol's a little guy, wiry and cut hard like beef
jerky, with wide mean eyes and a patchy gray beard. His uniform is
brown-tan and I can see a swipe of black at the collar that's got to be a
bulletproof vest. He thumbs back the hammer of his gun and I start to
freak out.
"What'd you do in there, boy?"
"I. He. I just. He did it. He did it to them." I'm blubbering. I can't help
it.
"Who's he?"
"I can't. I can't. I'm sorry. I can't. He'll hurt me so bad."
"Getcher fucking hands up."
I don't understand the question, but then again it's not exactly a
question. He kicks me again, in the leg this time, and barks.
"Hands!"
Fine. I raise my arms real slow. He chokes and sputters when he sees.
"Jesus, fuck happened to you?"
A pair of wet, rheumy eyes open above Left's mouth and he grins and
winks at me. Turns to leer at the cop, all yellow teeth and sclera.
"Same thing that's gonna happen to you, fucker."
I can see it happen as soon as he says it: the cop's eyes bulge and
something sick lights up in them. Recognition, horror, maybe just shock
and revulsion.
120
"What the fuck-"
Left opens his mouth to say something else but he doesn't get the
chance. The cop unloads on us and the bullets hack Left apart and blow
a bloom of heat in my middle but it doesn't matter because we're on our
feet and then we're on him and we all go toppling over and when the
cop's skull thwocks against the asphalt something wet spills out of him
and he starts gasping for a breath he can't seem to catch and then
everything goes quiet again.
***
That's how they die.
Facedown in the alley, cold, alone, and in pieces.
After that, it's just me again.
And whatever I have left of her.
***
I have to use my mouth to fish the phone out of the cop's pocket. It
hurts to move. The pain in my middle was getting worse, but now it's
better I think. Colder, at least. Heavier, too. Like things could sink into it
and never get found again. I try to hold the phone in place with a
forearm and hit the unlock button with my tongue. It takes a few tries
and I get grit in my mouth but eventually it works. Flip through the
functions to get to the dialpad.
At the end of my arm, the rags of Left twitch and crimp and I faintly
register pain radiating up from where he used to be, but it mostly gets
lost in the cold sink and that's okay. I look back at the dialpad and he
starts to twitch again, harder. He doesn't like it, or it's not really him and
it's just the meat on the end of my arm burning off a few final nervous
misfires but either way I need it to stop stop stop fucking fucking stop. I
bash him against the ground until he goes still forever.
I have to dial with the tip of my nose. I fuck it up a few times and
have to start over but eventually I get it right and it's worth it. Leaning
on my elbows, I ease myself down to press my face to the ringing phone.
121
The sound is buzzy and digital and too loud but I don't let it bother me. I
try to think of all the things I'm going to tell her. That I'm sorry. That I
should have touched her every day. That she was right. That I love her,
and I just wanted her to know. That I never meant for any of it and
please don't be mad at me and remember that sometimes it was okay.
My insides are leaking out from under me in a creeping pool of warm.
Sometimes we were okay. Please remember when we were okay.
The line rings and rings and rings and then there's a click of her
picking up. I try to hold my breath but I can't so I just wait for her to say
anything first.
Three shrill tones.
"You have reached a number that is no longer in service. Please check
the number and try your call again. Thank you."
The line clicks dead and I'm just laying there and then there's this
awful noise and I don't know if it's me laughing or crying or both but it
starts to gutter out and die and everything gets dark and the cold
spreads out and pulls me under and then I'm not anywhere anymore.
***
When I get to the bottom, he's already there waiting for me.
122
A Rousing Intervention
By Drew Tapley
Anastasia sat at a laminated table reading from a chrome laptop. Her
two-piece business suit and thirty-something glamour were altogether
out of place in an office of wooden walls and framed portraits of baby
animals. Whoever hired her was paying a lot.
The desk phone rang at a polite volume, and she answered it.
“Yes..? Thank you, Linda. Please send him in.”
She immediately dialed a number.
“He’s here.”
As soon as she put the phone down, a loud knock came at the door in
the form of a vague jingle. She got up and opened it to a man in his midforties with a kind of unwitting slime about his presence.
“Mr. Matthews. Thank you for coming. Please come in.”
“Cheers. Call me Doug,” replied the man in the breezy British accent
of some northern town.
He walked in bow-legged, wearing a sports jacket and a white t-shirt
stretched over a slight paunch, with faded blue jeans and bright white
training shoes that had been unpacked fresh from a box.
“Nice pad,” he said, scanning the office. “I could shoot something
really cool in a place like this. Off the top of my head, you’ve got this big
shot CEO bloke, right. A total prick. And his secretary comes in wearing a
tight top with her tits pushed into her face, and she’s—”
The door opened with a younger man who was clearly cut from the
same velvet curtain as Anastasia. He walked in fast and spoke slow, and
most certainly knew his fish knife from his soup spoon.
“Good afternoon Mr. Matthews. My name is Jonathan Kadle. Please
take a seat.”
He pointed to a plastic seat on one side of the desk. Doug pulled
himself away from a photo of a baby orangutan in a diaper, and took the
seat. Jonathan sat on the opposite side of the desk, next to Anastasia.
“Your services come highly recommended, Mr. Matthews.”
“Thanks Mate. You can call me Doug. I’ve been in the game over
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A Rousing Intervention by Drew Tapley
twenty-five years.”
Jonathan offered a polite smile.
“I’ll get straight to it, Mr. Matthews. Our client is a highly specialized
organization looking to make a new hire. This may be of interest to you.”
“Specialized in what way?” asked Doug with a smirk.
“They are a zoo,” said Anastasia. “A major client of ours.”
Doug chewed on this fact.
“I’d say that’s pretty specialized. The animal thing was huge in the
seventies. But to be honest, it’s more of an underground following these
days. I could maybe package it as a retro piece. What are we talking
here? Pigs? Horses?”
“Great apes,” said Jonathan.
“Apes?”
“Endangered Virunga Mountain gorillas of central Africa, to be
exact.”
“Like with fangs and fists and shit?”
The suits looked at each other, and then at Doug.
“Correct,” said Anastasia.
“Wowza! That’s certainly a niche market. Not out of the question,
mind; but there are certain practicalities you understand? It wouldn’t be
cheap.”
“Our client is not concerned with budget.”
“That’s good to hear. Gives me something to work with. Now, I have
a couple of actors who may be down for this.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Jonathan.
Doug was thrown.
“You have your own stars? I only work with professionals.”
“What I mean is, we are more interested in your proven skills of
creative persuasion.”
Now he was really thrown, and stared at the suits trying to get a
read.
“You do know what I do, right? I’m in the fucking business. I make
porn films. Granny-banging, fetish, shemales, even apes if folks are
down for that shit. We can make it two or twenty-two if you want—
unless of course it’s a masturbation piece.”
124
Jonathan straightened his tie, and Anastasia brought her chair closer
to the table.
“This position requires your specialist skills as a director,” she said
softly.
Doug tried to connect the dots.
“What exactly is it that you want me to direct?”
She interlocked her slender fingers and placed her hands on the
table.
“There are less than two hundred Gabonese mountain gorillas left.
All of them are in captivity under the auspices of an intensive breeding
program. Our client runs one of these programs in this facility, and is
experiencing difficulty mating them. They require your assistance.”
Doug laughed, and then laughed some more.
“You want me to get them to fuck?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
Doug looked around the room at the wall photos of zoo animals and
their doting keepers.
“I’ve been making skin flicks since I was a kid. Won a few awards, I
might add. And I’ve done some, let’s say unconventional stuff for the
Turkish market. But gorillas. That’s green grass, even for me. Surely
you’ve got some bloke in a lab coat that’s more suited for this kind of
work.”
“We tried that approach. Unfortunately, our previous hire was
unsuitable.”
Doug waited for an adjoining part of her sentence that didn’t arrive.
The suits watched him intently with even smiles.
“In what way were they unsuitable?” asked Doug, midway between
concern and amusement.
The suits thought this over.
“In a deceased way,” said Anastasia carefully.
Doug grinned in anticipation of the punch line. After half a minute,
his cheeky grin faded and was replaced by a heavy frown that looked like
a deflated balloon.
“And you want me to go in there and tickle some balls, maybe lose an
arm if I’m lucky. You guys are fucking loco.”
125
He got up and headed for the door. Jonathan was around the table at
a desperate pace.
“Our client is willing to pay whatever it takes.”
Doug slowly turned to him but kept his hand on the door handle.
“By the sounds of it, there’s a lot to take—like my life, for instance.
Plus, I want to be buried in gold shoes like James Brown. And that shit
ain’t cheap. Look, I’m gonna do us all a solid and pass this one up.”
He pulled the door open and saw Anastasia’s long, slender legs in his
periphery as she walked over with the gait of a pageant queen. His grip
on the door handle went limp and slipped from his hand as he turned
completely around to get a better look. She stopped a few inches from
his face, and he filled both nostrils with her scent. She was a totally
different type of glamour than he was used to being around; and they
both knew it.
“I’ll be frank, Mr. Matthews. We understand that there have been
some unfortunate errors in your tax filings over the last twenty-five
years.”
He watched her lips move while the words slid down his ear canals
and across a network of capillaries to his brain. His eyes bulged on
impact, and reduced to a narrow glare aimed into her bright green eyes.
“Help us help you,” she said with unfazed confidence.
Doug looked away at a photo of an elephant being washed.
“In view of our findings from the recent intervention,” added
Jonathan, “both apes will be sedated.”
An expectant air hung between them as Doug processed the last
weighty statements. He turned to Jonathan, passing over Anastasia’s
beautiful face without a second glance.
“How am I supposed to get a boner from a drugged ape? Brewers
droop is no myth, trust me on that.”
“It’s a mild narcotic to lower cortisol, the stress chemical leading to
aggression. It won’t affect his capacity for arousal.”
Jonathan took a friendly hold of Doug’s shoulder and led him gently
back to the table and the plastic chair. The suits skipped to the other
side, sat down and pushed a contract over the table in one seamless
motion. Doug picked it up and looked it over. He lifted his eyes.
126
“Apes and humans—they’re basically the same thing, right?”
“Exactly, Mr. Matthews. Exactly,” said Jonathan.
***
During the week that followed, Doug wasted no time or expense in set
decoration. Inside the gorilla enclosure, dozens of hired porn stars were
performing on the elevated viewing deck. Large screens displayed a vast
assortment of tastes from the adult film industry. But the real cherry
was a central stage he had custom-built, with the female gorilla Lulu
swinging in a suspended tire. Her ass had been pushed through the hole
and was poking out the back. Jomo the male ape came to the window of
his private habitat, looked out, yawned, farted, and went back inside.
Doug’s next course of action was to dress Lulu in a bodice with lace
knickers and a silk nightgown. It took an hour to get her into it and less
than a minute for her to rip it off. It was the end of a long and frustrating
day, with one actor complaining of flea bites on his ass.
Throughout the morning and afternoon of day two, two large
speakers played soft jazz, R&B, soul, disco, and 80s rock ballads. When
that didn’t get Jomo out of his cave, one of the hired talent—a skinny
platinum blonde with enormous fake tits—plugged in her iPhone and
played some meditative rainforest music. This at least got Jomo into the
main habitat, and mildly interested in what was going on.
