Light, Across The City
The young ones -- the men fresh from the police academy -- are assigned the night watch, what was once known as the 'beat' and now is simply the dead part of night where the new recruits go to earn their scars. The first night on the beat, the watch sergeant tells the new recruits one law. "The city returns the affection of those who are affectionate. Those who aren't, don't come home." This is the only maxim they needed to know about Empire City.
One year a watchman paused on the portal and asked: "What happens when the city loses her edge? What happens during twilight?"
Xanthic
It was a xanthic apple, flush with gold and light as if it had soaked up the last beam of sunlight through its smooth skin. It hung high on the single branch still ripe with leaves and shoots. He hadn't climbed a tree in years but found the skill just slumbering in his brain, his fingers remembering how to grip and hold the knobs of the trunk, how to bend his toes into the narrow crevices in the crook of the branches. One branch broke, unwilling to hold his weight, and he hung in space for a minute, the crackling echo of the branch's betrayal ringing in his head while his toes scrambled in reverse back to a previous, more solid, hold. He hugged the tree, wrapped his arms tight about its broad warm trunk and waited for the echo of the falling branch to fade. The wind tugged at the tiny whips of winter branches, brushed his hair from his eyes and dipped the lone apple-laden branch towards him. Just a little higher, the wind whispered.
He climbed the tree for the golden apple. There was a girl in the city, a girl he wasn't supposed to see. She wasn't invisible, just so pale as to be nearly translucent like all the others who came from the cathedrals in the clouds. He could see through her and the only hint of her presence was the white robe that floated in much too geometric of a path to be a fluffly little cloud. Since he had seen her colorless face, he had wanted show her the beauty of color.
Imprimatur
"When I first saw the Library, my tongue was stricken in my mouth. Those thousands of manuscripts pressed down upon me with such weight that the ability to form words fled from my head. I was like a child, a clean slate waiting to be blessed with the script of God. How could this be? How could so many texts -- such a profusion of scrolls and pamphlets and folios -- how could so many misfit books have been written? There was no imprimatur from His Holiness for these words. The Heretical Library was meant to contain the few existent copies of those texts which threatened the Word and the Light and yet here was an entire church filled to the high clerestory windows with bookshelves, each shelf groaning and weeping under the weight of the tomes piled across its back. As I was faced with the enormity of my task, my faith wavered for an instant. Was my task of cataloguing the bizarre, the heretic, the foreign and alien too profound to be accomplished by one man in his lifetime or even the lifetime of a hundred men? Had Babel scattered us all so far that we could never find our way back?"
(from the private journal of Cardinal Pietro Della Ambruzia, entry dated January 13th, 1513)
Ziggurat
The Ziggurat was named in honor of Duke Champlain on the eve of the expedition to the Vilcabamba mountains in Peru. Thermal imaging from low-flying planes had discovered ancient shapes beneath the dense forest. The archaeologists at the University wound themselves into endless discussions as to the origin of the pyramids: did they pre-date the Mayan settlements, were they the final link between the monuments of Central America and Egypt, were they the remnants of some other lost civilization? Duke -- born Duchess Urbania Champlain, much to the dismay of her mother -- wasn't interested in talk; she wanted to be the first one on the ground. She wanted to send back artifacts and images that would settle all the perpetual arguments.
"Ziggurats are Sumerian," Duke pointed out as Clio set the drink down on the bar. It was served in a narrow glass and the alcohol floated in thick bands: red, blue, amber and yellow.
"Sumerian?" Clio asked.
"The Sumerians were one of first civilizations in Mesopotamia. Right in the Fertile Crescent between the Tigris and the Euphrates. It's all part of Iraq now. There isn't much left anymore but, yeah, once upon a time, they built immense monuments that were crude step pyramids."
"So there might be a connection." Like everyone else, Clio had her own theories about the buildings hidden beneath the endless jungle in Peru.
