The Fable Online Issue 20 March 2017
Sarah Kedar Executive Editor Heather White Associate Editor Readers Benjamin DeValve Chris Champe Fiona Ryle Hannah Lawrence Heather White Memphis Trace Sarah Kedar Tim Tanko
Cover illustrated by Luke Spooner
Š2015-2017 The Fable Online|Contributing Authors
Foreword by Sarah Kedar Spring is around the corner. Gardens will bloom with beautiful life and light will shine over all. But underneath it all, where light can't reach, shadows will prevail and death will win. Darkness always lingers, waiting for the light to fade. In this issue, dark moments and still darker decisions are explored. Fairy tales are twisted until what remains of them is the decaying stench. Questionable and immoral decisions will leave you cold. Uncover what truths lie beneath the veil of fiction to discover the seeds of what it means to be human.
Table of Contents Poetry Chalice by Ben Bishop .................................................................................................................................6 Fathom by Angela Freeman .........................................................................................................................7 I sing a song for those by Dr. Javed Latoo ..........................................................................................................................8 Mindful by David Lohrey ..............................................................................................................................9 Recipe for an Eclipse by Lourdes Verรณnica .....................................................................................................................11 School House Perspective by Charles Hayes ..........................................................................................................................12 Fiction Epicurean by Julie Howard ............................................................................................................................14 Five Minutes by Jake Zawlacki ...........................................................................................................................17 Lagarfljรณtsormurinn by Virginia Elizabeth Hayes ..........................................................................................................18 Sins of the Father by Matt Graham ...........................................................................................................................20 The Great and Unparalleled Raakshasadoot by Gordon Brown .........................................................................................................................22 The Thaw: Pushkin by Virginia Marybury ....................................................................................................................26 About the Authors.......................................................................................................................31
POETRY
Chalice by Ben Bishop
I feel my thoughts slip away from the present. I feel my heart idly run toward brighter past I nod my head in a feigned interest, I think; My cup ranneth over, yet now runneth dry A failure of state. A failure of being, I feel. Anachronistically, I wish for that which I have not had, nor shall ever. I wish For a time of perfection, of peace. I wish for the ease I once felt When all things were facili, Not sanguine crimson, Dark, Fearful, but red, Crying martyr tears, Same as sinners, As Mothers, or Brothers, or Fathers, or -Is it andChildren Babies Saints Aunts Dogs Bees Ants Men I hear that the cup should run over; A doubting man listens but to himself.
Fathom by Angela Freeman when I sleep, my feet get tangled up in nets. so I always have to bend down and untie, undo the things that I forgot, the knots I left in place. and my mind half-floats, half-sails as a frown drifts onto my mouth and stays there, like a sea bird alighting on driftwood. up here, down here, there is no horizon. just a lot of melting worlds at sea. and though I kick the sheets from swimming around my ankles, there is always a remnant left between my toes, or encircling my waist like a lover’s hands, as a reminder that I am not swimming.
I sing a song for those by Javed Latoo I sing a song for those Who are full of energy, fairness, love juice, dreams, and unpredictability; Who are not afraid of failures; Walk with both arms and legs to climb an arduous summit. Who jump into turbulent waters to collect treasures from the seabed; Create history with their strides; Who burn books to light new paths; Dismantle the idols of banality, dogma, inequality, and injustice; Who burn old bridges to carry a nation on their strong just arms. I sing a song for those who have cleared the dross of bigotry from their hearts; Whose clamour disturbs the sleep of fascists and tyrants; who adorn the forehead of life with their dreams, ideals, and loves, nonconformity, valour, and smiles.
Mindful by David Lohrey
Are you mindful of the fact that the man there in the turban Is not a chimpanzee? I know this because that man is me. If you close your eyes, you’d never guess my race. My nails are the color of blood and my nose has been known to run, But Heaven knows I don’t bite. We came to have fun. I’m on my best behavior. Don’t you worry. Please give me a chance. We don’t eat with our hands. I just dropped in to savor the goods. Learning how to speak is part of the game, but Could you please give me your name? It could be Smith or Smythe. How can one know? Let me say this: it’s a joy to be laughed at. My name is not easy, but please do say it right and without making faces. We’ll stay out of your way. I’m not blocking the aisle. We’ve been standing here for only a while. Our turbans aren’t glass, So there’s nothing to break. But for your sake, we’ll put them away in the car. So long? Good bye? No cause to get jumpy. Your voice grows angry. Okay, all right. We’ll stay no longer.
As you stroll through the park Why not see our cousins the apes? Wave so they’ll know we are all friends.