Doug knew he had to invest some radical action at this point, but
despite offering thousands of dollars, he couldn’t get anyone to fluff
Jomo.
Specialist health food store, Erotic Delights, catered in a crate of
aphrodisiacs full of mixed pomegranates, dates, walnuts, asparagus,
chocolate-covered strawberries, and oysters. A whole barrel of bananas
spiked with Spanish fly was couriered directly into Jomo’s habitat on a
forklift truck. He ate them all, came out and took a giant shit on the
stage before falling asleep. When he woke up two hours later, there was
great anticipation that the drug had fully infiltrated his blood system.
Jomo grabbed his cock and pissed all over the stage. It stank of pungent
asparagus, and two porn stars vomited during a threesome on the
127
performance deck.
On that note, day two came to an abrupt end.
The following morning, Doug arrived in a truck full of farm animals.
After a light breakfast, a woman blew a cow and was fucked by a pig.
Thus began a late morning and early afternoon of skat activities, with
the hired talent throwing animal excrement at each other in the hopes
that Jomo would get turned on.
Nothing worked.
On the third and final day, Doug’s wellspring of ideas was drier than
cracked mud. He had tried everything, and nothing aroused even the
slightest interest from Jomo. In desperation, he tried to convince
veteran porn actress Candice Lemieux to dress up as a gorilla, flash her
axe wound, and see if she could get him out of his cave.
Candice and Doug went way back. They had made over a hundred
films together. But despite their friendship and mutual respect, it was a
hard sell. He spoke gently to her as she wiped baby gravy off her chest.
“Help me out here, Candice. C’mon.”
“Dougie, I owe you my career. You know that. I’ll blow two horses
and let a goat fuck me in the ass—but I’ve got my limits. I’m not going
out there with a five-hundred-pound gorilla. I’m sorry babe.”
As the afternoon drew in the evening, Doug was left with the same
question he had started with: How to get this obnoxious ape to stick his
dick in Mrs. Gorilla. Reluctantly and begrudgingly, thinking of nothing
but a federal tax indictment, he donned the gorilla outfit and zipped it
up.
His request for a tranquilizer gun had been shot down.
“These animals react badly to that,” the suits had said, and assured
him that their administered narcotic was more than sufficient to negate
violent tendencies in these apes. Perhaps they should have studied the
effects of mixing it with a barrel of aphrodisiac bananas.
“All you have to do is entice him out of his cage,” they said with a
heavy note of expectancy. “And lead him over to the female habitat.”
Doug tried to imagine that it was someone else out there waving
their ass in front of a gorilla’s habitat. As the sun slid down towards the
horizon, the flies were manic around his head, and did nothing to curb
128
his anxiety.
In a quick minute, Jomo appeared at his cave window with a curious
look on his face that Doug recognized straight away. He wheezed into his
lapel microphone.
“I think it’s working. He’s taking the bait. I’ll walk over to Lulu’s cave
now.”
“No wait!” said the suits. “Just give it a few more minutes until he’s
really horny. This could all be over in a flash.”
Doug could hear the excitement in their voices as Jomo started
flashing his cock through the cave window. He thought about the
punitive consequences of tax evasion, and took a precarious step closer.
Jomo pounded his chest and thumped the inside of the cave. Doug
unraveled.
“I don’t like this, man. Look, forget it. I gave it my best shot. It didn’t
work out. We can just chalk it up to experience.”
“He’s almost out. You’re doing great.”
“What kind of drug did you give him? He’s aiming his dick at me like
it’s a fucking Uzi. I’m out of here man. You can put this clobber on and
take over if you want.”
They offered him everything, but he had stopped listening and
started walking towards the exit. In the ape world of sexual pursuit,
Doug’s actions were like catnip dipped in cocaine. The concept of hardto-get or third base on the fourth date really doesn’t exist for large male
adult gorillas. You flash your ass ten feet from one, and you’re getting it.
You’re getting it good. Especially if you walk away.
Doug felt the gush of air on his back a second before the hairy arm
that swept around his waist and lifted him a foot off the ground. He tried
to scream, but it caught in his throat and mixed with the bile squeezed
out of his crushed abdomen. If there was a word he could voice at that
point in time, it would be ‘help’. Yet the suits watched it happen from
behind the glass partition, and knew there was nothing they could do.
Jomo ripped off the back of the costume with his other hand,
exposing Doug’s pale cheeks. He tried to wriggle free but it only served
to lock him closer to that furious cock poking him in the small of his
back. The tip of Jomo’s spam javelin slipped down between Doug’s
129
sweaty cheeks. The ape arched his back and fired his cock deep into
Doug, full length.
Doug vomited and screamed and begged, all in one breath, as the
ape pulled back and fired again, and again, fucking him senseless.
Anastasia turned away. Jonathan was transfixed. Doug’s screams and
pleas echoed through the office speakers.
“Turn it off!” shouted Anastasia, but Jonathan was a stone statue.
She ran over to unplug the mic, and they watched the rape in mute and
argued about what to do.
And then the ape came.
The suits heard it through the glass and turned to see Jomo’s O-face,
teeth bared, with Doug limp in his arms. It was over, but it had just
begun. Jomo dropped Doug’s unconscious body, and retreated back to
his cave for a nap.
When they lifted him onto the gurney, Doug recovered partial
consciousness. But his memory up until being placed in a medicallyinduced coma was understandably foggy. There was a light shone into
his eyes, and some people talking about him in the third person. His
vitals, his bleeding, his mental health, and some other medical jargon.
He faded in and out throughout it all. And then he was in a private room,
with doctors examining him before it all went dark. Now here he was, in
another room, a hospital room. Awake. Alone. Scared and confused.
Doug tried to move, but his body wouldn’t obey. He tried to talk, but
his mouth wouldn’t work. All he could do was lay there and move his
eyes, scanning the room. A TV discharged a banal daytime soap opera
with a female lead possessing too much plastic surgery and too little
acting range, shedding saccharine tears over a man who was leaving her.
He had orange skin pulled tightly over an aging face. The hour-long show
hammered out this scene on a wafer-thin plot, and Doug was forced to
watch. When he willed his neck muscles to turn away, he was forced to
listen.
A nurse walked in and immediately checked monitors and offered
him a drink of water. She left briefly and returned with a doctor.
"Hello, Mr. Matthews. My name is Dr. Gushti. How are you?”
Doug moved his tongue around. The nurse stepped in with more
130
water.
“Where am I?” he croaked.
“You are in the Mount Victor Memorial Hospital.”
He blinked twice.
“How long have I been here? What happened to me?”
Dr. Gushti held his hand.
“You have been here for three months. Do you remember anything?”
He shook his head and blinked some more.
“You were brutally assaulted by an ape.”
Doug let out a sob, but reined it back in.
“Why can’t I move?”
“You have been in a catatonic state since the surgery. Your muscles
are in temporary atrophy, but will return to use with physiotherapy.”
“Surgery? What surgery?”
Dr. Gushti looked at the nurse and then back at Doug.
“You were anally penetrated by an adult gorilla in a very aggressive
sexual attack. We had to rebuild your bowel, duodenum, and anus.
There was a series of surgeries, and then an unfortunate infection and
recovery. You will have to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of your life.
I’m sorry.”
Doug was speechless. His eyes filled with tears that flowed silently
down his cheeks.
“There is some good news, though."
Doug stopped crying and implored the doctor for it.
“I think it is best it come from someone else.”
He signaled to the nurse, who left the room and returned with
Jonathan and Anastasia. She was carrying a large bouquet of flowers,
and he held an ornate box of chocolates. They arrived at his bedside. It
was about as awkward as it sounds, with a pregnant silence that
Jonathan occupied.
“I brought you some chocolates,” he announced with a goofy smile,
and handed them to Doug but realized he couldn’t move.
“I don’t think you can eat them for a while, but they should last
until…”
He started looking for a date on the box. Anastasia nudged him.
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“How are you?” she said.
Doug stared at both of them with such vengeance that the medics
took a step closer to the door.
“I will leave you alone,” said Dr. Gushti walking backwards. “I’m sure
you have a lot to discuss.”
And the medics left.
“How am I?” said Doug. “I have to shit through a plastic tube into a
bag for the rest of my life. How do you think I am?”
Anastasia and Jonathan shared awkward eyes.
“We are deeply sorry for what happened,” said Jonathan. “There was
no way we… Gorillas have distinct personalities. Jomo is—”
“Don’t you DARE mention his name in here!”
“I’m sorry.” Jonathan swallowed hard. “In view of everything that has
happened, we have deposited sufficient funds into your account to
cover your debts and expenses. You also have access to the best
healthcare, of course.”
“Oh well, that’s just dandy then. And I’m sure everyone who saw me
get buggered by a gorilla will keep shtum, and my reputation will be
intact. It all worked out in the end, eh?”
Anastasia laid down the flowers on a side table.
“There is some good that came out of all this, and we hope you will
see it this way.”
“Here comes the silver lining.”
The suits looked at one another to determine who should deliver it.
Anastasia got the vote.
“After you arrived here, once your condition had been stabilized.”
She cleared her throat. “The doctors were able to extract Jomo’s semen
from your rectum.”
Doug blinked repeatedly as if trying to release a bug from his eyelash.
She continued.
“They isolated it from your blood plasma, froze it with liquid nitrogen
and couriered it straight to us. Luckily, it was a large sample, more than
triple the dose we would expect from the animal.”
Doug continued blinking. Jonathan looked back and forth between
the two of them.
132
“The sample was inseminated into Lulu’s uterus, and we found out
two days ago that she is pregnant.”
The suits linked their smiles. Doug stopped blinking and stared up at
the ceiling.
“Mr. Matthews? Doug? Did you hear what I said?”
He turned his eyes to both of them.
“I’m a surrogate.”
“You have provided an incredible service. Because of you, this
population of endangered mountain gorillas now stands a viable chance
of being—”
“Get out!”
“But Mr. Matthews, what you have done is—”
“Get the fuck out right now. NURSE, NURSE…”
She came running in.
“Get these jokers out of this room. NOW!”
“Please leave,” said the nurse with distress. “He cannot be upset like
this.”
The suits left in a hail of apologies, leaving Doug alone again. The
soap opera was just ending, and a news anchorwoman appeared with a
knowing grin.
“We have great news this afternoon from the city zoo. It has been
confirmed that Lulu the female gorilla is pregnant with twins.”
Just before Jonathan and Anastasia left the ward, they heard the
faint, guttural sound of someone screaming. It reminded them of
something that they couldn’t quite place until later that evening, when
they realized what it was.
It sounded like an ape having an orgasm.
133
An Act of God
By Stephen Baily
It was a Monday morning like any other in Grenadine County, and H.
Thomas Scroop, publisher of the Granford Daily Dose, was jerking off at
his desk.
—How nice for him, but, as an opening sentence, that seems to me
likelier to excite disgust than curiosity.
I’ll take my chances.
—I assume this Scroop was alone and free from video surveillance?
Of course.
—Then how the hell would you know what he was up to with his
johnson?
I quote, for your benefit, from the third page of the Daily Dose’s
employee manual: “As chief executive officer, the publisher will
masturbate three times a day, at nine, twelve, and three o’clock. Studies
at the Wharton School of Business have shown this will help him
maintain the detachment necessary to the performance of his duties.
