Chris Hugh - Benjamin Z. Huelskamp

Tim Keane - Miriam Moreno Perez

Michael J. Solender - Townsend Walker

STORIES ASTRIDE THE STONEWALL

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Chris Hugh

The Bride of Frankenstein Dances with Celebrity

The pale woman's flowing white gown dragged across the marble floor.  Her wiry black hair, bound up a strange cone-like style, was shot through with two streaks of white which had been fashioned into lightning bolts.  Outside, the lashing rain made the afternoon gray and dangerous. The woman lurched to the reception desk. 

"Welcome to Forever Pretense, Los Angeles' Premier Beauty Destination!"  the receptionist chirped.  "How may I help you?"

"How beautifully dramatic!"  the woman said conversationally, looking out the window.  Lightning flashed, bright, as if someone had momentarily switched on a strobe light, and a clap of thunder shook the building.  The customer smiled, exposing a collection of yellow teeth that seemed not to match each other.  "The cruelest savage exhibition of nature at her worst!" 

"It certainly is unusual to see weather like this in L.A.!"  the receptionist agreed, her smile undimmed.  "What can we do for you today?"

"I am here for a Transformation!" The woman raised her arm high and lighting struck as she spoke. Thunder rolled.

"Whew!"  The receptionist leaned over and looked outside.  "That sounded close!"  She turned back to the customer.  "A makeover, did you say?  Wonderful!  May I ask your name, please?"

"My last name I take from my creator, the greatest scientist in all of Prussia, Viktor Frankenstein.  My Christian name, dare I call it so, I take from Mexico's Saint of Death, for my body, though animated by lightning and the spirit of science, was created from the plundered corpses of the most heinous criminals who ever gave lie to the lofty title 'woman'!  I am the Bride of Frankenstein.  I am Santa Muerte Frankenstein!"

"Um, Sandy,"  the receptionist said, running her finger down the appointment list.  "Here you are. If you'd like to follow me, Sandy, I'll show you our waiting room.  May I get you a water or some tea?"

Santa Muerte Frankenstein followed the receptionist and thumbed through a copy of Bride magazine as she waited for her appointment.

#

Later that week, she appeared on the Maury Povitch show.  Her grizzled mane had been traded in for a playful, shoulder-length flip in a light auburn.  Her flirty green miniskirt complemented the color of her veins. 

"So, Mrs. Frankenstein," Maury was saying, "I understand that you have reached a financial settlement with a number of movie studios and publishing houses that have been making money from your story for the last however-many years."

The Bride remembered the joke her new agent told her to make. "Mrs.  Frankenstein sounds so old," she said. "I'm only one hundred and ninety eight!"  The audience laughed. "Please call me Sandy."

"Okay, Sandy. Tell our audience, how does it feel to be vindicated after all these years?"

The Bride opened her mouth to answer and then remembered she wasn't supposed to say vengeance is mine.  She smiled. "It just feels good to know that America's legal system works, Maury.  Now it's time for me to get on with my own reanimation." Maury stared at her a moment.  "I mean life."

Maury stepped into the audience.  "Here's a man with a question, Sandy."  He thrust the microphone under the chin of a tall, rough-looking man.  "What's your name, sir?  And what is your question?"

"People just call me Grease,"  the man replied, an ugly smirk on his face.  "Here's my question, Sandy.  You seem like you're gonna be a big celebrity, like all those other chicks I see.  So when am I gonna see a sex tape from you?" He leered.

The Bride's agent hadn't covered that question.  "Sex tape?"  she stammered.  "I have the strength of ten men."  Steam started coming out of her ears.  "Tape?  Mere tape?"  she shouted.  "Even iron manacles cannot hold me if I want--" 

Her head exploded.

#

After she was repaired, she continued with a manic schedule of interviews.  Larry King asked, "So, it is true that you and your husband are separated?"  She looked at him mutely with large eyes, afraid to say anything.  He repeated, "Are you separated?"

She silently touched her neck bolts, looked at her hands and feet and counted her fingers.  "No, everything is attached, Larry.  I'm not separated,"  she said, relieved.  The waves of uncharitable laughter froze her smile. 

And her head exploded.

#

The Bride learned to meditate to try to improve her patience. 

#

On Fox, Bill O'Reilly asked, "What is it like to be the Bride of Frankenstein?"

Another guest, Ann Coulter, broke in before the Bride could reply.  "Excuse me, Bill.  But Frankenstein was the name of the monster's creator.  If you've read the book, which I recommend, although Mary Shelley does not have the extensive footnotes that my books have which prove the scholarship of my books as well as the correctness of my opinions."  She tossed her sheet of golden blonde hair and rolled her eyes.  "What was I saying?"  The Bride started to answer Bill O'Reilly's question, but Ann Coulter butted in again.  "Oh, yes, Frankenstein was the creator.  His creation is referred to by conservative people as Frankenstein's Monster.  And by conservative, I mean informed, intelligent, God-fearing, decent people, like the ones who watch Fox."  The studio audience clapped.

