Sick Synopses or My Inner Kilgore Trout - Ideas for Short Fiction

The Torture Artist
An artist looks back at his career and is tormented by the idea that he hasn’t really been able to share his authentic self with those who interact with his art. He proceeds to commit a home invasion in a rural area, where he ties a couple up, rapes them repeatedly, and chews their fucking faces off while they still live.


The Sexual Experience
Various extremely graphic though dry and clinical descriptions of fractured bones.


A Drug Free Environment
A couple enjoys a night at the symphony and then goes home to kill their pet bird with a mallet.


The Night America Burned Down
An elderly woman does some gardening.


Wrapped In Plastic
Written advertisements for paramilitary and riot gear designed for the police: tactical shields, repeating shotguns, breaching vehicles, etc.


True
A sadomasochistic couple finds a stray dog and tortures it, finally cutting its head off. The head then begins speaking to them and ultimately bids them to cast runes from a mingled flow of bodily fluids so that it can deliver prophecy.


Hamburger Helper
A man with a botfly infestation becomes a prostitute in an attempt to obtain the money for treatment.


Women are from Venus
The President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Cydonia gives a televised State of the Union address during which he is wearing a stitched together “girl suit” of preserved human flesh ala Ed Gein or Buffalo Bill. The suit has three rows of jiggling tits and he wears it with his trademark red necktie draped between them. The state of the union, he says, is strong. He intersperses this address with anecdotes about the women whose skin make up the girl suit, such as the number of children they had or how they clenched their fists when he slit their throat. In a cutaway, a married couple discuss the speech and comment on the necktie, allowing that though the red is traditional Martian attire, the President really should have worn blue as it would make him look more dignified.


30 Minutes of Sicko
A brief history of Family Feud is followed with an example show’s polling answers being analyzed in minute detail. Among the categories polled in the example show: Something You Do After Masturbating and Things You See In an Automobile Accident.


Reality Assassin
Starting in her home, a woman walks through a series of doors and gates as she slowly comes to the realization that she absolutely fucking hates her husband and children. At the end she finds herself in a meadow surrounded by wildflowers.


The Magic of Ice
Purple butterflies follow a beautiful and gentle man everywhere he goes. A jealous husband tracks the butterflies to his home, where he catches his wife in bed with the man and proceeds to vent his rage in unusual ways.


The Rise of the Night
A would-be dictator is kidnapped by radicals and forced to undergo gender reassignment surgery in an effort to change his viewpoints. S/he maintains her fascist worldview even so. The real breakthrough comes after a fecal microbiota transplant.


Edgewater, Mon Amour
A man conducts a mass shooting at his office. Upon apprehension, he repeats the phrase “I don’t speak German,” over and over and seems unable to say anything else. A reporter who happened to be near the site of the incident has the scoop, but his editor turns him down on the basis that mass shootings have become passe and gauche and bore the public to tears at this point. So they concoct a story that involves a government coverup of a DARPA-funded experiment with hallucinogens and cutting edge time travel “Zeitsprung” technology.


The Goldfish
A middle aged couple’s life has become stale and routine. The wife takes up tennis and begins to become infatuated with the young tennis coach she is working with. She tries to flirt with him but he pretends not to notice, though she is uncertain if this is out of professionalism or if he genuinely isn't interested. One afternoon she returns home after a lesson and has an intense sexual fantasy about him. Her husband comes home from work a little early and sees her in the throes of passion, but she is so caught up in the ecstasy of the moment that she does not notice him. He quietly backs away and sits down in the living room, where they keep a goldfish, which he feeds and then watches for a time.


Furnishing
A woman must choose new drapes for the living room. She becomes paralyzed with indecision because there are so many choices and possibilities. This paralysis begins to bleed into other parts of her life and soon she cannot function at all.


Pure
An investigator begins looking into the rancid underworld where snuff films and child pornography intersect. He develops a cover identity in order to allow him to probe further. He soon loses himself and becomes complicit in the production of this material.


Babylon
A historian is cast from mainstream academia for holocaust denial and minimizing the atrocities of Nazi Germany. This is the last straw for his poor wife, who leaves him as a result of this loss of face and reputation. After she leaves, he mourns, and becomes intoxicated.  He proceeds to dress up in an authentic SS uniform, part of his personal collection. He does his best to achieve an erection by looking at a mixture of death camp footage and AI-generated pornography of famous Nazis, but it’s no use. As he passes out, sexually frustrated and covered in his own vomit, he vows to join the police.


Whitehouse
An extensive catalog of the various sexual proclivities of U.S. Presidents from Washington to present day. Gets really interesting after Roswell.


The Organ Grinder
A man tours the city with his pet mandril, who occasionally and for no discernable reason mauls some nearby person very, very badly.


Movement
A man looks out over his rice field and sees something white moving and wriggling, but he can’t tell what it is. He tells his neighbor, who also sees it, and becomes curious about it. The neighbor goes to take a closer look as the man heads inside to clean up for the day. He forgets all about the incident until the next day, when he catches a glimpse of his neighbor in the rice field. He goes to see his neighbor and the man has gone almost catatonic except for occasionally muttering about movement. Over the next few days several other people in the town are found in the same condition. The following week the man catches sight of the white thing again and goes himself to investigate it.


The Flesh of Heaven
A middle-aged detective who is sexually obsessed with his teenage niece works a school shooting and ruminates on the devastating effects of high powered rifle fire on the human body.

Sonic Consciousness

A struggling musician has a series of surgeries that slowly transform his body into a musical instrument.  His mind follows.

Babel

A man begins constructing a tower in a wing of his house.  The tower rises to nine stories and he keeps building it.  His obsession with it and total dedication to it cuts him off from his family.  Eventually the tower collapses and his obsession with it ends; he then reconnects with his wife and children.

They Float on the Surface

A woman has a calming mental routine of naming all the various capital cities of the countries in the world in a kind of mantra as she relaxes in the bath.  One day she cannot remember the capital of Macedonia, and this throws everything in her world off kilter.

Seller's Market

A catalog for a company specializing in paid intimacy, generally of a non-sexual nature.  You can have someone stroke your hair or put a cold washcloth on your forehead, or kiss your neck and shoulders.  You can talk to someone who will listen sympathetically and offer suggestions or condolences, a friendly hug, or will let you just cry and cry while they hold you and reassure you.

Thanatos Avenue

After an unnamed calamity causes global environmental and societal collapse, five drivers race across a desert where the walking dead roam.

Naptime for Scrunchie

A family cat wanders around a mansion, noting the incredibly dysfunctional behavior of its inhabitants; the dad is tuned out of everything except work, the mom continually makes not-so-subtle passes at her son, who is home from college, and the daughter dreams of one day leaving everything behind, perhaps to join the military.

Lord of This World

A day in the life of a group of nihilistic suburban teens.

The Anonymity Exhibition

A hotel worker finds a woman's corpse in a room that was supposed to be unoccupied.

The Coprophage

A man who lives alone wakes up, takes a shower, goes to his office job, has a routine day, goes to the gym, and comes home to make himself dinner before watching a little TV and going to bed.

Potato Lake

The lake is up in the north, in a land that is filled with lakes, and where there are forests of maples and oaks and pines where there are no lakes. It’s called Potato Lake and his father has a joke that it’s shaped like a fishhook but it’s right next to a lake called Fishhook Lake that’s shaped like a potato and someone switched the names around. They go there after his father finishes with work for the year and stay in a cabin for what feels to Faolán like forever even though he knows it is just the summer. A dirt path stretches along the lake at the top of a steep hillside of sandy soil, studded with trees and soft roots that Faolán can catch as he makes his way down. The lodge is at one end of the path, up at the highest point of the woods and there are cabins along it every so often. There are stairs made of packed sand and logs in the hillside but Faolán likes to climb down. At the bottom of the hillside is the beach, which is only about twenty feet wide before it hits the water. The lake has all kinds of things growing in it, and the water near the shoreline is cold, but Faolán, who is six this summer, doesn’t mind. He enjoys swimming in the cold clear part of the lake and seeing the alien landscape below as he swims over it, looking at all the different colored rocks and weird plants. The rocks are black and olive and white and red and there are even quartz crystals and he likes to watch the tiny minnows that form small schools and dart about in the shallow part of the lake near the beach. He uses a snorkel and a pair of goggles and feels like he can stay underwater all day.

He stays near the shore, though. The lake bottom drops off precipitously as one swims out into it. About twenty feet from the shore he can no longer keep his head above water if he stands. Another few yards past that the water is twice as deep as he is tall, and another few yards past that it gets dark, which he doesn’t like at all. Something about the dark, deep water frightens him. There’s a pontoon boat anchored out there that his older half-brother and half-sister sometimes swim to with the rest of the teenagers, but he never goes out to it, preferring to spy on the little silver fish and collect pretty rocks to stud his sand castles with and give to his mother as gifts, treasures he presents with utter solemnity as if they could somehow comfort her and make everything ok. He sees she is filled with fear and doubt even at the lake when they are supposed to be having a good time because she is not sure she wants to stay married to his father.

He doesn’t understand it but he knows it to be true. He knows they fight but he does not know why. The arguments don’t happen in front of him, but rather in his periphery and though he only ever gets little glimpses of them, he is watchfully aware of them. There is a seismic quality to them that makes him feel like the whole world might shift under his feet and slide away and leave him falling, spinning in a vast and distant night all alone, swirling like a burning cinder above one of the campfires they sometimes have on the beach, floating on the dark and heated air until he is pulled out past the pontoon boat and finally plunged into the deep black water to be dragged down to the bottom of the lake by the currents and doused for all time. He doesn’t understand why his mom wouldn’t want to stay with his dad. He thinks his dad is the most intelligent man who has ever lived, and he’s funny, and he doesn’t mind telling Faolán stories at night while he drinks beer and whiskey, and he sneaks Faolán a sip every now and then which makes him feel like they are part of a secret club together. He tries to be intelligent like his dad and thinks about the glowing campfires and the cinders and the dark and how the darkness always comes when and where there is no light. He wonders if that means the darkness is a kind of a default, always there and only kept away for short periods and if that means that things that “are-not” last forever like death but decides that can’t be right because god is forever and god is light and life.

Today his father is supposed to take him fishing.

Faolán likes to go out in the little motorboat, likes the way the prow climbs up out of the water and the fact that there’s no speed limit, which he finds amazing. He loves the feel of the wind on his face, almost blinding him as they shoot across the water, sometimes crossing another boater’s wake and skipping along the surface like a stone. He likes looking at the little sonar his dad sets up, baffled over the orange light on the screen and constantly asking his father what everything means. His father, patient, explaining it all to him, but it’s like Faolán can’t keep it all in his head, he can remember bits and pieces but in the end trying to understand the sonar is like trying to catch all the minnows in one of the little schools or trying to puzzle out how to make his mother and father stop fighting.

Faolán is wearing swim trunks and a pair of leather moccasins from the White Earth Reservation and he pads off the side of the path into the woods, pretending to be a Chippewa. It’s as if it’s always twilight in the woods no matter how bright the sun is, like it’s about to rain. He likes the cool, humid air and dim light here. He stalks from one trunk to another, slipping like a shadow between the trees, across the pine needles underfoot. He keeps his feet low to the ground, trying to be silent, but in spite of his efforts to be soundless, his foot slips and sticks into the loop of a rough root that protrudes from the soil and he stumbles to his knees where he sees the skull.

It’s half buried in the forest floor but even so he sees the ivory gleam of the bone and realizes he is looking into an eye socket. The skull lies on its side, and he understands at once that it is not human. It’s long, some kind of animal. Curious, he crawls across the earth and pushes his thick brown bangs up out of his face and begins to dig it out of the ground. The earth is soft and yielding even under his young fingers and it isn’t long before he is brushing the dirt and plant material from the skull. It is almost completely clean, without any remaining flesh on it whatsoever. The lower jawbone is missing and some of the back teeth in the upper jaw are gone as well. The remaining teeth are flat and Faolán remembers a book about dinosaurs he read and thinks that the animal must have been some kind of plant eater. Excited, he picks the skull up and carries it carefully back to the cabin. This is a real treasure, better than the feathers he finds from time to time and the rare quartz rocks from the lake. He’s never seen anything like it before. He holds it delicately, as if the whole thing might crumble in his hands if he isn’t careful. He’s so caught up in making sure the skull survives the journey back to the cabin and that he doesn’t trip over any of the roots that jut out of the dirt path that he doesn’t even see Cali standing outside the cabin next door until he almost bumps into her.