NB: Females—should any ascend to the post of publisher—are exempt
from this provision, as it’s well known masturbation takes them too long
and can make them more, rather than less, emotional.
—So you’re telling me playing with himself was in Scroop’s job
description?
Yes, and everyone in the building knew it, right down to Emily, the
pretty young receptionist in the lobby, who used to blush whenever—as
on this particular morning—she found herself obliged to ring his
extension at around nine.
I should note that, though he was right-handed, Scroop habitually
used his more womanly left hand for wanking, so that it was with his
manlier right hand that he picked up the phone.
“Talk to me, Emily.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Scroop, but a Mr. Longanecker would
like to see you.”
“The name sounds familiar.”
134
“He says John Tock wrote about him in his column on Saturday.”
Scroop repressed a sigh. In his experience, people mentioned in the
paper never came in search of him except when they were pissed off
and hell-bent on a retraction.
“Wait five minutes and send him in.”
He used the three minutes remaining after his listless discharge to
reread Tock’s Saturday column for signs of libel.
***
The Nick of Time
Toodle-loo to tuna fish
By TICK TOCK
of the Daily Dose
If it’s true what they say and you are what you eat, then I’m a can of
tuna fish.
Year in and year out, I eat a tuna sandwich every day for lunch at my
desk in the newsroom.
I eat these sandwiches with all the more pleasure because I know the
smell makes my colleagues sick.
Here’s my recipe: In a bowl, mash four ounces of canned tuna—the
three-for-a-dollar Safeway variety—with a heaping glob of mayonnaise.
Spread the resultant paste between two slices of Wonder bread. Tip:
Keep a napkin handy, because, with all that mayonnaise, you’re bound
to have to wipe your chin.
Addicted though I am to tuna, I sometimes run out and, when that
happens, I walk over to the Black Powder Cafe, across from the county
courthouse.
It’s true they gussy up their tuna with tomato, celery, sweet onion,
hard-boiled egg and the like, but they atone for these additions—so
unnecessary in the eyes of purists—by drowning them in even more
mayonnaise than I dare to use.
In glancing over the above, I realize a case could be made that what I
really love is mayonnaise, and that tuna just provides me with a pretext
135
An Act of God by Stephen Baily
for ingesting large amounts of it.
Be that as it may, while I was gumming my sandwich in the cafe
yesterday, a lean stranger caused every head at the lunch counter to
turn by entering in a suit and tie.
Now—as you’ll hardly need to be told if you live in the vicinity—
nobody in informal Granford owns a suit and tie, apart from H. Thomas
Scroop, hallowed be his name, our father at the Daily Dose.
“If you’re here about my taxes, I swear to you the check’s in the
mail.”
The stranger—in his forties, square-jawed and clean-shaven, with
close-cropped fair hair and something military in his bearing—declined
to join in the laughter excited by this example of Black Powder owner
Sid Betterly’s wit.
This made me wonder if Betterly hadn’t jokingly hit it on the money
and the stranger was indeed a fed, come sniffing around on the track,
say, of one of those supremacist gangs that have lately been raising
funds for their arsenals with lightning raids on small-town banks up and
down the interstate.
“Is this your restaurant?”
Betterly, behind the counter, dried his hands on his chef’s apron.
“I’ve had it on my back for the past twenty-five years—yeah.”
“Then this is your lucky day.” From the breast pocket of his jacket,
the stranger extracted a checkbook. “How much do you want for the
place?”
“Come again?”
“I’m interested in buying it. Will fifty thousand do the trick?”
Now Betterly is nothing if not an intelligent guy, and the proof is
that—specially when he thinks his leg is being pulled—he never makes
an important decision without consulting a newspaper columnist.
“What do you think, Tock?” He winked at me. “The price sound okay
to you?”
“For the premises and the fixtures, why not? But don’t forget the
clientele and the good will.”
“You’re right. I won’t take a cent less than seventy-five thousand.”
“Sold,” said the stranger, without batting an eye.
136
His name, it emerged, was Lloyd Longanecker, and he admitted to
being a city slicker from up in Emanonville. That was as much, however,
as he was willing to state for publication.
“Business is business,” he informed me, “and mine’s none of yours.”
As for Betterly, 60, who’s long been plagued by bad knees and never
dreamed he’d be in a position to retire early to Arizona, the veteran
restaurateur couldn’t help waxing sentimental while I was paying him
for my lunch.
“Over the years, I figure I’ve gone through several tons of America’s
favorite fish,” he said. “It’s kind of sad to think that—since I can’t
stomach the stuff myself—yours was my last tuna sandwich.”
***
—I’m no lawyer, it’s true, but I’m damned if I can see anything
defamatory in that.
Neither could Scroop, so, when Emily finally sent Longanecker into
his office, he decided to beat him to the punch.
“That was a nice piece we had about you Saturday, I thought.”
Longanecker, once again in a suit and tie, shrugged as he shook
hands with the similarly attired Scroop, who—not least because he was
an ex-Marine officer—looked something like an older version of him.
“There was a little too much tuna fish in it for my taste, but
otherwise it was harmless enough, I suppose.”
Scroop raised a brow. “Then may I ask to what I owe the pleasure?”
His office, given his eminence, was surprisingly small and impersonal,
with no pictures on the walls and nothing on its shelves but blue books,
dictionaries and the like. It had windows on two sides, but they faced
corridors, not the outdoors—not that it much mattered what they
faced, since their blinds were always kept drawn, like the blinds of an
adult bookstore.
“To come straight to the point, Mr. Scroop, how does ten million
dollars sound to you?”
With his emotions freshly depleted, Scroop showed no reaction as he
studied Longanecker across his barren desktop.
137
“As good as to any red-blooded American, I imagine. Why do you
ask?”
Just as he had in the cafe, Longanecker reached into his breast
pocket for his checkbook.
“Because that’s the price the organization I work for stands ready to
pay you for your newspaper.”
From the impassive expression on Scroop’s face, nobody could have
told if he considered the amount insultingly low or thrillingly high.
“I’m afraid I’m not in a position to entertain your offer,” he said after
a moment, “but I’ll be sure to pass it along to Ennis Vanderwarker, our
owner.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“The Daily Dose has been in the Vanderwarker family for a century,
and Ennis has every intention of perpetuating that legacy, so I wouldn’t
count on an encouraging response. Would you mind telling me who you
represent?”
The business card Longanecker handed him identified him as
executive vice president of the Foundation for Conjugal Equilibrium,
based in Emanonville, the state capital, two hundred miles up the
freeway.
“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with your foundation.”
“We work primarily with couples in troubled relationships—in
troubled heterosexual relationships, I should say. Homosexuals, in our
view, deserve their problems. Are you married, Mr. Scroop?”
“Divorced.”
“Well, should you and your ex-wife ever consider reconciling, you
might find us of real assistance.”
“My ex-wife has remarried.”
“Then be sure to refer her to us in the event she and her current
husband find themselves in a rough patch—as all couples of course do
at one time or another. We have a remarkable record of success.
Possibly you’ve heard of our president, Dr. Otto Ottolenghi?”
Scroop pursed his lips. “He’s on the radio, isn’t he?”
“On six hundred and thirteen stations in forty-seven states.”
“Then pardon my curiosity, but what need would he have for an
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obscure small-town daily?”
“I’m authorized to tell you only that Dr. Ottolenghi will be happy to
discuss his projects with you if you’re prepared to sell him your
newspaper.”
“As I say, I’m not positioned to make that call, but I’ll certainly let Mr.
Vanderwarker know of your interest.”
Longanecker rose. “In that case, you have my number.”
When he was gone, Scroop circled Tock’s column with a yellow
marker and took it upstairs to the newsroom, where he slapped it down
in front of Van LeVine, the city editor.
“Apparently, you’ve forgotten how to use your blue pencil.”
“I’m sorry?”
LeVine could be forgiven for not understanding, since he was barely
old enough to remember the days when blue pencils had been
synonymous with editing. He inferred enough from Scroop’s unpleasant
tone, however, to feel his bowels loosen.
“I didn’t appreciate that crack about me you let pass in Tock’s last
column.”
“God damn it!” LeVine involuntarily exclaimed.
Scroop scowled at him. “What?”
“I asked Rocker about that sentence, I expressly asked him, but he
said he didn’t see the harm in poking a little fun at ourselves once in a
while.”
Scroop’s scowl didn’t soften, as he wasn’t a boss who encouraged his
employees to shirk responsibility.
“I’ve stressed on more than one occasion neither Ennis nor I like
seeing our names in the paper. You know how seriously Ennis takes his
religion, too, so this particular instance is sure to offend him.”
“Believe me, it won’t happen again.”
Scroop, though, had already turned his back on LeVine and was
gliding down the aisle that separated the reporters’ desks from the
copydesk. As always, his appearance among us sent a chill through the
newsroom, and—like kids in school when the teacher arrives—everyone
who’d been gabbing suddenly looked very industrious. Everyone, that is,
except Tock, who was lounging back in his chair with his big feet up, and
139
who—with his unerring instinct for the inopportune—let loose a loud
fart just as Scroop came up behind him.
—In my experience, if you want your boss to materialize over your
shoulder, a fart will do the trick every time.
“Take your shoes off that desk.”
I witnessed this confrontation personally from my workstation across
the aisle, and I can tell you it was touch and go there for a moment, for
the following reasons:
 Unlike almost everyone else in the newsroom, Tock wasn’t
intimidated by Scroop.
 Like almost everyone else in the newsroom, Scroop was
repelled by Tock.
 Tock often spoke wistfully of being laid off, so he could collect
unemployent and devote his time to writing science-fiction
novels, of which he’d published a couple.
 Scroop often thought wistfully of giving Tock the boot, so he
could stop being bombarded with complaints about him from
ticked-off public officials.
On the other hand:
 Tock knew he’d collect nothing if he was fired by Scroop for
insubordination.
 Scroop knew Tock’s work was popular, and that circulation
might suffer if he fired him.
The situation had all the makings of a Mexican standoff—but, in the
end, it was Tock who blinked. His ergonomic chair creaked like the door
of a haunted house as he lowered his feet to the floor.
Scroop wasn’t the type to exult over trivial triumphs.
“This fellow Longanecker you wrote about Saturday,” he said. “Is
that really all you know about him—that he’s from Emanonville?”
“That was all I knew about him when I wrote the column.”
“You know more now?”
Picking up the notepad on his desk, Tock squinted at it through his
taped-together glasses.
“Enough to make me smell fish.”
Because LeVine wasn’t close enough to catch more than a few words
140
of what followed, he summoned Tock to his desk as soon as Scroop had
left the newsroom.
“You told him about the other businesses that called about
Longanecker?”
“Wasn’t I supposed to?”
LeVine frowned. In the interests of his own importance, he naturally
preferred to be the bearer of any noteworthy information passed along
from the newsroom to management.
“What was that he handed you when he left?”
Tock showed him Longanecker’s business card. “He asked me to find
out what I can about this Emanonville outfit.”
“Business isn’t your beat.” LeVine put the card in the pocket of his
pink oxford shirt. “I’ll take care of it.”
“You’re wasting your time if you assign it to Bucket Mouth.”