The Bride's spoke through gritted teeth.  "My husband is not a monster!" 

Ann glanced at her and back to Bill.  "There's no need to get pedantic, Sandy.  I learned the word 'pedantic' in law school which is where I learned to be a lawyer.  That's why I'm so lawyerly."  The Bride started to say something but Ann talked over her and Bill ignored her because he was looking at Ann Coulter's body and wondering if he'd saved enough money so that he could pay a settlement if he sexually harassed her.  "I've got a bone to pick with the whole 'Mad Scientist' label."  Ann continued.  "Did Frankenstein set up an actual experiment?  Did he have a control group of other cadavers that he did not reanimate?  Were his results peer reviewed or published?  Hmm?"  Her lips turned down at one corner and she lifted her chin, looking at the Bride.  "Well, did he?"

"Herr Frankenstein was my creator!  He created life!" 

"Of course.  I'm not arguing that he didn't create you.  I simply take issue with him being a Mad Scientist,"  she turned to the camera for the punch line.  "He was more like a Mad Engineer!"

The Bride's ears started to steam.

"Actually, Ann,"  Bill O'Reilly said.  "The problem I have is that Mary Shelley wrote the Frankenstein novel as some sort of New-Age, women's lib, feminazi rant.  She seemed to want to make the point that new life is something that comes from woman, and that when men try to usurp that and create life the result is monstrous."

The Bride clenched her fists while the other two chuckled over Mary Shelley. 

"Well, Bill,"  Ann said.  "I've given that aspect quite a bit of thought.  As you might know, Mary Shelley's mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote a ridiculous piece of claptrap called 'Vindication of the Rights of Women' back in 1798 that asserted that women were rational beings, oh, that's right, Bill, now stop laughing." 

The Bride slammed her fist onto the table, pulverizing it and finally gaining everyone's attention.  "Mary Wollstonecraft wrote that women should be educated!  She said that women were essential to the nation and should be viewed as human beings with the same fundamental rights as men!  What's wrong with that?"  She turned to Ann Coulter and pointed her long finger.  "You are a woman.  I can tell because your first name is feminine and you don't have an Adam's apple.  How can you--"

Then her head exploded. 

#

"No more interviews for you," the Bride's agent told her.  She was glad.  She was almost starting to miss life back in her Prussian village.  Every time she saw a pitchfork or a flame-engulfed barn, she felt nostalgic.  Her agent seemed oddly happy, though.  "Look at this, kid!"

She went to the computer, and the agent played a YouTube video.  Someone had spliced together footage of her head exploding and set it to a Jewel song called Pieces of You.  "Eighty million hits, kid!  You're a star!"

#

The Bride's last television appearance was the worst.  Dancing With The Stars.  She tried her very best, but she could tell she'd be the first contestant to leave the show.  Her Cha-cha was dismal, and the judges let her know it.

Len Goodman said, "Sandy, I could not even tell that was a Cha-cha.  You lurched across the stage, your footwork was terrible.  You need to bring Dr. Frankenstein in here to reanimate your dancing because it was literally dead!" 

The Bride's patience had worn thin.  Her head exploded.

Host Tom Bergamon looked down at the corpse, then turned to the main camera. "Viewers, have we got a surprise for you!"  With a sudden orchestra sting, the ABC Nascar team pit crew ran onstage.  There was a quick whir as the tire changers' impact wrenches removed the Bride's lug nuts.  The tire carrier pushed a new head into position and, with another whir, the nuts were tight again.  The crew chief did a rapid defibrillation as the gas man handed the Bride a Red Bull.  The jackman pulled her to her feet, slapped her butt and the pit crew ran off stage.  The whole operation took 6.5 seconds.

Bruno Tonioli jumped up and watched the departing men with naked admiration and the audience cheered.  “Now that was dancing!" he drawled. He turned to the Bride and sat down as the applause died.  "But you!  You daanced,"  he stretched the word out.  "You daaanced as if you had two left feet!  Maybe Herr Frankenstein made a mistaaake, perhaps you do."  He leaned over extravagently and looked at the Bride's feet. There was a roar of ugly laughter.  "Well, there is a right one and a left one, but Herrrr Frankenstein did not take those feet from a graceful garrotter or a pirouetting poisoner!  Noooo. He must have taken them from a boxy bludgeoner!" 

The Bride's head exploded.

