Reel
By Doug Draime
( shot in 3D )
( John Lee Hooker’s, Blues Before Sunrise, weaves in and out till final wipe )
( close up )
She snores like an old man
( quick cut )
She lies in a bathtub fingering herself. The water bubbles up. She can
hear her husband walking in the hallway. And she can hear her children
asking for Cheerios.
( slow dissolve )
In the middle of the room she leans over the table with a straw up her
nose. Does 2 long lines in record time. She smiles at Mary. Mary’s
husband works at the Shell station. He has no idea, and won’t be home
for several hours.
( fade )
Her mother, an invalid, in a wheelchair, writing a check on a Sears catalog.
( cut to her daughter )
She is slamming a screen door over and over again, screaming at her
husband.
“ You fucking asshole, you dirty son-of-a-bitch. Fuck you!. Fuck you, I hate
your fucking guts, you fucking piece of shit.”
The screen door falls of the hedges. Her husband is sitting in an old rocking
chair just inside the broken door, rocking their 2 year old son, who is crying.
“Your mother loves you, “ he says softly several times.
( cut to flashback )
A car is weaving in and out of the California mountains. It jolts to a stop on
the edge of a cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean.
( zoom to close up )
She is smashing her head on the steering wheel, crying and laughing hysterically.
( slow fade )
She is amazed that a plant is living in her house.
“Look,” she tells her husband, “this spider plant is actually still alive.”
( close up of plant )
( wipe )
( slow fade in )
Her mother in her wheelchair sitting in front of a muted big screen TV, shaking and
crying, tears flooding down her cheeks. She tightens the dirty gray blanket she has
wrapped around herself. A male nurse leans over her.
“Can I get anything for you, Mrs. Bergman? Is there something I can do?
Mrs. Bergman, Mrs. Bergman ...?”
( slow fade to her daughter in her car on the cliff )
( zoom to close up of her face, her breakdown )
( wipe )
- - -
Doug Draime emerged as a presence in the 'underground literary movement
in the late 1960's. He currently lives and writes in Ashland, Oregon.
By Doug Draime
( shot in 3D )
( John Lee Hooker’s, Blues Before Sunrise, weaves in and out till final wipe )
( close up )
She snores like an old man
( quick cut )
She lies in a bathtub fingering herself. The water bubbles up. She can
hear her husband walking in the hallway. And she can hear her children
asking for Cheerios.
( slow dissolve )
In the middle of the room she leans over the table with a straw up her
nose. Does 2 long lines in record time. She smiles at Mary. Mary’s
husband works at the Shell station. He has no idea, and won’t be home
for several hours.
( fade )
Her mother, an invalid, in a wheelchair, writing a check on a Sears catalog.
( cut to her daughter )
She is slamming a screen door over and over again, screaming at her
husband.
“ You fucking asshole, you dirty son-of-a-bitch. Fuck you!. Fuck you, I hate
your fucking guts, you fucking piece of shit.”
The screen door falls of the hedges. Her husband is sitting in an old rocking
chair just inside the broken door, rocking their 2 year old son, who is crying.
“Your mother loves you, “ he says softly several times.
( cut to flashback )
A car is weaving in and out of the California mountains. It jolts to a stop on
the edge of a cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean.
( zoom to close up )
She is smashing her head on the steering wheel, crying and laughing hysterically.
( slow fade )
She is amazed that a plant is living in her house.
“Look,” she tells her husband, “this spider plant is actually still alive.”
( close up of plant )
( wipe )
( slow fade in )
Her mother in her wheelchair sitting in front of a muted big screen TV, shaking and
crying, tears flooding down her cheeks. She tightens the dirty gray blanket she has
wrapped around herself. A male nurse leans over her.
“Can I get anything for you, Mrs. Bergman? Is there something I can do?
Mrs. Bergman, Mrs. Bergman ...?”
( slow fade to her daughter in her car on the cliff )
( zoom to close up of her face, her breakdown )
( wipe )
- - -
Doug Draime emerged as a presence in the 'underground literary movement
in the late 1960's. He currently lives and writes in Ashland, Oregon.
