Alive! Not me, of course. No, two tons of car slammed against one’s head doesn’t leave a lot of room for maybes. But my friends are still kicking, though Jonathan shakes a bit and Erin has a few more months of physical therapy to go and Rob’s therapist recommends he start running again. I was surprised that they made it, I have to admit but I’m glad that I’m the only doorstop. How’s it go? “Marley was dead to begin with, there was no mistake about that . . .” and then a lot of overwriting. Charles Dickens, you paid-by-the-paragraph talented bastard, the only author I’ve ever preferred in condensed form. But look at me, taking a page out of your overloaded books—
Ay, my mouth runneth over! I don’t really mind being dead. It’s a lot like what I imagine an acid trip to be; all disconnected symbols and images skittering around in solid form. And the synaesthesia is wonderful, all copper-colored songs and square smells.
I wander the rooms and climb the stairs and peek sideways out the windows of my afterlife, looking for my friends. They can be difficult to spot, even with their bright red faces on the days that they miss me, but I crane my eyes for them anyway. Sometimes I wave at them, my arms turning upside down when they go through the window. “Hello, hello, I miss you!” The plants wave with me, seeking the sun that orbits us in dizzy parabolas a hundred times a day. “Hello!” they echo.
Though I can’t talk to anyone, I do have the ability to make graffiti in the living world. Did you ever see things spray-painted on the underside of an overpass and wonder how they get there? They’re probably all me, even the ones made before I was born—I have a little trouble with time here, and I end up posting messages all out of order. Oh well—graffiti doesn’t have to make sense, does it? Even dead and swimming in art, I still can’t draw, but anybody can scribble block letters along a train. I painted “Mighty” and “Mouse” on two of them. I hope they clack past each other soon; it’s the sort of joke that appeals to me now.
There are lots of books in the third floor basement’s library, but it’s difficult to get there and even more so to get back, because some of the doors only work one way. I don’t know if everyone’s afterlife is like mine, but somehow I doubt it. You’ve seen it, I’m sure—that Escher painting, the one that’s all stairs and mind-bending angles. Most days I love it, walking one way and meeting my legs coming back the other direction, but it hides the library. I’ve started taking a backpack so I can lug a few volumes with me. My old favorites line all the walls in the building, but I’ve found that my memory of them is too good now, and I prefer the philosophical stuff that I’ve been finding. They’re scattered enough to make sense to me.
Funny, even dead I can’t understand Umberto Eco’s books. I’m not sure what that says about me, but it could just be that they’re not the same as they should be. I tried reading a romance novel on a whim and was surprised when I fell inside near the middle when, out of nowhere, a pony ate the heroine. I was lost for days, met a prince who’d wandered in out of “1001 Nights.” Still not sure if he was real, and if he was, then when. His eyes smelled like fresh bread.
In a sewer in New York, I wrote “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in Arabic and red ink. The alligators have taken to staring at it, not sure why, but I hope nobody goes down there. Posting a warning would only make it worse, I suppose; curiosity makes fools out of all of us.
Sometimes I have to crawl into a cupboard and hide from the flocks of birds that become clouds and the clouds that acquire feathers and beaks. I don’t mind the flesh-and-paint lizards that sometimes creep out of the floor, but the birds are just too much. They nest in the columns and squawk until the rain washes them away. I wish Escher had thought a bit more about his drawings; they’re just enough living and dead to make them fit here, and I’m tired of chasing his inky hands out of the kitchen with a broom.
Note to self: find out if I can make graffiti on places other than Earth. I’d love to freak out NASA.
My only regret, as I hang upside-down from a wall, is that my last drink was a Tequila Sunrise, which always makes me throw up. I didn’t want to die with my head out the window, Rob holding my hair back. A headlight hits me in the eye and I’m here, my words skittering across my tongue and universes hidden in the furniture. It makes me—
That’s a new door. I wonder where it goes.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Spirit Guide Tantrums
I pound on the medium’s door, a bag of un-husked corn in my free hand. “Let me in! You owe us!” I shout, making her placard rattle as I continue to hammer.
She slides open her peephole and scowls at me. “Madame Zelda does not do mornings.” The thick kohl around her eyes is smeared into her crow’s feet. “Go away.” She slams the opening shut.
A few kicks to the unsteady wood and she opens the small window again, her eyeballs jaundiced, with a scattering of blood shot through them, face creased with fury. “Please,” I say sweetly, showing all my teeth. “I’d like to speak to my grandmother.” I lean close to her. “Or perhaps I could go talk to Pastor Bill, tell him that you’re thinking of converting. How would you like to spend the next five hours listening to him talk about Presbyterian history and tactfully tell you that you’re technically a heathen and a terrible sinner before urging you not to make any decisions in haste?”
“You nosy, bossy—fine. Talk to your damned grandmother.” Closing the slit, Madame Zelda yanks open the door. She is wearing her day clothes, dirt-stained khakis and a sweatshirt from her daughter’s Ivy League college. “I’m beginning to wish that I had never gone to that retreat in New Mexico. You and your grandmother are more trouble than you are worth.” Grumbling, she rubs her eyes. “You are being rude, but I shouldn’t emulate you.” She nods toward the kitchen. “Go ahead and sit down. Do you want some coffee?”
I shake my head. “I don’t do well with caffeine. I wouldn’t say no to some hot water, though.” Fishing in my left pocket, I pull out a bag of peppermint tea. “She makes fun of me when I have the non-native plants, anyway.”
“Don’t I know it.” Pulling a battered teapot out of the cupboard, she jams it under the faucet. She jerks her head at my burden while she’s filling it. “What’s with the corn?”
Unexpectedly, I blush. “I thought it would make me feel closer to her. Y’know, a bit of shared culture.”
Zelda laughs. “You’ll probably cook it wrong and she’ll just mock you again.” Teapot full, she plunks it on the stove, spilling some of the water. She fiddles with the knob to turn it on. “I suppose you’ll want to cook it?”
I nod. “You can keep it when we’re done. My granddad got a huge load of the stuff and my granny and I been trying to work through it for days.”
She makes a non-committal noise, getting out an ancient coffeemaker and a can of the cheapest brand. “Alright. I’ve got a pot that should be big enough for five ears, and I wouldn’t mind a nice meal of corn on the cob tonight.”
“Thanks.” I play with the tea bag, easing the perforated edges apart and smiling at the wafting scent. “Uh, and I’m sorry for barging in, Madame Zelda.”
“That apology would mean more to me if I didn’t know that you’ll probably do it again next time you’re in a rush. Ay, you young things! You’ve got more years of youth than I probably have to live; I don’t know why you feel the need to hurry.” She measures out her ground beans into a filter. The smell mixes with my peppermint and I wrinkle my nose. It’s not the most appealing combination. “But your apology is accepted.”
To occupy myself while my water boils and her coffee percolates—I’ve pushed her as far as I really should, and I know better than to make her work before she’s had her drink—I look around the room. Usually I visit later and Zelda bustles me straight into what she calls “the room of mysteries,” a curtained and incensed room that I suspect looks cheesy in sunlight. Zelda means well, but she tends to go overboard when she doesn’t need to; I’m not really one to be impressed by velvet and mysticism. Oddly practical for a girl who communicates with her decades-dead great-grandmother on a regular basis, but both the stubbornness and the contradiction run in my family.
It’s a baking kitchen, of which I approve. I base my evaluation on the heavy double-rack of spices, the tea towels with burn holes in them, and the stack of dirty cookie sheets in the sink. There is a scent of bread in the air, which I sniff with appreciation. I wonder if I’ll be able to con her into giving me a slice.
“So, what was the urgency?”
I flinch, startled out of my staring with a pang of guilt; did she think I was judging her room? “Sorry, what?”
Zelda pulls a mug out of the cupboard in the same instant that the tea kettle starts to screech. “Avery, you banged on my door at seven in the morning, to talk to a woman who will be just as dead later in the evening as she is now. What’s going on?”
I squirm in my seat, reaching out as she hands me the filled mug. “I, uh, want to get some advice.”
She stares at me. “Advice. From your great-grandmother. The woman who, in a fit of pique, started howling about the Trail of Tears and William Henry Harrison in the middle of my séance when I tried to ask her to talk to Mrs. Peterson’s husband, never mind the fact that she was born after both of those events and on the other side of the country.” Zelda emits a dirty chuckle that rolls into a heaving laugh, tears rolling down her cheeks. “The—the—the woman who makes me call her ‘She-Who-Is-Bothered-By-White-People’ for her spirit name if she thinks I’m not appreciating her enough? You came here all in a bother, with a bagful of corn that is probably the wrong variety, because you want to ask her for advice?” Howling now, she bends over to support herself against the stove.
Annoyed, I drop the teabag into the water, releasing a grey cloud. “Yes.”
“Oh—oh my. Wow.” Wiping tears from her face, Zelda finally calms down, though a few stray laughs shake her in amused aftershocks. She grins, her missing top right incisor lending an extra smirk to her expression. “Honey, I always considered you to be the sensible type, but I take it all back.”
I glare at her. “Yeah, yeah, it’s all very funny.” Sipping at my tea, I stare at the calendar next to the fridge. From a local realtor’s office, it’s three months behind and my fingers itch to fix it. “Glad you’re enjoying yourself.”
The coffee boils and Zelda grabs for it with a happy sigh. “Thank goodness.” She pours her drink and dumps three teaspoons of sugar in it. Taking a gulp, she frowns. “Still bitter.” Setting it down, she rummages in the fridge, pulling out a carton of cream. A quick pour, another experimental drink, and she smiles. “That’s the good stuff.” Sitting across from me, she sips slowly, taking her time just to annoy me.
Made thirsty by her actions, I get back to my tea. Peppermint’s the only kind of tea that I like without sweetener, and even when it’s hot, it cools my mouth. Plus my great-grandmother doesn’t make snarky remarks about white girls and their Chinese tea when she smells it.
Getting impatient, I tap my finger against the mug and go back to studying the room. Zelda’s barely started her coffee and there’s no point in rushing her.
It’s really stunning, the difference between this room and the séance area. The walls here are painted buttercup yellow, and wavy glass windows let a lot of light in. She’s tacked some fancy plates up and the cabinets are a pretty, antique-looking white with open doors. I like it much better in here than in the mediation place—I wonder if I could convince her to let me talk to my great-grandmother here. Then again, for a Zuni farming ghost she’s a terrible snob. She likes the trappings and likes criticizing them even more.
“Alright, Avery, let’s get this over with.”
I look up at Zelda with surprise. “Aren’t you going to finish your coffee first?”
She rolls her eyes. “Avery, I have to admit that you are the least annoying of my customers, even though you don’t really pay me in anything but your grandmother’s temporary cooperation, but I have other things to do today.”
“Oh. Okay.” I am appalled to realize that I’m a little hurt by her frank admission of wanting to get rid of me. I must be going soft. “Works for me.” I grab my bag of corn and hoist it over my shoulder.
Squatting, she opens a lower cupboard and pulls out a large pot. “Husk the corn into this. You’d better make sure you don’t leave a single thread of silk in the room; I shudder to think of the abuse your great-grandmother would heap on me if I didn’t have a spotless place for her to manifest.”
I take it from her and follow her into her séance room. As always, I choke at first on the thick scent of whatever herb she was burning this week. She used to favor sandalwood, which I actually liked, but my great-grandmother griped about it so much that she switched to more natural grasses, which smolder and make my eyes water. For a woman with no corporeal body, she has a ridiculously sensitive nose, and the pickiness to back it up. I don’t know how Madame Zelda puts up with her all the time, I really don’t.
We sit at her smaller table, which only has room for two or three people. The other one seats up to ten, but it’s really awkward with just the two of us. This table is nicer, anyway, made like a puzzle out of many different kinds of wood. I like running my fingers over it; it feels like pebbles.
Madame Zelda lights some of the red candles that she has placed around the room. I put the pot on the table and pull out the first ear of corn. She shakes her head as she sits back down. “You know we have to hold hands for the first part and I’m not touching you if you’re all sticky.” She slides her hands across the table, palms up.
I put my fingertips in her grasp and she folds her fingers back to grip them.
She starts humming and rolling her eyes around. The lights grow dimmer and a whispering noise starts up in the room.