Duke raised her shoulders. "Sure, honey, there could be." She lifted the glass. "Thanks."
Clio smiled and watched the other woman sip from the red layer in the glass. "You'll be careful, right?"
"Always," Duke said. She made eye contact with Clio as she replied -- affirmation of message received and answer returned. "It's a reconaissance expedition," she said in an attempt to alleviate the other woman's concerns. "We've packed enough gear for four weeks. That's all. We'll have to come back to resupply at least, and that will take a week. I'll be back."
"I know," Clio said. "It's just..."
Duke sipped from The Ziggurat again, feeling the grenadine and blue curaçao mix as they passed her lips. Two distinct colors and tastes rushed together in her mouth. Like Clio and I, she thought. Unexpected mixtures, unexpected results. Life was full of little surprises, wasn't it?
Undine
Whether comes the untrammeled power within water? In a jar or glass, it is nothing, just molecules collected into such proliferation that they cannot move swiftly, that they gel into liquid, that they stick to one another and propagate motion with fluid elegance. Hydrogen and oxygen combined in the most simplistic manner, the primal coupling so easy, so basic, that our world is covered with it, that we are filled with it. Old stories speak of undines, spirits who inhabited the liquid ether and, by vibrations, could control the watery element. These stories speak of storms created from the fury of undines aroused, of inexplicable drownings on dry land from the spite of scorned nereiads, of pools made reflective by the glassy precognition of mermaids, of rain made sweet by the evaporated tears of kelpies. In each case, water is nothing but motion made by the echo of the heart of the undine. When you stand on the edge of a rocky shore and feel the ground tremble beneath your feet, when the spray lashes against your face and hands, and the slippery grasp of the fading wave tries to drag you back into the sea, you have to wonder what brought this motion to you. Was it love or anger?
Excrescence
There are goblins, sprites and dark woodfolk in the forest, the other children would whisper on the playground, peering fearfully towards the black wood which crouched at the edge of the village. Every year there was talk in the Council to burn back the forest, and every year someone would remember the last time there was talk of pushing back the forest: how, on the night following the day of torches and axes, the burning eyes came into their sealed houses and touched their babies, leaving red welts on necks and arms which gradually formed pulpy excrescences, marking those children. On their fifteen birthdays, these children all wandered into the woods , branches growing earnestly from their raised warts. The children rooted themselves in the cleared spaces near the edge of town and covered themselves with thick bark, growing taller and more slender with each year, their branches growing into an interlocking umbrella of dark leaves as if they stood silently with their heads bowed and their arms stretched out, clasping each other's hand.
Eidolon
The lost eidolon of Eventine began haunting the Quickie Mart out at the Four Corners sometime last winter. It may have been the weekend of the Great Snow of '02 when the world went white and we all stayed indoors, huddled next to our precious wood-burning stoves, covered in three layers of blankets, waiting for the ice to break. It was a hard winter, and all manner of creatures and persons got lost in that blizzard. Including one spook. He's an old one, probably uprooted during the construction out by the Mall where they've been digging down to the bedrock for the new parking garage.
There was a series of hauntings when construction of the Mall first started, and the historian from the State Museum finally scrounged up some old records from the early homesteaders and pointed out to the architecture firm that they were building 68 shops, three anchor stores, and a 17-screen movie theater on top of the original settlers. The Architects, adherents of the Neo-Logos Movement, scoffed at the possibility of conflict between the old world and the new. Digging continued and, in the bleak hour of night, dump trucks filled with broken shards of cedar, old bones and moist earth were trucked out of town to an undisclosed location. Shortly thereafter, the spooks came.
The Architects brought in a company from New York, a team of six who cleared out the ghosts in the space of two nights. The first night was terrible, the nocturnal hours filled with shrieks and moans and the dreadful crackling noise of the arcane devices of the ghost hunters. The second night was silent as every ghost that survived the first night was in hiding. As was the entire community. We all hid under our beds and in our closets, barely daring to breathe the whole night through.