Cali is seven, older than Faolán. Her family is staying in a cabin just up the hill from the one Faolán and his family are in, closer to the lodge where the adults go sometimes to drink beer and where they have a bunch of old comic books that Faolán reads on rainy days and pictures of men holding large fish on walls that look like logs. There is an old timey cash register and sometimes his dad gives him quarters so he can have a soda or candy from the lodge or play the pinball machine.

She is a little taller than him, with skin kissed golden by the summer sun. Faolán doesn’t know what a cornflower is yet but a few years later he sees one and instantly recognizes that the papery blue flowers are the same color as her eyes were and the thin silver leaves remind him of her fine blonde hair. By that time he can no longer recall her name, but he can see her clearly in his mind’s eye when it is quiet for the rest of his life.

She asks him what do you have? and that’s when he finally notices her, and stops in his tracks. His care for the thing he is holding almost leads him to break it. The momentum keeps it moving forward when he stops short and it bounces from one of his small hands to the other as he nearly drops it in surprise, but finally he gets a grasp on it and sighs in relief. Then he turns to Cali.

It’s a skull! he answers, isn’t it neat?

She looks at it closely. Can I touch it? she asks.

Sure, he says, but let’s go inside, I want to put it in the cabin. Cali nods and they dash into Faolán’s cabin.

Inside, it’s dark and smells like beer-battered fried fish. His parents and his sister might be at the lake or up at the lodge, he’s not sure. He runs to his room and puts the skull down. Cali follows him in her flip flops and swimming suit.

We have to talk about something important, she says then.

Faolán is puzzled. What is it? he asks.

She answers I don’t have a boyfriend but you can be my boyfriend if you want. And then she pauses before she continues but it has to be a secret. You can’t tell anybody.

Faolán isn’t sure how to respond but his heart begins to beat a bit faster in his chest. He isn’t sure he wants a girlfriend but he’s curious. Finally he decides that he thinks it will make her happy if he is her boyfriend and so he says ok.

She smiles at him and spins around and then says that means you have to kiss me.

It does? asks Faolán. He would never admit it because kissing is gross but the idea of kissing Cali is exciting to him somehow. Her lips are pale pink and her cheeks are pink and she smells like suntan lotion, like sweet flowers and coconuts and something he can’t place and he realizes he really wants to kiss her. His heart is still beating a little faster than normal.

Yes she replies seriously.

Well, if I have to, he says, resigned to his fate, and then she kisses him. It’s wet and a little sticky and Faolán thinks it should be gross but it’s not and he doesn’t know why.

After the kiss she tells him you’re not doing it right.

What am I doing wrong? he asks.

You have to hug me while you kiss me she replies and I have to hug you. Isn’t it obvious?

Faolán doesn’t think it is obvious at all, but he hugs her and she hugs him back and they kiss again and to Faolán it seems like they should be finished but she won’t let go. Finally she does and then she says do you want to see what I look like and his heart keeps beating faster and he starts to feel like he’s got too much spit in his mouth so he swallows it and it’s hard to swallow and he feels embarrassed but yes, he does want to see, very much and she tells him ok but I have to see you too and he says ok and she asks do you promise and he says I promise and he knows they aren’t supposed to do this, he’s not supposed to be naked in front of other people especially not a girl it’s embarrassing but she takes her swimming suit off and looking at her his heart is like a triphammer in his chest and the blood is surging through him and his whole body is burning like when he had the bad fever but it doesn’t hurt and he takes his swimming suit off and she says now we kiss again so they do and she says you can touch me if you let me touch you and he is incapable of saying no to this. Faolán feels strange and wonderful almost like a headache but it’s down in his body and it feels good instead of bad, it feels so so good and it keeps increasing and increasing until his legs shake and feel weak and the pleasure is finally too much to bear and he cannot take any more of the feeling and he pushes her gently away.

His eye falls on the skull and for some reason he cannot look away from it and he stares at it, suddenly feeling different and lonely and distant and hypnotized and thinking about the darkness and she asks him do you love me now and Faolán replies yes, I do, but the words leave his mouth leaden and automatic as if he is in a trance. He feels so far away, farther than the moon or the sun which he knows are millions of miles away and mesmerized, as though someone else is controlling his actions and words, and the bone blurs as he stares spellbound at the skull for a few more moments and wonders about the darkness and things that are forever. She says something but he cannot make it out. Finally he shakes his head to clear it and the world comes back a little and he looks at her and asks what did you say? She looks so serious and pretty and she says I said I love you too and Faolán says I have to go to the beach now and Cali says oh, I have to go to the lodge and then they put their swimsuits on. And then she gives him a scared look that he doesn’t understand and she says you can’t tell anyone and he says ok and she says you have to promise and Faolán says I promise. It is a promise he keeps for many many years. Then they walk outside of the cool cabin and back into the hot summer day and she runs off up towards the lodge, and Faolán runs down to the beach, jumping in places over the irregular steps made from dirt and wooden beams and the roots that twist like gnarled arms across the pathway.

When he gets to the beach he sees his mother wading in the water and she is holding his sister, who is two, and his father is on the pier watching them and drinking beer with their dog Maudie-audie next to him, black fur gleaming in the light, the sun hitting her gentle brown eyes and making her pupils so small and the little white ruff at her neck rising and falling and her pink tongue lolling out as she pants.

Faolán runs on to the wooden pier, his feet in the moccasins drumming lightly on the gray weathered planks as he does and his father hears him and looks up and says where have you been?

And Faolán is about to tell him but then he remembers the promise and he says only I found a skull, dad. It’s so neat! But I don’t know what kind of skull it is, only that it’s a plant eater. Will you look at it later? Faolán is certain his father will know what kind of skull it is because he knows things like that. He feels a little guilty not saying anything about being a boyfriend but the promise hangs in his mind like a gateway filled with fire.

His father raises an eyebrow and then he laughs and says of course I will! Do you want to go fishing? And his voice is a little thick and slow and his laugh is a little loud and Faolán sees his mother look up sharply.

Yes! Let’s go!

So he takes Faolán’s hand and they walk a little further down the dock to the boat which makes small liquid toonk! sounds as it bounces gently against the pier and Maudie-audie jumps in, wagging her tail and his dad puts a cooler into the boat and then puts the sonar in there, and a net, and has started helping him get his lifejacket on when he sees his mother striding down the pier, and Faolán can tell she is angry and he hopes it’s not because she knows about him being Cali’s boyfriend.

Tad, she calls. His father’s name is Tadgh, but his mother always calls him Tad. She’s moving quickly across the weather-beaten boards of the dock and her eyes are flashing and there are high red spots on her cheeks.

Tad, do you really think it’s safe to take him out there now? she asks and her voice is as sharp as her movements.

Drika, his father replies slowly and with deliberate calm, his tone and tongue slurring a little and as languid as hers is sharp, it’ll be fine.

You’ve had a lot to drink, Tad.

It’ll be fine. His father’s tone hardens a little.

Faolán knows what’s coming and squirms in his lifejacket. His heart is beating faster and his stomach starts to turn over but it’s not like when he was with Cali earlier, it doesn’t feel good at all. He wonders if he can head the whole thing off and does his best.

Please mom. Please. We were going to go yesterday but we didn’t get to. Please let us, he says.

See, Drika? He wants to go.

You were supposed to take him yesterday but you didn’t because you couldn’t function. And you slept all day.

For christ’s sake, Drika. We're supposed to be relaxing. We're on vacation, let him have some fun. Let me have some fun. Faolán, get in the boat.

Faolán scrabbles into the boat and pets Maudie-audie and turns and gives his mother an exaggerated smile. His mother squares her shoulders at his father and seems about to say something else but Faolán interrupts.

It’ll be ok mom! he says, I’ll watch out! And I’m a good swimmer!

His mother flicks her head over to him, her chin raised, eyes blazing.

Don’t make a scene, Drika, says his dad.

She shakes her head and murmurs why the hell not but then she looks at Faolán and her shoulders sag and she says fine, then. But she sounds so sad to Faolán and he wishes he knew what to do so it wasn’t like this and he’s struck with an impulse to follow her as she stalks back up the dock, to help her not be sad any more but he doesn’t know how.

His dad steps into the boat humming a little and sits down at the back near the big black outboard motor and smiles at Faolán and waggles his eyebrows and says she’ll be alright. And Faolán believes him.

His father tells Faolán let’s get her unmoored and then he grabs the pull starter and rips the cord from the engine and it comes roaring to life in a fog of blue smoke and the smell of oil and gasoline.

Faolán loves all the weird words associated with boating, starboard port fore and aft cleat and outboard and prow and moored and he repeats these in a kind of calming song in his head as he helps his father untie the boat and soon they push away from the pier and begin whipping along through the water on the open lake and Faolán gives himself to the exhilaration and exultation of the wind rushing past them as the prow of the boat climbs up out of the water and he holds on for dear life laughing and Maudie-audie barks and he forgets the distant feeling and his mother’s glare and his dad’s fuzzy speech as they zoom along bouncing gently across the surface. He looks back only once to watch their wake fan out behind them like a long white apron of churned cream or like the white ruff of fur on Maudie’s chest.

First they go to a branch of the lake that looks like a river to Faolán, and they have to go under a bridge which Faolán loves and pretends is some massive gate to another world. The little river banks are lined by trees and their boughs almost touch overhead and in some places there are tree trunks with branches and leaves still on them fallen in the brown water. His father stops the boat and it rocks from side to side and turns slowly as its own wake catches up to it. Faolán tries to keep his balance in the boat and his father sees this and does an exaggerated pretend falling routine which makes Faolán laugh. Then his father opens the cooler and gets a beer and a covered Styrofoam cup. His father takes the lid off the cup and Faolán looks inside. It is filled with wet earth and worms that move through it like slinkies, bunching up and then extending impossibly and they remind him a little of how his body was when Cali touched him earlier that afternoon but he doesn’t talk about it because he promised. His dad fishes a worm out and offers it to Faolán. This is the only part of fishing he doesn’t like. He wishes they could use the bright plastic and rubber lures from his dad’s tackle box even though they smell funny but his dad says the worms are better bait. He takes the worm and waves it ineffectually at the hook dangling from his rod but he is afraid of the sharp barb on the fishhook and doesn’t want to get too near it. Jesus christ, his dad says, give me that, and he takes the worm and baits the hook with it for Faolán. You have to learn to do this yourself he says and Faolán says yes dad but secretly he doesn’t want to and he wonders if maybe someday that means they won’t be able to fish together any more. But for now the job is done and his dad gives him the ok to cast so he whips the rod back then forward and pushes the button down as he does so and the silver line goes singing out over the water and lands with a splash and sinks a little. His dad says that was a good cast! and then slings his own line out. Then he takes a long pull from the beer can and crushes it and drops the can in the bottom of the boat. He takes the throttle of the motor, which has been idling, grinding and spitting slowly and tweaks it slightly so it smooths out and the boat begins to move calmly through the water while their lines drag behind, which his dad calls trolling. Faolán reels his line in and his dad says go slow and Faolán nods and casts the line out again loving the zip of it as the momentum shifts forward and the line slides smoothly from the reel and lands far away.

On the second cast he tries to go slower as he reels the line in and his dad opens another beer. He casts again and again as they slide along the dappled water and the sun shines through the leaves above. Finally he feels the line catch on something and jerks the rod back, but his dad shakes his head and points to a deadfall in the water where the line is.

You’re hung up on a tree or something. Not a fish he says.

His father clips the line and then says well I was hoping to get some bluegill over here but maybe it won’t happen today. Let’s get out of this creek and back out on the lake some, whaddya say? They reel their lines in and his father opens the throttle a bit and they begin to move through the channel a little faster. As they clear the creek Faolán makes himself bait the new hook his dad has tied on his fishing line. With a grimace, he reaches into the Styrofoam cup and pulls out a worm. The feel of it expanding in his hand makes him feel slightly nauseous and his fingers start to shake a little but he swallows the spit in his mouth and stabs the worm with the new hook and is so relieved when it is over. His dad opens the throttle as they get out into clear waters and they go speeding across the surface once again.

This time his father pilots the boat out into the middle of the lake, as far from the shore as possible before cutting the engine. The clouds have begun to cover the sun and the wind has picked up and the boat sways in the water as waves chop the hull. Faolán looks over the side of the boat and the water looks dark and cold and rough and he can’t see anything moving in it. The clouds reflect in the water so everything looks like dull metal. It seems very quiet with the motor off except for the gray waves slapping the side of the boat and it makes him shudder a little and reminds him of the distant feeling earlier. He looks up to see if his dad notices but he is looking at the sonar screen.

Here’s good. Let’s try this, his father says.

Faolán casts as they drift in the middle of the lake. Faolán can see the shoreline but it is too distant for him to make out any details no matter what direction he looks in. He knows he couldn’t swim to it. Then he hears something that catches his ear, a long and low lonely cry from far away that swells and swells and finally breaks like a sob and echoes out over the water. Several moments later he hears it again from a different direction.