He meant Sandi Cassandra, the Dose’s business editor, notorious
among us for her inability to tell any story in under fifty inches. She was
also—as Tock hardly needed to remind LeVine—married to the head of
the Downtown Businessmen’s Association.
“The only side she ever looks on is the bright one.”
“I said I’ll take care of it.”
“Suit yourself.” The verbal equivalent of the shrug Tock accompanied
this remark with could only have been: “Asshole.”
“Oh, and, Tock,” LeVine stopped him as he was turning away. “No
more cracks about Scroop in your column, understand?”
“He complained to you about that, did he?” Tock shrugged again.
“Fuck him if he can’t take a joke.”
Now, by a fortunate coincidence, LeVine had begun his career in
journalism at a weekly in Emanonville whose editor had subsequently
been lured away by the Emanonymous, the state’s major daily. This excolleague’s number had long been lodged on LeVine’s Rolodex, and he
didn’t hesitate to dial it.
—Without bothering to consult Google first?
There wasn’t any Google yet, and the Internet itself was still in such
an embryonic state that, when I went to sign up with Granford’s
pioneering service provider, the guy let the dog out before admitting me
141
to his shack at the end of a dirt road. Fitness, not the Internet, was the
craze in those days. I remember the first time I saw a jogger, I thought
he was a mugger who’d just stolen a purse, but, by the early nineties,
joggers in spandex were everywhere, even in back-of-beyond Granford.
Several gyms had opened in town, too, of which the classiest was the
Grenadier Health Club. All the local movers and shakers—no pun
intended—were members, including Bob Rocker, our editor-in-chief at
the Dose.
—I was wondering if this digression had a purpose.
At the same time LeVine was pumping his ex-colleague in
Emanonville, Rocker was swimming laps in the Grenadier’s Olympic
pool.
—On the newspaper’s time?
On its orders. Not that Scroop cared one way or the other about
Rocker’s incipient obesity, he just didn’t want him to end up—as one of
his predecessors had done—involving the company with litigious
survivors by dropping dead at the office.
In any case, as he was heading for the locker room after his daily
aquatic workout, Rocker caught a snatch of conversation between two
passing club members that made him prick up his ears. A good
newsman, it goes without saying, is always on the job, and he returned
to the Dose intent on relaying what he’d overheard to Bucket Mouth for
verification.
With his prematurely white hair still damp from the shower, he
entered the building through the employee entrance, crossed the
lunchroom, and paused for a drink at the water fountain in the corridor
outside Scroop’s office. I mention this pause only because it was
prompted, not by thirst, but by a recommendation he’d once read, in
the weekly health column contributed to the Dose by local physicians,
that you should never pass a fountain without taking a sip from it.
—Staying hydrated seems like a sensible idea to me also.
Except that you’d think editors, of all people, would know better
than to believe what they read in the paper.
—It was bad advice?
Not in theory, but the chronic diarrhea I developed after I started
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following it myself ended the minute I stopped drinking from that
fountain.
—Something was wrong with the water in the building?
Let’s just say the pipes were superannuated and located upstream
from the municipal sewage-treatment plant.
—So Rocker suffered from diarrhea, too?
He never said, but what I can tell you for sure is you couldn’t stand
next to him for more than a minute without learning the meaning of the
word borborygmus.
—Enough. What happened when he was done poisoning himself at
the fountain?
He raised his head and saw LeVine coming out of Scroop’s office.
“What were you doing in there?” he asked suspiciously.
LeVine, well aware Rocker disliked nothing so much as being
bypassed in the chain of command, couldn’t help looking guilty.
“Just giving Mr. Scroop some info he asked for on this Longanecker
character Tock wrote about Saturday.”
Now, when you encounter your boss at the foot of a staircase,
protocol requires that you let him precede you up it. It was LeVine’s
happy privilege, therefore, to have Rocker’s fat ass in his face as they
climbed the eleven steps to the newsroom.
“Rocker, I can smell your shit,” he said to himself bitterly.
“Come into my office,” Rocker ordered him when they reached the
top of the stairs.
He knew perfectly well LeVine went to bed every night dreaming of
replacing him, so he never missed an opportunity to remind him who
was in charge. He also took special pleasure in undercutting his morale
with offhand remarks such as: “The way things are going, it’ll be another
ten years before I can even think of retiring.”
Unlike Scroop’s, Rocker’s office didn’t lack personal touches—mainly
photos of his lawyer wife and their twin sons in the military—but its
most conspicuous decoration was a blowup of him shaking hands with
the elder President Bush at a White House reception for editors of
Republican-leaning provincial papers. In this standard-issue grip-andgrin shot—the sort Lyons, our news editor, would have buried in
143
embarrassment on an inside page—Bush looks as pleased with himself
as if he’s just called a dovish senator a chickenshit, while Rocker, with
his roly-poly chassis, evokes a bedazzled Humpty Dumpty.
Since it housed two desks—one to receive visitors behind and
another with a computer he could swivel around to whenever the
inspiration for an editorial seized him—Rocker’s office might have
seemed more imposing than Scroop’s, if its glass walls hadn’t been
deprived of blinds. I couldn’t say if this omission was intended to
underscore the Dose’s oft-proclaimed commitment to transparency, but
it enabled everyone in the newsroom to enjoy an unimpeded view of
LeVine fidgeting on his feet above his seated superior, like an abashed
defendant before a judge.
“What’s Scroop’s interest in Longanecker?”
“He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. My guess is he’s curious why the
guy’s been buying up businesses all over town.”
“What others, besides the Black Powder Cafe?”
“In the past couple of days—that we know of—Rectangle Realty,
McMahon’s Furniture, and Huckleby’s Body Shop.”
“So that makes five.”
“Four, by my count.”
Rocker, with an irritable wave, dismissed the correction. “While I was
swimming just now, I heard he walked in on Sunday and bought the
Grenadier Health Club, too.”
—Is it really that simple to buy a business? Wouldn’t you have to
inspect the books, prepare contracts, check for tax liens, and stuff like
that?
In your world, no doubt. In mine, if you’ve got the bucks, you can buy
anything, easy as pie.
“So what was it you found out for Scroop?” Rocker pressed on.
Alas, I missed LeVine’s answer, because right at that moment Tock,
across the aisle from my workstation, slammed down his phone in
astonishment. “Fuck me!”
Damrosh, the general-assignment reporter, whose desk adjoined
Tock’s, grimaced. “I don’t appreciate your language.”
“Then fuck you, too.”
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“What’s going on?” I said.
“I’ll tell you later.”
And, leaving Damrosh still spluttering, he got up and went into
Rocker’s office without asking for permission to enter.
“I know you told me to forget about Longanecker,” he said to LeVine,
“but I just now happened to mention him to a guy I know in the county
clerk’s office—and guess what.”
“Well?” Rocker demanded.
Again, I was prevented from catching the answer, this time by my
wife, who came up to me in distress.
—Your wife worked at the paper?
As a reporter in the features department.
“Can I talk to you for a second?”
I followed her into the conference room and closed the door.
“No matter when I look up from my screen, that dyke is staring at
me.”
She meant Karen Duckworth, her boss, the lifestyles editor.
“Get a vase and block her view.”
“Why should I have to do that?” Meredith was pale, and her hands
were trembling. “If she doesn’t stop, I’ll go to Rocker. I mean it! I’ll
complain to Scroop.”
“We’ll discuss this later. I’ve got pages to check.”
LeVine and Tock were following Rocker out of his office when I
returned to duty. They went on to their desks while Rocker veered off to
the stairs, lowering his chin to his chest as he started down them, as
though to make sure his feet, under the convexity of his gut, were still
attached to his legs.
“Got a minute?”
Behind the desk in his office, Scroop recalled his gray eyes from the
remote point in space they’d been focused on.
“What is it?”
“About this Longanecker and his foundation—”
Scroop cut him off. “LeVine’s already told me about the suit they
filed against the Emanonymous. Apparently, they don’t like being called
a cult, so you want to be careful not to make that mistake.”
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“There’s more.” Without being invited to, Rocker ventured to sit
down across from Scroop, though only on the edge of the chair. “It
seems, in the name of this same foundation, Longanecker’s bought—
hold on to your hat, you may not believe this—Mount Margeson.”
This was the extinct volcano whose snow-covered cone, visible from
all over the county, graced every postcard of Granford.
—Who’d be crazy enough to buy a volcano?
I said it was extinct.
—Besides, how do you buy a volcano? Who do you buy it from—
God?
Close. Except for a few years in the 1880s, Mount Margeson had
been the property of the federal government since the pioneers evicted
the Roughneck Indians from it in the 1850s.
—And what happened in the 1880s?
The feds made a present of it to the Great Grenadine Mining
Company, which hoped to extract various minerals from it.
—I don’t get it. Why would the government give a mountain away?
In exchange for the company’s promise to bring the railroad and
other amenities to Granford. Unfortunately, the company went
bankrupt before it could keep its word, and Uncle Sam had to repossess
the mountain. Which wouldn’t have mattered so much if taking it back
hadn’t also taken it off the local tax rolls. That represented a
considerable loss and, to compensate the county, the feds agreed to pay
it, in perpetuity, ten percent of their revenues from other regional
mining claims.
—That sounds like a pretty good deal.
While mining was in its heyday, you bet. The county’s share of the
receipts proved for decades more than enough to cover its operating
costs. Development, of course, was quick to follow, because people
were only too happy to settle in a jurisdiction with virtually no property
tax.
The trouble started when a barrage of environmental lawsuits forced
the last of the mines to shut down in the 1980s. All of a sudden, the
county found itself with little revenue and a population so spoiled by a
century of federal largess it refused to approve even the bare minimum
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of taxes necessary to keep the schools open and sheriff’s deputies on
the roads. For fear of anarchy, Congress, with the utmost reluctance,
agreed to divert enough funds from the military budget to carry the
county while it sought new sources of income. Mount Margeson was
also declared surplus and put up for sale—though with no real
expectation a buyer would materialize. After all, who’d want a volcano
that was good for nothing anymore—not even for erupting?
—We know the answer to that, so let’s get back to Scroop. How did
he react to Rocker’s news?
With what was—for him—an unusual display of curiosity. That is, he
propped his elbows on his desk, rested his chin on his thumbs, and
brought the tips of his forefingers together over the bridge of his furry
nose.
“Anything else?”
“I’m told the foundation already has applications pending before the
planning commission.”
“To do what?”
“I’ve got Tock looking into that, but, meanwhile, what we don’t want
to forget is their defamation suit against the Emanonymous was thrown
out.”
“So?”
“So that says to me it could very well be we are dealing with a cult
here.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Because it was so far from anywhere, Granford had long been a
magnet for survivalists, tax protesters, British Israelites, and others with
reasons to prefer skulking under the radar.
“Well, what do you think we should do next, then?”
Scroop straightened up abruptly.
“Wait and see. The Daily Dose has never made any bones about its
support for growth, and anyone who brings it to town will have an ally
in us, as long as they don’t misbehave.” He glanced at his watch. “Now,
if you don’t mind, it’s almost noon.”
“Is it? Already?”
There was a box of Kleenex on the bookcase and Scroop was
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reaching for it when Rocker hastily shut the door behind him.
***
I won't weary you with an account of the battle that erupted when word
got out the Foundation for Conjugal Equilibrium planned to relocate
from Emanonville to Mount Margeson.