In the morning, the ghosts and the hunters were gone. The Architects offered the township a blessing on the new Mall, freshly consecrated for the Gods of Consumerism, and crowned the buildings with the battlements of the New Word.
There no more ghosts until the winter when William McCready -- the first prospector of Eventine -- rose out of the ground and got stuck in the shadow of the Quickie Mart.
Initiate
"This is the hour I like," she said, nodding towards the weak sun. It hovered beneath the dark ceiling of the sky, drooping towards the ragged edge of the sea. She lifted the thin loop from the bottle in her hand and blew a fluttering stream of gleaming bubbles. "Just before sunset."
"The Poet called it the magic hour," he said, watching the wind play with the soapy bubbles. "But the phrase wasn't his."
"It's movie talk. That hour when they don't need all those filters, when the light is just perfect."
"Just?"
She smiled at him. "Well, as perfect as light can be."
He leaned against the worn brick of the chimney which jutted out of the roof of the building. "Not white and not black."
She dipped the wand and blew another stream of bubbles. "Just a hint of color," she added as the wind whipped through her drifting bubbles and tugged at the ends of her hair. "Russets and magentas and indigos. Their names sound deep and magical. Like you must be an initiate in the mysteries to be able to create them on a palette."
He closed his eyes. "The kind of colors you can see when you close your eyes."
"Exactly. You can't imagine yellow. But you can dream of gold and amber."
He tried to think of yellow, but, as he listened to her breath give life to more bubbles, all he could frame in his mind was the color and shape of her lips.
Lugubrious
"I can't say there is much to complain about really. No one expects much of me. I get to lie about as much as I want. I can lick my own balls which -- let me say -- isn't as weird as it first sounds, especially when you're a dog. I get to chase cats who are always the biggest sissies when it comes to a little fooling around. Like I want a cat hairball in my throat. Geez. I was just playing.
Anyway, it's all pretty good. Sure, the food sucks, but most humans are suckers for anything resembling anthropomorphism in their pets. You get a properly lugubrious expression on your face while they're eating dinner? Bingo. Table scraps.
Though, pork gives me the most righteous gas. Never was a problem when I was human.
That's right. I used to be a two-legger, before I pissed off my girlfriend's great-aunt from Romania. Yeah. Who know that the folk from the old country still knew a bit of magic?"
Favonian
At sunset, at the magic hour when the light changes from the hard white of an eggshell into the bleeding yellow of a split yolk, the wind turns. The wind which chases the sun across the sky dies, and all that is left is the gentle exhalation from the west as the sun dies yet again. The favonian breeze washes across the Hammerstone and rolls up the bulk of First Hill, washing the fetid stink of the tired city down into the grates and drains of the streets. Men, struggling home with the weight of their briefcases, pause on the street corners and look to the west, relishing the gentle touch of the west wind. Yes, the last effusion of energized solar particle waves turns back the spread of ash, the crippling process of decay wrought by hours of centralized air and torpid mechanical lighting; yes, men stop and look to the west.
In the distance, faint across the glittering waters of Hammerstone Sound, the trees of Chance Island are on fire.
Hypnogogia
The sleep center doctors tell me about the little deaths that aphnea causes. You have two choices: the fading, choking death resulting from sealed passageways or the electric blink where your brain -- for just a second -- is left in the dark. There are no other choices, and you will have but many of these episodes during the night.
There is hope if you chose the gasping, choking death of your throat closing itself during the night. You can have a tube shoved down into your esophagus and air will be pumped into your body for six hours. When your lungs overinflate and your body panics, it routes the air to your stomach where your turgid acids flail helplessly at the swirling atmospheres, unable to find something material to dissolve. This air passes through your intestines and comes out like black roses from your ass in the morning. You greet the day like a trombone.