I fidget. She has a light switch and a stereo remote stashed under the table. “C’mon, Madame Zelda, can we skip all the mumbo-jumbo voodoo crap? I thought this sort of stuff was for when you don’t actually have a ghost to summon, so you have to distract people.”
Returning to normal, she glares at me. “Avery. You are here to summon the ghost of your great-grandmother. You know, the dead woman. So if you make one more rude comment about the mystic arts, I will shove that corn up your nose and ban you from my house.”
“Fine.” Grumbling, I try to stay still as she goes back to her conjuring. I snort under my breath when a crystal ball is lowered from the ceiling, but she’s humming so loud at this point that she doesn’t hear me. To keep quiet, I count the pillows scattered everywhere. Thirty-seven, and that’s without turning around. At least they match the purple curtains she hung over all the walls.
Releasing my hands, Madame Zelda makes esoteric passes over the crystal ball, then raises her fingers toward the ceiling. “Oh spirit, hear my plea. I beseech you to honor us with your presence and answer the questions of this humble petitioner.”
“Great-grandmother, can you please hurry up? I wanna ask you a question.” Humble petitioner, ha! I’m blood to this woman, the only descendent she’s got who has any interest in Zuni culture and doesn’t go around doing the “woo-woo” thing.
I hate my cousins.
Madame Zelda hushes me fiercely, but a blue glow is already forming around the crystal ball, a small smoky portion inside of the thing and the rest coalescing outside of it. The smoky substance swirls for a minute before shaping itself into an eagle feather. “How, pale folk!” says a deep voice, the color of the spirit gliding through darker shades of blue, heading into one almost black before running backwards through the tint. “Me Chief Redman Talks-to-the-Earth. You have questions for Chief Redman Talks-to-the-Earth? Me answer with my great Injun know-how.”
I roll my eyes. “Great-grandmother, that’s not funny. Knock it off.”
The feather blurs and becomes that familiar broad face with amused eyes. “Ha, white girl! I should have known it was you again.”
“I will help you communicate with this young woman,” says Madame Zelda. “Spirit, how fare you in the Afterlife?”
I sigh. And this is why I don’t feel too bad about waking the woman up to let me talk to my great-grandmother. Outside of being a medium, she’s fine, but something about the atmosphere turns her into a hippie-dippy loony, and it drives me up the wall. No wonder my great-grandmother likes to needle the woman sometimes during her commercial séances. “Madame Zelda, we can hear each other just fine without your help, thank you.”
“Why I ever latched onto you I’ll never know,” my great grandmother taunts. “I should’ve just kept haunting that souvenir shop, making tourists feel nasty chills and buy too much jewelry for luck. There were only Hopi running it, but at least they knew better than to drag me all the way to the other side of the country, where it’s too cold and wet all the time.”
“Perhaps you sensed my connection with Avery,” says the medium, gritting her teeth. “Or knew that I would be able to help you pass your great wisdom onto—”
“To be honest,” said my great-grandmother in a more serious voice, “I was commanded to come with you, by the voices of Father Sky and Grandmother Spider.”
Madame Zelda perks up. “Really?”
“Hell no.” Forming a small bag out of nothing, Great-grandmother picks something out of it and pops it in her mouth. “Ha! Why on earth would the Great Ones care anything about a fifty-seven year old white wiccan? Nah, I was just bored and moved on an impulse.”
For all her talkativeness, my great-grandmother prefers to lie rather than give any real answers about where she lives. She does admit that there are other spirits there with her, though she won’t give any information on them unless somebody specifically asks, and I’ve always suspected that half of the time it’s just her playing dress-up and disguising her voice. But other than that, she’s closed-mouthed about the whole situation and won’t even answer the most basic questions about what it’s like.
One month, to amuse herself, she pretended to be in the Christian Hell, spending the whole time screaming about demons and fire. Then an old woman said “It’s just what she deserves” one night when Madame Zelda was called in as a fun addition to a wedding shower and Great-grandmother started in on her brimstone act. Apparently the bride hadn’t considered what her aunt might think of the “occult” goings-on. Indignant, my great-grandmother told the aunt that her beloved son was the one killing all her cats, exposed the affair that the maid-of-honor was having with the groom, and poured twenty gallons of red punch on the presents.
Madame Zelda doesn’t do showers anymore, though she can be prevailed upon for a bachelorette party.
I am distracted by her actions. “Hey, what did you just eat?”
The bag disappears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Great-grandmother. . .”
She grins and her smoke starts to drift apart so that her features stretch and distort. “The spirits of some dried peyote buttons.” Sticking her tongue out, she giggles. “Woo, they pack quite a kick! I’m going to be seeing stars for a few days, that’s for sure.”
I stare at her, open-mouthed. “How—how does that even work?”
Great-grandmother shrugs. “Dunno.” Then she giggles. “You two look like lizards. You have pretty scales, white girl.”
“Can’t you ever call me by my name?” I whine. I get enough mockery for not “being brown enough” to claim my heritage by alive people without her calling me “white girl” or “gringa” all the time.
“I’ll call you by your name when you get a real one,” Great-Grandmother retorts. It’s an old argument that I’m not going to win. Avery means “elf counsel,” which is the sort of thing that happens when your parents meet at a Lord of the Rings fan club.
I push out my lip and fold my arms. “It’s not my fault! Blame my parents.”
“I do! I haunted their dreams for three weeks straight when I found out about it. They’re just stubborn.” She sniffs. “I blame your mother.”
I stand up. “You shut up about my mother! Just because she’s not Zuni is no reason to assume it was her idea, and it’s no reason to say mean things about her either.”
“Gringa!”
“Corpse!”
“Enough!” Madame Zelda slaps the table, making the crystal ball shake in place. “You’re like little children. I thought you were supposed to have the wisdom of the ages, Mrs. Quintana. You claimed to be surrounded by great thinkers and spirits!”
My great-grandmother shrugs. “I lied.”
Madame Zelda leans forward and bangs her head several times on the table. “I should just go back to rapping and magnet controlled Ouija boards. At least fake séances are reliable ones, and nobody starts telling a bereaved widow that she’s thinking of having sex with the deceased husband that she’s been interpreting for.”
“It was funny!”
“You said what?” I ask, mouth gaping in shock. “Okay, you never get to make fun of my tank tops again, d’you hear me?”
From the table, Madame Zelda mumbles “Please just ask the damn question so I can get rid of her. I am too tired to deal with either of you this early in the morning.” She must have thumbed a few switches, because the crystal ball retracted back into the ceiling and the lights returned to a more normal level.
I’m tempted to point out that my great-grandmother started it, but I don’t want her to yell again. I take a deep breath. “Should I just let it go?”
“Let what go?” asks Madame Zelda, curious.
Both my great-grandmother and I turn to glare at her, with what I’m sure is the same expression. “None of your business,” Great-grandmother snaps.
Silence stretches on for a full minute before she sighs. “White—Avery. Do you know much about the Zuni way?”
I’m not sure what the answer I’m expected to have here is, so I shake my head.
“I didn’t think so. Nor should you, really; you weren’t raised near it. More my fault than yours; I should have made more of an effort to teach your grandpa about his own heritage, and I should have convinced him to come back before I died.” She runs a hand through her thick braid, turning the threads of it smoky for a moment before they reform in its absence. “The Zuni way is to be easy-going. Friendly. We try not to let things bother us, and move through life with as little inconvenience to others as we can. Suspicion, grudges. . . are considered to be, um, bad. Un-people-like.”
I wrinkle my nose in confusion. “But you are the least easy-going person I’ve ever met.”
“I’m dead! I can act however I want now, and there are lots of bad influences. Besides, you’d be amazed how people change once their society’s expectations are gone.” She laughs. “You think George Washington is as sober dead as he was when he was alive?”
Madame Zelda perks up. “You know George Washington? I’d love to have him at a séance.”
“No. I heard it from Crazy Horse, who heard it from Pocahontas—did you know you’re related to her, too, Avery?—who heard it from Benjamin Franklin. There are a lot of dead people, you know. I can only find those new ones you pester me about because they’re hanging around the very edge between life and death.”
“So you want me to let it go?” I ask, still processing the information about Pocahontas.
My great-grandmother shakes her head.
“But—”
She sits down. “I said it was the Zuni way, and that’s a statement that is not intended to mean anything about you. It’s about that boyfriend of yours. He is about as far from Zuni as you can get, and that’s not his fault, and it may not even be a bad thing, but the Zuni way and his do not meet in a manner that’s healthy for you.” Reaching out with an abnormally long arm, she pats my head. “You’re a good kid, even for a white girl. I don’t want you to make choices you’ll regret just because you think it would make other people happy.”
I smile at her, and she grins back. “Thanks, Great-grandmother.”
Madame Zelda coughs.
I look at her, and am stunned to see that her face is greenish-white, and she is slumped over the table. “Not to be rude, but I really need to let go now,” she says, even her voice sounding exhausted. “You are a draining woman.”
Great-grandmother nods. “I thought as much.” She smoothes my hair. “Seeya, white girl.”
“Yeah, yeah. Bye.”
The blue smoke grows paler until it is finally white. A wind comes from nowhere and blows it apart.
A little color returns to Madame Zelda’s complexion. “Thank goodness. I couldn’t have held out for much longer.”
I run to the kitchen and grab her cup of coffee. It’s lukewarm, but better than nothing. As an afterthought, I pull out the bread, which is smoking. Cutting off the least burnt part, I smear some butter on and return to her with both items.
“Thank you, Avery.” She eats and drinks, dunking the bread in the coffee. I’m not sure if she was trying to warm up the coffee or cool the bread, but it looks disgusting to me.
Then I see my bag. “Dang-it! I completely forget about the corn. Can I just leave it with you?” I pout. “I really wanted to get some recipes off of her.”
Madame Zelda jerks and drops her bread onto the table. Her eyes lock in place and her mouth opens. My great-grandmother’s voice comes out. “It’s. . . the wrong. . . kind. . . anyway. . . white girl.”
Then Zelda wobbles, her eyes focus on me again, and the possession is over. She scowls at me and shakes her fist. “Your grandmother is the worst spirit guide.”
This time the voice comes out of nowhere. “I’m still right.”
Laughing, I stick my tongue out to the empty air. “Yeah, but my corn is better, old woman.”
I may be a white girl, but I’m still her great-granddaughter, and I don’t take crap from anybody.
She slides open her peephole and scowls at me. “Madame Zelda does not do mornings.” The thick kohl around her eyes is smeared into her crow’s feet. “Go away.” She slams the opening shut.
A few kicks to the unsteady wood and she opens the small window again, her eyeballs jaundiced, with a scattering of blood shot through them, face creased with fury. “Please,” I say sweetly, showing all my teeth. “I’d like to speak to my grandmother.” I lean close to her. “Or perhaps I could go talk to Pastor Bill, tell him that you’re thinking of converting. How would you like to spend the next five hours listening to him talk about Presbyterian history and tactfully tell you that you’re technically a heathen and a terrible sinner before urging you not to make any decisions in haste?”
“You nosy, bossy—fine. Talk to your damned grandmother.” Closing the slit, Madame Zelda yanks open the door. She is wearing her day clothes, dirt-stained khakis and a sweatshirt from her daughter’s Ivy League college. “I’m beginning to wish that I had never gone to that retreat in New Mexico. You and your grandmother are more trouble than you are worth.” Grumbling, she rubs her eyes. “You are being rude, but I shouldn’t emulate you.” She nods toward the kitchen. “Go ahead and sit down. Do you want some coffee?”
I shake my head. “I don’t do well with caffeine. I wouldn’t say no to some hot water, though.” Fishing in my left pocket, I pull out a bag of peppermint tea. “She makes fun of me when I have the non-native plants, anyway.”
“Don’t I know it.” Pulling a battered teapot out of the cupboard, she jams it under the faucet. She jerks her head at my burden while she’s filling it. “What’s with the corn?”
Unexpectedly, I blush. “I thought it would make me feel closer to her. Y’know, a bit of shared culture.”
Zelda laughs. “You’ll probably cook it wrong and she’ll just mock you again.” Teapot full, she plunks it on the stove, spilling some of the water. She fiddles with the knob to turn it on. “I suppose you’ll want to cook it?”
I nod. “You can keep it when we’re done. My granddad got a huge load of the stuff and my granny and I been trying to work through it for days.”