Recipe for an Eclipse by Lourdes Verónica As you sit star-mouthed and semi-angelic on the cobalt cusp of Sabbath, I witch bruises into peonies and learn the tongue of tree pollen and shellfish. I conjure flags and flaps of Carnival – and sever my head instead. Tiny needles of longing nestling in my muscles, I think of suicide, bleed billboards to feed ravenous floor tiles, love you again. I listen to the house stutter back in syllables of dust. Get dinner ready for archipelagos of ravens perched in the kitchen silence. I pin my marriage to the fridge door as you rummage in my blood for a perfect recipe of an eclipse. I cup the purple curvature of an aubergine, slit it open, wonder why its moon-flesh smells of a freshly-mowed lawn. Chatzilim, melainsana, Ping Tung Long, Solanum melongena – should I not see you, where will I get oxygen? I wait for the night landslide of nostalgia to blue into you. Let’s celebrate my womb’s birthday while my pulse still holds the scent of apricots. Lean your agony against my breasts, after I narrate myself into your collarbones. Did you know you are the only way I know to sleepwalk out the star tissue of this body?
School House Perspective by Charles Hayes The white school house, covered with years of coal dust, looks so much smaller now. A rusty flag pole, white when it adorned, lies among the busted mine machines that cover the grounds once for play. The mine gone, the coal trucks only noisy ghosts in my mind, can I have lived here? Its little flat spot up against the steep land of the hollow where it came to be, my place to learn and grow back then. Marbles at recess, oral book reports to a room with two grades, and the growling gray trucks, humped with coal, that passed all day. Broken windows, like eyes that only light can see, sadly look my way. And a missing door with only night beyond seems to say, “Oh yes, I loved you then. I am not so bad. Look at you now.�
FICTION
Epicurean by Julie Howard
Pheromones scattered and sloughed cells drifted on the breeze. Mayra breathed in deeply, then more deeply still. Atoms swirled around nasal receptors, raced around her sinus cavity like a roller coaster and then exploded out with the release of breath. I want, she thought deep in her subconscious. Desire pulsed along her sinews, creating a throbbing in her bones. I want. Soft needles, pliable underfoot in tones of olive and asparagus, cushioned her wandering. Shimmering beads of dew, hidden from the morning sun, lazed upon the occasional pine cone. Quick as a synapse, her hand snapped up a grub from a dead branch and popped it in her mouth. Sweet and earthy, it brought her salivary glands alive with juices. Mayra closed her eyes and chewed slowly, letting the small mouthful roll around her mouth, then catching the slight spicy finish deep in her throat as she swallowed. She smacked her lips, regretting the grub’s hasty flight downward. With eyes open, senses stirred and vibrating on a heightened level—she trudged on. Her stomach growled deep and dangerously. Something better was coming.
She remembered harmonious times when meals came readily. Those were the days of her espousal – days that stretched out into long sumptuous years. Ramón had loved her fully, catering to her whims and encouraging her peculiar tastes. They dined on crickets and bats, wolf marrow and owl wings. Ramón had a flair for creating seasonings—using crushed tree bark and dried rabbit whiskers—and had a weakness for fresh clover pudding dusted with sugared nematodes. Those years put rolls under her chin and fattened her thighs. At night, Ramón stroked her growing curves and licked the deep crevasses behind her knees. After they had their fill of each other, he would wrap his arms around her and weep with joy. Her adoration of him grew along with her gluttony. She found his broken body below a towering pine one morning, the bird’s nest still clutched in his hand. The night before he had shared his idea of braising a red-tailed hawk’s nest, complete with baby birds still tucked in their eggshells, in drippings of elk fat.