What’s that dad? he asks, awestruck.

Loons. That’s the call they make when they lose each other.

I hope they find each other says Faolán. And he does.

They coast along for what seems like a long time to Faolán and he throws cast after cast and his dad drinks beer. A pile of red-and-white cans builds in the bottom of the boat and the beer smell mixes with the fishy scent of the boat and the lake and the gasoline smell of the outboard motor to create a heady fug. The air is humid and Faolán is happy. He’s not paying much attention to anything, just sort of floating along and petting Maudie-audie and he doesn’t really even feel the first bump on the line. But it comes again, and then again, and then he does notice. There’s one more big bump and on instinct he pulls back on the rod which bends in a whiplike curve under the strain of whatever has the other end of the line and then, alarmed that it might snap he pushes the button and lets some of the line out.

His dad hears the zipping sound of the line and sits up, suddenly paying attention.

Is it another tree Faolán asks, preparing for disappointment.

I don’t think so, his dad says. Look at it. Something is taking the line.

Faolán looks up and sees that the line is moving irregularly through the water. It’s not jammed in one place. He pulls the rod up towards his shoulder and something pulls back so hard he almost falls into the lake.

His dad grabs his shoulder and then sits behind him. Faolán can smell the beer on his breath and feel it on his face as his dad wraps an arm affectionately around his stomach for a second and says I think you set the hook just right.

Then the old man orders give it more slack! and Faolán hits the button again and hears the line go whistling out. He holds down on the button until the line comes to a sudden halt and there’s another strong tug.

I don’t think there’s any more line dad! He says.

OK, his dad says, OK start reeling him in then.

Faolán starts to reel the line in. It comes in a ways and then there’s a jerk and he instinctively pulls back and up on the rod which bends again and his dad shouts no, he’ll break the line, let him have the slack you took in and Faolán pushes the button again. For what feels like a long time the thing fights and he reels some line in and then lets it back out, then reels it in and lets the line back out over and over and his arms get tired and start to shake with exhaustion as the wind clears the cloud cover and the sun returns to make the water glitter. Then, very suddenly, he doesn’t feel anything fighting him.

I think I lost him dad he says but his father shakes his head no and says I think you got him. Bring him in. And his father looks over the side of the boat while Faolán reels the line in and he can’t believe how long it takes, his armpits and shoulders and hands are aching but finally his dad grabs the net and scoops it into the water and lifts it out and the fish in the net looks massive to Faolán. It has dark olive scales on its back and in stripes along its golden sides and a white belly and it's a kind of pearly pale pink around the mouth and gills which makes him think about Cali for a moment. The fish is flashing in the sunlight, the scales dazzling with iridescence and shifting hues as it thrashes in the net.

His dad looks back at him beaming and laughing and says that is one of the biggest fish I have ever seen caught out of this lake. And the way he laughs and smiles makes Faolán laugh and smile too and he asks his dad what kind of fish it is.

It’s a walleye his dad says, I thought it might be a northern pike but it’s not.

Walleye are good for eating, right? asks Faolán.

They are, answers his dad, who does the work of putting the fish on the stringer and then ties the stringer to the boat before he lets the fish slide just over the hull into the water and dangle there. He looks at Faolán and says you did really well. Walleye are hard to catch. They turn their prey around so it goes in to their mouth headfirst. That way they know they won’t choke on anything. But it means they are hard to feel on the line when they bump it. You did well.

Faolán’s heart feels full and swollen. His father is proud of him and then he thinks his mom might be happy too, since she won’t have to worry about dinner now, and he thinks that this means there is a good chance that there will be no fighting from now on and that makes him feel as if his heart may burst, he is so happy.

They don’t stay out on the lake for much longer. His dad is satisfied with the catch and Faolán feels too tired to do much more fishing, and besides he doesn’t think he will catch anything else nearly as good, maybe never in his whole life. His dad hauls the stringer out of the water and his fish flops about in the bottom of the boat and he lets Faolán take the throttle and Faolán opens it up as much as he can and they soar towards the shore. They fly frictionless across the surface until he sights the dock and then he slows way down and gives the tiller back to his dad, who takes them in until the boat bumps the dock and Faolán leaps out with Maudie-audie while his dad ties the boat up. Beth who owns the lodge is there and his dad shows her Faolán’s fish and all the adults seem surprised and impressed and say things like that fish is as big as he is and Faolán feels pretty pleased with himself. One of the adults has run off and comes back with a camera and a scale and a measuring tape. They measure the fish and the man declares it is twenty nine inches and ten pounds and eight ounces. He says we have to get a picture of this and his dad brings the stringer over to him with the fish on it and says hold this up for the camera and Faolán takes hold of the stringer and the fish is almost as long as he is tall and much heavier than he realized it would be. The man fiddles with the camera and Faolán’s arm gets so tired but he keeps holding the fish up because if he lets it drop then the tail touches the ground and the man with the camera says hike her high son and takes a picture finally, and Faolán is relieved when he finishes because his hand is sore from the stringer and his arm is sore from the weight of the fish.

Before they leave for the year Beth who owns the lodge has the picture framed and puts it up in the middle of the wall in the lodge behind the bar where the old timey cash register is and where everyone will be sure to see it.

Let’s go clean her, his dad says and they hike up the steep hill to the path that runs along the lake, and they go almost all the way to the lodge but then just before they turn off and there’s a little shack there, wooden slats on the bottom and screens about halfway up the walls. Faolán has been dreading this. This is the cleaning house. His dad opens the door and Faolán is hit with a stench that makes him want to throw up and stops. And his dad is holding the door open and says come on then, we don’t want to let the insects in and Faolán starts to breathe through his mouth but it doesn’t help very much because he can taste the smell and it feels like it sticks to his throat. But he makes himself go into the little hut.

His dad puts the fish on a table as a few flies buzz around inside the cleaning house and especially over a reeking garbage can where the odor is the strongest. His dad takes a long knife in a light brown leather sheath out and says to Faolán do you want to do it? And Faolán isn’t entirely sure about what’s involved, but he is certain he does not.

His dad shrugs and lays the fish out on a high workbench and it gives Faolán a lidless stare with the patient expression of underwater things and then his father takes out the knife and runs it through the walleye’s white belly, and the blood pours out red and Faolán feels his mouth fill with saliva like he’s going to throw up, and he thinks again of Cali and the place she has that is like the cut in the fish’s belly. His dad reaches into the slit and pulls the intestines out, and throws them into the reeking garbage can and the flies buzz around like insane things. Then his father runs the knife through the fish again and splits it in half, everything except for the head. And there is so much blood, much more than Faolán realized there would be and it makes him feel lightheaded and a little woozy. Now he’s sure he’s going to throw up and he tells his dad who says not in here, go out into the woods then.

So he pushes the screen door open and staggers out and he hears it slam shut behind him as the spring pulls it back. And he walks a little into the woods and spits a few times. He starts to feel a little better since there’s no smell. The wind shifts and carries the stench of the cleaning house to him and Faolán quickly moves so he’s not downwind any more. As he waits outside he looks up and sees that the sun has started to sink in the sky. He wanders around the area and his father finally comes out and they walk back to the cabin.

His mom and his little sister are in the cabin and his dad tells her all about the fish that Faolán caught and she seems delighted and she starts to make beer batter while Faolán goes into his room and gets the skull to show to his dad who tells him it is a deer skull.

The sun sets and the fish is served, but Faolán keeps thinking about the cleaning house, the flies and the slit in the fish’s belly, and then thinking about the worms crawling through the rich black loam in the white cup and he finds he cannot eat very much fish without feeling ill. So he drinks a lot of water and eats as many potato chips as he can and sort of pushes the fish around on his plate and asks to be excused every few minutes until both his parents are a little tired of him and let him leave.

Faolán goes outside and he sees that the woods are lit by fireflies. He catches one, cupping it between his hands and then opening them so he can see it glow, winking on and then off. He tries to release the firefly but for some reason it doesn’t fly away. It stays on his hand and waves its antenna and glows until Faolán finally brushes it tenderly away and watches it lift off into the quiet and gentle night. Then he hears his sister begin to cry in the cabin and then he can hear his parents talking and their voices begin to rise and sound sharp and he wonders what he did wrong. He felt so certain that the fish would make things ok, he had hoped forever but at least for a while. He thinks about the skull and Cali and the fish and he wanders away from the cabin and out of range of the argument and listens instead to the lake lap the shore far below the wooded path he is on, down the sandy hill with all the roots that he likes to climb, and he listens to the loons call lonely and long out over the water as they look for the ones that have gone. The sound strikes him as sad in a way he has no words for and he has that sense again of a kind of hypnotic distance, of being impossibly far away. He sits in the dark feeling very small and lost, like he is a cinder floating and spinning in the darkness over a campfire, first soaring on the hot air over the flames and then plunging, falling forever down deeper and deeper. He waits there in the night and he wonders if perhaps the darkness isn’t forever after all.

An Excerpt from the Tome of Sable Chains: Creation of Visanguka

 

https://www.deviantart.com/balaa

“Kanego told me that lions of the bush will not attack men without provocation, but will lie in the grass and let one pass. He added that stories of lions breaking down doors to kill people are lies; these are men. Lions have shame, man does not."   - Perfect Lions, Perfect Leaders by Allen F. Roberts

The creation of a visanguka is a mighty feat of sorcery involving perfect timing and self-control. It is a thing a mage may be proud of, for the process is long and fraught.

To begin, the sorcerer should first obtain two animals, a lion and a rat. These are starved to death. Maggots are allowed to gestate in the corpses, and are fed and fattened until they become huge and furry. The maggot of the lion will provide the visanguka with the ability to change shape and wield the weapons at a lion’s disposal. The maggot of the rat will provide the visanguka with a complete lack of shame, so that it will kill without reason or remorse.

While the maggots are grown, the sorcerer shall prepare an amulet. The amulet is to be charged with components that make one invisible: a shard of glass from a smartphone screen, which people stare at to the exclusion of all else around them; the vocal cords of one who has gone unheard – for example, an innocent man who has been hung in spite of protesting his guiltlessness or a victim of rape who screamed for help that never came, or who is disbelieved; an insect of the order hemiptera family reduviidae, who we walk by without noticing. These are the sorts of components that the evocator must charge the amulet with. This will provide the assassin with the ability to walk invisible and soundless, unseen, unheard, and unnoticed, into any compound, no matter how well secured.

The mage meanwhile should also create a child from clay and weave a basket. Let the child be as perfect as the mage can make it, of a size that indicates he is a newborn, and sculpted with his mouth closed. If the child is smaller it is well, but if it is too small, the sorcery will fail.  Let the basket have a lid that can be secured closed, and straps that allow the mage to fasten the basket to his body so that it rests against his stomach. The reeds of the basket must be woven in such a way that the sign of VULDRA VORN ZELAR is clear upon all of its sides.

When all is in readiness, the mage is to place the amulet around the neck of the child of clay. He then places the lion maggot in his mouth and blows it along with his life’s breath into the right nostril of the child. The same is to be done with the rat maggot, saving that the nostril should be the left one.

The child should then be placed into the basket and the basked closed, secured, and sealed with the mage’s emission (hence the sorcerer must be a potent male). The mage must then strap the basket to his belly, never taking it off for any reason for a time of one hundred and eleven days and nights. It is crucial that the cessation of this period of time coincides with the new moon! At the end of this time, upon nightfall and if the moon is new, the mage should open the basket. If the sorcery has been successful, the mouth of the clay child will have opened. If it is closed, no further sorcery can be worked upon this effigy and the mage must begin again! But if the mouth is open, all is well and he may continue.

The sorcerer is then to cut his wrist, giving the child to suck upon the wound. The sorcerer must wait for the child’s eyes to open and ultimately must judge for themselves when the child’s grey flesh has flushed with the color of life. He should then close the lid and fasten it again. Daily, the child will seem to change back into clay, and this feeding must be repeated again at nightfall for another one hundred and eleven days. Again, the wizard must never remove the basket from his body for any reason unless he is willing to begin anew, for removing the basket will cause the spell to fail. This is a time of great peril, for the child is hungry and will need more and more blood to sup upon as it grows! A careless wizard will be drained entirely of his life force and yet if the child is given too little to feed upon, it will die. The mage must wait until the clay child’s chest rises and falls as though it breathes and for its skin to have the hue of vitality before he withholds his blood for the remainder of the day. If the wizard judges well, the child will live and can be removed from the basket at the end of the second one hundred and elven day period. Thus released, it must be fed on the flesh of a human murder victim chosen at random and will then grow quicky, attaining the size and wisdom of an adult (though it will never talk, having been fashioned by necessity with no tongue) in not more than three months.