She makes a non-committal noise, getting out an ancient coffeemaker and a can of the cheapest brand. “Alright. I’ve got a pot that should be big enough for five ears, and I wouldn’t mind a nice meal of corn on the cob tonight.”
“Thanks.” I play with the tea bag, easing the perforated edges apart and smiling at the wafting scent. “Uh, and I’m sorry for barging in, Madame Zelda.”
“That apology would mean more to me if I didn’t know that you’ll probably do it again next time you’re in a rush. Ay, you young things! You’ve got more years of youth than I probably have to live; I don’t know why you feel the need to hurry.” She measures out her ground beans into a filter. The smell mixes with my peppermint and I wrinkle my nose. It’s not the most appealing combination. “But your apology is accepted.”
To occupy myself while my water boils and her coffee percolates—I’ve pushed her as far as I really should, and I know better than to make her work before she’s had her drink—I look around the room. Usually I visit later and Zelda bustles me straight into what she calls “the room of mysteries,” a curtained and incensed room that I suspect looks cheesy in sunlight. Zelda means well, but she tends to go overboard when she doesn’t need to; I’m not really one to be impressed by velvet and mysticism. Oddly practical for a girl who communicates with her decades-dead great-grandmother on a regular basis, but both the stubbornness and the contradiction run in my family.
It’s a baking kitchen, of which I approve. I base my evaluation on the heavy double-rack of spices, the tea towels with burn holes in them, and the stack of dirty cookie sheets in the sink. There is a scent of bread in the air, which I sniff with appreciation. I wonder if I’ll be able to con her into giving me a slice.
“So, what was the urgency?”
I flinch, startled out of my staring with a pang of guilt; did she think I was judging her room? “Sorry, what?”
Zelda pulls a mug out of the cupboard in the same instant that the tea kettle starts to screech. “Avery, you banged on my door at seven in the morning, to talk to a woman who will be just as dead later in the evening as she is now. What’s going on?”
I squirm in my seat, reaching out as she hands me the filled mug. “I, uh, want to get some advice.”
She stares at me. “Advice. From your great-grandmother. The woman who, in a fit of pique, started howling about the Trail of Tears and William Henry Harrison in the middle of my séance when I tried to ask her to talk to Mrs. Peterson’s husband, never mind the fact that she was born after both of those events and on the other side of the country.” Zelda emits a dirty chuckle that rolls into a heaving laugh, tears rolling down her cheeks. “The—the—the woman who makes me call her ‘She-Who-Is-Bothered-By-White-People’ for her spirit name if she thinks I’m not appreciating her enough? You came here all in a bother, with a bagful of corn that is probably the wrong variety, because you want to ask her for advice?” Howling now, she bends over to support herself against the stove.
Annoyed, I drop the teabag into the water, releasing a grey cloud. “Yes.”
“Oh—oh my. Wow.” Wiping tears from her face, Zelda finally calms down, though a few stray laughs shake her in amused aftershocks. She grins, her missing top right incisor lending an extra smirk to her expression. “Honey, I always considered you to be the sensible type, but I take it all back.”
I glare at her. “Yeah, yeah, it’s all very funny.” Sipping at my tea, I stare at the calendar next to the fridge. From a local realtor’s office, it’s three months behind and my fingers itch to fix it. “Glad you’re enjoying yourself.”
The coffee boils and Zelda grabs for it with a happy sigh. “Thank goodness.” She pours her drink and dumps three teaspoons of sugar in it. Taking a gulp, she frowns. “Still bitter.” Setting it down, she rummages in the fridge, pulling out a carton of cream. A quick pour, another experimental drink, and she smiles. “That’s the good stuff.” Sitting across from me, she sips slowly, taking her time just to annoy me.
Made thirsty by her actions, I get back to my tea. Peppermint’s the only kind of tea that I like without sweetener, and even when it’s hot, it cools my mouth. Plus my great-grandmother doesn’t make snarky remarks about white girls and their Chinese tea when she smells it.
Getting impatient, I tap my finger against the mug and go back to studying the room. Zelda’s barely started her coffee and there’s no point in rushing her.
It’s really stunning, the difference between this room and the séance area. The walls here are painted buttercup yellow, and wavy glass windows let a lot of light in. She’s tacked some fancy plates up and the cabinets are a pretty, antique-looking white with open doors. I like it much better in here than in the mediation place—I wonder if I could convince her to let me talk to my great-grandmother here. Then again, for a Zuni farming ghost she’s a terrible snob. She likes the trappings and likes criticizing them even more.
“Alright, Avery, let’s get this over with.”
I look up at Zelda with surprise. “Aren’t you going to finish your coffee first?”
She rolls her eyes. “Avery, I have to admit that you are the least annoying of my customers, even though you don’t really pay me in anything but your grandmother’s temporary cooperation, but I have other things to do today.”
“Oh. Okay.” I am appalled to realize that I’m a little hurt by her frank admission of wanting to get rid of me. I must be going soft. “Works for me.” I grab my bag of corn and hoist it over my shoulder.
Squatting, she opens a lower cupboard and pulls out a large pot. “Husk the corn into this. You’d better make sure you don’t leave a single thread of silk in the room; I shudder to think of the abuse your great-grandmother would heap on me if I didn’t have a spotless place for her to manifest.”
I take it from her and follow her into her séance room. As always, I choke at first on the thick scent of whatever herb she was burning this week. She used to favor sandalwood, which I actually liked, but my great-grandmother griped about it so much that she switched to more natural grasses, which smolder and make my eyes water. For a woman with no corporeal body, she has a ridiculously sensitive nose, and the pickiness to back it up. I don’t know how Madame Zelda puts up with her all the time, I really don’t.
We sit at her smaller table, which only has room for two or three people. The other one seats up to ten, but it’s really awkward with just the two of us. This table is nicer, anyway, made like a puzzle out of many different kinds of wood. I like running my fingers over it; it feels like pebbles.
Madame Zelda lights some of the red candles that she has placed around the room. I put the pot on the table and pull out the first ear of corn. She shakes her head as she sits back down. “You know we have to hold hands for the first part and I’m not touching you if you’re all sticky.” She slides her hands across the table, palms up.
I put my fingertips in her grasp and she folds her fingers back to grip them.
She starts humming and rolling her eyes around. The lights grow dimmer and a whispering noise starts up in the room.
I fidget. She has a light switch and a stereo remote stashed under the table. “C’mon, Madame Zelda, can we skip all the mumbo-jumbo voodoo crap? I thought this sort of stuff was for when you don’t actually have a ghost to summon, so you have to distract people.”
Returning to normal, she glares at me. “Avery. You are here to summon the ghost of your great-grandmother. You know, the dead woman. So if you make one more rude comment about the mystic arts, I will shove that corn up your nose and ban you from my house.”
“Fine.” Grumbling, I try to stay still as she goes back to her conjuring. I snort under my breath when a crystal ball is lowered from the ceiling, but she’s humming so loud at this point that she doesn’t hear me. To keep quiet, I count the pillows scattered everywhere. Thirty-seven, and that’s without turning around. At least they match the purple curtains she hung over all the walls.
Releasing my hands, Madame Zelda makes esoteric passes over the crystal ball, then raises her fingers toward the ceiling. “Oh spirit, hear my plea. I beseech you to honor us with your presence and answer the questions of this humble petitioner.”
“Great-grandmother, can you please hurry up? I wanna ask you a question.” Humble petitioner, ha! I’m blood to this woman, the only descendent she’s got who has any interest in Zuni culture and doesn’t go around doing the “woo-woo” thing.
I hate my cousins.
Madame Zelda hushes me fiercely, but a blue glow is already forming around the crystal ball, a small smoky portion inside of the thing and the rest coalescing outside of it. The smoky substance swirls for a minute before shaping itself into an eagle feather. “How, pale folk!” says a deep voice, the color of the spirit gliding through darker shades of blue, heading into one almost black before running backwards through the tint. “Me Chief Redman Talks-to-the-Earth. You have questions for Chief Redman Talks-to-the-Earth? Me answer with my great Injun know-how.”
I roll my eyes. “Great-grandmother, that’s not funny. Knock it off.”
The feather blurs and becomes that familiar broad face with amused eyes. “Ha, white girl! I should have known it was you again.”
“I will help you communicate with this young woman,” says Madame Zelda. “Spirit, how fare you in the Afterlife?”
I sigh. And this is why I don’t feel too bad about waking the woman up to let me talk to my great-grandmother. Outside of being a medium, she’s fine, but something about the atmosphere turns her into a hippie-dippy loony, and it drives me up the wall. No wonder my great-grandmother likes to needle the woman sometimes during her commercial séances. “Madame Zelda, we can hear each other just fine without your help, thank you.”
“Why I ever latched onto you I’ll never know,” my great grandmother taunts. “I should’ve just kept haunting that souvenir shop, making tourists feel nasty chills and buy too much jewelry for luck. There were only Hopi running it, but at least they knew better than to drag me all the way to the other side of the country, where it’s too cold and wet all the time.”
“Perhaps you sensed my connection with Avery,” says the medium, gritting her teeth. “Or knew that I would be able to help you pass your great wisdom onto—”
“To be honest,” said my great-grandmother in a more serious voice, “I was commanded to come with you, by the voices of Father Sky and Grandmother Spider.”
Madame Zelda perks up. “Really?”
“Hell no.” Forming a small bag out of nothing, Great-grandmother picks something out of it and pops it in her mouth. “Ha! Why on earth would the Great Ones care anything about a fifty-seven year old white wiccan? Nah, I was just bored and moved on an impulse.”
For all her talkativeness, my great-grandmother prefers to lie rather than give any real answers about where she lives. She does admit that there are other spirits there with her, though she won’t give any information on them unless somebody specifically asks, and I’ve always suspected that half of the time it’s just her playing dress-up and disguising her voice. But other than that, she’s closed-mouthed about the whole situation and won’t even answer the most basic questions about what it’s like.
One month, to amuse herself, she pretended to be in the Christian Hell, spending the whole time screaming about demons and fire. Then an old woman said “It’s just what she deserves” one night when Madame Zelda was called in as a fun addition to a wedding shower and Great-grandmother started in on her brimstone act. Apparently the bride hadn’t considered what her aunt might think of the “occult” goings-on. Indignant, my great-grandmother told the aunt that her beloved son was the one killing all her cats, exposed the affair that the maid-of-honor was having with the groom, and poured twenty gallons of red punch on the presents.
Madame Zelda doesn’t do showers anymore, though she can be prevailed upon for a bachelorette party.
I am distracted by her actions. “Hey, what did you just eat?”
The bag disappears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Great-grandmother. . .”
She grins and her smoke starts to drift apart so that her features stretch and distort. “The spirits of some dried peyote buttons.” Sticking her tongue out, she giggles. “Woo, they pack quite a kick! I’m going to be seeing stars for a few days, that’s for sure.”
I stare at her, open-mouthed. “How—how does that even work?”
Great-grandmother shrugs. “Dunno.” Then she giggles. “You two look like lizards. You have pretty scales, white girl.”
“Can’t you ever call me by my name?” I whine. I get enough mockery for not “being brown enough” to claim my heritage by alive people without her calling me “white girl” or “gringa” all the time.
“I’ll call you by your name when you get a real one,” Great-Grandmother retorts. It’s an old argument that I’m not going to win. Avery means “elf counsel,” which is the sort of thing that happens when your parents meet at a Lord of the Rings fan club.
I push out my lip and fold my arms. “It’s not my fault! Blame my parents.”
“I do! I haunted their dreams for three weeks straight when I found out about it. They’re just stubborn.” She sniffs. “I blame your mother.”
I stand up. “You shut up about my mother! Just because she’s not Zuni is no reason to assume it was her idea, and it’s no reason to say mean things about her either.”
“Gringa!”
“Corpse!”
“Enough!” Madame Zelda slaps the table, making the crystal ball shake in place. “You’re like little children. I thought you were supposed to have the wisdom of the ages, Mrs. Quintana. You claimed to be surrounded by great thinkers and spirits!”
My great-grandmother shrugs. “I lied.”
Madame Zelda leans forward and bangs her head several times on the table. “I should just go back to rapping and magnet controlled Ouija boards. At least fake séances are reliable ones, and nobody starts telling a bereaved widow that she’s thinking of having sex with the deceased husband that she’s been interpreting for.”