—I’m obliged to you. If I want to read about stuff like that, I’ll
subscribe to the Daily Dose.
Save your money. Disputes between pro- and anti-growth forces are
all alike. You could write the stories yourself without going to a single
meeting.
—I take it the anti-growth camp was strong in Granford?
Not numerically. Blue-collar towns with chronic high unemployment
aren’t, as a rule, attractive to tree-huggers. Still, Granford was home to
a small minority of yuppies for whom public-interest attorneys were
always glad to seek injunctions against timber sales that threatened the
view from their hobby farms. There was also an enclave of hippies who,
when they could tear themselves away from their marijuana patches,
were more than ready to jeopardize the lives of loggers by driving iron
spikes into Douglas firs.
Inclined though he was to hug trees himself, the yuppies disgusted
Tock, while the hippies, with their habit of comparing themselves to
Freedom Riders, revolted him.
“To equate trees with disenfranchised human beings,” he wrote in
his column, “is obscene.”
This earned him as many death threats as the claim he’d once made
that it was the dream of every forest to evolve into the skyline of San
Francisco.
—So who won the war over the mountain?
Longanecker’s foundation, after the state land-use board of
appeals—with its Republican majority—ruled on its behalf. The next
day, sheriff’s deputies gleefully removed the handful of bearded
protesters who’d thrown themselves down in the path of the
bulldozers, and clear-cutting—visible from most parts of town—began
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on Mount Margeson.
“We think, when the dust has settled, Grenadine County will realize
we bring change for the better,” Dr. Otto Ottolenghi said, in a press
release.
Though his bid for the Daily Dose was rejected, his efforts to acquire
local businesses continued. Eventually, something like fifty of them—
ranging from mom-and-pop groceries to the sprawling Roughneck River
Resort—became the property of the foundation.
—Help me out here. What did he want with all these businesses?
Several years later, on a plane, I happened to sit down next to Sid
Betterly—you know, the retired tuna-fish king. He hadn’t been in
Granford in some time and asked me if Ottolenghi had been successful
in his plans to take over Grenadine County. It seemed Longanecker had
confided in Betterly that Ottolenghi’s idea was to secure dominance of
the business community as a springboard to control of the courthouse.
—Did Ottolenghi put in any personal appearances in pursuit of this
political goal?
Not that we heard. If he ever traveled down from Emanonville to
inspect the ongoing construction on the mountain, he must have done it
incognito. Naturally, there was a lot of curiosity about him, but,
whenever I tried tuning in to his program, Meredith would switch the
radio off.
“How can you listen to that idiot?”
He had one of those anodyne barytones designed to disarm the
critical faculties, and his message—repeated over and over again to
those who phoned in for his advice—was that, if there was trouble in a
marriage, the husband was always to blame, for letting the wife
overstep her bounds. Even Rocker, who tended to interest himself solely
in electoral issues, found this proposition problematic, but, when he
wanted to air his doubts in an editorial, Scroop ordered him to back off.
“He doesn’t see any reason to tangle with Ottolenghi yet,” Lyons, my
boss on the copydesk, told me. “That’s his story anyway. Personally, I
wouldn’t be surprised if he agrees with the guy.”
So the Foundation for Conjugal Equilibrium continued its infiltration
of the county without encountering much in the way of skepticism. On
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the contrary, at the courthouse officials were increasingly optimistic,
because the foundation’s negative impact on the mountainside was
more than offset by the positive effect on the economy of the new
employees it brought in at many of the businesses it acquired.
Moreover, to a man, the individuals who took over these enterprises
proved to be industrious and upstanding. I stress the phrase, because
not one woman was to be found in their number. They dressed so
similarly, too—in dark slacks, crisply ironed white shirts, and the sort of
string ties favored by cowboys off the range—that, behind their backs,
people started calling them Ottomatons. Everywhere you went in town,
you saw them going about their business and, if you addressed them,
they were unfailingly polite, at least if you were male. They seemed less
comfortable around females, especially their married female
employees, who often grumbled about feeling pressure to quit—though
never enough to justify complaints to the labor department.
And then, out of the blue, after a year or so had gone by, Rocker got
a call from Longanecker.
“We thought that—now that we’re on the verge of wrapping up
construction—you might like to send a reporter and a photographer up
here.”
Till that moment, the site had been strictly off-limits to the
inquisitive—to the point where Tock, in an attempt to sneak a look one
night, had nearly gotten himself shot by a security guard.
“We know there’s a lot of interest in the community in what we’re
doing,” Longanecker continued, “and this seems like a good way of
introducing ourselves.”
“We’ll send some folks this afternoon,” Rocker said.
He at once called LeVine into his office and, after a short discussion,
they decided not to assign the story to Tock, even though he’d covered
the land-use controversy from start to finish.
“He’s bound to step on toes,” LeVine said.
His preference was for Bucket Mouth, but Rocker vetoed that. “She’s
too kissy-kissy. Let features handle it.”
Duckworth, the lifestyles editor, ordinarily would have jumped at
such a plum assignment, but a scheduling conflict obliged her to pass it
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along to my wife.
Meredith was anything but pleased. “That bitch could have given it
to Damrosh, but she knows how scared I am of mountain roads. What a
pity I’m not married to someone who can drive.”
“Who’s the photog?” I said.
“Hoff.”
“So go with him.”
Which—rather than battle with acrophobia behind the wheel—she
ultimately decided to do, even though Hoff, an otherwise amiable soul
with a bushy beard under a Stetson hat, was an incorrigible tailgater
who’d never met a car he didn’t feel compelled to pass. As he
negotiated the switchbacks up Mount Margeson at sixty miles an hour,
in his nonstop yakking he seemed as oblivious of the absence of guard
rails as of Meredith’s white-knuckled presence beside him. Not once did
she dare to lift her eyes from her lap—not till Hoff swung into a freshly
paved parking lot a thousand feet below the summit.
Longanecker was waiting for them there in dark slacks, a white shirt
buttoned at the throat, and a string tie—in short, your standard
Ottomaton attire. Behind him, shards of sunlight ricocheted off the new
headquarters of the Foundation for Conjugal Equilibrium, a grandiose
edifice that, but for the tinted glass that filled the gaps between its
squat columns, could have passed for a duplicate of the Temple of
Luxor.
The photo Hoff took as soon as he and Meredith climbed out of their
SUV caught Longanecker’s handgun pointing straight at them.
“Get back in your car.”
—Huh? Why would he invite the two of them up there just to chase
them away?
Rocker, who was as puzzled as you by the news of this hostile
reception, immediately reached for his phone and demanded an
explanation.
“I assumed,” Longanecker said, “you’d be sending that guy with the
bad teeth—the one who wrote all the other stories about us.”
“Tock doesn’t do features.”
The solemnity with which Longanecker cleared his throat signaled a
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portentous announcement. “That’s too bad, because it’s our policy not
to grant interviews to females.”
After bringing word of this down to Scroop, Rocker waited patiently
for him to lower his eyes from the ceiling.
“I knew it was only a matter of time till we crossed swords with
them,” Scroop said finally. “Put Longanecker and his gun on page one
tomorrow.”
***
No women welcome
——————-
Female reporter refused access
to marriage guru’s new headquarters
——————By TICK TOCK
of the Daily Dose
A reporter invited by the Foundation for Conjugal Equilibrium to tour its
new headquarters on Mount Margeson was turned away Thursday for
being a female.
Meredith Katznelson said she was stopped in the parking lot at
gunpoint and ordered off the property by FCE Executive Vice President
Lloyd Longanecker.
Asked about the incident, Longanecker said he has a license for the
gun and the constitutional right to warn trespassers off private
property.
“It’s the policy of the FCE, as set by its president, Dr. Otto Ottolenghi,
not to submit to questioning by females,” he added.
On Hundreds of Stations
Ottolenghi is the host of “Married and Miserable,” a syndicated
program carried on hundreds of radio stations.
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According to FCE literature, unhappy marriages are inevitably the
result when strong wives are allowed by weak husbands to usurp
traditional masculine roles.
“Resist her, mister, or she’ll kick your keester,” Ottolenghi is known
for signing off at the end of each show.
In his view, wives are hard-wired to make husbands suffer for letting
them assume responsibilities outside the home.
Questionnaires Offered
On his program, Ottolenghi invites listeners to write in for free
questionnaires.
Those who want their answers evaluated by FCE staff are charged
$100.
The price rises to $500 if the evaluation is done by Ottolenghi.
Since Ottolenghi announced plans to relocate to Mount Margeson,
several locals who paid the FCE to have their questionnaires analyzed
have come forward with complaints.
Typical is Sherwood Pinkham, 53, of Margeson Village.
In Need of ‘Rehabilitation’
Pinkham says he was informed by the FCE that, on the evidence of his
questionnaire, he and his wife, Starla, 52, were in need of an intensive
program of “marital rehabilitation,” available over the telephone for
$1,000.
“We paid the money, and it’s the biggest mistake I ever made,”
Pinkham said. “The so-called counselor we spoke with spent most of the
call trying to sell us time-shares in Honolulu.”
Longanecker, for his part, says the FCE has hundreds of testimonials
from satisfied couples.
“In our experience, in the rare instances where our rehabilitation
program is unsuccessful, it’s invariably because the husband is a
repressed homosexual,” he said.
A History of Controversy
Before relocating to Mount Margeson, the FCE was based for fifteen
years in Emanonville, where it was often controversial.
Several years ago, after the Emanonymous newspaper suggested in a
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prizewinning series of articles that the FCE had many of the
characteristics of a cult, Ottolenghi filed a multi-million-dollar
defamation suit against the paper.
The suit, which was eventually dismissed in district court, remains
under appeal.
Ottolenghi—again according to FCE literature—was born in
Switzerland and came to the U.S. as a teenager.
He holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Rin Tin Tin
University.
***
—I assume this opening salvo wasn’t without repercussions?
Put it this way. If a higher power hadn’t chosen to intervene, you can
bet years of hostilities would have ensued.
—A higher power, did you say?
Yes, and, though I usually prefer to leave it to televangelists to speak
for the Almighty, in this particular instance I can’t help feeling She could
only have been actuated by impatience with Ottolenghi’s mercenary
misogyny.
—Easy on the theology. What happened after Tock’s story came out?
Pretty much what you’d expect. At nine the next morning,
Longanecker—brandishing a copy of the offending paper—burst into
the high-ceilinged lobby of the Daily Dose and, before Emily at the
reception desk could even think of calling for security, stomped straight
by her down the corridor to Scroop’s office.
“You fool! You should have accepted the ten million we— Oh. Sorry.”
“I’ll just be a minute.”
“Take your time. Please.”
And, while Scroop carried on with the business at hand,
Longanecker—whose own contract required him to neutralize his
emotions every other hour on the half hour—diverted himself with a
blue book from an adjacent shelf. He’d failed to close the door behind
him and, outside in the corridor, lanky Bert Dunkler, the head of
accounting, tactfully averted his eyes as he shambled past on his way to
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the newsroom with a sheaf of newly cut checks.
At length, a brief gasp escaped Scroop.
“Now, then, you were saying—?”
Longanecker at once returned to the attack. “That, unless you
apologize publicly for this libelous article, we’re going to end up owning
your newspaper without having to pay you a cent.”