Loss of Home
By Kira Fahrenheit
The only thing more horrible than watching your house burn down is knowing that somebody did it, that someone’s maliciousness cost you everything you once held dear. I remember the smell most of all, the charred flesh and boiling metal that stung my eyes, my nose. I remember father holding me back, rough hands tight on my arms as I struggled to get free, struggled to plunge myself into the smoke and fire to recover some semblance of something from the old life that was quickly turning to ashes right before my eyes. He had to hold me again when we found out who it was, when we found out who was responsible for the destruction, and I remember the tears in his eyes, the restraint. It took everything he had not to throw himself into revenge, to throw away what was left of his life in the pursuit of paying back that debt which was so painfully owed.
And yet, in the end, what goes around comes around. It hurt a lot to see our old lives go up in smoke, but the joy that came afterwords, the sense of being free was almost as satisfying as the sadistic glee I felt as the man and his pack of zealous thugs that had taken everything from us met their fitting end. I’ll never forget the look on that half-breed’s face as I twisted the knife in his chest and slapped his stunned and dying face with one leather-gloved hand. Nobody burns down my Home and gets away with it.
- - -
Kira lives in the desert with her father and her brother. She loves fixing things, making things, and going for long walks with her cousin. She also loves airplanes, the bigger the better!
By Kira Fahrenheit
The only thing more horrible than watching your house burn down is knowing that somebody did it, that someone’s maliciousness cost you everything you once held dear. I remember the smell most of all, the charred flesh and boiling metal that stung my eyes, my nose. I remember father holding me back, rough hands tight on my arms as I struggled to get free, struggled to plunge myself into the smoke and fire to recover some semblance of something from the old life that was quickly turning to ashes right before my eyes. He had to hold me again when we found out who it was, when we found out who was responsible for the destruction, and I remember the tears in his eyes, the restraint. It took everything he had not to throw himself into revenge, to throw away what was left of his life in the pursuit of paying back that debt which was so painfully owed.
And yet, in the end, what goes around comes around. It hurt a lot to see our old lives go up in smoke, but the joy that came afterwords, the sense of being free was almost as satisfying as the sadistic glee I felt as the man and his pack of zealous thugs that had taken everything from us met their fitting end. I’ll never forget the look on that half-breed’s face as I twisted the knife in his chest and slapped his stunned and dying face with one leather-gloved hand. Nobody burns down my Home and gets away with it.
- - -
Kira lives in the desert with her father and her brother. She loves fixing things, making things, and going for long walks with her cousin. She also loves airplanes, the bigger the better!
Like Glass
By E.S. Wynn
I turn the piece of broken glass over in my hands. Once, twice, three times the light catches it and flickers across my eyes in a flash of pale brilliance. I sigh, and the dust of ancient, pulverized concrete stirs before me in faint, powdery grey curlicues. Kari is not coming. Kari is dead.
I turn the piece of glass over in my hand again. Once, twice, three times, each time considering my options, considering what I can do with this sharp little shard. Cutting myself is an option, hurling the thing at the closest wall is another. I choose the third; the piece of glass keeps turning over and over in my hand.
There has to be something I can do, something besides playing with this piece of broken glass while I wait for the drones to find me. They’d be searching the ashes of the great city by now, picking up the footsteps that Kari and I had so carefully hidden, following a trail of tiny discarded skin cells like a trail of breadcrumbs to the little ruined tower of concrete and rusty rebar that had become my sanctuary, or at least, as much as any place ever was. With drones constantly tracking your movements, no place was ever safe for long.
But that was why we tried so hard to confuse the drones, splitting up and taking separate routes to the same places, bathing regularly between coats of thick layers of ash and mud. Fully protected, thermals couldn’t pick us up, and it kept the traces we left down to a minimum. The drones still find us though, eventually. We can't erase every trace of our passage, and the hunters don’t miss a thing.
Once, twice, three times the chunk of glass flips across my palm, fingers dancing along its razor edges. Another fragment of a long-forgotten civilization, another meaningless and easily shattered fragment, just like me.