After the pit crew left again, Judge Carrie Ann Inaba said, "Now, now, Bruno," in her usual, conciliatory tone of voice.  Then she addressed the Bride.  "Sandy, I think you did some things very well.  Your Cha-cha had a lot of excellent lifts.  It's just that it's usually the man who lifts the woman, so I'd like to see more of that if you make it to next week.  I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do next.  Overall, you're not the best contestant we've had on the show, but you're not the worst either."  Everyone nodded uncomfortably,  remembering Kate Goselin.

The Bride was so touched, she ran up to Carrie Ann and hugged her, as so many female contestants had done before.  Unfortunately, none of those contestants had the strength of ten men.  Carrie Ann snapped in two.  As the famous judge and choreographer slowly slipped to the floor, the Bridge staggered back in horror. Seeing what she had been driven to, the Bride shook her fists toward the overhead studio lights.  Lightning flashed, thunder rolled and the Bride's face was a river of tears. And, in her grief, all her pent-up rage, alienation and longing burst forth. She flung herself across the stage, tore the judges' table from the floor and hurled it into the orchestra pit. Sobbing, she grabbed a twelve-foot potted palm and smote the famous mirror ball. Then she smashed through the studio audience, leaving a trail of-B list actors and reality stars in her bloody wake.

It was a rampage, a dance of death on Dancing With the Stars (immediately followed by a rampage on Jimmy Kimmel Live). 

#

A month later, the Bride and Frankenstein's Monster were back at their remote castle in the Austrian Alps.  They stood at a window, hand in hand.  "I am so glad that you have come home to me,"  the Monster said.

"I went crazy in L.A.," the Bride said. "But I've learned this is where I truly belong."  She looked up at her husband and smiled.  She lifted her hands and tenderly touched the Monster's face.  "These are the hands of a Prussian governess who was executed in 1808,"  the Bride said.  "They were not meant to do graceful extensions during a ballroom dance.  They were meant to strangle young students."

The Monster gently kissed her.  "And your lips were not meant to speak on television." 

"No, indeed, my love,"  she said softly, touching her bottom lip.  "These lips were meant to falsely accuse people of witchcraft, leading them to be tortured to death.  And they were meant to scream anguished death cries when their owner's own perfidy was unmasked and punished."  The Bride sighed happily and leaned against the Monster. 

An angry mob of villagers suddenly appeared, carrying pitchforks and torches. 

"Are you worried, my love?"  the Monster asked.

"No."  She squeezed the Monster's hand.  "They can't be any worse than the people in L.A."

Benjamin Z. Huelskamp

A Small Hole

I just got fucked. A long pole stuck hard in my hole rupturing furrows of skin along each side of the crack; the deep red liquid flowing freely even before I moved off. What? I can’t be poetic here? Ok, fine, so much for this city’s commitment to the arts.

I’m a slut, I do guys every night and during the days if the planets a line just right and a beefcake passes me on the street when sweat and brawn combine perfectly. Back in August I got fucked every hour one day through the worst of that hazy month. Liz, she’s my roommate, says I lied about that day and at most I got fucked a few times and came home too horny and used to remember the pathetic experience I gave the guy. Maybe I only got fucked a few times, but I gave that guy great head. Liz says I give terrible head. She says that when my little pink lips wrap around her hard cock she gets nothing but another excuse to go the clinic and get one of those queens in white to take scissors to it. I wish she would, then maybe she would stop wanting my head; stop screaming whenever she shoots a load in my mouth. She’s a bitch.

But there I was today, innocent and pretty. I had just put on a gorgeous shade of red, you can still see it. You know you could do a lot better with some blush and a better outfit. Blue really isn’t your color, but that little bit of gold is a very nice touch. Anyway, I just got it on when the prettiest little waitress came my way. Dainty and covered up; everything I’m not. If my brother was around he’d hoot at her and smack me on the shoulder. He used to tell me I’d be hard someday around girls like that, but you know, she didn’t do anything for me. Now the hunk at the bar, come to momma! She took my order: soy latte hold the coffee and a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich hold the bacon. I’m watching my figure, I put on one pound just last month.

What? You want me to talk about the guy at the bar? Ok, hun, he was beautiful: dark skin, arms that barely fit in those sleeves, perfect green eyes like really expensive emeralds. Tiffany emeralds not those lousy ones you find for ten dollars in the East Village. He turned, looked at me, pierced me with those eyes, that body. He wanted me, I knew it. Ask anyone in the bar, they knew it too.