Her wails upon finding him created a stampede of game out of the forest forever – leaving behind only the weakest and stupidest. Grubs, mainly, but also chipmunks and the occasional critter that thought itself smarter than her. Mostly, Mayra survived on those along with the bones of dead and diseased animals that slunk into the decayed forest to die. Her curves sagged in defeat and she let them melt away. What was the point without Ramón to share them with? Roundness became angular, soft became twisted. Her lips drew into a pucker and lines mapped her face. She knew she was getting old, and this slow starvation was hurrying her to an endless sleep. The vibration inside her twanged insistently. Mayra raised her head. Interested. Hungry. When roasted for a very long time, the long slender bones of ferret legs become crispy. Mayra had tucked these bones away for this special day, the tenth anniversary of Ramón’s passing. She would pull them out of the oven soon and flavor them with the last of the salt distilled from murky pond water, drained last year in her search for soft crawfish and snails. Ramón made this recipe for her often – meant to be an appetizer, not the day’s only meal – feeding her bone by bone and watching her needle-sharp teeth snap and crunch them with joy. She was lost in memory when there came a soft rap on the door. For a moment, the sound didn’t register. When it did, it roared toward her as though someone had pummeled the door with hammers. No one came to her door. Ever. The forest was too thick and forbidding. Rumors and tales swirled about dark things living there. So she enjoyed her solitude. The second taps came more urgently. Mayra sighed out loud as she rose, knowing this was the source of her unrest, the fierce tremor within. Ramón, she thought. He sent… something… to save me. Mayra moved slowly from living room to kitchen, surprised to find that she was panting. She stopped before the door, nostrils alive with the unknown scent beyond. She opened the door a crack and then let it swing open as she stood in stunned delight. Two children, one more perfect than the other, looked up at her. “Please, ma’am, we’re lost,” one said. “And so very hungry,” the second added. She almost ate them at her doorstep. But they were well-nigh too beautiful to eat, round and succulent, oozing salt and sweet vapors from pores top to bottom. Dressed in shorts, him – and skirt, her – their plump, dimpled knees were oily with fat. Above, glistening
eyes turned up to her were set above fleshy cheeks. Her nostrils quivered in reflex, and she swallowed slowly. Somehow, she thought, Ramón had sent her this meal that she’d savor for years. “Come in,” Mayra said, her voice syrupy and warm. She would binge on one bloody and roast the other, she decided. She raised a trembling hand, gesturing them inside. They hesitated, and her stomach fluttered. Her legs weren’t as strong as they used to be. If they took flight, she didn’t know if she could run them down. “Let’s have a meal together,” she said. The girl child moved forward into the kitchen quickly, and so the boy followed. Mayra sighed a quivering breath, releasing the frustration of her relentless hunger of recent months. Her bony hand swung the door closed, and it latched with a soft enduring click. She turned and fought to keep her long tongue from lolling out of her mouth. “The oven’s all ready,” she said, her voice lowering into something husky and unpleasant. Ah Ramón, she thought. Bon appetit.
Five Minutes by Jake Zawlacki
Imagine sitting here in a wooden chair with Chinese soft somethings under your ass, leaning on a green laminated particle board twice processed table. You’ve been here for a while. You’re miserable because you hate your job. You wait for the accented drawl of the guest social media marketing specialist from Tuscaloosa to end like a root canal. You wait for his mouth to seal like two slices on a grilled cheese sandwich. You wait for the grizzly meat speckled jaws of Hell to open up beneath the floor and swallow all these lifeless marketing representatives, including yourself. If only God showed mercy. Imagine you’re a guy. Imagine there is a pretty girl watching this same thing in this same room. Long high heeled legs, blue jeans, and a nice enough shirt to pass for business casual among a bunch of old overweight men. Nobody questioned the blue jeans. Between the smile, the eyes, and the laugh she could have worn a poncho and nobody would have blinked. The laugh sealed it. A laugh like a woman about to sprout her hidden wings and fly home. She giggled a lot in the theater but we had a good time. We quit our jobs and moved into a banana peel yellow Winnebago. We drove and lived for a long time in big places. A Midwest town enveloped us. We started a business, Wreckords and More. Our daughter was beautiful. She looked like Audrey Hepburn at ten years old. “Shotgun,” her dad said to me with a grin in a white tuxedo. I chuckled because that’s what married men do. I remember our daughter trying on her mom’s jeans and liking them because they were retro. She went to an expensive college with lots of brick buildings. We moved to the coast in a white cottage with a blue door. I painted the door before we unloaded the truck. It smeared on my shirt when we moved the couch in. Started a new business. All You Can Read, a used bookstore. We had beautiful chairs. Beautiful dark wicker chairs. Her legs bare beneath a polka dot skirt. Veined the way black streaks run through godlike white marble statues. She hands me a glass of water with half a lemon slice floating on top and smiles. Stop imagining. The presentation is over. We stand. We walk down the stairs. “Excuse me,” I say, “Would you like to see a movie?”