There was a fourth option– running was always an option, but the tower was empty, and I’d be going back into the ashes completely unprotected. Thermal imaging would pick me up immediately, and the drones would be on me in seconds, compressed plasma pulses screaming toward me as they burnt down through the already scorched and ash-choked air. I might get fifty feet from the tower before I was vaporized utterly, another nodule of the human cancer mercilessly obliterated before it could breed and spread to other parts of the planetary body. That was something I had always had trouble accepting– they saw us as little more than an infection, a malignant tumor sucking the life from the greater body of the Earth. And maybe they were right. I guess it really all came down to your perspective.
They had been pretty successful in curing the human disease too; Kari and I were among the lucky few drifters that still managed to carve a living out of the pitted and charred ruins and wastelands that were our constant companions, if that could be called living, and if you suspected we were lucky merely because we were not among the dead. Sometimes I found myself envying the men I’d seen vaporized in the ash fields, almost wishing that fate had chosen me instead of them. Even now, I almost envied Kari. Surely she was in a better place now than I. She had to be.
But there weren’t very many of us left anymore and, strangely, that gave me the will to press on and try to survive. Even if it meant being alone, I would continue to move, continue to avoid the relentless drones for as long as I could. I’d do it for Kari, and the hope that maybe, one day, I’d find more of my kind again, a pack of better-organized drifters, a larger, more insidious cluster of cancer to incorporate myself into.
The ragged chunk of glass continues to turn over and over in my hand, once, twice, three times, catching the light as it goes.
And suddenly, I am standing, the fragment of glass coming to a sudden stop in my palm. I grip it lightly, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to feel the edges against my flesh.
It is time to move again.
If I am lucky, the eyes in the sky will be watching something else. If I am lucky, I can sneak out of the tower and across the wastelands without having to worry about being picked up on thermal imaging. If I am lucky, the drones that had killed Kari and countless others before her will be chasing me across the surface of our burnt and blasted world for a long while yet. If I am lucky, I won't become another hard, carbon stain on this world of ash and glass.
- - -
E.S. Wynn once singlehandedly beat a five-handed rubbox of the Maorr Retocracy somewhere in the vicinity of Proxima with one brain tied behind his back. The lands on the other side of the mirror will never be the same (just ask Bob Dole!)
By E.S. Wynn
I turn the piece of broken glass over in my hands. Once, twice, three times the light catches it and flickers across my eyes in a flash of pale brilliance. I sigh, and the dust of ancient, pulverized concrete stirs before me in faint, powdery grey curlicues. Kari is not coming. Kari is dead.
I turn the piece of glass over in my hand again. Once, twice, three times, each time considering my options, considering what I can do with this sharp little shard. Cutting myself is an option, hurling the thing at the closest wall is another. I choose the third; the piece of glass keeps turning over and over in my hand.
There has to be something I can do, something besides playing with this piece of broken glass while I wait for the drones to find me. They’d be searching the ashes of the great city by now, picking up the footsteps that Kari and I had so carefully hidden, following a trail of tiny discarded skin cells like a trail of breadcrumbs to the little ruined tower of concrete and rusty rebar that had become my sanctuary, or at least, as much as any place ever was. With drones constantly tracking your movements, no place was ever safe for long.
But that was why we tried so hard to confuse the drones, splitting up and taking separate routes to the same places, bathing regularly between coats of thick layers of ash and mud. Fully protected, thermals couldn’t pick us up, and it kept the traces we left down to a minimum. The drones still find us though, eventually. We can't erase every trace of our passage, and the hunters don’t miss a thing.
Once, twice, three times the chunk of glass flips across my palm, fingers dancing along its razor edges. Another fragment of a long-forgotten civilization, another meaningless and easily shattered fragment, just like me.
There was a fourth option– running was always an option, but the tower was empty, and I’d be going back into the ashes completely unprotected. Thermal imaging would pick me up immediately, and the drones would be on me in seconds, compressed plasma pulses screaming toward me as they burnt down through the already scorched and ash-choked air. I might get fifty feet from the tower before I was vaporized utterly, another nodule of the human cancer mercilessly obliterated before it could breed and spread to other parts of the planetary body. That was something I had always had trouble accepting– they saw us as little more than an infection, a malignant tumor sucking the life from the greater body of the Earth. And maybe they were right. I guess it really all came down to your perspective.