Did I think he wanted to talk to me? Heavens no, he wanted to screw me. I’m a slut, I’m proud to be a slut. Some queens are proud to be queer, some are proud to be rich, I’m out and proud to be a slut. He wanted to screw me. Like my mother always said, “If they won’t take you to a nice dinner, at least get fucked like a rag doll.” No that wasn’t my mother, it was the butch bouncer at the Sun-Bitch Bar over on forty-ninth. So the guy gets up to use the bathroom. Every muscle was visible even under a suit. Zeus had climbed down from Olympus to breed me like Hera. I got up and followed him slowly. I walked behind him. We entered the alcove where opposite doors led to the rooms. They are labeled “Gentlemen” and “Ladies.” I always wished this place would just tell the truth: “Gods” and “Sluts.” I ain’t a lady. Shorts four inches down and a harter, I’m the kind of girl that Sister Mary Catherine always warned us about.

He turned and stabbed my eyes with those spears…no, dear, he didn’t actually stab me, just his eyes. Geez, everyone is so literal these days! But he did look at me and said the one word that could melt my flesh and break my soul; leave me ravished for years, never thirsting for the throbbing, squirting muscle again: “Hello.” I stood straight up, as did Joe. You know, I need to go with Liz to the clinic and take care of Joe. He always stands up at the wrong time. But my guy didn’t see Joe, just me. I felt down my back, everything needed to be in place, you know. I was shocked. A hole, a gaping hole, a millimeter long hole, in the back of my jean shorts. Maybe he wouldn’t notice as he stripped me down; revealed my womanhood. Hey! You can keep your opinion to yourself! Ain’t I a woman, I’m more of a woman than you! At least we agree on that. 

He stepped towards me, I stepped back a little. We did the horny cha-cha-cha for a few intense moments. Sweat poured down his brow and his cock showed. The back of my head felt the wall and then, then it happened. What? You won’t comfort a crying girl? Two-nine-four-two; two-nine-four-two; I’ll remember your badge number. But, ok, I felt it. A long metal rod, clean and round on each side. I’ve been fucked so much, it really doesn’t take too much for things to slide in there: poles, cocks, rods, fists, teddy bears…too much information, hun? I screamed as loud as I could, this guy had raped me. I got raped in a public bar outside the bathroom! I started to cry and kept screaming. The guy ran, but no one stopped him. Aren’t they supposed to stop him? I kept crying as blood ran down my leg. Remember that pretty little waitress? She laughed; said something about paint and a door stop.

What do you mean I wasn’t raped? I felt him in me, god damnit! Oh, right, cocks aren’t normally metallic unless it’s a dildo. Ok, maybe I wasn’t raped, but still I got fucked bad, it tore. I haven’t been torn like that since Uncle Marty did me in the broom closet at his lake house on the Fourth of July when I was nine. Now you feel sorry for me? Don’t worry, Uncle Marty was only four inches on the rare occasions he could get it up without drugs. After a week in Vegas, Aunt Sally hid his Viagra permanently. But, ok, fine, I wasn’t raped, but what about the blood? That was red paint and the guy was trying to keep me from stepping in it? Oh, well, I said I was a slut, never said anything about being a smart slut.

Do I have anything else to say? Hun, here’s my card. If you need to fuck something other than the old woman who made you get dressed in the living room—there’s cat hair on your shoulder—call me. One-eight-hundred-fuk-slut.

Tim Keane

Fable, after Julie Newmar

Bruce Wayne? a lame metaphor for The Prime Mover, escaping his womb of materiality onto a cave-pole & into a cape, turning out a campy messiah who flaunts a gleaming tailfin, a “mo-bile crusader,” who roars at dirt, strives to purge the city of its sleaze. His childish pious bat-zeal calls for an antagonist who proves style is the only substance, whose crimes are ritual-traps, whose blackmail is a consecration to shatter contingent being­­––hers are metaphysic heists staged to rouse the good guys’ bone-cold dread of death. Her weapons? Nietzschean ankle-boots, high heels sharp as an aphorism, pale skin that Shelley would adore, an entre chien et loup grin that would make Baudelaire blush, and purrfecting impending catastrophes swung over morality’s frail neck: acts to prove captivation is first arrest, until the will of the imprisoned savior yields to animal seduction, and, once he stops writhing, she carefully bids the illusions farewell, her drawn-out hermetic adieu over clawed fingers as she evades the responsible, literally, and hops up, and turns, one last time in the opened window, and laughs in the face of a hog-tied God.

Miriam Moreno Perez

Down in Dunny Cove

We were at the very beginning of year 2001 and the feeling of the coming of the new era was still quite vivid in people’s mind - even though we were already in it, and everything remained the same. The biggest New Year’s party had taken place in Sidney, and Tina, my half German half Greek partner at the time, and I, had gladly missed it while hiding away in Dunny Cove.