Once all this has happened, the mage will have a powerful servant; a visanguka lion-man who can spread terror and enact revenge at the sorcerer’s demand.

Crow

Kris Tsujikawa

For weeks afterwards, Faolán feels like nothing. Not like a Buddhist nothing, which is everything and bullshit and wonderful, but like an American nothing, like the holes in Wonderbread nothing, different and empty and invisible and absent. Hollowed out and left behind, like the shell of a cicada, papery and delicate. A burnt thing, consumed and ashen and scorched. As though he would disintegrate if someone even blew on him.

One morning he wakes and goes to the bathroom and rinses his mouth, spitting several times. He looks at himself in the mirror. He feels shaky. Weak. He feels like a fool.

He makes this accusation as he looks at himself.

“Fool. Idiot,” he says, calmly.

Then the words came in a rush. His voice rises by degrees with each word until he is shouting, and keeps rising until he is screaming.

“Idiot! Fool! Weakling! Coward! You are so fucking stupid, you know that?! Do you get that, you fucking brainless asshole?”

He heaps abuse upon his reflection.

“Trash! Moron! Man, FUCK you! FUCK YOU! I fucking HATE you, you know that? I fucking hate you.”  

The last sentence comes out like a sob and now he’s weeping, the tears running down his cheeks even as he clenches his jaw and growls through his gritted teeth. “You set yourself up for this! You realize that? You did this to yourself! Of COURSE this is how it was going to go. You KNEW it would go this way. You fucking KNEW IT. And you STILL did it, you fucking ASSHOLE!”

He flings the medicine cabinet open and starts pulling things out, hurling shaving cream and ibuprofen and toothpaste around the bathroom until his hand finds the small box of razors. Fingers shaking, he fumbles with it and gets one of them out. Even in the dim light of the bathroom, the edge of it gleams, bright with promise.

There is a sudden tapping at the textured glass of the bathroom window. Faolán registers it but it seems distant. He ignores it and turns the razor back and forth in his hand, watches the light dance across the blade, hypnotized by the idea of the blood against the white porcelain of the bathroom sink, the pale mint tiles.

The tapping sounds again, frantic this time.

“What the FUCK?!” Faolán shouts and, furious at the interruption, he slams the window open.

A sleek black Crow is perched on the outside sill. It releases a bright red berry from its beak and barks out a call, a cackling caw that sounds suspiciously like a laugh to Faolán.

Apoplectic, he eyes it incredulously.

“What the FUCK do you WANT?” he shrieks at it.

“Remember the dream,” Crow says calmly.

The razor falls from his nerveless fingers as Faolán gapes at it. It just talked, he thinks. I don’t think it’s me. I know I’m fucked in the head, but I don’t think it’s me. Suddenly, he cannot make his voice louder than a whisper.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“I am Crow,” croaks Crow, “Keeper of the Law.”

“What do you want?” he asks again, fascinated.

“Remember the dream,” Crow repeats.

Faolán’s mind races to match his heart as he casts desperately through the wreckage of his memory. What dream? he wonders, which one?

And then he knows.

“I was a bird,” says Faolán, “I flew and flew.” The words come out almost like a sigh.

Crow inclines its head slightly.

“I soared over the world,” Faolán continues, his countenance calm, “I caught the wind and rose. I could glide for a time, coasting carelessly on the currents, banking with the breath of the breeze. And I looked down at the world and saw how beautiful it was. How fragile and how beautiful. And I flew. I flew and flew.”

Then anger creases Faolán’s brow. “But I woke up.”

“Such is the way of dreams,” says Crow.

“What did it mean?” asks Faolán, “What do you mean?”

But Crow does not answer. He picks the shiny crimson berry up with his beak, cocks his head at Faolán and fixes a quizzical stare on him with one eye for a moment and then, with no further prelude, takes to the air and flies away.

Goryō (御霊)

The Gion Festival (祇園祭, Gion Matsuri) is one of the largest and most famous festivals in Japan, taking place annually during the month of July in Kyoto. Many events take place in central Kyoto and at the Yasaka Shrine, the festival's patron shrine, located in Kyoto's famous Gion district, which gives the festival its name. It is formally a Shinto festival, and its original purposes were purification and pacification of disease-causing entities. There are many ceremonies held during the festival, but it is best known for its two Yamaboko Junkō (山鉾巡行) processions of floats, which take place on July 17 and 24.

 

The three nights leading up to each day of a procession are sequentially called yoiyoiyoiyama (宵々々山), yoiyoiyama (宵々山), and yoiyama (宵山). During these yoiyama evenings, Kyoto's downtown area is reserved for pedestrian traffic, and some traditional private houses near the floats open their entryways to the public, exhibiting family heirlooms in a custom known as the Folding Screen Festival (屏風祭り, Byōbu Matsuri). Additionally, the streets are lined with night stalls selling food such as yakitori (barbecued chicken on skewers), taiyaki, takoyaki (fried octopus balls), okonomiyaki, traditional Japanese sweets, and many other culinary delights. The Gion Festival originated during an epidemic as part of a purification ritual ...

- From the Wikipedia entry on Gion Matsuri

In a broad sense, Goryō (御霊) is an honorific for a spirit, especially one that causes hauntings, and the term is used as a synonym for onryō (怨霊, vengeful Japanese ghosts).

- From the Wikipedia entry on Goryō

The potato was almost too hot to hold in spite of the clean white paper wrapper. It was slit at the top and steam poured out of it, liquifying a huge slab of white butter. Oscar took a leisurely bite of it, allowing the butter to drench his moustache and run across his cheeks and into his beard, savoring everything: the fluffy texture of the baked potato flesh, the salt, and the sweet fat of the churned cream. He waited a moment, chewing, eyes closed and face tilted to the sky, and then took a slow slug of icy golden lager. He wiped the back of his wrist and hand across his mouth to clean off the molten milkfat and looked up. Sanae was watching him, her eyes liquid in the late afternoon light, a smile on her face, shoulders relaxed. It made him happy to see her like this.

They were in Sanae’s homeland of Japan. They arrived slightly over a week ago, to visit her parents, and while they were there, it had been stressful for Sanae; she was constantly translating. Oscar spoke a bit of the language – “enough to get into trouble but not enough to get out,” as he said, and though he managed to make do with body language and his limited vocabulary when he was on his own, there had still been a lot of demands on Sanae. So when the opportunity came along for the two of them to get away, they jumped at it. They had traveled together first to Nara, and then on to Kyoto. Oscar had wanted to see the old temples and palaces, and they had not disappointed – the Golden Pavilion and Kiyo-Mizu Dera in particular were breathtaking.

Now, they had arrived at the Gion Matsuri – an old, old festival in Kyoto. He had been told it originated in the eighth century during an epidemic, and was a ritual to prevent calamities. A cab had dropped them out at the festival grounds, and they walked past barriers meant to keep cars away and onto a street where the festival was being held. People milled about and food vendors here and there were setting up their stalls or hawking their wares. Sanae bought a few dumplings, but Oscar’s nose had caught something else that smelled absolutely wonderful to him. He hadn’t realized how much dairy he ate until he arrived here – her family had a fairly traditional Japanese diet. The food had been good – miso soup and vegetables and rice that the family grew themselves, incredibly fresh and delicious – but he didn’t care very much for seafood generally. He wished that were different – it would have made life with Sanae simpler, certainly. And he thought Japanese seafood was beautiful. But he just didn’t like the taste of it very much, and so, though he always found something he could eat, he hadn’t felt truly satiated since they arrived. And now the smell of butter wafted through the air and it made him salivate. They tracked the smell to a vendor who was selling jagabata – grilled potato and rich butter from Hokkaido – and Oscar bought one along with a bottle of beer and dove in.

It was, at that moment, one of the best things he had ever tasted. The beer, too, went down smoothly and tasted wonderful. There was something to be said for the pleasure of drinking like this, having a cold beer in the dwindling light of an incredibly hot and humid Kyoto afternoon, as others did the same, everyone in a celebratory mood. Sanae ate her dumpling and he ate his potato and they lost themselves in the simple joy of being. I wish this moment could go on forever, he thought, maybe heaven is a place where nothing ever changes.

He took in his surroundings. More and more people were arriving to the festival. About a block ahead, at an intersection, Oscar could see a massive float sitting on the pavement, the gold and red of it blazing in the setting sun. It dwarfed the people surrounding it, gleaming with ornate gilded woodwork and colorful decorations.

“If we get separated, meet me back here at the base of that float,” he said, gesturing towards it.

“Oscar, if we get separated, get a cab and get back to the hotel,” Sanae replied, a little more sharply than was necessary, Oscar thought. But he wasn’t about to let that ruin the moment. He and Sanae strolled through the crowd towards the float. Now and then she would stop and look at a vendor’s wares while Oscar watched the people around him. It had become quite busy, with people all over the place as they arrived at the intersection where the float stood.  As he scanned the corridors made by the buildings he could see more floats, many more floats, all of them very much like the one they stood at the foot of, an endless number of them in every direction excepting the one they had come from. The floats stood at each and every intersection as far as he could see, disappearing into the distance.

He appreciated why she had told him to get a cab and get back to the hotel if they got separated.

It really was becoming crowded now as the sun set. People milled about, young women in fabulous and colorful yukatas, one a pale pink with bright red chrysanthemums and a dark blue sash, one night blue with pink plum blooms and a bright yellow obi, one royal blue with white cherry blossoms and a grass green belt. All of them accompanied by giggling friends wearing equally brilliant patterns, or escorted by young men in more masculine robes, jagged sea blue stripes on a grey background shot with geometric tessellations in pale green foam, or a textured charcoal yukata with a white belt that looked as though it had been touched with a calligrapher’s brush, another wearing azure, dragons outlined in white wrapped around his body from head to toe.  And there were people in western wear and more formal kimono as well, all of them swirling around him and Sanae as they moved through the maze of humanity. He gripped her hand tightly as she led him through the throng and glanced around.

It was then he got his first glimpse of the monster.

He saw it through the crowd, and it truly was just a glimpse, gone almost before he registered it was there. It had appeared out of a profusion of floats and bodies, a riot of colors and sounds and textures surrounding it, and was swallowed almost instantly by the multitudes. For that one moment, he saw it clearly and was absolutely transfixed by the sight of it, his blood seeming to stop suddenly in his veins as he experienced an instant of almost pure terror and confusion.

It brought to mind pictures he had seen that were supposed to simulate having a stroke, where everything was almost, but not quite, recognizable. You would get the impression of a kitchen, perhaps, though there certainly wasn’t anything you could identify as a kitchen in the picture. This bit of the photo looked like it should be a curtain partially covering a window, perhaps, and this bit looked as though it should be a clear jar filled perhaps with coffee beans or some sort of spice. The problem was, even though that’s what you wanted to see, the picture didn’t actually show those things. What was truly there was a meaningless glob of colors and shapes that made no sense at all, information that was completely un-processible. So as much as your eye wanted to see a flower or maybe a rooster’s head with its comb, what was actually in front of you was incomprehensible.

That’s what looking at the monster was like. Only, instead of getting the impression of a kitchen, Oscar’s eye gave him the impression of a human being. But past that, he couldn’t actually identify anything – there were parts that looked almost like eyes, and a nose, and something that looked very nearly like hair, and the overall shapes and colors were close – but nothing was right, in the end it was meaningless almost-patterns of skin and tissue and things that looked like they might be clothes but absolutely, in the final analysis, weren’t. And in that moment, his mind screamed at him: “It’s a monster! Oh my god, it is a monster, a real monster!”

The thing was swallowed by the bodies of the crowd and a moment later he was no longer certain just what he had seen. Maybe I just saw a bunch of people together and got confused, he thought. But it was difficult to convince himself, and he was left with a nagging sensation that he had seen something secret and terrible.

Finally, he made up his mind that it must be someone with some kind of awful birth defect, or someone who had been in a fire or had some kind of industrial accident, and he told himself he had no right to feel horrified by them the way he had. If anything, it was sad. The person must be lonely, he thought, but in spite of this internal monologue, he didn’t feel sad.  He had seen something that repelled him, and felt a deep loathing and repugnance that mingled with the perverse desire to see it again, to confirm just how hideous it was. And yet, he was afraid to see it again as well, though he did not know why, only that the sight was upsetting in a way that he could not articulate. In turn, this feeling led to a kind of shame – he had been raised with the idea that all human beings deserved understanding and compassion and had taken that to heart. In his work in the burn unit he had seen plenty of people who had been through terrible things, some of whom were injured beyond the capacity for speech. One lady in particular came to mind, a woman who had been trapped in her car after an accident, who had to wait, ensnared, as the hungry fire came to devour her, eating her fingers, eyes, lips, tongue and nose as it worked its way across her body.  She was terrible to look upon, but he felt compassion for her. But for some reason he could not identify, he was unable to summon any compassion whatsoever for the thing he had seen through the crowd. He hated it, and though he was ashamed of his hate, it would not go away.