Lagarfljรณtsormurinn by Virginia Elizabeth Hayes
The man stood on the rocky shore with his back to the lapping waves of Lagarfljรณt. He lifted his bearded face up toward the roiling storm clouds. "And so, after the third try, the great hero fisherman drew back his net." The three other men sitting nearby raised their glasses in salute. "Third try," they said, then drank. The storyteller balled his thick fists and lowered them, mimicking the action of pulling in a net. He pulled, then stopped abruptly as if the air had congealed and solidified. "And lo, there was a weight in the net. A great weight. A long, strong, slithering weight struggled against the net. But the heroic fisherman had come for a fight and didn't mind if one arrived. So, on he battled." "He battled," the men said, then again, drank. "The extraordinary battle raged on for weeks." The three men raised their glasses. "For weeks," they said, then drank. "And now it can be told that I was in the boat. I saw the schools of fishes swimming away from the beast, and I cast my net with all of my strength, swearing by the very blood of Thor that I should be victorious." The three men lifted their cups. "Hey," an alto voice interrupted. The three men let their cups droop. The great fisherman turned toward the voice with a deep scowl and a furrowing of his majestic eyebrows. A woman walked toward him holding an empty pail. "No fish? Again?" The great fisherman, the sworn foe of the lake dragon, let out a vast sigh. His mighty shoulders sagged. "I was getting to that part." "The part where you tell me there are no fish?" She lifted the empty pail. "And there is no dinner?" "Woman," he huffed out an exasperated breath. "Have you not listened to the story? I was thwarted by Lagarfljรณtsormurinn."
"Does the dragon of this lake know you're telling a story with him as the villain?" She glared at the bottle in his hand. "I hear he is sensitive." She glared a moment more, then turned away toward the seller of eggs where dinner might yet be found. "What," he muttered to her receding back, "do you know about stories? Or dragons? I'm the storyteller. If I say he is a villain, then he is a villain. If I say he is ugly, then he is ugly. I create the truth. And I say he is an ugly villain." The three men raised their glasses. "He is--" A shadow streaked under the water, twisting once. A thick bodied dragon shot out of the center of the lake, and snapped its head down onto the storyteller, swallowing him whole. Only the storyteller's bottle and footprints remained on shore. The lake dragon slipped back under the water and disappeared. The three seated men exchanged startled glances, then picked up the abandoned and lonely bottle. Filling their cups, they lifted a sad salute to the water. "Sensitive."
Sins of the Father by Matt Graham
This has to end. I don't know what day it is. I couldn't even swear to the month. The blanket of clouds overhead obscures everything and casts the world into varying shades of grey. It's difficult sometimes to distinguish night from day, though I know they still exist. Hunger eclipses everything, its presence ferocious and immutable. When everything began, I stayed awake wondering if we would die. Now I stay awake wondering when. Sarah and Daniel sleep through most of it. I'm thankful for that, at least. They're asleep now, huddled together under the ragged blankets, taking in the sparse heat from the old wood stove. They almost look peaceful, wrapped in each others arms as they are. Sleep brings dreams and precious ignorance of reality. I envy them that brief, blissful respite. Death will be a welcome release. While they huddle together day and night, I've been all but cast out. Sarah hasn't spoken to me in days, or maybe weeks. Daniel at least acknowledges me, but his blind loyalty to his mother allows little else. It hurts, yes, but it doesn't surprise me. Daniel has always been the proverbial momma's boy, quick to take Sarah's side and stick to it fiercely. The scenario is playing out once more. They blame me, of course, or at least Sarah does. I can't fault her for it, though. She wanted to leave at the first threat, and I said no. When the threat became confirmed, she practically begged me to come to this cabin, to stock up on food and get out of the city to wait out the storms. I should have listened, and now I've damned both of them because I didn't. It has to end. Could I have really known? Every year we get threats of terrible storms, with predicted snowfall from several inches to a few feet. People panic and buy every gallon of gas, jug of milk, and loaf of bread for miles. Meanwhile, I keep my family at home, saving our money and my blood pressure while chaos ensues outside. When the storms come, they usually bring enough snow to make a footprint, and life goes on. How could I have known this time would be different? I suppose that point is ultimately irrelevant. Sarah insisted, she begged, and I ignored her. Coming here would have made her feel safe. We could have found a store along the
way that wasn't bought out. We would have had time to gather wood before the weather turned. It would have been a hassle, to be sure, but doable. Even if nothing had come of the threat, Sarah would've had peace of mind. Instead, we were barely able to get out of the city, much less to her father's cabin. Worse, every building we passed was boarded up, and we were lucky to find the small stack of wood by the stove. I should have listened, and I don’t' know that she can forgive me. Now we sit day after day, cold and hungry, Sarah and David wasting away in their sleep while I rot with my thoughts. I haven't eaten in days, my last attempt to atone for the pain I've brought on them, but it makes no difference. Meals consist of a spoonful of some indeterminate fare salvaged from the cupboards and water to force it down. Even so, the food will be gone in a few days' time, and the wood won't keep the fire burning even that long. At least it will be over soon. They've suffered so much. We all have, and I'm ready for it to end. Every day their skin grows paler, their eyes more sunken and the circles around them darker. My son and my wife have the look of corpses and have seemed of death for days. They grow weaker by the hour, and I have watched it happen. My decision is made. I should have seen it coming. I suppose I probably did but didn't want to accept it. Now I have no choice. I can't sit by and watch them waste away any longer. I just caught a glimpse of Daniel's face in the firelight, and he's smiling. I can't remember the last time I saw him smile. Perhaps, when I'm finished, he'll get to dream his sweet dreams forever. He deserves that. That's the way it should be. I'm not going to let either of them wake up to this frigid hellhole another day. I can't. I owe them that much. Eventually, I'll have to follow them, of course. I know that, but I don't think I can do it myself. Perhaps I'll let the cold take care of me. There are worse ways to die, after all, like starvation. Yes, it will have to be the cold, quiet and peaceful. After all, once I'm finished, I won't have to starve.
