October 30th, 1903

It is my desire through the writing of this letter that I may discover not all evidence of humanity has been plucked from my pitiful spirit, as I fear. I would pray for my wretched soul, yet I suspect heaven has no corner dark enough for someone with my moral depravity. And even if God, our divine creator, could somehow overlook my wretchedness, the deal has been made, and in the making, my soul has been promised to the dark angel. I embark on this, my final task, with the realization that he lurks outside my door even as pen touches paper, waiting to cast his ghastly spell and claim what pathetic excuse for life still courses through these veins. I seek not forgiveness, as I understand that there is no forgiveness for the evil deeds I have committed. Still, perhaps in the retelling of my tale, I myself will begin to fully understand the devilish dealings in which I have partaken, and through my understanding begin to embrace my fate as frightening as it may be. For the reader, if ever my ramblings should reach the eyes of another, I simply ask for the honesty of your sensibilities, for only in your loathing may my spirit begin to, in death, make retribution for the whole of my life’s wickedness.

Unlike the more ordinary social degenerate, I cannot blame the corruption of my manhood on some frequency of abuse inflicted during childhood, the inevitable consequence of an unscrupulous father with a heavy hand and blackened heart. Nor can I conveniently attribute the extreme perversity of my actions to a stern and unkind mother who withheld her affections. The beloved only child of a mild-mannered and wealthy antiques dealer and his wife, I enjoyed every advantage that a secure and privileged upbringing provides, including my parents’ unequivocal adoration and devotion. Truth be known, my formative years were so wholesome, so blissful, I grew into a well-groomed, well-fed, and handsome young man with a level head and pleasing disposition, which led to considerable success in my early career as a physician.

No, my parents had sufficiently immunized me against the more common diseases of neglect and poverty. However, not even my fine upbringing could inoculate me against the most deadly infection known to man. Woman.  

Her name was Elizabeth and from the moment I first beheld those lush auburn curls and hypnotic green eyes, I knew I must have her. She was fair-skinned and as delicate as an evening primrose, such that it occurred to me she might fall apart if not handled with the gentlest of manners. Dr. Richard Fulteron, a colleague and good friend, had sponsored the event, and I begged of him a proper introduction.

“Elizabeth,” he started, “This fine gentleman is a dear friend, Jacob Hollingsworth.” I bowed and waited for her approval. Her cheeks flushed, she smiled and nodded. I was at once mesmerized by every word she uttered, and we spent the entire afternoon conversing at great length.   

I learned she was the daughter of Captain Albert Whitley, a wealthy American entrepreneur who’d made his fortune in the lucrative trade of stocks. After the unexpected death of her mother two years earlier, she and her father had left New York and arrived in London. By the stroke of three, I understood I was at her mercy and would thenceforth be deprived true happiness unless I could claim the entirety of her affections as my own.

“Elizabeth,” I said, when we found ourselves alone in the now empty parlor, as all the other guests had since continued on with their Saturday routines. “You must agree to grant me the pleasure of your company during dinner. I am eager to learn the particulars of this marvelous dress shop in Naples.” Ah, what a babbling fool I would have sounded like to another man, if by some divine intervention, one had been present. Perhaps then I would have stood a chance. But as it were, I was smitten by a cunning predator, one whose venomous bite would be artfully disguised as a kiss.

When she accepted my invitation without hesitation, I was pleased. It would be the first of many evenings together, and consequently, I spared no expense on these occasions, nor would I have spared expense had finances been an issue. We attended the theatre, feasted at the finest establishments, and waltzed at the most exclusive balls.  During these deliberately planned and extravagant evenings together, I made it my custom to smother her with the most unnecessary of extravagances, such as imported chocolates from Switzerland, the latest fashions from France, bath salts and perfumes from New Guinea and brilliantly-crafted beaded jewelry from India. Nothing was too good for my Elizabeth.  And when we were together, it felt as though the laws governing nature conceded to our love and the entire universe submitted to our bidding.

Certainly, I had admired women before Elizabeth, but none as stunning as she.  Her mere presence reminded every nerve, every muscle, each and every fiber in my body that I was indeed a man. Oh, how desire can blind even the most sagacious of men to a danger that stands before him, when he has drunk from its cup so voraciously and with such thirst that he forfeits his God given sensibilities.

Elizabeth was like a fine wine. The more I drank of her, the more I craved, and the more I craved the more I drank. Before long, there was not a second in a minute in an hour in a day that I did not entertain the thought of sipping that delicate and all-too-addictive wine. My appetite for her was insatiable.

At first, Elizabeth, flattered by my attention, as I was considered by all a most respectable suitor, accommodated my intentions towards her by making herself available to me whenever I so desired her company. Gradually, however, I noticed a slight reticence on her part that culminated in a single refusal to attend another of Richard’s Saturday brunches, which had become an unbreakable habit for the two of us. 

“Feeling a bit lightheaded,” she’d said. “Nothing to warrant any concern.” She would join me for dinner later that evening. Then at four, I received a second most disappointing message from her father saying she was still feeling ill and would meet me for dinner on Monday instead. 

I was understandably vexed. Her absence during brunch was bothersome enough, but to endure the unpleasantries of her empty chair at dinner was far too much to bear. I tried to console myself by inviting Richard to accompany me in her place. He was one of my closest friends, and it had been months since the two of us had spent any time cavorting about town as two young bachelors such as we are expected to do.  Troubled by my recent absence from these once habitual exploits, Richard happily accepted my invitation. We orchestrated an evening together at the Black Horse Inn, a spirited tavern known for its animated patrons that we were known to frequent before Elizabeth had seized my heart. I was eagerly anticipating our interaction. Yet once at the pub, Richard’s presence only vexed me further, and not even a pint of stout lager could blunt my unreasonable disposition towards him. I was not simply indifferent towards his attempts at casual conversation. I was rude. 

Sunday was a gloomy day with mournful gray skies and chilling temperatures. By midday my hunger for Elizabeth had achieved such notable proportions that maddening seems the most rational description. Doused in this persistent melancholy, I was deceived by a phantasm - the remarkably auspicious sort conjured through the ever-optimistic character of the imagination. I fancied I saw Elizabeth standing beneath the half-dead oak tree outside my bedroom window. Yet when I rushed to the hollowed trunk, it was gnarled limbs and barren branches that reached forward to greet me. The apparition, I concluded, had been the unabated consequence of a dose of whiskey intended to help me sleep and foolishly administered on an empty stomach. Alas, I did not sleep that night. My sole respite was remnants of Elizabeth’s scent stolen from a handkerchief that I had, through no particular craftiness or mischief on my part, removed from her handbag a week earlier.

Monday morning I had patients. Try as I may, I could not focus on the task at hand.  My thoughts were consumed with Elizabeth. By noon, I realized there was no cure for my malady, no tonic for my lovesick heart. Nothing except Elizabeth would bring me relief.  Unable to endure such unbearable heartache any longer, I decided to pay her an unexpected visit.

It was well known to me that Elizabeth had recently taken up piano lessons on Monday afternoons with a gentleman named McKinnely. I knew from our conversations that his residence was conveniently located on Baynard Street, only fifteen minutes from my medical office. So I grabbed my hat and coat and ventured out into the bitter afternoon.

I proceeded south on Winchester. Then turning left onto Baynard Street, I could hear the faint suggestion of Beethoven. I envisioned Elizabeth’s perfectly manicured fingertips dancing across the ivory keys with the grace of a ballerina dancing across the stage. I allowed myself a deep, indulgent breath for the purpose of reveling a moment longer in the bounty of my good fortune at finding someone as extraordinary, someone as deserving of my adoration as she.

Appreciating my state of mind at that precise moment, one can surely fathom the unparalleled sense of betrayal and disillusionment I experienced, when standing outside the gentleman’s flat, I glanced up through the window to see my beloved nestled hip to hip beside her instructor upon the piano stool.  His hands were intertwined with hers, and together, like the undulating bodies of two lovers, they glided across the keyboard in one continuous harmonious motion.

I felt as though someone had reached into my chest and extracted my heart.  Could it be, my Elizabeth, in love with another? I wanted to believe in her innocence, yet jealously choked out all evidence of reason. My first instinct was to charge into this scoundrel’s flat and claim what was rightfully mine. I might have succeeded in my frenzied cause, had I not slipped on a mossy patch and hit my head upon the third step, which coincidentally brandished a wickedly sharp corner. The impact left a substantial laceration above my left eye. When I attempted to stand, I nearly swooned. Feeling woozy, and my bravado gone, I decided to retreat back to my office where I could tend to my wounds and plot my revenge.
  
Later that night, as promised, Elizabeth joined me for dinner. Astutely aware of the true nature and potency of her toxin and the severe infection it had inflicted upon me, I had devised a remedy so devious, so diabolical, I am ashamed to admit that it was indeed my own. Yet as she walked through the door in the seductive chartreuse satin dress I had presented to her on our previous engagement, her complexion unusually rosy and her expression absent even a remote suggestion of remorse for her unforgivable treachery, I knew my cunning was justified.

“Dear Jacob, your eye. What on earth happened?”

“It’s nothing really, just a scratch,” I assured her. “Slipped over that dastardly excuse for a rug in my office and hit my head on the corner of the desk.”

“Are you sure you’re feeling up to dinner?”

“Why Elizabeth, my dear, how could I be anything but sure in your presence.”  Few professional actors could rival the performance I executed that night. I was superb.  I was better than superb. I had deceived the deceiver. Elizabeth suspected nothing.