“It was funny!”
“You said what?” I ask, mouth gaping in shock. “Okay, you never get to make fun of my tank tops again, d’you hear me?”
From the table, Madame Zelda mumbles “Please just ask the damn question so I can get rid of her. I am too tired to deal with either of you this early in the morning.” She must have thumbed a few switches, because the crystal ball retracted back into the ceiling and the lights returned to a more normal level.
I’m tempted to point out that my great-grandmother started it, but I don’t want her to yell again. I take a deep breath. “Should I just let it go?”
“Let what go?” asks Madame Zelda, curious.
Both my great-grandmother and I turn to glare at her, with what I’m sure is the same expression. “None of your business,” Great-grandmother snaps.
Silence stretches on for a full minute before she sighs. “White—Avery. Do you know much about the Zuni way?”
I’m not sure what the answer I’m expected to have here is, so I shake my head.
“I didn’t think so. Nor should you, really; you weren’t raised near it. More my fault than yours; I should have made more of an effort to teach your grandpa about his own heritage, and I should have convinced him to come back before I died.” She runs a hand through her thick braid, turning the threads of it smoky for a moment before they reform in its absence. “The Zuni way is to be easy-going. Friendly. We try not to let things bother us, and move through life with as little inconvenience to others as we can. Suspicion, grudges. . . are considered to be, um, bad. Un-people-like.”
I wrinkle my nose in confusion. “But you are the least easy-going person I’ve ever met.”
“I’m dead! I can act however I want now, and there are lots of bad influences. Besides, you’d be amazed how people change once their society’s expectations are gone.” She laughs. “You think George Washington is as sober dead as he was when he was alive?”
Madame Zelda perks up. “You know George Washington? I’d love to have him at a séance.”
“No. I heard it from Crazy Horse, who heard it from Pocahontas—did you know you’re related to her, too, Avery?—who heard it from Benjamin Franklin. There are a lot of dead people, you know. I can only find those new ones you pester me about because they’re hanging around the very edge between life and death.”
“So you want me to let it go?” I ask, still processing the information about Pocahontas.
My great-grandmother shakes her head.
“But—”
She sits down. “I said it was the Zuni way, and that’s a statement that is not intended to mean anything about you. It’s about that boyfriend of yours. He is about as far from Zuni as you can get, and that’s not his fault, and it may not even be a bad thing, but the Zuni way and his do not meet in a manner that’s healthy for you.” Reaching out with an abnormally long arm, she pats my head. “You’re a good kid, even for a white girl. I don’t want you to make choices you’ll regret just because you think it would make other people happy.”
I smile at her, and she grins back. “Thanks, Great-grandmother.”
Madame Zelda coughs.
I look at her, and am stunned to see that her face is greenish-white, and she is slumped over the table. “Not to be rude, but I really need to let go now,” she says, even her voice sounding exhausted. “You are a draining woman.”
Great-grandmother nods. “I thought as much.” She smoothes my hair. “Seeya, white girl.”
“Yeah, yeah. Bye.”
The blue smoke grows paler until it is finally white. A wind comes from nowhere and blows it apart.
A little color returns to Madame Zelda’s complexion. “Thank goodness. I couldn’t have held out for much longer.”
I run to the kitchen and grab her cup of coffee. It’s lukewarm, but better than nothing. As an afterthought, I pull out the bread, which is smoking. Cutting off the least burnt part, I smear some butter on and return to her with both items.
“Thank you, Avery.” She eats and drinks, dunking the bread in the coffee. I’m not sure if she was trying to warm up the coffee or cool the bread, but it looks disgusting to me.
Then I see my bag. “Dang-it! I completely forget about the corn. Can I just leave it with you?” I pout. “I really wanted to get some recipes off of her.”
Madame Zelda jerks and drops her bread onto the table. Her eyes lock in place and her mouth opens. My great-grandmother’s voice comes out. “It’s. . . the wrong. . . kind. . . anyway. . . white girl.”
Then Zelda wobbles, her eyes focus on me again, and the possession is over. She scowls at me and shakes her fist. “Your grandmother is the worst spirit guide.”
This time the voice comes out of nowhere. “I’m still right.”
Laughing, I stick my tongue out to the empty air. “Yeah, but my corn is better, old woman.”
I may be a white girl, but I’m still her great-granddaughter, and I don’t take crap from anybody.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Snow White Lake
1.
“When will he come?”
“When the moon falls into the sea and the cock crows backward. When Grundel the Elder learns how to sew with a pine needle and a thread of laughter. When there are enough stones piled up to block his way.”
“That will take too long. I want to go out and find him myself.”
“That’s not how it is done.”
“Why not?”
“Drink your potion.”
2.
“When will he come?”
“Not for a long time. Stop fidgeting and gather blueberries like you were told.”
“But if he comes and I’m not here? What if he meets me while I’m doing chores and I’m all dirty and covered in stains? He’ll never love me if he thinks I’m just a filthy peasant girl. Please, can’t I stay in the house?”
“Then who would pick the blueberries?”
“Jesminda!”
“I’m not going to wake her simply because you are lazy. When you are a queen, you will need to show grace and poise in all situations. Go into the forest.”
“But. . . what if there’s a dragon?”
“There aren’t any dragons in the forest, and even if there were, none of them would come for you. That’s not your tale.”
“I hate you!”
“Then you will be happy to get away from me and get some fresh air. And even if you do hate me, you must never say it. A queen must be kind and loving to all.”
“When I am queen, I’m going to make them chop off your head.”
“That’s not your tale either. You don’t frighten me.”
“. . . Where’s the basket?”
“Good girl. And make sure you’re back in time to take your potion.”
3.
“Why isn’t he here yet? Beryl’s prince came ages ago, and she’s younger than me!”
“Do not be so impatient, and do not envy Beryl. Her tale is not one you should wish to have. Be happy that you are who you are.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Beryl’s prince was no such creature, but rather a king.”
“That’s not fair!”
“From her own kingdom, my dearest. That was her father.”
“But—but he kissed her.”
“As you say.”
“I thought she cried with joy. . .”
“Every tale wanders through unhappy places, little one. Some are worse than others. Beryl will receive her happy ending, but with much cost before it is done. You must concentrate on your own narrative.”
“What is my tale? You never say.”
“That’s not how it is done.”
“Why?”
“Just take your potion.”
4.
“What is he like?”
“You’ll see.”
“Is he very handsome? Aurora says that he is handsome, but she sometimes lies just to see what would happen.”
“Patience, little one. You shall see when you meet him.”
“. . . He is a prince, isn’t he? And good? Tell me that he is good.”
“You must calm down. Why don’t you take your potion?”
“Not yet. Please, at least tell me his name!”
“You do not know him, little one. Not in your tale. It is important that you meet properly.”
“I’m just glad he’s here. I can’t wait to get out of here. I want to wear beautiful gowns and jewels and have dozens of servants to wait upon me, and a husband who adores me and obeys my every desire.”
“That is not a very good way to rule a kingdom, little one.”
“I know, but I just can’t stand it here anymore! Chores, and plain dresses, and all these other girls who are just as important as me so that I can’t feel better than anyone. I hate it.”
“You might miss it, someday. Circumstances can change and worsen. I shouldn’t tell you this, but. . . while your prince is here, little one, you will not go to him directly. Your tale is short, but only because much is left out of it. Only the middle of your story is in the tale; much in the beginning and all of the future is left out of it.”
“But there is a happily ever after, isn’t there?”
“. . . Probably, little one, but, well. . . your tale is the only one that never says. When you leave here, you have no guide until you first meet your prince, and then it is only there for a few hours, from evening until the next morning. And even then, you will be unaware of it.”
“But you promised me a happy ending.”
“I know.”
“You promised!”
“One last lesson for you to learn. Sometimes, people lie even when they don’t want to.”
“I thought you were supposed to care about me!”
“I do, but there is only so much that I can do, even for you. I have no tale of my own, and I am in no-one’s. That, I suppose, would be my story if it were the kind that is told. Calm down, little one. Drink.”
5.
I shiver. It is raining, and my fair hair trails over my face like waterweeds. My dress, as fine as I could ever wish when I first began to walk, is muddy and torn. A flash of lightning illuminates a castle in the distance, and I stumble toward it.
The thunderclap startles me, and I fall, knocking my hip against an uprooted tree. I wince, knowing that there will be a terrible bruise there. Before I left the lake, I had never been hurt before, even in the worst falls. Now I can raise welts on my skin with an absentminded scratch of an insect bite.
Whimpering, I climb to my feet and walk again. I move slowly, afraid to lose my way in the storm, guiding myself by the lightning. I miss my nursemaid, whoever she really was.
At last, I stagger to the end of the drawbridge. I reach to knock at the door, but the slippery flagstones unbalance me. Shrieking, I scrabble for something to hold onto, but there is nothing, and my head hits the ground with a terrible—
6.
All at once, there is a pounding at the door. The prince and queen, who were renewing their argument over the suitability of the newest set of princesses, look up in surprise. Who would be out in this weather?
The steward bows to them and scurries out to see what the commotion is. The prince loses interest and glares at his mother again, who glowers back.
Returning, the steward ushers forward a girl, dripping wet and half-dead with exhaustion.
She is the most beautiful girl the prince has ever seen, he thinks, even with the mud that covers her clothes.
The queen looks at her son’s reaction and worries, fingering her dinner of peas. She thinks that she will have to be very clever to test this girl.
The girl stands, and blinks away the water on her long eyelashes, and doesn’t think anything at all.
“When will he come?”
“When the moon falls into the sea and the cock crows backward. When Grundel the Elder learns how to sew with a pine needle and a thread of laughter. When there are enough stones piled up to block his way.”
“That will take too long. I want to go out and find him myself.”
“That’s not how it is done.”
“Why not?”
“Drink your potion.”
2.
“When will he come?”
“Not for a long time. Stop fidgeting and gather blueberries like you were told.”
“But if he comes and I’m not here? What if he meets me while I’m doing chores and I’m all dirty and covered in stains? He’ll never love me if he thinks I’m just a filthy peasant girl. Please, can’t I stay in the house?”
“Then who would pick the blueberries?”
“Jesminda!”
“I’m not going to wake her simply because you are lazy. When you are a queen, you will need to show grace and poise in all situations. Go into the forest.”
“But. . . what if there’s a dragon?”
“There aren’t any dragons in the forest, and even if there were, none of them would come for you. That’s not your tale.”
“I hate you!”
“Then you will be happy to get away from me and get some fresh air. And even if you do hate me, you must never say it. A queen must be kind and loving to all.”
“When I am queen, I’m going to make them chop off your head.”
“That’s not your tale either. You don’t frighten me.”
“. . . Where’s the basket?”
“Good girl. And make sure you’re back in time to take your potion.”
3.
“Why isn’t he here yet? Beryl’s prince came ages ago, and she’s younger than me!”
“Do not be so impatient, and do not envy Beryl. Her tale is not one you should wish to have. Be happy that you are who you are.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Beryl’s prince was no such creature, but rather a king.”
“That’s not fair!”
“From her own kingdom, my dearest. That was her father.”
“But—but he kissed her.”
“As you say.”
“I thought she cried with joy. . .”
“Every tale wanders through unhappy places, little one. Some are worse than others. Beryl will receive her happy ending, but with much cost before it is done. You must concentrate on your own narrative.”
“What is my tale? You never say.”
“That’s not how it is done.”
“Why?”
“Just take your potion.”
4.
“What is he like?”
“You’ll see.”
“Is he very handsome? Aurora says that he is handsome, but she sometimes lies just to see what would happen.”
“Patience, little one. You shall see when you meet him.”
“. . . He is a prince, isn’t he? And good? Tell me that he is good.”
“You must calm down. Why don’t you take your potion?”
“Not yet. Please, at least tell me his name!”
“You do not know him, little one. Not in your tale. It is important that you meet properly.”
“I’m just glad he’s here. I can’t wait to get out of here. I want to wear beautiful gowns and jewels and have dozens of servants to wait upon me, and a husband who adores me and obeys my every desire.”
“That is not a very good way to rule a kingdom, little one.”
“I know, but I just can’t stand it here anymore! Chores, and plain dresses, and all these other girls who are just as important as me so that I can’t feel better than anyone. I hate it.”