If he was impressed by the threat, Scroop showed no sign of it.
“Tock may be an obnoxious character, but he gave you every chance
to respond to the criticisms leveled against your organization. He was
nowhere negligent or malicious, and I can’t imagine a judge finding
anything defamatory in his story.”
“In the text, maybe not—but that headline’s a barefaced lie! To
allege females are unwelcome on our campus when the fact is we
employ dozens of unmarried ones in clerical positions is outrageous.
Later today, by registered mail, you’ll receive a formal demand from our
attorneys for a page-one retraction. If we don’t get it—”
Here, however, he was brought up short—as was Scroop and
everyone else in the building—by what I can only describe as a mighty
twang—as if a giant guitar string had been plucked down in the
basement.
The lights blinked, went out, then came back on—though you’d
never have guessed it from Scroop’s unchanged expression.
“As you know, we have three weeks to respond to demands of this
sort,” he said calmly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to look into that
power glitch.”
At the top of the newsroom stairs, he nearly collided with Rocker,
who’d come out of his office to distribute the checks Dunkler had
delivered to him.
“Looks like another squirrel or a Canada goose got itself fried by a
transormer.”
“Not now, Bob.”
Brushing past him, Scroop made straight for the copydesk, where
O’Brien was bemoaning the all-but-finished sports front that had been
snatched into oblivion from his screen by the outage. I myself had lost a
wire page—no laughing matter either, given the shortness of our
155
deadlines—but Scroop couldn’t have cared less about our technical
difficulties.
“Who did page one yesterday?”
“That’d be me,” Lamm said warily.
Rocker, with a flourish, leaned over my shoulder and put a check face
down in front of me. “Mees-ter Katznelson.”
“Well, then, I wonder,” Scroop continued in the same icy tone, “if
you’d be good enough to tell me, Craig, what, in Tock’s story, justifies
the headline you put on it.”
Lamm being slow to respond, O’Brien sprang to his defense. “It says
right in there those clowns won’t talk to women.”
“Mees-ter Lyons.”
“Grassy-ass, sen-yor.”
“It says they refuse to be interviewed by women,” Scroop pointed
out. “That’s a whole different proposition.”
“Mees-ter Lamm.”
“Thanks, Bob.” Ordinarily, Lamm would have taken a moment to kid
around with Rocker about his need for a raise, but he was too busy just
then bending over yesterday’s front page. “The thing is, I could swear
there was a question mark at the end of that headline.”
“Well, that’s easy enough to prove.” Lyons called up the history of
the page and clicked on the last version Lamm had worked on. “Yup.
There’s a question mark, big as life.”
“So what happened to it?” Scroop demanded.
Lyons opened the next version of the page, which had been saved
three minutes later by Fleming, now uneasily silent alongside O’Brien.
“It seems, Geena, it disappeared during final check.”
She flushed with embarrassment. “I guess I thought it wasn’t
needed, and I took it out.”
“What do you mean, you guess?” Scroop wheeled on her. “Didn’t
you read the story?”
“I heard them talking about it, but I didn’t have a chance to read it
myself—no.”
This was nothing unusual. Whoever, on a given day, was the checker
generally got the front page no more than a few minutes before
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deadline—that is, with barely enough time to look for typos in headlines
and cutlines, never mind in eight-and-a-half-point body copy.
“So you’re telling me you deleted it on the basis of some
conversation you overheard?”
“I went by what Van put on the budget, too.”
At this, the rest of us groaned inwardly. The budget, as I ascertained
with a glance, had Ottomatons to women: Drop dead, but we all knew
LeVine’s suggested headlines could never be trusted, because they were
written in advance, before he’d seen the actual stories.
—So what was the upshot? Did she get her head handed to her or
not?
In the end—nice pun, by the way, you could have a future as a copy
editor—her inexperience saved Fleming. She was still largely new to the
desk, and Scroop—of whom it was said that, if he had a weak spot, it
was only an abstract one, for outdoorsy blondes—let her off with a
stern warning before departing to draft a retraction.
“Miz-z-z Damrosh.”
“Thanks so much.”
“Mees-ter Tock.”
Instead of thanking Rocker, Tock looked up from his check in
annoyance. “Let me ask you something, Bob.”
“Shoot.”
“How much do you make?”
“Not to be rude,” Rocker replied, “but I don’t see where that’s any of
your business.”
“If that’s so, why is it you’re entitled to know how much I make?”
Rocker chortled. “As your boss, I can hardly be expected to be
unaware of what I’m paying you.”
“That may be, but it strikes me, if you had any sensitivity, you’d give
us our checks in sealed envelopes. Or is it you get off on humiliating us
by reminding us you know how little we take home?”
Before the flummoxed Rocker could reassert his authority, Bev, the
newsroom receptionist, called out from her desk, in a voice loud enough
to be heard across the street:
“I’ve got a guy on the phone here who wants to know why there’s a
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huge cloud of steam coming out of Mount Margeson.”
Hoff at once grabbed his camera and was halfway down the stairs by
the time Damrosh had found the number for the U.S. Geological Survey.
—But you said it was extinct!
It was a fact the mountain hadn’t been active in at least a thousand
years—only it seemed the twang we’d just felt had clocked in at 4.2 on
the Richter scale.
—There’d been an earthquake?
For Granford, a very rare one, tied to the infinitesimally slow descent
of the continental plate beneath its oceanic counterpart. I’m no expert
on subduction, but, from what I’ve read, it’s been in progress since the
Pleistocene under Grenadine County.
—In light of what you said before about the intercession of a higher
power, am I right in concluding this quake damaged the headquarters of
the Foundation for Conjugal Equilibrium?
Not directly. As temblors go, it was little more than a hiccup. Most
people didn’t even notice it. Maybe it knocked over a few beer cans at
the 7-Eleven.
—Well, then—
What it inarguably did do was startle Mount Margeson into hawking
a gob of meteor-sized boulders down onto Ottolenghi’s new temple.
Not a pillar was left standing and, to make matters worse, his insurance
policy covered earthquakes but not eruptions. Obviously, he’d have had
to be insane to think of rebuilding on the site and, soon afterwards, he
put his local holdings up for sale and relocated to more stable terrain—
in Arkansas, I believe.
—Did he fare any better there?
I couldn’t say, but, if you turn your dial far enough to the right, you
can still hear him counseling pantywaists to clobber their restive wives.
158
Day of Blood
By Matt Thompson
That year, the annual masters-and-servants masquerade at Dowse Hall
was brought forward a month to the date of March 24th. We tried to tell
him, we really did. "Lord Dowser," I advised on numerous occasions,
"should we not follow tradition and keep to April?" But he wouldn't
listen, even going so far as to threaten serious repercussions for any
member of staff who dared question him.
Gloom enveloped the household in the weeks leading up to the
festivities. Come the day, and an ominous pall of thunderheads loomed
over the gardens. The pavilions were hurriedly dismantled, a volley of
ice-cold rain soaked the lawns and everyone, the staff included, cursed
his Lordship for his intransigence.
Late that morning, I found him preening before his mirror. Garbed in
full servant regalia, as was customary, he looked quite frightful. He had
taken it upon himself to dress up as Marisa, our Guyanese cook, a lady
whose undoubted culinary talents were hardly matched by a svelte
figure. An appalling Jemima wig adorned his head, a voluminous apron
billowed out from his portly figure, and it pains me to tell you that he
had made himself up in full blackface, admiring his newly-distended lips
as if he were a colonial explorer attempting to commune with the
natives.
I, being in the socially intermediate position of butler, was spared the
ordeal of the role-reversal fancy dress the Lord seemed set on. Oh!,
should the remainder of the household be so lucky! Rita the governess I
had espied earlier, grumbling away to herself as she perched a rather
worn tiara on her head she had borrowed from the Lady. The rest too:
Victoria, the Lord's grown-up niece, pursing her lips in displeasure at her
dowdy maid's uniform; Jayne, the scullery maid, mismatched white
gloves giving her the air of one who had been let down by the costume
department in a school play; the Lady Severine, Lord Dowser's feared
mother-in-law, resplendent in a chauffeur's uniform even gaudier than
the one normally worn by Tom Ladd, the real chauffeur, himself attired
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Day of Blood by Matt Thompson
in a gabardine suit two sizes too large for his frame. The children, of
course, dressed as they wanted, class divisions being of little interest to
them.
It was my duty to inform his Lordship of the day's reworked itinerary.
As I prepared to make my presence known, however, a voice called out
from the en-suite bathroom. I couldn't catch the words, but the sound
was well-known to me indeed: it was Marisa herself! Before I had a
chance to sidle discreetly away she waddled into sight, clad in nought
but a bathrobe. He turned to her, and... well, suffice to say this was
clearly not their first tryst.
I managed to duck back out of sight unseen, thank heavens, and
scurried downstairs as fast as I could manage. I was an employee. I was
not a confidante, and nor did I aspire to be. My position did not
necessitate involving myself in adulterous deceptions, and I wished to
keep it that way.
Of course, the first person I encountered on my way back down was
Lady Dowser, squeezed, for some obscure reason, into a footman's
uniform. "Oh James," she breathed, "do we have to go through with it?"
And she wafted away in a haze of imported perfume, no doubt heading
for one of the numerous gin stashes she had dotted around the
premises where she thought no-one would find them.
I admit: I sighed, even if only under my breath, and steeled myself for
the Parlour Games.
***
Lord Dowser swayed from foot to foot before the fireplace, humming to
himself as the day servants cleared the dining table of dirty dishes and
empty wine casks. The rain that had been hammering on the windows
all afternoon was now no more than a pitter-patter, matched by the feet
of the children as they pounded past on some secret mission or other.
The string quartet engaged for the occasion sawed away in the ballroom,
the second violinist permanently some quarter tone out with her
accompanists. The resultant caterwauling only exacerbated the feeling
of apprehension that had settled over the house.
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His Lordship raised his goblet. "My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen," he
announced, wig somewhat askew beneath a once-white, now off-brown
head covering. "It behoves me to announce that on this day, the Annual
Festival of Dowse Hall, we, the extended family of this fine house, can –
for one day at least! – experience the other side of life. Now what say
you? A rum old do, what?"
The response from the gathering, some thirty strong by that point,
was, needless to say, underwhelming. A ragged attempt at a cheer from
some of the younger men dwindled to silence. Lady Severine,
chauffeur's cap perched jauntily on her head as if she were debuting at
Royal Ascot, sniffed. "Frederick," she declared, "what on earth do you
think you look like?"
He puffed himself up in mock indignation, fluffing his skirts and
crooking his bonnet. "My dearest mother-in-law," he said, "Marisa
herself expressed admiration for the accuracy of my costume." Marisa,
the poor thing, had been dressed up in one of his late father's suits,
deerstalker included, her ample curves almost bursting through its
seams. I rather suspected their tawdry affair might not last out the
evening. I was accosted with a vision of them engaged in their amorous
pursuits, he in full negro make-up, her straddling him like a ripened fruit
overhanging an untended lawn, and shuddered.
One of the younger relatives, a Viscount-in-waiting by the name of
Entway, attempted to leaven the atmosphere with mirth. "Lord
Dowser!" he declared, "I think it rather suits you. Had you considered
remaining a darkie forever, sir?" His friends chortled in merriment, as
Marisa simmered with barely-suppressed fury on the fringes of the
gathering.