The next morning, I rose at the first sign of dawn. I arranged to have word sent to my patients that I was ill and would be unable to see them. And it was true, I suppose.  I was ill, injected with the poison of a woman. 

Although it was Elizabeth’s custom to spend Tuesdays in the company of her father, I had convinced her to meet me again for a special dinner at my home. I enticed her with the promise of a surprise, a special surprise, one she deserved and one that was long overdue.
“Oh, Jacob, don’t be cruel. Tempting me with another surprise. You know very well that I can’t resist your surprises. Father will be so disappointed.”

“Well, if you’d rather not,” I teased, “I suppose my little surprise can wait.”

“Little?  It is little you say?”

She was like a malleable piece of clay in the sculptor’s hands, and my plan was already starting to take shape. 

My next feat had been to convince this rascal McKinnely to meet me. I had a private message delivered to his flat.  In the message I explained that I was anxious to purchase Elizabeth a new piano as a present for our impending engagement. I would be much obliged if he would be kind enough to afford me his expertise. After seeing their shameless flirtation the previous day, I knew he could not resist a chance to meet me in the flesh. For I firmly believe it is in the blood of such a man to learn all he can about his adversaries.  

I was confident in my physical advantage. Mckinnely was a musician who had presumably learned to express himself through his music, and not muscle and brawn.  However, leaving nothing to fate, I arranged our meeting at my medical office to ensure me an adequate edge should the circumstances take an unexpected course. 

When he arrived, I offered him a chair, which he politely accepted. “How kind of you to assist me,” I said with convincing sincerity. “Elizabeth speaks so highly of you. Her playing has improved tremendously under the benefit of your most competent instruction.” McKinnely smiled awkwardly, though I suspected beneath that clumsy expression lurked a man as devious and ruthless as myself. “I’ve heard you’re quite a talented and accomplished musician,” I continued as I turned and closed the door.
  
The proficiency with which I methodically delivered my revenge suggests that Elizabeth’s venom had indeed contaminated my heart and, in so doing, rid itself any semblance of compassion or conscience.  

“A Steinway, you say?” I slipped the syringe from my coat pocket but kept it hidden beneath the length of my sleeve. “The best money can buy?” I continued.  Walking around to his back, I drew out my weapon. By the time he comprehended the malicious intent of my actions it was too late. I had injected the Veronal, a potent barbituate I used during various procedures for the purpose of sedating my more restless patients.

The sheer look of terror on his face when I withdrew the syringe was gratifying.

“Good God, what have you done,” he demanded, clawing at the pin-sized hole in his neck.  He then attempted to stand, but the medicine was too potent. The poor man was more fragile than I had initially surmised, and other than this one feeble attempt, he made no legitimate effort to fight the drug’s effects. Within several minutes he laid slumped forward in his chair, limp and lifeless, a subtle expansion and contraction of his thorax the sole evidence of life. 

I wasted no time in completing my dishonorable deed. I lugged McKinnely’s body into my surgical suite and arranged it on the table, thankful for his slight frame.  I then donned a smock and retrieved a sterile scalpel from amongst a dozen other cold steel instruments. The ensuing cuts were precise and preformed with the mastery of a surgeon, for my Elizabeth deserved the best.

With the first part of my plan completed, I returned home. It was two o’clock when I arrived, which gave me three hours to prepare for my love’s arrival. The cook was instructed to have dinner prepared by half-past four at which time she was relieved of her duties for the remainder of the evening.   

When Elizabeth walked through the door she looked exquisite in a green velvet dress. She was so enchanting that I found it difficult to stay focused on the specific details of my intent. I escorted her into the dining room where our meal was eloquently arranged on the table, a roasted duck with all the trimmings. It was Elizabeth’s favorite. A crackling fire snapped in the fireplace and a series of candles provided a sultry ambiance befitting the mood of this special occasion.

When our meal was complete, I knew the time was ripe for Elizabeth’s surprise.  I excused myself, and upon my return held a square package with dimensions proportional to those of a hatbox. It was wrapped in white paper and dressed with a red satin bow. I placed the box on the table in front of her then suggested a toast to compliment the occasion.

“To you, Elizabeth, the love of my life.” Raising my glass in her honor, I noticed the slightest suggestion of displeasure in her countenance. “Why, dear, you look disenchanted.” I said. “Have I disappointed you?”

“No. Well, yes. It’s just when you said little surprise, I thought, or rather I presumed you truly met little, like as in the size of a ring box little.”

Dropping down on one knee, I smiled reassuringly. Suddenly, her eyes brightened, and I could see she was once again hopeful.

“Dearest Elizabeth,” I began, “You know how precious you are to me.” I took hold of her hand.  “From the moment we first meant, I was beguiled by all that you are.”

“Oh Jacob,” she whispered, a satisfied grin replacing her earlier glum. 

“You must know by now that I can not live without you.”

Elizabeth was in tears as I nudged the box towards her and encouraged her to open it.   She pulled the bow and lifted the lid. My heart fluttered as I waited for the inevitable reaction.

The quickness with which the color left her face was remarkable. I had hoped for something dramatic like a scream or a mournful sob, yet there was no such superfluous display of emotion. On the contrary, she seemed rather sedate, even catatonic.

“Why Elizabeth, whatever is wrong, my love? Please don’t tell me that my most humble offering does not meet your expectations. I thought for sure you would delighted.  After all, it was Mother’s.” Reaching into the box, I lifted out her lover’s severed hand that held the precious heirloom in its palm. 

Elizabeth’s bottom lip quivered. “Here,” I said presenting it to her. “Why don’t you try it on? Mother was quite a bit larger than you, but I had it sized. Surely you will grant me the pleasure of seeing it on your finger.”

“Jacob, you’re sick,” she cried out in a horrified voice.
 
“Sick, you say? Oh, my dear, how correct you are. I am sick, lovesick. Certainly these long elegant fingers are familiar to you?” I offered up McKinnley’s amputated hand, yet still she refused to acknowledge her infidelity.

It was then that her shock progressed into hysterics. She ran from the room, as if there were somewhere to run.  She was barely out the door when the Veronal I had slipped into her wine began to exert its effects, and she stumbled to her knees. I had used a much milder dosage than I had deemed necessary for McKinnely. I wanted to ensure she was conscious albeit sufficiently impaired. 

I retrieved the ring and slid it onto her ring finger. “Look, Elizabeth, it fits perfectly.”  She made a muffled groan, and I was convinced she was pleased. I leaned forward and kissed her. Her lips felt as smooth and supple as silk, and she smelled so sweet like the Chinese sacred lily narcissus. I then carried her into the backyard and leaned her up against the old oak. With the assistance of a lantern, I fetched a ladder and rope from the garden shed. The real challenge was finagling Elizabeth’s flaccid body up the ladder, and even amidst the freezing temperatures I could feel myself perspiring.  After several awkward attempts, I succeeded. I pulled the noose towards me and slid it over her head. Once secure, I let her go. A few desperate gurgles accompanied sporadic jerks, then nothing but a peaceful silence.  And so, it was done.

As I sit here now, reflecting back upon this unfortunate series of events, I realize I had no other recourse. Yet do not believe for one second that this last vial of Veronal, intended for none other than myself, represents an act of cowardice or an attempt to escape retribution.  There is no doubt that the punishment I deserve is considerably more severe than any hangman’s noose can deliver. To the contrary, it is the very nature of such grizzly and public deaths that warrant my decisive action. For it is clear to me, such practices are bound to invoke a sentiment akin to sympathy in the hearts of those good men and women who cannot fully embrace the righteousness innate in taking an eye for an eye. To allow such perverted compassion, no matter how small, on my behalf would be unjust and challenge the tragic irony of all that has come to pass. 

Be sure, this one truth I can attest to with complete certainty.  It was unadulterated love and not malice that forced my hand to this ghastly conclusion. I suspect any man who has fallen from such considerable heights of love as I describe can appreciate the necessity of so wicked a crime, no matter how horrid and monstrous it may appear on first consideration. So as you see, the corruption of my humanity was but the obligatory fate of a soul that had surrendered to the unscrupulous and malevolent will of a lovesick heart.

g. martinez cabrera

Tiny People

Since getting married, every night, Ben checked his pockets thoroughly.  His wife was always getting on him for that; she told him she didn’t like it when he put his pants in the hamper without checking because then she had to rewash all the clothes to get rid of the bits of paper-dust that were everywhere.  She hated redoing the laundry even more than she hated doing laundry in the first place, which she hated intensely.  So, needless to say, Ben did his best to clear his pockets.

But one day, just as he was about to throw away the shreds of receipts and old gum wrappers from the day, his eye fell on the tiniest scrapling.  The paper itself was non-descript: white, a strip of computer paper, he assumed.  But on it, was a drawing.  A stick figure, the kind any child might draw based on what she’d learned in math class—all line segments and circles.  He wasn’t sure where it came from.  He wasn’t one to draw tiny stick figures on little scraps of paper.  He wondered to himself how it was that the paper ended up in his pocket.  Though not the type to draw tiny figures, Ben was the type to think about the tiniest of things, which is what he would’ve done except that his watch started going off telling him it was time to go to bed.

When he woke up the next day, the first thought he had was of the tiny drawing.  But when he looked for it on his desk, he didn’t find it.  For a moment, he was sad.  As sad as one can be for a stick figure, but he told himself not to worry.  His wife, clean-freak that she was, had probably thrown the little piece of paper away.  So he went about the process of getting up and getting ready for work and forgot all about the tiny drawing on the little piece of paper.  At least, he forgot about it until he was getting coffee later that morning and he went to pay.