The other choice is the silent mystery, the miniscule flatline which interrupts your brain waves for the slightest of seconds. Bip! You've stopped. Bip! You've started again. It is no wonder you never fully sleep when your body simply stops for a second at a time throughout the night. You're halfway off the high shelf all night long, ready to roll into oblivion if that interrupted second never passes.
You are exhausted, fighting these little deaths. Morpheus never visits because you always scare him when he leans over to check if you are breathing. Your only friend is his little cousin, Hypnogogia. She lets you lean against her shoulder during the day. She is your best friend, actually, always there, always ready to catch you when you fall.
Palimpsest
There are four copies of the Chiotraczh Manuscript in existence, though by the recollection of most occult historians, they have all been destroyed. Once, all four were owned by the same man and, in a frenzied fit, he tried to save us from the terrible sigils and spells written on those pages. He couldn't bring himself to destroy the books. Oh, he tried, but their eldritch influence caused a tremor in his brain and a weakness in his heart which stopped his hands at the last moment. He couldn't burn them; he couldn't tear them apart; he couldn't throw them into the ocean. He could, however, take a knife to them. Not to cut the pages out, but to scratch the words off. It took him twenty years and the effort drove him deep into madness. And, when he was done, he wrote his own words on the now blank pages. He wasn't much of a writer, prone to hyperbole and an exaggerated paranoia as well as being wracked with spells of delusion, and his stories were all bleak and most of them ended badly.
These palimpsests were found in his collection when he died and since everyone agreed that he hadn't been that good of a writer, the heavy manuscripts ended up on the back shelves of an old bookseller's shop, hidden beneath decaying cookbooks and neglected travelogues to places no one wanted to go anymore.
A war has been fought in the decade since the rewritten manuscripts were lost, a war between the ancient sigils erased but not removed and the poorly connected words of the mad historian. Each page is a separate battleground, each word a skirmish to be won or lost. The ancient language has strong infantry and highly trained cavalry. The madman's words have the benefit of defense, entrenched on the page, but they are too scattered, too unorganized, to raise a proper defense. His words fight valiantly, but they are outnumbered. Page by page, line by line, the mad historian's text is eaten by the words of the priests of Chiotraczh. The ancient symbols swell on the page, filled with the squalid ink of the frantic historian.
When the books are found again, no one will remember the scrawled warnings of the mad historian.
Excoriate
Late at night when the radio signals slip and it is easy to get lost between the stations, you can find living noise communicating across the ether. Hang yourself up at the low end of the dial and wear a good pair of headphones, you know the kind; fat cups which sit heavily over yours ears and block out everything but the noise from somewhere else. Shhh. Listen. You can hear it whispering, cajoling, crying. It weeps in your ears, lamenting its lack of form. The living noise can't sustain a body, it excoriates the flesh from the inside out. Skin seems to melt like wax and black static seeps through like a swarm of flies escaping a piece of rotten fruit. This doesn't stop the noise from trying to convince you to give yourself over to it. Shh. Listen. The noise is desperate; it will tell you things you didn't know you wanted to know.
writing
- LITTLE FICTIONS -
This is a reasonably comprehensive list of my published work, both virtual and physical.
THE MISFIT LIBRARY
I am Nine of Thirteen, one of the members of the Misfit Library, a writing collective which puts out a quarterly journal of our respective work. We are scattered across the globe and determined to change the face of the planet one story at a time. The link above will take you to Misfit Central where you can acquire copies of the journal as well as read exclusive online material.
SYMBOLIC
I wrote a column for OPi8.com's Transmit blogs: journals of the new dark underground. SYMBOLIC tracked the novel I was working on, referencing the process and the research materials which mad up the backbone of the work. In addition, SYMBOLIC busied itself with ruminations and considerations on the nature of language and communication. And a wee bit of mythology. The first 100 entries of SYMBOLIC can be found here on this site as well as at OPi8.com.
LITERARY REPRESENTATION
I am represented by Scribe Agency as my literary agents. Please contact these gentleman if you have any queries about my work.
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