He had decided to stop ruminating on it and put the thing out of his mind when he realized he had lost Sanae. She was no longer with him. He spun about, looking for her wildly. When had she let go of his hand? he wondered. Was it when they stopped momentarily to look at the takoyaki seller’s wares? He seized on this idea and turned around to make his way through the horde to the vendor, who was shouting at the top of his lungs. “Irasshaimase! Irasshaimase! Irasshaimase!”

But as he got to the stall he realized it was not the same stall they had approached earlier, not the same man shouting, and as he listened to the peddler hawking his goods, he realized he could hear at least three other people over the din of the mob shouting the same thing: “Irasshaimase! Irasshaimase! Irasshaimase!”  Which one of them did we stop at? he wondered, the icy fingers of panic beginning to tickle his bowels.

Desperate now, he pushed his way through the mass to the other vendors, looking wildly about for Sanae. But he didn’t see her, and none of the vendors looked familiar. He made his way along in the general direction they had been going, wondering if he could perhaps find something to stand on so he could see over the heads of the crowd. But he feared even if he did so, he wouldn’t be able to identify her. The sun had truly set while he had been casting about for her, and now the festival was lit only by street signs in wild neon kana, glowing festival lanterns, and the fires of the food vendors. It was rapidly becoming too dark to pick faces from the masses.

Resigned, he decided it would be best to follow her advice, and make his way out of the section of Kyoto set aside for the festival and to try to get a cab back to the hotel. He reassured himself with the idea that she would be waiting in their room, and would scold him for being so careless when he got back. He wasn’t certain which way they had come from, and scanning the skyline he couldn’t see Kyoto Tower, which he had been using to orient himself.  He resolved to walk in one direction until he was out of the festival and set out to what he thought was the west. He had a vague idea that their hotel was in that direction. The lights and yukatas and decorated floats had lost their charm for him at this point and he put his head down, his shoulders up, and bulled and pushed his way through the crowd. After a length of time he looked up and for a split second he thought he saw the monster again, off in the distance through the partying rabble, a shape that should make sense but simply didn’t.

Then a teenager walking with his friends stumbled into him and would have fallen if Oscar hadn’t caught him. On pure instinct, Oscar grabbed at his robe as the kid fell, and managed to seize the cloth of a sleeve in his fist. Helpless in the inertia of his fall, the teenager would have tumbled face first into the ground if not for Oscar. He mumbled something at Oscar as he swayed back to his feet, only to overbalance and go spinning back towards his friends, who tittered at his drunkenness. The group moved on and as they made their way into the night he shuddered and glanced back in the direction of the monster, but instead of the horrible thing, he saw Sanae.

Relief flooded him. She was walking away from him, but it was her, undoubtedly and absolutely her. He recognized the clothing – not a yukata, but western-style clothes, jeans and a black camisole top – and her purse, a handbag made of soft, fine inden-ya, deerskin dyed black with a red lacquered dragonfly pattern covering it. But more than either of those he recognized her walk: the short, hesitant steps, the ever-so-slightly pigeon-toed gait that carried her slender, delicate frame.

“Sanae!” he called out. But she didn’t seem to hear him. He started after her, and called her name again, loud enough that heads swung his way as she turned a corner and slipped from view.

He really was pushing people out of the way now as he fought through the horde. He turned the corner and found that the crowd began to thin out here. He saw her ahead, perhaps two blocks away. This time she turned right, down an alley that ran at a diagonal to the avenue they were on. It was still a little too crowded to run, but he figured he had finally made it to the outskirts of the fairground. He began to jog, moving as quickly as he could towards the alley.

He followed the path she had taken and as he rounded the next corner in pursuit of her, he glanced ahead and saw her silhouette in an open doorway filled with dim light. Then the door slid shut, plunging the area into shadow.

He stopped short. What is going on? he wondered. He took in his surroundings and as he did, he became more confused and concerned. This was an empty, winding alley. He seemed to have left the crowd behind completely and that worried him. He didn’t see a single soul here, just the black shapes of buildings blocking the starlight. After the lanterns and the fires and neon signs, it seemed almost desolate here, and quite dark, and he wondered what she was thinking, coming down here.

He walked along towards the door, casting about for anything that might explain her behavior, and he realized suddenly how silent it was here, and how oppressive the shadows truly were. He could barely make any details out as he stumbled along, and as he neared the door he had seen Sanae go into, he stopped again, unsure.

What on earth is she doing here? he wondered, spiders of apprehension crawling around his belly.

It seemed so incredibly out of character for her. Sanae was the kind of person that was always where she said she was going to be when she said she was going to be there. It was very odd that she would visit some home in Kyoto instead of just getting a cab and heading to the hotel to meet him. At least he assumed it was a home. Then he recalled being told about the Folding Screen Festival, a part of the Gion Matsuri where people opened their homes and displayed family heirlooms.  Perhaps this is part of that? he wondered. But everything felt off, wrong. 

He looked at the door again. His heart began to beat faster. Perhaps I should just get back to the hotel.  Maybe it's not her, he thought. But he knew it was her. He was confident about that, if nothing else. He knocked at the door and waited, then knocked again, harder.

No answer.

Finally he tried the handle, and finding the door unlocked, he slid it to the side. It was even darker inside than it was out, everything cast in impenetrable gloom save a small circle of starlight that shone through the door. It revealed a pair of strappy black sandals. Sanae's sandals. He recognized them.

He stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him and called out, “Konbanwa? Sumimasen...”

There was no reply but he had the sense of something moving very stealthily in the interior darkness.  

“Hello?” he called, squeezing the word out of a throat that suddenly seemed like it wanted to close shut. The sweat that had cooled him in the humid Kyoto night now felt cold and clammy on his body, and his heart was beating like a triphammer. He could actually feel the blood pulse in his temples and pounding through his chest. He thought briefly of the monster in the crowd. There was a bang from the back of the room and the shadows shifted as he jumped and spun towards the noise. Then there was a whirring, clicking sound. Something about the size of a cat was approaching him. He braced himself, all his senses telling him to turn and run, to flee this place and never return.

The thing slid smoothly into the light and he gasped.  It was a tiny man.  He held a plate with a teacup on it. The little man neared him and halted just a few inches from his legs, then suddenly bowed his head and raised his tray with a jerk, offering him the teacup. Oscar nearly screamed, but realized just as he began that this wasn't a man at all.  It was a robot. A karakuri robot – an automata from the 17th century or so made to move with whalebone springs and strings, something like an old wind up toy, only much, much more sophisticated. It had its hair styled with a topknot, like an old fashioned nobleman, and it wore a hakama and a tiny man's kimono.  The deep blue and grey of the cloth and the black hair made the white paint on its wooden face seem very pale in the small ring of light.

He laughed in relief. This must be part of the Folding Screen Festival. Sanae was having a bit of fun with him, that was all. He bent down to take the cup in both hands, and lifting it from the tray triggered the karakuri to start up again. It slowly turned around and headed back into the darkness from which it came. His eyes followed it to a slim, feminine form in the shadows that he had not been able to pick out of the darkness earlier. Thank goodness, he thought, it's her.

“Sanae?” he called. “Honey?”

“I am here, my dear one,” came a voice as hard as the slamming of a coffin lid and as cold as the air in an emptied grave. Oscar’s breath caught in his throat as the lights came on and he could see everything for the first time.

“Oh God!” he shrieked, “Oh God! Oh God!”

A World With No Extras VIII: Life is a State of Mind

It has been a while since I’ve posted - you can thank the Cook County Sherriff for that (to steal a Joesky line). In all seriousness, I’ve managed (I think!) to get together a group to play Lacuna Part I – so most of my available brainpower has been...

\\\(?)\\\###REDACTED – DEEP BLUE CLEARNCE REQUIRED###///(?)///

...so the main blog-related thing I’ve been doing this month is working on my d23 project; I’ve finished off The Chop. Here, I set out to do “more normal” characters, Just Regular Folks, you know, and instead I wound up populating it with freaks yet again. And yet again, some of the characters from my fiction have shown up. I’m really glad I’ve decided to do this with a wiki-style tool – the webs of relationships have gotten exceptionally complicated, and I’m winding up with a six-degrees-of-separation kind of thing. This is sort of intentional – if you have been following this project, you will recall that one of the things I was trying to do with it was make a web of NPCs such that when the PCs took an action, the effects would ripple through the entire community in some way, and would even have recursive effects as what the NPCs did in response to the PC action caused their own ripples. I am starting to wonder what it would be like if I wrote a book where I just had a single character do one thing and then followed all the ripples and recursions out ad infinitum. Might be interesting! Or, quite possibly, it could also bore a reader to tears. I shall have to be quite careful if I try it not to be too precious about it.

Anyway, on to some of this month’s freaks.

First is Rebel Cell 94 – there are a few characters from the fiction here, one named Eli who I expect most of the folks familiar with this blog will know. Some characters who were only names in the past have been fleshed out a little. For example, there’s Christopher Trane, for whom I took inspiration from Ted Kooser’s poem Tattoo:

What once was meant to be a statement—
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

I’ve been reading a lot of Kooser recently – he has a kind of quietness to him, but that doesn’t stop his poems from being like dripping daggers held in the fist themselves.  And that poem captures the essence of Christopher Trane far better than I could, I think.

Rebel Cell 94 tries to operate in total secrecy, but they have been betrayed – Richard Darian and Harv Stroud grew up with a man named Thomas Byrd, and he was accepted into the cell on their word. He is a spy for the Cruel Duke by way of one of his retainers, Camryn Ramsey, who may be familiar from the last post about Sovereign Mount. Thomas has sold them all out both for fear and for monetary gain, and thus this particular rebellion is doomed, though they have not met that doom quite yet in this version of the city.

Another group that calls the Chop home is Ars Diabolicus – a group of artists who are obsessed with extremes, with transgressive art and achieving the sublime through excess. They create material meant to shock those who consume it into different modes of thinking and to take a long hard look at the conventional wisdom of the day. In addition to Faolán Delaney, another character from the fiction, we have Mallory Compos and Elyse Bradshaw, lovers who have formed an avant-garde jazz ensemble called Succubus, and the visual artist Harrison Stephens. His work is exceptionally disturbing – sometimes because of the material it depicts, babies being branded with hate symbols by smiling wolflike beings, an infant in an amniotic sac being injected with some puzzling substance by a sinister, hooded, skeletal revenant, half human half insectoid things feasting on decaying flesh, the world depicted in repeating tessellations of cock and cunt, and on and on. But even when his subject material is much tamer, his work still radiates a sense of menace. A burning refrigerator – what’s inside? A window into an empty bedroom at night. Harrison’s works are both prized and loathed by the critics.

Making up part of the Cross Street Merchant’s Guild, brothers Felix and Alex Mendoza look very similar but could not be further apart spiritually. Felix is an honest businessman, the older son who inherited their father’s business and who works as a tailor, taking both custom fittings for good clothes and mending clothes that are falling apart. His brother, Alex, meanwhile, is both a money lender and launderer. The kind of people that come to Alex for a loan are the kind that can’t get a loan anywhere else, and his rates are usury. But: he is connected. He knows Jace Blanchard from the Red Cartel, and helps convert Jace’s funds into “clean money.” Because of this, he is also afforded a bodyguard from the Cartel – a man named Brixton Orr. Brixton is beautiful, the kind of prettyboy that many men dislike and envy on sight, all ice blue eyes, square jaw, smooth but muscled model’s physique, and the sort who obviously spends hours on personal grooming. The pretty boy brooks no insults however, and is a supremely qualified combatant, skilled in all types of weapons as well as unarmed fighting, and is not in the least bit afraid to defend his honor.

Any or all of these people might be found from time to time in Blue Heaven, one of the Chop’s seedier drinking establishments. Blue Heaven also features live entertainment – sometimes it might be music, and other times it might be a strip show. Blue Heaven is not picky about its patrons, and both male and female strippers are featured in different parts of the establishment. The bouncer, a man named Zion Walters, has an impressive collection of tattoos, all done by Ryder Duran (who you may or may not remember as one of the residents of Shattering Stone). The dancers that work at Blue Heaven love Zion – there isn’t a single one of them he hasn’t extricated from some fucked-up situation with a patron who thought touching went with tipping.