There, among the pocket change and a matchbook (he didn’t smoke, but liked matchbooks) he pulled out of his pocket another small scrap of paper with another tiny man on it, except that this time, the tiny man was a tiny woman.  He assumed she was a woman because attached to its small circular head was a triangle, which he assumed was a ribbon.  There was also a wisp of a line coming off the circle, which he assumed was hair.

The people in line behind Ben started to get anxious.  They just wanted their coffee.  The cashier (who the coffee company called, a Transaction Specialist) with her hand out, was trying to fight her caffeinated annoyance, but she also had just come from yoga, so she was keeping things together nicely.  Meanwhile, Ben just stood there, holding the little drawing of the little geometric woman in his palm, still trying to figure out where she came from, and he probably would’ve just stood there if it wasn’t for the fact that she started talking to him.

She seemed a little lost, which made Ben sympathetic since at that moment, he felt a little lost himself.  “So who are you looking for, exactly?” he asked, walking away from the caffeinated-yogasized Transcation Specialist and the annoyed customers staring at him.

“I’m looking for John.  He told me to meet him here.”

“Where?”  Ben asked.

“Here.”

“In my palm?”

“No.  In the club.”

“Where’s the club?”

The drawing seemed like it was trying to move her head toward something.

“Are you ok?” Ben asked.

“Yes.  I’m just trying to show you where the club is.  It’s not easy when you’re a stick figure.”

“No.  I guess not.”

Ben and the drawing stared at each other (Ben assumed she was staring, though it’s kind of hard to know for sure when a drawing is staring at you.)  “Do you mean my pocket?”

“If that’s what you call it.  So have you seen him?”

“Who?”

“John.”  The drawing was becoming a little annoyed.

“What does he look like?”

“To you?  He probably looks a lot like me.  But that’s because you 3-D types are biased.  You think we all look the same.”

“Are you talking about the little guy I pulled out of my pocket last night?”

“Maybe.  I wasn’t there, so I don’t know who you pulled out of your pocket.  A lot of us go there, you know.”

“To my pocket?”

Before the drawing could answer, Ben noticed that the line of coffee-needing people were staring at him as was the Transaction Specialist, who was now losing her battle of yoga-induced equanimity.  Ben shoved the tiny drawing back in his pocket and went back to work, trying to forget what he’d seen.  It wasn’t easy, though.  He’d made contact with the littlest things in life—the tiniest of beings—and some of them, it seemed, thought of his pocket as a pick-up joint.

On his way back home, he wondered to himself if there were other tiny things that wanted to make themselves known to him.  Could insects speak?  How about dust?  Maybe dust was more than just dirt.  Like some kind of conscious blob of soft tissue that could speak if someone would just listen.  The possibilities were endless, Ben told himself just as he walked by a construction site under a huge crane.

What Ben had no way of knowing, because how many people could know this—is that huge things (like cranes) become really jealous—especially of tiny things.  Needless to say, a man paying so much attention to tiny drawings and insects and dust was just too much for this specific crane, who decided, quite on a whim, that this man should become a tiny speck of a person himself.

KJ Hannah Greenberg

"Well I like it," said Lorraine. "And so do the boys.  It makes it feel more like Christmas."

"Samuel won't approve."  Her mother had sighed.

"I'll put out a Menorah."  Why had she said that?  She didn't own a Menorah.

"What will John say?"

"Hanukkah begins on Christmas this year.  I don't think he'd mind.  He's a Unitarian."

"You should have asked him first," she said.  "Why did you invite them in the first place?"

"I thought it would be nice."

"You don't thank Jews by asking them to Christmas."

"Stephanie and Ben are Jewish.  They look forward to Christmas with us."

She could hear her mother sigh again.  "I never understood why you ask them either."

Lorraine walked past the two young men.  They were busy tuning their guitars.  She knew very little about them, apart from their names.  They were giant boys, nearly a foot taller than she, and they wore their hair twice as long.  From the look of them and their instruments, Lorraine braced for an evening of heavy metal.  But the music, when it came, sounded more like Cat Stevens than Metallica.

"I see you play," said Lorraine, on her way back to the kitchen.

The eldest, Samuel Jr. looked up at her with large blinking eyes.  He had a detached air about him, as though the world were something to be appreciated from afar.

"Can I get you something to drink?  We have sparkling cider, Southern brewed iced tea, unsweetened, of course, and there's also sparkling Cranberry, and ginger ale, and Coke.  Oh, and there's plain Seltzer."

"I'll take Cranberry juice," said Seth.

"Seltzer for me," said his brother."It's sparkling Cranberry.  Is that all right with you?"

Seth thought a moment.  "I guess so."

Lorraine set the sherry glasses on the sideboard and opened the bottle of sparkling Cranberry.

"It's chilled.  But I have ice if you want it."

"I'm good." Seth took a moment to watch the bubbles rising in the tumbler.

"Poor man's champagne." Lorraine laughed and then worried that the remark might have offended him.

Seth shrugged, put the glass down, and resumed jamming with his brother.

Lorraine listened a moment.  They play well, she thought, and then found herself staring at Seth's sandy-colored curls, which lay thickly matted around his shoulders.  He didn't take after either his father or his mother, not really, not with that hair, but he was tall like they were and, like his mother, he was heavy set with lipid blue eyes.

"The Seltzer is in the fridge.  I'll get it," Lorraine said to Samuel Jr., who sent her off with a dreamy smile and went on playing.

"This was supposed to be our brunch," said Samuel as Lorraine entered the kitchen.

"Put some caviar on that," Georgina said to John as she pushed a bagel crisp laden with egg salad into his hands.  "And don't forget the Madeira.  John says he's never had Madeira."

"No, but my Aunt Jo used to drink bourbon before dinner.  She took it straight with ice."   John was making an obvious effort to ingratiate himself with Georgina, to whom he spoke with the chumminess of an old comrade.  Lorraine knew her husband better.  She knew that he didn't like sherry.

She took the goblet of sherry out of his hand and sniffed. "Smells nice.  But Georgina what were you thinking?  These glasses are huge.  I have the most beautiful set of cranberry sherry glasses.  John's mother gave them to me."

Georgina set her Madeira on the table.

"These look fine to me," she said.  "Lead crystal, right?  But any glass is fine with us.  Right Samuel?"

"Plastic.  Paper.  I could care less."

Lorraine took a sip of Madeira, which went down with like a hot coal dowsed in sugar.  "Tastes a lot better than that bottle of Amotillado I bought last year," she remarked brightly.

"I don't know about that," said Georgina, who recognized faint praise when she heard it.  She handed Lorraine a bagel crisp topped with salmon mousse and roe.  "Try this.  Honestly, I don't like caviar.  It's got that real briny taste.  But Samuel and the kids go for it.  Don't you Samuel?"

"We eat anything," said Samuel, surveying the table.  Even ham, thought Lorraine, with a derisive glance at the melon and proscuitto.  She directed his attention to the plate of hors d'oeuvres.

"What's in them?" he asked skeptically.

"Gorgonzola, spinach and feta.  Try the miniature quiches.  You'll like them."

"I'm not big on quiche," he said and dipped a bagel crisp into the egg salad.

"Mom, mom," said Alexander.  "This is the best egg salad I've ever eaten.  Why don't you make egg salad like this?"

Georgina beamed.  For a moment, Lorraine thought she was going to offer her nine-year old some Madeira. "Samuel Jr. asked for Seltzer," she remarked to no one in particular.  On her way out of the kitchen, she cast a sorry eye at the great crock of beef bourgionne simmering on the stove.  It had taken her five hours to prepare that beef bourgionne.  Why had she bothered?

The doorbell rang.

"That's Stephanie and Ben," she announced.  Stephanie and Ben, like beef bourgionne, were a regular feature of Christmas at Lorraine's house.

"Come in!  Come in!"

"We're here!" cried Stephanie.

"We're so happy you could come.  Ben, it's so nice to see you."

"Nice to see you too Lorraine."

"Give me your coats.  Is that a bunt cake?  I'm so impressed."

She led the new arrivals through the living room where she lingered a moment in order to give them an chance to admire the Douglas fur, which had been icily but tastefully decorated in plain white lights and Victorian ornaments.

"Lorraine, the place looks great.  Ben, doesn't the tree look wonderful?"

"Stephanie spent all day in the kitchen baking that cake."

"You made this?  Bunt cakes are so difficult."

"I was a little worried about it.  But I followed the instructions in the Holiday Masterpieces Cookbook."

"What a great series that is," Lorraine said and then introduced them to Samuel Jr. and Seth, who were sprawled out on the couch, their guitars at their feet, and bored expressions on their faces.

"I didn't forget your Seltzer," Lorraine said to Samuel Jr.  "You two look hungry.  There are all kinds of treats on the table.  Help yourselves."  She relieved Stephanie of the bunt cake and led her and Ben into the kitchen.

"We're not big on the holidays in our house, right Samuel?" Georgina was saying.

"We celebrate at the mall."

"I'm not religious and I'm not raising my kids to be religious either.   We'd all be a lot better off without some church telling us how to think and what to do."

"These are our friends, Stephanie and Ben," I interrupted.

"Georgina."

"Samuel."

"Georgina, what an unusual name."  Stephanie held out her hand.