 I was back home, in Ireland, after years of voluntary exile in Berlin, where I never got to really improve my German; but where I spent some of the best years of my long and perpetual adolescence, as it somehow strangely felt despite having abandoned my teens’ days so many years before.

 Times were different now, and for some reason I began to think it was the time to stop wandering about and start getting down to something more financially productive and stable in the long run. My mind was not entirely content and convinced about facing the new changes in my life though, and it had been two years since I had a place to start my studies in engineering at one of the best universities in the country, but however uneasiness kept holding me back.

 I guess for almost anyone else my next step would have been nothing but an easy decision, an unquestionable move, but not for me. Apparently and unquestionably, it definitely wasn’t going to be that easy for me. I was certain about how much I wanted to continue my academic quest, but not so much about turning my life upside down by adopting a conventional life style, which I had almost forgotten during the years that I had spent abroad, not just in Berlin, but travelling the world as I wished. 

 That was easy. All I had to do was to find a construction job in the city for a couple of months; then, with the money I made, buy a ticket to India, Africa or South America for about a year. That was a deal that never worried me. Also the only deal I was willing to accept during the last years of my life; which, at the same time, left me with the fear that I was letting the trout slip out of my hands. I had to make a decision; make up my mind; think how Tina and I could put our lives together in the new world that, I felt, I was about to create.

 Tina wasn’t very different to me; the only difference was that she had already started college in Berlin before we met, and quitted by the time we met and got enough cash to go to India. Yet, she could still go back and finish her studies, and I was certain about that being in her future plans, what really tortured my fragile and indecisive state of mind was the question: “Will she leave me and go back home to continue with her life?” I feared to ask myself. “Will she swap all we have done together for a degree and, no doubts, some excellent academic references?”

 These were basically the doubts and fears that corroded my mind without mercy along those early days of spring. I had made clear to college that this year, finally, I was determined to start the course; but that exactly had been the case the two previous years, and I had not.

 So, here we were, down In Dunny Cove, West Cork, in my parent’s country house, where I grew up during the only time I was really free; with my girlfriend still by my side, safe, although as if dancing on the tight wire while observing how the days were again approaching their end - How hopelessly they had to.

  One early and bright evening, Tina was fiddling away in the living room next to the apparently useless chimney. It is amazing how Ireland awakes in foreigners the gusto for Irish instruments and music. There she was, as usual, applying all of her musical knowledge to the strings of the second-hand, old Irish fiddle, which didn’t sound too strident at all. She was skilful with her well-educated fingers, which had been trained to play the violin and classic European pieces rather than the usual Irish folk music; nevertheless she belonged to it; she either had the cadence, her ears simply loved it, or both.    

 I still remember her long reddish, straight but bushy and reactionary hair on her shoulders. I can still see her making that swift movement that as a tic she made with her left shoulder to get rid of her hair while she was immersed in her own musicality. She appeared quite Germanic, but the truth, as I have already mentioned, is that she and her both parents happened to be Greek. I guess this falls in the sack of the old story of wrong stereotypes. She had lived in Hamburg since an early age and moved to Berlin at a later. Her figure and shape couldn’t be more westerner - or maybe Greco Latin? Long and narrow as a vertical line; average size; rather pale skin with a slightly pinky touch in it, and a Southern one too, you could tell she grew up doing frequent visits to her family in Athens. Her pastel, pale eyes were pretty big and the opposite of mine from the front, but they strangely gave the opposite impression when seen from the side.

 I still remember those eyes so well… I think no other eyes have ever touched or captured me as those did; though that is another story. That evening, as I very often did, I tried to join Tina’s fiddle with my acoustic guitar. We used to sound quite good together, and had a good time too; however that day I was not in the mood to spend the whole evening banging my guitar’s strings, so I decided to go out.

 “Are you going fishing?” Tina asked stopping the music for a moment after observing through the large windows that the tide was in.

 ‘No, I’m just going for a smoke outside,’ I said as I was quickly getting out of the way through the door.
 
 ‘Sound,’ she said - a word that she had really got fond of; then, she carried on with her practice starting the same tune again.

  Outside the sea had covered the cove and looked quite calm. It was a good moment to catch some Mackerel, or maybe Pollack, although I was having a lazy day and I was only up to getting back in and grab a beer after having my cigarette. The rabbits had run away as soon as I had steeped out, but this time there was one still about the adventurer, the bold or lost one; you could see dozens of them through the window, get out and not even see a single one of them vanishing.

 The house was right next to a small cove, it was so close to the water that Tina found maddening the hypnotic sound of the waves at night before sleep. There were no trees around and therefore not many birds to be seen or heard. Some crops lay at the back of the house, and rough grass covered all hilly plains over the cliffs either side of the house, engulfed in a wild and picturesque huge bay, where there were no houses, no lights at night and not people – It was really just one of the very few idyllic places left on hearth.