Rounding out these places is a church – the First Church of the Holy Gyre. This is a place of contradictions – it’s run by a con man named Bexley Hunt, who is a classic grifter, and the operation itself really was set up to be his ultimate grift. However, by fate or by some dice of the gods, he has had a living saint, a real living saint, take up residence in the church. This man is Chance, and he is a humble gardener. He spends his days tending the garden in the inner courtyard of the church. Every now and then, a parishioner is sent in to seek advice from him. Chance has a way of putting someone completely at ease, and no matter what question they ask, he seems to be able to reply using the garden as a metaphor for the infinite circumstances of life. People who come to him seeking wisdom leave with the tumult in their hearts stilled, replaced by the idea that life is a state of mind, and their mind is at peace.  The idea that Chance may be incapable of understanding anything at all aside from his garden simply never occurs to them; His statements somehow manage to convey the essence of being present, and being mindful. In short, those who speak to him understand that they should focus on being there, fully present and engaged in one’s life.

Next up for WWNE: Heliotrope Hill, an arts and theater district..

A World With No Extras VII: Noblesse Oblige

I have made a table of contents for this project for anyone who comes across a later post and is interested in the earlier ones - you will find it on the righthand side towards the bottom of the blog.

This month has been rough in terms of maintaining my commitment to this goofy d23 project I have going on. As of today, April 29th, I have 25 character created for the month of April and most of that has been done in big, herky-jerky, catchup sessions. Cram sessions almost. BUT: I can always go back, dig in, and clean up – the most important thing is to get the work done in the first place, to get it out of my head and down somewhere where other people can see it.

It has been a busy month – workwise things are really starting to pick up and, having changed jobs recently, there’s still a lot for me to learn. I don’t get very much creative time; when I do it is usually interrupted every 15 to 30 minutes. I’m not trying to make excuses here, but those are definitely contributing factors. The other big factor has been a sudden glut of inspiration in fiction writing, which has spawned three additional stories thus far. So it looks like the Scarlet City is turning out to be pre-work for a novel after all. Still, I am going to continue working through the d23 aspect of this – it’s been fruitful so far and it may still wind up being a worthwhile RPG accessory.

This month I worked on Sovereign Hill. Quite a few characters from the fiction I’ve posted here live in this neighborhood. The Rude Duke of Solitude Spire lives here, as does the Baron of Barren Manor, and a host of smaller noble houses. The Duke remains a distant figure, hardly described, but some of his servants have stepped into inky flesh at this point – Camryn Ramsey has been a retainer for Solitude Spire longer than much of the city has been alive. Few can remember a time before he was one of the men behind the Ruby Throne. He is a scheming, underhanded, lying rat. He must be to have maintained his power for so long. He also happens to be able to put people immediately at ease around him, in spite of his reputation, and to make himself seem fair in all dealings. This is the result of long experience in the political intrigues that surround the highest office in the Red City.

A cadre of assassins is hidden here – it forms the base from which one of them, a man named Blackmouth, operates. The cadre is led by a geriatric woman called Grandmother; though she is ancient, none would dare gainsay her except perhaps, for her employers – and even they might think twice before doing so.

A six year-old girl named Darling also lives with the cadre. The cadre operates in Archetypes – some of which may be familiar, others alien. There will always be assassins named Blackmouth, Fog, Dust, and Komodo. Sometimes an assassin who is the exemplar of one archetype will become the exemplar of another. One day, Darling will become Grandmother, if she lives that long, but in the meantime, she is Darling.

Darling was taken from House Calix at the age of five, going willingly with Blackmouth after she saw her parents and therefore her future laying in tatters at her feet. Darling’s House was destroyed a year ago – a Ducal order of familial extermination for the crime of supporting a rebellion that Blackmouth carried out. There is still one servant left who is loyal to House Calix – Soto Collins, the former major domo. He is a man of many talents. Though he is unaware that Darling still lives, were he to find out he would stop at absolutely nothing to see her fortune restored.

In the meantime, he survives by the grace of House Hardin. Angel Hardin, Master of the House, is a small man, standing at just over five feet tall. He has wiry hair that grows in a great tuft from his head and deep set, intelligent brown eyes. He is urbane, cultured, and always seems to know exactly what to say.

Hardin genuinely thinks the nobility should be the servants of the people, and his presence at the Duke’s court is meant to encourage further work in this sphere. His wife is in full agreement. The other nobles think this is a dangerous idea, but Hardin is convinced it is the morally correct position. He is not in favor of a democracy, heavens forefend! But he is in favor of an enlightened nobility that serves the people. House Hardin is a formidable power, and this has kept them from being crushed for propagating these dangerously radical views. He uses Soto as a go-between to communicate with others about this sort of radicalism. Were he found out, no doubt one of the assassins would come for him, or perhaps the Duke would lean on House Cyprian to carry out this mission.

George Cyprian is in his early thirties, a serious man who recently started managing the affairs of House Cyprian. Looking over the books, he found he didn’t like what he was seeing. He outed a number of the family’s servants - including a few long-time retainers - for corruption, and had them put to death. This worked - those remaining ceased their embezzling almost immediately and the House’s fortunes have begun to turn around.

George’s main goal is to bring his House to the peak of economic and political power. What he inherited was in shambles - the execution of his father and subsequent disloyalty by the servants had crippled the house. 

George has begun to suspect that his wife, Zara Hardin-Cyprian, might not be entirely faithful herself. Zara does not love her husband, but she recognizes her duty to her house and does her best to maintain appearances. Angel and Frida, her parents, did their best to ensure she was aware of the responsibility the nobles had to the common people, but it simply has not stuck. Zara wants what she wants, wants it now, and sees no reason to deny herself, especially not for struggling commoners.

Zara is currently pregnant for the first time. She does not know this yet. The child might be George’s, but it is also possible that it belongs to her paramour, a man named Desmond Greer. She is desperate to keep this relationship a secret, as it could mean not only death for her and her lover, but dissolution of the alliance between the houses. In spite of this, she feels compelled to continue seeing him.


I have a few more to do, but I am planning on getting caught up on those today. Hopefully next month will be a little more consistent! Next up is The Chop – a rough and tumble middle-class neighborhood that produces people as varied as the cuts of meat that hang in the butcher shops and abattoirs and give the place its name.

The Dunes Like White Birds Glide Away

Faolán doesn’t know how to fall out of love.

He and Plum cop in the city, from a guy she knows, and then decide to head to the beach. They are in Plum’s little car. The girl can drive. On the way, she speeds along, weaving in and out of traffic, making moves that Faolán himself wouldn’t dare try. It exhilarates him to see her pull these maneuvers off over and over again. Once they get off the highway, she slows down, and they drive through a section of pine woods before they come to the dunes and the lake. The beach is empty and Plum gets out and starts fixing her shot right away.

Faolán has managed to keep the stuff at arm’s length in spite of introducing her to it, but she is hooked. All she wants to do is get the shit into her veins as fast as possible. They are alone among the dunes and the surrounding pines. Plum does her share; as she rushes she lets out this low moan that makes all the hair on his arms stand up. She watches him like a satisfied cat as he unfolds the piece of foil like it is alien origami. There is a lot of dope inside, much more than two typical dimes. Plum asks him if he’s done a double before and when Faolán tells her “no, I haven’t,” she says “are you sure?” and Faolán thinks about this phrase for a moment and decides it is the definition of rhetorical, because the question itself was answered a long time ago or they wouldn’t be here at all, and here they are. The answer is always going to be yes, because it has always been yes before, and it will be yes after. It is always and forever yes, but the ritual is important. The phrase indicates that you are about to step over a line, that your life is about to be different. Asking the question is invoking the ritual; answering it is acknowledging the line and one’s own willingness to set foot on the other side. The rest of what follows can then proceed without any ill feeling with regards to the consequences, but these words are the demarcation point. He completes his part of this ritual by answering in the affirmative and moves on to the next bit. He brushes the foil so the junk falls into the spoon and cooks it. There’s a little whiff of vinegar and the stuff cooks golden with almost no cut, no sludge left behind. Faolán struggles to find a vein and is about to say fuck it and use one of the big ones on the back of his hand but Plum stops him and says she’ll do it. He trusts her; she seems to be able to hit him every time. He has actually come to prefer that she does it rather than he do it himself. She climbs up on his lap with her knees at his sides, facing him. Her jeans are tight and her crotch is pressed against him, a sensation he feels he will never, ever tire of. He wraps his belt around his bicep like a tourniquet. She gives him an affectionate kiss and then picks up his arm and pushes the back of his wrist to his forehead, so he is posed like a southern belle about to faint, then says, “stay like that,” and peers at his forearm, frowning. She runs her hand over his arm and pushes down a couple of times, then nods when she finds a vein she’s happy with. “Hold still,” she murmurs, and her breath is sweet and gentle and her voice is low; he can feel the dark tones of her husky mezzo-soprano vibrate the skin of his face and earlobe. Faolán shudders involuntarily with pleasure, frisson, anticipation. There is a monstrous sensuality here, a hideous intimacy in this. She is about to penetrate him and make him feel incredible; it’s backwards, but it feels sexual to him.  He wonders why the backwardness of it doesn’t bother him, and then decides that probably all junkies are at least a little bit queer, too, even if they don’t want to admit it. She takes the rig and he feels the needle slide in to his flesh smoothly, and there's an odd sensation in his arm of being filled somehow and then she whispers “let go,” in his ear. He doesn’t know if she means the belt or his life or what but he does what she says and an incredible wave of warmth flows through his body. He has time to say “oh my fucking… god,” before he is helpless and overwhelmed and speech is beyond him. His head falls forward into her breasts where she cradles it with one hand while he rushes. As powerful as the tide, the warmth surges into the darkest corners of his being. It first fills him with a placid, gentle light, and then flows out past the boundaries of his body to form a trembling vesicle around him, surrounding and protecting him, braced against the ravages of awareness. All the sick, stupid sadness, the negative noise in his head, that endless, chattering monologue, is finally stilled, leaving him utterly without anger or anxiety, without sorrow or suffering. For an age, he floats suspended in golden wavelengths of devastating comfort.

Faolán is totally and hopelessly OK.

Without the pain of consciousness to mark time it is difficult to know whether seconds or eons pass in this reverberating eternity. He is a willing prisoner to the tranquility of oblivion, the serenity of death. When he was a child, death scared him. He has very few memories from childhood. It seems to him that when he tries to recall that time he winds up stumbling though the mazes of youth and can’t find what he was looking for. But this is a recollection he finds again and again: he used to lie in bed at night and ponder “not-being” and how it could not be imagined because humans only have experiences of being. And then he would try to imagine it anyway and writhe with the impossibility of the whole thing.

He becomes aware that he is in a room with high ceilings, covered in rich, old, dark wood paneling. Walnut, he thinks, but he is uncertain. French gothic style, ornate carvings on the panels. He’s sitting at a wet bar, the top of which is white marble. There is a sound like a great bell tolling a single time.

Across from him is a woman.

She is pale, almost albino, she is so pale. Her skin is flawless and milky. He can see delicate blue veins running beneath her skin, an intricate tracery under her collarbone and above her breasts. She has high cheekbones and a celestial nose. There is a chain of some pale and precious metal running from her ear to her nose on the left side of her face. She is blonde, and again the whiteness of her startles him. Her silver hair frames her oval face. Her eyes are large and wide set but he cannot tell what color they are. Sometimes they look grey; sometimes hazel. Much depends on the light and the shadow. It bothers him that he can’t figure this out. She is wearing a strapless cocktail dress of crushed blue velvet. It reveals her bare shoulders, upon which are a pair of blackwork tattoos. On the right, a heart. On the left, a skull.

She is the most beautiful thing Faolán has ever seen.

“I am Death-By-Love,” she says.

Faolán is silent. He finds it difficult to meet her gaze; in her presence he feels all his flaws acutely.

She tells him, “She is not yours, Faolán. She belongs to me.”

He cannot speak.

She continues, “You could be mine too, if you wanted.”

She reaches across the bar and takes his hand in hers, then brings it to her mouth. She presses her pale pink lips against him, first the back of his hand, then his wrist, then his forearm. Her touch sends shivers racing up and down his spine. He feels weak.

She presses her mouth once again to his forearm but this time she bites down. Faolán can feel her teeth puncture the muscle. The pain is exquisite, paralyzing. He cannot move, cannot even wrench his arm away. All he can do is gasp, drawing breath sharply as all his muscles stiffen and lock.  She throws her head back and his blood runs from her lips, rich and deep red. The color is a contrast to her flesh, crimson rivulets running down the pale valleys of her throat. This is her due, he thinks. The price to be paid for the ecstasy of her touch. All she demands is everything, and that there be no limits. No limits to pleasure, no limits to pain, no limits to desire – is it possible to live that way? 