"She's from the former Yugoslavia," Samuel explained.

"Are you Serbian?" Lorraine asked.  "Were you raised Orthodox?"

"I wasn't raised anything."

"But were you born here or in Serbia?" asked John.

"We came here when I was four," said Georgina.  "My parents weren't religious, and neither am I."

"She said she was from Yugoslavia, not Serbia," said Ben.  He added, with a short laugh, that he wasn't particularly religious either.

"I'm not religious at all," said Georgina.

Stephanie looked at her husband and then Georgina.  "Are you an atheist?"

Lorraine intervened.  "Ben, let me get you something to drink?"

"What's that you're drinking?"

Lorraine raised her glass.  "Madeira."  She drained her glass.  "Happy holidays everyone."

Georgina put down her drink and made her way around the table.  Lorraine didn't understand at first, but she could see other woman—this large woman—coming towards her with her arms outstretched. Oh, my God, she thought.  That was the moment when Lorraine could have fled the room, and not merely the room but the house, leaving her strange, mixed family behind forever.  But she didn't.  She knew that, no matter how uncomfortable the holidays made her feel, these people were her family.  There was nowhere else for her to go.  "Now that's the spirit," said Georgina, as she hugged her.  "That's the spirit."

* first published in Hayden's Ferry Review

Joe Mynhardt

The Other Side of the River

Beneath the smoldering dark clouds of Guinea, West Africa, following the river Niger as it snaked through the misty woodlands, Aneka ran with an axe in hand. I can feel him watching me. Bastard. The sound of distant thunder accompanied the scream that emanated from a lone wooden cabin further along the banks of the river.

“You can’t catch me!” a little girl shouted.

Ben turned to his six year old daughter, Mariame. “Not so loud dear, we have guests.”

Mariame froze and clutched her hands over her mouth.

Ben couldn’t help but grin. He loved having his friends and family over every Sunday. His parents would always bring a salad and a gift for Mariame. His best friend Michel would always be there with his fiancée Angeline.

“Sorry,” Angeline said as she came to a stop beside Mariame. “I probably shouldn’t have tickled her so much.”

“No, don’t worry,” Ben said as he turned back to his daughter. “Mariame dear, go help grandma in the kitchen.”

“I’ll go with you, Angeline said. “We’ll leave the boys out here to figure out how they’re going to cook all that food when the storm comes.”   

“We’ll wait for Michel,” Ben replied. “He’s the brains after all. Why else would you want to marry him?”

Ben’s dad stepped closer. “Definitely not for his good looks.”

“Still the best around these parts,” she said with a smile as they entered the house.

“That storm is really getting close now, Benjamin,” Joseph said. “Looks like you were right again.”

“We’d better start moving the stuff inside,” Ben said. He grabbed two chairs and carried them through the enclosed veranda to the dining room. Although it had been two years since her death, he still struggled to walk into the living room without glancing at his wife’s photos, especially the one with a baby Mariame in it.

Ben returned to the kitchen and almost gasped when he saw how quickly it had become dark. He stood behind his mother and placed his arms around her neck, squeezing her gently. “Anything I can do to help?”

“We’ll have to start the generator,” she said. “I can hardly see your father’s face anymore.”

“That’s a good thing,” Joseph said.

She blushed. “Oh, Ben–”

“Daddy,” Mariam interrupted.

“Yes dear.”

“There’s a man in the front yard.”

Thunder boomed as they stared at Mariame in silence.

“He looks scary, Daddy.”

Everyone moved to the veranda. Ben could hardly see the man standing on the other side of the screen windows. He opened the door. Before him stood a large African man unlike any of the natives of Guinea, dressed in a red loincloth, a double-headed axe in his grasp.

“Oh my God, it’s . . .” Ben said.

“Lock the door,” his mother said, her voice shaky.

Ben closed the door and turned the lock, yet he could still see the figure through the screen windows. “It’s Shango.”

“Can’t be,” his father replied.

“Who?” Angeline asked.

“It’s him . . . Shango, god of thunder and lightning. There have been sightings by fisherman up and down the river all month.”

“He’s coming?” Ben’s mom cried.

Ben turned to see Shango leap into the air and onto the roof in one powerful jump. He felt Angeline grab onto his arm.

“We need weapons,” his father said. “Where’s your rifle?”

“In the truck,” Ben said.

“No. Stay inside, Joseph!” Ben’s mother shouted. She reached out her arms in an attempt to latch onto Joseph’s shirt, but it was too late.

Joseph pushed the door open and dashed towards the truck. A swooping sound accompanied the flight of the axe as it soared through the air and struck Joseph’s back.

Everyone screamed. Ben rushed to stop his fainting mother from hitting the floor. He hardly felt Angeline let go of his arm. Moments later a loud thwack echoed from the kitchen.

Ben ran in just in time to see Angeline’s head and body plummet to the floorboards in two unsynchronized plops. Blood from the severed veins sprayed across the wallpaper. Her head rolled until it came to rest against the fridge.

Mariame shouted and ran into the adjacent living room.

Ben’s boots splashed through the pools of blood as he chased the attacker down the hallway and out the window of a back room.

Once out of sight, Aneka, residing inside the exterior body of an African male, bounded back onto the roof of the cabin and crouched. She yearned to let go of the axe. These poor people. Why did I ever think that bastard could help me?

Meanwhile Ben was searching the house for his mother, yearning to offer her some kind of refuge from the pain of losing her husband. He didn’t want to think about his own loss – his father, his best friend’s fiancée. There would be time for that later.

Ben grabbed the flare gun from the pantry and, carefully slipping his arm out the door, shot two flares. The flares lit up the darkening sky, illuminating the surroundings, turning the trees into frigid hands stretching out their boney red fingers towards the cabin. Darkness and uncertainty lingered beyond.

Ben returned to his mother, who was sitting wide-eyed near the kitchen door, and whispered in her ear. “Michel will be here soon, Mama. With guns. There’s no way we’re letting that thing escape. I’ll make him pay for what he did to dad.”

Lightning struck nearby. The thunder temporarily deafened them.

It wasn’t long before the rumbling of an engine came from the dirt road. Michel’s car skidded to a stop in front of the house. Ben ran to the front door waved to his best friend since kindergarten.

Michel climbed out of the truck and gaped at Joseph’s body.

“Watch out,” Ben shouted from behind the screen door, “he’s on the roof.”

Michel looked up in a shocked silenced.

“It’s Shango. I saw him with my own eyes,” Ben said, knowing that every local had heard the rumors. “We all saw him. Bloody axe and all.”

Michel ran into the house and handed a hunting rifle to Ben. He gazed around the veranda, no doubt in Ben’s mind who he was searching for. Michel rushed to the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. He fell to his knees and vomited at the sight of his headless fiancée.

Ben’s mother grabbed Michel by the shirt and pulled him towards her. “Let’s get out of here. He’s going to kill us all.”

Michel pulled himself away from her grasp and crawled to Angeline. Ben sat down beside his friend and draped his jacket over Angeline’s head. He placed his hand on Michel’s shoulder. He knew it would take Michel a long time to get over this.

Without saying a word, Michel wiped his mouth against his forearm and picked up his shotgun.

The two men exited the building. Michel went around the back while Ben raised his rifle and stepped away from the house, fixing his sight on the roof. He saw a dark patch on the roof, darker than anything else that surrounded it. Ben aimed, hoping it would be Shango, and fired.

The rifle pushed Ben back a step, yet the shadow moved. But then it stopped, and Shango stood up. For a few moments Shango, the cruel African god, stared at Ben, then he shriveled into the shape of a half naked woman and collapsed down the other side of the roof.

“I got him!” Ben ran around the side of the house, wondering if Michel had also seen Shango shape-shift into a woman. But Michel said nothing. Perhaps the darkness and the rain were playing tricks on him.

“Everyone out of the house,” Ben shouted as he saw a trail of blood on the window sill near where she had fallen.

He ran into the house and pulled his mother to her feet.

“Where’s Mariame?” he asked.

“Hiding.”

Further down the hall Aneka, now in her human form, lay silently under a bed, using her mystical skills to listen to every word the family said. Oh, please God. No. She turned her head and stared into the dark brown eyes of the little girl. No, I can’t kill children. He can’t make me. Please don’t scream. Aneka reached for the girl’s mouth.

There was a sound coming from the hallway, Ben leaning against the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway, rifle raised. He waited silently, listening.

A door creaked at the end of the passage. Shango stepped out.

In Ben’s shaking hands the aim of the rifle swayed form side to side. He fired a shot down the dark passage, but Shango ducked behind his blades and deflected the shot.

With a giant leap Shango jumped through the hallway ceiling and into the roof, sending pieces of timber plummeting to the floor.

Ben ran forward and fired two more shots into the ceiling, hoping to hit Shango before he could get back on top of the roof. A figure ran in from the back door. Ben raised his rifle and was about to fire when he saw the shotgun. “Don’t shoot. It’s me.”

“It’s too bloody dark in here!”

“I’ll find Mariame,” Ben said, “You get my Mom so we can get the hell out of here.”

Ben moved down the hallway and slid past Michel, both men wishing the other one well. Ben continued on and peered out the back door for any trace of Mariam.

Lightning struck nearby trees with several continuous strikes.

Ben moved from room to room, whispering Mariame’s name. Except for his wedding ring rattling against the side of the rifle, the house was quiet. Perhaps Michel and his mom were already waiting in the truck.