 Outside I sat on the bench that my father had made when he and my mother bought the house. There was a rainbow on the wall of the house right behind the bench, beneath the living room’s window, which I had painted myself being just a kid. The beauty of the bay from there was immeasurable.   

 My cigarette was brief; and as if expecting something else from the day, I decided to get out of the property’s garden and walk down the cove and up the hill towards the only tower that remained from an ancient castle, perfectly visible from the house. The original position or base of the castle was as unthinkable as improbable. The tower was still standing there on the supposed walls of the small fortification; but the only space left for the rest of it was the just fall of the cliff. In other words, it looked as if most of the castle had simply and unquestionably fallen into the sea. Some of its remaining walls were just another feature of the cliff site covered in rough grass and Sea Campions.

 This wild flower is the only one that grows up there among the very few old stones. The white part of the flower that holds the petals has what looks like veins going through it. This is something that gives it a sort of human look. I used to think that the people who possibly died there had turned into the seeds which would give this fleshy wild flower; this being the only reason why this species was the only one to grow in this so peculiar place.

 Every time I sat there I was overcome by a kind of yearning, as if whatever that had laid there in the past was calling us from beyond and we couldn’t hear it. Maybe that was the reason why the flowers had to be half human; maybe, in my mind, they were being part of that call; maybe that was the reason why they were coming out of the rock and stretching towards me; maybe that was the only reason for their beauty and attraction; maybe, the solitude they denounced was the reason why for as long as I stayed there, I would accompany them, as they would accompany me.

 This thought always stayed with me when I sat on top of the tower’s rendered stones. I was certainly a very superstitious person, the type with the imagination to read the crows’ movements in a whimsical way, as if they were nothing less than omens.

 On my way back I began to descent the hill covered by the overgrown wild grass, which felt very fresh and almost velvety on my bare feet. As my eyes could already reach the small landing down the hill, I, at once, saw a couple of strange floating craft disembarking by the shore.

 As I approached the bottom of the hill, the image began to elucidate. The two craft that managed to someway float in the water gave me the impression of being the huge and well-polished skull and skeleton of a mature mammoth. I got to the bottom of the hill, and, since my parents’ house was literally above the small pier, I couldn’t understand how Tina had not noticed anybody hanging around at some point and how these people had not caught her attention.

 My eyes kept disappointing my expectations, and the more I looked for my parents’ house the more frustrated I got for I couldn’t find it where it was meant to be. Despite the confusion I was seduced by an impending curiosity which dragged me towards the craft in the water forgetting Tina and my parents’ house for a moment.

 I was about to go down the small path that led to the stone platform, or old pier, when I discerned people surrounding the odd ships, which they seemed to be loading and preparing to sail somewhere – Assuming, of course, that such craft could ever be sailed, which I seriously doubted. From a bit up the small hill and not far from the seashore, my mind finally drifted for an instance while my head was thinking: “Those boats, as these people seem to see those two huge floatable sculls, maybe float but there’s no way they could ever be sailed, let alone successfully cross the ocean,” I looked towards the southwest while I said this to myself, “because that’s the direction they are going, right towards the American continent.”

 True, that if they were lucky to survive, the tide would eventually lead them to the very south of the American continent, to Mapuches’ Land of Fire.  But that idea was simple preposterous, I thought to myself, and I suddenly paniced realising that they were going to die.
Then, before rushing and going to speak to them, I quickly observed the sort of people that I was about to deal with.

 They were dressing as if commemorating the Stone Age, the Viking perhaps, or who knows what. They were dressing up in the skins of some similar mammoth to the one they were using as a boat. Women’s hair was braided and dark. There were only two or three adults, the rest were all children. I could only see a mature man, the rest were very young in comparison. They were probably a family celebrating some sort of strange private carnival.

 Something about them however told me that they were seriously planning to cross the ocean on those fancy boats; that they were so alien to the world I knew that they thought they could survive and find a better life on another, not far, seashore. Their shoes were made of the same skin which covered their well formed sturdy bodies and everything the shoes and clothes clung to their bodies with ropes.  I began to feel a very severe anxiety which began sweeping through my body, and I could not hold my fear back any longer. I knew I had to warn them somehow.

 I rushed into my intention coming to understand that I could not carry out such task, that there was an almost imperceptible wall between us that did not allow us to interact with each other. I started to shout with all my strength; some of the kids have already got onboard, and their father would soon release the shaggy ropes which retained the eccentric boats. Then, after a few minutes, they would be gone for good.