They had been pretty successful in curing the human disease too; Kari and I were among the lucky few drifters that still managed to carve a living out of the pitted and charred ruins and wastelands that were our constant companions, if that could be called living, and if you suspected we were lucky merely because we were not among the dead. Sometimes I found myself envying the men I’d seen vaporized in the ash fields, almost wishing that fate had chosen me instead of them. Even now, I almost envied Kari. Surely she was in a better place now than I. She had to be.
But there weren’t very many of us left anymore and, strangely, that gave me the will to press on and try to survive. Even if it meant being alone, I would continue to move, continue to avoid the relentless drones for as long as I could. I’d do it for Kari, and the hope that maybe, one day, I’d find more of my kind again, a pack of better-organized drifters, a larger, more insidious cluster of cancer to incorporate myself into.
The ragged chunk of glass continues to turn over and over in my hand, once, twice, three times, catching the light as it goes.
And suddenly, I am standing, the fragment of glass coming to a sudden stop in my palm. I grip it lightly, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to feel the edges against my flesh.
It is time to move again.
If I am lucky, the eyes in the sky will be watching something else. If I am lucky, I can sneak out of the tower and across the wastelands without having to worry about being picked up on thermal imaging. If I am lucky, the drones that had killed Kari and countless others before her will be chasing me across the surface of our burnt and blasted world for a long while yet. If I am lucky, I won't become another hard, carbon stain on this world of ash and glass.
- - -
E.S. Wynn once singlehandedly beat a five-handed rubbox of the Maorr Retocracy somewhere in the vicinity of Proxima with one brain tied behind his back. The lands on the other side of the mirror will never be the same (just ask Bob Dole!)
Nocturnal Pinky
By Dave Migman
Huge woman on the bus, diagonally across, squinty evil eyes regarding me. “I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU.” She screams at Vince. Did he see? Can he really be so oblivious? She’s infatuated with him. She wants to suffocate him with her affection; his beany little head thrust deeply into the huge cavernous cleft of her bosom, his little cheeks red raw against her warty flesh.
Vince turns. His tired eyes ringed by red sores.
“PINK BITS”
I laugh too much but I’ve held it in all the way down Ballyhooley Hill. School kids turn to suss us out, and their eyes are frozen at the sight of El, the ebony prince. Their eyes soften, smiles dart across their faces.
Bus stop on the quays and we’re out of there of into the chill the rising mist rolling off the river, the frost bites my shaven head, makes me feel real.
We are nocturnal creatures, I can’t say I know what day it is. I eat three breakfasts per day, time becomes fuzzy at the edges and as I walk wearily back home I can still hear the forklifts reversing and the tearing of the tape machine as it thumps down the lids of three hundred boxes.
This is the life we have chosen to lead. Pay slips and bank accounts, poke a plastic tag into the slot and draw a little blood out of the hole. 8Am time for a drink, off to the pub. The Slackers stand, united by their bondage to alcohol. Under artificial lights we herald in the dawn - prelude to our night.
Vince laughing sickly into his goblet, sucking up some caffeine infected mess. Off to the toilet to powder his nose with Bruce the Loose. And a woman, a goddess staring across at me. Staring across with midnight eyes and I can feel it, the cold sweat, the yearning.
“Go over.” says Vince, “Go speak to her.”
“Tell her you want to lick her hole.” hawks the Loose.
I slide over there, next to her, casually ordering another drink.
“What’s the story? How about it?” Deranged words come out. Not my words, someone else’s. She ignores me, shifting her languid gaze back to the television that is directly above where I was last standing. I slide from the bar, burning, snort something to the boys, “Lesbian!” they chuckle into their brews of booze.
Blinding sunlight, mid day, old women in fur coats, the crush of the high street, we stagger through glances of disgust and frowning descent from normal people who drink at decent hours.
The cycle is endless. Half daily measures of tedium, stacking, pushing, cranking, ten boxes to a pallet, the tape machine... that fucking tape machine. I hear it as I blunder into my dreams.