Ben snuck into Mariame’s room and checked under the bed. He glanced back into the passage and slipped into the master bedroom. “Mariame?” he whispered. He knelt down and saw her lying under the bed, her back turned to him. He reached in and pulled her out by her arm.

Mariame almost screamed, then looked into her father’s eyes with a warm serenity.

Ben embraced his daughter. “Why didn’t you answer when I called you?”

“The lady said I should close my ears and shut my eyes.”

“What lady?”

“The one with dark hair,” she said.

Ben closed his eyes for a second and nodded. He didn’t dare imagine what he would’ve done if that woman had hurt his little girl. He kissed Mariame on her forehead and, after checking if it’s safe, lifted her through the open window.

A sense of dread overwhelmed Ben. Maybe it was because he still hadn’t heard Michel start the truck. Not even a shot had been fired since they last saw each other. He didn’t know exactly what it was, but he knew Mariame had to get away as quickly as possible.

“You have to leave, baby. Run to town.”

“I don’t want to go alone, Daddy.”

Ben squeezed himself through the window before placing his hands on his daughter’s shoulders. “You have to, Darling. It’s not safe here.”

She wiped the mucus from her nose. “I’m too scared to go alone.”

“I have to help Grandma and Michel.”

“And the lady? Will you help her too?”

Ben gritted his teeth. “And the lady.”

“No, I don’t wanna.”

“Mariame,” he almost shouted. “I’m counting till three and if you’re still–”

Mariame took one final glance at her father, and ran.

Ben watched her till she disappeared safely into the foliage. He took a deep breath and sighed before making his way through the shadowy trees around the side of the house, searching for one more opportunity to take Shango . . . or the woman, down. Next time he’d go for the head shot.

A loud scream emanated from the front of the house. Ben ran closer. His mother’s body soared through the air and bent backwards around a tree trunk before sliding down to the muddy surface below. A bloodied axe protruded from her torso.

“No!” Ben shouted. He scampered to her side, no longer caring if Shango saw or heard him. He fell to his knees, stared into her shock-filled eyes, and screamed.

He turned to see Shango standing on the roof. Lighting illuminated the sky behind his muscular figure. “Michel,” he cried as he saw his friend pinned to the wall of the house by an axe. His legs still swayed from side to side like a marionette. “Damn you! You killed them all.”

Shango just stared at him.

“What the hell do you want?”

Shango jumped down. Rust-colored mud splashed beneath his feat. He grabbed the axe in both hands and, with only a god’s magic, pulled another axe from out of the first.

Ben raised the rifle. “Who are you . . . really? I know you’re not Shango. I saw you earlier.”

Shango stopped. The rain washed the blood from his body and the girl materialized. “Aneka,” she said in a shaky voice.

Ben stared at her golden brown skin reflecting in the lighting. “I shot you. Where’s your wound?”

She stepped closer. “I heal quickly.”

Ben tried his best to press his anger down, yet his arms still raised the rifle to take aim.

“I didn’t want to do this,” Aneka said. “I’m sorry.”

“You killed my parents; and my friends. Why?”

Aneka opened her mouth yet remained silent for a few seconds. “To save my family. They also died two years ago. In a flood.”

Ben shook his head and bit his lip.

“I was also there,” she continued, “and I sold my soul to the devil in exchange for my family.”

“Dear, God. Why?”

“You ever hear the sound of people drowning? I couldn’t just leave them.”

“Of course you could!” Ben shouted. “I had to. I was there when my wife died. I had to hold her in my arms as she took her last breath. I stared into her eyes as second by second the life in them faded.”

Ben lowered the rifle. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to tell your daughter that her mother is dead? It still hurts like hell, but I did it. I accepted it.”

Aneka cried. “Was she in a lot of pain?”

“Car crash. What do you think?”

“I’m sorry. I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but this, all this, is part of the deal. Ever since I’ve sold my soul, I’ve been appointed a demon. He forces me to kill families all over the world. Every time he makes me appear as a different creature or god.”

“Why?”

“To keep the myths and legends alive. Nothing keeps a legend going like the tall tales of drunken fishermen and a few dead bodies. I’ve already been a zombie, a werewolf, a roman god.”

“I mean . . . why don’t you just refuse?”

Aneka lowered the axes to her side. “He tricked me and imprisoned my family in Limbo. Since then he’s used my military past to his advantage. Every time I do a mission, he brings one of my family members back.”

Ben swallowed hard. “Let me help you.”

“You can’t help me. No one can. Why would you anyway? And if you didn’t shoot me, I would’ve left after one more kill.”

“You want to blame me for all this?”

“I never kill everyone. I have to leave some witnesses to tell the stories of what happened. When you saw me in my true form, you gave me no choice. My demon would not allow any of you to live.”

Ben looked at his mother’s broken corpse, his father’s bloodied body and his friend’s dangling leg. He shook his head.

“I really wish there was another way,” Aneka said as she raised both axes and advanced.

Ben raised the rifle, yet before he could get a decent aim, the first axe had already knocked the rifle from his grasp, sending it sinking into the water-covered mud. The axe lay at his feet and he picked it up.

Aneka charged forward with an overhead blow. Ben managed to block. He retaliated with a strike towards her legs, yet lost his balance as she jumped over the path of the swinging axe.

Ben spun around and, before he could regain his footing, the blade of an axe sliced through his calf muscle. He screamed and fell to the ground. “Wait.” He raised his hand towards her. “When it’s all done . . . what makes you think he’ll let you go?”

Aneka shrugged and raised the axe.

“What if I kill you? Wouldn’t that set you free?”

“I tried that on the first mission. He brought me back, but only after crushing my uncle’s soul right before me. I’m sorry, but I have to do this. You won’t feel a thing.”

Ben dropped his hands to his side and looked up at her. “Please don’t kill my little girl.”

Aneka wiped the salty rain from her face.

“That’s all I ask.”

“I promise,” she said.

Aneka swung the axe in a broad arc behind her, closed her eyes, and listened to the loud thud of steel smashing through bone and brain matter.

Aneka staggered forward and dropped to her knees, doing her best not to look at Ben’s desecrated cranium. She had never been squeamish, but she had rather gotten to like Ben in the brief time they spent talking. I can’t believe he still wanted to help me after I killed his family.

A bolt of lighting struck a nearby tree. The bark of the tree shifted and contorted into the shape of a demonic face. “Get the girl,” her demon’s voice bellowed, “she’s fleeing towards town.”

Aneka felt scared in his presence, yet she had an overpowering urge to deny him. “No!” she shouted.

“Do not test me,” the demon-faced tree roared. “You still belong to me. And you’ll do as I command.”

“The girl must live. She’ll tell people what happened here. Isn’t that what all this is about? Your precious mythologies.”

“She saw you,” he said.

“But she didn’t see me change. Isn’t Shango a god of magic anyway?”

The tree remained silent.

“I did what you asked. And I’ll do it till my debt is paid. Let the girl live.” She stood up and approached the tree. “Please.”

“Get your ass to Romania. It’s time for Vampire’s to make a real comeback.”

Although the demon allowed the little girl to live, Aneka swore revenge on him. Someday she’d be free, and she’d get her payback. Ben would get payback.

Only seven more missions and her family would be free.

Patricia Schultheis

Duchamp's Boy

Despite my fireplace’s toasty blaze, my front knocker’s unexpected thud turns my spine to ice.  The wickedly treacherous weather precludes any New Year’s Eve callers, not to mention that my limited circle has become even more so since Mama’s passing. Thus, only a matter of utmost urgency could merit anyone’s being out on such a night.  And then I realize that the knock has but one meaning: a note has arrived from Roland DuChamp.
       In that insouciant manner he’s so perfected ― deferential attitude but neither gloves nor silver salver ― my man Louis brings the missive to my parlor, and now, in response to his charade, I must affect indifference. The note’s rich vellum indeed marks it as being from DuChamp, and, as such, my impulse is to rip it open. But Louis, knowing as much about DuChamp’s dark explorations as I, full well understands my impatience, and, therefore, I must suppress it and feign interest in the volume of Machiavelli on my lap.
      “Why, thank you, Louis.  I thought I heard the knocker.” 
      “Yessir.  It was Mr. DuChamp’s boy, Sir.”
       And therein, Louis and I take yet another step in this, our peculiar gavotte.  The weather is beastly, and I understand Louis wants to know if he should let DuChamp’s boy, a slothful lout in need of a good whipping, wait for a reply.  If he freezes on my steps, it’s no concern of mine, saving the loss of DuChamp’s boon companionship the boy’s death would occasion not to mention the pinch to my pockets arising from the remuniation that good manners would demand I pay. (Being young and relatively strong, the boy is worth at least six hundred.)
       “Shall I put another log on, Sir?” Louis asks.
       Two years into the War for Southern Independence, comfort has become an increasingly costly luxury, but war or not, on this, the last night of a woeful year, I feel indulgent.
      “Another log, by all means.  In this horrid weather, there’s nothing like another log. And, Louis, have Mr. DuChamp’s boy wait.”
      “Yes, Sir.”
      “In the kitchen, of course.”
      “Yes, Sir.”
      Oh, the surpassing subtlety of the dance Louis and I perform. My having taken the high ground by letting the boy warm himself, Louis must respond in kind, freedman as he is, by honoring our relative positions. I hear him tell the boy to go around back and firmly close front door.  A master stroke on his part.
I finger the note. A mangy cur’s sniffing a panting bitch has no greater impatience than mine, but I must steel myself until Louis’s footsteps retreat down the hall. Only then do I unleash myself.
       DuChamp’s hand is, as always, beautiful. But tonight, as well might be expected, it has a suggestion of scrawl betraying great haste: “At long last, it has arrived. Come at once.  Burn this and all preceding correspondences, as well as all your personal papers pertaining. (I know you have them, my dear Duncan.)  Yours, R. DuChamp”
       Once he had discovered the sweet pipes of the Ottoman, Roland DuChamp grew increasingly loquacious, almost unguarded.  I remember the languorous evening, just before the war, as we sat on his verandah and he told me of his earliest years.
      “Having heard while I was just a babe that, being so unnaturally fair, I must eschew the out-of-doors, especially sunlight, I became increasingly solitary,” DuChamp told me. “By the age of five, nighttime had become my day. The August moon was full, the evening I wandered into our stables. Have I ever told you, Duncan, that for his coaches alone, Father kept five matched sets?”
     DuChamp told me how he spied his father engaged in a “beastly” act, the precise nature of which DuChamp remained vague, except to say it was the fountainhead of his livelong devotion to the dark arts.
      That peaceful evening when DuChamp related his tale seems from another era, yet, I perceive inevitable trajectory it engendered to my parlor on this icy night. I reread DuChamp’s note and then unlock the sideboard to decant the last of Mama’s favorite port.  Of course, I knew what the note would say even before I read it, but, still, anticipation is one thing, and having the unimaginable actualized is another. I take a drink and another, then ring for Louis.
       As soon as I tell him to hitch Pluto to the landaulette, I see protest playing in his eyes. The icy rain gripping Richmond could cause old Pluto to lose his footing and the landaulette, a delicate carriage, slip on the cobbles. But Louis restricts his protest to his eyes.  Doubtless he is as eager as I am to get to DuChamp’s.
        “Warm the mohair lap robe for me before you put it in the carriage,” I tell him. “And make certain poor old Pluto has his blanket.”