Her whispered question, sotto voce, silky, seductive, “Can you be brave?”

“Yes.” he answers.

“Would you die for me?”

He wants to say Yes, of course, Yes, please, Yes, but then he thinks of writhing in his bed as a boy. Trying to imagine eternal nonexistence. He hesitates...

Perhaps not…perhaps it is only possible to die that way.

...and her small smile widens, becomes a cruel crescent on her face where her lips and the bloodstains run together. Her bared teeth betray a baleful grin.

“You still fear death. You are a coward, Faolán. For a time you will call your cowardice good sense and so will others.  But in the end, I will have you.”

She leans forward and pulls his face to hers, and kisses him

Faolán bursts into flame. The blood on his arm evaporates instantly in the heat. The air is almost too hot to inhale and the smell is unreal: sweet, cloying and filled with death. He watches his skin char and peel away from his body, dropping away from the muscle in long, black, curled strips. The fire clings to him. It is greedy. It sucks away soft tissue and sends cinders of burning hair to dance on the heated updrafts. Faolán understands. This is not a punishment. This is a promise: the troth of oblivion. Her face grows dim, his vision wreathed in flames. He still cannot tell what color her eyes are…

…and then they are green with a golden sunburst around the pupil. He is staring into Plum’s face. The last thing he can recall clearly is an incredible wave of warmth flowing through his body. He still feels warm and untroubled. He realizes he has been on the nod and she has been trying to wake him. He hasn’t been asleep, though, not exactly. The experience with the white woman was far too real and vivid to be a dream. A hallucination? No, he doesn’t think so. It’s from some other place, some in-between place, the interzone between dreams and death.

“Hey,” Plum is crooning, “hey. Come back a little.”

“I’m here,” he manages to croak. His throat is sore, he can barely move his lips and tongue, his mouth completely dry, filled with corpse-dust. He sees that night has fallen and the fireflies have drifted over the dunes from the pines.  He wonders how long he has been out. Even my lungs are stiff, he thinks. He asks Plum.

“Almost three hours,” she says, stroking his chest, “you went out almost right away. You scared me. I thought I was gonna have to take you to the hospital.”

“What happened?” He is still having trouble speaking. He can tell he aches, but the pain is somehow distant. It carries no significance while he is still wrapped in the warm grasp of the dope.

“Right after you rushed you stopped breathing. For like four or five minutes. You really scared me, I didn’t think I could get you into the car. Then finally you started breathing again. That shit really did a number on you, huh?” He realizes he must not have moved that whole time, and that’s why he is sore.

They are alone on the dunes. Plum has stripped down and is wearing only a pair of panties covered with snow leopard rosettes. Faolán thinks she is gorgeous, one of those rare women who is wholly unselfconscious about her beauty. She never bothers with makeup and somehow looks better than any of the women who do. The only thing she ever does is dye her hair a vivid deep purple. She wears it in a long, angled bob that comes down past her jaw. It has grown a few inches since the last time she dyed it so the part closest to her scalp is caramel-blonde, her natural hair color. He has no idea what a girl this good looking is doing with him, but it makes him feel good that she is. Like he must be worth something.

She picks up a sheaf of papers in one hand. Faolán realizes it’s the novel he’s been writing and curses himself for having left it in the back of her car. Her expression is opaque, impassive. He finds himself drawn to this. He cannot tell what she is thinking. Usually he can read people. He can sense their emotions and state of mind. These are survival skills acquired in the fires of his childhood: is mom up to making lunch after the fight last night or will she scream at me if I wake her up? Is dad still feeling mean enough to hit me? People feel predictable to him, a simple matter of reading flashes of fury or fear in their eyes. Unlike most people, Plum is an enigma, a wildcard. He doesn’t know what she will say or do next. She feels dangerous to him but she also gives him a sense of elation. When he is with her he feels as if the future isn’t predetermined. As if they can actually change how it unfolds.

A frank and pornographic admission of how much he wants her is in the book and he worries about how she will react. Not that it will shock her – she’s shocked him more than he has ever shocked her, he’s certain – but that she might laugh at him. At his true and secret heart. She’s smiling a little.

“Do you mean it?” she asks.

He has no idea how to respond. “Oh, fuck off,” he says. He tries to roll back over but she pulls him gently back to face her.

“No, really,” she says, “Did you mean that? What you wrote?”

He studies her. Inscrutable as always. I don’t know what she wants me to say. He settles for the truth.

“Yeah,” he admits, “I meant it.”

“God, you’re such a fucking romantic,” she says, and she is laughing but it isn't unkind. She's pleased. He chuckles with her for a moment. It feels good.

Then she gives him a slow and serious look, and standing, she moves her hands down the rippling muscles of her belly to her panties and begins to slide them down her legs. She tells him, "I want you to do that. All of it."

He pulls her to him and kisses her as if he might somehow understand her this way, as if to drink her in.  They ravish and ravage each other, treat each other brutally, savagely. He marvels at the difference in texture between the sand and her bed, the lack of recoil, how solid and firm she feels with the powdered rock of the dunes supporting her, how hard.  The dope makes the sex almost tantric; he feels he can go on and on without orgasm and he fucks her until she is as lost in the ecstasy of penetration as he was earlier. Until she sobs for his release.

Afterward, they lie silent together among the clumps of grass that dot the cool sand, exhausted, and share a cigarette. The rippling sand forms dunes that seem to glide across the beach like great white birds. He puts his hands behind his head and looks up at the band of stars in the heavens. He watches fireflies hover above the dunes and the hypnotic dance of their soft yellow lights as they wink on and then off. He idly runs his fingers through a nearby mound of long grass as she goes down to the lake and splashes water on herself. Her body gleams in the starlight. She calls his name and as he nears her he sees a firefly land on the back of her fingers. It crawls from them to her palm as she turns her hand over. She cups it gently and brings her cupped hands to her face. She parts them, and the insect drifts out of them. It glows and it is so close to her that the glow illuminates her lips, nose, and eyes. She is not looking at it.  She is looking out across the lake. He watches a shadow of sorrow cross her face. It is gone almost before he can even register that it was ever there. As he stands by her in the dark, he replays the expression in his mind. Her momentary look of melancholy. Her eyes fixed on the empty horizon as if she saw some distant sadness and wondered at it. What a mystery she is! he thinks. What a gift! What an amazing and beautiful being!

He thinks back to the white woman wearing blue velvet. Not a dream. A vision. Yes. That’s it. He understands. They will lose each other.

Nothing can change this, he knows. This is an unalterable trajectory. It is made from the things that are innate to them and was set in motion at birth. It is predetermined and immutable.

Before the end, everything in the vision has happened.

 

Time passes. Years and years of it. Faolán cleans up, but she does not and this drives them apart. People praise him for having stopped using and for having left her when she would not. They tell him this is good sense. He hears it so often that he begins to believe it.

When word of her death reaches him, he does a brief stint in five-point restraints and he is forced to take Haldol, which makes him feel like there is a brick in his skull. It does not cure him or make things better. After this he becomes careful never to mention the words despair, ideation, or suicide around medical professionals, but they are constants, always present. He does his best to live a conventional life, tries to find something aside from death that can give him purpose. He keeps waiting for things to get better.

After she has gone, he finds that he understands what the poets are talking about when they talk about aching for someone. It is a physical ache: his throat throbs like it was swollen shut and the pain is real and present in every way.  A great hollow sensation that wells up from the center of his body like blood from a sudden wound and swallows him, engulfs him. A burning that pulses in his eyes and shoots through his throat and makes his heart flutter inside his ribcage. His heart like a kitten’s plaything, pierced with sharp new claws and teeth, injury without intent.  He thinks often of that moment by the shoreline and knows that when he saw that trace of sadness she showed him a glimpse of her true and secret heart. This memory is something he keeps close for the rest of his life, overwhelmed with gratitude for this keepsake she has bestowed on him, more private than any garter, and gifted in spite of his cowardice. That he wasn’t brave enough to walk into death with her becomes the fulcrum of his life and his greatest regret.

 

He's just quit the job and picked up from Lee and is standing outside smoking when the girl comes up to him. She’s in her early twenties, pale, slender, blue eyes, curly brown hair tucked into a stocking cap. He can tell right away she’s homeless. It’s too hot for the hat and she’s wearing too many clothes and her backpack is too big for her. He’s been homeless before.  When you have nowhere to leave things and trust they won’t be stolen, you wind up carrying it all with you, and that’s what tips him off.

She asks him if he can please buy her a cup of coffee at the café across the street so she can sit down in there for a while. He’s about to say Sure, I know how it is, but what he finds himself saying is:

“I just picked up a pile of really good dope and I do not give a fuck if I run my credit cards up. Why don’t we get a hotel room and get high?”

There’s a moment of shock but then her face lights up. “You serious?” she asks.

Faolán shows her the dope. She gives him an appraising glance and then lets her breath out in one swift go. Her shoulders relax. “Fuck it,” she says, “Ok. Let’s go. My name is Claire.”

They are close to the Medallion, which means the hotels aren’t cheap, but they are at least clean. Checking in, Faolán finds himself nervous, wondering what the hell he’s got himself into, and then is struck with how absurd his anxiety is. He wonders if the clerk will give him a hard time about staying with his “friend” but she doesn't even blink. They get up to the room. There’s a king size bed and they are up high so they can see the streets and the skyline. The buildings are thrown into shades of deep blue and black against a sky made blood red by the setting sun. It’s beautiful, he thinks. Then he pulls the drapes, takes a bag out and tosses it to Claire.

“You got your works?” he asks. She shucks her coat and hat off and nods. He can see her better now with some of the extra clothes off and the sun not in his face. She’s surprisingly pretty.  She hasn’t acquired that hard, used look people get when they have been on the street for a while. Usually the pretty girls find a way out of homelessness fast. Often it starts with something like this, he imagines. She takes a rig out of her backpack. He gets his own from the bag he carries it in and lays it on the bedside table.

He thinks about how things have changed since he was a young man. The dope game seems to get ever more vicious. The stuff going around these days isn’t heroin. It’s almost all cut – usually dorm - and fentanyl. One of the problems with this is that the lethal dose of fentanyl is tiny even for someone with a pretty high tolerance to opioids. And it’s not like this stuff is homogenized; guys mix it with a coffee grinder and that’s if you’re lucky. So there are hotspots, where you get a bag with a dose in it that can kill you. Faolán usually gets high alone, and is keenly aware of this.

He knows it’s not polite but, “How old are you?” he asks her.

“Twenty five.” She answers, “What about you?”

“I’m forty three.” He’s a fucking dinosaur in junkie years. These days he thinks it would have been best if he hadn’t made it out of his twenties. If, instead of resisting, he’d given himself to the white woman and burned and died with Plum.

She raises an eyebrow. “You don’t look forty three.”

“Well, that’s something. Thanks, I think. How long have you been doing this?” he asks her.

“What? Getting high? Like a year.” She replies.

Twenty five. A year. He wonders where she was a year ago when she was twenty four. He wonders if anyone asked her if she was sure.

“Ok. Don’t do that whole thing,” he tells her, “Don’t do more than like a third of it.”

She gives him a look like he can’t be serious, so he says, “This isn’t the usual street shit. Have you heard of grey death?” She gives him a vacant look and shakes her head no.

“OK. What you have there is a combination of carfentanil and heroin. There might be a little U-47700 in there too, that’s what I was told, but I kind of doubt it. It doesn’t have the slightest tinge of pink. I have no fucking idea what the cut is. Here, give me that.” he points to the bag he tossed to her. She hands it back to him and he taps the tiniest bit into her cooker. Her face scrunches up as she looks at it. “You ever see any dope that looked like that?” he asks her. She shakes her head. “Looks like powdered concrete or something doesn’t it?” he asks. She nods. “That’s part of the reason for the name. You can guess the other part, I’m sure. Be careful when you cook it, don’t put too much heat on it. I’m not sure it needs any heat at all to be honest. It will be completely clear, it’ll look almost like you are shooting water.”

“Ok.”

She sits down by the desk in the room and takes her shirt off so she’s in a black bra. She’s got an athletic build, small breasts, hard, flat stomach. She has a tattoo of a rose on her scapula. There’s a mirror at the desk and she investigates it.  He watches her slip the needle into the basilic vein on the underside of her arm. Using the mirror, she glances over at him, sees him watching. She keeps her eyes focused on him while she shoots. They are lambent in the dim room, her gaze almost defiant. Towards the end of the shot he sees her focus waver. A little sigh escapes her lips and she raises her eyebrows. She finishes and he watches her whole body relax as she drops the rig and puts her forehead into her hand, bracing the weight with her elbow on the little table. She breathes, “Ho-ly shit.” Then she looks over at him, blinking, and she laughs. It's an unaffected, natural laugh, a genuine laugh, and in that moment she goes way past pretty and all the way to gorgeous.