- - -
Dave Migman is at war with the angels and the elves. But really he's just a big fairy... or so it was told...
By Dave Migman
Huge woman on the bus, diagonally across, squinty evil eyes regarding me. “I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU.” She screams at Vince. Did he see? Can he really be so oblivious? She’s infatuated with him. She wants to suffocate him with her affection; his beany little head thrust deeply into the huge cavernous cleft of her bosom, his little cheeks red raw against her warty flesh.
Vince turns. His tired eyes ringed by red sores.
“PINK BITS”
I laugh too much but I’ve held it in all the way down Ballyhooley Hill. School kids turn to suss us out, and their eyes are frozen at the sight of El, the ebony prince. Their eyes soften, smiles dart across their faces.
Bus stop on the quays and we’re out of there of into the chill the rising mist rolling off the river, the frost bites my shaven head, makes me feel real.
We are nocturnal creatures, I can’t say I know what day it is. I eat three breakfasts per day, time becomes fuzzy at the edges and as I walk wearily back home I can still hear the forklifts reversing and the tearing of the tape machine as it thumps down the lids of three hundred boxes.
This is the life we have chosen to lead. Pay slips and bank accounts, poke a plastic tag into the slot and draw a little blood out of the hole. 8Am time for a drink, off to the pub. The Slackers stand, united by their bondage to alcohol. Under artificial lights we herald in the dawn - prelude to our night.
Vince laughing sickly into his goblet, sucking up some caffeine infected mess. Off to the toilet to powder his nose with Bruce the Loose. And a woman, a goddess staring across at me. Staring across with midnight eyes and I can feel it, the cold sweat, the yearning.
“Go over.” says Vince, “Go speak to her.”
“Tell her you want to lick her hole.” hawks the Loose.
I slide over there, next to her, casually ordering another drink.
“What’s the story? How about it?” Deranged words come out. Not my words, someone else’s. She ignores me, shifting her languid gaze back to the television that is directly above where I was last standing. I slide from the bar, burning, snort something to the boys, “Lesbian!” they chuckle into their brews of booze.
Blinding sunlight, mid day, old women in fur coats, the crush of the high street, we stagger through glances of disgust and frowning descent from normal people who drink at decent hours.
The cycle is endless. Half daily measures of tedium, stacking, pushing, cranking, ten boxes to a pallet, the tape machine... that fucking tape machine. I hear it as I blunder into my dreams.
- - -
Dave Migman is at war with the angels and the elves. But really he's just a big fairy... or so it was told...
Homunculi
By Richard Osgood
Irony entered the barn through open double doors. Anybody here? Someone or something was in the loft among the baled hay and nervous swallows. He climbed the ladder and followed the sounds to a void within stacked bales. There he found Judgment and Passion, each in varying stages of undress, tangled in ecstasy. Judgment looked up, shreds of loose hay clenched to wet flesh. Passion rose to her feet. Fractured light through weathered boards animated her glistening breasts. Do you not like what you see? Passion motioned for Irony to come forward, but he stepped back and Judgment rushed toward him. Irony slipped on a patch of loose hay and fell to the floor below. Passion turned to Judgment——You have to do something.
Judgment dragged Irony to a hatch in the floorboards. In a small room below sat a large wooden box, at one time used to store beef shanks and headless chickens. The temperature within remained constant and cool, no matter the heat from above. He laid Irony in the box and latched the lid, confident that Conscience would come later to dispose of the evidence. Judgement emerged from the chamber to discover that Passion was gone. Folly stood in the open barn doorway, laughing and pointing and flouncing about. You will never wake up from this, he said, never wake up, never wake up, never wake up from this. Judgment covered his ears and shut his eyes. He opened them to find the bedroom curtains drawn and crickets alight the August darkness. Knowledge entered the room, shadowed by light from the hallway, and leaned between the stack of twin beds. You were having a bad dream, he said. It's okay now. Go back to sleep. Knowledge faded into darkness and Folly’s head appeared over the edge of the top bunk. It is not okay now, he taunted, you are still in a dream, from which you will never wake up, never wake up, never wake up, from which you will never wake up.