“You might miss it, someday. Circumstances can change and worsen. I shouldn’t tell you this, but. . . while your prince is here, little one, you will not go to him directly. Your tale is short, but only because much is left out of it. Only the middle of your story is in the tale; much in the beginning and all of the future is left out of it.”
“But there is a happily ever after, isn’t there?”
“. . . Probably, little one, but, well. . . your tale is the only one that never says. When you leave here, you have no guide until you first meet your prince, and then it is only there for a few hours, from evening until the next morning. And even then, you will be unaware of it.”
“But you promised me a happy ending.”
“I know.”
“You promised!”
“One last lesson for you to learn. Sometimes, people lie even when they don’t want to.”
“I thought you were supposed to care about me!”
“I do, but there is only so much that I can do, even for you. I have no tale of my own, and I am in no-one’s. That, I suppose, would be my story if it were the kind that is told. Calm down, little one. Drink.”
5.
I shiver. It is raining, and my fair hair trails over my face like waterweeds. My dress, as fine as I could ever wish when I first began to walk, is muddy and torn. A flash of lightning illuminates a castle in the distance, and I stumble toward it.
The thunderclap startles me, and I fall, knocking my hip against an uprooted tree. I wince, knowing that there will be a terrible bruise there. Before I left the lake, I had never been hurt before, even in the worst falls. Now I can raise welts on my skin with an absentminded scratch of an insect bite.
Whimpering, I climb to my feet and walk again. I move slowly, afraid to lose my way in the storm, guiding myself by the lightning. I miss my nursemaid, whoever she really was.
At last, I stagger to the end of the drawbridge. I reach to knock at the door, but the slippery flagstones unbalance me. Shrieking, I scrabble for something to hold onto, but there is nothing, and my head hits the ground with a terrible—
6.
All at once, there is a pounding at the door. The prince and queen, who were renewing their argument over the suitability of the newest set of princesses, look up in surprise. Who would be out in this weather?
The steward bows to them and scurries out to see what the commotion is. The prince loses interest and glares at his mother again, who glowers back.
Returning, the steward ushers forward a girl, dripping wet and half-dead with exhaustion.
She is the most beautiful girl the prince has ever seen, he thinks, even with the mud that covers her clothes.
The queen looks at her son’s reaction and worries, fingering her dinner of peas. She thinks that she will have to be very clever to test this girl.
The girl stands, and blinks away the water on her long eyelashes, and doesn’t think anything at all.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Dyslexic in Love
Instants pass like centuries.
Violently, I yearn for your touch to
linger along my cheek,
even as I know you think of me
only as a poor companion.
Ultimately, I cannot speak—
your beauty paralyzes me.
Oh, for the courage of Alexander!
Do not look my way;
my heart cannot take the
agony of your warm smile,
your bright and shining eyes!
Let me suffer in the dark.
Only in the night do I hope,
evening stars illuminating my
loneliness, my every thought
vested in love, my poems full of it and you.
Violently, I yearn for your touch to
linger along my cheek,
even as I know you think of me
only as a poor companion.
Ultimately, I cannot speak—
your beauty paralyzes me.
Oh, for the courage of Alexander!
Do not look my way;
my heart cannot take the
agony of your warm smile,
your bright and shining eyes!
Let me suffer in the dark.
Only in the night do I hope,
evening stars illuminating my
loneliness, my every thought
vested in love, my poems full of it and you.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Shadows and Dust
She walks down the alley to their old apartment, her sneakers leaving imprints in the scattered trash.
A smear of rust marks her palm when she reaches for the fire escape ladder, and she eyes it with concern. The cops padlocked the front doors, though, so there’s no help for it. Taking a deep breath, she climbs.
Thank God they were too poor for a penthouse. Her crowbar pries open the fourth floor window and she slips inside, the window sliding shut behind her.
He’s nearly transparent now, but greets her with a smile.
“I missed you.”
He nods.
“Can’t you please come with me?” She wishes she could touch him.
The wind sighs his answer.
A smear of rust marks her palm when she reaches for the fire escape ladder, and she eyes it with concern. The cops padlocked the front doors, though, so there’s no help for it. Taking a deep breath, she climbs.
Thank God they were too poor for a penthouse. Her crowbar pries open the fourth floor window and she slips inside, the window sliding shut behind her.
He’s nearly transparent now, but greets her with a smile.
“I missed you.”
He nods.
“Can’t you please come with me?” She wishes she could touch him.
The wind sighs his answer.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
A Coward's Grief
Would that I were water,
to slip through eager fingers.
Would that I were stone,
with no heart that feels pity,
no habit of kindness.
Would that I were a bird,
a lizard, a worm, a fish,
to run away and hide
from your hopeful voice,
avoiding more lies of omission.
Would that I were anyone but me,
standing at the edge
of the gulf
that you continue to deny.
Would that I were. . .
would that I . . .
Would that I could be seen
as who I am,
so that you would stop loving me.
to slip through eager fingers.
Would that I were stone,
with no heart that feels pity,
no habit of kindness.
Would that I were a bird,
a lizard, a worm, a fish,
to run away and hide
from your hopeful voice,
avoiding more lies of omission.
Would that I were anyone but me,
standing at the edge
of the gulf
that you continue to deny.
Would that I were. . .
would that I . . .
Would that I could be seen
as who I am,
so that you would stop loving me.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
First Kiss
This is her first kiss.
They walk together; he leads her gently with his hand on the small of her back. They move slowly but precisely, each placing their feet as if the fate of the world depends upon it. He looks over at her and smiles reassuringly, but she is too nervous to smile back. No man has ever touched her like this before, as if he wishes that he could remain next to her forever.
The sun is bright, though still drowsy from its long sleep. Mist rises from the ground, coating the ferns’ fronds with a mysterious glow. Despite her melancholy, she cannot help but glance sideways at her companion. From the way he looks at her, she could almost believe that he loves her.
The pair walks a little further. She closes her eyes and revels in the strange perfection of this moment. Despite everything that came before it, she is content. She wants this to go on for eternity.
Too soon, though, they stop in front of a brick wall. He turns to her, and her heart leaps in a sudden spark of fear. She is not used to these emotions, these feelings which are threatening to overwhelm her, and she gasps. The sun is suddenly too hot, and the sky is far too bright of a blue. Leaning against the wall for support, she looks at him. Her lips are parted; her eyes are wide, afraid, and beautiful.
“Cigarette?” he asks her. He holds one out, looking nervous now.
She barely manages to shake her head.
“I do not blame you,” he says. Dropping it back into his pocket, he swallows hard. He looks at her, and she wonders if this is the first time he has ever walked this way with someone. She fiercely hopes that he has not, that she is special to him.
Unable to move, they stare at each other, each seemingly frozen in the morning air. Their hands are both stretched out slightly, not touching, but only a breath away from each other. She feels as if years are passing.
A sudden shout from some distance away startles them, and they jerk apart. She blushes, and he looks toward the source. He nods and begins to walk away, but turns back.
He takes hold of her face and kisses her the way she always dreamt of being kissed, sweet and loving and firm and full of promises. She clings to him, trying to make it last, but the kiss ends quickly. He pulls away, his eyes wet, and runs from her.
She wants to cry, to beg him to come back, but she bites her lip. She blinks as the sun shines off the metallic sheen of their polished guns. There is one loud bang, and she slowly falls to the ground.
He lowers his gun and crumples to the ground, weeping. The hard soldiers around him do not comfort him.
This is her last kiss.
--another "classic," slightly edited for improved writing ability. It was for some sort of writing challenge that was the title and the required use of a few words. I forget which ones, though I know that "ferns" was one of them. It's a bit melodramatic, and I need to bring up that wall more subtly, but it was a good stretch for me.
They walk together; he leads her gently with his hand on the small of her back. They move slowly but precisely, each placing their feet as if the fate of the world depends upon it. He looks over at her and smiles reassuringly, but she is too nervous to smile back. No man has ever touched her like this before, as if he wishes that he could remain next to her forever.
The sun is bright, though still drowsy from its long sleep. Mist rises from the ground, coating the ferns’ fronds with a mysterious glow. Despite her melancholy, she cannot help but glance sideways at her companion. From the way he looks at her, she could almost believe that he loves her.
The pair walks a little further. She closes her eyes and revels in the strange perfection of this moment. Despite everything that came before it, she is content. She wants this to go on for eternity.
Too soon, though, they stop in front of a brick wall. He turns to her, and her heart leaps in a sudden spark of fear. She is not used to these emotions, these feelings which are threatening to overwhelm her, and she gasps. The sun is suddenly too hot, and the sky is far too bright of a blue. Leaning against the wall for support, she looks at him. Her lips are parted; her eyes are wide, afraid, and beautiful.
“Cigarette?” he asks her. He holds one out, looking nervous now.
She barely manages to shake her head.
“I do not blame you,” he says. Dropping it back into his pocket, he swallows hard. He looks at her, and she wonders if this is the first time he has ever walked this way with someone. She fiercely hopes that he has not, that she is special to him.
Unable to move, they stare at each other, each seemingly frozen in the morning air. Their hands are both stretched out slightly, not touching, but only a breath away from each other. She feels as if years are passing.
A sudden shout from some distance away startles them, and they jerk apart. She blushes, and he looks toward the source. He nods and begins to walk away, but turns back.
He takes hold of her face and kisses her the way she always dreamt of being kissed, sweet and loving and firm and full of promises. She clings to him, trying to make it last, but the kiss ends quickly. He pulls away, his eyes wet, and runs from her.
She wants to cry, to beg him to come back, but she bites her lip. She blinks as the sun shines off the metallic sheen of their polished guns. There is one loud bang, and she slowly falls to the ground.
He lowers his gun and crumples to the ground, weeping. The hard soldiers around him do not comfort him.
This is her last kiss.
--another "classic," slightly edited for improved writing ability. It was for some sort of writing challenge that was the title and the required use of a few words. I forget which ones, though I know that "ferns" was one of them. It's a bit melodramatic, and I need to bring up that wall more subtly, but it was a good stretch for me.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Triumphant
I carried it within me, and I brought it to you.
You stare at me, a hurt and bewildered look upon your face.
I am the one lying on the ground, blood bubbling up between my cracked lips, yet I cannot help but laugh at your expression.
You asked me where it was, what we’d done with the chimera.
I said I didn’t know, but I should have said that I was uncertain as to where it was exactly. I didn’t know in which tissue it lurked, curled up in my innards, tearing off shreds of flesh to assuage its growing hunger. I just knew that with every breath, I wanted to scream. With each step, I prayed to die. But I had a job to do, so I stifled my anguish behind a mask and came to you as a Trojan horse in torment. The chimera—the hideous thing we’d wrought of pain and teeth and hate—was our present to you.
Waving my flag of peace, I got close to you, bearing my evil burden. We spoke. You told me your conditions for our surrender; they were requirements no human would ever force upon another. Total, abject control. The relinquishment of all weapons, even those for hunting. A tax that would have starved us and killed half our population. I nodded, smiled. Groveled. You relaxed enough to find me attractive, and ordered your guards away.
I complied readily, undressing to remove an inconvenient barrier to the chimera. And when you embraced me, I freed it, and it burst from my gut. A hideous thing with sharp fangs, and it leapt for you with welcoming arms spread wide, latching onto your taut stomach. You gasped, your legs and feet covered in my gushing blood, and staggered back, a monster biting into you.
I fell, my intestines spurting out of me like so many bloody ropes.
And now I watch as it burrows into you eagerly, gorging on your internal flesh after a long fasting, as your eyes roll back in your head with a world of pain.
Your mouth moves but makes no sound, and you fall backwards onto the bed, your image dim in my darkening vision.
I win.
--An old one, and a super morbid one, but I've always liked it because it turned out mostly the way I wanted
You stare at me, a hurt and bewildered look upon your face.
I am the one lying on the ground, blood bubbling up between my cracked lips, yet I cannot help but laugh at your expression.
You asked me where it was, what we’d done with the chimera.
I said I didn’t know, but I should have said that I was uncertain as to where it was exactly. I didn’t know in which tissue it lurked, curled up in my innards, tearing off shreds of flesh to assuage its growing hunger. I just knew that with every breath, I wanted to scream. With each step, I prayed to die. But I had a job to do, so I stifled my anguish behind a mask and came to you as a Trojan horse in torment. The chimera—the hideous thing we’d wrought of pain and teeth and hate—was our present to you.