The Lord wasn't finished, however. "Now how about a game?" he
slurred. "A dare to the Gods, what? And who among us wishes to
challenge the authority of Heaven? Hmm?" He swilled his whisky and
drained the remainder of the glass in one fell swoop.
"How about a hunt, sir?" said the fool Entway. His pheasant-beater's
attire was just a little too well-cut to convince, his demeanour too much
that of privilege.
"A darkie hunt!" one of his companions cried. Marisa's eyes,
161
unnoticed by all except me, widened in panic as the shout went up.
"Hunt! Hunt! Hunt!"
Lord Dowser hurled his decanter to the floor and clambered onto the
table, narrowly avoiding stepping on one of the vastly expensive china
serving bowls. A servant snatched it away as he raised a finger and made
his declaration. "A magnificent idea! Let this day be the Day of Blood!
Hunt Master! Where is my Hunt Master?"
Old Spinkling, the long-retired Hunt Master, shuffled forward. Bent
almost double by the curvature of his spine, he had spent the last
decade, since the passing of the law forbidding the hunting of vermin,
residing in one of the semi-derelict cottages that flanked the grounds of
the Hall. I doubted he even still owned his colours, let alone whether he
would be in any fit state to wear them.
"Lord Dowser," he croaked. "I am afraid the hounds are ill-prepared
for such an exercise at this short notice."
Since the last of the awful creatures had passed away several years
previously this news came as no surprise. The Lord, however, was not to
be deterred.
"No mind, old chap, no mind." He hoisted his petticoats. For one
horrifying second I thought he might be about to dance a can-can.
Fortunately he did nothing more compromising than clear a space
around him with his foot. A gravy boat tumbled to the floor, spilling
some of its contents onto his niece Victoria. She gazed at the stain
spreading over her maid's smock in horror and edged away.
Lord Dowser, however, had spotted her. "You there, what's-yourname? Victoria, yes. Will you be our prey?" Victoria threw a hand to her
mouth, turned and fled. The Lord frowned. "No? Then how about you,
Marisa?"
Marisa stuttered incoherently for a few seconds before I decided that
now would be a precipitous moment to step in. I stepped forward and
politely cleared my throat. "Lord Dow –"
I was rudely interrupted by a stomp of feet from the hallway and the
shrieks of his Lordship's daughter Daphne, accompanied as ever by her
younger brother George. "We want to do it! We do! We do!" They
pelted into the room and across to where their father still perched on
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the table. Feigning surprise, he leaned down and took their hands in his
own.
"You wish to be a darkie, child? Or a fox?"
"Fox!" cried George, little knowing what he would be letting himself
in for.
"Very well then!" Lord Dowser hopped to the floor, slipping in the
spilled gravy but somehow retaining his balance, and raised the
childrens' hands high. "The Hunt is on!" he announced, to an amused
cheer from the assembled company. "Spinkling! Raise the hounds!
Mother-in-law! Raise the company! Marisa! Er...you can just watch." He
formed his hands into a trumpet shape and parped out a thin imitation
of a hunting call, to screams of merriment from his offspring. Excited
conversations sprang up around us, and the mood seemed suddenly
more festive.
I should say at this juncture in the tale that I knew, without a shadow
of a doubt, trouble lay ahead. Being powerless to prevent it, I did what I
could and eased to my master's side. From there, I hoped I could be in a
position to guide the man according to the rules of deportment; or,
failing that, to prevent him from embarrassing himself and, indeed, all of
us, any more than he was liable to if unchaperoned. For what is a butler
for, if not to preserve the illusion of prestige?
But the master was in his own world now, lost in a reverie of past
triumphs, memories of grander days ghosting across his face as he
barked out his orders to all and sundry. I caught Lady Dowser's eye as he
gabbled his ideas of how to dress the children as foxes to their
governess, the aforementioned Rita, who was gawking back at him in
utter horror. The Lady held my gaze for a few seconds, her wistful
expression almost crumpling. Heroically, she held herself together long
enough to melt away into the teeming crowd and out of sight.
I couldn't, just then, remember whether I'd topped up all her secret
gin stashes or not.
***
Fortunately the rain had died down to the occasional squall by the time
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we assembled on the driveway in front of the house. I spotted a quiver
from a nearby topiary, one that the gardeners had fashioned into the
approximate shape of his Lordship's features for the occasion of the
Festival.
"Boo!" George scurried out from behind the hedge to stand in glory
before the hunting party. He was dressed in a russet-brown one-piece
pyjama suit. Someone had attached a bushy tail to its rear, which
swished against his legs when he twirled in a circle to show his costume
to the gathering.
"Wonderful!" a young lady shrieked. I think her name was Caroline,
or Kirsty. "Are they giving you a head start?"
George looked around him in confusion. Daphne emerged from the
scrum and took his hand. Clad in similar vestments, albeit with a
sweeping haughtiness to her cut, she resembled less a verminous
creature than some being of ancient authority and legend. "We," she
announced, in her cut-glass diction, "wish to celebrate the
transformation of the old era into the new."
The hubbub of conversation died down around her. The sound of the
string quartet drifted to us from inside the house, the second violinist
more out of tune than ever. Lord Dowser, I noted, had stolen out to
stand at the back of the crowd, still in his costume, still with Marisa at
his side. Glad of the diversion the forthcoming hunt was engendering, a
mood of somewhat hysterical excitement had overtaken the guests.
Now, they fell silent and waited for Daphne to continue.
"Today is a day of rejoicing," she said. I found myself wondering who
had drafted the speech for her. Their mother, I assumed. "Behold! The
disguise is complete, and the masquerade reaches its climax."
She gestured to Tom Ladd, who stood by the sweeping flight of steps
leading upwards to the main door of the Hall. He produced a battered
hunting horn from somewhere and pulled his oversized suit sleeves out
of the way. Daphne and George held hands and cried out in unison:
"The Day of Blood!"
Tom bowed, put the instrument to his lips and blew out a raspy,
bubbling fanfare. The children turned tail and sprinted for the bushes.
Once they had disappeared, the company stood uncertainly for a few
164
seconds beneath Dowse Hall's somewhat grimy exterior, as if waiting for
the Hunt Master to sound the charge. Spinkling, the poor old thing,
tottered forward and made as if to speak. He had clad himself in the
remnants of his hunting attire, the red coat faded and worn, his
breeches stained and torn at the knees. Before he was able to humiliate
himself utterly Lord Dowser's voice rang out from somewhere behind
me.
"Foxhounds!"
A feeble hurrah went up from the attendees. Their party costumes, in
the drear afternoon light, gave off the impression of a group of children
who had ransacked their parents' ottoman for a birthday celebration. In
the circumstances I found the analogy quite fitting. The Lord strode forth
and assumed an imperious air before the crowd. "Are we prepared?"
Another cheer, louder than the last.
"Then sound the Hunt! Spinkling, you old rotter! Sound the Hunt,
man! Sound it!"
The unfortunate Spinkling looked around him in baffled
incomprehension, until Tom Ladd took pity on him and puffed out
another flatulent blast of air. "Hunt them down!" came a cry. It was
Entway, hat askew, empty champagne glass in hand. He hurled the
goblet to the gravel. "Kill the vermin! Or if we can't, let's find ourselves a
darkie, what?"
A yell of assent went up from his friends, echoed with faint
reluctance by the members of staff – myself excluded. Marisa, ignored
by all as one would avert one's eyes from the last walk of a condemned
prisoner, gave out a strangled squawk. Lord Dowser strode to her side
and took her hand. His boot-polish make-up was starting to run by now,
creating lightning-fork rivulets that ran down his face and halted at his
chin. The contrast with the proud-even-in-the-circumstances bearing of
his mistress was quite startling.
The Lady Severine snorted. She spoke, her words slicing the muggy
air like sharpened knives. "Frederick, did you ever think that you might
end up with a negro heir if you carry on comporting yourself in this
manner?"
But the Hunt was on, and no-one, apart from myself, was listening,
165
the Lord least of all. They were too intent on discussing the capture of
their prey, and the best way to go about tracking the children down.
Already groups of them had begun to head for the garages and their cars
that awaited them there. Lord Dowser dragged Marisa after him as he
barrelled round to the rear of the house, his skirts flapping in the breeze
that had sprung up. I could smell a fresh promise of rain on the air.
Before long, only I, the Lady Dowser and Spinkling were left. The Lady
laid a gentle hand on the old man's arm. "You can go now, Spinkling."
She aimed him in the direction of his cottage and gave him a small
shove, causing him to stumble slightly as he doddered away, jaws
masticating at nothing, a faint odour of urine lingering in his wake. The
Lady turned to me. Her eyes attempted to focus, with remarkably little
success. "James," she said, "will you marry me? If I divorce him, that is."
I said nothing. The sound of car engines purred around the side of the
building towards us. She hesitated, gave out a small, sad shrug and
stumbled up the steps. I fixed my gaze sternly on the middle distance
until she was gone.
The first of the cars hove into view. A Subaru 4x4, it was driven in an
erratic manner by none other than Entway. Packed with a leering,
drunken cabal of his friends, it reminded me of a ship of fools, a pilotless
vessel of derangement heading for nowhere other than oblivion, both
spiritual and – I hoped, despite my best intentions not to do so –
physical. Behind it came a convoy of Range Rovers, Jaguars and other
such symbols of privilege, a number of them full of maudlin-looking
servants being chauffeured by their social, if not moral, superiors.
A roar and sputter, and the appalling sight of Lord Dowser
manifested itself through the haze of exhaust fumes. He sat at the helm
of a vintage motorcycle I had forgotten even existed. Attached shakily to
its flank was a sidecar, within which the luckless Marisa had somehow
managed to cram herself, tweed cap held firmly to her head, her face a
blank mask. The Lord revved his engine. A loud pop ensued, causing
Marisa almost to leap from her cradle in shock, and a cloud of blackened
fumes drifted over the parade.
He rode to the front and held up an arm. Everyone revved their
engines and blasted on their horns. There was a pause.
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Then...
He thrust his arm downwards, engaged the accelerator and shot off
in the direction of the roadway a hundred yards hence. After a second,
Entway's car lurched into gear and followed, swerving around the
decorative stone fountain at the head of the drive and onto the straight
pathway leading to the road. The rest, in their own fashions, followed as
best they could.
The last vehicle, a battered Ford Focus piloted by none other than
Tom Ladd, pulled up beside me. The door swung open. Victoria was in
the passenger seat. She swung her shapely figure out and adjusted a
windscreen wiper that had somehow become stuck. I took the
opportunity to slide into the back. "Shower of shite," Tom muttered, as
Victoria got back in.
The car's interior stank of whisky and stale cigarettes. As the
overbearing frontage of Dowse Hall receded behind us, I sank back and
let out a sigh. Victoria turned to Tom and gave him a distant smile. He,
the scoundrel, disengaged his hand from the steering wheel for long
enough to caress her thigh in an over-familiar manner. She slapped it
away with a giggle as he swung left onto the road.