 I shouted and twisted my body between spasms in my agitated mind, but they did not even look my way. Then, the tall and stout man, who had managed to cut his dark hair with probably a sharp stone - I suppose, because of the way it looked like – walked a bit backwards up the hill approaching where I was – where I was standing sweating and staring at him totally out of control. He got so close to me that the most unbelievable thing after all was not what my eyes beheld, but the fact that he really could not see me or hear me. 

  Slowly the man started to turn around himself as if he had heard something in the distance; or maybe as if he could feel true eagerness and wanted to have the last look at the land that he had probably inhabited for a long time, and that now he was just about to leave. He turned around showing me his face, a countenance I will never be able to forget. What I saw was not entirely human. My whole body stopped and shivered from fear. The kind of man’s forehead was exaggeratedly protuberant, making his eyes look as frightening, deep and dark cavities in his face, where he had like two big lumps either side of it. The face had, although less than the body, a significant amount of hair as well. He looked so inhuman in a way, that all I felt down my very guts was the deepest fear I had ever sensed.

 “Honey?” I heard Tina shout. “Is that you?” Tina’s voice broke my sudden silence. “I thought I’d heard you screaming. Are you alright?” She continued shouting trusting her sixth sense and knowing that I was close enough to hear her.

 I looked back in the direction of the same house I could not find only a moment ago. I, then, saw that it was almost dark. I quickly turned around again to look at the man one more time, determined to not give up, but the man was gone. The darkness had swallowed the extraordinary mammoth craft and the entire “troglodyte family”.

 “Say something, will you?” Tina shouted. “You’re scaring the hell out of me! What are you up to, may I know? Ho – nn- ney…?” she stuttered with trembling voice from the entrance of the house, as if she would have been the victim of such an atrocious experience and had just seen an entire family drowning in the sea.

 I am an imaginative person; I have always been a kid with more than just imagination - I guess, special. And all I have ever lived, as much as all I have ever imagined has always been full of mystery - An unsolvable or unlockable mystery which would hold its own key for good. I suppose that is life, an unsolvable mystery.

  Was Tina going to go away or was she going to stay with me? Who on earth knew the answer to that mystery which almost drove me crazy? Whichever was the right answer, I had to let it go – I had to let it go and then let it happen. I had no choice, so what was the point in me not being able to decide if I was going to eventually breath the very air that went through my very nostrils whatever happened, when it wasn’t even up to me or even her? 

 I still remember her huge but almond eyes. I will never forget them; I found them immense, unlike mine, nevertheless kind of similar.

Michael J. Solender

Walk

It was her humanity that I found so inviting. Birds called to her when we walked in the woods. They fluttered past, hoping to encounter first hand her beauty and grace so they could entertain the trees and mimic her goodness.

Are some born evil while others are born good? Do their mothers instinctively know the child that suckles at their breast will inflict harm upon others in the years to come? What would they do armed with this knowledge? Who could they tell?

My sweet Corrine knew neither duplicity nor darkness. Light was hers alone that morning we met as she cast her radiance into my being and future’s past. I loved her without knowing her and love her still. I long to walk with her now and hold her words, cradle her thoughts, breathe her breath and share her being.

My life, now sliced upon the bias, filled with angles of cast off precision yielded corners where I wanted to hide.

Fiery rage burned within. I wanted to wrap it up in a newspaper and it up and take to her. Corrine needed to birth the son that was my rage. It would grow inside her from the seed I planted, sewn by the despair I felt from not being able to make her understand.

Can anyone really understand?

Perhaps not. My rage would not last, it would become extinguished by rationale and calming talk. Corrine, while not understanding, would be comforting. She would no more bear my rage than I would carry it beyond today. Be gone. Animus is such a wasted emotion.

Take me my love, take me within your call and never release the grip you have upon me. I am spellbound, I rejoice in the knowing that this truth is mine.