Waving my flag of peace, I got close to you, bearing my evil burden. We spoke. You told me your conditions for our surrender; they were requirements no human would ever force upon another. Total, abject control. The relinquishment of all weapons, even those for hunting. A tax that would have starved us and killed half our population. I nodded, smiled. Groveled. You relaxed enough to find me attractive, and ordered your guards away.
I complied readily, undressing to remove an inconvenient barrier to the chimera. And when you embraced me, I freed it, and it burst from my gut. A hideous thing with sharp fangs, and it leapt for you with welcoming arms spread wide, latching onto your taut stomach. You gasped, your legs and feet covered in my gushing blood, and staggered back, a monster biting into you.
I fell, my intestines spurting out of me like so many bloody ropes.
And now I watch as it burrows into you eagerly, gorging on your internal flesh after a long fasting, as your eyes roll back in your head with a world of pain.
Your mouth moves but makes no sound, and you fall backwards onto the bed, your image dim in my darkening vision.
I win.
--An old one, and a super morbid one, but I've always liked it because it turned out mostly the way I wanted
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Hoping for Tank Tops
For those who were not "fortunate" to grow up around Pittsburgh, PA, here is a brief dictionary.
*Yinz: You'ens: You (plural)
*Jag Off: Jerk
*Pervs: Perverts
My mom needed two more days of decent tips to earn the rest of the money for a new air conditioner, so my brother Jimmy and me sweated on the fire escape, eating popsicles and trying to look down girls’ shirts.
Have yinz ever been in Pittsburgh in the summer? We’re in the north, so yinz wouldn’t think it would be so hot, right? Nah. Cities that’re mostly about winter are built for winter, all about keeping in the heat. They don’t know how to handle summer, so it gets boiling, especially in cheap places like ours. My nana gives us dirty looks when we’ve got the AC running—she thinks it’s a luxury—but I’ve seen her “fall asleep” in front of it when her arm gets tired from waving a fan around.
“Gina Pulaski let me look under her shirt yesterday,” Jimmy announced, a trail of melted red popsicle sliding down his hand. “At her bra.”
I bit off a hunk of mine and chewed it, wincing at the rush of cold against my teeth. “Liar.”
“Did so! It was white and there was a little flower in the middle of it.” He leaned his face through the bars and spits into the street below. “I think she’s my girlfriend now.”
“Oh, yeah?” I watched a girl approach the end of our street, feeling hopeful, but she turned at the last second. “Did she make ya’ pay to look?”
Jimmy gnawed his stick. “Well, yeah, but it was only a dollar.”
“Then she ain’t really your girlfriend.” Finishing my popsicle, I went back inside for another. “You’re just a sucker.”
My brother followed me and grabbed my arm, giving me an Indian burn. “Shut up. Take it back!”
I tried to keep from yelling, but Jimmy’s really good at twisting the skin, and he got three inches on me this year. “Alright, alright, Gina Pulaski’s your girlfriend, lemme go!” I rubbed my arm and glared at him. “Jagoff.”
“S’what you get for saying stuff like that.”
We grabbed our cherry ices and sat back on the fire escape.
“There’s one, there’s one!” Jimmy jabbed me in the side with his elbow and pointed downward.
A blonde girl—she looked really mature, like in high school—walked underneath us. She had a short skirt and a really low shirt. Jimmy and me watched as she bounced down the street. We couldn’t see her face, but that didn’t really matter. The only bad part was knowing how short our alley was.
Then we grinned as she pulled out her phone, stopping right under our dangling feet. She tossed her hair and stamped her feet. We could hear her yelling even from 30 feet up. “Ferrills, Chuckie, if yinz don’t getcher ass out here right now, umina make yinz wish yinz was never born! How’s come yinz gotta be such a freakin’ JAG-OFF all da time? Ar relationship’s gonna be over if yinz don’t stop bein’ such a greazy, ig’nernt creep!”z** Her shirt got even more open as she got angrier.
Jimmy looked over at me and broke a piece off his popsicle. He held it over the edge of the railing. “Betcha I can get it down her shirt.”
“No way! You ain’t got the guts.”
He smiled real big and let go.
I watched as the little red piece of ice zoomed, with perfect flight, to the promised target.
She screeched at the impact and whirled around, looking up and spotting us right away. “Yinz little pervs! Yinz need beat up!” Digging the popsicle out of her shirt, she flipped us off and ran under the fire escape to stand by the door so we couldn’t see her anymore.
Jimmy was laughing even as he hurried inside to hide from her. “Totally worth it.”
I would have agreed, except our nana saw the whole thing and told Mom. Two weeks of being grounded inside in the heat, without even a tank top to give us something to do.
And whatever Jimmy said, Gina Pulaski never came to see him, so she wasn’t his girlfriend.
**
Dialogue Translation: “Ferrills, Chuckie, if yinz don’t getcher ass out here right now, umina make yinz wish yinz was never born! How’s come yinz gotta be such a freakin’ JAG-OFF all da time? Ar relationship’s gonna be over if yinz don’t stop bein’ such a greazy, ig’nernt creep!”
means
"For real, Chuckie, if you don't get your ass out here right now, I'm going to make you wish you were never born! Why do you have to be such a JERK all the time? Our relationship's going to be over if you don't stop being a greasy, ignorent jerk!"
and “Yinz little pervs! Yinz need beat up!"
means
"You little perverts! You need to be beaten up!"
I hope this clears things up.
*Yinz: You'ens: You (plural)
*Jag Off: Jerk
*Pervs: Perverts
My mom needed two more days of decent tips to earn the rest of the money for a new air conditioner, so my brother Jimmy and me sweated on the fire escape, eating popsicles and trying to look down girls’ shirts.
Have yinz ever been in Pittsburgh in the summer? We’re in the north, so yinz wouldn’t think it would be so hot, right? Nah. Cities that’re mostly about winter are built for winter, all about keeping in the heat. They don’t know how to handle summer, so it gets boiling, especially in cheap places like ours. My nana gives us dirty looks when we’ve got the AC running—she thinks it’s a luxury—but I’ve seen her “fall asleep” in front of it when her arm gets tired from waving a fan around.
“Gina Pulaski let me look under her shirt yesterday,” Jimmy announced, a trail of melted red popsicle sliding down his hand. “At her bra.”
I bit off a hunk of mine and chewed it, wincing at the rush of cold against my teeth. “Liar.”
“Did so! It was white and there was a little flower in the middle of it.” He leaned his face through the bars and spits into the street below. “I think she’s my girlfriend now.”
“Oh, yeah?” I watched a girl approach the end of our street, feeling hopeful, but she turned at the last second. “Did she make ya’ pay to look?”
Jimmy gnawed his stick. “Well, yeah, but it was only a dollar.”
“Then she ain’t really your girlfriend.” Finishing my popsicle, I went back inside for another. “You’re just a sucker.”
My brother followed me and grabbed my arm, giving me an Indian burn. “Shut up. Take it back!”
I tried to keep from yelling, but Jimmy’s really good at twisting the skin, and he got three inches on me this year. “Alright, alright, Gina Pulaski’s your girlfriend, lemme go!” I rubbed my arm and glared at him. “Jagoff.”
“S’what you get for saying stuff like that.”
We grabbed our cherry ices and sat back on the fire escape.
“There’s one, there’s one!” Jimmy jabbed me in the side with his elbow and pointed downward.
A blonde girl—she looked really mature, like in high school—walked underneath us. She had a short skirt and a really low shirt. Jimmy and me watched as she bounced down the street. We couldn’t see her face, but that didn’t really matter. The only bad part was knowing how short our alley was.
Then we grinned as she pulled out her phone, stopping right under our dangling feet. She tossed her hair and stamped her feet. We could hear her yelling even from 30 feet up. “Ferrills, Chuckie, if yinz don’t getcher ass out here right now, umina make yinz wish yinz was never born! How’s come yinz gotta be such a freakin’ JAG-OFF all da time? Ar relationship’s gonna be over if yinz don’t stop bein’ such a greazy, ig’nernt creep!”z** Her shirt got even more open as she got angrier.
Jimmy looked over at me and broke a piece off his popsicle. He held it over the edge of the railing. “Betcha I can get it down her shirt.”
“No way! You ain’t got the guts.”
He smiled real big and let go.
I watched as the little red piece of ice zoomed, with perfect flight, to the promised target.
She screeched at the impact and whirled around, looking up and spotting us right away. “Yinz little pervs! Yinz need beat up!” Digging the popsicle out of her shirt, she flipped us off and ran under the fire escape to stand by the door so we couldn’t see her anymore.
Jimmy was laughing even as he hurried inside to hide from her. “Totally worth it.”
I would have agreed, except our nana saw the whole thing and told Mom. Two weeks of being grounded inside in the heat, without even a tank top to give us something to do.
And whatever Jimmy said, Gina Pulaski never came to see him, so she wasn’t his girlfriend.
**
Dialogue Translation: “Ferrills, Chuckie, if yinz don’t getcher ass out here right now, umina make yinz wish yinz was never born! How’s come yinz gotta be such a freakin’ JAG-OFF all da time? Ar relationship’s gonna be over if yinz don’t stop bein’ such a greazy, ig’nernt creep!”
means
"For real, Chuckie, if you don't get your ass out here right now, I'm going to make you wish you were never born! Why do you have to be such a JERK all the time? Our relationship's going to be over if you don't stop being a greasy, ignorent jerk!"
and “Yinz little pervs! Yinz need beat up!"
means
"You little perverts! You need to be beaten up!"
I hope this clears things up.
Monday, April 13, 2009
All the Wars Have Already Been Fought
The coin was made in secret, under strict guidelines. The judges clean it before the toss to ensure that no oil or dirt has collected on its surface to skew the results. Then they place it in a robot’s care; no human could be trusted to flip without bias.
We are massed on the right; you are on the left. The referee points to you. Heads.
Today we fight the battle of Gettsyburg. Fought during the American Civil War, it resulted in 71, 699 dead on the Confederate side and 95, 489 people dying in the Union army, but the North won. That’s all I know.
He signals to the operator, who turns on the machine. One swift movement and the metal spins in the air, shining in the bright lights of the stadium.
The disc falls to the felt platform spread beneath it. Tails.
My fellow soldiers and I march to wardrobe, to be outfitted in blue before they run us through the scanner that assigns our identities. I take one glance back at the arena, where the floor is already arranging itself into the appropriate landscape. I see an apple orchard and a hill before the door closes behind us.
They hand me a numbered uniform and I scramble into it as best I can, fumbling at buttons. I barely have time to jam the cap on my head before I’m herded into the scanner. A blue flash of light, a harsh beep, and it’s done. The pretty girl in period clothing hands me a clipboard.
My random assignment is Thomas Campbell, a lieutenant. I help hold the hill—Little Round Top—until I trip onto a charging confederate’s bayonet. Not a very noble death, but at least we win, and I get to kill three people on the other side—#3490, #281, and #70610. I am careful to memorize each number so that I don’t have to check my statistics in the middle of battle.
I forget why we arranged this fight. I think you were blocking our trade routes, or stealing our water, or raping our women. Or maybe that was the last country we fought; it’s hard to remember. We got to win that time, too.
This gun feels strange in my hands, the bayonet making it difficult to hold upright. I wonder if the real Thomas Campbell thought the same things that I am. I wonder why he was fighting, if it was because he believed in his country, or because it was a steady paycheck, or because his girl didn’t love him anymore.
The starting bell sounds. I take a deep breath and run to my first position.
We are massed on the right; you are on the left. The referee points to you. Heads.
Today we fight the battle of Gettsyburg. Fought during the American Civil War, it resulted in 71, 699 dead on the Confederate side and 95, 489 people dying in the Union army, but the North won. That’s all I know.
He signals to the operator, who turns on the machine. One swift movement and the metal spins in the air, shining in the bright lights of the stadium.
The disc falls to the felt platform spread beneath it. Tails.
My fellow soldiers and I march to wardrobe, to be outfitted in blue before they run us through the scanner that assigns our identities. I take one glance back at the arena, where the floor is already arranging itself into the appropriate landscape. I see an apple orchard and a hill before the door closes behind us.