The Great and Unparalleled Raakshasadoot by Gordon Brown
“But you have doubtlessly heard of him. How can you not have? Even before his birth, the Raakshasadoot was interminably famous. Were not the newspapers filled for a month with howls of scandal and intrigue? The flawless, doe-eyed actress Aditi Khan was pregnant! And her, unmarried! And suspected to carouse with both the visionary director M.K. Ramki and the resplendent Peswhi artiste-magnifique Samir Al-Sarhan. And these, just the first names among a long list of equally admirable and distinguished admirers. This is known to you, of course. As is the tragedy of the poor girl, who withdrew entirely from the world (ah, such a pity!), feeling the country and finding refuge in the estate of a foreign admirer (I can tell you with certainty it was Mr. Alfred Hitchcock.) And it was there, in a charming cottage in the fens, that the great and unparalleled Raakshasadoot was born. You may have heard lies about the Raakshasadoot. Nauseating gossip spread by his enemies (for the Raakshasadoot has no rivals). But greatness is certain to attract scoundrels and tongue-waggers just as moths are drawn to brilliant flame. It is a lie – a horrible lie – that the tragic and beautiful Aditi Khan disposed of her child in the stinking fens outside the cottage. It is a wretched and terrible malignment to suggest that her tender heart bore anything but boundless love for her offspring. And those who say that her child, reeking with brackish swamp earth, crawled up through the window and back into its crib – such people are simply spiteful. Spiteful and jealous. And who would not be? Any child may be born with two flat eyes, two pink ears. Any child may be born with a fat, jiggling belly and a set of useless, spasming legs. Any child may be born with a faint patch of waspish hair atop their ugly, nectarine heads. The great and unparalleled Raakshasadoot was more fortunate. The Raakshasadoot, as you can see, has two sets of compound eyes that glisten with oily iridescence. The Raakshasadoot has an elegant proboscis the color of the finest brandy
and lovely, oozing scales. He has dripping, gossamer wings that whine with the delightful song of a lonely violin. Is he not a graceful creature? Certainly the apple of any mother’s eye. Doubtlessly the pride of any handsome and talented father (perhaps the legendary cricketer Baghat Rathour or the Baron von Kastle.) So great was Aditi Khan’s love, that she sent the Raakshasadoot away. Recognizing his greatness, she knew that she could not keep him from his calling in the world. Filling the inside of a shoe box with orange marmalade and rotting blackberries, she enticed the Raakshasadoot into clambering inside. When he had, she snapped the box shut on top of him. ‘How cruel is a mother’s love?’ as the distinguished poet reminds us. The Raakshasadoot felt the sharp points of her shoes savage the box and the Raakshasadoot heard her curse him, calling him any number of names. This, of course, to only ensure that her son (whom she loved as a flower loves the sun) would know not to return. His destiny lay in the world outside. And yet the Raakshasadoot wept. Wept great snuffling tears that rolled down his mucous scales. Wept such tears as only a noble, handsome and endlessly talented creature can weep. And he wept for days and days and days and days until the lid of his box was suddenly opened. He found himself squealing and writhing in the sunlight. The air stung his lungs – so miserably crisp, so unbearably sharp. The great blue waves of the ocean stretched across all directions. Rough sailors had opened the box and they recoiled from the Raakshasadoot. Of course, they were only surprised to find themselves suddenly in the presence of a celebrity, yes! And being jealous, they made a show of plugging their noses and pretending to gag and muttering about the unbearable stench. Ah, such mendacity – for the Raakshasadoot has a perfumed essence, calling to mind jasmine blossoms on the first night of summer! But this you also know. The captain was summoned and he confessed that he was at a loss as to what should be done. The Raakshasadoot demanded to be returned to the bosom of his divine mother – the raven-haired Aditi Khan. Philistine and blasphemer that he was, the captain claimed to have no knowledge of any such woman. Neither did any of the crew, save for an old Tamil cook. He claimed that he knew of the unsurpassable actress – that he had seen one of her pictures when he was a boy. But she had killed herself in ‘46. And her, pregnant too, such a shame!