        “Yes, Sir.  Will there be anything else?”
        I encase my visage in a neutral mask. “Bank the fire.  We may not return until the by-and-by.”
        Louis’s look tells me he understands the full portent this last remark― we may not ever be home again.
        As soon as he leaves I take DuChamp’s note up to my dressing room and unlock the bottom drawer of my cabinet.  Lifting out a neat stack of old blankets ― one still smells of Mama’s lavender ― I press the rear right corner.  The bottom releases, and, adjuring DuChamp’s enjoiner to burn his note as well as my papers, I put his note among my jottings  the least I can do for humankind. If we do return, their worth will be illimitate. If not, perhaps they will forewarn their discoverer against unnatural quests. 
        I hear Louis coaxing Pluto into the stays only time for the briefest good-bye to my cozy, old room. To my hobbyhorse in the corner. To that lithograph of a boy with his kitten.  And to that tattered copy of Forbidden Celtic Myths and Dark Arts. And to Mama’s Bible by my bed. Oh, she was a stern believer.  So very, very stern. 
        May she be forgiven for the term of Louis’s employ. Forgiven for having freed him and than shackled us, each to the other, by instructing her solicitor that Louis shall receive his stipend only for however long he stays with me, and that I shall receive my allowance for only as long as I keep him in my employ.   Oh, Mama’s cleverness!  Dare I say her deviousness? But, what can I do, on this of all nights, when all may tilt either into pristine orderliness, or unspeakable chaos, but say she had my best interests in her heart.
Enough!  My great coat. My muffler. My gloves. I must be off, perchance to witness Roland DuChamp as he grasps the reins of destiny!
       As we ride through Richmond, through the landaulette’s curtains I see the brightly lit homes of my neighbors on the square. The war has occasioned a perverse gaity, and I can only surmise that the revelers silhouetted in the windows had arrived before the ice.  On the landaulette’s bench, DuChamp’s boy holds tight, but Louis, his hands being occupied with the reins and whip, must steady himself by bracing his feet against the board. Canny fellow, he’ll  manage.  Even in this weather his cap sits at a jaunty angle.
       I suspect that he and DuChamp’s boy are nattering about that devil Lincoln’s Abomination Proclamation, but Pluto’s hooves prevent me from hearing clearly. Two years into the war, we in Richmond breathe nothing but rumor.  The news of Lincoln’s proclamation has been swirling for months.   
       That night on his veranda, when DuChamp had just returned from Constaninople, I advised him to sell his boy. But he refused, citing his compromised health and his dependency occasioned by his failing eyes.
     “Tell me, my dear Duncan,” he asked, “exactly what would I do without him?  You see what I am.  I dare say you, he and the rector’s wife are the only ones who don’t shrink from the very sight of me.  No . . . no . . . don’t protest. My poor eyes are not so weak that I do not see the revulsion in other people  my pasty skin, my puny stature  they only render those who can withstand me all the more precious.  So, you must understand why I keep him.”
       His long journey had exhausted my old friend and talk of his boy had been untoward on my part, an uncalled for divergence from that happy evening. Despite its great difficulties, Constantinople had been a stellar success. He had met a camel driver who had a cousin who had a brother-in-law who had heard of the fabled orrery my friend desired.  Little did we know how he would have to risk life and limb running the Yankee blockade twice more before his quest ended.
     As for me, why I have let myself be caught in the web of his explorations, I cannot fathom except to say that I, too, suffer from certain degree of loneliness.  I would be false beyond redemption if I did not admit that my friend’s recountings of his increasingly exotic travels have come to excite me like an addictive opiate. How his temerity has increased!  With each journey and his tales have become increasingly vivid, until I can almost see the khol-lined eyes and hear the ankle bells of the caravansary’s attendants.
Pluto stumbles and Louis fights to keep his cap on his head while steadying the landaulette.  We round a corner and the square where DuChamp lives is full of our brave boys in gray, bivouaced, I presume, in anticipation of the mayhem Lincoln’s accursed proclamation will let loose.   As if in defiance, every house save DuChamp’s blazes with merriment.
        Louis shouts over his shoulder, “Shall I knock, Sir?”
Before I can tell him to maintain his hands on the reins and to send the boy, DuChamp opens his front door  doubtlessly having watched from a dark window.    The candle his hand cups flutters in the rainy blasts and illuminates his protuberant forehead and aquiline nose. The remainder of his face is so cast in shadow as to be utterly absent, until he smiles and his porcelain teeth glitter. 
       Louis pulls up Pluto. Since I’ve shared my musings about DuChamp’s quest for the magical orrery with Louis, and, on occasion, have even asked him to interpret the Celtic myths associated with it, I know that he chafes to join us. (Mama, who taught him to read and write, said he was brighter than I. How he treasures the cheap pocket knife she gave him for learning the fifth declension before myself.)
       As I alight from the landaulette, a shout rises from the bivouac on the square, where our plucky, brave boys, despite the icy rain, have contrived a bonnie bonfire. A huzza goes up, but DuChamp, scarcely noticing, tells his boy to stable Pluto and beckons me inside.
      “So good of you to have come posthaste, Duncan,” DuChamp says as I climb his steps.“Posthaste, but not a minute too soon, if the legend is to believed.  All must be done by dawn, as you well know, or we shall have to wait for another New Year.”  His voice is rasping and, not having seen him since his most recent trip, this, his last, to the Ottoman’s nether reaches, the caves of Cappadocia, I am struck by his appearance.  Always fastidious about his habiliment, perhaps as compensation for his grotesque physiognomy  tonight Roland Duchamp appears to have clothed himself with a disregard bordering on slovenliness. Even in the flickering light I see spots on his waistcoat and scuffs on his boots.  Worse, a dusting of whiskers covers his lower jaw, and his nails are yellow and long. His skin has a glaucous hue.
     I had expected to proceed to the basement, the likely site for uncrating the orrery, but Roland leads me to his study where, boars’ heads, antlers with six-foot spans, and crossed tusks inscribed with Nordic legends hang like dusty icons in a cathedral of slaughter. Roland makes straight for a hookah by the globe.
     “We have a minute or two while the darkies tend to your carriage. The crating is very stout. I cannot open the thing myself, even if I dared.  I shall need your man as well as mine,” he says, then draws on the hookah and offers it to me.
      The hookah’s serpentine coils beneath my fingers feel alive, vibrant, and seductively primal.  A woman’s breast must feel like this, I think.
     As I pull on the hookah, the spots on the stuffed leopard in the far corner expand and contract.
      “They are so beautiful,” I say and hear DuChamp giggle. 
He pours himself some rum and offers me a glass, saying  “Father, God bless him, laid in cases and cases straight from the family plantation in Jamaica. His cousin, you know, died at Toussaint’s hand.”
         The marriage of rum and the hookah is ill-advised, but a strange admixture of apprehension and recklessness courses through my veins and I need a strong elixir. I want to watch the leopard’s pulsing spots, but my eyes land on DuChamp’s boy standing in the doorway.
      “Mr. DuChamp, Sir, the nag’s in the stable.  Will there be anything else?”
      “Take this to the basement,” DuChamp says of the hookah.  “And be careful.”  Handing me the half-empty bottle of rum, he takes another for himself and the candle. “Well, let us begin, he says. “Or at long last, end.  Whichever may come.”
        From a flickering lantern illuminating DuChamp’s basement, shadows, like frantic spirits of stillborn babies, skitter across the walls and over the floor’s uneven bricks.  On an old table my friend has stacked the relevant texts. A twelfth century crimoire’.   A missal for a black mass.  A book of Celtic chants.
      In the floor’s center is a large, rough crate bound with wide metal straps. Its stamps mark its journey along the north coast of Africa, past Gibraltar, to, at last, our fair Richmond.  Who knows how many hands have touched it without once realizing they were brushing destiny?
       DuChamp draws on the hookah and takes a crowbar from the corner. Handing it to his boy, he tells him to break the bands without damaging the crate.  “If need be, I’ll take an ax to it, but, for now, I want as little harm done as possible. From what I’ve read, the orrery’s mechanism, is exceedingly delicate.”
      The boy sets to work, leveraging the crowbar under the first band.  He tries to pry it open, but lacks the height for the proper angle.
     “Help him,” I order Louis, and Louis, who is taller than the boy, puts his hands higher on the crowbar. The four black hands press the crowbar down and down until the strap snaps apart. Its broken edges strike out like a doubleheaded snake.
      I take a satisfying swallow of my rum, and DuChamp works his hookah while Louis and the boy make quick work of the second and third straps.  The fourth, however, resists their efforts, and Louis, in an attempt to get better leverage, trips on one of the broken straps.
      “Watch your footing, you old fool,” I tell him.  “Who will get me and Pluto home, if not you?” Louis says nothing, but I can tell my “fool” is a burr on his black hide.   With the boy, he sets to the last strap. But, not snapping like the others, it splinters apart, sending shards of metal ricocheting against the walls and ceiling.
      When a fragment lands near DuChamp, he giggles.  “It seems, my dear Roland, we’ve loosed the fiends of hell.” He goes to the crate and runs his palms over it.
      “Ah,” he says, “at last.  At long, long last.”
       There remains only the lid, but it is firmly nailed and once more his boy and Louis apply the crowbar.  I pour more rum.  Iron and wood mule in protest as the nails are ripped from the crate like teeth from a jawbone. Sooner or later, everything yields, I think, but keep the sentiment to myself.  This is no time for waxing philosophic. Despite his continuing drawing on the hookah, Roland’s little eyes are perfervid with expectation.
     “Lift it off.  Lift it off,” he says of the lid, and, once they have it in hand, Louis and the boy step over the metal straps and set the lid against the wall.
       I peer into the crate, but heavy cotton batting surrounds the contents.  Like and child digging for a shiny lost penny in a pile of leaves, Roland begins grabbing fistfuls and flinging them behind himself.  He is short and has to stand on tippy-toe the deeper he goes.  I’m about to caution him, when he withdraws his hand so suddenly that, for a moment, I wonder if he’s been bitten by an adder hidden in the batting.
    “I touched it, Duncan.  I touched it.  What should I do?” he says.
    I wait, take a swallow, and another.  Reportedly even the slightest touch of the orrery will summon its powers. But nothing seems to be occurring save for another cheer from our happy lads on the square.
       “No harm was done, Roland,” I say.  “But let the darkies get the orrery out. Then, if anything happens, and we live to tell about it, we can lay the blame on them.”
Louis and the boy thrust their arms in deep into the crate and slowly, slowly lift up an exquisitely crafted mechanical model of the solar system.  Even in the flickering light I can see the sun and some of the planets have been incised with symbols from the black arts: a chicken’s claw, a human skull, a forked tail.
       Louis and the boy place the device on the table and press their backs to the far wall, their eyes wide. Perhaps, I was wrong in my supposition while I knocked about in the laudaulette.  Perhaps the subject of their conversation was not Mr. Lincoln’s Abomination Proclamation at all, but the orrery.  What else can explain the obvious apprehension of DuChamp’s cowering boy.  Not educated like my Louis, how else could he appreciate the significance of this particular orrery, unless Louis, who has followed every step of DuChamp’s search with me, told him? Yes, Louis must have explained that this was no ordinary orrery, but one crafted for Brendan, the bastard half-brother of Charles Boyle, Ireland’s fourth Earl of Orrery.  Charles’s own orrery had been madeby John Rowley, a worker in metals and a student of the stars. When the bastard Brendan saw how clearly his brother’s depicted the world’s order he was consumed with jealousy, vowing that he must have one as well.
    But Rowley, in his shop where he worked with his daughter, dismissed him, saying, “I’d sooner align the poles of hell, before I trade with a bastard.” Rowley’s words, however, were too late, for Brendan, as lusty as he was strong-willed, had already spied Rowley’s raven-haired daughter in the shop’s dark recesses and had divined that Molly Rowley perhaps knew as much about the device as her father. In the scant minute he saw her, he had fathomed, too, her voluptuary nature.