They hand me a numbered uniform and I scramble into it as best I can, fumbling at buttons. I barely have time to jam the cap on my head before I’m herded into the scanner. A blue flash of light, a harsh beep, and it’s done. The pretty girl in period clothing hands me a clipboard.
My random assignment is Thomas Campbell, a lieutenant. I help hold the hill—Little Round Top—until I trip onto a charging confederate’s bayonet. Not a very noble death, but at least we win, and I get to kill three people on the other side—#3490, #281, and #70610. I am careful to memorize each number so that I don’t have to check my statistics in the middle of battle.
I forget why we arranged this fight. I think you were blocking our trade routes, or stealing our water, or raping our women. Or maybe that was the last country we fought; it’s hard to remember. We got to win that time, too.
This gun feels strange in my hands, the bayonet making it difficult to hold upright. I wonder if the real Thomas Campbell thought the same things that I am. I wonder why he was fighting, if it was because he believed in his country, or because it was a steady paycheck, or because his girl didn’t love him anymore.
The starting bell sounds. I take a deep breath and run to my first position.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Trepanning for Fun and Sport
We admit it. We arranged for her to break up with you, making sure that she did it in the most humiliating way possible. It wasn’t difficult. Lust is no mystery to a race that once made a star out of Styrofoam, just to see if we could. A few hits to the pleasure center when she was with your best friend, one or two to his—but fewer, because he’d always had a thing for her anyways—a late bus that left them alone together, and they took care of the rest themselves. Simple.
True, there are probably easier ways to drive a man to drink until he blacks out, but we believe that life’s about the journey, not just the destination. We’d ask if you agree, but we are perfectly aware that you do not. Instant gratification, that’s you.
We don’t intend any insult by that observation, just so you know. Quite the opposite! By your impulsiveness, you made yourself perfect for our purpose. We’d be hypocrites if we judged you harshly for that personality trait. And you really acted well, in light of the circumstances; you were angry, not violent; depressed, but not obnoxious about it. Very impressive.
But we can do better.
The key to a good trepanning is the personal touch, and that means hand-operated tools. While a power drill will of course cut through the skull in no time, it’s much riskier in terms of blood loss and accidentally cutting into the brain. We like to make a circle of holes and then use the saw. Things stay tidy, and we don’t have to worry about you forgetting your sixth birthday party or, you know, drooling.
The lack of electricity means that the whole process takes time, which is where your blackouts come in. Getting you blind drunk really was the best plan; you attributed your headaches to the alcohol and the hangovers. You didn’t want to look at yourself in the mirror, which meant we didn’t have to spend tedious time hiding our operations every night, and your funk kept other people with better eyes away from you. Short of dropping a bit of schizophrenia in the initial hole, there really wasn’t a better way to keep you out of sight and out of mind until we were finished.
Now that we are finished, we could get her back for you, if you like. It’s as easy as hitting the pain or revulsion centers when—no? Are you sure? Alright.
And thank you, by the way. Your—well, you don’t really have a word for it, but we call it a “nagush"—your nagush was delicious. It’s the part of your brain that allows you to travel between alternate versions of the universe, very rare in you people, only exists in about one out of every million, which is a pity. Makes you special, though! The point is that that it is an incredible delicacy, and you’ll never miss it. Traveling between universes is worthless anyways; all the other ones are terrible. Trust us—ours was a real pit.
Well, that’s about it. Any other questions? You should probably wear a helmet for the next couple months if you’re going to do any strenuous physical activity, go bike riding, that sort of thing. And avoid blows to the head. We left the hole so that when your nagush grows back, we can come take it out for you again, and it would be just awful if you injured yourself.
We would feel just terrible.
True, there are probably easier ways to drive a man to drink until he blacks out, but we believe that life’s about the journey, not just the destination. We’d ask if you agree, but we are perfectly aware that you do not. Instant gratification, that’s you.
We don’t intend any insult by that observation, just so you know. Quite the opposite! By your impulsiveness, you made yourself perfect for our purpose. We’d be hypocrites if we judged you harshly for that personality trait. And you really acted well, in light of the circumstances; you were angry, not violent; depressed, but not obnoxious about it. Very impressive.
But we can do better.
The key to a good trepanning is the personal touch, and that means hand-operated tools. While a power drill will of course cut through the skull in no time, it’s much riskier in terms of blood loss and accidentally cutting into the brain. We like to make a circle of holes and then use the saw. Things stay tidy, and we don’t have to worry about you forgetting your sixth birthday party or, you know, drooling.
The lack of electricity means that the whole process takes time, which is where your blackouts come in. Getting you blind drunk really was the best plan; you attributed your headaches to the alcohol and the hangovers. You didn’t want to look at yourself in the mirror, which meant we didn’t have to spend tedious time hiding our operations every night, and your funk kept other people with better eyes away from you. Short of dropping a bit of schizophrenia in the initial hole, there really wasn’t a better way to keep you out of sight and out of mind until we were finished.
Now that we are finished, we could get her back for you, if you like. It’s as easy as hitting the pain or revulsion centers when—no? Are you sure? Alright.
And thank you, by the way. Your—well, you don’t really have a word for it, but we call it a “nagush"—your nagush was delicious. It’s the part of your brain that allows you to travel between alternate versions of the universe, very rare in you people, only exists in about one out of every million, which is a pity. Makes you special, though! The point is that that it is an incredible delicacy, and you’ll never miss it. Traveling between universes is worthless anyways; all the other ones are terrible. Trust us—ours was a real pit.
Well, that’s about it. Any other questions? You should probably wear a helmet for the next couple months if you’re going to do any strenuous physical activity, go bike riding, that sort of thing. And avoid blows to the head. We left the hole so that when your nagush grows back, we can come take it out for you again, and it would be just awful if you injured yourself.
We would feel just terrible.
Friday, April 3, 2009
The Little Gods
His mother leaned against the frame of his door. She rubbed her right thumb over and over with the other one, biting her lip. “Sweetie, this has to stop.”
He took another lump of clay out of his bag and slapped it on the table. She’d tried not buying it anymore, but he’d just stolen some from school.
“Craig, please!”
He heard the sharp edge to her voice, her last defense before she spills over into tears, but he didn’t care. Twins. He needed twins. Splitting the clay in two, his fingers moved into the familiar motions. He formed heads, necks, and the two sets of arms. It was here that he paused—should he try something a little more interesting? Something with lots of arms, like a scorpion or an octopus? No. Twins were perfect, two halves of a whole.
The phone rang.
His mother made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. “When I come back here, you’d better not be doing that anymore.”
Craig ignored her, concentrating on teasing legs out of the clay. On one body, he added a few strips for long hair on the head—they would be brother and sister.
“I—I mean it!” Biting her lip again, she left. The heavy door swung half-closed, releasing the smell of new wood and fresh paint.
He sniffed at the odor. The pain made him a little sick to his stomach, but he didn’t care. Using her fingernail, Craig attached tiny pieces of clay to make the eyes, noses, and mouths. As an afterthought, he added horns to the male figurine. He would be a hunter.
Smoothing out one last rough edge, Craig held one figure in each hand. He turned them over carefully, searching for any imperfections.
Then he glanced at the doorway to make sure she was really gone. Reassured, Craig reached under his desk for the blue, plastic box hidden underneath it. He set the statues down first, to avoid bumping them.
It was a pencil box he’d stolen from the girl who sat behind him in class. She’d been sick for a few days and left it behind; he’d needed something to store his tools in. It seemed like fate, so he took it. It was perfect for his purpose.
Opening it, Craig took out the needle and box of matches. A quick swipe lit a match and he ran it over the needle until the thin metal gleamed red. Then he blew out the match and waves it in the air. Needle now clean, he pricked both of his middle fingers, raising a drop of blood on each. He pressed the blood to the eyes, mouths, chests, and foreheads of the figures until the features were coated.
Craig squeezed more blood from his fingers and smeared it over a crumpled dollar bill he’d found in the street. Striking another match, he burned the money, mumbling nonsense syllables as he did so.
“Sweetie, that was your school. Did you take—oh, no. No!”
He felt his fists clench, but forced them to relax. Folding them, Craig concentrated all his thoughts on the two clay statues.
“You promised me that you would stop this.”
He’d said no such thing! Outraged, he accidentally stopped his internal chanting. He shook his head to remove the stray thought. This part was the most important, so it was the hardest.
“Stop it! Stop it right now.”
Craig jumped as his mother grabbed his shoulder. Luckily, he was already done with the ritual, but he glared at her anyway. She had no right to touch him. He turned to the little gods instead, to admire his handiwork.
Their movement started with slow, ineffectual twitches. Finally they gained enough control to start looking around, though they remained lying down. Their mouths opened and closed, emitting small squeaks and noises. The woman was the first to move properly, clambering to her feet with only a few false starts. She stared up at Craig.
His mother let go of Craig backing away with a low moaning noise. Cupping her hands, she pressed them around her eyes. “Please, Craig, don’t—don’t—”
The male eventually climbed to a standing position as well, with a great deal of difficulty. His horns, Craig was surprised to see, had grown into antlers. The small man waved a hand at Craig’s mother.
Leaves fell from out of nowhere, landing on the woman’s head. She didn’t seem to notice.
A god of trees as well as the hunt, Craig thought, pleased.
Seeing her brother’s achievement, the woman screwed up her face and waved her hand towards Craig’s mother as well. A shower of raindrops moistened the leaves and a tiny spark split the air above her.
And a weather goddess. Craig smiled. They would be good gods.
His mother had uncovered her eyes to stare at the twins. Reaching up, she brushed the leaves off her head, biting her lip so hard that she left white marks. “They’re—they’re really good, Craig. Very pretty. Best yet. Now why don’t I make you some lunch? A tuna sandwich, maybe?”
The gods began to explore Craig’s desk. They squeaked and chattered to each other at each encounter with something new. He never got tired of this part.
“You like tuna, sweetie. . . I’ll cut the crusts off. . .”
Then Craig frowned. Something was wrong with the hunting god. He was—he was limping! Dragging his left foot behind him. His lips pressed together, Craig snatched the god off the desk to look at him.
“Please, sweetie, leave the poor thing alone.”
Craig pinched the foot between his fingers. His face turned white when the pressure made a dent in it. The foot was still clay. Craig squeezed harder, crushing it. The little god screamed, the sound recognizable even at the low volume.
“No!” The word burst out of his mother. “Don’t hurt it, please! Stop it!”
What kind of hunting god couldn’t even walk? It was wrong. No good. Craig took hold of one of the antlers and twisted it off, with a corresponding cry of pain. He felt the air crackle above him as the little weather goddess tried to help her brother, but it didn’t bother him. The hair on his arms rose as she tried again. Craig winced that time—the electricity felt uncomfortable as it ran though his newly healed wrist.
He felt no pain, only anger, when his mother grabbed the same wrist, trying to pry the little god out of his hands. “Craig, you’ve got to stop this. Give it to me!”
Craig wrestled out of her grip, retreating to the other side of his desk. He pulled the other antler off. This time, a trickle of blood flowed down from the injury.
Both the gods were shrieking now. A wind picked up in the room. His mother moaned and she backed away to the wall. Her knees buckled and she fell, pressing her forehead against the carpet.
“It’s your fault!” Craig screamed. He shook the god at her, its limbs jerked around by his movement. “It’s all your fault.”
“Please. . . don’t. . . I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” His mother crumpled into herself, holding her shoulders with both hands and rocking, still crouched on the ground.
Craig threw the little god at her. He missed and it slammed against the wall with another loud scream before going silent. It bounced off and fell to the floor, its unmoving form a few inches from his mother’s right leg. “You did this. You interrupted me! Everything you do is—is stupid and—and wrong! I hate you, I hate you!” He yelled so loud that spit flew from his mouth.
She rocked harder. “I know, I know. . . oh god!” The wind grew stronger, pushing Craig’s posters so they fluttered on the walls. “It’s all my fault; I should have done something sooner. God forgive me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
The little goddess jumped up and down on the desk, her shrill tones full of rage. Running to the box, she grabbed the needle, holding it like a spear. She leapt off the desk, aiming for Craig.