When the Raakshasadoot heard the cook speak such cruel falsehoods he attempted to defend his mother’s honor, lashing out wildly with his tail and his proboscis. His valiant efforts were met with a savage orchestra of kicks from the cook, captain, and crew. It was only through the guiding hand of destiny that the peerless Raakshasadoot escaped, scuttling away into the shadows. He hid for the next weeks beneath the decks, making his nest among the rats and the roaches, dodging this way and that as hunting parties scoured the ship for him. How long this may have gone on, who can say? Months, perhaps even years. And the world would have been robbed of the glorious and illustrious Raakshasadoot – can you even bear the thought? The manner of his escape need not concern you. Neither should the justice he exacted upon the wretched, libelous crew. And if a country doctor was present on the beach when the Raakshasadoot drifted ashore, what difference would it make? You have not come to hear of selfish doctors who would not lend their cars, you have come to hear of the magnificent Raakshasadoot. Suffice it to say that the Raakshasadoot found himself alone in the dusty world, seeking out the company of his equals in taste and in breeding. Hence, he made it known in a lonely roadside café that he wished to be taken to the Baron Hotel in Aleppo. For it is known that the songbird Umm Kulthum takes lunch there, that President Nasser has a standing reservation, that M. DeGaulle favors the place as well. And the Raakshasadoot has a wallet full of money for anyone who will take him. Never mind the red stuff, it’s dried now and money is money, is it not? None of the sullen locals came forward. They glowered at the Raakshasadoot and returned to their coffee and tea, murmuring in Arabic and Armenian. The Raakshasadoot’s eight-chambered heart sank within his carapace and he clicked his legs together for the waiter and ordered yet another bowl of sugar cubes. ‘And a bowl for me as well.’ This had come from a tall man in a tan suit. He pulled out the chair across from the Raakshasadoot and sat, lighting a cigarette and offering one to his host. The Raakshasadoot reached for one but the man in the tan suit withdrew them quickly. ‘Of course not! What am I thinking? Yes, what am I thinking? Can’t singe that lovely voice of yours, now can we?’ The man introduced himself, stating that he had heard the Raakshasadoot’s plight and pegged him at once for a creature of superb class.
‘You have noble blood, perhaps? I have a nose for such things, you know. Come now, no false modesty!’ The Raakshasadoot beamed, ‘It would be on my paternal side. My mother is the incomparable Aditi Khan –‘ ‘Apipi Khan, yes, yes, I was just about to say. Exactly like lovely Apipi. I can see the resemblance. Striking! Such an enchanting singer –‘ ‘Aditi Khan. She was an actress –‘ ‘With a lovely voice. An angel, truly, truly. And you have a tremendous voice as well. Have you acted? Any theater? I have a colleague you see. Bold new direction. True art. If you’re not engaged this evening perhaps I might set up a meeting.’ And it was so that the great and unparalleled Raakshasadoot climbed into the back of the man’s dark car. And it was so that the man explained that the Raakshasadoot should meet an associate with connections in entertainment. And he would certainly introduce the Raakshasadoot to Mr. Bergman and Mr. Fellini, who were good friends of his. Of course, for this to be done, the Raakshasadoot must establish himself, yes, yes. He would be taken on a tour of sorts. Village to village, city to city, all across the world. This, so that all might see the great and unparalleled Raakshasadoot. Sing? Dance? Cavort? Of course not! To simply look upon the Raakshasadoot, to be close to such a célébritéis itself an honor! Yes, like Douglas Fairbanks, only better. And this cage? These bars? To protect from overzealous fans, quite naturally. And the rest, of course, you know.”