A hundred yards ahead of us the convoy trundled onwards like a
mobile premonition, a funeral procession of drunk drivers on their way
to the afterlife. Before too long the car in front of us swung sharply to
the left. We followed, onto a rutted track that led to the apple orchards
most of the Hall's wealth is derived from, and that only because the Lord
leaves it entirely in the hands of a franchise company. The Ford, not built
for this kind of terrain, jolted up and down and left and right with each
mound and dip in the roadway; if, indeed, you could have called it that.
Victoria tried to say something, but could manage nothing more than a
vague chatter of teeth and tongue as Tom wrestled with the wheel,
swearing under his breath.
Finally, the track ended and we drew to a halt. The vehicles of the
Hunt were arrayed around us in a disorderly mess. At least two of them
appeared to have collided, going by the fresh-looking dents and
shattered indicator lamps. They were all empty. My companions and I
slid out onto the wet grass. Relieved to be back out in the open air,
167
damp and chilly though it was, I scanned the locale for any sign of their
incumbents.
"There!" Victoria pointed to a gap in a hedge, not twenty yards from
where we stood. I caught a flash of blue on the pathway that led
through the orchards; it was the Lady Severine, puffing along in her
chauffeur's uniform, walking stick waved in front of her as if to ward off
a horde of demons. "Come on!" Victoria yelped. Her eyes were bright
and glazed as she sprinted off in hot pursuit. Tom rolled his eyes and
jogged after her, pulling his sleeves up all the while and swerving
gingerly around the puddles.
I, seemingly the only member of the entourage with any sense of
propriety left whatsoever, had no choice. Hierarchies are there for a
reason, I always feel. Without them, we would be subject to the laws of
the mob. Law, after all, is less a stone tablet descended from heaven
than a crumbling parchment, nailed to a wall and fading in the sun,
ignored by all until it suits them to invoke its legitimacy. One must
always strive to do what is right and just. And the behaviour I had
encountered today bore witness to the fact that a strict social pecking
order is vital; these days more so than ever, if the tenets of civilization
are to be exercised in their proper manner.
With that in mind, I traversed the pathway as best I could. Avoiding
the lowest-hanging branches and being careful not to splash my cuffs
too badly, I hastened onwards to see what damage I would need to
repair this time. I tripped and almost fell; was that a tyre track I had
caught my foot in? I realised the Lord's motorbike had been conspicuous
by its absence back at the parking area.
The Lady Severine spared me not even a passing glare as I overtook
her. Already I could hear cries and screams ahead of me; I quickened my
pace, fearful of the sight that would meet my eyes as I rounded the last
corner.
It was worse than I had thought.
In a circular glade near the centre of the orchard Daphne lay
sprawled out on the ground, surrounded by a baying mob. As I watched
on, aghast, Victoria ran up and kicked at the poor girl's flank. A roar
went up from the crowd. Rita, the governess, was chanting along with
168
the rest, a froth of saliva exuding from her lips as the frenzy filling the air
rose and fell and rose once again, its fervour greater with each round.
Lord Dowser stood proudly by his motorbike. Marisa, still wedged
inside the sidecar, sat with her face in her hands, weeping openly.
George sat motionless in the mud ten feet away, his face chalk-white
and his lips moving in some private invocation. Daphne, as I realised
when I drew closer, was not in fact dead after all, merely knocked
unconscious. A halo of blood surrounded her fair head, crimson matted
into her hair and streaking what I could see of her face.
Rita, I noticed with a start, was clutching George's fox tail to her
breast. Lord Dowser had spotted it too; he strode forward and snatched
it from her grasp, causing the woman to almost tumble to the dirt. I
wanted to grab her by the arm and remind her of her nurturing
responsibilities, her duty to stop this madness before someone actually
died. But Entway and his friends, and Caroline – if that was her name –
and Victoria and now Tom Ladd and everyone else were hollering and
screeching and yowling like a pack of hounds barely held at bay by the
Hunt Master, and I could do nothing.
It was the Lady Severine who put a stop to it. She barged through the
crowd, rapping a number of them painfully with her stick, and knelt
down beside the girl. Daphne, by then, was stirring. With a groan, she
managed to lift her head, gazing blearily around her at the mob and
turning an even paler shade of white than her brother.
"Frederick?" The sound of the Lady's voice was like that of a church
bell, silencing all within earshot. She fixed his Lordship with a flint stare.
"What did you do to this young lady?"
The crowd, at her words, had frozen in their postures. A tense hush
blanketed the scene, a still life latent with hostility and the promise of
true violence. Lord Dowser shrugged, toeing the earth with his boot and
trying not to meet his mother-in-law's gaze. Considerable streaks of his
make-up had made their way onto his collar, leaving his face looking like
that of a chimney-sweep or powder monkey. Someone from the crowd
catcalled an incomprehensible heckle. It was, I believe, Entway, shushed
by his companions as Daphne rose unsteadily to her feet. Her costume,
ripped and bloodstained, hung from her in tatters.
169
It was Marisa who told the truth. "He ran her down!" she sobbed.
"He...he tried to...oh, God..."
And she broke off into racking hiccups, tears streaming down her
plump cheeks and staining her neckerchief. Even Entway dared not
interrupt again. He, and the others, seemed rooted to the spot. I fancied
there was something radiant about them, as if the weak shafts of
sunlight that now poked their way out from behind the rainclouds were
illuminating them from the inside out.
A fat drop of rain fell onto Marisa's face, and then another, and
another.
The Lady Severine's eyes were hooded with sorrow and contempt.
"Those who forget the past, boy," she chided, "are doomed to repeat it.
Remember your wife?"
The Lord hung his head. Daphne leaned over and vomited. Tendrils of
sputum hung from her lips as she heaved her recently-consumed lunch
onto the ground, there to mingle with the bloodstains that veined the
dirt.
The Lady pursed her lips. "And have you, Frederick, forgotten what
happened to James?"
Rita gave out a small, piteous cry and crossed herself. Lord Dowser
nodded and mumbled his apologies, his petticoats beginning to darken
in the rain that now fell freely. I, on the other hand, was dumbstruck,
unable to form even a single word. And what happened to me, Lady
Severine, I wished to ask of the woman. And what, for that matter,
happened to the Lady?
But I said nothing, and merely drifted to my master's side, a shield
between him and the derangement he had wrought. His mouth was
opening and closing like a sluice gate, nothing more than a whisper of
sibilance escaping his grease-painted lips. It was like watching a bad
actor in a minstrel-show production of Macbeth, beholding the head of
Banquo at his table.
Entway, the buffoon, tried to lighten the atmosphere the only way he
knew how. "A fine Hunt, sir. A fine Hunt!"
A shamed silence met his words. Before long the gentlemen and
ladies of the Hunt departed in dribs and drabs, as mourners will turn
170
from a graveside in the rain, bereavement clouding their faces. Marisa
eased herself from her sidecar. Without a backward glance she waddled
away into the trees, shaking her head and muttering obscurities no-one
but herself could comprehend, never to be seen again. I didn't blame
her.
The Lady took Daphne by the hand, gestured to George to follow and
began the trudge back to the cars along with the rest of them.
It was just his Lordship and I left. His eyes seemed fixated on a harsh,
unforgiving future visible only to himself. What he saw there I couldn't
have told you, and didn't wish to know. I shifted my feet and cleared my
throat, feeling one of us had to break the pained hush that had
descended.
"Will that be all, sir?"
***
The sacrificial Day of Blood proved worthy of its name. From that day
forward until such time as he was finally committed I would find the
Lord Dowser, black wax smeared across his countenance, staring into
the mirror in the bed chamber of his derelict house; the Lady Dowser
forever at his side, scrubbing his cheeks but removing not a spot,
humming a gentle melody to herself and sipping at her flask of gin.
And I, servant till the end, flanking my master's elbow; a blood
sacrifice to preserve the ancient customs, archivist of the immutable
laws of hierarchy, a Fool at the head of the ritual procession of Dowse
Hall.
171
Author Biographies
In Order of Appearance
Jason Rhode is a writer, former Jeopardy contestant, art model, and manabout-town, who has a Master's degree in philosophy and is a solid-gold
Gemini. Last year, he became a full-fledged Pokemon master with the help
of his faith community, and redefined what the world meant by
"love". Federal prosecutors have linked him with over 74 life-ending cases
of Country Strong during the mid-Nineties.
Michelle Ann King writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror from her
kitchen table in Essex, England. Her favourite author is Stephen King (sadly,
no relation), and she also loves zombies, Las Vegas, and good Scotch
whisky. She's sold stories to a variety of anthologies and magazines,
including Strange Horizons, Interzone, and Black Static, and her first
collection “Transient Tales” is available in ebook and paperback now. See
www.transientcactus.co.uk for links to her published books and stories.
Charles Wilkinson’s publications include “The Pain Tree and Other Stories”
(London Magazine Editions, 2000). His stories have appeared in Best Short
Stories 1990 (Heinemann), Best English Short Stories 2 (W.W. Norton, USA),
Unthology (Unthank Books), Best British Short Stories 2015 (Salt) and in
genre magazines / anthologies such as Supernatural Tales, The Dark Lane
Anthology, Abstract Jam, Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, Phantom Drift (USA),
Bourbon Penn (USA), Shadows & Tall Trees (Canada), Nightscript (USA) and
Best Weird Fiction 2015 (Undertow Books, Canada). “Ag & Au”, a pamphlet
of poems, appeared from Flarestack in 2013. “A Twist in the Eye”, his
collection of weird fiction and strange tales, has now appeared from Egaeus
Press.
Jaclyn Adomeit currently lives in Calgary, Canada where she daylight as an
environmental engineer. Her work has previously appeared in Armchair /
Shotgun magazine, and online at Literally Stories and Flash Fiction
Magazine.
172
Brad Kerstetter is a stay-at-home father/builder/writer. When he is not
tearing apart walls, rewiring, and rebuilding, then he is tearing apart
sentences and rebuilding paragraphs, or chasing the kids. In this issue, his
piece, "Everything’s Alright," explores what happens when we live in denial
and feel we deserve a certain way of life.
Dan Frazier is an entertainment journalist who has contributed to
Entertainment Weekly, BlackBook, NYLON and SPIN.
Peter Ryan is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Notre
Dame in South Bend, IN. You can find his work nowhere as this is his first
publication of fiction. If he had free time he would enjoy spending it with his
wife and 130-pound Saint Bernard.
Matthew Lyons lives in New York with his wife. His work has most recently
appeared in Bastion Science Fiction, Maudlin House and Comb. He's
probably taller than you. Not that it's a competition.
Drew Tapley is a full-time copywriter and journalist, recently published in
Popshot literary magazine (http://popshotpopshot.com/magazine) with his
short story “Here, There & Everywhere”. He co-wrote the book "Funny
Business," which has been on the shelves at Chapters bookstores
throughout Canada following publication in 2011. His writing has been
variously published in journals, newspapers, magazines, and online
platforms in Canada, Australia and the UK for almost a decade.
Stephen Baily is the author of three novels, ten plays, and short stories that
have appeared in some twenty-five journals. His novel "Markus Klyner, MD,
FBI" is available as a Kindle e-book.
Matt Thompson is a London-based writer of oddball fantastical fiction and
player of experimental music. His stories have been published at The Fable
Online and Apocrypha & Abstractions, among others. He can be found
online at http://matt-thompson.com.
173

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