Judgment leaped from the bed and ran to the barn. He searched for the hidden chamber beneath the floorboards. It was nowhere to be found. Folly danced in the loft with the swallows and baled hay, singing of remorse and condemnation. Judgment returned to the bedroom and found the stacked twin beds consumed by memory, in their place a king-sized bed on which Modesty lay fast asleep. He turned to the dresser where he discovered a ceramic urn with the ashen remains of Knowledge. Judgment searched the room and in a corner near the closet discovered a wooden peg protruding from the floor. He pressed the peg and a hatch popped open revealing a cold, dark chamber below. At the bottom he saw a large wooden box. He entered the darkness and opened the box. In the place where Irony once lay, the betrayed eyes of Conscience stared up at him.
- - -
Richard Osgood lives on a river where the north meets the south. Publication credits include, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Hobart, Dogzplot, LitChaos, Mudluscious, and Writer's Bloc, among others. He continues to mourn the deaths of Steve Marriott and Syd Barrett.
By Richard Osgood
Irony entered the barn through open double doors. Anybody here? Someone or something was in the loft among the baled hay and nervous swallows. He climbed the ladder and followed the sounds to a void within stacked bales. There he found Judgment and Passion, each in varying stages of undress, tangled in ecstasy. Judgment looked up, shreds of loose hay clenched to wet flesh. Passion rose to her feet. Fractured light through weathered boards animated her glistening breasts. Do you not like what you see? Passion motioned for Irony to come forward, but he stepped back and Judgment rushed toward him. Irony slipped on a patch of loose hay and fell to the floor below. Passion turned to Judgment——You have to do something.
Judgment dragged Irony to a hatch in the floorboards. In a small room below sat a large wooden box, at one time used to store beef shanks and headless chickens. The temperature within remained constant and cool, no matter the heat from above. He laid Irony in the box and latched the lid, confident that Conscience would come later to dispose of the evidence. Judgement emerged from the chamber to discover that Passion was gone. Folly stood in the open barn doorway, laughing and pointing and flouncing about. You will never wake up from this, he said, never wake up, never wake up, never wake up from this. Judgment covered his ears and shut his eyes. He opened them to find the bedroom curtains drawn and crickets alight the August darkness. Knowledge entered the room, shadowed by light from the hallway, and leaned between the stack of twin beds. You were having a bad dream, he said. It's okay now. Go back to sleep. Knowledge faded into darkness and Folly’s head appeared over the edge of the top bunk. It is not okay now, he taunted, you are still in a dream, from which you will never wake up, never wake up, never wake up, from which you will never wake up.
Judgment leaped from the bed and ran to the barn. He searched for the hidden chamber beneath the floorboards. It was nowhere to be found. Folly danced in the loft with the swallows and baled hay, singing of remorse and condemnation. Judgment returned to the bedroom and found the stacked twin beds consumed by memory, in their place a king-sized bed on which Modesty lay fast asleep. He turned to the dresser where he discovered a ceramic urn with the ashen remains of Knowledge. Judgment searched the room and in a corner near the closet discovered a wooden peg protruding from the floor. He pressed the peg and a hatch popped open revealing a cold, dark chamber below. At the bottom he saw a large wooden box. He entered the darkness and opened the box. In the place where Irony once lay, the betrayed eyes of Conscience stared up at him.
- - -
Richard Osgood lives on a river where the north meets the south. Publication credits include, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Hobart, Dogzplot, LitChaos, Mudluscious, and Writer's Bloc, among others. He continues to mourn the deaths of Steve Marriott and Syd Barrett.
Advice for Beginners
By Edmond Caldwell
Tap it just like you would a soft-boiled egg with a spoon, except use a hammer. A ball-peen hammer works best. Give it a couple of taps with a ball-peen hammer so that it cracks but doesn’t shatter and spill out of the frame. You have to find the right proportion of force and delicacy.