The Thaw: Pushkin by Virginia Marybury
The soft snow, dizzy from its descent, has slept for three days before this thaw. Such vagaries of temperature in November are no surprise to the Petersburger, despite all the grumbling and sniffing about disorder. In the middle of the city, high up on a warm metal back, a wet white fur collar slides off the shoulders of a dandy's coat. He settles his shoulders, preening a little. The metal flexes, too, and his demonstrative gesture – an arm lifted in a rhetorical point – acquires attitude and animation. Streets away, in a courtyard, he is teased by schoolchildren shouting his name as they rush around him, stamping out the iambs of his name. This is interesting, and he almost feels warm, but then their teacher calls them away; slowly, they trickle into their museum; and their agitation fades. Why should he be quiet, though, and cold? If he could manage just a few steps, he could be inside, too: he could be home! Too late. The early winter night closes over him, like an eye falling asleep. The night is wet, and runnels of water form in the folds of his coat, tickling him as they drip from his fingertips. Yet there is nothing to be done about it, and it's not so bad to be out in the rain if he remembers he is a statue. *** In Artists' Square, though, it's all much more difficult to bear: here, there is wetness, indignity, irritation, noise. Filthy slush swirls below him and a Don Giovanni is being staged, somewhere over ... there. Imperceptibly, the statue's attitude shifts, like a boat in the stream of people walking toward the theatre. Tethered to the stone, he has an anxious wait before they come out again, still vibrating with music and horror. He is warmed by his own interest: he wrote a Don Juan of his own, once, but his anti-hero would never have stood at the door of any theatre, and certainly not of his own home. Standing outside is for an idiotic Leporello or a statue. His arm is still raised, his head turned as though he might make a remark, but that is only
how they posed him: he has been silenced. *** In the mild night, feet beat the slush into mud, and mix it well. Flat cakes of ice crumble at one another's edges, in the rivers and canals. *** The statue outside the flat decides he ought to move. Some clouds have appeared in the sky, but they do nothing to dim the rose-metallic glow: light accumulates and fills them before being spent again in the early northern night. This interests him greatly. He begins to sense the inspiration which used to precede a work. Throughout the long night, he composes, working life and action into himself. It is difficult to compose a man when he only has bronze materials, but somehow, by the start of the working day, he can hear. By daybreak, he can still do nothing outside his body, but he has a small means of existence. Eventually, he moves. These eyes cannot be human yet: he sees divine signs. ВХОД, urges one. Entrance. Cautiously, he climbs down into the slushy courtyard and enters the building – glancing, with a pang of alienation, at a booth moulded into the wall, divinely identified as КАССА, Cashier – and passing on. He has not had sufficient will to convert bronze into wool, so his heavy, flaring coat hampers him. When an old babushka begins making a commotion behind him, he does not have the strength to reply to her. Leaving the atrium for a large, high-ceilinged room is puzzling. Racks of coats, from individuals of mysteriously varied sizes and classes, stand behind a counter. By the window, a woman is half-leaning on a deep metal basket, pulling a mat off her boot. In the act of dropping the foot-cover, she sees the poet and goes still. So now I am the Medusa! he thinks, amused. He has made flesh out of stone and metal; and now he reflects stone into real, soft flesh! His appearance causes a great deal of astonishment. Despite the frozen terror of the people all around, they stare avidly, peering at him through all the reflective surfaces in this glassy palace.
He can see himself, too. His skin is still bronze-hued, his African chevelure stiff with metal curls, like a bas-relief of waves on the River Neva. Then the babushka from the lower floor enters, no longer afraid, abusing him in strangely-debased Russian. He strides impatiently away, moving as best he can, but then he faces two more severefaced babushki and finds that his Medusa effect has vanished. “You can't come through here without putting on the over-shoes,” one of them informs him. “He hasn't bought a ticket!” pants the first woman, who chased him up the stairs. He pushes through, trusting to his heavy bronze body to overwhelm. They follow him, gripping his softening coat, shouting. “Let me go!” His voice is like a huge bronze bell. It betrays what he is – or was – but magnifies him also. “I'm going home, damn it!” He strides for the doors. Room after room passes, without furniture. He panics. Has he been bankrupted? He scarcely notices the paintings on the walls, but toils on, seeking something familiar. His coat clangs against the doors, shocking him through. Amid a quick current of people, he struggles, beginning to sink. Their warm hands are not repulsed by him. Their grip strengthens. “He didn't buy a ticket!” “He must be drunk.” He clangs his name at them, again and again, as though he is smashing at his bronze body to make it resound. Had I known how strong flesh was, my Don Juan would never have submitted to the statue! He would have sent the Commander back to hell himself! The people make a formation in front of him and drive him out. He protests, beginning to feel more and more metallic. Even with them driving him, it is now hard to move. Outside, he turns to defy them, but standing at bay, in that old posture, he re-invokes his prison. He freezes.