“Holy fucking shit,” she repeats, “you weren’t kidding.” She gives another short laugh and it makes him smile.

She says, “Thank you.  God, I needed that.” She sits there for a few moments, blissed out, and then asks “Is it ok if I take a shower?” It bothers him a little that she feels like she needs to ask permission. 

“Of course,” he says. She smiles at him and walks over to the bathroom and closes the door. Faolán heads to the elevator and outside to have a cigarette.

It’s after sundown, and it’s quiet. A thing he’s noticed about financial districts like the Medallion – they are so busy during the day, but at night it’s eerily empty.  People work there.  They don’t live there.  The quiet reminds him of a night ten years ago when Helen, his wife, wanted to go to a nearby park after sunset. It was high summer.

On that night they walked together through sunflowers that loomed over them like quiet giants, their shadows long in the faded evening.  As the sun set they were surrounded by the ephemeral glow of fireflies winking on and off. The air was sweet with the smells of high summer, a spicy floral scent mixed with the redolence of fresh water.  

And then, all of a sudden, not ten feet from them, there was a doe.

They both froze. He had never been so close to a doe before, and has not since. The doe nickered softly and smelled the air. She titled her head at them and Helen squeezed his hand gently and whispered “look,” and he saw a fawn, both of them mere feet away. He wondered that he could not see them before. Even the purple twilight doesn’t explain how they have appeared. Until now they were hiding, staying so still that they were invisible, the same way waterbirds sometimes freeze as they stalk a shoreline and vanish into the reeds behind them as the shadows shift. Faolán was filled with a quiet sense of wonder, transfixed between the doe, her fawn, and Helen, surrounded by gentle creatures with eyes like milk. What a gift they are! he thinks. He feels he could stay here forever, listening to the night sounds and watching the doe and her fawn. With Helen that night he felt as though he were someone else, perhaps even someone good.  He misses being able to pretend that he was a good person, and the gentle, humid summer nights he spent with her when there were fireflies everywhere.  The feeling is not quite nostalgia, but there is an overwhelming sense that something has been lost, as if he had a chance to alter the course of his life and missed it.

He finishes the cigarette, and flicks the butt and his memories into the pavement, then heads back up to the room. Claire is still in the shower. He sits back on the bed and takes his shirt off and looks at himself. His arms are a tracked horror show; they look like they have been splashed with hot fat or acid, covered with circular scars. At this point even the veins in the backs of his hands are all sunken, but there’s still one place between his thumb and forefinger on the side of his left hand that is plug and play. He doesn’t even have to tie off.

Claire comes out of the shower in her panties, breasts bare and white. Her nipples are a beautiful pale shade of pink and her hair is still wet and slicked back, though a few dark ringlets frame her face. She sits down at the edge of the bed and dries herself with a fluffy white hotel towel. He notices that in addition to the rose she has a small tattoo on the side of her buttock. Yes, sir say the words etched into the firm flesh of her flank. He wonders who made her do that, wonders that anyone could be so heartless.  Wonders that such heartlessness is so common.

“God, I feel so fucking good,” she says, “I needed that shower. And that shot.” She finishes drying herself off and tosses the towel on the floor. Faolán sits with his back against the headboard and she crawls toward him on her elbows and knees and she looks at him like she's searching his eyes for something, and then she leans forward and kisses him. And she kisses him again and then she starts kissing his chest and then his stomach, and he feels her fingers in the waistband of his jeans.

He stops her, putting his hands on her hands. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks her.

Her eyes flick to the ring he hasn’t taken off, and then back to his face, and he sees her lower lip tremble for a second. It’s all the answer he needs.

“You don’t have to,” he tells her.

“But…but…”

“I’m not going to kick you out. Don’t worry.”

She sighs. “Look, it’s not…like, you aren’t bad looking or anything. It’s fine. I’ve done it before.”

“I know,” he says.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” she snaps, scowling, and then her eyes go wide. “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry I said that.  You aren’t going to hurt me are you?”

“No more than I already have,” he answers. Then, seeing the expression on her face, “I’m sorry. No, I won’t hurt you. I don’t want to hurt anybody. Look, it... all I mean is, it’s ok.  This isn’t a transaction, Claire.  That’s not why I’m doing this.”

She seems nonplussed, but she murmurs “Ok.” And then she asks, “Why aren’t you with her now?”

He sighs. “She’s gone, Claire. She left me. I don’t blame her. In the end I couldn’t make her happy. I can’t even make myself happy, I should have known I wouldn’t be able to make anyone else happy. But I tried. And it didn’t work.”

“Oh,” she says, and they are both quiet for a while.

Then he says, “I want to talk about it. Would you listen?”

She nods.

“When we met, I was acting like I was ok. Do you know what I mean? I was acting like plain old life was enough for me, like there wasn’t this immense vacuum in place of my soul that would never be satisfied. Like I could fall out of love as easily as I fell in love.

“I was good at acting this way. Because I wanted so bad for that to be true, you know? And I managed to fool her. I even fooled myself for a while. But the truth will out as they say. I don’t know what it is about us – there’s something different about junkies. Not everyone gets hooked, you know? A lot of the folks who are willing to go so far as to try something like heroin do get hooked, of course – but some don’t. And I have always wondered why that is. I think in the end, what separates us is that the ones who get hooked have something in them that loves oblivion. We want the sweet taste of death to sting our lips.  Because life is pain.

“I managed to fool myself for a long time that that wasn’t true. That I was a good person like her, that I loved life. And there was no one specific thing that made me realize otherwise. It was something that happened over time. I would wake up and each day I would believe a little less in what I was doing. That what I did mattered. That any of it had a point.

“When I was younger, I felt that sense of meaninglessness all the time but instead of making me retreat, it made me jump in to things headfirst, with no regard for the consequences. It looked like rage to other people, but it was a screen to keep me from touching despair, to keep me searching for a way to find some sense of purpose, to see if there was anything I could do to change the future. But I’ve come to the conclusion that there are things innate to us and to our circumstances that put us on a trajectory that we cannot change.

“Anyway, I gave it my best shot, you know? I tried hard to change my trajectory, and as part of that, when I met this woman I married her. And I managed to fool us both for a time. A pretty long time, really.

“But as much as I tried to pretend it wasn’t there, it caught up with me. It might have been different if we had kids. I might have been able to go on pretending that I had some reason to be here if that had happened. But it didn’t, and that’s for the best. I know people do it all the time, but it’s a shitty reason to bring another consciousness into this world.

“Anyway, it’s no one’s fault. This was always my trajectory. That’s how it was meant to be. I tried therapy. Anti-depressants. All the usual things. But no matter what I did, the sense of meaninglessness kept growing. You can’t fucking meditate your way out of this, you know? And therapists, even religions, they all say that feelings are ephemeral, transitory, that they don’t last. Well, this feeling lasts.  The void calls and calls. It’s been there since I was very little, and it has never gone away. La tristesse durera toujours. So I came back to this, to dope. It’s the only thing that ever made me feel genuinely good.

“And I hid it from her. I tried to pretend that everything was fine, was normal. I knew it would upset her, and I didn’t want to do that, and I didn’t want to talk to her about it because I felt that instead of convincing me that there was a purpose to everything, I might convince her that there wasn’t one, I would leave her as hollow and empty as I am myself. I would give her despair. So I didn’t say anything. And I set things up so that I couldn’t fuck us up too much. I let her run the finances.  I went on methadone so I’d have a baseline to operate off of and wouldn’t have to score or get sick. Two or three times a month I’d get a bunch of dope and get high for three or four days. It let me carry on like things were normal for a long time.

“It took a while but she finally asked me about it one day, and I had promised myself that even though I didn’t advertise it, I wasn’t going to lie to her if she asked me directly. And if she had been only been angry or upset, it would have been ok. And she was, but the thing that I had been so frightened of, the reason I hid it from her for so long, the thing that got me, was that she was ashamed of me. That’s a thing that we have in common, those of us who know despair. People like me and you, junkies, alcoholics, gambling addicts, suicides. What it feels like when someone you love is ashamed of you. It’s like the thing you are, at your core, isn’t good enough. Can never be good enough. And it’s not like you can defend it, you know? For those of us who are empty – who aren’t depressed, but despairing – there’s no cure for that.”

She gives him a solemn nod.

“So. That was more or less that. I told her I would let her keep everything, signed the house and the bank accounts over to her.  Which was only fair.  And let her go.  And so she went.  Or rather, I did.”

They sit for a few minutes, and then Faolán gets up and heads for the shower.

The shower feels good and he stays for a while, letting the hot water wash over him. He starts to get a little lightheaded so he squats down to avoid falling and sits there, absorbing the steam and heat.

When he gets done and comes back out to the bedroom, Claire is stretched out with her chin propped up on a pillow at the end of the bed, watching TV. Her back is creamy and a few freckles spot her shoulders.

He gets six bags out and considers. He has stayed in touch with a few of the guys he was homeless with, and buys his stuff from one of them, a guy named Lee who looks out for him. Lee warned him to take it easy with this stuff. He already has what would be a lethal dose of methadone in an opioid-intolerant person swimming around in his bloodstream.

“Hey. Hey Claire.” She looks over at him. The light of the television is like ghosts crawling over her face. Her eyes are pinned and she is frowning like she just woke up.

“You got any Narcan?” he asks.

She sits up, worried. “Yeah, but what the fuck are you planning to do?”

“Nothing. Just making sure,” he answers.

He puts five of the bags back, just does the one. It is every bit as strong as advertised, and he feels momentarily good enough that he decides he can wait a little longer. He joins Claire on the bed. She’s watching something; he doesn’t like television but decides to let her do what she wants for the night. At some point he nods off while the light from the television throws exaggerated shadows around the darkened room.

In the middle of the night he wakes and finds that Claire is pressed against him, nuzzling his neck and shoulder and caressing his chest. He rolls on to his side and they fold themselves together, his stomach against her back, and he holds on to her and strokes her hair, gently tugging on the ringlets and letting them bounce back. When he knows she’s almost asleep he kisses her on the back of the neck and they drift off together.

He sleeps late; usually he’s up at four thirty or five, and he spends the first few hours of his day trying to put the armor and the mask on so he can operate in society, but this day he doesn’t see the need. Now that he is committed he is relaxed. He’s still up before she is, and he spends a little time marveling at her in the dark room. Finally her eyes flutter open and she smiles at him, and he feels her smile stab his heart and is grateful for it.

She gets up and gets dressed.  He walks her down to the lobby and outside. It is a fine, warm day. He gives her two more bags and then gets the rest of the cash he has out and tries to give it to her. She shakes her head at first but he insists and eventually she takes the money. She begins to walk away and he watches as she fades into all the people hustling through the Medallion as first one person walks in front of her, and then another, and another, until he only sees little flashes of her through the crowd and he wonders at what an amazing thing it is to fall in love, and how lucky he is that even now, at the end, his heart beats a little faster when he thinks of her: what a mystery she is! what a gift!

He goes back up to the hotel room and takes out the rest of the dope. Seven left. Plenty. He looks out the window and marvels at the warm sun, the cloudless blue sky. He gets the dope ready and hits that spot on his hand again. Watching the blood feather into the needle as he pulls back, he knows he has connected. He pushes down on the plunger, and as he does it’s like he’s pushing the brain-noise out and the familiar sensation of being totally fine, of everything being absolutely and imperturbably fine, in. Three quarters of the way down he feels his spirit begin to become untethered from his flesh and dance in the annihilating waves of tranquility. It becomes lost in the interzone between dreams and death, and flies to a place he knew as a young man where clumps of grass grow from the sand. It is just after dark and parabolic dunes like white birds glide away across the beach in the soft starlight. Tonight, the stars have terrestrial counterparts: there are fireflies everywhere. They float gracefully through the humid air, winking on and off, on and off. He can hear the lake lap calmly at the shoreline in the distance. There is a piney, dusky smell in the air and he can just barely see the silhouette of a tree line stretching lazily behind him, while in front, the horizon is born from the lake, everything naked and empty. He lays back and lets the cool sand cradle him, with one leg bent at the knee and the other stretched out. One of the fireflies lands on his raised thigh and he idly watches it crawl over his leg, winking on and then off, on and then off, before it flies away. He lays there in the gentle darkness for a long time listening to the waves roll in and then out, and watching the fireflies winking on and then off, and he hears someone by the shoreline in the distance softly call his name.