Townsend Walker

Tongues of Fire

That which I should have done I did not do.  And for that I take the blame because, though I wanted to do it, I was thwarted, or as the contumelious will put it, I allowed myself to be cowed, first by the French, then by the Spanish, each threatening depredations against my person and the young nation I represented in Rome.  Others may credit me with having the foresight not to rush into the affair madly when there was little hope any action would have saved the situation.  I can see now that inaction was not the wise course because in my absence others flooded in, though with more force than I might ever have been able to muster, and created a most intolerable situation, a situation that will undoubtedly take years to conclude.  Loath as I am to be a Cassandra, I know, on the basis of what I have experienced in my life, and have been told by others of greater wisdom and experience, lives will be lost in the unraveling.  What might have I done?  Had I but called them together to reason, to tell them the foolhardiness of their entanglement.  I might have; I was acquainted with them both.  I am disquieted for I shall be witness to the inevitable conflagration that will unfold.  I hope, pray, and will bend all efforts to see that the fires are dampened, only a few lives are lost, and that I may see a peaceful resolution of the international crisis instigated by this affair.  If I hesitated it was not because I was fearful of my own safety and reputation, but the welfare of those close to me, my dear wife Anna and precious little daughters, Sarah and Abigail.  There are forces in this ancient city that cannot be trusted.  That they should be exposed to even one-tenth of the vitriol and whips of rectitude to which I have been, it would be much too much for me to bear.  What can a man do when others depend on him for their well-being and sustenance?  How can he be as brave as he otherwise would be if it were simply he, facing the mobs, sliced by the careless knives disguised as words prancing through the daily news sheets?  Oh, those men who call themselves journalists, seekers of truth, debunkers of the pompous.  It has often occurred to me that those who wish to expose others would suffer poorly under the cold light of a winter’s day.  The light sharpened with needles of frost, the light that would pierce the cheap woolens and sink into and burst open the vials of venom lurking in and sustaining those pitiful people.  There are those that say they are but doing the job for which they were hired.  It is a poor excuse to shift the evil to their employers, the men that demand that their four pages be blackened with markings every day: that there be at least one story to cry for justice while crying to sell the paper.  I have not digressed, for journalists have inflamed a situation that might have been settled quickly.  They carry heavy responsibility for what occurred. 

What was this affair, but in all of those that matter most, one of the heart.  Only when that affair had budded, ripened, then burst out of its skin as an overripe pomegranate spilling purple red juices for all to see, were the principals brought to light, their families engaged, and their nations rallied.  Each was offended, each sought justice, each appealed to their friends, each appealed to God for rightful and wrathful vengeance, each invoked the wraiths of their forbearers to beseech the heavens, and hells, for their cause.

Carlos and Dominique met in Rome in the spring of 1806.  The young ones were there, only by mere chance at the same time, to pay their respects to the Holy Father, the figure to whom each owed spiritual allegiance.  And no one foresaw, certainly not I, standing a few feet away, that lodged as they were in quite separate quarters of the ancient city, that on Pentecost when rose petals dropped from the oculus of the Pantheon, recreating God’s gift of tongues to the apostles, the two would reach for the same red petal, and that such was the grace of each of these young people that they touched, then held, that single fragile flower fragment, not tearing it as ordinary mortals might, but cupped it as one, and in doing so came face to face with the most charming visage either had heretofore beheld in the opposite sex.  He bowed, she curtsied; he placed the petal in her hand and placed her hand on his heart. 

“Carlos Bourbon,” he said.

“Dominique Bonaparte.”

“Enchanté mademoiselle,” he whispered.

Before more could be said they were enfolded within the tents of their families, hastened into the Piazza della Rotunda, and thence to their palazzos. 

But the seed had already fallen into that fertile ground with which the young and adventurous are most familiar.  Within the week their paths crossed, by happenstance I think not, on the Circus Maximus while they were horse back riding with friends.  Slight shifts of their eyes were sufficient to reveal the recognition of affection they held for each other, unbeknownst to their companions. 

Chambermaids and valets with scented billets-doux managed to find their way through secret doors and up back passages of their embassies.  On via Condotti, while their guardians were preoccupied buying boots, hats, dresses and jackets, the young couple stole away for minutes alone in the rear of Caffe Greco.  My Anna and her friend, Lady Montcrief, overheard the tête-à-tête. 

“I have not slept since I saw your face,” Carlos said.

“Nor I,” she replied.

He slipped her a folded paper.  “A poem for you, ma chère.”

“Read it to me, I pray,” she said.

Mon bel ange
Descendes du ciel
Bénisse moi
Avec tes grâces,
Avec tes mots,
Avec ton amour,
Que je puisse vivre
Un jour encore.

“Comme c’est beau, ton poème,” Dominique said.  “My maid will be at the fountain in Piazza Navonna with a yellow ribbon tomorrow at noon.”

“As will my man.”

Less than three months following the fateful encounter at the Pantheon, Carlos and Dominique’s scheme to be alone was fulfilled, at the home of her friend, the painter and sculptor, Antonio Canova.  Each had slipped out the way the billets-doux had found their way in.  They met until, until it could no longer be hidden from her mother and the ambassador.  Recriminations and remonstrances were hurled from Piazza Farnese to the Quirinale and back again.  With the pretext of reinforcing the French army in Portugal, Dominique’s uncle, the Emperor, had little choice but to proceed against Spain.

NB: The first line is the title of a painting by Ivan Albright hanging in The Art Institute of Chicago.