Damn the living! He can no longer speak, but he can think. A vain, senile bo-bok of life. Damn the practice of erecting statues... *** The second night in the repertory cycle for Mozart's Don Giovanni. By some acoustic trick, the music comes clearly to the statue's receptive bronze. The metal softens, humming slightly. After all, why should he stand outside? The Commandant's statue pushed his way in, and the way Pushkin wrote it, Peter the Great's statue didn't stand still either when provoked by a mortal man. Distracted by his brooding, he flexes ... and moves. Instantly alive to the possibilities, he leaps down. He and the ground shudder as they meet, and the impact quickens him. *** The wall of papier-mâchÊ cinder-blocks crashes down, satisfyingly. He sings out in the rôle of the Commandant, in his great bronze voice. Like the Commandant, he is larger as a statue than as a man. As the only immortal here, he vaunts his stature in front of the singers and the audience. Far too soon, the curtain cuts across his view but then sweeps aside again, for the principals to receive their acclaim. He takes his place with them, savouring the vibrations, wishing he could close a door and let the applause ring around inside him forever. Suddenly, though, there is a ruder shock. A large, soft man, draped in dull bronze silk, stumbles onto the stage and seizes the statue's arm. This hand is heat and energy, not the applause he has mistaken for warmth. Behind the flesh man are three others: two burly men and a grim-faced theatre babushka, all terrifyingly melting-hot. The agitation in the air is changing. No longer sound beaten by hands, but a cold, refined twinkle of tension, filling the theatre. He begins to go deaf, even as the sound of applause fades. Exposed as a statue, he is inexorably driven back, through the theatre, through the rings of light, each orbit growing colder as he recedes from the centre. He has no strength of
his own; the ripples of warmth wash him back, back, back, receding. Stasis captures him, lifting his arm into its old pose. He freezes. *** In the River Neva, the water turns white and sticks.
About the Authors Angela Freeman is a CNY-based designer, writer, and enthusiast of creative expression. During her time at the Rochester Institute of Technology, two of her poems were published in the 2014 edition of Signatures, RIT's annual art and literary magazine. She also received an Honorable Mention for prose in the 2014 RIT Creative Writing Awards. Angela later served as a layout editor and gallery show exhibition chief for the newlyrenamed Signature, which won several honors in the 2015 Gold Circle Awards for Magazines, as well as a Gold Crown in the 2016 CSPA Collegiate Crown Awards. Angela currently works as a freelance designer in her spare time, and regularly contributes news pieces to the online publication of Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism.
Ben Bishop is a student at the University of Memphis: Lambuth. He has a love of reading, writing, and eating.
Charles Hayes, a multiple Pushcart Prize Nominee, is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. A product of the Appalachian Mountains, his writing has appeared in Ky Story’s Anthology Collection, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fable Online, Unbroken Journal, CC&D Magazine, Random Sample Review, The Zodiac Review, eFiction Magazine, Saturday Night Reader, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Scarlet Leaf Publishing House, Burning Word Journal, eFiction India, and others.
David Lohrey was born on the Hudson River but grew up on the Mississippi in Memphis. He currently teaches in Tokyo. He has reviewed books for The Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register, has been a member of the Dramatists Guild in New York, and is currently writing a memoir of his years living on the Persian Gulf.
Dr. Javed Latoo is a UK based senior clinician, honorary lecturer, and a medical Editor. In his spare time, Dr. Latoo writes poetry. His poems have been published in various literary and medical journals. His first published collection of poems is Gushing Fountain: A
Collection of Poems (2015). http://www.gushingfountain.co.uk/
Gordon Brown grew up in the deserts of Syria and now lives in the deserts of Nevada. Since his arrival in the New World he has been published in Danse Macabre and has upcoming work in NoD Magazine and The Airgonaut. Gordon spends his time looking after his pet cats, of which he has none.
Jake Zawlacki lives in the Altai mountains of Mongolia where he coaches basketball, speaks Kazakh terribly, and tries to make the world just a little bit better. He has been recently published in zeroflash, 101words, Romance Magazine and Litro.
Julie Howard is a former journalist with The Sacramento Bee, Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the bygone Maturity News Syndicate. She currently writes fiction from her home in Boise, Idaho. Several of her pieces have been published in Across the Margin, Literally Stories, and the Dime Show Review.
Lourdes Verรณnica is a Moscow-born translator and teacher currently living in Rome. Her poems were featured in In My Bed Magazine (Canada), the Silver Birch Press I Am Waiting Poetry Series and Lavender Review as well as nominated for 2015 Pushcart Prize. Some poems are upcoming for publication in Window Cat Press.
Matt Graham is a video game and horror film archivist, and sports his own IMDB page thanks to approximately 1.3 seconds of screen time in James Rolfe's "Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie". He lives and writes in Tennessee, where he lives with his wife, five children, three cats, and a partridge in a pear tree. He is working on a debut novel, tentatively titled "Jacobs Hollow", and plans to have it completed by Summer 2017.
The ninth daughter of a surgeon who accidentally cut off the tip of his index finger, Virginia Elizabeth Hayes developed a keen eye for the absurd at an early age.
Virginia Marybury read Russian and French at university, and wrote her M.A. dissertation on late Soviet corruption and power, so you may imagine the sort of people she writes about. Never fear: there are petty players among the grand intriguers. She dislikes obfuscating third-person biography, especially since she's already hiding behind a pseudonym.