      Brendan bided his time until the dismal autumn afternoon he found proud Molly alone in the shop. “Make me such a device as my brother the duke has, Molly, and I’ll give you a gem, an emerald beyond compare,” he asked.
       And Molly, longing for beauty to match her own, assented. And so as winter’s nadir approached, she labored on an orrery of exquisite design, investing it with charms beyond imagining, for the bastard Brendan awakened within her fires she could not dampen. With every planet she hung she thrilled as much for his praise as for his kisses. And then, on the last day of the year, the cosmos being afixed save for Mother Sun poor Molly, knew that the orrery being finished, so, too, would be Brendan’s kisses. 
     “Ah, Girlie,” he said, seeing the orrery.  “You’ve earned your emerald.  But wouldn’t you like to earn a sapphire as well?”  And again she assented with all the passion and craft she possessed, earning jewels by giving away what was priceless.  But when she asked the bastard Brendan for the gems, his answer was to grab her raven hair and twist her head to the window.  “There, out there, is not the green of Ireland all the green a heart can wish for?  And that sea?  Is it not the rarest sapphire?  Those are all the jewels you’ll ever need, Molly girl.”
      In her rage, Molly put a curse on the orrery.  At first dawn of a New Year, whoever sends the orrery’s planets spinning shall be empowered beyond belief, all the old order having been swept away and a new one established with the most exhalted place being reserved for whomever had the temerity to set the thing aspinning.  But woe to him who is ill-prepared to assume his new role.
       After leaving Ireland, the orrery’s provenance becomes obscure: it surfaces first in an Andorran monastery whose monks had mastered dark hermeneutics, then on an ossery in the Venetian lagoon, and finally in the caves of Capadoccia, where DuChamp and his team unearthed it.
       “At last,” he says, “I have only to wait until dawn and send the thing spinning.  Then, let whoever may, shrink from the sight of Roland DuChamp, not in revulsion, but in fear, for the power I will possess.”
      As if they and the orrery were magnets of like poles, his hands with their hoary nails dance over the device from a constant distance. He walks around the table three times, examining it from every angle, then takes out his pocket watch. 
       “I have read the books,” he says, “but none says dawn where. Does the curse apply to dawn wherever the orrery is? Or is it dawn in Ireland? The texts simply say ‘dawn’.”  His eyes are tumid with agitation. He takes a draw from the hooka, but it does nothing to calm his mounting nervousness.  In the hope he will follow suit and thus calm himself, I take a swig from my rum, draining it. Roland takes up his bottle but can’t uncork it.
        “Don’t just stand there,” he barks at his boy, “get me something to open it with and glasses, and be quick, or I’ll give you your first beating of the New Year.” 
       As the boy leaves, Louis says.  “Perhaps I can help, Mr. DuChamp,” and, taking his pocketknife that Mama had given him, works at the cork. He has it out just as DuChamp’s boy decends the stairs with a tray holding two gold-rimmed goblets.
      “You lout,” says DuChamp, “You’re too late.  You’re as much good to me as a capon in a henhouse.  And you brought the Murano goblets, you idiot.  I can’t use those goblets for rum.  It’s not done. What a saint I am for not selling you.”    
      “Roland,” I tell him, “what does it matter?  Once you set the orrery in motion, all the world will look to you and you alone for all manner of protocols. From which glasses for which beverage to the alignment of nations, all that will be yours alone.”  DuChamp giggles and fills one goblet for me and one for himself.  He drinks, takes a draw on the hooka and checks his pocketwatch again.  Before I can let myself drink, I look at Louis to make certain he has put away his knife — his attachment to it has always made me somewhat nervous —  but, then, seeing it’s not in his hand, I give my tongue a little tease on the goblet’s gold filigree before I drink.
       Another disturbance goes up on the square.  Doubtless, our dear Johnnie Rebs are toasting the New Year as are we.
     “I have one other concern, my dear Duncan,” says DuChamp.  “The texts say dawn, but, when, exactly is dawn?  Is it full sunrise, or first light? Another vexation.  I am not prepared for these complexities, Duncan.  Once I set the device in motion, you must promise to be my able administrator.  I beg you.  You must harry the details into order.  I must think of a suitable title for you.”  
      “Have your boy move the thing without stopping from this moment onward,” I tell him.  “Then the precise second cannot escape you. The boy, after all, is yours.  His agency is as well.”
       The noise on the square has taken on an ominous quality.  I hear horses and cassons moving.  Lincoln must have proclaimed his proclamation, and our fair boys must be preparing to quash its message.  But DuChamp pays no heed.
       “You heard Mr. Duncan,” he screams at his boy.  “Spin the thing.  Spin and spin it until I tell you to stop. If your arm falls off, spin harder.”
       But the boy hangs back, hearing DuChamp, but hearing perhaps more loudly the possibility that the Proclamation has been bruited, reaching even our fair Richmond.
  “Spin it!” DuChamp screams, his porcelain teeth gleaming.  “Do as I say!”
   But the boy’s feet remain planted.  DuChamp whirls at him and trips on the hooka shattering his goblet and sending a wedge-shaped shard of glass into his wrist. At once, a steady red rivulet drips down my friend’s palm, his fingers, and his yellow nails.
     “God help me,” he says.
      “Sit down, Roland,” I say, then turn to Louis and the boy. “Run outside. And scrape some ice from the walks.  Shake it from the trees. Get it wherever you can. And be quick for once in your lives.”  They leave and Roland sinks to the floor. Using the batting, I try to stem the bloody flow from his wrist and soon great crimson balls litter the floor around the orrery. As if my friend had hidden within himself another more ghostly self, a whiter Roland DuChamp is emerging before me eyes. He groans.
       “They’ll be back with ice soon, Roland,” I tell him. Now the noise on the square is devoid of any hint of holiday merriment and resounds only with martial blood lust.  Even with the stick of Roland’s blood on my hands, I manage a thought: with one spin of the orrery Lincoln’s decree can be reversed. 
        The device gleams in the lantern light, almost beckoning me to spin it and claim its powers for my own.  Oh how proud Mama would be of her little boy.  Have I not guided and counseled DuChamp throughout his quest? Why should I have to smile at his father’s “five matched pair,” as I scimp by on the allowance Mama’s soliciter doles out?  And why should I be the one laboring to “harry the details into order” while DuChamp claims the glory?  Is that to be my reward for my devotion to him? . . . to be his shadow, when, with one spin, I can reverse what our oppressors from the North would let loose?  Am I not my Mama’s son?  Growing up with Louis, did I not learn that in a triad, two will fight for the love of the one?  Can I not reign like Mama did over Louis and myself while he and DuChamp carry out my commands?
       DuChamp stirs and manages a weak smile.  “You want the orrery’s powers for your own, don’t you, Duncan?”
     “No.  No. How ever can you think such a thing, Roland?”
     “Oh, Duncan, Duncan, you have a heart of sufficient falseness, but, I fear you lack the necessary opaqueness to lie as the orrery’s master must.”
       Placing me second again!  Just as Mama held me second in intelligence to Louis, DuChamp holds me second in deception to himself.  But I will show him.  I leave him on to floor to press his own bloody batting and go to the orrery.  I’m about to touch it when Louis comes down the stairs. His cap is filled with ice, but he is alone.  The orrery is between us.
      “Where’s Mr. DuChamp’s boy?” I demand.
      “Gone, Sir.”
       “Gone?  Gone where?”
      “He didn’t say.”
       “Didn’t you ask him, you lazy lout?”
       “What good, Sir, would come of my asking?   That boy doesn’t have to answer to me. Or anyone else any longer. He’s heard Mr. Lincoln’s news.  Yes, indeed. He’s heard the news.  And he’s gone.”  When Louis sets his cap on the table, some ice spills onto the floor near where DuChamp sits.
     “My boy is gone?” he asks, his voice sounding like an echo from a far, dark distance. 
     “He’ll be back, Roland,” I assure him.  “And then you can give him a good hiding.     He’ll be back.  On his own, how can he care for himself half as well as you have?”  From the floor DuChamp manages a weak but dismissive smile.
     I command Louis to give me his knife.  My mind, skating on rum and hooka, has crafted a plan worthy of Mama: I must cut Duchamp’s sleeve and bind ice to his wound lest I not have his skills available to me when I have to orrery’s powers. 
  But when Louis takes out his knife and opens it, I devine in an instant that he craves the orrery’s potency as much as I do. Why else does he stand with that wretched mechanism between us, and his knife open?  I grab the crowbar to defend what’s mine by right of the greater weight of the loneliness I’ve borne all my life.  And by my higher birth.
       “What do you want with that crowbar, My Duncan?” Louis asks. “I thought you were going to tend to Mr. DuChamp.”
    “You old fool,” I counter, “do you think, I do not perceive how you have designs on the orrery for your own black goals?”
      From the ice-slick floor I hear DuChamp give a last ghastly giggle.  “Go to it, boys,” he croaks.
      Louis holds the open knife in his palm, which traces slow circles in the lantern light.  ”Your mama always feared you carried craziness within you, Mr. Duncan, Sir,” he says. “Don’t you know that’s why she had her solicitor write her will the way it is?  So I could protect you when your craziness came out.  And now I see your mama was right.  All these years and your craziness is finally showing itself.”
     “I’m not crazy, you hear me?  I’m not crazy!  I just want what should be mine.” I try to swing the crowbar at his head.  But I want to avoid damaging the orrery, so I swing high and slip on the floor, tripping over a metal strap that springs like a cobra, imbedding its jagged edge into DuChamp’s neck, which spurts a fresh, red fountain.
     “Get something,” I scream at Louis. “He’ll bleed to death for sure.”
  Louis, his knife still open, assesses the hoary scene and takes a single backward step up the stairs.
      “Stop,” I scream.  “Can’t you see, he’ll die?” Roland makes a feeble effort to dislodge the metal strap from his neck, and then his mouth slackens and his porclain teeth fall out onto the floor. Louis takes another step and another. “Stop,” I scream again.  “You are my only witness, Louis.  If he dies, they ‘ll think I killed him.  You saw that it was an accident.  It was an accident.”
       Louis stops. “Black man’s word not worth much.”
      “But they’ll believe you. You’re free!  Mama set you free. They’ll have to believe a freedman.”
     “No, Sir.  I’ve never been free.  Mr. DuChamp’s boy, now, he’s free. Proclamation or not, he’s freed himself.  Time I did the same.”  Louis’s palm still cradles his beloved pocketknife and with one foot he feels behind for another higher step. “Besides, if I stay, you might say I drove that thing into Mr. DuChamp.”
    “I’d never do that, Louis.  You know I’d never lie about you.”  I struggle to sound convincing, but cannot keep the note of falsehood from my voice.  Too, I’m chagrined that Louis has so easily deduced my true reason for wanting him to stay with me when this grizzly event must be explained.
     “Crazy wasn’t all your mama said about you, Mr. Duncan,” Louis says. “Know what else she said?”
    “What?”
    “She said her greatest shame was that her only son couldn’t lie any better than a headless chicken can fly.”  He takes another step up the stairs.
    “That’s not true!  It’s not true!”
     But he continues climbing.
“Louis, come back.   Don’t leave me.  They’ll think I killed him.”
      But now only my man’s legs are visible, and they, like the rest of him are receding from my view as if he were ascending through a tear in an unseen curtain circling the weary world.
     “They’ll hang me, Louis,” I scream. “Like a common criminal, they’ll hang me. Is that what you want?  Don’t leave me here!”
      But he’s gone from sight.  Then I hear his footsteps running along the front hall.  And then DuChamp’s door thudding shut.  And I’m left with only the noise of my own fervid prayer.  On the floor, Roland’s eyes have rolled upwards in his skull, and his tongue lolls out of his toothless mouth.  The puddle of his blood is so deep his porclain teeth nearly float. I’m alone with the orrery.  My only hope is to spin and spin the wretched thing.  And to pray and pray.  Over and over again I say, “Oh, Mama. Sweet, sweet Mama, come.  Please, please come. Come and help your poor little boy in his moment of greatest need.”