Once you’ve cracked the surface you need to choose one of the pieces to pry out. This can be tricky because you don’t want to dislodge the other pieces. Then all you’ll see is some old backboard or the discolored wall behind the frame. Don’t pick a shard that looks load-bearing, so to speak. But of course you’ve also got to pick one that will leave a big enough hole once you get it out. Sometimes it’s like there’s only one right piece and you have to figure out which.
Once you’ve picked that right piece you can start prying it out, very, very carefully. This part is tough because of the whole question of gloves. If you’re not wearing any or they’re too thin you can easily cut yourself. But if they’re too thick you lose all sensitivity, you start going by thought instead of by feel and end up dislodging all the pieces again. We prefer no gloves for this part but that’s only because we’ve done it so many times; beginners should wear gloves for the entire operation.
Pry very slowly and carefully until your end of the shard sticks out at a slight angle from the plane of the surface. Then worry it like you might a loose tooth until you can pluck it out while the rest of the shards hold in their crack-pattern.
The thing to remember here is not to be distracted by your reflection. This is definitely rule number one for this phase. You’re going to be tempted to look at the cracked, uneven version of your face, with your nose shearing off in one place and starting again in another, and all the varieties of lip-slice. Next thing you know a phrase like “skull tectonics” pops into your head and you’re flipped out for the next month. This is the mirror trying to protect itself, but it’s really harmless if you don’t pay attention. It’s just a matter of refocusing your eyes onto the very surface. Don’t give in to the illusion of depth. Also don’t be alarmed if the surface seems to bulge slightly, giving a convex appearance. This isn’t an illusion but there’s nothing you can do about it.
Once you’ve extracted your piece and the whole thing hasn’t crashed out of the frame, then the real fun begins, although you still want to keep those gloves on so you don’t sever an artery. Inside there’s usually this stuff like peat that has a strong, musty odor, even a little horse manure-y. It’s like packing material, but organic and compressed as if it came out of a compost heap. Except organic matter under pressure gives off heat, whereas this peat-stuff feels like it came out of the fridge. Other times it is more like hair. Anyway you can tear out tufts of this peat- or hair-like matter and sift through it for whatever’s inside.
It’s random what you might find, but not completely. Last week we found a rolled-up length of leathery material like parchment, almost like a scroll made out of batwings, if you can imagine such a thing. Maybe it was the thought of batwings that did it, because next we found the bones of a small animal or bird. Some of the bones were arched or bowed like ribs or wing-bones, while others were so corkscrewed that they could not have come from any normal animal, although they were clearly bones.
Cindy was trying to scratch on the parchment with the sharp end of a bone when we found, in the very next tuft, a ballpoint pen that had teeth marks in the cap. At first we thought it didn’t write, but then we discovered that it only wrote certain letters – A, C, D, E, I, L, and W – and the words that could be written with those letters, like AID, ADD, LAW, ILL, LIE, WELL, DEED, LEAD, ALLIED, CALLED, CLAWED, WALLED, etc. We guessed that we needed to come up with something that used all of the letters, and that gave Cindy the idea – probably because we had some of the parts already, like CALLED and WELL – that they spelled the name of that kid who went missing last year, EDDIE CALDWELL. This had probably been his pen.
- - -
Edmond Caldwell's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pear Noir!, DIAGRAM, Word Riot, Sein und Werden, Dark Sky Magazine, and elsewhere. He was last seen in Boston.
By Edmond Caldwell
Tap it just like you would a soft-boiled egg with a spoon, except use a hammer. A ball-peen hammer works best. Give it a couple of taps with a ball-peen hammer so that it cracks but doesn’t shatter and spill out of the frame. You have to find the right proportion of force and delicacy.
Once you’ve cracked the surface you need to choose one of the pieces to pry out. This can be tricky because you don’t want to dislodge the other pieces. Then all you’ll see is some old backboard or the discolored wall behind the frame. Don’t pick a shard that looks load-bearing, so to speak. But of course you’ve also got to pick one that will leave a big enough hole once you get it out. Sometimes it’s like there’s only one right piece and you have to figure out which.