He avoided her easily, slapping her out of midair. The wind stopped as the weather goddess was thrown backwards onto the desk from the blow. The needle, torn free, clattered back into the box. “You didn’t stop her.” Craig stared at his mother with hate. “You didn’t try to stop her!” He grabbed things from his desk and began to throw them at her. A pen hit her in the cheek, just missing her eye. Snatching the box, he hurled that too. It hit her in the head and everything fell out around her. He kept throwing ever he could, tears running down his face. “You never stopped him, either! You didn’t even try!”
His mother sobbed. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I just—I—oh, god!” She stopped rocking, sitting up. A bright red spot marked where the pen hit. “But he’s dead, Craig! Can’t—you’ve got to forget him!”
Forget?
The same doctor who stitched his mother’s injury is setting Craig’s wrist now. “Your father’s in surgery,” he says softly, his eyes on the delicate work. “He’s had a heart attack.”
Craig doesn’t say anything. He has his teeth clenched to keep from throwing up. Throwing up is not allowed.
“How’d you break your wrist, Craig?” the man asks. He starts to prepare the cast, glancing at Craig as he does so.
Craig shakes his head.
“Is it the same way your mommy broke hers last month? Because she wouldn’t tell me either.”
Where is his mother? Why isn’t she here? She should be next to him, promising to take him out for ice cream. Craig looks around wildly, finally spotting her at the far end of the ER. She is talking to a police officer, her stitches standing out in the tiny shaved spot in her hair.
“Did the same thing happen to your wrist as what happened to your arm and eye last year?” The doctor starts putting the cast on. He looks straight into Craig’s face. “Craig. Did you hear what I said about your dad having a heart attack? It was a bad one. He’s very sick.”
Craig lifts his head, his lower lip quivering. “Good!”
The noise in the ER disappears around his outburst and everyone turns to stare at him. His mother presses the back of her hand to her mouth and runs to him, but it’s—
"Too late,” Craig mumbled, not realizing he was doing it. Spent by his fury, he slumped back into his chair.
“Craig. . . please. . .”
He blocked her out. Seeing the crumpled form of the little goddess as if for the first time, he swept her off his desk like an errant piece of paper.
“Please. . .”
Pulling out another lump of clay, Craig put it on his desk. His hands—the palm of the right one bleeding a little from the needle when he’d hit the weather goddess—moved into their familiar positions.
“Don’t hate me. Please don’t hate me. I—I was so afraid. . . I thought. . . I thought that if I stood in front of you, tried to stop him, he’d even angrier. I thought—oh god! I was sure he’d kill us both. That was going to be the last time, I swear! We were going to leave the next morning. . . I had our suitcases all packed. Please, sweetie! I love you so much. I’m so sorry.”
This one would be perfect. And strong. It would have so much power that it would be able to bring his father back from the dead
Craig would punish him for everything he’d done. He’d take a long time to do it, and make him very sorry. And then, when his father had made up for all the pain, Craig would kill him again.
That’s what you do with monsters.
He took another lump of clay out of his bag and slapped it on the table. She’d tried not buying it anymore, but he’d just stolen some from school.
“Craig, please!”
He heard the sharp edge to her voice, her last defense before she spills over into tears, but he didn’t care. Twins. He needed twins. Splitting the clay in two, his fingers moved into the familiar motions. He formed heads, necks, and the two sets of arms. It was here that he paused—should he try something a little more interesting? Something with lots of arms, like a scorpion or an octopus? No. Twins were perfect, two halves of a whole.
The phone rang.
His mother made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. “When I come back here, you’d better not be doing that anymore.”
Craig ignored her, concentrating on teasing legs out of the clay. On one body, he added a few strips for long hair on the head—they would be brother and sister.
“I—I mean it!” Biting her lip again, she left. The heavy door swung half-closed, releasing the smell of new wood and fresh paint.
He sniffed at the odor. The pain made him a little sick to his stomach, but he didn’t care. Using her fingernail, Craig attached tiny pieces of clay to make the eyes, noses, and mouths. As an afterthought, he added horns to the male figurine. He would be a hunter.
Smoothing out one last rough edge, Craig held one figure in each hand. He turned them over carefully, searching for any imperfections.
Then he glanced at the doorway to make sure she was really gone. Reassured, Craig reached under his desk for the blue, plastic box hidden underneath it. He set the statues down first, to avoid bumping them.
It was a pencil box he’d stolen from the girl who sat behind him in class. She’d been sick for a few days and left it behind; he’d needed something to store his tools in. It seemed like fate, so he took it. It was perfect for his purpose.
Opening it, Craig took out the needle and box of matches. A quick swipe lit a match and he ran it over the needle until the thin metal gleamed red. Then he blew out the match and waves it in the air. Needle now clean, he pricked both of his middle fingers, raising a drop of blood on each. He pressed the blood to the eyes, mouths, chests, and foreheads of the figures until the features were coated.
Craig squeezed more blood from his fingers and smeared it over a crumpled dollar bill he’d found in the street. Striking another match, he burned the money, mumbling nonsense syllables as he did so.
“Sweetie, that was your school. Did you take—oh, no. No!”
He felt his fists clench, but forced them to relax. Folding them, Craig concentrated all his thoughts on the two clay statues.
“You promised me that you would stop this.”
He’d said no such thing! Outraged, he accidentally stopped his internal chanting. He shook his head to remove the stray thought. This part was the most important, so it was the hardest.
“Stop it! Stop it right now.”
Craig jumped as his mother grabbed his shoulder. Luckily, he was already done with the ritual, but he glared at her anyway. She had no right to touch him. He turned to the little gods instead, to admire his handiwork.
Their movement started with slow, ineffectual twitches. Finally they gained enough control to start looking around, though they remained lying down. Their mouths opened and closed, emitting small squeaks and noises. The woman was the first to move properly, clambering to her feet with only a few false starts. She stared up at Craig.
His mother let go of Craig backing away with a low moaning noise. Cupping her hands, she pressed them around her eyes. “Please, Craig, don’t—don’t—”
The male eventually climbed to a standing position as well, with a great deal of difficulty. His horns, Craig was surprised to see, had grown into antlers. The small man waved a hand at Craig’s mother.
Leaves fell from out of nowhere, landing on the woman’s head. She didn’t seem to notice.
A god of trees as well as the hunt, Craig thought, pleased.
Seeing her brother’s achievement, the woman screwed up her face and waved her hand towards Craig’s mother as well. A shower of raindrops moistened the leaves and a tiny spark split the air above her.
And a weather goddess. Craig smiled. They would be good gods.
His mother had uncovered her eyes to stare at the twins. Reaching up, she brushed the leaves off her head, biting her lip so hard that she left white marks. “They’re—they’re really good, Craig. Very pretty. Best yet. Now why don’t I make you some lunch? A tuna sandwich, maybe?”
The gods began to explore Craig’s desk. They squeaked and chattered to each other at each encounter with something new. He never got tired of this part.
“You like tuna, sweetie. . . I’ll cut the crusts off. . .”
Then Craig frowned. Something was wrong with the hunting god. He was—he was limping! Dragging his left foot behind him. His lips pressed together, Craig snatched the god off the desk to look at him.
“Please, sweetie, leave the poor thing alone.”
Craig pinched the foot between his fingers. His face turned white when the pressure made a dent in it. The foot was still clay. Craig squeezed harder, crushing it. The little god screamed, the sound recognizable even at the low volume.
“No!” The word burst out of his mother. “Don’t hurt it, please! Stop it!”
What kind of hunting god couldn’t even walk? It was wrong. No good. Craig took hold of one of the antlers and twisted it off, with a corresponding cry of pain. He felt the air crackle above him as the little weather goddess tried to help her brother, but it didn’t bother him. The hair on his arms rose as she tried again. Craig winced that time—the electricity felt uncomfortable as it ran though his newly healed wrist.
He felt no pain, only anger, when his mother grabbed the same wrist, trying to pry the little god out of his hands. “Craig, you’ve got to stop this. Give it to me!”
Craig wrestled out of her grip, retreating to the other side of his desk. He pulled the other antler off. This time, a trickle of blood flowed down from the injury.
Both the gods were shrieking now. A wind picked up in the room. His mother moaned and she backed away to the wall. Her knees buckled and she fell, pressing her forehead against the carpet.
“It’s your fault!” Craig screamed. He shook the god at her, its limbs jerked around by his movement. “It’s all your fault.”
“Please. . . don’t. . . I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” His mother crumpled into herself, holding her shoulders with both hands and rocking, still crouched on the ground.
Craig threw the little god at her. He missed and it slammed against the wall with another loud scream before going silent. It bounced off and fell to the floor, its unmoving form a few inches from his mother’s right leg. “You did this. You interrupted me! Everything you do is—is stupid and—and wrong! I hate you, I hate you!” He yelled so loud that spit flew from his mouth.
She rocked harder. “I know, I know. . . oh god!” The wind grew stronger, pushing Craig’s posters so they fluttered on the walls. “It’s all my fault; I should have done something sooner. God forgive me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
The little goddess jumped up and down on the desk, her shrill tones full of rage. Running to the box, she grabbed the needle, holding it like a spear. She leapt off the desk, aiming for Craig.
He avoided her easily, slapping her out of midair. The wind stopped as the weather goddess was thrown backwards onto the desk from the blow. The needle, torn free, clattered back into the box. “You didn’t stop her.” Craig stared at his mother with hate. “You didn’t try to stop her!” He grabbed things from his desk and began to throw them at her. A pen hit her in the cheek, just missing her eye. Snatching the box, he hurled that too. It hit her in the head and everything fell out around her. He kept throwing ever he could, tears running down his face. “You never stopped him, either! You didn’t even try!”
His mother sobbed. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I just—I—oh, god!” She stopped rocking, sitting up. A bright red spot marked where the pen hit. “But he’s dead, Craig! Can’t—you’ve got to forget him!”
Forget?
The same doctor who stitched his mother’s injury is setting Craig’s wrist now. “Your father’s in surgery,” he says softly, his eyes on the delicate work. “He’s had a heart attack.”
Craig doesn’t say anything. He has his teeth clenched to keep from throwing up. Throwing up is not allowed.
“How’d you break your wrist, Craig?” the man asks. He starts to prepare the cast, glancing at Craig as he does so.
Craig shakes his head.
“Is it the same way your mommy broke hers last month? Because she wouldn’t tell me either.”
Where is his mother? Why isn’t she here? She should be next to him, promising to take him out for ice cream. Craig looks around wildly, finally spotting her at the far end of the ER. She is talking to a police officer, her stitches standing out in the tiny shaved spot in her hair.
“Did the same thing happen to your wrist as what happened to your arm and eye last year?” The doctor starts putting the cast on. He looks straight into Craig’s face. “Craig. Did you hear what I said about your dad having a heart attack? It was a bad one. He’s very sick.”
Craig lifts his head, his lower lip quivering. “Good!”
The noise in the ER disappears around his outburst and everyone turns to stare at him. His mother presses the back of her hand to her mouth and runs to him, but it’s—
"Too late,” Craig mumbled, not realizing he was doing it. Spent by his fury, he slumped back into his chair.
“Craig. . . please. . .”
He blocked her out. Seeing the crumpled form of the little goddess as if for the first time, he swept her off his desk like an errant piece of paper.
“Please. . .”
Pulling out another lump of clay, Craig put it on his desk. His hands—the palm of the right one bleeding a little from the needle when he’d hit the weather goddess—moved into their familiar positions.
“Don’t hate me. Please don’t hate me. I—I was so afraid. . . I thought. . . I thought that if I stood in front of you, tried to stop him, he’d even angrier. I thought—oh god! I was sure he’d kill us both. That was going to be the last time, I swear! We were going to leave the next morning. . . I had our suitcases all packed. Please, sweetie! I love you so much. I’m so sorry.”
This one would be perfect. And strong. It would have so much power that it would be able to bring his father back from the dead
Craig would punish him for everything he’d done. He’d take a long time to do it, and make him very sorry. And then, when his father had made up for all the pain, Craig would kill him again.
That’s what you do with monsters.
Blissful Sigh
Have you ever done something that you love, something that's real, and just sunk yourself in it for a long time? And then you re-surface and you just feel so, so, happy, because you made something good and you haven't gotten to do t for a while.
Ahhh.
I'm just very content right now.
The story that has caused this bliss in me will be posted as soon as I type it up. ^_^
Ahhh.
I'm just very content right now.
The story that has caused this bliss in me will be posted as soon as I type it up. ^_^
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