Gary J. Shipley

Enucleated Eye

In the end everything grew back gelded inside the eye as it watched over a gymnast’s snapped legs ploughing shit into gravel, over the others who’d drunk through the glut of fresh fires and stayed alive till the helicopters came, when the air snapped and I heard snakes murmuring in hot trees, when you said they’re like cracks in the sky and I agreed, smiling, leaking piss as we both opened our mouths and breathed them in, blind then to the deformity of our machines and the complexities of melting, our hands engulfed in unmade twitches, our signals compulsively anonymous, and something insectoid about our shadows as we sickened with a stifled anxiety, the pule that would make us dying refugee, and the chokemeat passing through, nozzles on us slavering, so a man and a woman before us, grovelling, skin forged reptilian, as if they were and we were someplace else and could disappear, as if smoking heads grown from grit could ever die in the iron lyric of trains planted in sunshine, their skins a silver blanket of embarrassed warbles over acrolithic figures hiding their wriggling faces, their mouths insipid, stiff adrenalized niceties, necks scraped together from the slewed treatments of a hierophant’s allergies to the industrialised mining of ghouls effusing late morning disorder, and drinking their lungs in grey alert the humourless talk out loud, lunging at ludic targets, those nesh neurotics’ uncharted hollows, their augural simulars two per sect, their tortile bands infiltrating the stellular cut-outs curated by shills caught siphoning shit from the viperous fuck-holes of certain high-powered architects of meat, and so the hostile course of the city expanse pins us in towards the corners, the dust whispering folds in concrete as it journeys inside us, cuts its steps, all bent up inside knocking air, the atmosphere like stones revealing us all vast and automatic while she gasps the inevitable custom, trying to shoot sense into rotten tissues and, and I stay calm and we are all sold on the retirement of ontology, the same clicked heads murmuring metal repair, but still we listen for something important in the prephilosophical use of prophecy as prophylactic and ask whether we can see our dreams considered space-worthy and dying as progress, when all you see is my wife with her head unpacked down two flights of stairs, her limbs translated from the howls of broken spiders, and like this the auto-farted myths from tower block death camps come to us empty, all drenched in the stray piss of men made of fog and phantom pregnancies, because there was no head and there was no blood and you can’t know my wife