Once you’ve picked that right piece you can start prying it out, very, very carefully. This part is tough because of the whole question of gloves. If you’re not wearing any or they’re too thin you can easily cut yourself. But if they’re too thick you lose all sensitivity, you start going by thought instead of by feel and end up dislodging all the pieces again. We prefer no gloves for this part but that’s only because we’ve done it so many times; beginners should wear gloves for the entire operation.
Pry very slowly and carefully until your end of the shard sticks out at a slight angle from the plane of the surface. Then worry it like you might a loose tooth until you can pluck it out while the rest of the shards hold in their crack-pattern.
The thing to remember here is not to be distracted by your reflection. This is definitely rule number one for this phase. You’re going to be tempted to look at the cracked, uneven version of your face, with your nose shearing off in one place and starting again in another, and all the varieties of lip-slice. Next thing you know a phrase like “skull tectonics” pops into your head and you’re flipped out for the next month. This is the mirror trying to protect itself, but it’s really harmless if you don’t pay attention. It’s just a matter of refocusing your eyes onto the very surface. Don’t give in to the illusion of depth. Also don’t be alarmed if the surface seems to bulge slightly, giving a convex appearance. This isn’t an illusion but there’s nothing you can do about it.
Once you’ve extracted your piece and the whole thing hasn’t crashed out of the frame, then the real fun begins, although you still want to keep those gloves on so you don’t sever an artery. Inside there’s usually this stuff like peat that has a strong, musty odor, even a little horse manure-y. It’s like packing material, but organic and compressed as if it came out of a compost heap. Except organic matter under pressure gives off heat, whereas this peat-stuff feels like it came out of the fridge. Other times it is more like hair. Anyway you can tear out tufts of this peat- or hair-like matter and sift through it for whatever’s inside.
It’s random what you might find, but not completely. Last week we found a rolled-up length of leathery material like parchment, almost like a scroll made out of batwings, if you can imagine such a thing. Maybe it was the thought of batwings that did it, because next we found the bones of a small animal or bird. Some of the bones were arched or bowed like ribs or wing-bones, while others were so corkscrewed that they could not have come from any normal animal, although they were clearly bones.
Cindy was trying to scratch on the parchment with the sharp end of a bone when we found, in the very next tuft, a ballpoint pen that had teeth marks in the cap. At first we thought it didn’t write, but then we discovered that it only wrote certain letters – A, C, D, E, I, L, and W – and the words that could be written with those letters, like AID, ADD, LAW, ILL, LIE, WELL, DEED, LEAD, ALLIED, CALLED, CLAWED, WALLED, etc. We guessed that we needed to come up with something that used all of the letters, and that gave Cindy the idea – probably because we had some of the parts already, like CALLED and WELL – that they spelled the name of that kid who went missing last year, EDDIE CALDWELL. This had probably been his pen.
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Edmond Caldwell's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pear Noir!, DIAGRAM, Word Riot, Sein und Werden, Dark Sky Magazine, and elsewhere. He was last seen in Boston.
In The Place That Lays Beyond
By Kira Fahrenheit
My heart is full of dead people
But I won’t let them out.
I keep my memories inside,
Won’t let them fly, let them drift away
Or take shape, shared with others
Where lights dance pyroclastic;
Alive and iridescent, mirrors of light and fire
That reflect life on the face of death
Memories of flesh hiding age, hiding rot.
Hiding truth; a blind solace
You cannot touch,
Cannot love.
My heart is full of dead people.
But I’ll always keep my memories inside.
- - -
Kira lives in the desert with her father and her brother. She loves fixing things, making things, and going for long walks with her cousin. She also loves airplanes, the bigger the better!
By Kira Fahrenheit
My heart is full of dead people
But I won’t let them out.
I keep my memories inside,
Won’t let them fly, let them drift away
Or take shape, shared with others
Where lights dance pyroclastic;
Alive and iridescent, mirrors of light and fire
That reflect life on the face of death
Memories of flesh hiding age, hiding rot.
Hiding truth; a blind solace
You cannot touch,
Cannot love.
My heart is full of dead people.
But I’ll always keep my memories inside.
- - -
Kira lives in the desert with her father and her brother. She loves fixing things, making things, and going for long walks with her cousin. She also loves airplanes, the bigger the better!
